Welcome to Paradise (2 page)

“Aren’t you ready yet?”

Mira started at the demand, uttered so abruptly from behind her, almost burned herself with the iron she’d borrowed from the front desk.

“Just getting the wrinkles out,” she promised, setting the iron down on the bedside table and picking the dress up from the bed. “Five minutes.”

Scott looked at his watch. “You know I hate being rushed. We have to be in the ballroom to meet everyone at ten. Why couldn’t you have done it last night when we got in?”

“Sorry. Five minutes, I promise.” He was in a bad mood because he was nervous, she knew. Once they got through the initial orientation and he knew what to expect, he’d do better. Until then, she’d just keep from annoying him further. She’d had plenty of practice at that after years of bouncing between her parents’ various households. If there was one thing she was good at, it was not making waves.

Ten minutes later, Scott was shifting impatiently from foot to foot at the hostess stand of the motel restaurant. A busy waitress glanced across at him as she filled coffee mugs. “Be right with you folks,” she called. Bustled over and grabbed menus.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully, leading them to a table by the window, with its uninspiring view of the parking lot and the field of cattle across the highway. “Coffee?”

“Please,” Mira said.

“A cappuccino for me,” Scott corrected.

“Sorry,” the waitress said. “We don’t serve espresso drinks.”

“Coffee, then,” he sighed.

When the waitress came back with their coffee, she brought something else too.
The two men from the evening before, whom she was clearly planning to seat next to Mira and Scott.
They both smiled at her in recognition as they approached, and she found herself smiling right back. It wasn’t hard to do. Both men were dressed in worn Levi’s that clung in all the right places, and T-shirts that stretched across broad chests. Both had dark brown hair, though the shorter one’s was darker, almost black, and wavier than his—brother’s? It must be, she decided. They looked too much alike to be anything else, though the taller one was leaner, not as deep through the chest or as wide across the shoulders. More handsome, too, his features a little more finely hewn, brow ridge and cheekbones a little less harsh, and a straight, strong nose instead of something that looked as if it had been broken, once upon a time. She wouldn’t kick either of them out of bed for eating crackers, though. There was so much warmth, too, in both sets of dark blue eyes, the generous, well-formed mouths. They were a double dose of
hot, that
was for sure. Was this what Idaho men looked like?

“Grace.” Scott’s voice broke in on her thoughts as the waitress came to their table, order pad in hand. “What do you want?” He hadn’t seen the men, she realized, from his position with his back to them.

“Oh! Just eggs. The two-egg breakfast, I guess. Whatever,” Mira said, looking belatedly at the menu.

He nodded. “This show’s going to be good for both of us. More exercise, less to eat. But I guess you might as well have one last big meal before we start.”

Was that about her weight? She knew he was disappointed that she hadn’t been able to follow the gym routine he’d set up for her in preparation for the show. She smoothed her dress over the slight rounding of her stomach, wishing it were flatter. Those last ten or fifteen pounds never seemed to come off.
Too many breakfast meetings, too many restaurant meals, too many late nights in strange offices.

Not for the first time, she wondered if agreeing to do this with Scott had been a good idea or the biggest mistake she’d ever made. It was one thing to date someone during her breaks between assignments, she’d begun to realize. And another thing entirely to be with him twenty-four hours a day, especially the way he’d been acting lately. He’d started out being so nice to her. Had flattered her, sent her flowers, taken her out to the best restaurants. But that was a good year ago. Lately, it seemed like nothing she did pleased him, no matter how hard she tried. The drive from Seattle the day before, with Scott anxious, jumpy, and snapping at her at every opportunity, had been
a long
six hours.

He was frowning again now as the waitress seated another party at a big interior table next to theirs. A couple with three young children, the eldest of whom, a boy of about ten, walked and seated himself with difficulty. Cerebral palsy, maybe.

“Great,” Scott muttered. “Kids.”

“They have a right to eat too,” she said, keeping her voice low.

Scott averted his eyes from the family as the waitress bustled up with their food. Buttered his toast and took dubious bites of egg, picked at the well-fried hash browns.

“It does feel daunting,” Mira told him, working her way through her own meal with guilty pleasure. She loved English muffins, no matter what Scott said about the virtues of whole-grain toast. And who knew what they’d be eating tomorrow, or how hard it would be to make it? “But everyone will be in the same boat, surely,” she went on. “I can’t imagine they’d have chosen any survivalists or experts for the show. That has to be the appeal—to watch regular twenty-first-century people trying to live in 1885. Everyone else will be nervous too, and struggling as much as we are.”

