She turned from her scrutiny of the wall. “Sell what?” Esme busied herself pushing a vase on Constance’s recovered-wood coffee table; every spare minute she seemed to be arranging and rearranging the little oddities and baubles.
“Everything,” he said, waving at the room in general. “We could partner with the galleries and talaveras, let our guests take a piece of Casa Constance home with them.”
Her eyes widened and her hand clutched a small wooden figurine. “We can’t sell these things.”
Santiago warmed to the idea even as a piece of him agreed with Esme. “Everything has a price and with the added benefit that there is always something new to see at Casa.”
“I am not turning my home into a consignment shop!”
“This isn’t your home, it is your business. Don’t think of this as a consignment shop, but a living, breathing gallery for local artisans and craftsmen. Many chains offer their linens or pillows for sale, we’ll take that one step further.” Why was he pushing this, pushing her? In just a few weeks the villa would be his to do with as he pleased. Why not let her live in her little dream world a little bit longer?
Because with every minute you’re here you’re buying in to her little dream world.
The phone rang, interrupting them. Santiago froze but didn’t reach for it. Esme folded her arms over her chest and waited. Another ring. Another interminable silence in which Santiago felt frozen to the high chair behind the desk. Another ring.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“We aren’t officially open until tomorrow, when the ad crew arrives. Anything else can wait.”
Another ring.
“Haven’t you kept her waiting long enough, Saint?”
The answering machine picked up, and then a short silence.
“Santiago?” Magdalena’s voice, wobbly, came through and Santiago’s heart clenched. And then a whisper, “Pequeño.” And a bit louder. “I wanted to say hello, my Santiago. I hope we can talk soon.” The same message he had heard every day since returning to Vallarta. The phone clicked off and Santiago deleted the message before the little boy inside him could replay it again and again.
“As I was saying,” he began, wishing Esme would stop looking at him like he’d grown two heads, “if some of the smaller things are for sale, it would allow the guests to take a piece of vacation home with them.”
“A memory.” Esme’s voice was flat.
“Exactly.”
“But you don’t believe in memories, in looking back. Why would you care if our guests do?”
“Because looking back will make them want to return for another stay.” Did he have to state the obvious every time they disagreed?
“Fine. We’ll start by pricing the pieces in your rooms. Since you’ve mostly moved in to the master suite, those three rooms will offer more guest space.”
“But there are no—”
But Esme was gone. Stomping up the stairs in her strappy, platform sandals, the hem of another sundress flirting with the backs of her thighs. It was much easier to discount Esme’s opinion when she was buttoned up behind business suits. In the flirty sundresses she’d taken to wearing he found himself wanting to coddle her. To tell her she could do anything she wanted, including keeping Casa Constance. She didn’t look back from the stairs. Santiago had no choice but to follow.
*
Esme drew in a startled breath as the door to her old rooms banged against the newly painted wall. Nothing out of place. The linens lay crisply against the bed, the dresser held none of the flotsam that normal people accumulated. No watches, no rings, no keys. Every drawer closed. Several boxes of new board shorts lined one wall. She opened the closet door hoping at least this area looked normal. But, no. Shirts and suits were arranged by color, shoes laid out according to style, belts hung from one hanger, ties from another.
Everywhere she looked Esme saw familiar pieces of furniture in an unfamiliar landscape. In the corner, where she used to stack her favorite books, the chair seemed lonely. There was no forgotten water glass on the bedside table, no sunglasses on the dresser top. She'd been so angry when she stormed in a few days ago she didn't notice, but even the television remote was arranged at a perfect angle to the flat-screen on the wall.
Who lived like this?
Okay, fine, he’d been spending most of his time in her bedroom, but before then he’d lived here. For a few months he’d been here and hadn’t accumulated anything? Where were his trophies? Where was his wallet?
