While they waited for the food, Calli employed Duardo as an interpreter and arranged to use the hotel’s telephone. She placed a call to Josh’s office at the silver mine on Las Piedras Grandes, repressing her frustration at having to deal with an operator to place a simple long distance call. Using good English, the operator told her it would take a while, so Calli sat back at the table, a few feet away.
“What does piedras mean?” she asked Duardo.
“Rock. Boulder.”
She laughed. “Las Piedras Grandes...the big rock.”
“It is, too,” Duardo said. “Right at the end of the main island is las piedras. There is nothing on it.”
“Nothing but silver in vast quantities,” Minnie said.
“Yes. For many years, though, nothing.”
“How big is it?” Calli asked.
“You can drive across the island in twenty minutes,” Minnie said.
Duardo nodded. “I believe that is true. I have not been there.”
“No? Northern boy, huh?”
“Most certainly,” he agreed easily.
The food arrived then, steaming hot bowlfuls of what Calli took to be stew and plates of crisp tortilla-like wafers. There was also a bowl of something cream-colored and of the same consistency as a dip.
In Lozano Colinas, most of the dishes consisted of lots of fresh produce—salsa and piquant salads, along with just-browned meats and freshly made tortillas. In Pascuallita, the emphasis appeared to be different.
“No spoon, no fork,” Minnie muttered.
“No. Like this,” Duardo explained. He picked up the crisp wafer, dipped it in the creamy stuff and took a small bite, then indicated they should, too.
It tasted bland.
“Now try this,” he instructed and dipped the wafer into the bowl before him. The wafer emerged thickly coated with sauce and carrying a spoonful’s worth of what looked like carrots and perhaps meat.
Calli dipped into her bowl and ate. The stew was a savory delight, the vegetables crisp, the meat tender. Spices hit the back of her tongue and surprised her with their subtleness.
“Like?” Duardo asked.
Minnie frowned. “It’s not curry, I know that. It reminds me of curry, though. It’s great,” she assured him. “What is it?”
“Whatever it is, it’s never been in a can,” Calli declared. “That flavor you only get from blending and cooking well.”
“Three days,” Duardo said.
“And the meat?”
“Wild mountain goat. There are many around here. Try it with the tapenade.”
Calli ate with a relish, for she was ravenous. They had only had chocolate and a handful of crushed cookies on the train.
“This is what you eat all the time?” Minnie asked.
“Often. People cook here more than they do in the city. It is traditional and it is cooler. Nearly two thousand feet. We have bigger mountains in the north.” He did not hide his pride.
The call to Uncle Josh went through just as she finished her bowl. Calli sat at the bar and swiveled so the customers sitting a few stools away could not eavesdrop—even if they did know English.
“Calli? I got your note. You’re in Pascuallita?”
“Yes, we got off the train a while ago and we’re eating right now.”
He was silent for a moment. “I suppose there’s a good reason you’re up there?”
“Yes.”
“Should I worry, Calli? You left with no notice, in the dead of the night. And Pascuallita...I’ve heard rumors that Pascuallita is where the rebels would strike first.”
“Have you heard something might happen?”
“No. You be careful, anyway. Duardo is with you?”
“Yes.”
This time his silence was even longer. “Is he armed?” Uncle Josh asked, his tone awkward.
“Not that you’d notice, looking at him. Yes, he’s carrying a gun,” Calli murmured.
He sighed and she could see him in her mind, rubbing his hand through his hair. “Okay. Is Minnie there? Let me talk to her.”
* * * * *
After lunch, they stepped out of the tavern and looked around. The train station was directly in front of them. Because of the mountainous terrain, the platform lifted twenty feet higher than the road. Bright red, yellow and blue safety rails edged the platform and tubs of flowers sat beneath them, nodding in the little breeze that passed up the street. It was mid-afternoon, yet lots of people still moved about the street.
“No siesta?” Calli asked.