“I’m not going to be struggling,” he retorted sharply. “I’ve done my homework, and I’m in great shape.” His critical gaze swept down her torso. “I’m just worried about whether you’re going to be able to handle it.”

So if they were voted off, it was going to be her fault? “I’ll do my best,” she said, a rare flash of anger giving an edge to her voice. “That’s all I can promise. But I’ll be doing that.”

Why did everyone doubt that she could do this? She was a hard worker, she got along with people, and she was pretty good at observing and evaluating their interactions. Surely all those things would help her. But her father, too, had thought little enough of her chances. And had been downright appalled at her choice to do the show in the first place.

“What?
Why?” Dr. Steve Walker, plastic surgeon to Seattle’s finest, had demanded when she’d paid him a duty visit at his Mercer Island home to say goodbye. “What about your job?”

“I took a leave.” She could feel herself starting to get flustered already. So much for the self-assured announcement she’d practiced aloud on the drive across the bridge. “It’s only two months.”

“And what did Jeff say about that?” he pressed, referring to the partner who was her direct supervisor. And, unfortunately, Steve’s former patient and current golf buddy.

“Well, he wasn’t too happy,” she admitted. “But there’ll probably still be a spot for me afterwards, he said.”

“Probably? Probably doesn’t cut it,” he snapped. “I pulled strings to get you that job. And you’re going to throw it away in order to be on some trashy reality show that you probably won’t last a week on anyway? How is that going to make me look?”

“I’ve been at that job for five years, though,” she said, hating how defensive she sounded. Her father might have got her the job, but she wouldn’t have kept it if she hadn’t been good, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. “It seemed like time to reevaluate. And the show isn’t trashy. It’s on the History Channel! I thought it might be fun, and a good challenge.” She’d dared to hope that he might admire her for trying it. Clearly, though, she’d been wrong.

“It sounds fun to me too,” Becky, her father’s third wife and barely ten years Mira’s senior, said from her spot on the couch beside her husband. “Too bad you’re doing it with Scott, or I might just have decided to join you.”

“Like hell you would,” Steve growled.

“Oh, quit being so grumpy,” Becky laughed. “I didn’t do it, did I? And Mira’s right, it’ll be good for her. She’ll be putting herself to the test. I’ve seen that show, and so have you. It doesn’t look easy.
The physical aspect, or the strategizing and maneuvering either.
It’s a great challenge.”

Maybe it was the softening of age, or just Becky’s confident personality, but Mira still marveled at the way her husband’s frequent impatience seemed to bounce off his latest wife’s armor without making a dent. And at his obvious affection for her, the attention he paid to her in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that she defied him so often. An affection and attention he had certainly never showed his first two wives, or Mira herself for that matter.

“I have seen it,” Steve said grudgingly. “You and I could have done it. But that’s because we’re tough enough to handle it. Whereas Mira . . . Well, Scott will figure out how to come out ahead, if anyone can. She can listen to him.”

Becky looked unconvinced. “Listen to your own instincts,” she counseled a few minutes later, hugging Mira goodbye at the door. “You’ll do great. And I really
am
envious. It sounds like a wonderful adventure. Go for it. Give ’
em
hell.”

Movement in the corner of her eye, a sudden clatter, wrenched Mira from her thoughts, had her turning toward the next table. The oldest boy, who’d been struggling with his meal, had knocked the corner of the plate with a clumsy hand, sent it tipping over the edge of the table and falling to the floor, knocking over his glass of orange juice along the way. Juice and scrambled egg flew, a fair amount landing on Scott’s pant leg. He reached down with a look of disgust on his face to wipe the light material with his napkin, and glared across at the family.

The brothers had turned as well at the noise. Now, the shorter one got up. Came over and picked the plate up off the floor, set it on a nearby table together with the overturned glass. He smiled at the boy, who was scarlet with embarrassment and attempting a flustered apology.

“Could happen to anyone,” the man said cheerfully as the waitress hurried over to clean up. “
Here.
” He reached for the plate of toast at his own place. “I’m not eating this. Something for you to work on while they bring you another egg or two.” He winked at the boy, sent a reassuring smile to his parents before sitting down again.

“Sorry,” the boy’s mother said to Scott, seeing him ostentatiously dipping his napkin into his water glass to clean the spots that remained on his pants.
He nodded curtly, but didn’t respond.

“It’s all right,” Mira told her hastily, her embarrassment rising at Scott’s ungracious response. “No harm done.”

“Let’s go,” Scott told her. He shoved his chair back, knocking into the chair of the darker-haired man sitting directly behind him, causing his own eggs to fly off the fork he had begun to lift to his mouth.

