“We’ll go half a mile and hit the canyons.”
“Perfect.” Sally didn’t want to talk, she was conserving her wind. She was still slim and tanned, but her endurance had gone to hell.
“We’ll cut through here, through the woods.” Mona was turning left, and Sally saw her legs moving efficiently down the sandy path. Damn, that woman had got some musculature going…. “Come on, honey!” her mom urged.
Sally blew out her cheeks. “Coming …”
“Aaah!”
Her mother slipped. It was so quick, Sally barely saw it coming. Mona’s ankle twisted; she fell and something cracked—Sally heard her groan, heard the nasty thud as she dropped to the ground—and Mona plummeted off the clifftop path, slicing through the scrubby plants and crumbling, sandy earth, her manicured nails futilely scrabbling for a hold, down the side of the rock.
Sally grabbed for her mother’s arms and missed. She screamed, and rushed to the side of the rock face. Mona was slipping and tumbling down the almost-sheer hill, crashing and veering; Sally could make out patches of blood on her arms and legs. She shrieked, almost hysterical, calling wildly for help, but they were out here on their own….
Mona groaned and thudded and fell awkwardly onto an outcrop of rock; she didn’t move. She was clearly unconscious. Sally felt a wash of dizziness surge through her body; black spots floated in front of her eyes.
“Oh, God! Help me!” she screamed.
“Hey.”
Sally jumped—it was the sound of a man, further down the path.
“You need help?”
“Yes! Please come! It’s my mom—”
“I’m coming,” he shouted. “Hold on.”
There was the sound of running feet and he appeared on the path, a tanned, strong-looking man with mirrored shades, a shirt, and a Dodgers baseball cap; an enthusiastic Labrador bounded along at his heels.
“What’s the problem?”
She grabbed his arm, babbling. “Oh, thank God. My mom—her ankle gave out. She went over. She’s down there… .”
He took one look and straightened up. “Stay right there. I have a car phone, I’ll call 911.”
“Thank you …”
He ran back down the path. Sally looked over; her mother did not stir. She wondered wildly if she were dead. The seconds dragged on horribly.
Eventually he came back.“Highway Patrol is sending a cruiser. I argued with them, looks like you need the Coast Guard and a chopper.They said it shouldn’t be long… .”
There was a shiver in the rocks; some stones, dislodged by Mona’s fall, tumbled onto her prostrate body; one of them struck her ankle; without regaining consciousness she shifted, and hung further off the edge of the lip of stone, a dead weight pointing down.
Sally sobbed. “Mom, oh, God, Mom. They won’t be here in time. She’s gonna fall. She’s gonna die.”
She clutched at the stranger.
Mona slipped a couple more inches. She was in a bad position. They could both see what gravity was doing.
“Wait there.”
“Don’t leave me,” Sally wept. But he was gone. She inched closer to the edge herself. Her mom—her mom was all she had in this world, really.When you came down to it, what did a career mean? Without Mona, Sally was lost. Had she saved her from addiction just to watch with her own eyes as her mother plunged into the sea?
But she saw no way she could climb down.The edge was too small to support them both. And since Mona was unconscious, Sally knew she couldn’t lift her. If she climbed down the rock, they would both die… .
“Okay.Watch my dog.”
The man was back. He had a length of rope coiled around his waist and a pair of spiked shoes on. He ran up to the nearest tree, an elm a few feet to the right of her mother, looped the rope around, and hastily knotted it; then he tied another loop, and another, around himself.
“What are you doing?” Sally asked, hesitantly.
“No harness. I’m gonna get her.”
She bit her lip.This man didn’t have the right equipment. He could slip—die.
“Watch Felix,” he said again, and slipped a length of rope between his hands.
Sally crammed her knuckles into her mouth.The elm tree did not have a wide trunk. It bent forward, leaning with his weight. He was tall, a strong, heavy guy, lean but bulky with muscle. She could see the strong muscles of his back working as he moved, quickly and with purpose, down the rock face; stones and plants gave way under his footing, but he just shifted his weight.
