Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  He knew who she was referring to. He used Paul in the field on occasion. He knew they both did. That wasn’t what had prompted his quizzical look. He was surprised at her question.

  “Why d’you ask?”

  She shrugged, suddenly feeling self-conscious. She shouldn’t have asked. “Curious.”

  Personal questions always made him leery. But this one was harmless enough.

  “Yeah, I was. For about two years. Maybe three,” he speculated vaguely. He looked at her before beginning to eat. “I forget.”

  Amanda had a feeling that Pierce didn’t forget so much as he wanted to blot the whole thing from his mind. She saw the rigid set of his jaw. Common sense told her to drop it. But he had probed her. Turnabout was only fair play. “What happened?”

  He didn’t look at her. “I wasn’t meant for marriage. It’s as simple as that.”

  Paul had given her no details. She pictured a bewildered young woman who had bought more than she bargained for by marrying Pierce. Amanda had only herself and Jeff to go on.

  “Broke her heart?”

  His eyes were cold when he looked at her. Though he squelched it quickly, one bitter memory had managed to get through: Marsha, her long hair spilling about her nude breasts, sitting up in bed and mocking him with her string of lovers.

  “If I did, she was too busy screwing around to notice.”

  The flash of pain she saw in his eyes was genuine, even though his response was flippant. She knew how much being betrayed could hurt. “I’m sorry.”

  He frowned and took a last forkful. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Was he as hard as he let on? Maybe she was reading too much of herself into him. “You don’t look any the worse for wear.”

  Pierce pushed back his plate, his appetite suddenly gone. “People generally cover their scars, Mandy.”

  She didn’t know if this was just a ploy to make her soften toward him or not. She only knew that it was succeeding.

  Silence hung between them, thick and awkward. It was broken by a jubilant shout. The next moment, Christopher, dressed in yellow pajamas, came dashing into the room.

  “’Lo, Mommy!”

  Amanda got off her stool quickly and threw her arms around the boy. She let his hug warm her as it always did. ‘”Lo, yourself.”

  Her face softened when she looked at her son, Pierce thought. For just the barest of moments, he found himself envying a two-year-old.

  Releasing his death grip on his mother’s neck, Christopher turned his attention toward Pierce. Green eyes the same shade as his mother’s flickered over the tall man as recognition set in. Christopher’s face split into a huge grin. He grabbed hold of Pierce’s jeans and scrambled up his leg as if Pierce were a piece of furniture there for his exclusive use.

  ‘”Lo, man.”

  Pierce eased the child onto the stool next to him. “Pierce,” he coached. “My name is Pierce. Can you say Pierce?” He gave Amanda a look that warned her not to laugh. “God, I feel like Mr. Rogers.”

  Christopher looked as if he was trying to figure out how to fit his mouth around the name. ‘”Eese,” he declared triumphantly.

  Close enough, Pierce thought. “’Eese it is, sport. Hungry?”

  Christopher nodded his head vigorously.

  Pierce looked over Christopher’s head at Amanda. “Looks like you’ve got another customer, Mandy. Good thing I brought a full carton.”

  “Good thing,” she mimicked.

  Pierce’s grin seemed to say that he could read her mind. “Put a little feeling into it next time,” he said.

  Amanda watched the way Pierce let Christopher patiently explore the hair on his chest. Suppressing a smile, she tried not to make more of the scene than there was. But she couldn’t escape the fact that she liked what she saw. Or that it created a warm feeling within her.

  She cleaned off the pan briskly, then set it on the burner once again.

  “Breakfast coming up.” Two more eggs found their way into the pan. She scrambled them.

  While the eggs cooked, she took out the orange juice and poured a little for Christopher.

  Pierce watched as Christopher grasped the glass in both hands. Only part of the liquid made it into his mouth. The rest of the light orange stream decorated his face and the front of his pajamas.

  “Where’s my fan club?” Pierce nodded toward the doorway, half expecting to see the round-faced woman peering at him shyly.

