Plain Return (The Plain Fame Series Book 4) (11 page)

He stood there waiting until Anna left.

“Alejandro,” Amanda insisted. “What’s wrong?”

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked toward her. Even dressed in his jeans and boots, he still managed to look sophisticated and in complete control. The odor of the dairy barn lingered on his shirt and a piece of hay clung to the fabric. “I fear I have some bad news,” he said, enunciating each word.

“I imagine so, from the expression on your face.” She reached out to brush the hay from his shoulder, her fingers lingering there for just a moment. He remained so serious and disturbed that she felt panic set in. “What is it? It’s nothing to do with your mother or the tour, is it?”

“The media.”

Just those two words.

The media? The feeling of panic did not leave as Amanda worried that yet another story about them had been reported in the tabloids. What on earth could it be this time? she wondered. The last tabloid story had nearly destroyed their faith in their marriage. Luckily, they had learned an important lesson: question everything printed in the media. Amanda braced herself for whatever he was about to tell her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We can get through it, Alejandro.”

It seemed to take a few seconds for him to realize what she had meant. “No, that’s not it,” he reassured her. “When I say it’s the media, I mean they are here.”

She felt as if her heart hurt. Here? In Lancaster? Already? Why couldn’t the reporters leave them alone, just for a few short days? This was her time to reconnect with her family, something that was proving to be much more difficult than she had expected. Now, if the paparazzi invaded the farm, it would only make things worse.

“Oh, I see.”

He stood before her as if waiting for her to continue speaking, but she had nothing else to say.

To her surprise, he slipped his hand out of his pocket and extended it toward her, touching his fingers to the back of her neck while his thumb caressed her cheek. “You are so beautiful, Princesa,” he murmured. She shut her eyes and let herself enjoy his uninterrupted attention. “What have I done to deserve someone as good as you?” He took one step forward and pulled her toward him so that her cheek was pressed against his chest. “You tolerate so much with never a complaint. You are a strong woman, no?”

“With you by my side?” She looked up at him. “
Ja
, I am strong.”

He lowered his head and pressed his lips against hers, his arm tightening around her waist as he kissed her. “That is what I love about you, Amanda,” he whispered.

“That’s it?”

He gave a soft laugh. “One of many things.”

“Much better,” she teased.

“Now, we should go talk to your family,
sí
?” He took a step backward but still held her hand. “I imagine Jonas knows by now, but your mother will be out of sorts.”

No doubt, Amanda thought. By now, Lizzie should be used to the attention. The paparazzi respected the law enough to not step onto their property. Granted, it was not pleasant knowing that people were lingering in the road and that a police officer was overseeing their behavior and making sure that they obeyed the law. But the paparazzi’s presence didn’t disrupt anyone’s daily routine on the farm. At least, that was how Amanda viewed the situation.

“We aren’t staying so long, Alejandro,” Amanda commented as they walked through the dark room that connected the small
grossdaadihaus
with the main house. “I’m sure that a few days will be tolerable. Remember when I came home after Daed’s stroke? Even the bishop was tolerant,
ja
?”

Alejandro pressed his lips together but didn’t reply. She suspected that he was remembering how the bishop had come to the house with the tabloid magazine. Amanda tried to push away the memory of how embarrassed she had felt when her sister confessed that she’d seen at the main grocery store the magazine photos of Alejandro with that horrid Maria. Natural human curiosity led to a propensity for devouring gossip to which not even the Amish were immune. Still, Amanda had been surprised that such news had filtered through to Lititz, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t as if the Amish communities or their neighbors cared much for the world of show business.

In the sitting area of the kitchen, Elias sat in his wheelchair, staring out the windows at the fields. Amanda noticed him as soon as she opened the door and entered the room with Alejandro behind her. Elias glanced up, and Amanda thought she saw him smile at her, a brief sign of joyful recognition. But just as quickly as it had shown up, the sparkle disappeared and he turned his head back to stare at the barren fields that he wouldn’t be able to plow this year.

