“Whatever.”
They walked across the neglected yard in silence and settled on the sealed buckets that contained plaster repair mix. Marissa, straight as a Victorian lady, waited for Crystal to look up. “I really think this is in your court, kiddo.”
“She caught me smoking,” Crystal said, and dropped her face into her hands, hiding behind her yards of hair.
“Smoking?” He sat up, shocked in spite of himself. “Crystal!”
“See?” Crystal flung away her hair, threw out her hands. “That’s what I mean. That shock thing you do. I hate it.”
He felt like he’d been kicked, and before he spoke, he took a minute to breathe deeply, in and out, and tell himself that whatever Crystal did was just a symptom of her anger. He found himself touching a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a memento of his own days of anger. “Crystal,” he said quietly.
She looked at him finally, and there was so much misery in her expression that he reached out and took her hand. “Are you all right?”
Her fingers tightened around his convulsively. “Yeah.”
“Do you smoke a lot?”
“No. I did sometimes, back in Albuquerque, but not since I came here.”
“Why today?”
A shrug.
Marissa asked, “Do you want to get out of this school that badly?”
“No,” she said, aggrieved. And to Robert’s complete amazement, she started to cry again. “I don’t know why I did it. It could be bad for the baby! But there was this girl and I just asked her for one, like to prove something, I guess. And—” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “It was stupid. I know it was. But, Miss Pierce, I’ll do anything you want. Please?”
Robert let himself look at Marissa then, clenching his jaw to keep hope from showing on his face. The blouse made her eyes even bluer in her pale face, but it seemed like he could see goodness there. Not Rich Girl benevolence, but something real and honest.
And something more, too. In anyone else, he’d have named it street savvy, but he didn’t know how this woman, with her three-hundred-dollar shoes and that million-dollar cosmetic smell, would have picked up street smarts.
But the bright blue eyes narrowed, her lips tightened and she leaned forward. “Listen here, Crystal. You got me the minute you walked in that door, and I know I’m a soft touch where certain kids are concerned. Fifteen was the worst year of my life, and I bet you’re having an even more miserable time than I did, so I’m on your side in a way you aren’t going to find very often. But—” she leaned closer, elbows on one knee “—I’m also smarter than I look, and if you play me, you’ll lose me. Got it?”
Crystal, without a single atom of surprise about her—which was more than Robert could say—nodded. “I promise, Miss Pierce.”
“Good.” She looked at Robert. “Are you free to take her home?”
He hesitated, only a second. “Sure,” he said.
Marissa inclined her head, and he found himself snared in a strange way by the measuring expression in her eyes. “There was no right answer to that question. Why don’t you let me call Louise if you have to go to work? I know she won’t mind.”
“Who’s Louise?”
He shot Crystal a silencing glance, and considered it. Louise Forrest Chacon was famous—almost infamous—for her need to take care of not only her own children, but the children of the whole damned world. He had been the beneficiary of that loving attention more than once, the most memorable time being when he’d had to tell her that her son was in the hospital after falling down a cliff.
Something eased, all the tension and conflict he’d been feeling since they’d walked up, and he gave Marissa Pierce a smile. Rich Girl or not, she had something real that he liked a lot.
“Truth is,” he said, “I got connections to my boss. He won’t fire me. But maybe me and Crystal can take the afternoon and go for a visit.” He stood and held out his hand, only realizing, when it was fully extended and she couldn’t refuse without being rude, that it was covered with dust, making his dark skin look as if it had been plunged in flour.
But Marissa didn’t even hesitate. She smiled—a true, deep smile that went all the way to her beautiful eyes—and she put her small, neatly manicured hand into his.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
Robert knew, even in the few seconds that he allowed himself to want her, that it was impossible. She wasn’t just well-to-do, not like an officer’s wife or a doctor’s daughter—but bloody rich. He recognized the difference from his days in the army, when he’d occasionally been called to provide security for a diplomatic function. It didn’t matter what country the rich guests came from—an Arabian prince or a Brazilian rancher’s wife or a Japanese royal—the details of that kind of money were always the same.
Clean. Impossibly well-groomed. Hair that looked as if it had been cut one strand at a time. Skin that had been perfectly fed and tended since birth. Toenails as well manicured as fingernails, clothes that moved invisibly, perfectly, of fabrics so fine they’d last seventy years.
But most of all, it was the smell. A smell that filled his head now, a scent of cosmetics, a particular combination of notes from products he couldn’t even begin to imagine. Lipsticks and lotions and creams and shampoos that came in frosted glass containers to sit on marble sink-tops.
Never failed to get him, right in the libido, and it didn’t fail now. Halfway hating himself for the weakness, he gave himself three seconds to inhale it deeply, allowed two seconds more for the desire that came with it to roll down his spine.
Yeah, he was weak. And it was a particularly dismaying weakness, that he was almost invariably attracted to such women, though he’d never actually pursued one. Logically, a poor Indian who’d spent his life fighting for every damned thing he had, ought to hate women like that.
But “ought to” didn’t mean “did”. Above all things, know thyself. What Robert knew was that smell could rip his heart out if he let it, because in some ways it represented everything he’d ever dreamed of as a boy—comfort and privilege and cleanliness. For that eight-year-old he’d been, for the fifteen-year-old shivering in a doorway, he savored the sense of her hand, her smell, her clean, orderly life, then let her go.
“Come on, Crystal.”
She stood up and stopped in front of Marissa. “Thank you, Miss Pierce,” she said with sincerity. She took a breath and said, “You know that thing you asked about?”
“Thing?” Marissa frowned a little, then remembered. “Oh, yes. Your passion?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you if you want.”
“Please.”
“Movies,” she said, and that was all. She turned and started walking toward Robert’s truck.
Robert lifted his head and grinned at Marissa
