Beautiful Stranger

At the door he paused. “Do you want to know what she loves?”

“I’ll wait until she’s ready to tell me.”

He nodded. “All right. Thanks again.”

He closed the door behind him and Marissa sank against the desk, swallowing the weird rush of emotion his simple, clear words had given her. You were always beautiful. Not exactly the words she would ever have expected to come from the lips of a jaded, brooding man who only crooked his finger and had women from thirteen to seventy flocking to his side.

Then she realized with a wry little smile that it was exactly what she should have expected. The great power of a ladies’ man lay in his understanding of a woman’s most private, most revered hungers.

Reaching for her purse, she chuckled. He’d certainly zeroed in on Marissa’s.

There was a card from her sister in the mailbox when she got home, and Marissa laughed when she opened it. The front showed a beachy guy in worn white cutoffs, smiling hunkily, and the inside said, “Just wanted to send you something fun to break up your day.”

Marissa had mailed out the exact card, for no particular reason, to her twin sister, Victoria, only three days before. They were identical twins, the only children of their obscenely wealthy and overly protective parents. What nature began in the womb, the isolation their parents had imposed had completed; the pair had an almost uncanny bond, as if they were one mind in two bodies.

When she walked in, still smiling, the phone rang.

“I just got it,” she said into the phone, knowing by a twin’s intuition exactly who was on the other end. “I should have known.”

Victoria laughed. “I don’t even know why we bother. Next time, just buy the card and keep it and so will I, and we’ll both save the postage.”

“Ah, what fun would that be?”

Victoria changed gears. “Enough of that. Who is he?”

It startled Marissa. “Who?”

“Some man. Don’t lie. I felt it, right in the solar plexus.”

Marissa chuckled. “Well, he’s really no one. A cute parent, that’s all. Sweet talker.”

“Mmm. He must be hot, that’s all I have to say. I’m going to come see for myself. Can I come visit? Maybe stay for a week. Or a month?”

“Really?” Marissa cried. She had not seen her sister in more than two years, largely due to Victoria’s hectic and worldly schedule. “That would be so fantastic!” She smiled to herself. “I have quite a surprise for you.”

“And I have one for you.” She laughed softly. “I can’t imagine that we’ll duplicate each other this time.”

Marissa thought of her sister’s ultraskinny frame. “Nope. Not this time.”

“All right, then. I’ll see you in a week or two.”

They hung up.

Chapter 2

One of the best parts of Marissa’s job was that her planning period fell just before lunch, so on those days that she was not required to be in the cafeteria or walking the grounds, she had a good long break in the middle of the day. She often went to a small café nearby to have a salad freshly made from a long list of menu items. Today she chose butter and radicchio and romaine lettuces, sunflower seeds, broccoli, tomatoes and shredded carrots and a bare sprinkling of pumpernickel croutons. They didn’t even have to ask anymore if she wanted the dressing on the side.

Carrying her overflowing plate to a table near the window, she relished the salad slowly, along with a whole-grain roll and a thin spread of butter and the unsweetened raspberry tea they served, made with fresh lemons and raspberries. Outrageously good.

Gazing peacefully at the bright blue Colorado day, she felt sinfully satisfied. In her old life, she had rarely taken the time to enjoy food—eating had been a guilt-laden activity, something evil one was required to indulge, and she often hurried through it, almost inhaling a meal before others had made it halfway through.

It was a miracle to her now to really taste the butter on the bread, savor the small wheat berries in the soft dough. She dipped her fork in dressing and speared a pale green leaf of butter lettuce—it was one of her favorites at home because of the way the leaves felt in her hand, soft as suede—and took time to experience the combination of flavors. Before she had finished half the salad, she was satisfied—no, closer to stuffed.

Replete, and feeling virtuous from all the nutrients she’d managed to pack into a single lunch, she paid and headed back to campus, two blocks north. The walk was a particularly pleasant one, following a path through a park that ran through the middle of town like a long finger. The day was not yet hot, and a breeze lifted her hair.

A breeze that smelled of cigarettes. She glanced over, ready to smile; the few teachers who still smoked often slipped away to the park during lunch, and it was her habit to shake her finger at them cheerfully. But no one was sitting on the favored bench beneath a copse of aspens—instead, blue smoke wafted around the edge of a cinderblock building that housed rest rooms. Marissa spied a combat boot with a spot of pink paint at the toe peeking around the base of the wall.

With a sigh, she crossed the grass, shaking her head, and came around the building.

Crystal Avila hunched there, guiltily, and started so violently when she saw Marissa that she dropped the cigarette on the ground.

Marissa quickly stepped on it, grinding it beneath the toe of her shoe. “Bad idea, kiddo. And not just for you.”

The girl ducked her head, pulled her coat more tightly around her belly. A fall of hair, taking up a thick reddish hue in the dappled sunlight, slid over her shoulders.

