Wild Card (Wild At Heart Series Book 3)

by Christine Hartmann

  In the back of Bree’s SUV, Ryder untangled a garment bag intertwined with a heap of electronics that spilled from an open pocket of her suitcase. He stuffed charging wires, a laptop brick, and a silver cell phone into the open compartments and transferred all the luggage to the back seat. Twenty minutes later, his greasy hands closed the SUVs enormous hatchback. He kicked the new tire on his way back to his car.

  “Full-size spare.” He flopped into the driver’s seat next to Bree and rubbed his fingers with a donut shop napkin. “You’re good to go.”

  Bree put her hand on the passenger door handle. “Accidents freak me out.”

  Ryder twisted the napkin into a tight roll. “With good reason.” He tossed the crumpled paper into the foot well. “Let’s get going.” He walked to the passenger side and pulled her out of the car. Palms on her shoulder blades, he guided her back to the SUV.

  Her fingers brushed the scorching hood of her car. Gravel crunched defiantly under her feet. The shadow of a stray cloud darkened the road ahead and disappeared. She settled herself again behind the wheel and faced Ryder. “Thanks.” The word caught temporarily in her throat as it passed.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Haven’t changed a tire since driver’s ed.”

  Bree searched through the mess in the passenger seat foot well for her keys. “I hope the thing stays on.”

  Ryder bent and threw items into her open purse.

  She grabbed the bag from him. “I keep my stuff organized.”

  Ryder peered over her shoulder as the large leather weekender swallowed her arms to the elbow. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “It’s my personal system.” She held up the keys.

  Ryder rolled his eyes. “Be careful next time. You drive like my grandmother, all gas and no class.” Bree bit back a smile. He closed the door. She turned on the car and gunned the engine, feeling better. Ryder strolled to his car, waving a thumbs up.

  The smooth pavement welcomed her back as though nothing had happened. She pulled into the fast lane. Moments later, the phone rang. She turned on the headset. “Leave this grandmother alone.”

  “Bree?”

  Her foot slipped from the accelerator as she registered the quizzical tenor. “Mal?”

  “Expecting someone else?”

  Her foot reclaimed the gas. “Thought Stephanie was calling back.”

  “Nope. Just me.”

  “How are your parents liking Vegas?”

  “Dad spent so much time looking at the ground that a couple of strangers asked him if he’d lost something.”

  Bree watched her speedometer, keeping the numbers hovering around seventy-five. “What about your mom?”

  “Think the slot machines pushed her over the edge.” There was a cough, then the sound of a hand over the phone microphone. “My parents just dropped by.” A raised woman’s voice filtered through the connection, followed by a man’s grumbling, and the woman’s rising tone.

  Bree absently felt the seat beside her for the donut box. Her eyes shifted between the empty road ahead and the rearview mirror. “At this rate, I probably won’t get there before nine. Maybe later.”

  “We’re all looking forward to seeing you.” The voice sounded hollow above the increasingly audible argument in the background.

  “I can hear your parents.” She reflexively smoothed the front of her blouse and straightened her spine.

  “Got to go.”

  “You need me there to play interference.” She stepped on the accelerator, ticking the speedometer above eighty.

  “No rush. This end’s all set. See you when you get here.” He hung up.

  The road ahead stretched straight as a ruler. She watched the broken yellow line flash by as her thoughts drifted back to the first time she met Mal’s parents.

  ***

  He introduced his childhood into their conversations carefully, bit by bit, as though he feared people could only stomach small doses. So she hoarded scraps of information and, over time, pieced together a tattered picture of what she thought his life growing up entailed. Since he always spoke of austerity, she guessed the family lived in suburban California’s version of a monastery. Because his parents’ strict religious sect frowned on ostentation, she imagined the house as dull, utilitarian, and uninviting. She envisioned Spartan rooms without carpets, unappealing meals, and bare walls. No photographs. No piano. Certainly no Internet. Everything in black and white.

  So she stared flaccid-jawed as Mal pulled up to the neatly manicured, two-story standalone house with skylights, a welcoming front porch, and pastel blue picket fence.

