Plain Return (The Plain Fame Series Book 4) (17 page)

“Alejandro?”

He lifted an eyebrow and shifted his gaze in her direction, peering at her over the rim of his glass.

“Are you all right, then? How was the show?”

At first, he didn’t respond. He took a long, slow drink, and then he appeared to savor the taste, swirling the liquid around in his mouth as he set the glass down on the bar.
“¡Buenísimo!”

“Are you drunk?”

He exhaled and made a face that spoke of irritation. “No, Amanda. That was sarcasm.”

“Ah.” She walked closer and, standing behind him, put her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed against his back. “And the interviews? Did they go just as well, then?”

“Even better.”

She gave him a little squeeze. “I’m so sorry, Alejandro.”

“Me, too.” Twisting around, he faced her while still letting her hold on to him. After a long moment, he lifted his hand and brushed back a stray piece of her hair. Giving her a soft smile, he asked, “What is it that you always say about God’s plans for us?”

She nodded. “He has plans for us, Alejandro. We just don’t always know what they are.”

“No,” he said slowly. “That we do not.”

“Tell me about the interviews?”

When he shook his head, Amanda understood that he didn’t want to talk about them. She could only imagine the barrage of questions he had faced, and she pictured him doing the best that he could to dance through the answers with a smile on his lips. But she couldn’t help wondering what answers he had given to the questions regarding the little girl.

“Tell me about the concert.”

He sighed and cleared his throat. “It was fine, Princesa. But there was a lot of fussing about the fact that you weren’t there. On social media feeds people speculated that you would show up at the end.” He tried to smile at her, but there was sadness in his eyes. He hated disappointing his fans more than anything, and this showed on his face. “At the end of the show, they would not leave. They chanted your name.”

“They did what?” She had heard him properly but almost didn’t believe him. “Oh, Alejandro!”

“
Sí
, it was not good.” He reached behind him for his drink. “I tried to not linger at the arena and told Geoffrey that I had to get back here. He didn’t argue.”

Amanda nodded, understanding what he meant: Geoffrey knew the entire story, and unlike Alejandro’s former manager would have done, he wasn’t going to attempt to leverage Isadora’s appearance in their lives to create a surge of media interest.

“Have you had a break today?” He stood there, swirling his drink in the glass, the ice cubes hitting against the sides and making a soft tinkling sound. When she shook her head, he sighed.
“Ay,
Princesa
,”
he said and lifted the glass to his lips for another sip. “What a life, eh?”

“Tell me about what happened yesterday, Alejandro. Please.” All day she had been waiting. She needed to know the story, to better equip herself with the necessary tools to deal with what lay ahead.

“What happened yesterday?” He gave a rough laugh, the glass still lingering near his lips. “My world was turned upside down, that’s what.”

Arguing that both of their worlds had been affected would serve no purpose, so Amanda remained silent. Self-loathing, she thought, is an emotion that doesn’t recognize the needs or emotions of other people.

“Geoffrey heard from the courts when we landed in Rio,” Alejandro admitted, finally crossing the room to sit in one of the chairs. He yanked at his tie so that it slid away from his collar and then flung it on the ground. “He met with them, realized the validity of the complaint, and spoke with me. What else is there to tell, Amanda?” He shut his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and finger. “I had to make a decision,
sí
? And I couldn’t just throw her into an institution.” He took in a deep breath and exhaled. “Maybe the old Viper could have. Just quietly tucked her away.”

“Oh, Alejandro!” She caught her breath at his admission.

“It’s true.” He flung his head back and rested it against the top of the chair. “I contemplated it, Amanda. For a minute, maybe less. Without you . . .”

He left the rest unsaid, and she knew what he wanted to say—or, rather, deny having wanted to say. She hurried to his side and knelt beside him, her hand on his knee as she peered at him. “
Nee,
I can’t believe that. You would have felt something, Alejandro.”

“You think so, eh?” He laughed again. “I’m not so sure.”

“The mother?” she prodded, hoping to shift the focus back on to what had actually transpired the previous day and off his feelings of guilt. “What happened to her, then?”

He stared down at her, sitting by his knee, and reached out to brush a stray hair from her cheek. “You are so beautiful,” he said softly. “I do not deserve you, Amanda.”

“Alejandro! Don’t say such things.”

“Ah yes, the mother . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “I found out she had the baby when she first contacted my lawyers. I don’t know how she got their information. She wasn’t as much of a
pobrecita
as I thought,
sí
?” He laughed, but in a mirthless way.

Amanda suddenly understood that the word
pobrecita
was an insult. She clenched her teeth, flashing back to the night the women had called her the same name.

“I settled out of court and arranged to send her a modest amount of money each month,” he continued. “She didn’t come from money, and it must have felt like a windfall. I never heard from her again.”

