Waiting for Lila (6 page)

"I can't talk to Glory. She's distracted and moody. I can't hit her with my trouble if she has trouble of her own."

Delilah was instantly alert.
Had Glory been different lately
, she wondered.

Almost four years ago, when Glory first met her husband, Delilah had seen then how much her friend loved Alan. Only a blind fool could have missed it. The evidence was in Glory's face, in her every look. And from the beginning Delilah had been afraid for her friend. It was risky to love at all, but it was insane and self-destructive to love that much.

Although both she and Glory lived in Dallas, Delilah didn't see Glory often. Being around a couple so obviously devoted to each other made Delilah more than a little uncomfortable. It wasn't that they made her feel like a fifth wheel; the problem was that Delilah knew love for what it was. She had always known. Love was a chain-wrapped specter from her past. It was her own private hell.

For most of the people Delilah had known, love was a meshing of weaknesses, a do-it-yourself kit with no instructions included. If you asked ten people to define love, you would get ten different answers. But no matter what definition they put on it, there was always a qualifying statement added—sooner or later, love hurts.

That was the truth as Delilah knew it, but when she saw Glory and Alan together the truth sometimes became confused. If they were right, then Delilah had to be wrong. And if Delilah were wrong about love, her entire life had been built on that error.

No,
she told herself,
she wasn't wrong. She couldn't be. Glory and Alan were the exception that proved the rule. They were unique
.

Delilah would never allow herself to depend on another human being for happiness the way Glory did. That was the way to suicide row.

"Couldn't you give me a few tips?"

Addie's voice pulled Delilah abruptly out of her dark introspection.

"Please, Delilah, I'm really desperate," Addie begged.

Delilah did not want to do this. She felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of being an emotional—or sexual—counselor to anyone. For heaven's sake, she was the last person in the world to give advice on love.

"I don't know what to tell you, Addie," she said, her voice hesitant. "This really isn't my kind of—"

Delilah broke off when she saw the sheen of tears in her friend's eyes. "Oh, hell," she said in exasperation. "All right ... all right. I'll try to think of something. But don't blame me if it's all wrong."

Addie scrambled to her knees, her expression brightening. "I knew you'd come through for me. Thank you, Dee. Thank you, thank you, thank—"

"If you hug me, you can forget the whole thing," Delilah said, watching her warily.

Addie shook her head vehemently. "No, I won't. I promise."

Delilah sat on the bed beside her friend and stared into space as she considered what Addie had told her. After a moment she said, "Why don't you simply tell him how you feel? I admit I don't usually advocate honesty between the sexes, but in your case, it seems to fit."

Addie shook her head. "I couldn't do that. If I can't have his love, I want at least to keep his friendship. If I tell Booger I love him, he might feel uncomfortable around me. Or pity me." She shuddered violently. "I don't think I could stand that."

Delilah understood. She had never been able to handle pity either. "Okay, I'll think of something else." She paused and chewed thoughtfully on her lip. "Maybe you should make use of this buddy thing."

"What do you mean?"

"I haven't got it all worked out yet, but the first thing you're going to do is buy some new clothes. Trash all your Valley Girl stuff and buy things that are feminine. Not frilly, you're not a frilly sort of person. Look for things that are subtly seductive. If you don't know what you're looking for, ask a salesclerk who looks sexy herself."

"I couldn't do that," Addie said, her voice shocked. "Booger would notice immediately. He'd make fun of me."

"We want him to notice," Delilah said. "And if he makes jokes, you simply laugh and throw in jokes of your own. Then tell him an edited version of the truth. Tell him that you've decided I have the right idea about finding a husband at this conference. Tell him you're in your sexual prime. You want babies and a home life. Throw in all the stuff about your biological clock."

Addie frowned. "What good will all that do?"

"Booger's sharp, Addie." Delilah smiled confidently. "He's going to start giving some thought to what it will be like when the attention you usually give to him goes to your husband instead. That's enough for the first step."

For a long time Addie sat staring at the ceiling. She didn't say anything, but several times she nodded, as though she were holding a silent dialogue with herself, and Delilah could almost see the gears in her friend's brain clicking.