“Do you smoke a lot?” Marissa asked.

“No.” She swallowed, dared to raise her eyes for a split second, dropped them again. “This is the first time since—” She burst into tears. “I don’t know what I was doing!”

“Oh, honey.” Marissa reached for her with one hand, ready to offer a shoulder for a hug if the girl needed it, but Crystal jerked away, hiding her face with her hands.

“Don’t suspend me, okay? I swear, I’ll do whatever you want, but I don’t want my uncle to—”

“To what?”

“To give me that look, all sad and disappointed.”

“Ah.” She folded her arms, leaning as casually as she could against the wall. “Well, first of all, I can’t suspend you for smoking because you’re not on school grounds.”

“Really?” Bright, hopeful eyes in a face streaked with tears.

“I could have you sent to study hall for leaving campus—”

“Oh.” Deflated balloon. Shoulders drooping, head dropping.

“—but I don’t see what purpose it would serve. You have enough study hall for fourteen people already.” She sighed. “I want to help you, Crystal. I wish you’d let me.”

Abruptly the girl put her back against the wall and slid down to sit on the ground, her elbows braced on her upraised knees, her hands over her face. “You can’t do nothing.”

“Anything. And you’d be surprised.”

“You don’t know,” she said miserably. “You don’t know what those girls say about me. I hate them.”

Marissa knelt, trying to be as ladylike as possible in a straight skirt. That was one thing her old tent dresses had afforded that she’d never truly appreciated—freedom of movement. “You want to walk back to school with me? We can talk in my room. I don’t have a class for an hour.”

She shook her head. “I want to go home. Can you call my uncle?”

“Sure.” She reached into her purse and took out a tiny cell phone. “What’s the number?”

Crystal looked up. “It’s a beeper.” She gave the number and Marissa punched it in, then held the phone loosely as she examined the girl. “Someone hurt you today?”

She blinked. Nodded, her mouth tight. “I know how it looks, you know, but I’m not a slut. I never was.” She raised her head. “I swear it on a stack of Bibles.”

“I believe you.” She hesitated. “Is it different people or someone in particular? If there’s someone in particular, I can make sure it stops.”

“Get real.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I would rat someone out like that.”

The phone trilled lightly in her hand. “Hello?”

“This is Robert Martinez,” he said. That voice—it rolled over her in a wave of color, a rich sienna, like the skin on his arms. “You beeped me?”

“Yes. This is Marissa Pierce, Crystal’s math teacher. She’d like to come home. Is that all right?”

“Is there something wrong? Is the baby okay?”

“They’re both fine. She’s just had kind of a bad day.”

“A bad day? What does that mean?”

Crystal said, “Ask him if I can walk over to where he’s working and I’ll tell him what’s going on.”

Marissa repeated the information.

“That’s fine. Look, I know she’s right there, but is there something going on I need to know?”

“Yes,” Marissa said.

“Can you bring her over? Or meet me somewhere?”

“Sure, I’ll bring her.” Crystal rolled her eyes. Marissa grinned. “Where are you?”

He gave her directions. It was only three blocks west, in the heart of the historical district. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Marissa stood, brushing her skirt down. “Come on, kiddo.”

Crystal stood, wiping hard at her face with her sleeve. “Why are you always so nice? Don’t you know people take advantage of you?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

When Robert’s beeper had gone off, he’d been high on a ladder in the foyer of a Victorian ruin. His crew was working on the restoration of a mansion that had been built with mining money just before the turn of the century. Neglected for more than twenty-five years, rumored to be haunted, Rosewood would provide the centerpiece for a historical renewal project that the town of Red Creek hoped would attract summer tourists to replace the income lost when skiers looked elsewhere for entertainment.

Robert had been tearing out the plaster and lathe of a particularly rotten stretch of ceiling, his hair and face covered with dust and old spiderwebs, when the pager had beeped loudly.

He’d checked the number with a sinking feeling. He only wore the beeper so that Crystal could get in touch with him anywhere, anytime, and it could only be her paging him. He’d scrambled down, brushing off his face and arms as he went, then had called out to Tyler Forrest, in charge of the meticulous restoration of the wood, and Robert’s direct superior. “Need to borrow your cell phone, man.”

The number was one he didn’t recognize, and when he’d called it and got Marissa Pierce, he’d felt a frisson of…anticipation over the sound of her voice. And then sadness that Crystal was still having so much trouble.

He handed the cell phone back. “I gotta take a break. Crystal is going to come here, and I’ll need to take her home and get her settled. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Is everything okay with the baby?”

“Baby’s fine.”

Tyler nodded. “Take as long as you need. Kids come first.”

“Thanks.”

“Wait a second, man.” Tyler reached into a leather satchel. “My wife found these. Why don’t you take a look while you’re waiting?”

