There were things in the article that Vega couldn’t have gleaned from meeting Emilia a couple of times or from overhearing her conversation with Ruben. There were things he would only know if someone had told him… Someone like Ruben, a traitorous voice inside her whispered.
Shifting restlessly in her chair, she folded the paper and stuffed it into a dictionary, which she stuck in her drawer for good measure. Then, without thinking twice about it, she found her straw hat and, holding it like a shield, marched out of her bedroom.
Susana and Luis had fled the scorching glare that had settled over the veranda and were sitting in the parlor with the shutters half-closed, laughing and whispering as they went over an old scrapbook of Susana’s.
She looked up guiltily when she heard Emilia approach, and even Luis put on a sober expression, as if he too felt the need to shield Emilia from their obvious happiness.
“Are you going out?” Susana asked when Emilia paused in front of the mirror to put on her hat.
“I’m going to see Ruben,” she announced, and would have added “and don’t you try and stop me” but the words were a trifle too dramatic, even for her.
“I don’t see how you can stand to after what he did,” Susana said, in a voice so hard it sounded unfamiliar coming from her lips.
“But Ruben left,” Luis said, frowning. “He left for the city yesterday. Mrs. Herrera told me when I stopped by earlier today—said he’d sent her a telegram asking if she could post his things.”
Emilia, who was reaching up to adjust her hat, stopped in mid-motion. “He did?” she cried. “How could he have, without saying anything?”
“He didn’t think you’d want to speak to him,” Susana said.
“Why would he think that?”
“Because I told him so.” Susana buried her face in her hands. “I did to him exactly what he did—” She choked back the words, and Emilia realized she hadn’t told Luis what Ruben had done. She didn’t know how to feel about that, so she simply looked at her sister, unable to say a word.
Luis looked from one sister to another. “I don’t know what happened between you,” he said, “other than the obvious. But there’s something in this morning’s Diario I think you should read.”
Emilia fetched the paper from the front hall and paged through it until she found Ruben’s byline.
The column was longer than usual; it took nearly half of the seventh page, bumping Mr. Galvan’s column to the eighth, and the illustration that usually accompanied it had been left out. “I had been in Arroyo Blanco for exactly one week when I met Emilia Cruz,” it began.
Emilia reached the end of the last paragraph and lowered the paper, feeling a fluttering inside her stomach. “It’s a retraction.”
“Saying you didn’t write the stories after all will not make you any less notorious,” Susana said.
“I know. It’s not that kind of retraction. You had better read it.” Emilia handed her the newspaper and sat in the edge of an armchair. “I have to go to him.”
Luis glanced at the clock. “You can take the three o’clock train if you hurry.”
“You’d better take some things with you in case you don’t make it in time to take the last one back,” Susana said. “I’ll help you pack.”
Emilia followed her into the bedroom and stood in the doorway as Susana found an old valise of their mother’s, which neither of them had reason for using before.
“Am I making a mistake?” she asked.
Susana put down the shirtwaist she was folding and looked at Emilia. “It’s up to you to find out.”
Leaving Arroyo Blanco hadn’t been as easy as just boarding a train.
The book fair might have been over, but plenty of people still lingered in the town, hoping to catch a sight of Miss Del Valle. Some of the more intrepid ones had found her house and when Emilia opened the door to leave, she’d found herself mobbed.
In the end, she had to sneak out through the back, through Mr. Ortega’s house, while Luis met her down the block in his motorcar and Susana kept the gawkers at bay. Crouching low in the back of Luis’s motorcar, Emilia wondered, not for the first time, if she’d done the right thing in not doing everything she could to prevent Vega from revealing her identity. It had been easy to find courage when she didn’t care what anyone thought or said or whether they snubbed her in the street or stopped inviting her to their stuffy parties, but she hadn’t bargained on this.
It took her half an hour to arrive in the city and another half an hour to find the address Luis had given her. Ruben had stayed in the boarding house before, Luis had explained, and though he didn’t know whether he’d returned or had gone somewhere else, it was a good place as any to begin searching for him. She hadn’t much hopes for it, and was planning on visiting the offices of El Diario Nuevo next, but the landlady, upon her asking about Ruben, told her, “Oh yes, the writer. He moved in yesterday. Hadn’t a stitch with him that I could see. If he owes you money—or if he’s gotten you into trouble,” she added, sweeping a sharp gaze over Emilia, “I wouldn’t count on getting much from him.”
Though obviously curious about Emilia’s reason for seeking out Ruben, the woman stopped short of asking outright and pointed Emilia to a room at the top of the stairs. Emilia climbed the stairs, anticipation making her breath short.
The street had been so bright that it was a while before Emilia’s eyes finished adjusting to the dimness. The door to Ruben’s room was open a crack and through it, she could see it was strewn with papers and old issues of Blanco y Negro. The few pieces of dingy furniture scattered over the terra-cotta tiles made up the saddest collection of household goods Emilia had ever seen.
He didn’t look much better. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair was in disarray, as if he had been running his hands through it.
“Emilia?” She might have been an apparition, the way he gaped at her. “What are you doing here?”
