Eduardo was driving his brother's truck to Guerrero Negro. The truck had been giving him troubles, but today it was behaving. He didn't speak any English, but Joe's Spanish was fluent, if ungrammatical. They talked until the road went up the mountains, then Joe shut up because he wanted Eduardo to concentrate on his driving. Eduardo was a frightening driver at best!
Joe closed his eyes and tried to pretend they were driving a windy country road, without cliffs and mountains, tried to forget how Eduardo had almost taken them over the cliff on that last curve. He had only two choices: put up with Eduardo's driving, or get out and look for a new ride. Getting out seemed like too much trouble, and maybe it didn't matter all that much if he went over the cliff with Eduardo anyway.
The Mexican was whistling tunelessly, the note dipping every time they jerked their way around one of those mountain curves. Joe felt the truck turn a corner and pick up speed as if for the crest of a hill. Then he heard something and his eyes flew open. A car on their side of the road had stopped. Up ahead, a big camper just coming into sight was heading towards them. There wasn't room in between for Eduardo's truck!
Eduardo jumped on the breaks.
Joe threw his hands in front of his face to protect himself, because sure as hell he would go through that windshield! Eduardo didn't have seat belts.
They came to a screaming halt about three inches behind the old car. Joe's heart resumed beating when he realized the camper was past them and they were both still alive.
"Carro es roto," said Eduardo.
The Spanish-speaking segment of Joe's brain didn't seem to be working. It took him a minute to play back the words and translate.
"Yeah," he agreed finally, deciding that Eduardo had better nerves than Joe would ever hope to have. "Carro is probably roto," he added, mixing his languages.
Eduardo was grinning as he slammed the car into first gear and turned it off. Surprised, Joe jerked into English. "You're gonna park here on the road?"
Eduardo seemed to get the drift, but he just shrugged and said, "La señorita," and stumbled down out of the truck.
Joe followed. He should have known! She was blonde, with long legs and shoulder-length hair. She was sitting on a rock near the car, had turned to watch Eduardo, and she was smiling. She didn't need to bother with the smile. Like most Mexicans, Eduardo was a pushover for a girl with blonde hair.
"Sorry," she said, standing and walking towards Eduardo with the open stride of a woman who walked a lot.
No woman stranded in the middle of the Baja should sound so confident, but she was smiling and Eduardo might not know her words, but she was saying, "It just quit, and I couldn't get it any farther. I was hoping no one would hit it." Eduardo grinned at her and she added, "Buenos días," making the Mexican smile even wider.
Joe expected her to ask for help. He was prepared to be amused at her struggles with the language. She'd spoken two Spanish words so far and butchered them terribly. He was startled when she asked, "Can you get your truck past OK?" then amused when she managed to get her question across with sign language.
Eduardo nodded vigorously and spewed out a stream of Spanish that had her blinking.
"No comprendo." She mutilated those words, too, but she had a nice voice. Low pitched. A little husky, as if the heat had given her a hoarse throat. She was perspiring, the moisture on her face a sultry sheen. Joe thought she'd had her blouse open when they came up. It was buttoned unevenly, as if she'd done it up too hurriedly. He was irritated with himself for being unable to get his eyes away from the gap where the buttoning process had gone awry. He could just see a glimpse of soft white flesh and some crazy part of his mind was painting pictures of the parts he couldn't see, of her eyes closed and her lips parted on a sigh of pleasure.
Eduardo made another try, and she repeated, "No comprendo. Sorry. Just squeeze past and go on if you can." She gestured to his truck, then the road.
Joe stepped forward, said lazily, "He's telling you that he can't leave a señorita stranded out here."
Her head jerked and for the first time he saw her eyes, almost gray with just a hint of blue. They should have been relieved, softening with gratitude at finding another gringo. They weren't. They traveled down his long, shaggy form, over the jeans and the patches to the salt-stained leather sandals. Then back up, taking in his ragged T-shirt. She met his eyes then and he had the crazy notion that if his mother could see him right now she would be looking at him just like that.