Duardo shook his head. “No heat,” he explained. “Why sleep away the day?”
Even though it was cooler at this elevation, there was still a mugginess in the air that reminded her they were in the tropics.
“We’d better be tourists,” Minnie said, dropping her sunglasses over her eyes, hitching her heavy overnight bag over her shoulder and looking around with interest. “Where are the shops, Duardo?”
“Ah, shopping, of course,” he said with laugh. “How silly of me to forget a matter of such importance.” He arranged his bags in his left hand, tucked Minnie’s hand under that elbow and turned her to face downhill. “This way,” he instructed. He waved for Calli to walk along beside him, yet he did not guide her with a touch to her arm or back as he had done in el colinas. The reason, when she figured it out, took some of the pleasantness out of the afternoon. He was keeping his gun hand free.
The narrow, winding streets in Pascuallita discouraged any vehicles with more than two wheels. They had been constructed around the original buildings, sited on the flattest land available. The streets had been laid on the land that remained—the steepest land. Sets of steps and terraces broke up many of the streets, which further reduced traffic.
Bicycles were everywhere and many of the younger people used skateboards and skates. Most people walked. There was a lot of foot traffic and more of it the deeper they wound into the heart of the town.
At one intersection of three different streets, Calli heard her name being called from the street on her left. She looked that way, startled. At the far end of the street sat an open-topped Jeep. Nicolás Escobedo leaned against the front grille, his arms crossed, a black hat shading his face, sunglasses obscuring the dark blue eyes.
Calli controlled the first impulsive sound of delight that came to her. She brushed past Minnie and Duardo and hurrying up the narrow little alley. She stopped in front of him, her backpack slapping against her shoulder. “You came.”
“And you thought I wouldn’t.”
“I couldn’t see how. Never mind. You’re here. Although how you got here...”
“Later,” he said and lifted his chin. “Duardo.”
Duardo and Minnie had followed her up the alley. Nicolás held out his hand, and the younger man dropped his bags and shook it. He didn’t smile.
“Anyone?” Nicolás asked.
“No.”
“You have my thanks.”
“For you, señor, anything.”
“I will take it from here,” Nick said, straightening up. “You will come to my house, yes?”
Duardo looked awkward. “No, señor, as much as I regret missing such an honor, I have something I must do.”
Nicolás dropped his chin to peer over his sunglasses at him.
Duardo moved his feet and shrugged. Calli realized he had turned pink. “I will visit my mother. I want her to meet Minnie.”
Pleasure touched her. Calli suppressed her smile.
Minnie looked up at Duardo with a small smile of her own.
Nick nodded. “Of course.” He glanced at Calli. “Excuse me for just a moment.” He pulled Duardo aside. They dropped in low, quiet Spanish.
Minnie grabbed Calli’s arm. “Oh hell, now I’m terrified,” she whispered. “You don’t meet their mothers here unless it means something.”
“Which is just what you wanted, so why the terror?”
“What if she hates me? I’m American, I’m...I’m...I’ll never
measure up.”
“You’ll be fine,” Calli assured her.
The two men finished their conversation and returned to the front of the Jeep. Duardo picked up his bags again and picked up Minnie’s hand in his right. He nodded at Calli. “Adios, la dama fuerte. I will take good care of your cousin.”
Calli heard Nicolás chuckle as she touched Duardo’s arm. “Thank you, Duardo.”
She watched them walk down the alley, suddenly shy—she battled her own terror. Deliberately, she looked at Nick. She could not see through the sunglasses whether he watched her or happened to be looking in her direction.
“Strong lady?” he said.
She grimaced. “It’s not as picturesque as red leopard,” she returned.
He pulled keys from his pocket. “I think it fits you perfectly.” He opened the passenger door of the Jeep for her and moved around to the driver’s side and settled in the seat.
“What did you mean when you said ‘anyone’ to Duardo?” she asked.
