MEANT TO BE MARRIED

by Ruth Wind

  No. He narrowed his eyes, lifting his chin as if in defiance of the night itself. Admitting he needed to finish it meant that he would have to admit how much he'd loved her, how much a fool he had been.

  No. Love was for boys and fools. Love only caused pain. Anger and revenge were much more reliable emotions.

  * * *

  It was only two days before the news of Sarah's return spread through the family, and only hours after that when Teresa Benavidez, his troubled fifteen-year-old niece, sought Elias out in the office of the warehouse. "Hey, tío," she said in greeting. "You busy?"

  He closed the file on his desk. "Never too busy to talk," he said. "What's up?"

  She flowed into the small room – she always flowed or floated – and poured herself into an overstuffed chair. Her musky perfume drowned out the green scent of the rose hips being processed today, and her lips were painted with lipstick that was almost black. A fake nose-ring graced one nostril, since she didn't quite dare to actually get it pierced. Her mother – Eli's oldest sister – would kill her and she knew it.

  Eli waited while she plucked at her blouse with dark blue fingernails and wiggled one foot, getting ready to say whatever was on her mind.

  "I saw the family meeting the other night at Grandma's," he said when she still did not seem inclined to start the conversation. "Was it you at the middle of it?"

  She rolled her eyes and popped her gum simultaneously. "It was stupid. I didn't even do nothing this time."

  "Anything."

  She waved a hand. "Whatever. Some girls at school got caught smoking and they said it was me who gave them the cigarettes." Her eyes widened in outrage. "I do not smoke."

  Eli nodded.

  Finally Teresa flowed into an earnest position. It was always startling to see the overly painted, badly dressed girl move like that, like water or air, as if she were some magic being whose parts assembled themselves back in perfect order each time she moved even an inch. "I heard there's this photographer in town," she said. She put a finger in her mouth to snag the end of her gum and, talking around it, added, "Everybody says that she's real famous, that she does all kinds of magazine covers and all the biggest models."

  A stillness went through Eli. He waited. "And?"

  "Well—" Her gaze sailed around the room, and her shoulders shifted. "I heard you used to go out with her? And maybe you guys are still tight? Or something?"

  "You mean Sarah."

  A falsely guileless smile bloomed on her face, and it surprised him just as her grace did. Even though it was false, it was gorgeous. "Yeah! You know her?"

  "I did." He plucked a pencil from the top of the desk.

  "Tío," she cried. "You're not making this easy."

  He let the eraser tap the desk, and sent the pencil upward through his fingers, then let it swing down in an arc and tapped the lead. "You want easy, Teresa, then talk to me. Don't play games. What do you want?"

  The shoulders lifted, the eyelids fell, the head shifted. "Do you still know her? Are you guys, like, friends?"

  "And if we are?"

  "Then maybe you'd ask if she would shoot my portfolio?"

  "Portfolio?"

  "A modeling book." Now her gaze was open, almost painfully earnest. "If someone that famous and that good shot my portfolio, it would be such a break."

  She was afraid, Eli realized suddenly, that he would make light of her dreams. As long as he could remember, Teresa had said she would be a model, and she was right: a break like having a Sarah Greenwood portfolio of shots would take her a long way.

  He pursed his lips, considering the possible consequences of asking Sarah for this favor. A small, dangerous part of him remembered the look of her mouth, moistened by rain, the way her sodden T-shirt had clung to the ripened slope of her breasts. A pulse of reaction jumped in his loins.

  Dangerous.

  But within that hard place in his heart he imagined something else: Garth Greenwood's face if he found Eli at his daughter's cottage.

  He looked at his niece. "I can talk to her, but we have some bad blood between us. I don't know if she will say yes."

  Teresa swallowed. "But you'll ask for me?"

  He shrugged. "Sure." The worst Sarah could do was say no.

  An almost feverish look of excitement lit the girl's large dark eyes. "Thank you." She jumped up, all legs and arms and hair, and kissed his cheek. "Tell me as soon as you talk to her, okay?"

