BEAUTIFUL STRANGER Page 3

  "She caught me smoking," Crystal said, and dropped her face into her hands, hiding behind her yards of hair.

  "Smoking?" He sat up, shocked in spite of himself. "Crystal!"

  "See?" Crystal flung away her hair, threw out her hands. "That's what I mean. That shock thing you do. I hate it."

  He felt like he'd been kicked, and before he spoke, he took a minute to breathe deeply, in and out, and tell himself that whatever Crystal did was just a symptom of her anger. He found himself touching a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a memento of his own days of anger. "Crystal," he said quietly.

  She looked at him finally, and there was so much misery in her expression that he reached out and took her hand. "Are you all right?"

  Her fingers tightened around his convulsively. "Yeah."

  "Do you smoke a lot?"

  "No. I did sometimes, back in Albuquerque, but not since I came here."

  "Why today?"

  A shrug.

  Marissa asked, "Do you want to get out of this school that badly?"

  "No" she said, aggrieved. And to Robert's complete amazement, she started to cry again. "I don't know why I did it. It could be bad for the baby! But there was this girl and I just asked her for one, like to prove something, I guess. And—" She wiped her face with her sleeve. "It was stupid. I know it was. But, Miss Pierce, I'll do anything you want. Please?"

  Robert let himself look at Marissa then, clenching his jaw to keep hope from showing on his face. The blouse made her eyes even bluer in her pale face, but it seemed like he could see goodness there. Not Rich Girl benevolence, but something real and honest.

  And something more, too. In anyone else, he'd have named it street savvy, but he didn't know how this woman, with her three-hundred-dollar shoes and that million-dollar cosmetic smell, would have picked up street smarts.

  But the bright blue eyes narrowed, her lips tightened and she leaned forward. "Listen here, Crystal. You got me the minute you walked in that door, and I know I'm a soft touch where certain kids are concerned. Fifteen was the worst year of my life, and I bet you're having an even more miserable time than I did, so I'm on your side in a way you aren't going to find very often. But—" she leaned closer, elbows on one knee "—I'm also smarter than I look, and if you play me, you'll lose me. Got it?"

  Crystal, without a single atom of surprise about her—which was more than Robert could say—nodded. "I promise, Miss Pierce."

  "Good." She looked at Robert. "Are you free to take her home?"

  He hesitated, only a second. "Sure," he said.

  Marissa inclined her head, and he found himself snared in a strange way by the measuring expression in her eyes. "There was no right answer to that question. Why don't you let me call Louise if you have to go to work? I know she won't mind."

  "Who's Louise?"

  He shot Crystal a silencing glance, and considered it. Louise Forrest Chacon was famous—almost infamous—for her need to take care of not only her own children, but the children of the whole damned world. He had been the beneficiary of that loving attention more than once, the most memorable time being when he'd had to tell her that her son was in the hospital after falling down a cliff.

  Something eased, all the tension and conflict he'd been feeling since they'd walked up, and he gave Marissa Pierce a smile. Rich Girl or not, she had something real that he liked a lot.

  "Truth is," he said, "I got connections to my boss. He won't fire me. But maybe me and Crystal can take the afternoon and go for a visit." He stood and held out his hand, only realizing, when it was fully extended and she couldn't refuse without being rude, that it was covered with dust, making his dark skin look as if it had been plunged in flour.

  But Marissa didn't even hesitate. She smiled—a true, deep smile that went all the way to her beautiful eyes—and she put her small, neatly manicured hand into his.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "You're welcome."

  Robert knew, even in the few seconds that he allowed himself to want her, that it was impossible. She wasn't just well-to-do, not like an officer's wife or a doctor's daughter—but bloody rich. He recognized the difference from his days in the army, when he'd occasionally been called to provide security for a diplomatic function. It didn't matter what country the rich guests came from—an Arabian prince or a Brazilian rancher's wife or a Japanese royal—the details of that kind of money were always the same.

  Clean. Impossibly well-groomed. Hair that looked as if it had been cut one strand at a time. Skin that had been perfectly fed and tended since birth. Toenails as well manicured as fingernails, clothes that moved invisibly, perfectly, of fabrics so fine they'd last seventy years.