  “I thought your parents…” She trailed off, not sure how to express the image in her mind.

  He maneuvered the car to within six inches of the curb, cut the engine, and turned to her. “Are frugal? Despise consumerism? Disavow the commercialization of our culture?”

  “Isn’t that…” Her gaze rested on an old BMW in the driveway.

  “Bought it when we first moved. Before they converted.” He swept his arm, taking in both the house and the neighborhood. “First generation born in the U.S. Kind of competitive.” He fingered a small mole on his chin.

  Bree put her hand on his arm. “Now I’m nervous.”

  Mal kissed her on the nose. “Don’t be. I love you.”

  Bree pulled back. “You’ve never said that before.”

  He caressed her mouth with his finger. “You’ve never met my parents before.”

  She laughed. “I can’t be the only girlfriend you’ve brought home.”

  Mal looked out the window. “The only one who has a chance of coming out alive.”

  “Appreciate your confidence.” She tickled his chin.

  Mal’s mouth twitched down at the corners. “Watch out for Patel landmines.”

  Bree giggled and opened her door. “What should I look for?”

  Mal traipsed up the walk behind her. “When you step on one, you’ll know.”

  Inside, on a bright floral sofa, with a cup of chamomile tea balanced on her knee, Bree felt oddly at home. The room and people, she thought, were like the Indian version of a 1960s family TV show. What wasn’t familiar in the décor seemed like it belonged. But she regretted the hour she’d spent in the bathroom that morning with a department store display’s worth of makeup in front of her. Mal’s four sisters clustered along one wall, two on a piano bench, one in an armchair, and one on a footstool, with not a hint of product on their faces or in their hair. At least Mal’s mother had succumbed to dabbing on muted lipstick and, potentially, a smudge of rouge. But her only piece of jewelry was an enormous gold cross dangling from a thick gold chain around her neck.

  “Mal’s told us so much about you.” His mother perched on a straight-backed chair in the middle of the arch that separated living from dining room, completing a blockade around the living room’s empty coffee table.

  “And me about you, Mrs. Patel.”

  Mrs. Patel shook her head. “Call me Faye. My parents named me Fahya. I never comprehended why would they do that in this country. It makes me sound South American.” Her eyes darted to Bree. “Not that Hispanic is bad. But you know how it is. A child wants to fit in.” She straightened her spine. “I look more like a Faye.”

  Bree tucked her hands together in her lap. “Guess my parents got it right, since I look like a Bree Acosta.”

  Mal’s youngest sister giggled. Faye flashed her a stern look. “Mal says you’re a pharmacist.” Faye swept back black hair tinged at the temples with gray. “I was pre-med in high school.”

  Bree blinked. “I didn’t know they offered pre-med classes in high school.”

  Faye’s brow wrinkled. “What I mean, of course, is that I would have been pre-med if my parents allowed girls to go to college.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

  Bree’s eyes sparkled. “My mother wanted to be a doctor too.”

  “I had everything I needed to excel.”

  Bree nodded. “Except a
supportive family.” She took a sip of tea and looked up to find seven pairs of eyes staring at her as though her blouse had popped open. She ran her fingers down her front buttons and pinched her neck line closed. She turned to Mal. His focus swiveled to the coffee table.

  Faye cleared her throat. “I was the youngest of seven girls. My parents didn’t have time for luxury.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Neither did his parents.” Faye glanced at her husband. The air in the room suddenly crackled, as though a spark had been lit and threatened to burst into flame.

  Bree put her tea on the table and leaned back with a neutral expression. Mal glanced at her. She winked and the corner of her mouth rose, as if to say, “I’m watching this one from the sidelines.”

  Faye launched into a monologue about the inequities of arranged marriages, Indian parents-in-law, and misogynistic cultures. The rest of the family stared at the coffee table as though it were a screen showing an absorbing drama only they could see. Mal sat erect and periodically squeezed Bree’s hand when his mother’s attention was elsewhere.