“Never?” The word sounded so cold and heartless. It wasn’t a word that she would associate with Alejandro. While he couldn’t claim that he’d walked away from this child who’d been born from what she presumed was a very short relationship—if there’d been any relationship at all!—Amanda felt a wave of nausea at the thought that he had never even inquired about his child.

He didn’t seem disturbed by the unspoken disappointment in that single word she’d repeated. “Yesterday was the first time that I learned she’d died, this woman,” he said.

Again, Amanda found herself wondering at the way he talked about Isadora’s mother. How could he have shared something so intimate and beautiful with a woman he did not know or care about? For the first time, Amanda wondered about the things she did not know about Alejandro’s past. She had told him that she didn’t care and that she didn’t want to know about them. But was that true? Not knowing felt almost as bad as she imagined knowing might feel.

“She deserted the family, leaving her baby with her parents, and took the money to return to Rio.”

“Oh?”

“And then she died.”

“From drugs?”

He nodded. “The woman from the government, Maria Fernanda, said she overdosed on drugs. The family didn’t want to tell me, in case I stopped paying the money.”

Amanda gasped. “That’s awful!”

He reached down and tugged at one of the hairpins that held together her bun. “That’s life, Amanda.”

“Not my life!”

He slipped another pin out of her bun and then another, until her hair cascaded down her back and over her shoulder. “In my world, it’s life.”

She shook her head. “
Nee,
Alejandro. I don’t believe that. Not anymore. Maybe when you were in Cuba, or maybe when you were starting out. But you don’t walk away from family responsibility. That is not the man that you are. Not now.” She took the pins from him and held them in her hand as he twisted her hair around his fingers. “Maybe not ever. You just didn’t know any better.”

The mood for talking seemed over as he twisted her hair into a long, ropelike strand. It wrapped around his hand, and he tugged, just enough, to catch her attention. “I know better now, Princesa,” he said, his deep voice catching in his throat. “And I need to show you that I am a changed man.”

She didn’t need to translate the hidden meaning beneath his words. His insecurities called out to her, loud and clear, through his calm external composure. Like a child who’d been caught doing something wrong, Alejandro needed to be reassured that she forgave him and loved him. She knew all too well that he needed her to comfort him, to hold him, and to let him sleep with his head on her shoulder as she gently stroked his arm. He needed to know that she loved him, no matter what his past sins.

“Come,” she said as she stood up and took his hand. “You need some sleep, Alejandro.” She helped him stand, and then she walked backward, leading him toward the bedroom where Isadora slept. “Shh,” she whispered as she opened the door and guided him inside, one finger pressed to her lips. “Don’t wake Isadora.”

Chapter Fifteen

In the privacy of her dressing room, Amanda leaned against the cold cinder-block wall, her eyes shut as she waited to be called onto the stage. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her fingers digging into her arms. She took deep breaths, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. But all she could remember was the folded piece of white paper and the look on her husband’s face.

Outside the door, she could hear a commotion. A loud bang, something falling, and then laughter.

Feeling irritated at the noise, Amanda glanced at the door and was confronted by the large ceiling-to-floor mirror on the back of it. Her reflection only caused her more angst, for she wore her least favorite of the dresses that Jeremy had ordered made for her. Red. It wasn’t a color that she would ever have chosen to wear, especially decorated with the sparkling sequins on it that caught the light, sending prisms of color in different directions as she moved. The dress was also low-cut. Too low-cut. What was it with men wanting women’s clothing to display the top half of their breasts? With a disgusted sigh, she rolled her eyes and looked away from the mirror.

Her dark mood had appeared earlier, during the Meet and Greet. She had quickly learned that the South American women who paid to meet Viper—and there was a long line of them—were definitely not like the women who came to see him in the United States.

No, the South American women were striking and worldly. They were not young girls or older women. Each one was more beautiful than the next and appeared to have one, and only one, thing on her mind: catching Viper’s attention. They clung to him, their chests brushing against him as they lingered in his arms, their bodies saying more than any words could, as they waited for the photographer to take their photos. They whispered in Viper’s ear and made him laugh. And when they walked away, they looked at Amanda with disdain.

The Argentinean women were the most aggressive of them all.

Amanda tried to remain expressionless as she stood off to the side of the room. But her blood was boiling, especially when she saw Alejandro rub his hand up a woman’s arm, his blue eyes flashing as he drank in her beauty. When the woman slipped a folded piece of paper into his hand, not only did he open the note and read it, he slipped it into his pocket and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

That had been the last straw. Amanda left the Meet and Greet.

Without waiting for anyone to accompany her, she found her way back to the dressing room and locked the door. Her emotions welled up, and she tried to calm herself. Even though she told herself that the man who’d slipped that piece of paper into his pocket was not Alejandro but Viper, she was hurt and angry. These were two feelings that she was not used to experiencing. And she didn’t like them.

“Amanda!”

