Spin the Sky (20 page)

That seems to mollify Lupe.

The spoon disappears and Lupe gives a satisfied chuckle, “Yes, she is. But you can still try. She needs a little romance in her life. So go get cleaned up and I’ll get you some food. Hurry.”

Cesar hurries.

He is tempted to spend the rest of his life in the hot steamy shower, but he keeps having an unsettling daydream in which Penelope discovers him in her shower. Cesar tries hard to make this a naughty fantasy, but he is too practical to expect anything other than horror on her part and embarrassment on his.

Feeling a million times better but still not quite human, Cesar dries off and puts on the clean clothes that Lupe shoved at him. In the kitchen, there is strong coffee and a plate full of
carne guisada
for him. He says a prayer of thanks to whatever gods may be for a woman that can cook.

Lupe keeps up a stream of chatter about all the small doings of the ranch as she prepares vats of food. Between the cowgirls and Trevor’s bottomless teenage stomach, dinner is always massive here.

Cesar loves every minute of it. He sighs happily, amazed at how content he can be, sitting in a kitchen listening to gossip over a strong cup of coffee.

Getting up to wash off his dirty dishes, he tells Lupe, “That hit the spot,
abuela
.” She turns to him, her hand out for his dirty dishes.

Then her eyes pop open suddenly.

“Cesar!” Lupe screeches.

Then a whole stream of Spanish pours out her mouth, some prayers of thanks to the Holy Father that brought back her prodigal boy and some very dirty curses.

Cesar tries desperately to calm her down before anyone else comes in. Too late he realizes that the clothes she gave him to wear are actually old ones he’d left behind all those years ago. Also, Cesar had called Lupe
abuela
every day of his life before he left.

He sighs. It is profoundly stupid to try and fool your family. Before he knows it, she’s grabbed a fistful of his pants and yanked them down hard.

“There! I knew it!” Lupe cries triumphantly pointing at the scar running down his thigh. When he was five, he’d climbed into a bullpen to pet the sharp-horned bull and gotten this scar for his efforts.

“Yes, it’s me,” he hisses. “Please, don’t tell on me yet.”

Lupe gasps and crosses herself reflexively. “What are you doing, running off with no word for years and years and then coming home pretending to be someone else? That’s not how your
pobre madre
raised you. No, it’s not.”

She slaps him with a wet dishrag, almost as an afterthought. Cesar wipes soap off his face and watches Lupe warily. Lupe is not a fast thinker, a fact that saved Cesar from many a well-deserved beating as a child. He sees dismay cross her face as she realizes that she just assaulted a grown man. Then a frown appears as she thinks of the decades of slaps that Cesar has missed out on by leaving.

This is replaced rapidly by a look of steely determination as she raises the rag again. Cesar is fully prepared to bolt for the lawn if she tries to dispense fifteen years of accumulated corporal punishment. Fortunately, at that moment they both hear footsteps and voices in the yard. Yanking his pants up, Cesar knows he doesn’t have time for a long heartfelt talk right now.

“Lupe, I’m sorry,” he whispers bluntly. “Sorry for everything, but please let me tell Trevor and Penelope in my own way. Please?”

Lupe sniffs.

She nods once quickly as Trevor comes walking in with Penelope close behind him.

“Hey Ulixes! Mom says I can be a ship pilot!
Carne guisada
for dinner? Wicked!” cries the boy happily, taking Cesar’s plate out of his hand and filling it up with food, talking the whole time about ships, navigation, shipping lanes and solar sails.

Lupe makes a show of turning her back on Cesar.

Penelope stops in the doorway when she sees Cesar, her hand going up automatically to smooth her hair. She walks self-consciously through the room and into the back of the house. Cesar can hear the sounds of her washing up.

Lupe gives him a significant look and whispers, “She’s still too good for you.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Cesar mutters back out of the side of his mouth. “We’ll talk later.”

Lupe sniffs. “Oh, we most certainly will, young man.”