  Amanda looked at her watch. It was a little after seven. Carla was usually up by now. “Carla’s still fighting off a sinus attack. Maybe she thinks she can sleep it off.”

  “Just as well.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped the orange juice from Christopher’s cheeks.

  Amanda caught the action out of the corner of her eye and a little more of her resolve cracked. She didn’t know why seeing him wipe her son’s face should make her feel closer to Pierce, but it did, even though she knew there was absolutely no future for this sort of feeling.

  She was only asking for trouble.

  She sighed inwardly. It seemed she was doing a lot of that lately.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  The sun streamed in through the restaurant window, highlighting the table where Amanda sat across from Carla. Christopher sat next to her, swinging his legs to and fro beneath the table, oblivious to the conversation. For once, he wasn’t the center of Amanda’s attention. Carla was.

  “Carla, you just can’t leave like this. Christopher and I depend on you.” She reached across the table to squeeze the woman’s hand.

  It was true. She did depend on Carla. More than that—she’d be lost without her. Amanda knew how difficult it was to find a competent nanny, especially for someone as energetic and exhausting as Christopher. Amanda desperately cast about for a way to persuade Carla to remain in Dallas.

  She had been aware that the young woman’s homesickness was getting worse, but she hadn’t thought it was getting to the point where Carla would just quit and return to New Mexico. After all, Carla had become almost part of the family.

  Carla stared down at her plate, her face set stubbornly.

  Amanda felt bone-tired. It hadn’t been a good week, by any stretch of the imagination.

  Grimsley was more intent than ever on getting rid of her. Though she and Ryan Richards were co-anchors, Ryan was suddenly being given the bulk of the copy to read. Amanda took the snub with dignity, hoping to ride it out. But the situation was getting worse and she knew that she was quickly heading for a showdown with the station manager.

  But if she was heading for a confrontation with Grimsley, Amanda had absolutely no idea where she was heading with Pierce. Undoubtedly nowhere.

  Right now, Pierce wasn’t even around to give her a clue. She had deliberately avoided him for a week after they’d slept together. And then the beginning of this week had seen a possible coup in one of the eastern European countries that kept forming and re-forming. Shorthanded because of a flu epidemic, the station manager had sent Pierce to cover the story. That left Amanda with some breathing space, and far too much time to think and feel.

  And if that wasn’t enough, there was Whitney. He was to be indicted soon on charges of fraud and stock manipulation. She’d done the story herself. Amanda had been to see him twice, offering to do what she could. But it was her father now who would do Whitney the most good.

  She didn’t seem to be doing much good at anything lately.

  In an attempt to make Carla change her mind, Amanda had invited the young woman out to talk over their problem in a restaurant that specialized in authentic Mexican cuisine.

  It had only made Carla more homesick.

  Christopher squirmed next to her. His attention was entirely focused on his lunch. He wasn’t eating it, he was squeezing it. Beneath his small fingers, refried beans were oozing out of the child-sized tortilla on his plate in both directions.

  Amanda refrained from reprimanding her son. It would only call attention to the negative s
ide of Carla’s duties.

  Amanda sighed. “Carla, what can I do to make you reconsider?”

  The wide shoulders lifted and fell helplessly. “I’m lonely,” she said. “I miss my family. There is no one here for me besides the two of you.” She bit her lip helplessly. “I haven’t met anyone.”

  By anyone, Amanda knew that Carla meant a man. But it was hard to meet people when she was busy with Christopher most of the day and closeted herself with tapes of soap operas during the evenings.

  Amanda tried to remember what it was like to be twenty. It seemed an eternity ago, instead of just eight short years. There was a world of difference between her approach to life and Carla’s. Carla never went out to seize what she wanted; she waited meekly for it to come to her.

  “Maybe if you joined a health club, or took a course at night, or—“

  “No.” Carla shook her head. “My mind is made up. I spoke to Eduardo.”

