by Cach, Lisa
As the last waves gripped her, he came to his own summit, grasping her tightly against him, her name a muffled cry against her neck.
She lay beneath him, his body a heavy, warm weight on her, his lips against the sensitive spot under her ear, listening to their mingled breathing, and she knew that there was nothing to regret.
The dream was drawing to a close, but it had been the sweetest she had ever had.
Chapter Nine
Eliza bit the corner off her chocolate bar and chewed without enthusiasm. It tasted like dirt. Making an unhappy face, she wrapped it back in its foil and dropped it into her purse, there to join the remains of four other bars, all equally as unsatisfying.
Nothing tasted the same since coming home.
She slouched into her desk chair, unfinished paperwork spread before her, and stared at nothing.
She'd lost five pounds since coming home two weeks ago. She tried to eat—she bought baguettes and Brie; she bought Belgian beer and frozen bags of French fries—but there was something missing from her meals, and she left them untouched on her plate.
It was Sebastian that was missing, of course. That was easy enough to recognize. What she couldn't accept was that she longed for him, when she had been so careful to frame their three days as a foreign affair, a fling. It wasn't supposed to continue beyond the borders of Belgium and of her vacation. She hadn't meant to think of him as anything but a fond memory.
She wasn't supposed to want him here, in the United States, for as far into the future as she could see.
At least she had no regrets; that was something. Not about what she had done with him, not even about the shocking sum on her credit card statement. Every time she opened her closet door, she ran her fingers down the airy fabric of the green dress. Given the chance, she'd relive those three days again, from their first encounter on the train to the morning they had said good-bye.
She'd relive them again and again, only maybe this time, instead of kissing Sebastian on the cheek and wishing him well when they parted, perhaps she would tell him she would write, or call, or she would ask him to visit her in Seattle, or maybe she would even offer to meet him in San Francisco.
But perhaps it was best to have ended it as she had, with neither promise nor plea. He had asked for her number and email address, but she had known it was mere politeness on his part. She was as much a holiday fling for him as she had thought he was to her.
"Eliza?" Sister Agnes asked, poking her head into the small office the dietitians shared. "Are you all right? You've been looking down lately. Is everything okay?"
Eliza tried to smile for her. "I haven't been eating well."
Sister Agnes made an affectionate tsk sound, her real-life self always much kinder and cheerier than Eliza's mental version. "There's something for you in the break room. It might pique your appetite." Her eyes fairly twinkled.
Probably another case of samples from Ensure. Sister Agnes always got excited when they came out with a new flavor.
Eliza sighed and hauled herself out of her chair. Her feet shuffled on the floor as she blindly made her way to the break room, only vaguely wondering why the Ensure was put there instead of the nutrition room, as usual.
Chattering voices and laughter brought her out of her daze as she reached the room. Nurses were gathered around the table, and one was digging paper plates out of a cupboard, leftovers from someone's birthday.
"We should wait," a nurse said.
"I can't."
"Did someone go get her?"
"Eliza wouldn't really mind if we had some, would she?"
"Some what?" Eliza asked, trying to see what was on the table. The nurses didn't usually get so excited about Ensure.
"You're here! Can we have some of your cake?" Tanya, a cardiac nurse, asked.
"It's gateau," Kelly corrected, pursing her lips to give the word the proper French effect. "It says right on the box."
"I didn't know it was your birthday," someone else said.
"It's not," Eliza said, at last making it to the table. A white cake box with pale blue and silver scrollwork in the corners dominated the table. The ribbons that had been tied around it had been cut by someone, and one flap of the lid was outside the box, testament to the peeking of an overeager nurse. In the center of the lid, written by hand in copperplate script, were the words Eliza's Gateau.
An impossible flame of hope sparked to life inside her. She looked quickly about the room, as if he might be hiding in plain sight, but there was no one there but nurses. "Who brought this?” she asked, voice tight.
"I don't know," Tanya said.
"It was here when I came in," someone else said, shrugging.
"Open it!" said the others.