Later, when the room was dark and Delilah lay in bed, it suddenly hit her that she, Delilah Jones, the woman who never meddled in other people's affairs, had done just exactly that. Big time, she thought wryly.

Without warning, another piece of her world had shifted beneath her feet.

❧

Bill stood on the north side of Nuevo Ovledo's central plaza, smiling with pleasure as he gazed around. On one side of the plaza was a simple but beautiful old stone church, the heart of the community. The remaining three sides were lined with stores and government buildings. In the center of the square a small fountain sparkled in the sunlight. It was surrounded by stone benches and a lushly flowering garden.

Bill had come to Nuevo Oviedo to see Arturo Fuentes, the village doctor. He had met Arturo several years before in Houston and had become intrigued by the village even before setting eyes on it. Now he considered it his special place. He had made good, solid friends here.

He wanted to share all the beauty and the friends with Lila. He wanted it to be special for her too.

Life was so funny, he thought with a smile. He hadn't realized until he saw her that he had been looking for her. He hadn't known that he was loose pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One look at Lila and the pieces came together. Now his life made sense.

Damn, he felt good. He wanted to grab the people walking by and say,
Let me tell you about Lila. Let me tell you about the most wonderful woman in the world.

But he didn't. He simply walked along, hands in pockets, whistling softly under his breath. It was a beautiful day. An almost perfect day.

Seconds later Bill glanced up, and suddenly the almost perfect day became absolutely perfect.

❧

Delilah sat on a stone bench watching the water in a small fountain dance in the sunlight. She had told the others that she preferred to explore alone and that she would meet them in three hours.

Lies. All lies. She didn't want to be alone. She wanted to be with Bill.

She had made no attempt at self-deception about her reasons for coming to Nuevo Oviedo. She had wanted one more taste of the other side of life. The sweet side. The side where maneuvering and manipulating were foreign things.

Suddenly she heard him call her name, and, smiling, she glanced up to see him walking toward her. When she recognized the undisguised look of joy on Bill's face, her smile faded slightly as she felt a sudden unexpected need to protect him. From herself.

He was so damned open. One had a duty, whether one liked it or not, to protect people who made themselves this vulnerable. Bill was a sweet man, and she was deceiving him by pretending to be something she wasn't.

She would stop it soon, she promised herself. She would make sure he wasn't hurt by her pretense. She would be with him for just one more day, then she would end the charade.

"How can you look so glamorous and still look like you belong here?" he asked as he reached her.

"Walking shorts and a madras shirt do not glamour make," she said, then studied his face. "You don't seem surprised to see me."

His hand dropped to her waist, and he gave it a squeeze as he shook his head. "Surprised? No, I guess not. You see, you were with me already." When she raised a questioning brow, he laughed. "I was thinking of you, and suddenly you were here. I invoked you."

"I don't know whether to be flattered or offended," she said with a laugh. "Invoke sounds like something you would do with a curse."

"Or an enchantment," he said softly, keeping his gaze on her face. "How long do I have you? Do you have time for lunch with some friends of mine?"

"I have time, but surely they won't want a stranger dropping in on them out of the blue."

He smiled down at her. "They'll fall in love with you. How could they not?"

And how could she not feel a burst of warmth when he looked at her with such open pleasure? Rising to her feet, she let him take her arm and guide her.

The large, low house, built of wood rather than adobe because of the frequent rain, sat on the edge of the village. The beautiful flowering bushes that surrounded the house disguised the fact that it wasn't a wealthy household.

The front door was opened for them by a woman in a pink housedress. Although the woman seemed as though she were normally shy, her excitement on seeing Bill was open and exuberant. She threw her arms around him and spoke rapidly in Spanish.

Laughing, Bill pulled Delilah forward. "Lila, I'd like you to meet the best dancer in all of Mexico, Alicia Fuentes."

As they spoke, a group of children had crowded into the area immediately behind Alicia. She shooed the children away just as Bill began putting names to the faces. Along with the expected Juans and Marias there were several names Delilah had never heard and feared she wouldn't be able to remember.