  Bree used the interlude to study Mal’s father, who sat motionless in an arm chair across from his daughters. Where Mal was youthful, his upper body firm from long sessions at the weight lifting machine in his small apartment, his father’s thin shoulders stooped. Where Mal was reluctant to hold people’s gaze, his father looked past people, as though preoccupied with something distant and unattainable. But Bree also detected a more distilled image of what had attracted her to Mal: a calm tenor voice that reminded her of her own father’s; brown eyes that sparkled when thin lips parted in a smile that bisected and softened chiseled features; deliberate gestures that conveyed an inner steeliness at odds with an outer presentation of accommodating—perhaps even long-suffering—obedience.

  Mal’s sisters bumped each other’s knees when they thought their mother wasn’t looking. The youngest, Bree knew, was sixteen but looked, in a plain white blouse and navy skirt, barely out of middle school. The twins had just turned twenty-one but still lived at home during this, their final year of college. The oldest sister, closest in age to Mal and most distant in demeanor, was Val, who sat nearest her mother and nodded emphatically at key points in the stories.

  “Val wants to be a man,” Mal said when he ran through his siblings one more time in the car on the way over.

  “She’s transgender?” Bree turned in her seat. “I thought your parents were super conservative.”

  Mal thought, absentmindedly fingering the mole on his chin. “She’s trans-something. Like transferring all her aggression onto me. Used to beat the heck out of me.”

  Bree squeezed his bicep. “No fear of that these days.”

  Mal continued like he hadn’t heard. “She would take my place if she could get me on a twenty-year expedition to Antarctica.”

  “The way you hog the covers?” Bree laughed. “You’d never make it past Mexico.”

  Mal shrugged. “All the worse for Val.”

  In the family living room, Bree inspected Val. She looks lonely. Bree’s gaze softened and at a pause in Faye’s monologue, she leaned forward. “Faye, your family’s so impressive.” She opened her arms to include the sisters in her sweeping compliment. “You’ve accomplished a lot.”

  “God guides us.” Val responded for her mother, rubbing her hands together. “He blesses those who listen to His calling.”

  “I didn’t have a big family.”

  Faye’s glance flitted between Bree and Mal. “Mal told us. It was God’s will.”

  Mal coughed. “Mom…” He reached for Bree’s hand.

  Bree patted his palm and shook her head, smiling. “Maybe that’s why I’m here in a big family today.” She stood and moved toward the piano, on which rested a collection of framed photos. “Who are these beautiful women?”

  Faye beamed and rose. “That’s my aunt…”

  Over the next hour, the discussion pitched and heaved its passage through chit-chat, iced tea on the back porch, and appetizers in the kitchen. Bree maintained a steady, consistent hand on the conversational rudder, maneuvering the talk away from Faye’s tumult and into calmer waters. At dinner, after a ten-minute standing grace around a white table cloth smothered by large dishes of meatloaf, Brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes, Bree nudged the tiller between grateful mouthfuls. Any woman who cooked the way Faye cooked had a direct line to Bree’s heart. The more Bree voiced enthusiasm about the food, the more Faye’s cold demeanor melted, until, by the dessert, she was a pliant mass in Bree’s hands.

  On the porch when they said goodbye, Bree beamed as the younger Patel sisters hugged her, Val shook her hand, and Mr. Patel embraced her in an unexpected bear hug. Faye pecked her on the cheek as Mal pulled the car into the driveway. Bree squeezed her hand. “I’ve never had a more delicious dinner.”

  Faye blushed. “You are welcome back anytime.”

  After they drove out of view of the house, Mal braked at a stop sign and yanked Bree into his arms, covering her mouth in a deep, voracious kiss. She caught her breath and snuggled into the soft leather of his ancient Jaguar. She tugged her blouse over her full belly. “That meatloaf was to die for.”

  Mal repetitively stroked the steering wheel. “I’ve never seen anyone handle Mom the way you did.”

  Bree sighed. “And I could eat ten more slices of that strawberry rhubarb pie.”

  “How did you know what to do?”