“Mamm, Anna.” Amanda spoke softly, so as not to disturb her mother as she sat at the table, sorting through fabric that she wanted cut up into four-inch squares. Anna was at the stove, heating up water to make some instant coffee, the mugs and the jar of coffee already on the counter. “Alejandro noticed that the photographers are back,” she said, sliding onto the bench at the table. She reached out and touched one of the squares. “Is this my old dress, Mamm?”

“
Ja
, it is.” Lizzie snipped at the fabric and another square fluttered down to the table. “Why don’t those horrid people just go away?”

Anna leaned her backside against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest, resting them on her expanding stomach. “They don’t seem to come onto the property, so I don’t quite see what’s of interest to them.” She gave a little laugh. “It isn’t as if the view from the road is so beautiful,
ja
?”

Amanda appreciated her sister’s comment.

Alejandro cleared his throat. “They will leave when we do, no doubt,” he said.

“No doubt,” Lizzie said through tight-pressed lips.

Without being asked, Amanda began to sort through the squares, putting like fabrics together in a neat pile. “They do go away,
ja
?”

It was Anna who responded with a chipper, “Oh
ja
, Amanda. They go away from the road—eventually. But they do seem to linger about the public areas.”

This was news. Amanda hadn’t been told this information. Out of all the letters she’d sent to the farm, only one had been answered, and the brevity of the message had been disappointing. Was this the reason why? Had they not wanted to burden her with the knowledge that the paparazzi never left Lititz? “I had no idea!” She turned to look at Alejandro. “Did you?”

A slight lifting of his shoulders answered her question.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Anna busied herself with making the coffee. “I reckon a body can get used to anything,” she said. Steaming water splashed against the sides of the mug in her hand. “Isn’t like there’s anything you can do about it,
ja
?” She put down the kettle. “Coffee for you two?”

Amanda ignored her sister’s question and stared at her mother. “What has the bishop said about this?” She imagined that the bishop didn’t need to see much more invasion of paparazzi within his church district in order to follow through on his threats to shun her parents.

“What’s to be said, Amanda?” Lizzie answered. She set down the scissors and pushed away the fabric as she accepted the coffee mug that Anna handed her. “When you leave, they do, too. For the most part.”

“It seems there’s always someone somewhere eager to steal a photo or two. We send Harvey to the store now,” Anna admitted. “He’s not as bothered by them, and they don’t seem as interested in him, anyway.”

Harvey. Of course. That was how Alejandro kept in touch with her family, how they had known when the car service was arriving from the airport and how, undoubtedly, her husband had known that the paparazzi were still lingering in Lancaster County. Yet he had filtered this information, keeping it to himself and not sharing it with her. What else didn’t he share with her? she wondered, feeling both hurt and angry at this deliberate exclusion on his part.

When she turned to look at him, she noticed that there was a distant look in his eyes as he met her gaze. He lifted an eyebrow, and she knew better than to ask him any further questions. Even if she asked him later, in the privacy of the
grossdaadihaus
, she doubted he would share with her the reasons he had chosen to keep that information to himself. She turned her head away and looked out the window, working hard to maintain her composure. Regardless of Anna’s false bravado, Amanda knew that even though the bishop had demonstrated a more compassionate side during her last trip to Lancaster, he certainly had to be unhappy.

No wonder Alejandro had scheduled such a short visit.

Once again, she found herself confronted with feelings and emotions that she was desperately trying to sort out. It certainly didn’t help that her mother was cutting one of her old Amish dresses into small squares. While Amanda knew that the squares would be used to make a quilt, it pained her to see how emotionless her mother appeared. To her mother, it was merely recycling an old dress. To Amanda, however, it felt like a symbolic gesture of her mother’s acceptance that her daughter was no longer part of the community: not because of shunning, bitterness, or even a fight, but because her departure was accepted as God’s will. Acceptance versus rejection, she wondered. Which one is worse?

She had been weaned away from her home of almost twenty-one years. She was not like Anna, who was all grown up, expecting her first
boppli,
and an integral part of the Beiler family. No. Amanda felt like an outsider.