  He nodded. Still tapping his pencil, eraser to tip, tip to eraser, he inclined his head, watching her as she left. It looked as if fate, so unfriendly to the cause of love all those years ago, was more inclined to lend help for revenge.

  * * *

  A black-and-gray tabby slipped through the slats of the fence and ambled through the cosmos to join Sarah for breakfast. "Good morning," Sarah said, reaching down to stroke the big tom's arched back. "I saved you some bacon." She put the bits and pieces of meat on the wooden slats of the porch floor and grinned when the cat delicately nibbled them.

  Every morning for the past three days the cat had arrived precisely at breakfast to beg a few scraps and wind around her legs. Sarah had asked Mrs. Gray if the tom belonged to her, but she'd only scowled. "That cat!" she had exclaimed. "He's a stray, and the worst beggar I've ever met. Just shoo him away."

  But after years of being unable to keep a pet of any kind, Sarah found the cat a pleasing companion. She liked the benevolently sleepy smile he had when he lounged in a sunny spot in the garden, and his warm purring approval over her attentions. It was easy to please him.

  When he finished his bacon, he sat back and looked at her expectantly. For a stray, she thought, he was certainly healthy. His fur was thick and glossy, though she sometimes pulled cockleburs from the hair on his belly. Aside from one nicked ear, he didn't have the scars most strays carried, like warrior knights, from all their battles. "That's all I saved," she said, spreading her hands as if he understood the concept of empty-handed.

  Evidently he did, for he nimbly leapt into her lap and settled down to lick his paws. Sarah chuckled, and petted him lazily.

  Her days since her arrival had settled into an agreeable routine. She awakened slowly and ate her breakfast here in the garden, then cleaned up and took a walk that ended up at her parents' house. She helped her mother with various chores or stayed with her father while her mother ran errands. Sometime in the afternoon she returned to her little house, where she read or watched a movie or simply sat in the garden and watched the sun set. Yesterday she had called an old high school friend, and they were going to meet for dinner today. Joanna, an art dealer, had often stopped by to see Sarah in New York, but this was the first time they had met on home ground since Sarah had left Taos.

  The sound of footsteps on the flagstone path between cottages reached her, and Sarah glanced over without expectation. There were five cottages on the hill, and mornings were busy. Whoever it was on the path now was hidden by the trees and shrubby plants that landscaped the hill. She spied a jeans-clad thigh and a boot between a yucca and a huge sunflower bush. A rather nice thigh, actually. A shoulder, straight and clean, came into view below the branches of a Russian olive. Sarah's hand stilled as she waited for the rest, a dark head, a face hidden by sunglasses. Her fingers curled in the thick fur of the cat in her lap.

  He stopped on the other side of the gate, his mouth sober, his hair glinting in the bright morning. "Hello, Sarah," Elias said.

  She didn't move. Nor did she speak. On one level she did not quite trust her voice, because honestly, it was not fair that he could still be that unbelievably sexy. He'd been a beautiful adolescent, but many boys were beautiful. She knew some of his brothers had not aged so well as this – they had put on weight around the middle, and those sleek lines of cheekbone and jaw had softened with genial family-man warmth. Not Elias. He was as trim and sculpted as he had been at eighteen. And success sat well on him, lending an authority of carriage he had not held as a boy.

  Sarah strok
ed the cat and waited. He had some purpose in coming here. Let him say it.

  He took off his sunglasses, pursed his lips. "I have no right to come here after I was so angry the other night."

  "True."

  "But I have come with a request I promised I would make, and I wonder if you have a moment."

  She lifted one eyebrow. "A request? How interesting."

  He inclined his head. "Not for me. For my niece Teresa. Do you remember her?"

  Sarah swallowed, thinking of the little girl who had ridden between them sometimes in his car, a beautiful little girl with a wild imagination, who made them both laugh. "Of course I remember her. She must be practically grown up by now."

  "Not quite." He gestured at the gate. "May I come in?"

  "If you promise this is really about Teresa. I do not want my day ruined with ancient history."

  "Fair enough." He opened the gate and closed it behind him. As he crossed the courtyard, Sarah was snared as she always had been by the way he moved, straight and loose limbed, as comfortable with his body as a stallion.