  Eduardo was her oldest brother and the head of the family in Taos. Amanda knew he had never liked the idea of Carla moving out of the state to begin with. It had been Carla’s sense of romance that had prompted her to go against his wishes in the first place. And now her homesickness was forcing her to return.

  “He will be coining for me at the end of the week.”

  A week? Amanda knew she would never find anyone to replace Carla in that short amount of time. Besides, she genuinely liked Carla. “I—“

  Amanda’s next words were cut off by the sound of an alarm suddenly going off. The clatter drowned out the conversation. Carla looked around for the source. It was coming from outside.

  “What is it?” Carla shouted.

  Amanda had one restraining hand on Christopher. He was ready to dash out and investigate things for himself. “It sounds like a police alarm.”

  “That’s not a siren,” Carla protested.

  “No, I mean the kind that goes off when there’s a robbery in progress.”

  Through the window she could see people converging before the liquor store across the street. Amanda was already on her feet. For the time being, Carla and her problems were going to have to wait.

  “Wait here,” Amanda said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Shifting in the booth so that she was now next to Christopher, Carla watched through the window as Amanda joined the swelling crowd on the street.

  Hurrying across two lanes of traffic that were already beginning to snarl, Amanda stopped short of the liquor store. She saw movement inside, but it was difficult to make out just who was in there and what was going on.

  She turned to the person closest to her, a gnarled-looking old man in a Stetson. His entire middle was defined by a huge silver belt buckle. “What’s going on?”

  He didn’t even turn to look at her. His eyes squinted as they seemed to bore through the window of the liquor store.

  “Looks like a robbery.” The wonder of seeing a drama unfold a few feet away was mirrored in his weather-beaten face.

  “I seen him go in,” the woman behind Amanda volunteered, “some tall, skinny kid with a big gun, like in that drug movie that’s playing.”

  Amanda turned to look at the woman. She truly doubted the youth was brandishing a gun as he entered, but Amanda knew that people’s imaginations and their need to be important tended to make them flesh out details. “Was he alone?”

  The woman’s entire face seemed to shrug. “I didn’t see nobody else.”

  Amanda moved closer for a better look into the store. She thought she could make out a tall, thin figure waving something around. Most likely a gun. Besides the person behind the counter, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the store.

  “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  The barely restrained hysteria in the stranger’s voice made Amanda turn around. She saw a tall, blond man clawing his way through the crowd. He was clutching a bag with a grease spot on the side of it. His eyes, huge with terror, were fixed on the store.

  “Oh my God. Doris! That’s my wife.” He pointed toward the liquor store with the bag. “My wife’s in there,” he cried out to no one in particular.

  Several people in the crowd murmured sympathetically, others craned for a better view.

  Amanda made her way over to him. She had to lay her hand on his arm to get his attention.

  “Are you the owner of the store?”

  “Yes, yes, I just went out to get us some lunch. She wanted roast beef.” His Adam’s apple moved jerkily as he swallowed. “I just left her alone for ten minutes. Just ten damn minutes.” He looked at Amanda, seeing her for the first time. “How could this have happened? This is a nice neighborhood.”

  Sympathy brimmed within her. “Things happen in nice neighborhoods all the time. There’re no fences around to protect you.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He was staring at the store again, clutching the bag with both hands, squeezing it without even realizing that he was still holding on to it.

  Amanda hurried back across the street to the restaurant. Carla was on her feet, holding Christopher’s hand as she stood by the entrance.

  “What’s going on?” Her face, so lifeless only minutes before, was glowing with excitement.

  “It’s a robbery. The owner’s wife’s inside. She must have tripped off the alarm and the gunman panicked. It looks as if he’s holding her hostage.”

  Amanda took the purse that Carla had been holding for her and rummaged inside for a pad and pen. Finding both, she slung the bag’s strap over her shoulder.