Her hand shaking, she reached out and did so. The cake inside was frosted in pure, smooth, snowy white, decorated with a spray of candied violets. Someone shoved a knife into her hand.
"It's almost too pretty to eat," Kelly said, sighing.
"Don't say that!" someone else protested. "I've only got five minutes of my break left."
Eliza cut into the cake, the texture thick and heavy enough that she had to use both hands. She pulled out the first wedge and dropped the dense, fudgy slice onto a paper plate.
"Chocolate!" someone said. "I was running low."
"That time of the month?"
"Doesn't matter when."
Eliza continued to serve, the plates whisked away as quickly as she filled them, while her mind was trapped in tripping circles of thought. Sebastian? Delivered? From where? Candied violets. Chocolate. Sebastian? Here? Delivered? She trembled, nervous sweat forming under her arms.
"Whoa, mama, what's in this?" Kelly asked.
"Bourbon, I think," Tanya said, taking another huge bite.
"And it looked so innocent, with all that white frosting and flowers."
"You think the flowers are edible?" someone asked.
The voices faded from her awareness as Eliza stood and stared at the remains of the cake, remembering. Sebastian. The art museum.
"When I marry, I will spend my life getting to know my wife the way van Eyck knew his, and I will love her unto death."
"And will you find a way to make her immortal?"
"Perhaps I will name a gateau after her."
The knife fell from her hand to the table.
"Hey, psst! " a nurse hissed from the doorway. "Come take a look at this guy."
Two nurses came to peek. "God, he's gorgeous. Think he's visiting his grandmother or something?"
"Maybe he's lost."
"New intern?"
"Definitely not a patient."
"Wouldn't mind giving him a bed bath."
"Back, back!" the first nurse said, shooing them back into the room. "He's coming this way."
Eliza stood motionless at the table, eyes on the empty doorway. His footsteps became audible: measured, confident, at ease. And then he was there, her own James Bond, her van Eyck, her exotic, foreign lover.
"Eliza?" he said.
She sensed every astonished eye in the room swiveling from his handsome face to her.
"Sebastian," she said, and walked slowly toward him, the room silent, every ear listening. She felt as if her heart was afraid to beat, her lungs afraid to breathe, for fear that he might vanish if she did.
He stepped forward to meet her, then cupped his hands on either side of her neck, his thumbs running along her jawline. "Three days. It was not enough time."
"No."
"Would you like to give it thirty?" he asked.
"I'd like to give it three hundred."
"Perhaps even three thousand will not be long enough," he said softly. "Every time we part, I feel that we have left something unfinished. It might take a lifetime, and even then I don't think I will have had enough of you."
"Am I still dreaming, Sebastian? Or are you really here?"
His glance shifted, looking over at the decimated remains of the cake, then back to her. "Perhaps Seattle
could use another dessert restaurant. Would you like that?"
"I'll get fat," she said, and didn’t care if it was true.
He bent his head, his mouth beside her ear. "I'll give you plenty of exercise."
She felt the blush on her cheeks, and then he kissed her, slow and deep. Her arms slipped around his neck, and her heart began to beat again as the room erupted in hoots of appreciation.
When the kiss ended, Eliza opened her eyes and saw Sister Agnes standing by the table, a plate of cake in her hand.
"I haven't had any lunch," Sister Agnes said around a full mouth. "Do you think I'm being terribly wicked?"
"Didn’t you know?" Eliza said. "Chocolate is good for the heart."
Back to Table of Contents
Every Part of You
Chapter One
Los Angeles, California
The man wouldn’t stop staring at her.
Angelica shifted in her seat, flipped her long, dark brown hair forward over her small breasts and crossed her arms protectively. She was scared and self-conscious enough as it was, sitting in the waiting room of a plastic surgeon, awaiting a procedure that made her intestines turn every time she pictured it in full, horrifying color. It wasn’t soothing her to have a mouth-breathing surfer dude sprawled in the chair across from her, gaping as if she was an unusually large wave.
