“It’s dark, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“So? You’re a mechanic.”
Damn Eric and his ideas, anyway. “I can’t work on it if I can’t see.”
“Wait. I’ve got…” She dug in her shoulder pack. “A-ha!” she crowed triumphantly and handed him a key ring with a small square of plastic.
“That doesn’t count as a tool.”
“It’s not a tool, it’s a light.” She squeezed the plastic and a tiny beam shone out the end. “See?”
“You want me to fix a car in the dark with this?”
“You’re a mechanic, aren’t you?”
“I’m not a magician.”
“It’s a long walk. And a big cab fare.”
“I’ll take a look but there’s not a lot I can do without tools.” It was a good excuse. Then again, he did want to get back to Playa del Carmen. The Bug’s engine was low tech, like the cars he was used to working on. The newer cars, with all their microprocessors and electronics, required diagnostic equipment he didn’t have, let alone know how to use. With the Bug, he at least stood a chance.
Circling to the back, he opened the hood to uncover the engine compartment and began to check the obvious stuff. Gas, yep. Good battery cables, ditto. Spark plug wires?
Even in the faint light, the spark plug wires looked as if they’d done time in the tropics. “This could be our problem. They’re corroded.”
“Why did they get us down here?”
“You can run with one plug wire out. Not well, but you can do it. Even two, in a pinch. So maybe we got down here with two good wires, which was why the engine was so shaky, but the third one gave up the ghost. Hold this.” He handed her the light. “Keep it shining where my hands are.”
As he spoke, he was taking off the wires one at a time and using his ignition key to scrape away corrosion. “We just need to get this baby home, so cross your fingers.”
“You want me to hold the light and cross my fingers?”
“I have faith in your talents.” Evenutally, he rose. “Okay, that’s about all I can do here. Time to test her out.” He walked to the front of the car, Delaney on his heels, and got into the driver’s seat. He looked at Delaney. “Do you feel lucky?”
She held up her crossed fingers.
He turned the key, worked the gas and the engine caught. Roughly, it was true, but it was running and he saw no reason to press his luck. “Cool. Get in. We’re ready to go.”
“I thought I was driving.”
“I’d better stay here.” He couldn’t entirely hide the smile.
“It wouldn’t be safe to take my foot off the gas.”
She scowled at him. “And to think I was happy to be traveling with my own personal mechanic. I bet you corroded those wires yourself just to stop me from driving.”
He gave her a big wink. “Just doing my part to keep the streets safe. Come on, baby, let me take you for a ride.”
6
“YOU KNOW HOW ROOMS HAVE maximum occupancies?” Delaney asked as she bent toward the bathroom mirror with her eye pencil. She jerked to a stop, narrowly avoiding Thea’s elbow as she pinned her dark hair on top of her head in a practiced swirl. “Bathrooms should have max occupancies, too. No more than three women trying to primp at the same time. For safety’s sake.”
Next to them, Sabrina slicked on lipstick and Trish applied bronzer to her fair complexion. Delaney glanced back to the mirror and then blinked and frowned to see Paige sitting on the toilet, applying mascara using a hand mirror. “Wait a minute, shouldn’t you be next door?”
“I’m sharing a room and a bathroom with Kelly and Cilla,” she said calmly, keeping her eyes open wide as she stroked on precisely two coats. “The term ‘war zone’ comes to mind,” she added.
“I heard that,” Cilla called through the open door connecting the two rooms.
“That was Delaney,” Paige said.
“Nice try, Favreau. Just for that, you don’t get to use my La Prairie eye cream. And I don’t know why you’re complaining about crowding, Delaney. You’re not even supposed to be here.”
“Yeah,” Sabrina said, “you’re supposed to be at your boyfriend’s house.”
Delaney bent toward the mirror. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“That’s right, ex-boyfriend,” Paige put in.
“For an ex-boyfriend, she sure spends a lot of time with him,” Cilla observed, walking in through the connecting door. “Hey, Thea, can I borrow your white belt?”