Perhaps the worst part was that she felt as if she had not found a home of her own. The Englische often said that “home is where the heart is.” And while her heart was with Alejandro and he loved her back—of that she was sure and certain—she still wondered: Where was
home
? Was it the private jet, the yacht? Was it the fancy condo or the hotel rooms? Was home found in the few hours carved out here and there when she could finally be alone with her husband, in the wee hours of the night? No, none of that was home. So where was
home
?

“Freshly baked sugar cookies, anyone?” Anna said cheerfully, bringing a tray of the fragrant treats and placing it on the table.

That
was more like home, Amanda thought as she felt a deep sadness fill her as she realized that the vision of home she desired was one that she most likely would never have with Alejandro.

Chapter Ten

The Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, was a small airport. But despite this, crowds of people waited in the main area, their bodies pressed against one another as they watched through the doors for the arrival of their loved ones. Some held signs written in Spanish, and a few had their children with them.

While they waited to be escorted through customs, Amanda looked through the glass doors and saw a crush of people, most of them young women with long black hair and smooth tanned skin. When they saw Viper walk with Amanda through the double doors, two escorts on either side of them, the women began to scream and more than a few began to cry. Security personnel lined the barricade, their backs to the passing couple as their eyes scanned the crowd, watching for anyone who might try to break through in order to reach him.

Alejandro wore his dark sunglasses, and his expression was hidden behind the black lenses. But he smiled and paused every few feet to let his fans take photos of him. Amanda stood behind him, uncomfortable with the scantily clad fans. After having left the penthouse at two o’clock in the morning for the airport, and following a three-hour flight, Amanda felt weary. Given that it was now only a little after four in the morning, she hadn’t expected so many people to be waiting for Viper’s arrival.

Clearly, she had been mistaken.

As she stood there, waiting patiently for her husband to slowly move along the line of waiting fans, she wondered at the power of this man. The idolatry his fans directed toward him never ceased to amaze her. Wherever he went, people gathered. Despite his shift in image, from globe-trotting bad boy to sophisticated married gentleman, his following had not decreased. If anything, the opposite was true.

Earlier, while en route to Colombia, Alejandro had met with his new manager. She had been too excited to sleep, so instead, Amanda had listened as Geoffrey and Alejandro reviewed his latest numbers, both in sales and social media. She could barely believe what she heard: he received $500,000 per show.

Most of the dates were sold out, which meant that overall revenue would be over $2 million per performance. After all of the expenses were paid and Alejandro received his cut of the merchandise, he would earn over $7 million in just five weeks.

She had been stunned to hear these figures—and to see a disappointed look on Alejandro’s face.

“What is the latest on the US tour?” he asked Geoffrey.

After shuffling through some papers, Geoffrey had looked up and responded with a crisp, “Forty-one million.”

“¡Ay, mi madre!”

Alejandro sounded irritated, but she couldn’t understand why. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she sat in the leather bucket seats of the private jet. “That’s an awful lot of money,
ja?
”

He shook his head. “The average gross was one million per venue.”

Geoffrey frowned. “If that,” he added.

Amanda still didn’t understand. “Oh? And that’s not
gut
?”

Geoffrey suppressed a smile while Alejandro tried to explain. “No, Princesa. The South American leg will bring in less money because the venues are smaller. That means it will negatively impact the overall average profit per show.” He pointed to one of the papers on the table. “See here?” He ran his finger down a column of figures and, at the end, tapped the total. “That is what we can expect from the next five weeks.”

She peered at the numbers on the sheet, understanding little, if anything, of what she saw. “That’s still an awful lot of money,
ja
?”

His shrug told her that he was not impressed. “We must make it up in Europe over the summer.” This statement was directed to Geoffrey. “How are those dates holding up?”

“Sold out in the United Kingdom,” Geoffrey said without referencing his notes. “Same with Switzerland and France. Germany is only at sixty-five percent, and Belgium at fifty percent.”

“How many cities are on the European tour?” Amanda asked.

“Twenty.” Geoffrey pushed another paper toward her. She glanced down at the list. Half of the places she had never heard of before.

When Alejandro mumbled something in Spanish then, shaking his head and looking out the window of the airplane, Amanda had suspected it was for the best that she couldn’t understand what he said.