Maybe he had a mental impairment. Or maybe he was stoned. That was more likely, wasn’t it? He looked the type: sun bleached shaggy blond hair, skin so deeply tanned that he had premature crow’s-feet round his brilliant blue eyes, faded Hawaiian shirt worn open over a white tank, baggy shorts, flip-flops. He was huge, too—at least 6’2”––and muscled.
Okay, he was gorgeous, she could admit that, but beauty and brains had obviously not come together in this southern California package.
“You here for a nose job?” the man asked.
Angelica’s hand flew to her nose, touching the peak at the center of its hook-like arch. As a kid, classmates every Halloween had teased that she should be a witch because she already had the nose for it.
She squirmed under the man’s gaze. “No.”
He nodded. “That’s a beaut you’ve got there. Looks like something you’d see carved on the side of a Mayan temple.”
Angelica cast a beseeching look at the receptionist—her Japanese-American housemate Karen—but Karen was on the phone.
“Where are you from?” the giant asked.
Angelica returned her reluctant attention to him. There was a faint, untraceable hint of accent to the brute’s voice. “Here. L.A.”
“No, I mean originally. Where’s your family from? Central America?”
Angelica pressed her lips together. “Sacramento.”
“But you’ve got some Maya or Aztec in you, don’t you?”
“Probably.”
“Cool! So what are you here for, then, if not your nose? Don’t tell me: a boob job. Seems like no one in L.A. can appreciate a nice little pair of half-cuppers like yours.”
Her lips parted in shock. A moment later she fled to the reception desk, leaning against its high counter, her back to the guy, giving him ample chance, no doubt, to wonder if she was there for liposuction on her wide hips.
Karen ended her phone call and looked up, her oval face in its frame of glossy black hair as serenely beautiful as a Japanese geisha’s in an ukiyo-e print. “You aren’t still nervous, are you?” she asked, no hint of the annoyance in her voice making it to her expression. “I keep telling you, Dr. Velazquez is great, one of the best in Hollywood. You think all those movie stars who meet with him secretly would trust their faces to anyone who wasn’t good?”
“It’s not that. It’s him,” Angelica whispered, subtly gesturing over her shoulder with her chin. “Who is that guy?”
Karen leant to the side to get a better look, smiled, and waggled her fingers in greeting. “I can’t talk about other patients,” she said quietly to Angelica. “They were very clear about that during my training.” She shrugged. “Sorry. He’s a good-looking guy, though, isn’t he?” Small movements of Karen’s eyelids hinted at brows that would have roguishly waggled before she’d had her face paralyzed with injections of neurotoxins. “Hunka hunka! I’m not surprised you’re interested.”
Angelica shook her head frantically. “No! He’s weird.”
Karen snorted. “You think every guy is weird. He’s fine. More than fine.” The phone rang and Karen picked up, shooing her away.
Angelica turned from the desk and searched for something to look at besides the alleged hunk.
The hunk-oaf, rather. The hoaf. She smiled to herself, imagining a cartoon version of the hoaf, a zombie-like creature. He’d have a shambling gait, ragged surfer clothes, and drool spooling out of his mouth. She’d draw that rivulet of saliva coming down off the side of his too-rugged jaw with a fat glistening droplet hanging free, swaying with each zombie step, bouncing on its viscous thread of moisture. She was an effects animator for a movie studio, so she knew a thing or two about making realistic drops of monster drool. She chortled to herself and went to stand in front of one of the framed photos on the wall, pretending absorbed interest but seeing only a blur of greenery, her mind’s eye filled with the hoaf.
There was a stirring of movement behind her. Her ears pricked as Surfer Boy stood and took the few steps to cross the room. She could feel his presence looming behind her, his mass blocking the light. The back of her neck and arms tingled, the hairs standing on end.
She was being stalked by a hoaf. She bit her lower lip, smothering a nervous giggle.
“I saw one of those once,” he said near her ear, the rich vibrations of his voice sending a shiver down her neck despite the nasal overtones. He sounded like he had a cold.