  Bree stretched her legs, sliding lower onto the seat. “I didn’t expect your parents’ house to be so pretty.”

  “Keeping things looking neat is a virtue in my parents’ religion.” Mal pulled onto the freeway and gunned the accelerator.

  “And you get along with your sisters.”

  Mal merged into the HOV lane. “Because misery loves company.”

  “You have things in common.”

  “Because we’re united by a common…”

  Bree laughed. “Your mother’s not so bad.”

  Mal sped down the freeway at eighty-five miles an hour. “I was going to say family history.”

  “At least you have a history.” Bree touched his leg. “There’s no rush.”

  Mal relaxed his foot. “Isn’t there?”

  Bree scrutinized his face. “I know that look.”

  Mal took one hand from the wheel and ran it across her thigh, up her blouse, and over her breasts. “I’ve got champagne in the fridge and fresh sheets on the bed.”

  Bree kissed his fingers. “A lie down is just what I need. I couldn’t eat another thing.”

  ***

  A semi roared past Bree’s SUV with a gust that made the car quiver and snapped her out of her reverie. The phone rang. She glanced at the screen. Ryder. She declined the call. A minute later, the phone rang again. She reluctantly put on her headset.

  “How’s it going?”

  Bree ground her teeth. “Just reminiscing.”

  “About high school?”

  “About the first time I met Mal’s family.” Why, she thought, did they always end up talking about her?

  “Let me guess. His parents are still married. He’s got at least two sisters. And they all get together for a family dinner once a month.”

  Bree’s foot eased off the pedal. “W-T-F.”

  Ryder chuckled. “You’re not going to marry a loner. You’ve always wanted family around.”

  Bree squinted at his silhouette in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I’m that predictable.”

  “I don’t think being predictable makes you boring.”

  She wiped a thin film of dust from the radio console on the dash. “I’ve changed a lot since high school.”

  “We all have.”

  “Anyway, family treats you better than friends.”

  “That,” Ryder sucked in his breath, “depends on the friend.”

  Bree snorted. “You should know.”

  A red sports car overtook both their vehicles in an angry roar. Bree took her foot off the
gas and watched Ryder’s car gain on her, then back off again as she slowed.

  “I want to focus on getting to Vegas in one piece.” She hung up and dropped the headset into her lap. She opened the window and let her hair blow through the crack. With some friends, she thought as the air whipped strands across her face, you don’t need enemies.

  Chapter 5

  In the CEO’s office at the toy company’s headquarters, a fluffy lamb spun through air, head over pink tail, like a cotton candy missile. It thumped against the room’s wooden door and slid to the floor in a tangle of spindly legs.

  “Get that thing back to design.” The CEO’s deep voice shook with impatience.

  A navy-suited young woman bent at the waist with a swiftness and precision evidencing long practice and lifted the sheep by its ear.

  “I want a wolf, a grizzly, something boys won’t be embarrassed snuggling.”

  The woman nodded, her mouth in a straight, unperturbed line. One hand rested on the doorknob. The other held the disgraced animal at arm’s length.

  “Tell them I want a prototype by Monday or I’m making cuts.”

  “Yes, Mr. Greenwood.” The woman closed the door softly behind her.

  In a large leather chair behind a massive glass desk, a man with a gray crew cut and closely clipped beard slammed the flat of his hand onto the clear surface as though squashing an ant at a picnic. “Now where’s my fucking phone?” He yanked open onyx drawers, sifting through papers and muttering. Next, he overturned a large silver trashcan and accompanied each crumpled paper projectile that he shot back into it with a curse. After hearing a knock on the office door, he stuffed the remaining detritus behind his chair with his foot and, when the door opened, was striding toward the exit.

  The young woman wore a plastic children’s doll smile. Her iPad rested on her arm. “You wanted to talk about Friday morning’s TV show?”

  “Fuck that.” The man breezed by her.

  She scampered to keep up as he marched through a bright, orchid filled atrium toward a golden bank of tall elevators. “Want me to come back later?” Her words kept time with her steps. “They sent questions. Marketing has ideas about policy responses.”