  He halted at the edge of the porch. In for a penny, in for a pound, Sarah thought, and gestured to the chair on the other side of the table. "Have a seat."

  "Thank you." He sat formally, back very straight, and put his sunglasses on the table.

  Sarah was glad of the cat, anchoring her in reality – his rumbling purr against her thighs, his big soft body under her hands. It was really almost too much to see Elias like this, in the flesh, grown and whole. It had the feeling of a dream, and she was afraid she might just start saying whatever came into her head. Let's just let bygones be bygones and go have wild sex in my room, what do you say?

  Bending her head to hide her face, she said, "Tell me what Teresa needs."

  "What?"

  She raised her head and, to her amusement, saw that there was new heat in his cheeks, a genuine blush, and his eyes darted suspiciously away from the region of her braless breasts under the simple, light cotton tunic she wore as a robe.

  Serves him right, her voice muttered nastily. For once, Sarah agreed with it. "Tell me about Teresa," she said again.

  "Right." He folded his hands. "She wants to be a model. She asked me to come ask you if you might shoot a portfolio for her. I would pay you for your time."

  Sarah took a breath. It was a delicate situation. The common misconception was that a girl needed only to be beautiful to be a good model, when the balance was actually far more complex. Often the strangest faces were the most photogenic, and the prettiest to the eye were rendered bland on the page. "What makes her think she'd be good at it?"

  "I don't know. She's just always wanted it, since she was little."

  "How tall is she?"

  Elias frowned, and gestured to the middle of his throat. "Here … maybe five-nine? She's tall for a girl."

  "That's good." She hesitated and then decided to simply tell the truth. "There's no way to know if she has even a little of what it takes until I see how she interacts with the camera, and how she looks on film." She met his eyes as honestly as she was able. "You are the only one who knows if it would be better for me to simply say no, or to give her a chance and maybe face the possibility that she is not going to be a model."

  Something in his face moved. Softened, maybe. A little tension eased away from his eyes, and all at once there was a hint of the old Elias there. "She's in trouble," he said. "She's running with the wrong kids, maybe right on the edge of making some very bad choices." He paused. "I don't know if it would be better for her to keep dreaming, or know."

  "When I was about fourteen," Sarah said, "a photographer in town for the summer took me under his wing and let me use his darkroom and his cameras. He walked with me all over town and helped me learn to see. I loved taking photographs before that, but it was John who gave me the passion." Sarah pressed her lips together in thought. "Maybe what I can do is have you bring her here and shoot a few good rolls of film, just to see. I'll give her those prints, and she can use my name, but if she has no real talent, I don't want to spend more time shooting her, because it will make me feel like a liar."

  "That's more than—"

  Sarah stopped him with an upheld hand. "You can pay me for my time on that one. And I am not cheap."

  A hint of a smile touched his lips.

  "If she has true potential, I'll shoot a professional portfolio for her, and since it would be my way of repaying my old mentor, I won't charge either of you for it."

  "Fair enough, Sarah." He stood. "I did not deserve your consideration, and you offered it anyway. Thank you."

  "You're right," she said. "You didn't deserve it. But that's no reason to punish Teresa."

  He nodded. "When would you like us to come?"

  The cat, spying something in the flowers, suddenly leapt off Sarah's lap, and she felt suddenly vulnerable. She crossed her arms. "I'm busy today, but we may as well get it done. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe two or three?"

  "Two would be good," he said, his gaze on the horizon. "I'll bring her here. Should she bring anything?"

  "Couple of changes of clothes, different colors. Maybe a hat or a scarf that she likes. That's really all."

  "Okay." He didn't quite meet her eyes as he lifted a hand. "Fine. I'll see you then."

  Sarah nodded, but he was already striding toward the gate, hurrying as if he had an appointment. He'd already gone through the gate when she spied his sunglasses still sitting on the table. She reached for them and simultaneously called out, "Elias!"

  * * *

  Eli could not breathe. The air was too hot. His blood pounded through his ears and he imagined he could hear the swish of it in his veins, like the river at spring runoff, the volume doubled, tripled. He thought his hands might even be shaking.