Inside the house there were more introductions as Delilah was presented to the fathers, mothers, older brothers, and sisters of the children who had been at the door.v Other than Alicia, only two or three of the Fuentes group spoke English, but all of them, without exception, made her welcome.

Bill gripped Delilah's arm and smiled an enigmatic, slightly wicked smile. "Now it's time for you to meet
Abuelo
."

"Si, si
,
Abuelo
," several of the adults murmured, heads nodding, eyes sparkling.

Bill moved her through the group to where an old man was seated against the wall in a high-back carved wooden chair that reminded Delilah of a throne. He had iron-gray hair and his dark face was as intricately carved as the chair.

Bill spoke to him rapidly in Spanish and, it seemed to Delilah, at great length. Finally he turned to Delilah and said, "Lila, this is Tomas Fuentes,
Abuelo
, Grandfather, to most of the people in this house."

The old man didn't move. He simply stared at her for a long time. After a few moments Delilah began to grow uncomfortable, but she refused to look away from his dark eyes. Behind her, the people in the room seemed to be holding their collective breath.

Then suddenly Senor Fuentes nodded his head abruptly and said, "
Bueno
, Guillermo,
bueno.
"

Immediately everyone relaxed and began talking and laughing. Delilah felt she had just passed some kind of test and didn't know whether to be annoyed or amused.

Before she could decide, the Fuentes clan began to move en masse into the dining room. It was a large, high-ceilinged room that was almost completely filled by a long wooden table. A high-back chair stood at each end of the table, and there were benches on either side.

Alicia indicated that Delilah was to sit at the end of the table, opposite Senor Fuentes, but she hesitated. "Shouldn't Bill sit there?" she asked. "He's your special guest. I'm just a tag-along."

"No, no, you sit here," Alicia said, giving her a shy smile. "You are our honored guest. Guillermo is family, as you will be soon."

Delilah turned to Bill, who was seated on her right, and whispered, "If they insist on adopting everyone who walks in off the street, it's no wonder they have such a large family."

He laughed, but there was a peculiar look in his eyes, a pleased look that made her wonder what was going on. He had been very casual about the invitation, maybe too casual. Why should this family accept her so completely?

Delilah was used to struggling for acceptance, and life had taught her to be suspicious of good things that came easily. There was always a price to pay.

Later, she told herself, she would figure the whole thing out. She was an expert at finding angles. This situation would prove no exception.

Lunch turned out to be an informal affair with lots of food, talk, and laughter. Everyone at the table seemed to be trying to fatten up Delilah. First one then another of the Fuentes family would bring a side dish or an alternate entree for her inspection and, supposedly, her consumption. Delilah didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but even Booger couldn't have done justice to the tremendous meal.

After lunch everyone except the women and children who were in charge of cleaning up went outside to the patio. The children immediately surrounded Delilah, taking her on a tour of the yard as they and some of the younger women tried to teach her some Spanish words.

Jaime, a precociously flirtatious seven-year-old, stooped to pick up a handful of soil. "
Tierra
," he said carefully.

She pointed to his face, the face that had been spotless minutes earlier. "
Tierra,
" she repeated to the noisy amusement of the others.

On the other side of the patio Bill sat with the men of the Fuentes family who were all clustered around old Senor Fuentes. The expressions on their faces were uniformly serious, and several times one or the other of the men would get loud and vehement. The old man would simply raise his eyes to the offender, who would immediately back down.

Delilah recalled what Bill had told her about the way Tomas Fuentes ran the village. She still believed he was a tyrannical old man, but she could see now that he didn't take his responsibilities lightly.

Little more than an hour later, when she and Bill left the Fuentes house, the children walked along with them to the marketplace. There were rows of wooden stalls and wares displayed on blankets spread on the ground. Fruit, vegetables, chickens, and trinkets filled the area. But there were no people.

"Siesta time," Bill said apologetically when Delilah found a red leather belt that made her eyes light up. "Well have to come back for it later."

Before long they were on the opposite side of the village from the Fuentes house. One by one the children stepped forward and spoke to Delilah in polite but incomprehensible words. When the last one finished, Delilah smiled and thanked them as well as she could in her meager Spanish.