“Sure,” Thea said, putting one final pin in her hair. “If I can use Sabrina’s lipstick.”
“Me, too,” Trish added.
Delaney concentrated on lining her eyes, staring into the mirror to get it right. “Hey, he’s great in the sack and he leaves tomorrow. I’m trying to make the most of our time.”
“I don’t know why you’re worried. There’s always home,” Trish pointed out, fluffing her hair with her fingers and studying herself in the mirror.
Delaney reached for her eye shadow. “Vacation is vacation and home is home. Different time, different place.”
“Walk Away Sue strikes again,” Sabrina said with a smile.
“That’s right, you don’t want to break your streak,” Kelly called from next door.
“It’s that less-is-more thing.” Thea walked back in to apply her perfume.
“I don’t know what you guys are talking about. I have plenty of affairs that last.”
“For a couple of months,” Paige agreed.
Delaney shrugged and flicked on some mascara. “If it’s not working, there’s no point in sticking around.”
“And if you don’t stick around, you never have to deal with it not working,” Thea observed.
Delaney added a quick coat of lip gloss and straightened. “Walk Away Sue?” she snorted. “You’re cute, all of you.”
“No.” Thea grinned. “That’s cute.”
She pointed to the far side of the mirror. In red lipstick, someone had written Delaney ™ Dom.
“I’D SAY IT’S A WINNER,” Dom told Delaney, raising his voice to be heard over the hubbub.
“Pretty much anything Cilla touches is,” Delaney said.
They stood at the grand opening of Cilla’s boutique in the Cancun Grande Caribe resort. Cilla and her husband Rand had chosen well, finding the perfect location off the pink and aqua and white open-air lobby, inviting the people who specialized in being fabulous. The air was filled with that special, heady laughter that came from guests at an exclusive party. Too many guests, in Dom’s estimation. No one could even see the merchandise. Then again, at this sort of event, the merchandise was sort of besides the point.
It wouldn’t be in the future, though. In the future, the store would clean up. What could be a better fit at a tropical resort than outrageous lingerie? And in the back, in an area designed to look like a boudoir, even more provocative stuff, including sex toys. “You have one of these?” he asked Delaney, picking up a vibrator of hot pink latex.
“Certainly. Don’t get too excited,” she added when she saw his brows rise. “I didn’t mean I had one with me. I left it at home. I share a lot with my girlfriends but my special electric friend isn’t one of them.”
“I could buy you one. That number that looks like a rabbit, for instance—”
“Is one of our biggest sellers,” a voice interrupted. They looked up to see Cilla, an amused look on her face.
“I can only imagine why,” Dom said. “What do you sell more of, toys or clothes?”
“Toys.” Her eyes sparkled in fun. “Would you believe it?”
“You hit the pulse,” Delaney told her.
Cilla shrugged. “People like their toys and they like buying them in a place that doesn’t make them want to take a shower after.”
“The store looks wonderful,” Delaney said. “It’s perfect.”
“Tell Paige. It was her design. She does all the stores now.”
“Well, she did an amazing job.”
; “You should see the one in Milan.” Cilla’s eyes glimmered. “It’s beautiful. It opens in two weeks.”
“Milan, L.A., Manhattan, Cancun…” Dom ticked off.
“Paris, San Francisco, Miami Beach,” Cilla added.
“Just how many stores—”
Dom broke off as a tall, polished, dark-haired man approached Cilla from behind. “Excuse me,” the interloper said to Dom, then spun Cilla around and fused his mouth to hers.
Cilla made a squeaking noise of shock. It didn’t seem to faze the guy; he just kept on, kissing her thoroughly. And she wrapped her arms around him and clung like a limpet.
Dom glanced at Delaney. “Cilla’s husband know she’s got a guy on the side?”
“I think that is Cilla’s husband. Rand.”
Dom studied them. “How long did you say they’ve been married?”
“Two years.”