The man reached for his napkin as Mira watched, wiped egg from his shirt, then grinned across at the boy, who smiled happily back at him. “See? What did I tell you?” the man said. “Could happen to anybody. And yes, you’re excused,” he said pointedly to Scott, who, Mira realized with chagrin, still hadn’t apologized. Well, no chance he was going to now.

Back in the room, she set quietly about brushing her teeth, checking her hair. Scott came up behind her as she straightened up after rinsing her mouth, wrapped his arms around her from behind and reached around to kiss her cheek.

“Sorry. I’m just really stressed about all this,” he said. “You still in it with me?”

She smiled reluctantly back at him. “Of course. And I do understand. I’m nervous too. But . . . I was embarrassed back there, for that boy. I wish you’d told him it was OK.” She didn’t mention the man. She had the feeling he could fight his own battles.

“I can’t help it. I don’t see why people have the right to take kids like that out in public and make everyone else uncomfortable. They should get a babysitter or something, don’t you think?”

“No,” she said, stepping out from the circle of his arms. “I don’t. Maybe you just shouldn’t look, if it bothers you.”

“Well,” he said with his best smile, “I guess I’ll just look at you. You look pretty good.” He took her hand, turned her to face him, then bent down and kissed her. “Still got that focus?” he asked. “I need you at a hundred percent. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

“Yes. I said I would, and actually, I’m looking forward to it. The chance to take a real break, think about what I want to do next.”

“Recharge your batteries, get a better attitude so you can go back and grab that promotion,” he suggested.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

Mira gave a final tug to her dress, checked that all her buttons were fastened one last time before following Scott into the hotel ballroom twenty minutes later. Two rows of chairs sat unoccupied save for one middle-aged couple, talking intently together. Several other people were standing around, looking at the cameramen, the twisting cables attached to huge light setups. Somehow, it made it all seem real. They hadn’t even started yet, and they were already being filmed.

Mira smiled at a tall, broad, older African-American man who moved forward, his kind expression a contrast to his powerful body. “Hi,” he said. “Another brave soul taking the plunge, I see. Stanley Douglas.”

“Mira Walker.” She offered a hand that he accepted, pressing it gently and quickly before releasing it.
Clearly a man who knew his own strength, and was used to harnessing it.
“And Scott Mitchell,” she added.

“My son Calvin,” Stanley said, gesturing to a smaller, much leaner version of himself standing nearby,
his
expression less amiable than his father’s.

“The token Black men,” Calvin said. “It’s just us and the Latinas, I guess.” He nodded to two women talking to an older couple nearby. “Minority Number Two.”

 
“You think the four of us are the only people of color who applied?” his father asked. “And yet they selected us, us four individuals
.
Nobody’s asking you to represent your race, just like nobody’s asking Mira here to represent hers.”

“Pop,” Calvin sighed. “You don’t really believe that.”

“That’s how I choose to look at my time here,” his father corrected him. “I can’t be fussing about what anyone else thinks.”

“Have you met the others?” Mira asked, uncomfortable with the topic.

“Yeah.” Calvin raised his voice a bit, caught the eye of the woman and girl to his left. “Lupe and Maria-Elena Garcia, do I have it right? I’m trying to remember names.”

“That’s right,” the woman said, coming forward to meet Mira and Scott. “I’m Lupe, and this is Maria-Elena, my daughter. I’m so excited,” she said, patting her considerable chest with her hand and laughing a bit at
herself
. “I can’t believe they chose us. I didn’t think we had a shot.”

“Demographics,” Calvin began,
then
subsided at a warning glance from his father.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Mira heard Scott mutter. Turned to see what had incurred his displeasure now, and felt her breath catch.

It was the two men from the coffee shop. She could see the moment when they caught sight of Scott, clearly surprised and not any more pleased than he was.
Her own
sudden shortness of breath had nothing to do with the potential awkwardness of the situation. Something about the dark, slightly tough look of them seemed to go straight to her . . . heart.

 
“Who are they, do you know? Because they are, like, totally
smokin
’,” Maria-Elena said, sounding a bit breathless herself, brown eyes wide in her plump, pretty face.

“And way too old for you,” her mother said.

“
Mommm
,”
Maria-Elena protested. They are
not.
”

“They’ve got to be thirty, at least. Too old,” her mother repeated, to the accompaniment of an exasperated sigh and an eye-roll from her daughter.

A door at the front of the room opened, interrupting whatever would have come next. Mira recognized the man who came through it instantly. Cliff
Talmadge
, the show’s host.
Just as blond and surfer-handsome as she recalled him, and with a magnetism about him that drew the eye, but smaller than he appeared on television.

“Hi, everyone,” Cliff said to the faces that quickly turned his way. “If you’ll take a seat, we’ll get started.”

