Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? Were there witnesses? Wasn’t anyone arrested?”

  “No. No witnesses, no arrests.”

  She seemed to find that appalling. To Rafael, it was simply the way of the world he’d known as a youth.

  “When did it happen?”

  “A long time ago. Fifteen years.”

  Her eyes were too lovely, her mouth too sweet, her shocked expression too innocent. He felt her fingers curl against his palm, her nails scraping gently over his skin like a kitten’s tiny claws. “To be stabbed in the back... You must have been seriously hurt.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen? Were you mugged?”

  “No.” He let out a long breath. Behind her lovely eyes, her sweet mouth, her innocent gaze and the quiet furling of her hand within his, he sensed the tenacity that so exasperated him. And excited him. If she were just a nice, compliant young lady she wouldn’t make him crazy with anger—or passion. She wouldn’t interest him at all.

  He knew she would keep at him until he told her. “It was a fight,” he said.

  “A knife fight?”

  “I didn’t know there would be knives. I wasn’t armed.”

  “Who were you fighting?”

  Another gang. “Some neighborhood boys. It was a turf war. You know, this street belongs to us and that street belongs to you. It was stupid. I didn’t want any part of it.”

  “Then why were you there?”

  I was a Hermano del Sol. My hermanos told me I had to be a part of it. “It was one of those things. Everyone was there, the whole neighborhood.” He stroked her knuckles with his thumb, as if his soothing caress could answer her questions. And his own. He still had questions about that night, questions he’d long ago resigned himself to living with forever. “In those days the barrio was tough, but it wasn’t as it is now. Back then, people fought when someone spray-painted his name on someone else’s territory. It wasn’t like today, with gang-banging and drive-by shootings.”

  “No guns. Just knives,” she muttered, as if she saw no difference.

  “Guns are a coward’s way of facing his enemy. Knives are personal. You have to get close enough to stare into the eyes of the man you want to hurt.”

  “Have you...” She swallowed and ran her tongue across over her lips, as if that would make her words flow more easily. “Have you ever hurt anybody?”

  “With a weapon, no. I fought with my fists sometimes. Even knives seem cowardly. I never carried one.”

  “Maybe if you’d had one, you could have defended yourself against whoever did that.” She gestured toward his scar.

  Her comment surprised him. It almost sounded as if she approved of ghetto violence—at least if it was in self-defense.

  He gave her hand a light squeeze, grateful for her empathy. The universe he grew up in was something she couldn’t begin to comprehend, yet she was trying—at least speaking the right words. “A knife wouldn’t have helped me,” he told her. “I was cut from behind. By the time I felt it, it was too late.”

  “How badly were you hurt?”

  He gave a brief, harsh laugh. “The blade broke a rib, tore through muscle, nicked an artery and punctured a lung. It was so dark that night, and there were so many people running through the streets. And suddenly I felt a blow to my back. I thought I’d just been kicked...but then I started coughing blood, and my legs went out.”

  “Rafael...” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  He squeezed her hand again. “It doesn’t matter. I lived.”

  “You could have bled to death, or been trampled, or—”

  “Diego saved me.”

  Her eyes widened, and she smiled with dawning recognition. Maybe, like so many other people, she had wondered how two men with such different personalities could have remained close friends. Diego was as garrulous as Rafael was reticent, as open as Rafael was private. Diego was frisky, lecherous, preening and bursting with charm—everything Rafael wasn’t.

  Yet he would trust Diego with his life, because Diego had already earned that trust in the most fundamental way.

  “I don’t remember large parts of that night. But at one point my eyes came into focus. I was in an alley, and Diego was looming above me. My blood was all over him. He saw some people running by and he called to them, and told them to get a car. They drove me to the hospital.”

  “Why didn’t they get an ambulance? Or the police—”

  “The police didn’t come to our part of town,” Rafael said dryly.