  "Elias!" Her voice ripped through the stillness, oddly urgent, and he whirled, bracing himself – for he didn't know what.

  For her. Coming toward him without hurry, her athletic legs burnished and bare below a shapeless red tunic that had long sleeves and reached her knees and should not have been so alluring. But it was. The fabric was thin as water, opaque but somehow woven with shiny gold and silver thread that shone at every turn, every curve, as if she were clothed in nothing but spiderwebs.

  The sight had been headily sensual as she sat calm and still in a chair, with a cat hiding half her body, but now she moved, and the cloth moved, too, shimmering around her waist, glowing down the front of her thighs. Elias stared, his chest tight, and it seemed the sun kissed the tip of each breast with a star of golden light, as if to focus his gaze upon that which he should not see. It was only a trick of the fabric, the fact that her breasts upturned—

  "Your glasses," she said, holding them up.

  Tendrils of hair escaped the loose knot into which her hair was bound, and fell down her neck. She lifted a hand to brush a wisp from her mouth and Elias thought it the most erotic gesture he'd ever seen, her fingers brushing over that cheek, her mouth parting a little, the soft gray eyes alive with humor—

  His eyes narrowed. She knew.

  With exaggerated care she put the sunglasses in his hand, and in a voice as husky and sensual as a spoonful of honey, said, "Close your mouth, Elias." Then she turned, walked back to the house and went inside.

  For one minute he did not move, thinking in wild ways of following her into the dimness of those rooms, and tearing away that sinful fabric, and tasting that body he'd longed for so much, so long ago…

  Fool.

  He was a fool. With a frustrated groan, he whirled away and stormed back up the hill.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Sarah walked to her mother's house at midmorning. It was already hot, but the clean, dry heat of the desert, which was ail sun pouring from a cerulean sky. She loved being able to walk everywhere, even if – like today – it meant joining the hordes of tourists that crowded the sidewalks and breathing the fumes of a dozen oversize RVs waddli
ng down the street. And her mood, which had been lifting a little with each hour she'd been home, was particularly exuberant as she strode up the hill.

  She didn't lie to herself. She knew exactly what caused the feeling of triumph. Elias, staring at her as if he would catch fire at any second. Or melt in a puddle of lust. Thinking of it now as she passed a string of cinder-block adobe storefronts, Sarah chuckled to herself. Score one for her.

  It was only fair. He'd been quite nasty to her that first night. He'd hurt her feelings and dragged out all kinds of insecurities and demons Sarah had no interest in plumbing. In ten seconds she had been reduced to the vulnerable, frightened, miserable teenager she thought she'd left behind a long time ago, and it had appalled her.

  This morning it had been the adult Sarah and the adult Elias, and Sarah had won, hands down. It was a good feeling.

  She spent most of the day with her mother, helping her to wash clothes and clean the house, then played a round of gin rummy with her father before he tired and wanted to nap. When she came out of the bedroom she noticed that her mother looked wan, too. "Mom, why don't you go lie down? There's nothing wrong with taking a nap when Dad does."

  Mabel brushed her hair from her face. "Maybe I will. Are you coming back for dinner tonight?"

  "No, I'm meeting Joanna for dinner at La Paloma."

  "Joanna!" She smiled. "That's wonderful. I used to see her all the time when she was working at the gallery. How is she?"

  Sarah flopped onto the couch, her feet in front of her, and lifted her hair to let the cool air from the window blow over her sweaty neck. "Very happy. She has a baby who is nine months old. She's going to bring him along." Sarah grinned. "I gather he's more or less the apple of her eye."

  "She married an Indian, didn't she? Thomas something."

  "Concha."

  "Bet that didn't go over well with his people."

  "I don't know." Sarah lifted a shoulder. "They're living on Indian land, and I gather the family is nearby, so it can't be too bad."

  "I guess." Mabel's cornflower blue eyes gained a distant expression. "Things are so different now. When we were children we never thought of mixing the way you all have. We stuck to our own. All of us did."