As soon as the children had scattered, Bill took her hand and pulled her into the thick forest that grew right to the edge of the village.

"Where are we going?" she asked as the thick growth closed behind them, obscuring all sight of the village.

"I want to show you something." He glanced back at her. "How did you like my friends?"

"They were wonderful," she said with enthusiasm. "And I loved the family feel of the place. You could tell the children are very much loved there." She paused. "And as much as I hate to admit it, I even liked Senor Fuentes. He's a formidable old man, but there's a kind of eld world, autocratic charm about him. He must have knocked the women dead with those dark eyes when he was younger. How old is he anyway?"

"No one knows. And no one has nerve enough to ask. We do know he was born before births were regularly recorded here." He held a tree limb aside for her. "Abuelo has lived his whole life in Nuevo Oviedo. It's his village and he wants things for it. He has dreams for it."

"Prosperity?"

He shook his head. "No, like you, he's a realist. He knows Nuevo Oviedo will never be a wealthy village, but he wants things for the village that would normally come only with wealth. He wants quality education for the children and a chance for them to go to college. He wants co-op farming and improved techniques. He wants a local hospital. He spends all his time and energy making plans and talking to influential people." Bill laughed. "I think it's just plain stubbornness that keeps him alive. He won't let go until he's sure his plans are under way."

The old man was certainly impressive, Delilah admitted silently. That much responsibility would tend to make anyone autocratic. "Does he have a heart condition?"

"What makes you ask that?"

"My high school Spanish wasn't much help, but when you were introducing me to him, I thought I recognized a couple of words. One was corazon. Doesn't that mean heart? I assumed there must be something wrong with his heart."

"Not his. Mine." He raised his gaze to her face. "Mi corazon," he said softly.

Delilah couldn't look away from his eyes. So much gentle warmth. So much caring. And for the first time in her life, Delilah Jones blushed.

She tried to pull herself back to earth by reminding herself that Spanish was an ornate language, an extravagant language. People probably used mi corazon when introducing their dentists. But it didn't do any good. She stared into his eyes and went back to the safe, warm place she had found last night. She had missed it.

After a long moment he glanced over her shoulder and said, "Look, Lila."

She turned slowly, then stopped as her breath caught in her throat.

They stood on a cliff that looked out over a deep green gorge. At the north end a slender thread of a waterfall fell hundreds of feet to the floor of the valley, filling it with a fine silver mist. And everywhere she looked there were rainbows.

"You brought me here to share heaven with me," she whispered in awe.

"No, that's not heaven," he said, turning her to press her against a tree. "This is heaven."

When he wrapped his arms around her and brought his mouth to hers, she knew this was what she had been waiting for. This was what she had been aching for since he had left her at the door in the small hours of the morning.

She willed her mind to go blank. She didn't want to think; she wanted only to feel. And as his hard, exciting body began to move urgently against hers, she did just exactly that. She gave herself over completely to sensation, sweet sensation.

For a long time she forgot where they were. She forgot who they were. She simply reveled in the feel of his lips on hers, his body against hers.

"Have dinner with me tonight." His voice was rough and breathless as though he had just run a long way.

She dropped her head against his chest, feeling weak. "I can't." The words were almost a groan. "I've already made plans to go out with my friends."

"They're important to you." He sounded as though he wasn't quite sure he liked the idea.

"Yes, they're important. For years we took care of one another. And this is the first time we've all been together in over three years."

She didn't know why it was so important that he understand. She had always made it a rule never to explain or make excuses for her actions. But with Bill it was different. She cared what he thought about her. She cared.

He kissed her again, holding her even tighter. 'Just a drink then. After dinner meet me in the bar at La Porta for a drink."

"Just a drink?" she asked, feeling her resolve weaken.

He touched her face gently and sighed. "No, that was a lie. It won't be just a drink. We both want more than that."

He moved his lower body against hers, igniting fires. "Feel what happens to us when we come together," he whispered huskily. "We've known each other for only two days, but that doesn't matter. It feels like coming home. It feels like returning to a place that's familiar but more wonderful than you ever dreamed it could be. There's a Tightness when we touch . . . you've got to feel it too. You must."