Chapter Two
Dinah didn't see second man until he spoke, but when she looked, she recognized the type. A drifter. A dropout. She'd seen a lot of them the year she turned sixteen—hanging out on the beach, going nowhere, using summer sun and a bit of panhandling to keep food in their bellies without much effort. She might have been one of them if it hadn't been for the clear vision of one frightening night. And Leo.
Her eyes sheered away from something uncomfortable in the stranger’s gaze, but he didn't stop looking at her. His body hung relaxed as his eyes surveyed her lazily. It was a hard body, physically fit, but he had the eyes of a man who didn't get involved, who stayed back a few feet from life.
She didn't answer him, just let her eyes take him in. The T-shirt was badly worn, but it hugged the bulging muscles of his chest in a way that ... Maybe he worked out with weights. It had to be hard work that developed those muscles, but she didn't think it was the kind of work anyone paid for. The jeans had been patched again and again, the patches sewn on by hand, and he didn't care who knew it.
His face ... She came to his face in the end, and that was when she realized how long the silence was growing. His hair might once have been a light brown, but the sun had bleached it to a streaky blonde. His skin was dark golden, probably as dark as it could ever get from the sun, nothing like the brown color of the Mexican man's skin. He could use a haircut. Perhaps he cut his own hair once every few months. It had that look. His mustache was reddish-blonde, and it was surprisingly tidy, emphasizing the hardness around his mouth. He was clean-shaven except for the mustache, a detail that seemed strangely at odds with the rest of him.
And he was bored by this little incident. She frowned at him, then turned back to the Mexican. "Gracias, señor," she tried. "I'm fine. Just go on." She waved her hand and he understood her well enough, although the other man choked as if he thought her Spanish was the funniest thing he'd heard in a week.
The Mexican man looked friendly, a little worried, and he gestured and radiated the desire to please a lovely lady. Although she couldn't understand, Dinah found herself grinning at his assumption that she needed someone to look after her. Then she saw where the drifter was moving.
"Get the hell out of my car!"
He stopped with his hand on the driver's door to her Olds. "I'm just taking a look," he said reasonably.
"If I want help, I'll ask for it." His eyes were blue, deep and hard. She figured her own eyes were just as hard, but grayer. She thought their wills were about evenly matched, and it was her car. "It's overheated. I'm just waiting for it to cool down."
He didn't back off, but walked around to the front of the car, peering in under the open hood.
She snapped, "Don't touch anything."
"I'd have to be crazy, wouldn't I," he murmured, obviously amused. "The engine's almost red-hot." He added a couple of sentences in Spanish and the Mexican joined him in front of the hood.
"Listen,” said Dinah, “just go on your way and leave me be." She pushed in front of the Mexican and he immediately gave way for her to pass, murmuring something that sounded polite and incomprehensible. She reached both hands up and started pulling down on the big, spring-loaded hood, saying, "It's fine, and there's nothing to be done except to wait for it to cool off."
She got the hood down about six inches before the drifter’s hand locked on it, holding it against her pressure. She stopped, her hands tight on the hot metal, her head refusing to turn to look at him.
"Does the Mexican spea
k any English?" she asked tightly.
"Not a word," said the drifter. She could feel the body heat from him close behind her, could smell his masculine scent. With the sun beating down hard on her, his closeness had a strangely dizzying effect on her. His voice made her tremble, too. "If you close that hood, it'll be forever before your rad cools down."
Dinah let go and the hood pushed up, then she turned to face the drifter. Would his hands be like his voice, strong and sure, deep and almost shattering? Up close he was harder to face down. Six inches between them, maybe eight. His eyes weren't quite solid blue. They were flecked with gold. His face was hard, his jaw rigid, and he might be a drifter but he got his way when he wanted it.
She made her voice expressionless. "I would like," she said slowly, emphasizing every word, "for you to get the hell out of here. I know what the problem is. I'm dealing with it. I don't need some bloody American dropout to come along and start tinkering with my engine for the good of his bloody ego. Get your hands off my car and get out of my life." Her voice had quickened as she spoke and the Mexican had stepped forward, talking rapidly.
