Wicked Intentions(34)

I smile at her.

She smiles back with the sharpness of a viper’s fangs. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Just cleanin’ up the mess, baby. It’s kinda my thing, cleanin’ up messes.”

If a man could be struck dead from a look, I’d already be six feet under.

“Funny,” she says lightly. “And here I thought your thing was causing blindness with your teeth. How much work have you had on those chompers? That shade of white must’ve cost a fortune. They’re as snowy as a unicorn’s flank.”

I make spokesmodel hands at my smile. “These old things? Oh no. These are bona fide, baby. I never even had braces.”

She makes a face like she’s sucking on a lemon wedge. “What about that nose? And that jaw you’re always parading around like it should be chopping a cord of wood? I’ve seen axes with softer edges. There’s a history of cosmetic surgery there, right?”

I mouth You wish and stroll over to the fridge, where I open the door and stand peering in. “You feel like breakfast or lunch?” I ask over my shoulder. “It’s kinda brunch time, which is why I went with bacon—though really, bacon’s apropos for any meal on account of it bein’ so delicious—but I’ve got fixin’s for sandwiches, omelets, pasta, crepes—”

“Crepes?” she repeats loudly.

I turn and look at her, glaring at me like a warlord from the kitchen table. Blinking innocently, I say, “I knew I was gonna have a guest from Paris, so I stocked up.” My lips twitch, but I try very hard not to smile. I’m only marginally successful. “Got escargot, too. You want some of those? Not really my thing, but I figure with you bein’ French and all”—I add emphasis on the word French—“you’d enjoy ’em.”

She flattens her hands over the tabletop and exhales. I imagine plumes of white frost emanating from her nostrils, like the smoke from dry ice, and suck in my cheeks to keep from bursting into laughter.

“No, thank you,” she replies, in a voice like brandished swords.

“Okay. I’ll surprise you then, how ’bout that?”

“For a change,” she mutters under her breath.

Now who’s the sarcastic one?

I set about making brunch and ignoring the waves of hostility pulsing at me from all angles. I’m whipping eggs and milk with a fork when I hear, “So where are you keeping the diamond, anyway?”

“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?” I keep on whipping, then am struck by an idea. I turn to her with a smile, which she curls her lip at. “I’ll make you a bargain.”

Tap, tap, tap goes her index finger on my kitchen table. “This should be interesting.”

“Tell me your last name and where you’re from, and I’ll tell you where I’m keeping the diamond.” When she hesitates a moment too long, I remind her, “You decided to trust me, remember?”

“That was before I decided I wanted to kick you in the balls,” she shoots back.

I lift a shoulder like I could care less either way, and turn back to the eggs. “Suit yourself.”

Muttering in Spanish crowds the air like colorful birds. I think I hear curses involving my mother and a few imminent threats on my life, but I’m not proficient in the language, so maybe I’m imagining it.

“My last name is Lora. L-O-R-A.” She spells it out like I’m too dense to guess, her tone loud and condescending. I swallow a chortle.

“And where do you live when you’re not traveling the world in search of booty, Ms. Lora?” I glance at her over my shoulder. “The jewel kind, not the other kind. I wasn’t implying you travel the world in search of men.”

“How gallant,” she deadpans. “Thank you for clarifying.”

I send her a wink. “No problemo.”

She appears to be doing deep-breathing exercises for several moments, complete with closed eyes and pursed lips on slow exhalations. Then she opens her eyes. “My home is in Morocco. But that’s not where I’m from.”

I instantly lose interest in the eggs.

Morocco.

I slip through a basement door in my memory to a place I visited once and never forgot. A place teeming with life, color, noise, and scents, so many exotic scents assaulting the nose, it was dizzying.

Orange blossom and cardamom, mint tea and jasmine oil, roasting meat and sweat. Dusty markets called souks filled with tourists and snake charmers, food stalls and laughing children, henna artists and musicians, a labyrinth of alleyways leading in like tributaries from the mazelike medieval city beyond. Lush gardens shimmering amid golden desert sands. Quiet riad courtyards adorned with mosaic-tiled fountains. Lapis lazuli glittering on ancient tomb walls.