  Sandra didn’t speak for several minutes. She looked offended, and for a moment he felt sorry for having spoken so bluntly. It wasn’t her fault the civil authorities had wanted nothing to do with his old neighborhood, a community of illegal aliens, of sweatshops and sub-standard housing and people who spoke only Spanish.

  But his apology died on his lips. Let her know the brutal truth, he thought. Maybe when she trumpeted his life across the pages of the Post, she would show some compassion.

  “So Diego took you to the hospital,” she finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you lived.”

  “It was doubtful for a while, but yes, I did.”

  “And you became a movie mogul.”

  He laughed, this time without bitterness. “I was laid up for a long time. Rosa had a friend she brought to see me, a priest. At first she and Father Andreas just prayed over me—he gave me last rites a few times. But then, when it seemed I would recover, he would come on his own and lecture me about how I couldn’t go back to the streets.”

  “Where did he expect you to go?”

  “It didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t back. He was good to me, but tough. Like a father should be.” Father Andreas had been more of a father than Rafael’s own long-gone father. “While I was still in bed he got me into a program to earn my high school diploma.”

  She did a mental calculation. “You were already, what? Twenty when this happened?”

  He saw what she was getting at. “I never finished high school. Your research didn’t tell you that?”

  “As a matter of fact, no.”

  “Well, now you know. I’m no scholar like you.”

  “I had advantages you didn’t have, Rafael. I had support, I had my family behind me—”

  “And I’m no scholar,” he cut her off. If someone truly wanted an education, he didn’t need the support of a family. When Rafael had been a teenager, the only education he’d wanted was in how to survive in a dangerous world. It was only after he’d nearly lost that battle to survive that he admitted how much he wanted out of life, how full it could be if he opened his eyes and looked beyond the limited horizons of his youth. “Father Andreas told me he would be able to get me work, but only if I got schooling.”

  “It’s easier to get a job with an education.”

  “I could have done the jobs he found me without a degree. But it was a test. He wanted me to prove myself. He wanted me to use my brain.”

  “He sounds as if he saved your life as much as Diego did.”

  “He’s a good man.” Rafael shifted slightly, easing onto his back and pulling Sandra against him, taking the weight of her head on his shoulder and savoring the silky spill of her hair over his arm. “He found me work in construction. One job was on a movie set.”

  “And fortunately he’d already taught you to use your brain, so you could learn about how to make movies,” she said.

  “I knew how to use my brain. And my arms, and my back. Sometimes a person has only to unlock a door, and then everyone can walk through on their own. It’s when the door is locked that people get trapped on the wrong side. And they pound the door until they’ve battered their fists into pulp, and they give up, when all it would have taken was a key in the lock.”

  Sandra fell silent. Her hand wandered across his ribs to his shoulder, and then she turned her head and kissed his chest. He wasn’t sure wh
y he had told her so much, except that in her own way she too had unlocked a door. Not because she was a reporter but because she was a woman, listening without judging him, sympathetic to his pain but celebrating his survival.

  The light friction of her lips was itself a celebration. The dampness of her tongue against his skin made him gasp and dig his fingers into her soft flesh. He hauled her up onto him and kissed her, drank her in, let her hair flow like rain over them both.

  His body arched, rose to her, swelled against the heat of her. It occurred to him that he could bring her back to his house. His bed at home was more comfortable, the setting more private. And he had every intention of spending the whole night with her, like this.

  But she was right here, naked in his arms, and he couldn’t stand the prospect of getting dressed and driving a half hour before he could have her.

  He sank his head into the mattress and lifted her onto himself. One of her legs slid down between his, her thigh pressing him in a way that caused a wave of pleasure to rip through him. Her mouth caught his and his body surged. The swollen tips of her breasts brushed against him and he groaned. Sandra wasn’t an Aztec princess, he realized. She was an enchantress, a sorceress, stripping away his defenses and making him hers. And when she opened her magical body to him, and undulated around him in the passionate rhythm of love, he knew with a pang of despair that nothing could protect him from this woman.