The two loud, sharp knocks on the door did not give her the impression that Alejandro was happy. She had hoped he wouldn’t have noticed her departure from the Meet and Greet. But as always, Alejandro knew exactly what was going on at all times. He was the master of seeing everything without appearing to be watching.

And he was not pleased.

She took a deep breath, knowing that no matter how much she wished to pretend she wasn’t in the room and to ignore his knocks, she must open the door. Harboring anger and resentment would only make her feel worse. Reluctantly, she pushed off from the wall and walked toward the door.

When she opened it, Alejandro stood with one hand pressed against the doorframe, waiting expectantly with a scowl on his face. “What was that, Amanda?” He didn’t wait for her to answer as he pushed his way into the room. “How many times have I told you not to leave without security?”

“A lot.”

Hearing her words, he spun around to face her. His angry expression and flashing eyes told her that her insolence did not sit well with him. Yet she didn’t want to apologize for it. After the past week and all of the changes that had been thrown at her, she felt that she was owed at least that much.

“We are not in the United States, Amanda. I hire security for a reason. Can we at least get that established,
sí
?”

She didn’t respond.

“And you left the Meet and Greet why?”

Oh, she thought. Let me count the reasons.

Ever since the concerts in Rio, the situation had deteriorated quickly. With the concerts over and four days without commitments, Alejandro had kept his promise to enjoy a few days of respite in Argentina. He had rented a private country estate outside of the sea town, Pinamar. What he had neglected to mention was that he and Amanda and Isadora would not be alone. The house was constantly swarmed by different people from Viper’s tour as well as Enrique Lopez and his entourage, who’d joined up with the Viper Tour since he, too, was singing in South America.

Amanda had quickly learned that she was not partial to Enrique Lopez.

Unlike Alejandro, Enrique surrounded himself with beautiful women who wore skimpy bathing suits that caused Amanda’s cheeks to flush red with embarrassment. Their golden skin glistened in the sun as they strutted around the pool wearing high heels that distorted the shape of their feet. Yet they appeared completely at ease and enjoyed themselves, relishing the attention they received from both Enrique’s and Viper’s entourage.

Feeling ashamed for those women, Amanda steered clear of the pool area. Instead, for most of the time she was supposed to be relaxing with her husband, Amanda was left to tend to Isadora. The worse part was that Alejandro hardly seemed to notice. He slept late into the day and went to bed early in the morning. Amanda, however, had found herself at the mercy of a five-year-old who cried whenever Amanda tried to leave her with anyone else.

The four days of relaxation had turned into four days of partying, only Amanda never received an invitation. The only time she saw Alejandro was during the evening meal. He didn’t appear to notice that she was anything less than her usual, bubbly self. Between arising early with Isadora and lying in bed listening to the noise from the outside courtyard around the pool, Amanda got little sleep and felt increasingly less tolerant toward the scene of debauchery that had crept into what should have been their quiet family vacation.

Yes,
she thought wryly as she watched her husband pace around the dressing room with a scowl on his face.
I could make quite the list for you, Alejandro
.

But she said none of this. Instead, she sighed and lifted her hands as if defeated. “I’m tired, Alejandro.”

He stopped pacing and looked at her. “Tired?
You’re
tired?”

From the tone of his voice, she knew that he wasn’t asking her a question but, rather, was mocking her response.

“Ay,
Dios
,”
he mumbled, lifting a hand to his head. “If you want to know what tired is, Amanda, step into my shoes!”

Immediately, she felt the all-too-familiar wave of guilt. The truth was that Alejandro was working hard, too hard, and she knew it. And with the unexpected situation in Rio adding even more stress to his life, he was clearly at the breaking point. In all fairness, she realized that he was dealing with more than most people could take. But Alejandro wasn’t like most people. He thrived on working long hours and pushing himself to the limit. If anything, he challenged himself to continually expand the range of opportunities available to him. His drive to succeed was relentless.

For the first time, Amanda began to wonder if she could keep up with him.

“I’m practically killing myself, Amanda,” he snapped. “This is the tour that will push my success to a new level. Geoffrey received a call today; I’ve been asked to host the international music awards show next year. Do you know what that means? For a Cuban American to be asked to host such an event?”

“That’s wonderful,” she managed to say.

“But ‘wonderful’ doesn’t happen without the success of this tour, Amanda! And this tour cannot be successful if I am distracted from my duties because I am worrying about your safety!” He began to pace again, his hand back on his forehead. After he turned around, she watched as he clenched his fists and cried out in wordless frustration, sounding like an angry animal trapped in a cage. He spun around and looked at her, his expression still tense, but his tone softening.

“Tell me about the Meet and Greet,” he said. “Why did you leave?”