Stifling the urge to check that she was not, in fact, a ghost, Emilia advanced into the room, allowing the door to fall shut behind her. She laid her valise by the door, and noticed when he looked at it, his expression unreadable. “I came because I saw your column. I— You withdrew your criticism of my work.”
“Not all of it. I still maintain the language is a little too florid and you indulge too often in sentimentality. But yes.” Ruben took a deep breath. “I was unnecessarily cruel in what I wrote about your stories. It wasn’t fair to you, or to the other books I reviewed. So I wrote an exposé—about myself. About the inflammatory articles I wrote in order to breed controversy and sell more copies.”
“You did it for me?”
“I did it because it’s the honest thing to do. But I would not have come to the realization without you.” Their eyes met and he held her gaze for a moment, then turned away and began to line up the ink pots on his desk.
Her heart wrenched inside her chest. She touched his arm. He glanced at her, his heart in his eyes, and he must have seen something in her face that made him stride across the room and put his arms around her, tentatively, as if he thought she would pull away.
She didn’t.
“I did so many things wrong,” he said. “It’ll be a long time before I put everything to right.”
“About what you did to Susana and Luis… It isn’t my place to forgive you for it, because I’m not the one you wronged.”
His arms tightened around her. “Does Luis know?”
“We haven’t told him. We thought you might want to speak to him yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruben said. “I’m so sorry for how I’ve muddled everything up.”
“I’m only sorry there are no bodies of water nearby for me to knock you into,” she said, feeling a smile tug at the corners of her lips. “That, I think, would be a suitable punishment.”
“There’s a bathtub in the other room if you wish to dunk me,” he offered.
“I once wrote a love scene that takes place in a bathtub.�
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“I know. I read it.” He grasped her around the waist and pulled her close enough so she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin. It was devilishly hot inside the room but the heat of his body made her shiver. “Unfortunately, I think my landlady will feel obliged to come upstairs and investigate if you stay here any longer.”
She rose onto her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his. “Let her,” she suggested, tugging at his necktie. “What’s another scandal to us, after all?”
“Are you sure?” Ruben asked her as she began to undo his shirt’s buttons. Less than an hour before, he’d been despairing of ever seeing her again and here she was now, trying her damnedest to strip him.
She kissed him. “We’ve all but pledged ourselves to each other, Ruben. What more do you want?”
“To hear you say it. Tell me you’re sure. Tell me you really want this.”
Emilia kissed him again. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. I want you in my bed and in my life and if you hesitate again, I really will drown you.”
It was all he needed. Scooping her into his arms in a move so sudden it made her squeal, he took her over to the bed and placed her on top of the covers.
She had managed to unfasten most of his buttons. He made short work of the rest, standing beside the bed, getting harder and harder as he watched her watching him. He would have ripped his clothes off, but the hunger in her eyes made him go slowly, taking notice of his body and the way the warm air that came through the half-open shutters caressed his skin.
Finally, completely nude, his clothes in a heap on the floor beside him, Ruben knelt on the bed and reached for her. She had toed off her shoes but the rest of her body was covered, if a trifle disheveled, her jaunty straw hat knocked askew.
“Wait,” she murmured, laying a hand on his thigh. “I didn’t get a good look at it the other day,” she explained, and before he could answer, she had leaned forward and swept her tongue experimentally along his length. He struggled to keep from cursing. Oblivious, she continued to tease him with her mouth until, hoarsely, he asked her to stop.
“Did you not like it?” she asked, licking her lips.
“I liked it just fine,” he said roughly. Cupping her face between his hands, he bent lower to sweep his tongue over the seam of her lips, where her tongue had been only a moment ago. His hands traveled down her neck and shoulders, all along the length of her covered arms, until his fingers were linking through hers. Nudging her closer to the middle of the bed, he sat beside her and nibbled his way down her neck, until his lips met lace edging at the collar of her periwinkle dress, the one that made her brown skin look like something in a confectioner’s window— a treat, made of caramel, something to lick and suck on until sweetness exploded inside his mouth.
She propped herself up on her elbows to allow him easier access as he reached behind her neck and began to slide each of her cloth-covered buttons through their respective buttonholes, pushing it over her shoulders to reveal the green-ribboned chemise he’d seen when they swam in the lagoon. Her breasts strained against the thin cotton, lifted by the corset that stopped just under them. Reaching the end of her buttons , he pushed the dress down to her waist and lifted the chemise as far as it went, his breath growing ragged as he noticed that her nipples were even darker and tighter than they’d been when he’d kissed them—a week ago? Two weeks?
His mouth was on them before he could give it a second thought, her fingers twining into his hair.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” he confessed with his face still buried in her chest. “I didn’t think you would forgive me and—I—.” Knowing her distaste for sentiment of the non-fictional kind, he swallowed his words back and gave her a crooked smile. “I can understand why the duke went on a rampage when Valeria left him for the poet. I came very close to rampaging myself.”
She touched his face briefly, as if she knew what he’d been trying to say. “If I’m meant to be Valeria, I rather think that would make you the poet. So instead of rampaging, feel free to compose a nice ode to my—”
“Charms?” he suggested, dropping a kiss on the side of her breast. “Your ample, rounded, sweet-tasting charms?”