  ***

  SANDRA BLINKED AWAKE as the first hint of dawn seeped through the blinds in narrow lines of milky light. It took several seconds for her eyes to focus, a bit longer for her brain. Shapes clarified themselves: a desk, a leather sofa cushion propped against a wall, her skirt in a wrinkled heap on the floor, a wall of shelves displaying Mexican pottery. A ceramic Aztec sun.

  A muscular male arm wrapped firmly around her body, the hand cupping her breast, the skin adorned with an Aztec sun.

  Rule number one: Never sacrifice your objectivity.

  Closing her eyes, she shivered. The room was warm, Rafael’s body was warmer, and some time during the night he’d spread the blanket over them. But she couldn’t fight off the chill that permeated her as she contemplated what she had done.

  Sacrificed her objectivity. Lost her grasp of the story. Forgotten her professional ethics.

  Fallen in love with Rafael Perez.

  She swore under her breath. How could she possibly be in love with him? Before last night, the only time he’d kissed her had been to sidetrack her when she’d asked too many questions. Chances were, last night’s passion had been more of his strategy. He’d seduced her away from her assignment.

  Except that he had answered her questions last night. He’d revealed more about himself in the past twelve hours than he had since she’d first taken him on. He’d shared himself, not just in his words—she had to admit he still hadn’t mentioned that he had brother who dealt drugs—but in his actions, his attitude. She’d seen his sensitivity, his responsibility, his vulnerability. If he hadn’t specifically declared that he’d been in a gang, he had let her see his mark, and he’d told her about the savage gang warfare that had nearly taken his life. For a man like Rafael, such candor was unusual.

  Surely he hadn’t related the trials of his youth because of some ulterior motive. He’d done it for the same reason he’d made love to her—because she was special to him, because last night they’d transcended their antagonism and found each other in some other place, in another context. In love.

  That was last night. This was this morning, and Sandra had to figure out how she was going to get through the next few days, the next few minutes.

  Rafael stirred beside her, tightening his hold on her. Without opening his eyes, he kissed her brow.

  “I have to get up,” she murmured.

  He opened his eyes. They were profoundly dark, clear despite the hour. He lifted his free hand to her face, sketched her lower lip with a callused fingertip, and then kissed her mouth.

  A tremor of heat centered in her hips as he deepened the kiss. She mustn’t let herself respond to him, knowing she had to get away, knowing she was already hopelessly in love with him—yet she couldn’t help herself. Her arms circled his neck; her tongue mated with his and her body shook with a fierce erotic charge.

  “No,” she whispered, to herself more than him. “I really have to go.”

  He eased back, and she took some small comfort in the fact that the kiss had overwhelmed him as much as it did her. His breath was ragged; his aroused flesh pressed between her thighs.

  He studied her for a long moment, and she was sure he would say something. But he evidently thought better of it. He dropped a brief, pensive kiss on her brow, then released her.

  She experienced a mixture of relief and regret that he wasn’t going to beg her to stay. Obviously he knew as well as she did that she couldn’t be at the studio, wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothing, when his colleagues and the police investigators arrived in a few hours.

  Besides, Rafael was too proud to plead. If she said she had to go, he would let her go. The same pride that kept him from confessing that he’d once belonged to a street gang kept him from begging a woman to remain in his bed.

  He tossed off the blanket and stood. Sandra allowed herself a moment to admire his body in the pre-dawn light. She gazed at the smooth, strong expanse of his back, broad at his shoulders and tapering to his buttocks, a faint line separating the darker bronze skin above his waist from the paler skin below. She almost protested when he stepped into his jeans. She would have liked to ogle him just a little longer.

  She had to go, though. They both knew it. And with a forlorn sense of loss, she got up.

  Rafael turned and stared at her. When she reached for her blouse, draped over a chair, he shot out his arm and blocked her. Again he seemed on the verge of speaking; again he hesitated. He closed his hand around her wrist and drew her to himself.