Mona slipped a little further.
“Hurry, please,” Sally shouted. He ignored her, and kept abseiling ; lower, lower … almost there …
There was a loud crack; the small stone ledge shifted, tilted; Mona Lassiter’s unconscious form slid inexorably forward….
And his thick, weightlifter’s arm reached out and grabbed her by the elbow….
Sally watched in horror as the elm tree buckled and doubled over, the rope fraying.The man gasped and grunted, his feet losing their grip, scrabbling to get it back as he heaved, with brute strength, her mother’s unconscious form over his back.
She ran to the tree and put her arms around it, desperately trying to hold it back. But her strength was as nothing—she couldn’t stop it bending forward.
Sally looked over the cliff. He was climbing, slowly, agonizingly so, in contrast to the way he’d dropped down, fleet and sure-footed. She could hear the grunts of pain; her mother’s weight was being supported by a single hand as he used the other one to climb. Oh, God! She was not a religious woman, but she prayed. Please let him be strong. Please let him not drop her….
After an eternity he was at the top, his face puce with effort, sweat pouring down his forehead.
“Take her,” he gasped.
Crying and laughing, half-hysterical, Sally tugged and pulled at Mona’s arms; her mother slipped off her rescuer’s shoulders and flopped forward onto the grass. She was bruised and bleeding, cut in several places, obviously concussed, but still breathing. As Sally examined her breathing, trying to loosen her shirt, wake her, the man hauled himself onto the grass and fell onto his back, panting, struggling to regain his breath.
Sally looked at him with pathetic gratitude and then winced. His palms were raw, cut and bleeding from the rope burns. His barrel of a chest was heaving, trying to get his breath, to recover from the monstrous effort.
“You saved her life,” she said. It was obvious, but she had to say it. “Thank you—thank you so much, mister.”
He opened his eyes. “Where’s my dog?”
Sally’s stomach flipped; she’d forgotten about the dog. This guy had asked this one thing of her, and she’d lost his damn dog. She looked around wildly; the dog was sitting calmly behind her, wagging its tail, as though its owner had been engaged in a shopping errand.
“Right here,” she mumbled, guiltily.
He closed his eyes again. “You forgot; it’s okay. Felix is trained.”
There was a wail of a siren in the distance, getting closer. He struggled to sit up.
“Thank God for that.” Sally was in tears from the relief.“The police are coming … they’ll get you both to a hospital … you need the paramedics.”
He looked at her for the first time. She couldn’t see the eyes behind the sunglasses, but she did register how his eyes traveled over her face, flickered over her body. A man who had looked at a lot of women.
Sally felt an answering pang of lust and dropped her gaze. An instinctive reaction, she told herself. The guy had just saved her mom. But all the same, she suddenly, fervently wished she didn’t look quite such a mess; hair sweaty from the run, eyes red with tears, no makeup, unwashed morning hair scraped back in a jogger’s ponytail.
“I’m not staying.” He stood up.“Your mom will be okay, once she’s checked out.”
“Are you a doctor?” She didn’t know why she asked him that; she just wanted him to stay.
“No. But I see a lot of sports inju
ries.” Finally, he took off the shades; and Sally, already red, blushed scarlet.
Along with the muscled body and square jaw, she now saw a pair of light gray eyes, unusually pale, like wolf eyes in the dark skin.
“Now you recognize me,” he said, without false modesty.
“I—yes.” She tried to cover her confusion. “You—on the cover of that magazine.”Why was it coming out so stuttery? She felt like a moronic sports fan.
“Sports Illustrated.” He grinned. “You really had no idea, did you?”
“I didn’t.You’re Chris Nelson.The baseball player.”
Sally wasn’t a fan, but she knew about Chris Nelson, the shortstop for the Dodgers. Single-handedly turning the team around. An All-Star. A megastar, in this city; even Hollywood types sucked up to him.
“Yeah, well, do me a favor. Don’t tell anybody about this. I don’t need the publicity; the press will just dog me for weeks.”
“I won’t.”
