Wild Orchids

by Karen Robards

  “For God’s sake, hurry up! I didn’t mean for you to primp for hours. Let’s go.”

  The impatient voice snapped Lora back to the unpleasant present. She threw a loathing look over her shoulder at her captor, ran the comb she had extracted from her purse through her hair, and moved stiffly toward where he waited by the trapdoor, the still-damp sarape tossed carelessly over his shoulder. As she approached he put a hand on her arm. When she looked at him inquiringly, he patted the faint bulge at his waist that she knew was the gun. Then, without waiting for a response from her, he lifted the door and swung himself through the opening and down the ladder. Left alone, Lora toyed with the idea of slamming the trapdoor after him and sitting on it, but reluctantly dismissed the idea. It just wasn’t worth it. He would get her back one way or another—she had seen enough of the way he operated to be sure of that—and the consequences would be distinctly unpleasant. To say nothing of what might happen to the innocent Rodriguez family.

  The hour was early, but the sun was dazzling and the Rodriguezes, along with their older children, were already out in the fields. Mamacita was left with the three youngest, two toddlers who looked to be less than a year apart and an infant. Her suspicious looks at the two norteamericanos and the childrens’ wide-eyed fascination did not encourage them to linger. Her captor said something in Spanish, to which Mamacita responded by thrusting the ruined sombrero, which he had removed out of politeness and left downstairs the night before, and a package wrapped in a clean cloth into his hands.

  “Gracias,” he replied with a curt nod, and catching Lora by the upper arm, propelled her with him through the door.

  Lora was given only a brief moment to look around as he hustled her along the track that was still thick with mud. As she had thought, the Rodriguez house was situated at the very edge of a small village of shabby cinderblock dwellings. Muddy fields burned out of the jungle stretched away on all sides, and the older residents of the village could be seen laboring on their hands and knees among the growing crops. Dogs and chickens and very small children seemed to wander about at will. All seemed fascinated with the gringos, and soon there was quite a little procession following them back toward where they had abandoned the VW. Lora, looking over her shoulder at four solemn-faced toddlers with huge dark eyes, three mangy dogs almost bristling with fleas, a round dozen pecking hens and a single strutting bantam rooster, had to smile despite herself. Her captor, seeing her smile and glancing over his own shoulder to discover the reason for it, scowled fiercely and wheeled to face the ill-assorted gang of camp followers.

  “Vamos!” he roared with a shooing motion, and the group scattered to the accompaniment of wailing children, barking dogs, and clucking hens. Only the little rooster stood his ground, the rusty feathers around his neck rising like a dog’s hackles.

  As Lora watched, he uttered a ferocious squawk and launched himself with a fanatic’s intensity at the legs of the man beside her. Her captor let out a squawk that rivaled the rooster’s in volume as he found himself under attack, and kicked and jumped as the valiant fowl assaulted his shins with beak and claws. Lora was helpless with laughter by the time the rooster, obviously considering himself the victor, flapped off to crow in a nearby clump of palmettos. Her captor had to drag her along after him as he retreated with ignominious haste to the safety of the car, casting wary looks behind him all the way. Lora was gasping for breath by the time he thrust her into the driver’s seat and shut the door on her.

  “Start the car,” he growled, and while she did he went around behind to push. It took no more than a single heave from that powerful body to wrest the small car free of the ruts. Before Lora could even consider driving away and leaving him standing, he was in the car beside her, scowling.

  “Very funny,” he said sourly at her continued giggles.

  Lora went into fresh gales of laughter as he pulled up first one and then the other pants leg to check for injuries to his ankles and calves. There were none that she could see—apparently the sturdy material of his jeans had saved him. Putting his feet back on the floor, he cast her a disgruntled look and held up the package that Mamacita had given him.

  “If you don’t shut up, I won’t feed you.” He unwrapped the cloth to reveal a stack of tortillas.

  Lora hastily smothered her mirth as well as she could—isolated chortles struggled at intervals to burst forth, but in the face of starvation she did what she could to suppress them—and eagerly held out her hand. Ordinarily, a plain corn tortilla would have been less than appetizing, but this morning it tasted like ambrosia. She ate two and could have managed more, except that he had wolfed the other two himself. She looked longingly after the last bite as it disappeared into his mouth.

  “Drive,” he said as he had the day before, and winced as Lora thrust the car into gear and they jolted off down the road.

  At his direction, they had turned off on Route 180 onto Highway 295 just before reaching Chichén Itzá the day before. The ejido where they had spent the night was located just off the two-lane road, perhaps some forty or fifty miles farther along, Lora calculated, appalled to discover that yesterday they had covered just a little over two hundred miles. At home, even zealously obeying the speed limit, that would have taken perhaps four hours. Yesterday they had driven for almost ten—but then, there had been a few interruptions, like the rain, and her own escape attempt that had left the Volkswagen’s front end looking distinctly the worse for wear. Today, she hoped that they would make better time. The sooner they reached wherever he was going, the sooner she would be free of him. She hoped.