The drifter said, "I'm not American," as if that was the only part of her conversation he had heard. The Mexican said something she couldn't begin to understand.
Dinah drew in a deep breath. Really, this was ridiculous, but the man would not go away. "What's he saying?" she asked the drifter as his Mexican friend kept talking.
"He's offering you a ride." Dark golden hands pushed their way into the pockets of those tattered jeans. She would have sworn there wasn't room for his hands. His body fit the jeans so tightly.
She shifted, aware of her hot, sticky flesh under her own jeans. "I don't need a ride." She turned to the Mexican. He was grinning under his tattered straw hat, gesturing for her to climb into his truck. The truck looked incapable of going another five feet, much less miles and miles. "No, thank you," she said, but he only grinned wider. "No. I do not need a ride!" Then, exasperated, she asked the drifter, "How do you say no in Spanish?"
He shrugged shoulders that were ridiculously broad. "You said it. It's no, Spanish or English." He sounded amused, the kind of laughter that comes from a man who is watching a play. Did he ever get involved? Did he make love that way, his voice detached and his eyes cold?
She swallowed at her uncomfortable image, and said tightly, "Tell him to go on, drive on. I don't want a ride."
The broad shoulders shrugged. "He's a Mexican. He sees a woman out here, car broken down, he's got to do something."
She twisted her shoulders, followed his eyes and saw that her blouse buttons were all fouled up. "Why? Why can't he just leave me be? You'd leave me, wouldn't you?"
"In a flash," he agreed, and she felt a spasm that was like pain. "But he can't. It's that Latin machismo. You'd better take the ride. You're not going to get that car up this mountain. You've only just started."
She hoped he was exaggerating. She'd already climbed halfway to the blue sky overhead. "Just what do you suggest I do with my car? Push it over the bank?"
"You might as well." He grinned, watching her fumble to straighten out the buttons. "You've still got it wrong. You're still one button off."
She looked down and saw that the bottom of her shirt didn't match by about three inches. To hell with it! At least that gap was gone, the place where his eyes kept drifting. It bothered her that there wasn't even any warmth in his eyes when he watched her breasts. It made him a little frightening, more than a drifter. Inhuman.
She turned at the steady roar that was approaching from downhill. Lord! It was one of those massive tractor-trailer rigs. It was crawling up, letting out breaths as if it were panting. It came to a noisy halt with its bumper touching the dirty red truck that had stopped in the middle of the road. She looked back and saw the Mexican striding towards the big rig with his arms waving before his voice got started. As the driver of the truck started shouting in Spanish, Dinah saw that the drifter was leaning back against the side of her car, watching.
"Do you ever get involved?" Her voice was ridiculously irritated. She looked back at the Mexicans, who were standing in the middle of the highway, talking and waving their arms. There was a small car coming around the corner, downhill. It stopped just in front of the red truck. She murmured, "Surely there's room for it to slip past them?"
"Probably," said the drifter. He was standing straight now. She'd seen the tension snap into his body as she'd asked about him getting involved. He said wryly, "The guy in the car just wants to be in on whatever's happening. If he drives past, he'll wonder what it was all about from here to Ensenada."
"Oh, lord!" She looked at her car, at the collection of vehicles cluttering up the steep, miserable corner. "At least nobody's going very fast when they get to that corner."
"As long as no busses come along." He was watching the red-truck Mexican wander towards them while shouting back over his shoulder in Spanish. He grinned and added lazily, "As far as I can tell, Mexican bus drivers don't slow down for anything. Machismo again, I suppose."
Dinah couldn't help grinning, looking at this non-American with his muscular chest so well displayed under what was left of his T-shirt. The Mexican stopped in front of her, took off his straw hat and gestured towards the two trucks with it. "Señorita," he said with a flourish. "Alli. El camión para usted."
"What?" She blinked. There were three Mexicans now, all men, all silent, waiting for something from her. Unwillingly, she looked to the drifter for help.
"He's offering you the big truck. Your chariot."
"Offering me? You mean to ride in?"