It was a while before he was satisfied with the attention he’d paid her breasts, and still longer before he managed to get her to his feet and properly divest her of all her clothing. His bed was striped with afternoon sunlight, the white cotton sheets in a tangle, and when she lay on top of them and pulled him over her so he was straddling her hips, he found he could have written an epic poem about the way the golden light warmed her skin. Her hands with their ink-stained fingers roamed up his thighs, exploring every bulge and indentation, and they were almost trembling when he nudged her legs open and arranged himself against her.
“Are you ready?” he asked, bracing himself against the mattress so his weight couldn’t crush her.
Slowly and deliberately, she spread her legs open further and wrapped one leg around his thigh. “I always am,” she said, and Ruben had to agree.
Chapter 23
The afternoon light that filtered in through the shutters of Ruben’s bedroom was fading slowly. It was still hot, but a light breeze swept over his skin, courtesy of the folding fan Emilia had produced from her pocketbook.
She lay on her stomach under a light cotton blanket. From that position, he could admire the curls that had escaped from their pins and were now plastered with sweat to the back of her neck. She gave him a lazy smile. “Well, I’ve definitely missed my train home.”
He ran a finger along the curve of her ear, still half expecting her to vanish like a dream. “Would accept an invitation to stay, if I were to extend one?”
“Only if you have food,” she said.
Ruben obligingly rolled off the bed and went to the wooden cupboard where he’d stowed some of the things his mother had pressed into his hands after dinner the night before. He’d eaten most of it, but he still had half a cornmeal cake and some guavas from his mother’s tree. He held out both for her inspection and was unsurprised when she picked one of the guavas.
She’d slipped into her chemise, the thin fabric distracting enough that his gaze kept wandering to her chest as it rose and fell with every breath. He caught her eye and decided he’d better distract himself before he interrupted her dinner.
But he couldn’t stop himself from sinking close beside her on the bed and lifting her bare legs onto his lap, stroking her silky skin while she ate.
“If the business with Manuel had happened in one of your stories,” he remarked, “there would be a powerful, wealthy nobleman standing in the sidelines, ready to marry you and offer you protection against scandal.”
“It’s a good thing I’m not the sort to hide underneath a man’s title,” she said, biting through the guava’s thin green skin. “To tell you the truth, I think a good dungeon or a witch’s curse could solve the problem just as well.”
“Have you never considered marriage?”
They were fairly evenly matched when it came to height, but she had a way of looking at him that made him feel as if she were the taller one. “I’ve considered it,” she said. “But I don’t know how it would be possible. It’s not every man who wants a writer for a wife, much less one whose work is…well, controversial to say the least.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a writer for a wife. Even one whose sentimentality overrides all guidelines of good plotting,” he said with a faint smile. “I wouldn’t be able to offer her much. But whatever I have, it would be hers.”
Emilia looked around the room with great exaggeration. It was mostly empty, save for the papers scattered on the table and a book or two beside the bed. “Whatever you have, hmm?”
“I know it’s not a good bargain for you,” he said, abandoning all pretense. He gripped her knee and tried not to let her see how badly he wanted her to disagree. “I was sitting here yesterday, thinking about what you must have been going through back at Ar
royo Blanco, and all I could think of was that I should be there next to you. I want to be at your side, not only to help you face the newsmen and the gossips, but for everything to come."
Her lips, slick with guava juice, were curling into a smile. “Well, if you can get over my ‘striking disregard for anything resembling coherence’, I can get over your appalling lack of furnishings.”
“And titles.”
“And ability to resist murderesses.”
He bent his head close to hers and whispered into her ear. “There’s one thing I don’t lack.”
Her hand trailed a path down the front of his trousers.
“Well, two,” he amended.
“Are you going to say something unbearably saccharine about how the one thing you don’t lack is a deep and abiding love for me?”
“No,” he lied. “Not now, at any rate.”
She laughed. “Why, Mr. Torres, how very sentimental of you.”
“Someone I know once told me there’s nothing wrong with sentiment.”
“Nothing wrong with a good, solid kiss, either. After all, who if not a writer knows that it’s preferable to show than to tell.”
He kissed her. He did it slowly, lavishly, putting into it everything he had felt over the past few days. He kissed her until she was gasping for breath and still protested when he drew away.
And then, for good measure, he dipped his head lower and brushed his lips over the indentation at the base of her neck, her collarbone, and the deep cleft between her breasts, until she was gasping again—this time out of desire. Only then did he release her, pulling back to look at her flushed face with satisfaction.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly, “showing is definitely better than telling.”
He took the guava from her hand and tossed it onto the table, pulling her hand to his mouth and licking the juice off her fingers. “I do love you, you know,” he told her.
“I know,” she said softly. She slid one of her fingers into his mouth and he sucked on it. “Do you remember when I asked you if you believed in romance? I wasn’t sure I did, at the time, not in regards of myself. But after all the arguments, the drowning attempts, the endless lectures about my writing abilities—”
A Summer for Scandal Page 20
