“You’re one of the man whores.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A MAN...WHAT? Finn gaped at Magdalene’s profile as she turned away to lounge in the driver’s seat, casually draping her left wrist over the steering wheel. Did she just call him a man whore?
Temper sparked. Because, what the fuck? She’d known him five lousy minutes in the greater scheme of things and thought she had him all figured out? Well, excuse the hell outta him if that hacked him off some. Only one thing prevented his spark of ire from racing up a line of black powder to explode all up in her face.
He couldn’t claim she was completely wrong. He had made avoiding commitments—and, yeah, sue him, getting laid as often as possible—a priority from the time he was about seventeen. Until recently it hadn’t occurred to him to even question his habit of holding himself romantically aloof.
And if that wasn’t enough, in his head he could hear his sister Hannah laughing her ass off, then wheezing between raucous whoops of hilarity, “Oh, God, man whore. She sure nailed it in one with that description, didn’t she, boyo?”
Still. The spark might refuse to set off an explosion, but it didn’t simply vanish in a puff of harmless smoke, either. Hannah was family; since first memory they had taken turns insulting and knocking each other off their respective high horses. She was allowed to dent his pride, because he knew her bottom line was she would always have his back.
Little Ms. Magdalene, on the other hand, didn’t know him for shit.
Well, two could play this game. He felt as though he, too, had a decent grasp on her less desirable characteristics. He opened his mouth, ready and willing to pepper her with them like buckshot.
Only to notice that maybe she wasn’t as insouciant as she appeared. When he looked closely, in fact, he could see how rigid her left leg was and how hard the foot on the end of that leg pressed against the floor on the far side of the brake pedal.
Almost as if she were bracing for him to take his best shot.
It made him remember that, unlike him, she probably hadn’t had a lifetime of someone having her back. Which was not to say he felt duty bound to give her a free pass to take potshots at him. Hell, no; screw that.
He slid over and even as he stopped to leave space between their bodies, he slipped his arm the rest of the way along the top of her seat until he could tiptoe his fingers across the cap of her shoulder. He plucked up a strand of her braid-wavy hair and rubbed its ends between his finger and thumb. “Jealous, Magdalene?”
She whipped her head around, yanking the strand free. “How many times do I have to tell you my name is Mags?” she demanded. “And jealous of what?” She gave him a look that said, “One of us is deluded, Jack—and it’s not me.”
He picked up another thicker tendril and wrapped it around his forefinger, bringing his hand closer and closer to her face, until he could trace the whorl of her ear with his fingertip. “Of the fact,” he said in a low voice, leaning near, “that I have had lots. And. Lots. Of s-s-ssex.” He breathed the final word directly into her ear.
Which, okay, probably wasn’t his smartest move. Not when it brought him close enough to smell the sunshine in her hair and the healthy Mags scent of the rest of her. “But, hey, don’t you worry, darlin’,” he said as if running off at the mouth would somehow negate his awareness. “I can always make room for one more.”
He didn’t need the scream of outraged she-relatives in his head to know he was out of line. But he’d say this for Mags, she lost that stiffness he’d noticed and turned to face him, cool as you please. Ignoring his hand now firmly entangled in her hair, she gave him a long, slow once-over.
“Tell you what, darlin’—and what’s with your constant use of that word anyway? Is it just a sly way of dodging ever having to remember actual names?” She essayed a never-mind-that wave of her hand. “That’s not important. My point is that I’m not really interested in being one of a faceless horde of...dozens? Hundreds?” Mild distaste flashed across her expression. “Thousands, perhaps?”
“Hey, let’s not rule out millions.” He watched color fluctuate under the fine-grained skin of her chest, her throat and face, and dug his fingers deeper into that warm, streaky blond hair until he could scratch his nails along her scalp. Goose bumps cropped up on her arms. “So...should I take that as a no, then?”
“Yes. You should take it as a great big resounding no. I’d have to be drunk off my ass to sleep with you.”