“One of what?” She turned slightly and looked up at him, breathing in a scent of clean minerals, like an ocean beach.
He chuckled, his smile showing white teeth. “One of those.” He pointed at the photo in front of which she was standing: a small bright green snake coiled on a branch.
Angelica grimaced. “Oh. Ugh. Snakes creep me out.”
“Is that why you were staring at it so hard?”
She hadn’t even looked at the photo; her mind had been too busy drawing the hoaf. She murmured a noncommittal noise.
“It’s a green parrot snake, and they’re even more beautiful in real life. There’s something about their color that almost glows, even in the rainforest.”
“Yellow.”
“What?”
“The snake is greenish-yellow; the human eye reads yellow as light. That’s why it looks like it glows, compared to the other greens. But a glowing snake is still a snake.” She shuddered and moved to the next photo, this one of a butterfly.
The hoaf followed. “So are you just a little afraid of snakes, or phobia-afraid of snakes?”
Angelica shrugged a shoulder. “My brother once put a garter snake in bed with me while I was sleeping.” She glanced at the hoaf. “It was an experience that stayed with me.”
He grinned. “Cheeky bastard! Wish I’d thought of that, when I was a kid.” He thrust his forearm toward her, and pointed at two pale scars amidst the tanned skin and bleached arm hair. “Sea krait, a type of water snake. They dive underwater and go fishing. You should see it, hundreds of them undulating through the water together, hunting,” he said, contorting his arms in serpentine movements.
“I can picture it,” Angelica said, feeling queasy as her head filled with the image of hundreds of long, thick snakes twisting through clear blue water like huge parasitic worms. “Too well.” Sometimes a strong visual imagination could be a curse.
“The snake left its teeth in my arm, but not enough venom to do more than make me puke.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t stop me from liking little green parrot snakes, though. I’m Tom, Tom Haggerty,” he added, sticking out his hand.
Her natural instinct toward politeness had her putting her fine-boned hand into his rough, warm paw. �
�Angelica Sequiera.”
“Angel,” he said softly.
“Angelica,” she corrected.
“Good to meet you, Angelica.” He held her hand gently in his own, as if aware of how easily he might bruise it. His eyes looked into hers as if seeking the answer to a question, and for a moment Angelica lost herself in that brilliant blue gaze, forgetting even that his mouth was open so he could breathe.
“You’re not getting your butt lipo’ed, are you?” he asked.
Angelica grunted in protest and jerked her hand out of his. At the same moment, the nurse popped out of a doorway, clipboard in hand. “Angelica?” she called.
“Here!” Angelica grabbed her bag and fled into the relative safety of the medical rooms.
“Are you ready to say good-bye to those acne scars?” Dr. Velazquez asked cheerily as he came into the procedure room. His scrubs couldn’t hide the elegance of his slender frame or diminish the grace of his movements. His eyebrows arched devilishly under glossy black hair parted on the side, and his dark eyes flashed with energy and intelligence.
“Muhhh… Yeshhh,” Angelica said, dimly appalled at the slur in her voice. In prepping her for the procedure, the nurse had given her a sedative to calm her overblown anxieties.
“Good, good! And it is such a kindness of your body to allow us to suck that unwanted pocket of fat from beneath your chin,” he said, touching the hated second chin with the tips of two long fingers, “and re-inject it into your scars, where it can do some good.”
A burning tingle of embarrassment fought through the sedative. “Yeshhh.” Dr. Velazquez was so handsome, she was self-conscious in his presence even when he wasn’t studying her every physical flaw and suggesting improvements.
The nurse lowered the back of Angelica’s dentist-like chair until she was looking up at the ceiling and the photographic mural of Costa Rica’s jungle that had been affixed there. Dr. Velazquez was from Costa Rica originally, and the nurse who’d prepped her had explained that all the plants and animals depicted in photographs on the medical office walls were of native animals. Dr. Velazquez donated a percentage of his profits to rain forest conservation.