“I would stay to check on your mom, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, again.” Sally bit her lip. She couldn’t ask anything more of the guy.To do so now would look like she was just another one of the girls that tried to crash practice wearing the shortest skirts. “We’ll be good once the cops get here. And … you know, you’re a hero.” It had to be said; her blush deepened.
“That’s cute.” He winked at her, and Sally’s stomach flipped over. “Long time since I’ve seen a girl blush.”
“Your hands are all messed up.”
“Yeah, well. My shoulder’s practically dislocated.”
“I think your trainer is going to put out a hit on me,” Sally joked.
“John Tepes will, if I miss the series against the Yankees,” he said.Tepes was their manager.“But don’t worry. I’ll come around and save you.”
The siren sounded closer. He stood up, and Sally was ashamed of herself for feeling such a bitter pang of disappointment while her mom lay feet away, knocked out.
“Your name is Sally Lassiter, right?”
She jumped out of her skin. “How … do you know that?”
He smiled. “Papers. My girlfriend showed me a picture. She bought some T-shirts in your store; looked hot on her.”
Girlfriend. Right. Of course. Like a hot superstar athlete like him was going to be single.
“Thanks, Mr. Nelson.”
“I think it’s Chris, after all that. Good-bye, sugar. Felix!”
He whistled, and the dog sprang from its sitting position and followed him, bounding, down the hill.
Sally was still sitting staring into space when the troopers arrived, a couple of burly men with guts that would have done credit to Santa Claus.They would have been zero help.
“She’s okay—we’ll get her to Malibu Memorial Hospital. What happened here, ma’am? How did you get her back?”
Sally told the story, leaving out Nelson’s name.They whistled as they grabbed her mother by the shoulders and ankles and staggered down the path with her.
“Some story,” the other one said. “Some guy.”
Yeah, Sally thought, regretfully. Some guy.
Mona had suffered little more than a concussion, a broken arm, and some bad bruising; it was almost a guilty relief for Sally to have her tucked away in hospital for a few days. She tried to fling herself into her work.The baseball player had disturbed her, profoundly, and she woke in the mornings restless from half-forgotten erotic dreams.
But now she was aware of him, she was reminded of him everywhere: on the news, flicking through the channels, whenever she saw a fan in a Dodgers shirt. An undisclosed “injury” had put him on the disabled list for a month’s recuperation. Nelson on the DL was the talk of L.A.
Sally waited fearfully for something to happen, for the story to break; if the cops had traced his cell call or something … half the sports fans in L.A. would be picketing their new store.
It didn’t happen.
She got on with her job. Designing. Buying. Making GLAMOUR a statement.
She had a vision, and the other two girls let her go with it. GLAMOUR.The name said it all. Every shopping trip would be a vacation. Something to justify their sky-high prices.
Maybe Laetitia Berry would come and shop there.
Laetitia, or Letty, as the press called her. Former Miss Minnesota and now sitcom star. Tall, slim, African-American, with flawless ebony skin, a retroussé nose, and blindingly white teeth. She shopped at only the best stores, drove a Maserati, and, as Sally was finding out, had been dating Chris Nelson for about a year. There was a pregnancy rumor. The gossip rags said they were getting married.
But of course. For Nelson to be unattached would have been fantasy. Sally was truly grateful, and she tried to be happy for Letty. And Chris.
She tried to tell herself there were plenty of other fish, and all that. Now that she was interested in men … now that she’d saved her mom … now that she felt she could breathe … there were plenty of places a pretty young woman could meet men in this town.
That didn’t work, either.
Sally was busy. Like it or not, pining or not, the store was rolling toward the grand opening. Now she had a PR campaign to organize. She got the hell on with it.What else could she do?
Haya stepped into the limo with relief.
It was air-conditioned, a blessed change after the baking heat outside. She was an Arab, and she’d thought she could handle this weather, but the further along her pregnancy got, the less she liked it.
“Take me to Bar-al-Yanni, please,” she said to the driver.