  But most of all, it was the smell. A smell that filled his head now, a scent of cosmetics, a particular combination of notes from products he couldn't even begin to imagine. Lipsticks and lotions and creams and shampoos that came in frosted glass containers to sit on marble sink-tops.

  Never failed to get him, right in the libido, and it didn't fail now. Halfway hating himself for the weakness, he gave himself three seconds to inhale it deeply, allowed two seconds more for the desire that came with it to roll down his spine.

  Yeah, he was weak. And it was a particularly dismaying weakness, that he was almost invariably attracted to such women, though he'd never actually pursued one. Logically, a poor Indian who'd spent his life fighting for every damned thing he had, ought to hate women like that.

  But "ought to" didn't mean "did". Above all things, know thyself. What Robert knew was that smell could rip his heart out if he let it, because in some ways it represented everything he'd ever dreamed of as a boy—comfort and privilege and cleanliness. For that eight-year-old he'd been, for the fifteen-year-old shivering in a doorway, he savored the sense of her hand, her smell, her clean, orderly life, then let her go.

  "Come on, Crystal."

  She stood up and stopped in front of Marissa. "Thank you, Miss Pierce," she said with sincerity. She took a breath and said, "You know that thing you asked about?"

  "Thing?" Marissa frowned a little, then remembered. "Oh, yes. Your passion?"

  "Yeah. I'll tell you if you want."

  "Please."

  "Movies," she said, and that was all. She turned and started walking toward Robert's truck.

  Robert lifted his head and grinned at Marissa before he could stop himself, and he saw a flash of something cross her face, a flicker of awareness, unmistakable. Instead of squelching it with a brisk word or a sharp glance, he found himself inclining his head, testing the sensation of that new, fresh lust of his own, and found that it felt pretty good, that he liked the almost forgotten and pleasurable sense of awareness in his thighs. Interesting.

  "Movies?" she said.

  Robert only nodded, giving her a faint smile. "Yep. The rest you'll have to get yourself." He followed Crystal to the truck, knowing that Marissa watched him. He felt her eyes on the back of his arms, his legs. He thought of her sexy, rolling walk, and let a single vision of his hands, sliding up heavy breasts covered in heavy silk, tease his libido, then brushed it away. He climbed into the truck. "You had lunch yet?"

  Crystal shook her head.

  "Want burgers and fries?"

  "Really? Junk food?"

  He grinned. "A little now and then won't hurt anything."

  * * *

  When she got home from work, Marissa changed into sweats and T-shirt and her now-battered walking shoes. She needed her workout today more than usual. Pulling her hair into a ponytail, she stretched the backs of her thighs and calves as she'd been taught, then set out just as the sun slid to touch the top of Mount Evans, a craggy peak among many that lined the horizons of Red Creek, Colorado. The sun, she thought as she strode down Main Street

  , looked like a ball balanced on the tip of a seal's nose.

  She loved the stillness of late afternoon and evening in Red Creek. April touched the air with the fragrance of new greenery and pine sap, but in the shadows, she co
uld still feel the bite of the long winter, surprising and exhilarating.

  As she moved, her heels hitting the old concrete of sidewalks poured in 1920, she felt the strain of the long day ease down her spine, flow through her legs and into the ground. Her shoulders shook loose, and she found her breath take a new, calm, deep rhythm.

  Who knew simple walking could be such a life-changing experience? Eighteen months ago, a little blue over a failed romance, Marissa had finally tired of herself. Impetuously she'd set out on a walk around the town square to enjoy the sunset. Breathe the air. See something besides her own sorry face in the mirror.

  That day she'd walked only five minutes, but it had been a five minutes that changed her life. The next day she'd done it again, just as an experiment, to see if it made her feel as good as it had the first time. It had.

  It had gone like that for weeks—Marissa stepping out into the world at dusk to walk as far as she could, then come home, just to see what it was like. After a month, she could walk twenty minutes. After two, she was up to forty.