She turned to him, standing there as if oblivious to her turmoil, in yet another ancient pair of board shorts with a faded green tee practically painted over his six-pack. Who was this person she’d been sleeping with? Dreaming about? Making plans around?
How could she make a man who held on to nothing see that he needed her?
“Where are your things?”
Santiago brushed by her to move the remote closer to the television. “In the drawers. We don’t all need reminders of every event in our lives scattered around the place we live.”
“And because you don’t want reminders of your past you don’t think I should have any, either?”
“What are these things to you, Esmerelda? You picked out every piece on a spur of the moment shopping trip. They don’t represent anything.” He let out a sigh. “I know you love this place, but you can’t let it own you.”
“I’m not.” Esme straightened her back and folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t. I may have bought most of these things at random, but I like them. Every single piece. I want them to be part of the villa for a long time. Why is that a bad thing in your eyes?” She didn’t say that they were now reminders of a day spent with him. Watching him, pretending with him, flirting. Taking her first sky-dive.
“You are too attached to see things clearly.”
“And you aren’t attached enough.” The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “You think I’m not thinking clearly because I want this place to feel like a home instead of a mausoleum?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. You’ve done everything you can to turn this place into your version of one. All white walls, white furniture—”
“You made the all-white decision.”
Esme ignored his interruption. “No decoration. No feeling. Just what are you trying to create here?”
“I’m not saying you haven’t done a good job decorating the rooms, Esme.” He reached for her but Esme backed away. “All I meant is that by selling some of the smaller pieces we will have a constant influx of new, bright pieces to interest people.”
“How can I believe you when you’re more attached to your ratty old board shorts than you are to the villa?”
He looked at his clothes and back to her. “What do my shorts have to do with anything?”
“They have everything to do with everything. You wear board shorts that are falling apart when you have boxes of new ones lining the walls. You have the remote control lined up perfectly with the television, your suits arranged by color. Nothing is out of place.” She flung her hand out. “Your wallet isn’t even sitting on the dresser. You don’t live here. You exist here.”
His mouth twisted to the side but he didn’t contradict her and Esme’s heart broke a little at his distance.
“I don’t live anywhere, Esmerelda. I don’t get attached. I don’t collect chechere. I told you that already. But if it makes her feel better, here.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled his wallet out, and tossed it on the dresser. “Now there’s a piece of me randomly lying on your furniture. Am I living yet?”
“No,” she whispered, running her hands over her chilled arms. He didn’t hear her, he was already gone. Back to his ocean. Back to wherever he could escape any kind of pull on his life, and here she was, picking up the pieces.
Esme opened the middle drawer and dropped the cool, black wallet inside. The sides flapped against cherry wood, the worn corner of a photo peek
ing out from behind the leather. Hands shaking, she lifted the cover. The candid picture, of Santiago laughing with Magdalena, made her breath catch. He couldn’t be more than five or six, she decided. Couldn’t know that his mother would become immobilized by fear in just a few short years. In the picture, they were a perfect unit. Magdalena’s eyes crinkled at the corners. She could almost hear the laughter between them as Santiago’s small hands reached toward his mother’s nose. Esme sniffled and shook herself. She wouldn’t cry.
Not for the little boy in the picture. Not for his mother.
Not for herself.
Realizing that Santiago could come back, she pushed the picture back inside. Her fingers pricked another corner. Esme told herself not to look. This man who was so alone he didn’t even move the remote control kept pictures. How could she not know what other images he kept close to him?
She shouldn’t have looked. Esme caught her breath and swallowed. Hard. The other picture was of her. Kneeling over the tide pools on the other side of the beach, pointing inside one. Santiago, probably sixteen, leaned over her shoulder, looking inside. Heart pounding, Esme reached into the wallet again, but there were no more pictures. Just some money and credit cards. Guiltily, she replaced the pictures and then closed the drawer, putting the wallet back on top of the dresser.