He paused with his hand on the keys, already inserted in the ignition. Then, he started the engine. “I asked him if anyone had followed you from las colinas.”
She shivered. “How did he know to watch out for that?”
“He’s one of the best captains in the Vistarian army. When I asked him to bring you here, he knew what I expected of him.” Nick switched off the engine and turned to her. He took the sunglasses off and reached to pull the edges of her shirt aside. He was checking to see if she still wore the medallion. He smiled when he saw it. Then he drew her forward and kissed her. His lips were warm, firm and demanding. Her shyness, her awkwardness, and the sense of unreality slipped away.
This was Nicolás. Nick. He was real and hot beneath her fingers.
He let her mouth go, his hand resting around her waist. “No more worrying,” he declared. “You decided, back in the city, to accept the risks, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So did I. We do not worry about the future now. Just this moment.”
“Well, okay.”
“No, Calli. I mean this. Here, I am me. Just me. Nicolás, that you call Nick.”
She tapped his jacket, down low on the left-hand side. Her fingernail rapped against metal as she had known it would. “You’re not just Nick,” she whispered. “You will never be just Nick, but that’s okay.”
He studied her with the same cool assessing glance he had given her in the prison cell. Then he swiveled back to face the steering wheel and put on his sunglasses. “I think, perhaps, you are even more of a realist than I.” He put the Jeep into gear and took off with spinning wheels.
She tried to calm her jumping heart. “You don’t like that?” She lifted her voice above the engine noise.
“Right now, no.” His smile was tight and hard. “That’s because you’ve made me feel foolish. You are right, la dama fuerte. We accepted risks, which means we can’t afford to ignore them or pretend they’re not there. So...home, by the most direct route with no scenic stops. There, at least, we shall be as secure as we can be.”
He drove through a maze of streets. It seemed as though he backtracked sometimes. She realized he was avoiding the terraced roads a car could not use. Then they were beyond the town and driving along a narrow mountain road with a sharp drop to Calli’s right. They headed northwest, further into the mountains.
“How far?” she asked.
“Twenty minutes. It depends on the weather.”
“Rain?”
“Fog,” he said. “Fog makes turning the hairpin bends an exercise in caution.”
“You live very much out of the way?”
“Just enough.” He paused while he negotiated a sharp curve. “Five years after I got back from the States, I bought up half-a-dozen slice farms and built a house at the top of them.”
She took a moment to absorb the wealth of information in that simple statement. Nick liked living away from everyone. He’d acquired at least six properties to build a house upon. His out-of-the-way property was not a little cabin in the woods, then. “Slice farms?” she said at last.
“I’ll show you one, later,” he promised. “My neighbors still work their farms.”
“And you lived in the States while you studied, right? Philosophy and economics.”
“Mmm.” His attention had drawn to the road ahead and he slowed the Jeep, creeping around a bend. Hidden on the other side of the blind corner, a dozen mountain goats meandered across the road. He beeped the horn to encourage them to move. They wandered to the side, barely looking at the Jeep.
“You knew they were there?” Calli asked.
“They were on the side just there when I came down the hill earlier.”
“They look just like the ones we get back home.”
“They probably are. The British traders introduced many western ideas and animals into Vistaria in their efforts to make the world England.”
“You don’t like that, do you?”
He took a while to answer. “I grew up listening to my mother’s stories of Belfast and the mighty English fist. No, I don’t like it. Not for Northern Ireland, nor for Vistaria.”
She didn’t know how to respond, for she had glimpsed the passion he had for his country, the dedication he brought to his work. She represented a country that most of his fellow Vistarians viewed as a threat. Yet she sat here beside him on her way to—
“Tell me about your dreams, Calli,” he said, making her jump.
“Dreams?”
“You said you dreamed of us. Together.”
“I did.” The quick montage of images, faded by constant review, flipped through her mind. Despite the fading, they still had the power to stir her, to catch her breath with their power and their raw sensuality.