“Of course, ma’am.” He spun the car directly into traffic with practiced ease and Haya struggled to stay awake. Jet lag was bad, but she really wanted to get this trip over with. After that she could go back to the hotel, unplug the phone, hang the little sign on her door, and she’d be done.
It was vital to buy enough. She had to be four times as good on this trip, because her baby was getting too big, too restless in her belly. There would be no more sourcing from the Middle East after this. Haya needed enough goods to last in the stock-room for at least five months; she wasn’t getting on a plane until her child was six months old and weaned, and it would take her four months to train another woman to her exacting standards.
At least she knew, now, that she couldn’t do it all herself.
Choosing the precious objects had been a big deal for Haya. Sally took care of the Western fashion and the store design, and Haya added the exotic flavor and the ethical dimension. She knew she had to live up to both ideals. Sourcing art, jewelry, cloths, lamps, and rugs from the Islamic world—but not from dealers; from individual women, or from the nascent collectives that had sprung up of widows, unmarried women, women whose meager income from the glorious things they worked was keeping flesh on the bones of their children. Haya had big ambitions there. She wanted those rich Americans to get addicted to this beauty, and pay top dollar. Everybody would win—the buyers would get something unique, not mass-produced, something that would look great in their houses for generations. The women who made these things would finally receive a fair price, even a generous one by local standards. Haya had no doubt it would transform lives. And of course, GLAMOUR would take a hefty slice out of the middle.
It was ethical commerce, not simple charity. Haya had to answer to the demanding Jane Morgan on that. And she wanted to make money, anyway. For her own independence, and her child’s—Ahmed’s child. Profit and principles. If she could combine them, Haya thought, she could be happy; she could salvage something from her husband’s death, make a difference in the world.
Ghada was her last stop on the tour. She had already shipped enough Jordanian mosaics, Moroccan carpets, Egyptian lamps and carvings, and Palestinian cushions to fill the holds of a small ship.This remote kingdom was the final destination; Haya wanted to invest in a line of traditional jewelry from Ghada. The desert tribeswomen in the north crafted elegant necklaces and bracelets dripping with small met
al disks, a variant on the coin jewelry in other Arab countries; Haya thought they looked feminine and delicate, good on any woman, and when she had showed Sally Lassiter a sample Sally had gone wild.The intricate pieces would be the center of the opening GLAMOUR jewelry collection. The traditional metal was silver; Haya wanted to negotiate for a commune of women to work them for her in copper; the Americans didn’t like silver, it was too dully familiar. Jangling, luxe bracelets of fiery red-gold would knock the Hollywood ladies out. Haya was sure of that.
“We may have some delays on the road north of the city,” her driver said, lapsing into the Egyptian Arabic that was a lingua franca in the Middle East.
Haya sighed. “Why is that?”
She didn’t want to be late. They were waiting for her at the small oasis town and she had had some difficulty in securing this meeting; these women did not trust Americans, even Arab-Americans.
“There is a visit there from one of the sheikhas. Sheikha Alia, the daughter of the king’s half uncle.They will have security.”
“Of course.” Haya didn’t want to be rude, so she chewed on her lip.The royal family of Ghada, highly wealthy from a combination of oil and booming real estate in the metropolitan cities on the coasts, was large and well funded.There was the king, old and tired, an absolute ruler. His many brothers and sons, daughters and sisters, all princes and princesses. A few degrees removed from that, the royalty had lesser titles like Sheikh and Sheikha. Just in case, Haya reviewed her protocols. Prince, or Emir; Royal Highness … Sheikha … just Highness.
“Why is she going there—is there some function?”
“The royal women often patronize the markets and bazaars there.They support the traditional crafts.”
“Ah.” Haya smiled. “Do they indeed?”
Perhaps—who knew. Perhaps she could get something out of this. She thought of the Western love of titles. If they could market the Ghadan necklaces as “worn by royalty” they would sell even better.Would the sheikha agree to be photographed in a necklace? There would be some samples waiting for Haya today. She got excited, she could see the advertising campaign now. Even better, maybe there would be another lady, somebody further up the tree; one of the king’s daughters or granddaughters, a true princess.
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