She hesitated to tell him. If he was angry over her leaving without security and even more irritated because she didn’t have the energy to keep up, she certainly didn’t want to mention her feelings about all of the beautiful women who threw themselves at him, from Colombia to Brazil and now in Argentina. After everything that happened over the holiday season with the tabloids and Maria, Amanda didn’t want to even suggest the idea of jealousy. To do so would be to admit the unthinkable: that she had lost her faith not only in Alejandro but also in her own ability to maintain his interest.

“Amanda,” he coaxed.

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

She met his gaze and knew that she had to confess. Otherwise, the guilt and the doubt would become a barrier that would break their relationship. “I cannot compete with all of these women,” she finally admitted. “Frankly, I’m not certain I would want to. They have no morals, and they certainly don’t care that you are married.”

She waited, and when her words were met with nothing but silence, she took a deep breath and covered her eyes with her hand. “And I’m starting to worry that there’s something wrong with me.”

“Wrong with you?”

She nodded, still covering her eyes. “
Ja
, Alejandro, wrong with me.” Uncertain how to tell him, she sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. “I . . . I’m not pregnant, and it’s worrying me.”

Of course, the timing was wrong now anyway, she told herself. With everything in such a state of chaos, Amanda realized how wise God truly was. He didn’t want her getting pregnant, not yet. He always had a plan, and she needed to rely on him to determine if she should bear children. After all, he had given her Isadora. Amanda tried to take comfort in that. Even thinking about this hurt her heart. She just had to keep reminding herself that she was not to question God’s plans for her life.

Alejandro nodded and glanced at the clock on her counter. “We will discuss this in more detail tonight. For now, I need to go onstage, Amanda. We are already late.”

She didn’t know how to take that last comment, and she wondered if he blamed her for running behind schedule. If she had expected a look of empathy from him, a word or two that expressed his understanding of her emotional state, she would have been mistaken. Instead, he spun on his heels and walked out the door and down the hallway, ignoring anyone who passed by, even if they paused to ask him a question.

When Alejandro was in a bad mood, people knew to steer clear of him.

“What was that about?” Stedman asked as he walked around the corner. His dark eyes followed Alejandro as he stormed away from the dressing room.

She didn’t answer and averted her eyes.

“Lovers’ quarrel,” he said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. “They always happen midway through tours.”

Amanda took a deep breath and swallowed the remark that she wanted to make to Stedman.

“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Shake off the negative energy, shall we?”

He led her to the large waiting area underneath the back part of Estadio River Plate. The open-air stadium was larger than most of the other venues on the South American tour. According to a very happy Geoffrey, it was sold out. Both nights. Given its capacity to seat almost fifty-eight thousand people, Amanda concluded that the Buenos Aires concerts were the highlight of the tour. As the energy of the audience coursed through the air and charged even the atmosphere backstage, Amanda found herself relaxing more in Stedman’s company.

Recorded music filtered through the backstage area, and Amanda realized that Viper had not yet started his performance. She glanced around, wondering where he was. When he’d left her dressing room, he had commented that he was already late. Yet she didn’t see him anywhere.

“Let’s go, Amanda,” Stedman said, drawing her attention back to him. Immediately, he began moving his body in time to the music. Salsa. Forgetting about Alejandro, Amanda took Stedman’s cue and focused on the dance, her hips swaying to the music. Slowly, she felt the tension leaving her, the music and the movement of their bodies filling her with a slow trickle of happiness.

“Now mambo, ’Manda,” he instructed, quickly switching his movements and laughing at her when she stumbled.

“Stedman!” She fell against him, her cheek pressing against his shoulder. “Don’t do that!” But she was laughing. Despite his fierce dedication to the art of dance and his focus on perfection when dancing, Amanda had seen a different side of him on this tour. She’d found that his attention to detail, when looked at from a different perspective, could be seen not necessarily as a negative but as a drive to perfect his art.

“You have to be ready for the beat to change,” he said, setting her back onto her feet. “Try it again.”

She glanced down at his feet, and he clicked his tongue, shaking his head as he lifted her chin with his finger.

“No cheating,” he said. Pointing to his eyes, he stared at her. “Keep your attention here, not on the feet.”

She tried, but, after she kicked his foot, she started laughing and leaned against him. “I can’t!”

The Miami Stedman returned, a frown on his face. “Can’t or won’t?”

“I’m just not good at those fast dances.”

He shook his head. “You are a beautiful dancer, Amanda,” he said. He reached out his hand, and when she took it, he spun her under his arm and pulled her close to him so that her back pressed against his chest. “And you should do more of it.”

She laughed again as she stepped out of his arms. “I don’t foresee that happening,” she said lightly and took a step backward. When she bumped into someone, she stumbled once more. This time, she felt a hand slip around her waist and spin her just enough so that she found herself in Alejandro’s arms. He wasn’t staring at her but over her shoulder at Stedman, a steely and cold look in his blue eyes. “Oh!” she gasped. “You aren’t on yet?”