Esme crossed to the terrace, opened the doors and looked back at the room that was once her favorite place in the world. Her posters no longer hung on the wall and the canopy bed was in storage in the attic, but she remembered where every loose floorboard lay. Slowly, she walked up the outer stairs to the master suite and sat heavily on the lounge to stare out at the bay. A lone figure sitting on a surfboard in the water below caught her eye. He sat perfectly still in a brilliantly white stretch of water as the sun set into the Pacific.
Santiago. Alone, just as he said he wanted.
The pictures didn’t mean anything. They were only mementos. She had boxes full of the same kind of stuff in the closet, upstairs in the attic. Only his mementos were things he said he didn’t want. No, she couldn’t go there again. She couldn’t go back to the innocent girl from his picture, the girl who believed his keeping a picture meant they were destined to be together. She had to move forward so that the memory of these few weeks would dull as the memories of her parents’ deaths had dulled.
Esme sighed. She could no more save Santiago from his demons than she could go back to living in her old room. Not even after Santiago left and, pictures or not, he would leave. She had to remember that.
She had to keep moving forward and she couldn’t do that by avoiding the man on the beach.
She waited until Santiago came inside and followed him into the kitchen, standing over the stainless sink eating a cold ham sandwich and drinking a Corona.
“Truce?”
“I didn’t realize we were fighting,” he said, that dark chocolate voice tickling up her spine.
“So you’ve been staring out to sea for the past hour because you’re, what, happy?”
He took another bite of sandwich and didn’t answer.
“Look, I can’t always be wrong and you can’t always be right. I don’t want to turn this place into a galleria. You don’t want it to look too homey. We’re both right. Have you really looked at what we’ve done these last few days?” She waved her arms as if the motion would allow him to see through the walls. “In a couple of days we’ve made a beautiful inn that will be comfortable and inviting but still fulfill the wants of our hopefully rich-and-famous guests.”
“I still think an in-resort store is a good addition.”
Esme refused to rise to the bait. “Fine. We’ll turn the second sitting room into a place for artists to display a few select pieces. Nothing mass-produced. Everything hand-made.”
“Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine filled with helpful ideas.”
She wouldn’t fight with him just so he would feel more comfortable, she vowed. “I like to think of it as compromise. You may only be the manager here for a few more weeks, but if we can agree on the small things, working together with a staff shouldn’t be hard at all.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
The man was infuriating. He didn’t want to talk? Fine. But he didn’t have to totally close down on her. Before she could do something stupid like apologizing for her personal feelings, Esme turned to the kitchen door. “Santiago, rinse out the sink when you’re done. And that big, silver door near your knee? That’s the trash compactor. Put the bottle inside, don’t leave it on the counter.”
*
Esme stood on a five-by-five platform one hundred feet in the air and closed her eyes. Two deep breaths in and she opened them, determined not to look down. She focused on a bunch of bananas in the top of a nearby tree and almost forgot she would soon be hurtling down the zipline to the jungle floor below. Despite not talking to her last night and sleeping in his own room for the first night in nearly a week, Santiago insisted she continue her Adventure Training. She could have objected, after all, shutting himself off from her wasn’t exactly living up to his end of their “teamwork” bargain. Only she didn’t want to.
She didn’t want Santiago closed off and uncommunicative. Besides, light and easy would help to protect her heart, too. Probably. Okay, not at all. Not when the sight of him this morning had her heart ready to jump from her chest, when her first impulse was to jump into his arms and beg him not to leave.
Cursing her idiotic heart, Esme smiled at Santiago lounging in one corner, harness around his hips. She sat back in her own harness and, satisfied that it wouldn’t break open once she cleared the platform, gripped the hand-hold.
Two workers crowded the platform and a crowd of zipliners were queuing up far below them, but Esme couldn’t move. And then Santiago was beside her, whispering in her ear.
“I’ll be right behind you, Esme.” He thought she was afraid of falling to the hard ground below? Esme held back a sarcastic chuckle. Hardly. She was afraid of falling flat at his feet and begging him to stay in Puerto Vallarta to run the villa with her.