“That’s quite a kiss for two years.”
“You know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“I thought it was out of sight, out of mind.”
Before them, Cilla came up for air, laughing. “I thought you were still in Milan,” she said to Rand, linking her hands behind his neck.
“I figured I could take a break and come for the opening. Assuming you’ve got space for me in your room.”
“I’ll have to kick out the flamenco dancer who’s been staying with me, but…”
He put his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. “I’ll show you some flamenco.”
She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss on him. “Promises, promises. Actually, I’m staying with Kelly and Paige but I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Uh-oh, more people in the bathroom,” Delaney muttered.
“I heard that,” Cilla said.
“You’re always hearing things you’re not supposed to,” Delaney said.
“One of my best talents.”
Laughing, Cilla turned to Dom. “Dom, I’d like you to meet my husband and business partner, Rand Mitchell. Rand, this is an old…friend of Delaney’s.”
“Any friend of Delaney’s,” Rand said, looking like an island planter in immaculate white linen.
Dom shook hands with him. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a big hit, here.”
Rand stared into Cilla’s eyes and caught her hand in his. “Yeah, I do.” Then he glanced back at Dom. “And the store looks like it’ll do well, too.”
Cilla beamed. “I was telling Dom about our other stores when you walked up.”
“Good locations,” Dom agreed. “You must have a phenomenal scouting team.”
“You’re looking at it. Are you in retail?” Rand asked.
No, he was currently headed straight to hell, Dom thought with a mental curse. “Car repair,” he said.
“Car repair? The guy’s Super Mechanic,” Delaney told them. “I watched him the other night fix a car in a dark parking lot with nothing but a key.”
Rand’s expression opened up. “You’re a mechanic?”
“I run a garage,” Dom said, resisting the urge to cross his fingers. “Management, mostly, these days.”
“No kidding? I worked at a garage when I was in high school. You need a tranny rebuilt, I’m your man.”
“I’ll let you know the next time I have an opening.”
“You do that.”
“You could hire me,” Delaney pouted. “I could at least change somebody’s plugs.”
Dom scooped her close to him. “Darlin’, you’re not changing anybody’s plugs but mine.”
Rand looked at Cilla. “Old friend, you said?”
“Old boyfriend. Junior high school,” Cilla clarified. “They ran into each other again down here.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
Rand whistled. “If I were you, I’d hurry up and buy some lottery tickets while that luck’s still holding.”
“The odds are about right,” Dom said thoughtfully. “One in a million or so?”
Rand nodded at Delaney. “I’d say you’ve already got one in a million, right there.”
Dom was beginning to think he was right.
“I thought I was one in a million,” Cilla objected.
“We’ve revised our guidance. I’d put you at closer to one in a billion. In fact, I’d be happy to demonstrate if you’d like to go somewhere a little more private. Excuse us.” He nodded to Dom and Delaney. And laughing, he and Cilla walked away.
“Nice guy,” Dom commented.
“Rand? Oh, he’s great,” Delaney said. “It was weird at first to see Cilla paired up but he makes her so happy. I can’t imagine her without him now.”
It seemed a curious description. “What’s so weird about falling in love?” he asked, watching her closely.
“You didn’t know her then. It was the last thing she’d have thought about.”
“Ah. Was she the first one in the group to get married?”
“No, but she and I always kind of had the same opinion about it.”
“As in not doing it?”
“I don’t want to settle down. I like variety.” She glanced across the room at the rest of her friends, all giggling together over drinks.
“But now your gang’s all paired off,” he said, following the direction of her gaze. “Feeling left behind?”
“It’s not a race,” she retorted, more tartly than she’d intended.
“That’s not an answer. Does it bother you?”
Sometimes, Delaney thought. Not that they were doing something she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do but that they’d moved away from her in some fundamental way. Once, they’d all been best friends, without secrets. Now, there was a part of their lives she couldn’t understand, couldn’t share.