Opulence and poverty and beauty; such beauty everywhere, you could drown in it and be grateful for such a glorious death.

I look at her with fresh eyes, this exotic creature regarding me with disdain at my kitchen table, and feel the sharp, painful throb of my heart.

“What?” she asks, nonplussed.

“I can picture you there, among the date palms and veiled women. I can picture you stealing into a locked room at dawn with the morning call to prayer echoing over the empty medina, the sun on red-tiled rooftops already hot.”

By her expression, I can tell we’re both surprised at the thickness of my voice.

After a moment of stillness, she murmurs in Arabic. It’s the opening recital of the Adhan, the call to worship that rings out from minarets atop mosques five times a day in Islamic countries.

I listen the way an alcoholic drinks wine. Her singing is like the song of angels. It inspires the exact same kind of dumbstruck reverence in my heart.

“Do you practice Islam?” I ask over the roar of my thrumming pulse.

She shakes her head. “But the prayers are beautiful.” Looking at her hands, she adds more quietly, “And so are the people. Morocco is the most beautiful place in the world.”

I’m struck with realization. “You miss it.”

Her shoulders round the way they do when you’re bent with exhaustion or remorse, your body unable to hold itself upright any longer. “Like someone chained to the wall of a cave for a hundred years misses sunlight,” she says in a voice so low, it’s almost a whisper.

I take a breath that feels like inhaling fresh-fallen snow.

This.

This is why I answered Reynard the way I did when he asked me why I didn’t turn her in to the police. This feeling of awe, for lack of a better word. This powerful, mysterious force that makes my chest ache with yearning, though I don’t even know its proper name. This magic of hers that drew my eye and held it from the second I caught my first glimpse.

For me, Mariana holds an allure I’ve never encountered, something elemental, a pull as strong as gravity, and just as impossible to resist. She makes me wish I had a talent for sonnets or sketching so I could capture the essence of it on paper, put it down for others to marvel over the way I do, the way people marvel over the magnificence of the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal.

She makes my pulse quicken, my blood run hot, and every cell in my body and soul come alive.

She moves me.

And I’d move mountains for her.

Our petty game of tit for tat abandoned with the next beat of my heart, I stride over to the table, bend down, and take her startled face in my hands. I give her a kiss, firm and potent, letting all the joy singing in my veins leach through my lips. When it’s over, I pull away and stare into her lovely brown eyes, the rich hue of fine, barrel-aged bourbon.

My voice all gravel and sandpaper, I say, “All right. I’ll show you the diamond and I’ll tell you the whole plan. Then you’re gonna tell me everything I want to know. Your life story, where you grew up, everything you love and hate and are proud of and regret. Your favorite music, your favorite food, the name of the first boy you ever kissed. And I’m gonna tell you mine.”

Mariana laughs breathlessly, her eyes alight. “You kissed a boy?”

“Smartass,” I growl, falling, falling, falling, head over heels and around again.





Twenty-One





Mariana




I once heard insanity described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That was Albert Einstein, a much more intelligent person than myself. I’m thinking of him now as Ryan drives me to wherever he’s keeping the diamond. I’m in the passenger seat, mulling all my life choices that have led me to this moment as the cityscape of Manhattan flashes by outside the windows, a silent movie of color and light.

It’s silent inside the car, too. For once, we’re not fighting or fucking. We’re just sitting side by side, holding hands.

Such a simple thing, yet so painfully tender. My whole life, I’ve felt lioness-strong, toughened by the cruelty of fate and circumstance, but meeting Ryan has taught me that my heart isn’t the fortress I thought it was.

Instead, it’s is a newborn baby bird, blind and vulnerable to predators and the elements, trembling with hunger and terror in its nest.

I want to kick my own ass for being so weak. This whole thing has disaster written all over it.

“Pretty grim over there,” Ryan observes, squeezing my hand.

I keep my gaze turned to the window when I answer, because I know how good he is at reading what’s in my eyes. “Just ruminating on the vagaries of life and how arbitrary it all is.”