  And after three months, people started to tell her that she needed to get some new clothes. Clothes that weren't falling off her. For the first time she realized that she'd been losing weight by simply moving her body. When she stepped on the scales at the local grocery store—she didn't keep one in her house and still didn't—she discovered she'd somehow lost thirty pounds.

  Thirty pounds.

  As Marissa came around a corner, Ramona Forrest was waiting in front of the clinic where she worked. Short and busty, Ramona had taken up walking to rid herself of the extra layer of cushion she'd gained while pregnant, and she had begun to enjoy their evening walks so much that she'd enlisted Louise, whom they usually picked up on the next long turn.

  Louise was waiting in the designated spot, but she didn't have on her sweats. "Hi, girls," she said. "I have a houseful and can't go, but, Ramona, your darling girl is up there, along with your husband, and I've got Curtis and Cody, too, so I'm fixing a big meal. Why don't you both circle back and eat with us when you're done?"

  "Sounds good," Marissa said, and tucked a loose strand of hair back into her ponytail. "As long as you aren't doing the Southern thing and frying all of it."

  "You know better. I've got plenty of skinned chicken breasts for my girls, and a salad with every green known to mankind. I even bought some of that raspberry vinaigrette." She said it "vinegar-ette" and Marissa smiled.

  Ramona glanced at her watch, then the sky. "Half hour?"

  "All right."

  As they continued their walk, Ramona said, "She's up to something."

  "Absolutely. She's so guilelessly obvious."

  "With Louise, it's usually matchmaking."

  "True. Wonder who it is." Marissa paused in horror. "Oh, I hope it isn't me!"

  "Keep walking." Ramona tugged her arm. "Why you?"

  Marissa groaned. "I sent Robert Martinez over to her today."

  "Red Dog?"

  "The very one." She squeezed her eyes tight. "Oh, good grief. I'll die of embarrassment if that's what's on her mind."

  "I'm lost. Start over. Why would you even send him to—?" She interrupted herself. "Oh. Crystal."

  "Right. I thought Louise might be a help to both of them."

  "And she will, but she also got the bright idea to match the pair of you up." Ramona chuckled. In a Frankenstein voice, she said, "Be very careful," and shook her head. "She's a mule when she puts her mind to something."

  "I know." She rolled her eyes and took Ramona's arm. "But I have to tell you that he's one devastatingly sexy thing, isn't he?" She grinned. "I even get kind of flustered when I have to talk to him. Me. Flustered."

  "He's definitely gorgeous," Ramona said cautiously. They paused in their talking to take a hill that was particularly challenging. At the top she continued. "He's also a dog—hence the name."

  Marissa felt a little pinch at the warning. "I know," she said aloud. "Not my type."

  "Liar. The badder they are, the better you like them."

  Marissa grinned. "I know. Isn't that funny? And my sister, who has made an art form of being the bad girl, loves the good guys. How weird is that?"

  Ramona smiled, but her large brown eyes were serious. "I know he's gorgeous and wounded and mysterious, Marissa, but those wounds are deep. I don't think that man has ever had anyone in his corner. I'm not sure he's capable of making a connection with a woman."

  Marissa felt suddenly humiliated that anyone should think she would go after a man like that, or had any hope of him coming after her. Aware that her cheeks were red, she waved a hand and made a joke. "I wasn't exactly thinking of marriage." She sighed. "I'm not the kind of woman he'd go for anyway."

  "Uh, sweetie, have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?"

  She grinned. "Oh, yes. I admire myself in the mirror at least seven times a day, for very long periods."

  Ramona laughed. "So, why not you, then?"

  "Do we have to do this? I'm embarrassed enough, okay?"

  "Mmm," Ramona said, anchoring herself more firmly to Marissa's arm. "I think we do. Maybe old Red Dog's just what the doctor ordered to build up that flabby self-esteem."

  Marissa laughed at a vision of lifting him overhead. "Push-ups for the ego?"

  "Sit-ups for the psyche!"

  "Sex for the soul." It didn't have the same ring and she knew it, but she didn't take it back.