“Yeah?” He leaned close. Lightly gripped her firm little cleft chin, pressed a here-and-gone kiss on her lips, then, setting her loose, pulled back. And in his most tempting voice murmured, “Buy you a margarita?”
She made a sound like a suppressed sneeze exploding in her throat and, knowing a muffled laugh when he heard one, he grinned, disentangled his fingers and moved back to his own side. He knew damn well their chemistry went both ways, because she’d been every bit as engaged as he when she’d kissed him in the gondola. But unable to shake his dad’s edicts about the way men treated women, he merely said, “You know you’re tempted.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” But then she laughed outright and started the car again. Pulling out onto the empty road, she shook her head, shot him a what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-you glance, then turned her attention back to her driving.
“You just keep telling yourself that, bub.”
* * *
WHEN THEY ROLLED into the town of La Plata later that day, Mags was relieved to see it looked plenty large enough to house a car-rental agency. She pulled over to ask the first person they came across if there was indeed one—and if so, where they might find it. Following the man’s directions, she then set off to locate it.
They couldn’t have driven more than a couple of miles before they suddenly found themselves at a cross street bisecting a sizable festival in progress. The air rang with the shouts of merrymakers and music, and the long boulevard they crossed was closed to traffic and clogged with costumed revelers. Citizens dressed in their own brilliantly colored party garb filled the sidewalks, while seductive aromas of fiesta food wafted beckoning fingers, inviting one and all to come eat their fill.
The guitar, horns and mariachi-heavy music drifting through their open windows had her involuntarily dancing in her seat. She forced herself to still, but when she glanced over at Finn she discovered that he, too, was doing a seated boogie.
Meeting her gaze, he gave her a whatta-ya-gonna-do, one-sided smile and continued to rock his upper body in a subtle, sinuous rhythm. She took back what she’d thought yesterday when she’d made the snap judgment he wasn’t a club kind of guy. Apparently he was.
The man rocked some serious moves, at any rate.
The music faded as they left the festival behind. Mags navigated her way to the rental agency through a maze of secondary streets until she finally spotted a sign for Paseo Las Industrias Barato Auto Rentals. And for the first time since running afoul of Joaquin in Santa Rosa, she felt as if something might actually go their way. She’d gotten her current car through a Barato agency—and while the quality of this one didn’t compare to the few cars she’d rented in the States, the agency did honor returns from any Barato dealership in South America.
After giving Finn the paperwork and letting him out in front of the office, she looked for a place to park in the minuscule lot. Judging by the vehicles she walked past a minute later, it might have been the Santa Rosa agency fleet that was the fluke, not the rest of the Barato-owned agencies at all. The cars in this lot looked far newer. That was encouraging. So was entering the tiny agency to find the clerk speaking English and dealing quite handily with the American.
Finn looked pumped when he and the clerk joined her a moment later. He slid a folded piece of paper and a key on a foam ring, of all things, into his back pocket. Reaching her, he turned her around and escorted her right back out again.
“We have to go grab our stuff out of the trunk,” he said. “Enrique here is hot to close u
p for a couple of hours to attend the festival. You and I are gonna go check it out as well.”
“Oh, but—” She glanced over her shoulder to see the clerk locking the front door, then hustling away. She opened her mouth to call him back, but snapped it shut again. And nodded. What the hell. Checking out a local festival sounded like a great break from their single-minded drive toward the Munoz grow farm.
Finn grabbed her tote out of the trunk, handed it to her and pulled out his backpack. He put the foam-ringed key into the pack’s outside pocket and swung it onto his back.
“Which car is ours?” she asked, digging through her bag for her wallet and a lipstick.
“Beats the hell out of me.”
She turned to him. “But what do we do with our stuff?”
“We’ll have to carry the pack and your purse. The rest we’ll leave here and come back for later.”
“If it’s still here to retrieve.”
He shrugged. “Which is why we’re taking the important stuff with us.”