“Tell me about them,” Nick coaxed, his voice low.
Even when she had lived with Robert, she had not discussed intimate dreams and fantasies. She couldn’t recall if she’d even had them.
Nick glanced at her and smiled. “Ah, Calli, it’s clear you’ve never been with a man who cares about such matters. I do. I want to know what’s in your heart, your mind, your soul and every inch of flesh and blood in between.”
She changed the direction. “You said you dreamed of me, too.”
“I can tell you my dreams. I’d rather show you, though. For that I need both hands free.”
“Show me?”
“Oh yes,” he said, his voice lower still and hoarse. “I have the details memorized.”
She shivered, despite the sun.
“Give me the one image that has stayed with you,” he said. “I know there must be at least one. A moment from your dreams. Just as you did that night at Ashcroft’s, when I touched your breast. You said you had dreamed it, only—”
“The reality was better than the dream,” she finished. Despite her awkwardness at discussing such intimate details aloud, her body was responding. “Your hand on my hip.” Her voice was husky, too.
“Ah...you’re such a delight. A realist and a romantic in one long, delicious package. You’ve just let the realist stay in charge for too long. Since the long-departed Robert, I’m guessing.” He spared a swift look at her. “Did he prey on the romantic in you?”
“I suppose that’s what he did do,” she said slowly, thinking it through. “He convinced me he loved me and that we’d be together forever, only he had to get through medical school, first.”
“So you moved in with him, left college, supported him and loved him,” he finished. “Until he got his internship.”
“Yes.” Her cheeks burned.
His hand came down on her thigh and squeezed. Empathy. He knew. He had seen it all without explanation.
The pounding anticipation made her voice thick and unsteady as she said, “How safe is it here? Can you put the gun aside?”
He seemed to consider that. “Aside, but not too far aside.”
“Do it. And take off your jacket too.”
He shot a look at her, an in
decipherable glance with the sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He reached inside the jacket and pulled out the same automatic pistol she had seen in the palace last night. After checking the safety he slid it onto the shelf below the windscreen. Then he pulled off the hat and threw it into the back of the Jeep. His dark red hair, which looked almost black in dim light, ruffled in the wind, the deep red highlights gleaming.
“Sunglasses, too,” she insisted.
“Of course.” He took them off, folded them up with one hand and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “Better?” The indigo eyes narrowed against the sun.
“Much better,” she assured him. “The jacket.”
“You’ll have to help me.”
“With pleasure.”
He grinned and held out his right arm so she could tug the jacket down over his hand and let him slide his arm out. Then the left arm. He leaned forward and she pulled the jacket away from him and dropped it into the back of the Jeep, over his hat.
His shirt, what looked like a normal short-sleeved business shirt, billowed around his shoulders and chest, moving in the small breeze created by the passage of the Jeep. She studied his thick, tanned forearms and the wide wrists, as he held the steering wheel.
“The shirt, now,” she said, her heart beat picking up speed.
“You do it.”
Oh my...
Calli sat on her knees, anchoring herself with her hand over the back of her seat and reached to slip the first button undone. Nick stayed silent, his eyes on the road, as she undid the second, the third, the fourth, fifth. She reached the waistband of his jeans. She pulled the shirt out of the jeans and undid the final button. The shirt flew open like a parachute blossoming in the wind stream, revealing the broad expanse of his chest. Tanned skin over well-defined muscles and below the two dark, erect nipples his abdomen rippled, the six-pack clear and hard.
“Oh...” she breathed and rested her hand on his shoulder, feeling the heat and soft yield of his flesh.
“You like what you see?”
“Oh, yes.” She pulled at the sleeves of his shirt, removing it altogether, leaving him topless. His shoulders had powerful round caps of muscles; his biceps and triceps flexed under the skin with each movement of his hands on the wheel. A scar, pale and faded from age, marked his right shoulder. She touched it.
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