Delaney shrugged. “Not my zebra, not my zoo. Come on, let’s go outside and get some air.”
The room was stifling, the combined heat of a hundred bodies dwarfing the abilities of the air conditioning in the small boutique. Outside, surprisingly, the air felt cool by comparison. That was saying something, considering it was probably in the nineties.
They followed a terrazzo-tiled walkway. Blue stucco pillars marched alongside them, the base of each girdled by a circlet of white spheres like little bubbles. In the reflecting ponds that ran next to the walk, orange and white koi circled in the glow of the lights.
But it was the beach that drew her, as it always did. She didn’t care about the glowing blue fantasy of the pool. She didn’t stop to sit on any one of the chaises that sat under palm trees, but kept going, kicking off her sandals for the sensation of the cool sand between her toes.
This late in the evening, the beach was deserted, everyone at the restaurants, the bars, the nightclubs of Cancun. It was quiet, peaceful. Only the hiss of the surf broke the silence.
“Going to walk to Cozumel?” Dom asked.
She glanced at him, then back to the lights of the island flickering on the horizon like some jeweled necklace. “It looks beautiful, doesn’t it? So serene. Do you think that when the Maya were here, the light of the fires made it all the way across the water? Did they see it like we do?”
He considered. “They’d have to have been awfully big fires.”
“So if the islanders came over here, they’d watch their home disappear at night?”
“It probably stayed dark. But I think they knew it was there. Just because they couldn’t see it didn’t mean they stopped believing.” He kicked off his Topsiders and tied them by the laces to sling over his shoulder. “I thought about you, you know. I always wondered where you’d gone.”
He wasn’t talking about the here and now. She stepped onto the wet sand in the wake of a retreating wave. “You could have found me easily enough. My parents lived in the same house for years.”
“Maybe it was enough knowing you were out there.”
They walked farther in silence. The moon spilled silver light across the water.
“So why did we break up, anyway?�
� Delaney asked. “I don’t remember that we ever did, officially.”
She felt more than saw him shrug. “Different schools. Small distances seem bigger when you’re young.”
“We used to talk all the time. And then, after a while, we just didn’t. It was as if you were drifting away on a boat or something. Every time I talked with you, you were further gone.”
“We weren’t moving in the same circles anymore.” Now, he sounded uncomfortable.
“That’s right, you were a private-school boy, off with the smart kids.” She heard the hint of rancor in her voice.
“Not smart, all of them. They mostly had money.”
“But you guys didn’t. How did you swing it?”
“My mom taught at St. Joe’s, so we got a break on tuition, and then she inherited some cash. They came up with the rest. Somehow, it got to be really important to them both that I go. And I figured if they were working almost every hour to make it happen, I needed to make a go of it.”
“I felt left behind,” Delaney said, surprising herself.
“I didn’t mean for you to. But it was more challenging than our school. It took a lot to keep up. And I was trying hard to fit in.”
“I guess you and I, we didn’t fit anymore, huh?” She turned to stare at him. “I missed you. You just stopped answering my phone calls, so after a while I stopped calling.”
But it had hurt, she remembered now, truly hurt. The sting had eased over the years until she could recall him fondly, but that young girl had grieved.
And ever after, she’d made sure she was the one to walk away.
“Delaney, you shouldn’t think—”
“And you shouldn’t worry about explaining things sixteen years later. No harm, no foul.” She shrugged. “Let’s go back to the party.”
FOR A WHILE, THERE WAS NO more talking. It hadn’t been his choice to go off to St. Joseph’s and yet it had happened. And his life had changed in many ways.
Dom remembered those nights on the phone, Delaney laughing over something that had happened at her school, places and people he no longer was part of. All the while he’d been fighting to form new friendships, somehow finally recognizing that to do that he had to stop looking back at what he’d left behind. Calling had become increasingly uncomfortable, so after a while he’d stopped. And the surge of guilt he’d felt had gotten smaller and smaller every day until it was small enough to bury all together.
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