Now, in light of the throngs of people lined up throughout the airport and the noise being made by the screaming women, Amanda wondered if anyone in the country
wasn’t
going to his concerts. Not even in Los Angeles and Miami had she seen so many fans at the airports.

As she waited for Alejandro to finish interacting with his fans, she felt someone grab at her arm. In the blink of an eye, a cell phone was shoved in front of Amanda’s face as the young woman took a selfie with her. The woman screamed in delight and released Amanda, but other women then began to grab at her, too.

Immediately, Alejandro was at her side, quickly using force to extract Amanda from the overeager fans. He gave no outward sign of his emotions, and he did not scold the women, but the drained look on his face and the way that he held Amanda told her of his anger. There would be no more interactions with the fans, so he led her through the walkway, staring straight ahead instead of smiling at the crowds.

Once they were in the car, Alejandro turned to Geoffrey. “What was that?” he snapped at his manager. “What type of security is this? I will not tolerate Amanda being accosted! She could have been injured!”

The anger in his voice startled Amanda. She realized that she had never heard him raise his voice around her. With the exception of the time he’d confronted his former manager over the Maria incident, Amanda had never known Alejandro to demonstrate anything but complete self-control.

She reached out and touched his arm. “I’m not hurt,” she said softly. The truth, however, was that she had a moment of fright when the first woman grabbed her.

He placed his hand over hers, his attention still on Geoffrey. “Get on the phone with Andres and find out how that happened. He is accountable for both Amanda’s and my safety. Inexcusable!”

“Sí,
Alejandro
.”
Geoffrey’s head was already bent as he typed furiously on his phone.

“Not a text! Call him!”

“Please, Alejandro,” she pleaded. “Let’s not make too much of this. Mayhaps I was standing too close,
ja
?”

He squeezed her hand, but shook his head. “I pay people to protect us, Amanda,” he said. “That never should have happened.”

Mindful not to contradict him, Amanda remained silent. She took a few deep breaths and stared out the window, tuning out the conversation between Geoffrey and Alejandro. When they started speaking Spanish and once Alejandro appeared to have calmed himself, she finally exhaled and relaxed.

They had a full day ahead of them: an interview at a radio station before meeting with an entertainment television reporter. Then they would go to the arena, Estadio el Campín, so that Alejandro could conduct a sound check. Since the majority of the equipment was being rented at each location, he wanted to leave nothing to chance. After sound check, he would shower and change before driving into the city to do a video shoot for a new sponsor: a Colombian energy drink manufacturer. Amanda felt more tired just thinking about all of these appointments, all of which were scheduled before late-afternoon meetings with more reporters prior to the VIP session and show.

She understood that he had to pack his days full of these meetings because they would leave Colombia immediately after the concert to fly to Quito, Ecuador. After a brief five hours in their next hotel, the schedule would start all over again. Just as Anna had said back when Amanda returned to Lancaster from Kansas City, it was a shame that the time spent in these amazing cities was too short for them to sightsee. However, Alejandro had promised her some free days between the concerts in Rio and Buenos Aires.

“You are sure you do not want the hotel?”

His question startled her, and she turned back from the window.
“Nee,
Alejandro
,”
she responded. Unlike the times she had accompanied him to other concerts, this time she didn’t want to leave his side. Instead, she wanted to experience everything that he did. “I’ll be fine.”

She hoped that she was right. She didn’t feel fine, but she didn’t want to retire to the hotel by herself while Alejandro, looking perfectly energized for the upcoming days, started the first day of the tour without her. From a media perspective, people would wonder where she was. From a personal perspective, she didn’t want to appear weak, as if she couldn’t handle the travel. She was here to support Alejandro, and that was exactly what she intended to do.

“Coffee,” he announced. “Some good Colombian coffee!”

Oh,
she thought, and lots of it. If only her eyes didn’t burn from being so tired . . .

Their first two stops were radio stations. Amanda followed behind Alejandro, feeling immune to the voices around her. Naturally, everyone spoke Spanish, but unlike in Miami, no one here felt compelled to switch to English for her benefit. The lyrical melody of Colombian Spanish, however, was different from that of Alejandro’s Cuban Spanish. For a while, as she listened to it, she wondered if Alejandro was experiencing any problems understanding people. But after he began laughing at something the DJ said to him, she realized that he understood just fine.