  “What does your husband do?”

  “What?” The question, out of the blue after more than an hour of driving in silence, surprised Lora.

  “I said, what does your husband do?”

  Momentarily at a loss, Lora took a few seconds to remember the family she had invented for him the day before.

  “He’s a math teacher.” It was probably safer to stick with the truth as much as possible. That way, she wouldn’t forget anything.

  “Another teacher, huh? Wow, wherever you’re from, they must really be behind their education system one hundred percent. I never would have guessed that even two teachers’ salaries would have stretched to cover a jet-set vacation for the whole family.”

  “It wasn’t as expensive as you’d think,” Lora mumbled. To tell the truth, there was no way she could have managed this trip to Cancun on her salary in a million years, and no way that she and a husband both earning approximately the same thing could have afforded to bring themselves and their two children to Mexico’s newest playground for the international rich. “Besides, it was paid for with an inheritance.”

  This last was inspired, she thought, and had the advantage of being the absolute truth as well, at least as far as it went.

  He snorted. “Cut the crap, Lora.”

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she flicked a quick glance sideways at him. He was looking at her with a narrow-eyed gleam that made her nervous. He could not know she lied—could he? How could she have possibly given herself away?

  “Who do the kids belong to?”

  “Are you talking about my children?” She tried to inject a note of amazement into her voice.

  “Don’t give me that. You don’t have any kids. And you’re not married.”

  “What on earth makes you say that?” This time, she thought, the amazement was rather better done. She did wonder what made him think it. Personally, she thought her tale had been pretty convincing.

  “Two things. First, the way you react to a man.”

  “What do you mean by that?” She sounded both defensive and startled.

  He snorted again. “When I started taking off my clothes, you looked as if you’d swallowed a jalapeño pepper. It was obvious that you weren’t used to seeing a man in his shorts—to say nothing of in the buff. Therefore, it stands to reason you’re not married.”

  “Maybe I’m just not used to
seeing a man other than my husband undressing,” Lora said stiffly, feeling heat creep up her neck to her cheeks and ears and beyond.

  He merely raised his eyebrows at her skeptically. “Want to hear what else makes me think you’re not a loving wife and mother?”

  “No!”

  “No stretch marks,” he said succinctly.

  Lora’s eyes widened, and she felt another wave of embarrassed heat wash up her neck as she remembered that he was certainly in a position to know. He had seen every inch of her skin.

  “Not all women get them, you know.”

  “Most do. Almost all when they’re as fair as you. But there’s not a mark on your skin. It’s smooth as a baby’s.”

  “So maybe I’m one of the lucky ones.”

  “And maybe you’re not. Come on, come clean. Who do the cute little girls belong to?”

  “They’re my nieces,” Lora said, giving up. For some strange reason, she was not altogether sorry that her make-believe family was being laid to rest. She didn’t like telling lies, and she wasn’t particularly good at it, as this denouement proved. And there was another reason, one that occurred to her to be immediately vanquished: she didn’t like the idea of this man, whose body wildly excited her despite every grain of sense she possessed, believing that she was married and a mother. Just why that was, she refused to speculate.

  “And the math teacher? Is there a math teacher?”

  “My fiancé.”

  “Do you sleep with him?” The question was so deceptively casual that it took a moment to sink in.

  “That’s none of your business,” Lora yelped.

  “Suppose I make it my business?” he asked with an exaggerated leer that made Lora want to grind her teeth. When he wasn’t scaring her to death, he was totally outrageous, totally infuriating. . . .

  She was on the verge of losing her temper, Lora realized with surprise. And she never lost her temper. Not anymore. Not since Janice had grown up and left home and stopped stealing her clothes, her cosmetics, and her boyfriends. Janice said that those few occasions in their childhood were the only times she had ever heard her inhibited little sister really yelling, and Lora supposed Janice was right. She was a rather low-key person, now that she thought about it. Maybe she should have her blood pressure tested or something. Maybe it wasn’t high enough. She had read about people with that kind of problem. . . .

  “Christ, hit the brakes! Stop!”

  She had been looking at him ruminatively. When he shouted, his eyes widening with alarm, she jumped. Instinctively, her eyes shot back to the road before her foot even began moving for the brake. What she saw sent her leg stomping frantically downward. A large brown cow stood placidly in the middle of the road not fifteen feet away, chewing her cud as she watched with disinterest as the orange Volkswagen rattled toward her. Lora gasped, her foot came down hard on the brake—and the car gasped too before hesitating briefly, belching, and bucking forward. The cow didn’t budge.

  “Christ, that was the clutch!” He was yelling in her ear. “Hit the goddamn brakes, woman!”

  Lora tried again, and this time she got it right. The car squealed to a halt not more than two feet from the animal’s sleek, brown hide. Lora sat with her hands curled tightly around the wheel, staring disbelievingly at the still chewing cow who was regarding them with mild interest through the windshield. Her captor let out his breath and reached over to slide the transmission into neutral.

  “You have to be the worst damned driver I have ever seen in my entire life.”