  His kiss swamped her. It was a kiss of hunger, of yearning, of farewell. He didn’t have to speak; his kiss said everything.

  It took all her willpower not to sink back onto the mattress, pull him down on top of her and bind her body to his once more. But if she did that, she would never be able to leave.

  So she relaxed her hold on him, and smiled her thanks when he handed her her bra.

  They finished dressing in silence. The air hummed with awareness, with unquenched desire. When Sandra was fully clothed, Rafael came up behind her and smoothed her hair with his hands, unraveling the tangles. His gentleness brought tears to her eyes.

  She hastily batted them away and stepped into her shoes. Then she turned to face him. “I’ll come back later,” she half asked.

  He almost smiled. “Good.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  He lifted his hand and brushed an errant strand of hair from her cheek. “Will you?” he asked.

  Like him, she had no answer. Still fighting the urge to cry, she let him accompany her out of the office, downstairs and outside to her car.

  He helped her in behind the wheel, kissed her cheek and closed the car door behind her. Then he turned and reentered the building without a parting look.

  Long after she had driven out of the studio and across town to her apartment, her cheek burned with the imprint of his lips. Even the chilly early-morning air couldn’t quench the heat of his kiss.

  It wasn’t just the kiss that warmed her. It was Rafael, all of him, his body, his soul, his anger and his tenderness. It was love, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  ***

  SHE WAS NOT IN THE MOOD to face Flannagan, but she had no choice. She hadn’t been in the news room—hadn’t even talked to her boss—since she’d received word that Melanie had died. To avoid him now would definitely seem suspect.

  As she drove into the Post building’s garage, she gave herself a silent pep talk. Under no circumstances was she to let on that anything of a personal nature existed between her and Rafael. Under no circumstances was sh
e to let her feelings for him get in the way of the story. She could write anything she wanted about him, as long as it was true. The truth wouldn’t hurt him.

  On her way upstairs from the garage, she stopped at the kiosk in the lobby and bought a jumbo cup of coffee. She hoped the caffeine would keep her too jumpy to notice the strange, luscious aches in her body, the soreness of muscles that had gone too long unused, of lips that had gone too long unkissed.

  It was seven-thirty when she reached her desk, and the metro news room wasn’t yet up to speed. She clicked on her computer, took a long, scalding sip of coffee, and called up her file on Aztec Sun.

  “Sandy! It’s about time you showed up!” Flannagan bellowed from the doorway. He bounded across the room, a nightmare vision of clashing plaids barreling toward her desk. She tried not to cringe as he bore down on her, circling her desk and leaning over her monitor until his ruddy face was just inches from hers. “What have you got?”

  She still hadn’t figured out how to deal with Rafael, whom she loved. Dealing with Flannagan was way down on her list of priorities. She inhaled deeply to steady her nerves, then looked him squarely in the eye and said, “Nothing.”

  He frowned. “I’m talking about Melanie Greer’s overdose. What have you got?”

  “Nothing.”

  This time he was the one who had to take a steadying breath. “Sandy. We’ve been holding the presses for you. Come on, sweetheart—you drove all the way out to Chino to meet with some dealer in jail. What did you get?”

  She tried to remember the lecture she’d given herself just minutes ago in the garage. Something about not letting her feelings for Rafael get in the way of the story. Something about how the truth couldn’t hurt him. Something about not sacrificing her objectivity.

  “Nothing,” she heard herself say. It wasn’t a lie, she swore to herself. What she’d learned from Ricardo had nothing to do with Melanie.

  Except that Melanie had died of a drug overdose, and Ricardo had been sentenced for selling drugs, and he was Rafael’s brother, and Rafael was the producer who had landed Melanie for the leading role in his first big picture, and...

  Oh, God, she was lying. Lying to protect him. Just as he’d lied to protect himself. If Flannagan ever found out she wasn’t being honest, he would never forgive her. She wasn’t sure she would ever forgive herself.