She sighed, put her wallet and lipstick back in the tote and pulled out one of her scarves. She twisted her hair up off her neck, tied it in a knot midway between her crown and the base of her skull, then wrapped the scarf around it in a style a South African makeup artist had shown her. Looping the bag’s strap over her head, she settled it cross body. She looked up to see Finn watching her with a crooked smile. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just...that girlie stuff you’re always doing is way outside my experience.”
“Yeah? Don’t your sisters or your millions of lovers do the girlie thing?”
He shrugged. “Probably. I’ve just never paid much attention. C’mon.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “Let’s you and me go do the festival.”
The rental agency was on the edge of La Plata’s industrial area, so they had to hike quite a way before they reached the event. Mags was hot and thirsty by the time they plunged into the heart of the party, but the music and aromas and the sheer amount of men, women and children gathered with a single shared purpose of having fun made her forget for a while the problems that had been piling upon her shoulders. Looking over at Finn, she saw he had his camera out to document the scene.
She got caught up in the crowds as she and Finn inched their way along the sidewalk, dividing their attention between the spectacle around them and looking over the goods for sale on rugs and flimsy tables. They stopped to watch as a group of women in brightly patterned costumes danced past in the street, twirling and manipulating their huge circle skirts until they swirled around them like kites taking flight.
Mags pored over a table piled high with costume jewelry. She particularly loved the chunky bracelets made from what looked like old-school Lucite. Even with the bargain-basement asking price, she was aware of the limited amount of cash she’d brought with her on this trip. She tried to ignore it, but it jangled at the back of her mind and finally, regretfully, she turned away from a particularly appealing orange-and-cream-colored bangle.
Out of nowhere a little voice in her head demanded, What right do you have to enjoy yourself—and coveting jewelry, for pity’s sake—when your mother and father are enduring God knows what at the hands of Munoz’s men?
Enormous guilt threatened to consume her, but she squared her shoulders and forced herself to think logically.
And, looked at rationally...
They weren’t blowing off her parents’ situation so they could enjoy a day out of time. The car agency was closed until the festival was over and their attending it themselves was a legitimate means of de-stressing. Heaven knew their psyches had absorbed hit after heavy-duty hit ever since her original run-in with Joaquin. It felt like it’d been one craptastic challenge after another. So, she shook off her guilt as best she could and granted herself permission to take this time for what it was—a brief respite that would help refill their wells and give them the strength to fight again.
Several barely pubescent boys in elaborate costumes and headdresses the colors of the sun did a tribal dance out in the street a short distance from the jewelry tables. Beyond them two shirtless teenaged boys in white pants performed a contrastingly modern B-boy routine to a hip-hop tune blaring from an old eighties-style boom box.
Mags looked over her shoulder to share a grin with Finn over the wildly divergent cultural styles and found him gone. She looked around, but for a moment all she could see was a group of men in black bowlers and beautiful elaborately embroidered yellow ponchos with yellow and green fringe that shivered with their every move. Anxiety began to itch like a bad rash under her skin. Oh, God, where did he go?
She mentally kicked herself, because if he’d deliberately shaken free of her, well, it was her own damn fault, wasn’t it? Why did she always have to shoot off her big mouth before she thought things through? She knew she had crummy impulse control, but couldn’t she, just once, have bitten her tongue and not blurted out the first damn thing to pop into her head?
Oh, no, a voice dripping in sarcasm drawled in her head. Not you, girl. You had to go call him a man whore.
Crap. Who could blame him if he’d gotten fed up?
Then, suddenly, there he was, weaving toward her through the ever-moving throng. When he reached her a moment later, he held out a tall to-go cup filled to the brim with ice and what looked like lemonade. “Here,” he said. “I thought you might be thirsty.”
She walked right past his outstretched arm to wrap her own tightly around his lean middle and give him a hard, relieved hug. Because the truth was, she hadn’t fully realized until this moment how much strength she gained just knowing that he was with her, shouldering a huge share of the burden.
And she really, really didn’t want to find out what it would be like if she had to do this on her own.