"You got it." The red-truck Mexican shot a stream of Spanish at the man who wasn't American. The drifter explained "He thinks you found his truck too old and dirty. He says you'll be fine in the big truck."
"Oh, I don't believe this! I—Oh, my God! There's a van coming up the hill!" The van was pulling a camper and the driver had already started his horn blaring.
"Not a Mexican," observed her translator. "He's too impatient."
The Mexicans were talking among themselves, gesturing to her car. She looked back and saw there was still steam escaping the overflow container for the radiator, although that horrible boiling sound had stopped.
"Is there no end to this?" muttered Dinah. "We'll have the whole of Mexico stopped on this hill!"
"José!" called the driver of the red truck. The man beside her lifted his head at the sound, then strolled over to the Mexicans.
So now she knew his name. As the men stood in the middle of the road yammering away in Spanish, Dinah kept hearing references to the señorita. Then the driver of the van got out and started shouting in English.
Dinah leaned against the car, felt its heat burning her back. "I don't believe this. This isn't real." Surely that wasn't another car coming down the hill? It was! A Volkswagen beetle filled with brown, young Mexican men. They piled out and joined the crowd in the middle of the highway. They looked like college students. She had a feeling that's exactly what they were, too.
A few moments later, one of the college students walked towards her. "Hallo, señorita. Speak Spanish?"
"No." She smiled and he smiled back. "Sorry, I just speak English."
He grinned even wider and walked back to look at her license plates. "I speak little English," he offered, his eyes admiring as he asked, "From Canada?" She nodded and he asked, "Speak French?"
"A little," she agreed. What Canadian didn't know a little French? She could lie in the bathtub and take a stab at translating the back of her shampoo bottle, although she probably couldn't carry on much of a conversation.
"We push the car," he announced, grinning at her.
"Over the edge?" She jerked around, her hands firming on her hips, her body thrust between him and the car. "Look, my car's fine. I don't need any help!" She closed her eyes, said desperately, "Look, I'm grateful for the ... the—I'm grateful, but could you just tell them all to go away."
"All right," sai
d a rough voice. She turned and found herself staring into José's blue eyes, seeing again the flecks of gold. He was moving this time, heading right for the back of her car. She had thought he was talking to her, but he wasn't. He was waving an arm towards the Mexicans following him. Then his hand touched her shoulder and she jumped back.
He said impatiently, "Come on, señorita, get in the car." He gestured to the college boy she'd been talking to, and the boy ran up and pushed her hood down. Behind her car, a row of Mexicans were surrounding José.
"What are you doing?" He'd said she should push it over the edge, but surely—? Her voice raised almost out of control. "What on earth are you—Get away from my car!"
José loomed up in front of her, much closer than an arm's reach now. He made her feel small. She was a tall girl, not used to being dwarfed.
"Just get in the bloody car," he said impatiently. She saw the small car edging past the two trucks and the van. Behind it the beetle was tailgating its way past. The road in front of her was clear now, empty. José said lazily, "Before you stop the whole of the Baja from being able to travel, get behind your damned steering wheel and try to keep from going over the bloody cliff."
"Stop swearing at me!" She glared at him, but it was no use. She had no choice but to go along with whatever they had in mind. She might manage to beat José in a battle of wills, but she had a crowd of helpful Mexicans to contend with and they were immovable in their need to look after the señorita. She turned and opened her car door.
She said, "All right," but she knew the resentment showed in her voice. She settled into the seat, then twisted to look back at him. "Just tell me what you bunch of macho idiots are planning to do with my car. I'm sure you wouldn't mind pushing me over the cliff, but that can't be it or the Mexicans wouldn't be willing to help you."
He grinned. For the first time she saw real amusement in his eyes. It unsettled something deep in her chest. She bit her lips.
He said, "We're going to push this monster around the corner. You just sit there like a lady and provide the steering, and we'll act like a muscle-bound bunch of fools and push your bomba up the hill. There's a wide spot in the road just around the corner where la bomba can relax and cool off."
So Much for Dreams Page 2