  "Yeah, that's what he's about, all right. Sex." Ramona sobered. "Is that something you could do? Take what he offers and walk away when it was done?"

  "I could try." She laughed throatily. "I mean, gosh, what's the worst that could happen? Not like I haven't had a broken heart once or twice in my life."

  "Haven't we all." They walked along the sidewalk, silent for a long moment. "On second thought, Marissa, stay away from him. He's just…" She lifted a shoulder.

  "He's just what?"

  "Wrong for you, that's all."

  Marissa's antenna rippled. She narrowed her eyes and said, "Would you mind being a little more specific?"

  Ramona didn't answer for a moment. She was a diplomat at heart, a doctor whose patients worshipped the ground she walked on. "Look, don't take this wrong—"

  "Oh, I know where that always leads."

  Ramona stopped. "You probably do. And I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Marissa, but you're clueless on this level. You think it doesn't matter that you're worth however many zillions it is now, but it does. You don't know anything about life the way he and Crystal had to live it. You don't even know about ordinary people's lives."

  Stung, Marissa crossed her arms and looked at the last gilding on the edge of the world, a brilliant gold zigzag edging the tops of the mountains. "And how much do you know about it, Ramona? More than I do?"

  A puzzled expression crossed her face. "Well, no, probably not, but—"

  "But," Marissa added gently, "you might he less inclined to judge?"

  Ramona winced. "Ouch." She raised her big, compassionate eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm the one being judgmental."

  "It's all right. I'm used to it." She relented a little, rolling her eyes. "Let's not talk about it anymore."

  "Labels," Ramona said with a sigh. "What a pain. We all get stuck with them. Red Dog is the sexiest, baddest, saddest. I was the brainy busty one."

  "Richest, fattest, smartest."

  Ramona laughed. "Ha! We could have duked it out for smartest."

  Marissa laughed. "Thank heavens. I couldn't stand being the richest, the fattest and the smartest."

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  Crystal didn't like white people all that much. Back in Albuquerque, there never had been that many in her life, really, only the ones on TV and at school, but here, it seemed like nearly everybody was white. It made her feel lost, kind of, like she was in a foreign country and didn't know the language.

  She had to admit the old lady was pretty nice, and she was married to a Mexican who
still talked as if he hadn't been gone too long, and that made it easier to believe the lady was really that nice. She gave Crystal some Kool-Aid, and her house smelled like houses in Albuquerque, of onions and chili, which was for the Mexican husband, of course, but it still made it easier.

  After a while, the house filled up so much that Crystal got kind of panicky, afraid all of them would want to make polite conversation with her. But Mrs. Chacon seemed to know the exact minute Crystal wanted to burst into tears, and took her into a room at the back of the house where there was a bed and a VCR. She had a ton of movies, too. "Your uncle said you like movies. Feel free to watch whatever you want, all right? And maybe you can have a nap. I'll save you some supper—don't worry about that."

  It almost made Crystal cry. That was what she hated about being pregnant. She cried over everything, as if she had an underground well in her belly and it overflowed every day.

  She looked through all the movies, and there were some pretty good ones, she had to admit. All the Nightmare movies, which she liked because they made her real life—no matter how bad it was on a given day—look pretty good since nobody was stalking her; and some goofy old movies such as Gone with the Wind, which Crystal had watched and didn't get at all. She thought Scarlett was a total bitch and deserved to lose a good guy like Rhett. There were also a couple of her absolute, tip-top favorites, such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which she'd seen at least a hundred times, and Last of the Mohicans, which made her cry and cry and cry, every single time. She didn't know if she wanted to do that right now. To get the full effect, it was best if she was all alone and could make all kinds of noise without anybody hearing what an idiot she was about movies.

  There was no Titanic, which might actually have been too creepy for words. But there was one of the Romeo and Juliet with guns, the new one, with Claire Danes. Crystal put her hand on it, daring herself to look at it. But in the end, she just couldn't. Not without Mario.

  For one minute, that hot feeling came into her throat—not tears, but something that burned a lot more—and she wanted to touch him, talk to him, so bad that she almost couldn't breathe. But that didn't do her or the baby or even Mario any good.