  “Here.” Amanda quickly wrote down the phone number to the news station. “I want you to call this number.” She tore off the sheet and pushed it into Carla’s hand. “Ask for Paul. Tell him to get out here as fast as he can with his camera.”

  Carla stared at the paper she was holding. “Paul?” she echoed.

  “Yes, Paul. Paul Rodriguez. Tell him we’ve got a robbery in progress.” She heard the siren abruptly stop and glanced automatically over her shoulder. But nothing appeared to have changed, except that there were more people in the street. “Got that?”

  Carla nodded.

  Amanda looked down at her son. The boy’s eyes were animated as the noise and excitement spurred him on. “And don’t lose Christopher.”

  Carla’s hand tightened around the boy’s. “Don’t worry.”

  “Mommy?” Christopher’s voice sounded a little uncertain as he looked up at her.

  He was always getting lost in the shuffle, she thought with a pang of guilt. She dropped to her knees for a moment. “Mommy’s got a story to do, sweetheart,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t understand. But this was who and what she was, and eventually he would understand that. “Stay with Carla.” Kissing him, she rose and hurried back outside.

  By now, the street was mobbed. Amanda saw the tall store owner and fought her way over to him. She tugged on his sleeve to get his attention. “Mr.—?”

  He looked at her, his eyes dazed, like a man suddenly waking up to find himself in the middle of a war. “Anselmo.” He mumbled his name as if it were a strange word. As if nothing fit anymore, nothing was real. He stared at the store helplessly. “Diego Anselmo. I only left her for a minute.”

  “I know you did,” Amanda said soothingly. “It’ll be all right.” She hoped it sounded as if she believed what she said. She’d seen too many things go wrong to be overly optimistic.

  He heard her tone, but not her words. Everything was becoming blurred to him. “She’s pregnant,” he sobbed. “Nine months. It’s our first. Oh God, what if—?”

  His bewildered cry was lost as a siren wailed. But Amanda didn’t have to hear him. She knew what he was thinking. What if the situation caused her to go into premature labor?

  A squad car approached, its noise cutting though the thick layers of people. They parted on both sides of the vehicle.

  Amanda took the store owner’s arm and pulled him in her wake as she made her way over to the squad car.

  The first off
icer out of the vehicle was a heavyset, dark-haired man in his early fifties. His puffy face was scarred with pockmarks from his youth and creased with lines. There was a small, jagged scar just above his left eye.

  He scanned the street scene with eyes that were devoid of judgment, of feeling.

  “Anyone see what went on?” He threw his question out into the mob. A dozen voices began to answer at once.

  Amanda elbowed her way forward. Her voice rose above the others, clear and sure. “I’m Amanda Foster with K-DAL News.”

  The policeman’s eyes swept over her. There was no recognition. If anything, there was a trace of dislike.

  Another person who thought the news media were vultures, she thought, not fully blaming him.

  “Never watch the stuff. I’ve got to live it eight hours a day. That’s enough.”

  She wasn’t about to argue with him. She urged the store keeper forward.

  “Mr. Anselmo owns the liquor store. He stepped out to buy lunch for himself and his wife.” Amanda nodded toward the store. “She’s inside. While he was gone, someone entered the store and tried to rob her.” She glanced toward the store. “He’s still in there.”

  More policemen were arriving on the scene. Amanda saw them bringing sawhorses to barricade off the area.

  “Just one guy?” the policeman asked Amanda.

  “That’s what I heard.” The policeman began to walk to the front of the mob. Amanda hurried after him. “I caught a glimpse of him by the window. He looks like a kid.”

  A shot rang out from the store, shattering part of the front window. People in the crowd screamed and scrambled to get out of the way.

  The policeman scowled, pushing Amanda roughly back behind him. “A kid with a gun.”

  The store owner seemed to come to life at the sound of the gunfire. “Doris!!” Screaming her name over and over, Anselmo ran toward the store.

  A policeman tackled him, bringing him down just as another shot rang out.