The cowgirls come tumbling into the room with Argos, laughing and chattering. Lupe turns back to her pots and pans while Cesar stands there for a minute, not sure what he should do. Probably, he should go and earnestly tell Penelope the truth, have a long serious talk and hope for mercy.

Instead, he slips out the door and back to his little room with its single bed where he falls into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

P
enelope desperately needs to throw this guy out of her house. She doesn’t need to be worrying about getting caught kissing in the laundry room like a teenager. She doesn’t need to toss and turn all night with dreams about rough hands on her body and the coarse feel of stubble on her cheek.

She just doesn’t need this.

Accordingly, the next morning Penelope asks Ulixes to help her work on the Ag Level water pump. There isn’t anything really wrong with it that hasn’t been wrong with it for the last decade, but it is in a remote part of the ranch and she can’t think of a better place to talk to this man privately. She is glad when he readily agrees.

•

Cesar knows exactly how secluded the Ag Level water pump is, having snuck out there many a time to smoke cigarettes and drink beer as a teenager.

He thinks this will be the ideal location to reveal his identity to Penelope. Someplace where no one can hear her scream at him and there is nothing lethal she can hit him with. It is also over three miles from the nearest elevator, so she can’t run away before he has a chance to explain. It is even farther from the nearest shotgun. Cesar checked.

However much he is not looking forward to the conversation, it needs to happen, so the sooner the better. He sets his shoulders and follows Penelope, determined to hold his tongue until he tells her the truth.

•

As they make their way down the elevator, Penelope’s thoughts begin to run along a different path.

Sure, he can’t stay. Of course, he can’t stay. The man is a drifter and will probably wander off on his own any day now. She has that rule about men staying here anyway and to break it will mean having to admit this man means something to her. She can’t have that.

But if he is leaving, then what harm is there in indulging this bizarre attraction before he goes? Penelope thinks about all the Ether dramas she watched in her life and decides perhaps she is being too harsh on herself and on this man. Perhaps she ought to be more open-minded.

If he is leaving anyway, why not steal a few moments of passion before he goes gently into that good night? They get off the elevator and begin walking. The more Penelope walks, the more logical this idea seems.

A good, thorough sexing up will do her good. There are the health benefits to consider. Penelope tries to think of a few beyond a clear complexion and a good night’s sleep, but gives up. She has never had an affair previously because her world is so small and sex always came with too many strings attached. But here is this attractive drifter who is obviously interested in her in that way.

Penelope studies the man out of the corner of her eye as he trudges along. He is discreet. She knows almost nothing about him after ten days. So probably the fact that he’s made love to the Widow of Ithaca won’t come up in casual conversation and rumors won’t come crawling back to haunt her. In all likelihood, she can have all the red hot loving she wants with this man and then never see or hear from him again.

The more she thinks about it, the more attractive Mr. Ulixes becomes.

•

Cesar walks without knowing where he goes, so focused is he on coming up with the words that will convince Penelope not to turn him away. There must be some set of words that will make her forgive him. If only he can think of the right way to arrange his thoughts into eloquent arguments so that she’ll give him another chance.

Cesar tries to think logically about what he will do if she absolutely throws him out, but he has a hard time making his brain focus on that painful idea.

He can’t leave. Surely she can see that?

Cesar needs to find out about the sabotage situation. He needs to know his son and he needs to protect Penelope and Trevor from Uri Mach and his dad obviously needs help. And he doesn’t want to go. He really doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay here more than he’s ever wanted anything. With the force of all his years and any knowledge, experience or wisdom he might have ever gained, he wants his wife to love him again.

Cesar scowls at the ground beneath his feet as they walk on in silence. Penelope must suspect something, he decides. She isn’t talking. They’ve been walking along for an hour in silence. He can see they are almost at the water pump.

This area is one of the prettiest parts of the ranch. Cesar’s father planted peach trees here and created a private little grove. Cesar’s mother loved peaches. This morning, the peach trees are blooming, throwing their sweet scent in the air like confetti.