Finn looked down at her. “He-e-y—hey, there. You okay?”
She nodded against his chest. Then, firming up her chin, which had developed an unacceptable tendency to tremble, she stepped back...and thrust up that chin. “Of course,” she said coolly, reaching for the cup he’d offered and taking a huge gulp.
And God have mercy. She moaned against the cup’s rim. The lemonade tasted like manna from heaven as it slid like iced silk down her throat.
“Of course,” he repeated, a slight smile tugging at his lips as he checked her over. The moment she lowered the cup he reached out to rub his thumb across her bottom lip. He drew it back to study the drop of lemonade that decorated his thumb’s pad, then brought it up to suck the droplet into his mouth.
The way heat streaked through Mags’s veins, a person might be forgiven for thinking he’d done something a helluva lot more suggestive than licking up a drop of juice. She turned away to stare blindly at a group of young women currently parading down the street in Vegas showgirl–style outfits that were long on sequins, feathers and towering headpieces, and short on coverage. She glanced down at her own cargo shorts and double tank top and thought she could probably stand a little style herself. She had forgotten, during her years away from El Tigre, the sheer panache Latin women often brought to their fashion and makeup.
Even if it was the memories of this country that had steered her interest in makeup artistry.
“Shit,” Finn suddenly muttered next to her and she looked up to see him gazing past the performers in the street.
“What is it?”
“There’s a couple of thug-looking guys on the other side of the street,” he murmured. Then his voice went hard and authoritative when she started to turn her head. “Don’t look.”
“Is it Joaquin or what’s his name?”
“No, but they’re definitely on the lookout for someone and they don’t seem quite sure yet that we’re it, so don’t give them a better look at your face by facing them fully.”
“Gotcha.” Drinking the last of her lemonade, she turned casually away. “Give me ten minutes and I can change both of our looks so much our own mothers wouldn’t recognize us.”
H
e looked down at her. “How do you plan to do that?”
“I’m a makeup artist and I have stuff in my bag that can transform us.” And wasn’t it odd that she hadn’t already told him how she made a living? Even though they’d only been together one day, they’d shared so many adrenaline-fueled experiences it somehow caught her by surprise that he didn’t know. She knew about him being in business with his brothers.
“And you can do this in ten minutes?”
She nodded. “Or less.” She turned to consider the shops behind them and the tables set up along the edge of the sidewalk. “Let’s go in there,” she said, nodding at a shop two doors away from where they stood.
It was dim and cooler inside and she headed straight to the wall of carnival masks. “We’ll make yours easy,” she said and within two minutes had selected a tiger’s-head mask, two arm ruffs and a beads-and-bones necklace. She carried everything to the counter to pay.
“Is there a back door?” she asked the clerk, who was more interested in checking out the action on the street than in her and Finn. Except to check the price, he’d barely even glanced at her purchase.
Without taking his gaze off another group of scantily dressed young women outside, he jerked his head at the narrow curtain that separated the front from the back of the store.
They stepped through it and she put a finger to her lips. “Take off your shirt,” she whispered. “And if you have different pants to put on that wouldn’t hurt, either.”
He did as she said—and for once she was too busy digging her all-gold pirate outfit from the bottom of her tote to take the time to admire the show. Throwing in the costume had been a last-minute impulse in case she needed to supplement her meager funds while she was here. She hadn’t actually anticipated it would be necessary, but as she dropped her pants and wiggled into a pair of tights she thanked God for the little voice that had insisted she include it.
She slipped a full-sleeved shirt over her tank tops and buttoned it up to her throat. She added a vest atop that, tied a sash around her waist and arranged the two oversize plastic skeleton keys to dangle just right. Her sword was in her suitcase back at Senora Guerrero’s boardinghouse, but she slid her plastic dagger into the sash at her side. She pulled on soft, flimsy-soled boots, then reached for her makeup kit and stepped into the small restroom that luckily provided a mirror and began sponging gold makeup on her face and neck and hands.
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