He took the folder. “What is it?”

Tyler gestured to the boarded area above the landing of the stairs. “Photographs of the original window. Black and white, but at least it’s a start.”

Robert shook his head with a wry smile. “You’re a damned pit bull, you know it?”

“So they say.” Tyler grinned. “Just take a look.”

He carried the folder out to the shabby porch, patting his shirt pocket for cigarettes in an automatic gesture. It was empty, as it had been for three years. The habit of reaching for them would probably be with him when he was ninety. He took out a wooden match instead, stuck it between his teeth and flipped open the folder.

The window was enormous, and it was not simply painted glass, as had been fashionable at the turn of the century, but the real thing—stained glass in lead. It was also enormous, stretching from the base of the landing to nearly a story and a half above. Robert whistled. It was good work—no, better than that.

It was also well beyond anything he had attempted. He’d done small restorations for private homes, usually a small round in a door, a pair of matching windows alongside a fireplace, things like that. He’d done one large window for an Indian church, but not even it came close to this in size. Tyler would have to find someone else.

With a shake of his head, he closed the folder and paced to the end of the porch and back again, peering every so often down the sidewalk in the direction from which they’d come.

Chill, man, said a voice in his head, and he exhaled heavily, got rid of the match and forced himself to sit on the wooden railing that surrounded the porch. A breeze, smelling of pine resin and sunlight on a carpet of old leaves, swept down from the mountains, as light and clean as anything he could imagine. It was one of the things he liked best about this place, that weightless, scented breeze. It rattled the aspen leaves together overhead, startling a squirrel who skittered down the trunk and nearly across Robert’s feet before it realized its mistake and scuttled off in the other direction.

The tension in his chest eased. Whatever the problem was, he and Crystal could figure it out. As long as they had each other, a roof over their heads, food to eat, there would be an answer.

But when she appeared on the sidewalk, he wondered. Her head was bent in misery, her arms folded across her chest. She was too skinny. So miserable. She would not say a word about the boy who’d made her pregnant, wouldn’t say anything about her life back in Albuquerque at all, come to that.

Next to her, Marissa provided such a contrast of healthy womanhood that Robert nearly resented her. Sunlight caught in the fall of her elegantly cut dark hair, hair that swung in a thread by thread flow that came only from a very expensive set of scissors. Today she wore a royal blue blouse, silk by the low luster, together with a simple straight skirt. Lush breasts and round hips, a complexion clear as a bowl of milk, teeth as straight and white as a picket fence.

He didn’t move immediately, caught by a swift, sharp surge of lust, rare and surprising. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what kindled it, noticed the fine heavy sway of flesh beneath her blouse, the unconscious swish of hips—she had a very female kind of walk, one you didn’t see much anymore. Like one of those old-time movie stars, Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth. Yeah, she had a very Rita Hayworth look, a siren in silk.

It was only then that he realized how he must look himself, covered in hundred-year-old plaster dust. The recognition, couched as it was in the obvious wish to look better for her, annoyed him, and although he brushed a little at his shirt and face as he walked down to meet them, he dared her to look down on him for being a working man.

Anyway, it was Crystal who mattered, not her teacher.

As the two of them approached, Robert saw that Crystal’s face was streaky and red-eyed. In the oversize jacket she insisted upon wearing, she looked like a refugee, especially in comparison to the elegance that came off Marissa in clouds, along with that rich-girl smell. For a moment, he hated the teacher and everything she represented—the entire power structure, the do-gooder mentality. Gritting his teeth, he resisted brushing dust from himself and said, “What’s going on?”

They exchanged a glance. “I think I’ll leave that up to Crystal,” Marissa said with a soft smile at the girl. Even her voice was rich. Perfect vowels, perfect tone. He bet she never shouted, even when she was flat-out furious.

“Crystal?” he prompted.

She looked toward the tops of the trees, to the roof, at the ground, anywhere but at his face. In some way it wounded him. Why wouldn’t she talk to him? “You tell him,” she told Marissa.

“I’d rather you did, Crystal,” Robert said. “Have I ever yelled at you? Have I done anything to make you think I’m judging you?”

“No.” The word came out hoarsely. “It’s not that.”

“What, then? I don’t get it. I want to help you.”

Marissa touched his arm, just above the elbow, and when he looked up, she gestured toward a cluster of white buckets tucked under the shade cast by an old pine. “Why don’t we go sit over there?”

He spared a glance at her skirt. “Mighty expensive clothes to go slumming in.”

“They’ll wash,” she said, steel in her tone.

He knew better, but shrugged. “Whatever.”

They walked across the neglected yard in silence and settled on the sealed buckets that contained plaster repair mix. Marissa, straight as a Victorian lady, waited for Crystal to look up. “I really think this is in your court, kiddo.”

“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?”