Morning glory vines wind around the tree trunks and undergrowth. In the middle of the grove is a little building to house the water pump and the tools necessary for tending the peach trees. As a teen, Cesar had come here to smoke grapevine and use his comm to browse the naughtier parts of the Ether.

Cesar has no eyes for the pastoral scene today. What is Penelope thinking? That’s all he wants to know. She is probably getting ready to throw him out for the impertinence of kissing her.

Hell, she probably isn’t thinking about him at all. That is a depressing thought.

She is probably thinking about starting an affair with that engineer Asner. That is a more depressing thought.

Cesar torments himself for a few minutes by imagining Penelope slipping into some black lacy nothing for another man, but then gets distracted by the mental image as his imagination takes a lurid turn. Before he can check the impulse, a lascivious smile curls up his lips and he looks at her only to find her eyes on him.

Cesar gulps and knows that the moment has come. He takes her hand in his and moves a step closer to her. Penelope is giving him the oddest look, a curious smile on her lips. He stammers and stutters, not knowing how to begin. All his carefully plotted arguments and persuasive phrases are lost.

It turned out that he doesn’t need them. Before he knows what was happening, Penelope is in his arms. Her lips are on his. Her body molds against him like they were made for each other. Cesar feels his eyebrows practically leap off his face, but he is no fool. He kisses her passionately.

They are lost to all but each other for quite a while. At one point, Cesar takes a deep breath and tries to say something, but Penelope holds a finger to his lips.

“Now is not the time for talking,” she whispers.

Well, Cesar never liked to contradict a lady.

As they fall into the thick grass, Cesar tries to tell her he loves her, but before the words form, she nips his ear gently with her teeth and then trails sizzling kisses down his chest. After that, all he can manage was a groan.

Much later, they lie together on the grass, watching peach blossoms drift from the trees. He runs his hand lightly down the small of her back, marveling at the soft, almost velvety skin.

Cesar no longer trusts himself to speak. He is content to feel her gentle breath across his chest as her cheek lies against his shoulder. He finds himself half-hoping that she already knows. That this is her way of letting him know all is forgiven. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To get exactly what he wants without even having that awful awkward conversation.

He sighs. No, he isn’t that lucky.

Life is never that easy.

On the other hand, judging from the noises she was making earlier, Penelope is probably in a very good mood right now. If Cesar is going to tell her who he really is, now is a great time. She’ll probably be pretty happy to find out that instead of making love to a stranger, she’s actually made love to her husband.

Cesar turns his head to speak to her and realizes Penelope is softly snoring. She’s fallen asleep there against him. His heart melts and he tightens his arms around her. Not enough to wake her, just enough to feel her heart fluttering against his ribs. Then he frowns, returning to his previous thought.

If Penelope doesn’t know who he really is, then she’s just made love to a stranger. Cesar does not like the idea at all. He might have gotten in a serious snit about it except she is so warm and soft against him that he falls asleep too.

•

Penelope wakes up with a start and realizes she is drooling on a man’s chest. This is definitely not how she is accustomed to waking up.

She closes her eyes, remembering the joy of the afternoon. With a thoroughly satisfied sigh, she stretches luxuriously before looking around for her clothes. She sees them scattered here and there around the grove, but makes no move to retrieve them yet.

Penelope has no idea what she’s been missing in the last fifteen years. She really must have forgotten how much fun sex was, because if she’d known it was like that, she’d have been doing it with every other man she saw.

Realistically, probably not.

Penelope’s gut instinct tells her that it is not like this with every other man. Fortunately, making love to this stranger was stunningly similar to her dim memories of making love to her husband.

Maybe it is the same with all men? That would be a big letdown. She’s been saving herself all these years and the whole time, any random guy could have been scratching this itch. Penelope could have given the Whore of Babylon a run for her money if she’d known it would be good with any man, but she hadn’t. Is she just dumb?

The truth is, Penelope has long suspected that most men aren’t any good at sex or, at least, not any good at making it fun for her too. She suspects that good lovemaking requires brains in a man. He has to be smart to know how to make love to a woman. And there is something else.