Ridiculous. Carrying her picture in his wallet only meant he had fond memories of her. It didn’t mean he wanted to stay with her for the rest of his life. She only wished it did.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, but the words sounded like a lie to her own ears.
“Then off you go.” With a light push against her hips, Santiago started Esmerelda toward the trees.
Esme wanted to close her eyes against the foliage rushing toward her but she couldn’t. Heart pounding, she leaned back in the harness to speed the trip to the bottom. She spotted a few colorful birds in the trees and leaned forward, wanting the trip to last a little longer. She’d never felt anything like this. Not skydiving, not snorkling. She was part of the trees, part of the wildness filling this area of the coast. The angle of the line changed and her harness took off even faster until her hair blew out behind her and she had to squint against the wind in her face.
Reaching out with one hand, she slapped at a few leaves, giggling at the tickle they left against her palm. She could do this. She could run the villa on her own. Constance would be home soon and she would love the changes to the place.
Esme would survive without Santiago once he left. And until then, she would remember this crazy ride down the zipline. Too fast, too much to look at. Too much to want.
Too little time to enjoy it.
*
Twenty minutes later, lying on one of Santiago’s boards as the gentle waving of the bay rose and fell around her, Esme decided he was one hundred percent right. After the crazy free-falling action of ziplining, this was the perfect way to relax. Added bonus: there was no way she could fall off these gentle waves. She could just float, for hours and hours and—
Santiago flicked a handful of water at her and Esme coughed when she inhaled a few drops.
“What was that for?”
“No sleeping on a surfboard. Dangerous.” Sometime between coffee in the kitche
n, waiting on the zipline platform and now, Santiago had relaxed. Or maybe she had. Esme wasn’t certain which. But things were no longer tense between them. There were no words waiting to be said, no apologies to make. She turned her head to look at him and noticed that at some point he had flipped from his back onto his stomach. “Flip over. Lesson number one: paddling.”
Esme groaned. “Can’t lesson one be napping on a hot afternoon with the water all around me?”
“Not unless you want to wind up halfway to Hawaii by sundown. Then you would really need to paddle. So, flip.” He waited, watching her expectantly until Esme rolled onto her stomach, desperately holding the sides of the board as her small movements rocked it from side to side. Santiago watched her closely until her board lay quietly in the water again.
Esme felt a little silly. There was no way she could surf, not even in these gentle waters, but Santiago’s eyes gleamed excitement in the sun. “Ready, Surf Master.”
He grinned. “Okay, in the bay you can’t surf, the waves aren’t powerful enough. You could body surf a little on a rough day, closer in to shore, but not real surfing. That makes this place ideal for an initial lesson. What you want to do is paddle your arms like oars. Left arm, right arm, left arm, right arm,” he said, making dragging motions with his arms through the water
Esme tried it and was surprised at how fast she managed to move the board over one crest and down the next. Over and over.
“Harder on your right, you want to paddle straight not in a circle,” Santiago said and Esme realized she was now parallel to the shore instead of perpendicular.
She straightened the board, took a few more strokes, and then stopped paddling as Santiago caught up with her. “Piece of cake. Next lesson, and then I want my bath.”
He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Patience, pequeña, patience. Once you’re paddling on a big wave you just ride it up to the top, and as you come over the crest you pop—” he jumped in one fluid motion, standing on the board in the rolling water as if he stood on a giant cruise ship instead of a slim piece of fiberglass “—up and stand. Balance. When the board moves, you move. Just keep your feet spread apart, knees bent and your hips directly under your shoulders. No problem.” He glanced at the sky. The sun painted orange and pink streaks across the horizon behind them. “Let’s paddle back. Gloriana’s dinner won’t wait forever and we need to walk through the villa before the guests arrive in the morning.”
The Saint's Devilish Deal Page 11