“Here,” Geoffrey said, handing her something to drink.

“What is this?”

“An energy drink.”

She eyed the canned beverage suspiciously. An energy drink?
She wasn’t so certain about accepting it. “I better not,” she said and handed it back to him.

“It’s going to be a long day and an even longer night” was all Geoffrey said.

Thinking twice, Amanda finally decided to try it. After all, they were headed to their third interview, and even after six cups of very strong coffee, she was still feeling as if she could sink into a bed and sleep for two days. The drink didn’t taste bad, just like a carbonated juice. And as she stood in the waiting room behind the stage, watching on a small television monitor as Alejandro was interviewed for a popular talk show in front of a live television audience, she began to feel rejuvenated enough to face the afternoon.

Geoffrey looked at his watch. He remained silent but was clearly concerned about the time.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Sound check is in two hours. And then the Meet and Greet at seven.”

She looked up at the screen again and was surprised to see that six scantily clad women had joined Alejandro on the set. They wore sleeveless dresses with three thick horizontal stripes of color: red, blue, and yellow. The pattern resembled the Colombian flag and might have been rather pretty, Amanda thought, if the dresses weren’t skintight and the women’s chests all but completely exposed.

The show cut to a break, and Alejandro walked off the stage. She could barely see him standing off to the side, the six women surrounding him and his arm around two women’s waists. Behind him, the set was being changed so that he could perform one of his songs. He, however, was oblivious to all this activity as the women hung on him, smiling for the camera.

Amanda glanced over her shoulder at Geoffrey, but he was engrossed in reading a text message on his phone. She turned back to watch the screen and saw Alejandro kiss one of the women on the cheek. Her body pressed against his in a way that made Amanda more than uncomfortable.

The fans in the States also adored Alejandro, and on more than one occasion she had seen beautiful women try to throw themselves at him. But she had never before seen such an inappropriate public display of dress (or lack thereof!) and behavior as she did now. She could only assume that the women were dancers who would perform behind him while he sang for the audience. Somehow that only made Amanda feel worse about the way they clung to her husband.

Once the set was arranged, Alejandro moved back to the center of the stage and accepted a microphone from a sound engineer. He smiled over his shoulder at the dancers, who lined up behind him as the music started. Amanda watched as he began to sing. While she couldn’t hear the words, she could tell that it was one of his older songs, one that had climbed the charts and hovered at the top for weeks on end. The women danced in sync behind him, their bodies moving in a way that Amanda couldn’t ever have imagined. Their hips moved in a fluid motion while their legs, long and bronzed, all followed the same exact steps. Several times, Alejandro joined them, grabbing one and rubbing his hands up her torso.

Amanda looked away.

“They’re a bit more demonstrative here,” Geoffrey said.

Feeling embarrassed that he must have witnessed her reaction, she merely shrugged.

He directed his attention back at his phone. “Rio and Buenos Aires will be much worse, Amanda.”

She couldn’t imagine anything worse.

By the time the show finished and Alejandro was ready to leave, the six women had left. One of them had bumped into Amanda as she and Geoffrey waited in the corridor. Rather than excuse herself, the woman looked down her nose at Amanda, a look of disdain on her face as she whispered
“pobrecita”
under her breath.

“What does that mean?” Amanda asked Geoffrey when the women, laughing at the remark, disappeared around the corner.

“What does what mean?”

“Pobrecita.”

He shoved his cell phone into his pocket. “Little poor one,” he replied, “or just poor baby.” His attention was not really on his answer, and Amanda realized that he didn’t really explain what the women meant when they said that to her. Instead, Geoffrey was trying to catch Alejandro’s eye. “Hey, Alejandro!” He pointed to his watch, and Alejandro nodded. As quickly as he could, he extracted himself from the Colombian fans who surrounded him on the edge of the stage to join his manager and wife backstage.

“Ah, Princesa!” he said, wrapping his arm around her neck. “You are still awake!”

They let security lead them through a set of double doors to an underground parking lot. A car waited for them, and as soon as they had shut its doors, it sped off toward the exit.