  “I’d only driven automatics before yesterday.”

  “Good God in heaven.” He shut his eyes, leaning his head back against the seat briefly before sitting up again. “Well, no harm done. Honk the horn, and let’s get moving.”

  Lora obediently honked the horn, then when the cow didn’t budge honked it again. The cow flicked her ears forward, an expression of interest briefly lighting her eyes. When nothing else happened, she apparently dismissed the sound as unimportant. Her attention shifted to her fellow cows, who had been lunching by the roadside and were now wandering over to see what was going on. All the while, she remained planted solidly in the middle of the road, calmly digesting her lunch.

  “Now what?” Lora asked.

  “Now you get out there and shoo her away.”

  “You must be joking.” Lora turned to look at him, aghast. He was grinning—strange how that grin altered his whole face, changing him instantaneously from a ferocious looking criminal to someone who looked like he could, with no effort at all, charm the birds off the trees, or in this case the cow out of the road.

  “Nope.” The laconic reply made Lora shake her head vigorously.

  “You do it. I’m afraid of cows.”

  “A Kansas farm girl, and you’re afraid of cows? Come on.”

  “I am. One chased me once when I was a little girl and I had to climb a tree to get away from it. It stood underneath mooing and shaking its head until my grandfather came looking for me and chased it away. I hate cows.”

  “Too bad.”

  Before Lora knew what was happening, he had leaned over, opening her door and thrusting her out of the car before slamming the door shut again and locking it. She scratched frantically for the handle, pleading for admittance. The sadistic swine heaved his big body over into the driver’s seat and rolled the window down about an inch.

  “This pays you back for the rooster.”

  “That wasn’t my fault—I only laughed—oh, please, oh, no, oh, please open the door!”

  This last was a near shriek, uttered because the cow, finally seeing something of interest to investigate, started to move—right toward Lora. Lora gave up trying to get into the car, moving frantically around the back as the cow, both ears pricked forward, followed. The other cows, interested by this new game, came swarming up the bank to join in. Lora ran to the passenger door, moaning with fear, and tugged desperately at its handle as the whole herd of cows trotted after her. To her relief, the handle gave. She jerked the door open and dove inside, slamming the door almost on the intrigued cow’s nose as she sank into the seat to the accompaniment of uproarious laughter.

  “Bastard,” she said feelingly as the car moved forward—smoothly, of course, since he was driving. Casting him a venomous look, she again thought longingly of blunt objects. How she would like to bash in that unfeeling black head. . . .

  “Ho, ho, for a girl who’s afraid of cows you handled that pretty well. Sort of reminded me of the Pied Piper. . . .”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Nasty, nasty . . .” He shook his head in mock reproof. “I bet you don’t say that to Brian.”

  “You’re not Brian,” Lora retorted, glaring, and then had to grin herself. She was willing to bet that she had looked pretty funny, dancing around the back of the Volkswagen with a whole herd of curious cows trailing behind.

  “You’re pretty when you smile.”

  It was an offhand remark, sort of thrown at her, and it took Lora a moment to catch it. Then she looked at him, her expression a mixture of pleasure and wariness. He was concentrating on the smooth blacktop surface of the road, his hands competent on the wheel, his big body jacknifed into the little space like the folded insert in one of those cards with punchlines that pop out. His eyes were narrowed against the sun that beat down through the window, finding reddish glints in the bristles on his chin and in the silky mustache that matched the ones in the rough black curls at his nape that the sun just touched. He looked completely unaware of having paid her a compliment, and Lora had to replay the words carefully in her mind to be sure she had heard what she thought.

  “Thank you.” If his compliment—if he had even meant it to be a compliment—was offhand, her response was shy. He acknowledged it with a curt nod, his eyes never leaving the road. Able to think of nothing else to say, Lora too looked at the road. Only then did it occur to her that they had switched places.

  “You’re driving,” she said, sur
prised.

  He grunted, his expression wry as those black eyes flicked in her direction. “I don’t think there’s much possibility that we’ll get pulled over out here. And I’ve had about all I can take of watching you abuse this poor car. We—the car and I—deserve a little peace.”

  Lora frowned at him for this slur on her driving, but only half-heartedly. Quite honestly, she was glad to have him take the wheel. It was good to have a rest—and besides, an escape, should she decide to try one again, would be much easier to orchestrate from the passenger seat . . . She lapsed into meditative silence, and they passed through the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto without speaking.

  Soon afterward, the view changed. Highway 295 became Highway 307, and cleared fields no longer fell away on either side. The road had been hacked out through the dense jungles of the state of Quintana Roo; dense walls of vegetation on either side seemed to constantly threaten encroachment on the cleared areas. Moisture from yesterday’s rain rose steamily upward through the trees to hang over the low-ceilinged jungle like a thin cloud of white vapor. The smell of rotting vegetation was everywhere, seeping through the air conditioning vents to make Lora slightly sick at her stomach. Or maybe her stomach was acting up out of hunger. She didn’t know, but the pungent smell certainly didn’t help.