Scott steered Mira to the opposite side of the rows of chairs from the dark-haired men, next to the middle-aged couple
who
’d remained firmly planted there as the others had mingled.

“Looks like we’re mostly here,” Cliff said, looking around. “Go see if you can round up the last two, would you?” he asked a young man hovering nearby who seemed to be some sort of production assistant. “Never mind. Here they come now.”

Everyone turned to look behind them. The two young women certainly made an entrance. Blonde, tanned, and thin, they immediately made Mira feel frumpy. No question why these two had been chosen. They looked around, seeming not in the least discomfited at being the last to arrive, and immediately made a beeline toward the two dark-haired men, giving an almost identical flick to their hair as they took their seats.

“So, now that we’re all here,” Cliff went on smoothly, “Welcome to
America Alive: 1885.”
A smattering of applause greeted his pronouncement. “We’re here to take you back into the nineteenth century.
With a couple small differences.
Because of course, they didn’t have these guys around then.” He gestured to the two cameramen, one of whom was filming him, the other with his lens pointed towards the group on the chairs. “Let me introduce Mike and Danny, our lead cameramen. They’re going to be your shadows, together with some other guys you’ll meet as we go along. I know it feels strange now, but trust me, within a few days you’ll have forgotten all about them. That’s their job, to be invisible. But anything you don’t want them to see . . . Well, you’d better not do it.”

A nervous laugh or two, a murmured burst of conversation at that one.
Cliff began to speak again, broke off at a hand
raised
in the audience by the man sitting next to Scott. “Yes?”

“I’m sure I speak for all of us,” the man said, “when I ask why we were selected in groups of two. That’s never happened on
America Alive
before, as you know. I believe we’re all curious. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind enlightening us now.”

“Ah,” Cliff answered good-humoredly. “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it? We’ve got to keep you guessing a little, and the audience too, now that we’re into our fifth season.”

“When will we find out?” Scott asked abruptly, almost interrupting Cliff. “How we’re going to be divided, or whatever it is that you’re not telling us? How the game is going to be set up?”

“We’ll get into all that later,” Cliff promised. “Right now, let’s have you
get
to know each other a bit. Maybe you two would like to start,” he said to the man who’d spoken first. “Just tell us your names, a few words about where you’re from and what you do, why you came on the show. Besides the million dollars, of course,” he added to another laugh.

“Martin
Deveraux
,” the man, thin and fortyish, said.

“And Arlene
Filippi
,” the heavier dark-haired woman next to him cut in. “We’re from Boston,” she went on. “We’re keenly interested in the negative impact that modern technology has on personal relationships and family dynamics. In fact, we’ve set up our own home as a technology-free zone, and we try to keep our children’s life simple too. No TV, no video games, no iPods,” she said proudly. “When we heard about this show, we felt it was the perfect chance to truly experience life as our great-grandparents lived it, and to model that simpler lifestyle for the rest of the country.”

Mira heard a snort, and turned to her right to catch the devilishly dancing eye of the man sitting beside her. He raised his eyebrows comically, and she had to fight the urge to giggle. But it was their turn now, and Scott was speaking.

“I’m Scott Mitchell,” he said. “And this is my girlfriend, Grace Walker.”

“Mira, actually,” she broke in. “I prefer Mira.”

“I’m an attorney in Seattle,” Scott went on, “and . . .
Mira
,” he added after a pregnant pause, “works for a management consulting firm. I came on the show because I enjoy a challenge. And by that, I mean I enjoy winning. I’ll just warn everyone now,” he went on with a jocularity that, Mira thought with an inward squirm, probably didn’t deceive anybody, “that I’m a pretty fierce competitor, in
and
out of the courtroom. I’m in it to win it.”

The introductions went on. The
couple next to them were
brother and sister, it turned out, Rachel and Kevin. Lupe and Maria-Elena, Stanley and Calvin, she’d already met. The blondes, Chelsea and Melody, were former college roommates (“sorority sisters,
betcha
anything,” Kevin murmured beside her, forcing her to suppress another giggle), and were currently “breaking into acting” in Los Angeles.
And then the two dark-haired men.
Mira leaned forward to get a better look as the taller one spoke.

“Alec and Gabe Kincaid,” he said easily. “Brothers. Twin brothers, actually. San Francisco Bay Area, these days. I’m a computer geek. And Dr.
McDreamy
here,” he said, slapping his brother on the shoulder, “is the real deal.
A real live doctor.
Anybody want to break a leg or have a baby out here, Gabe’s your boy.”

That
had her sitting back in her seat with a thump. And
the blondes leaning in a little closer as Gabe put up a hand in protest
.

“I’m not here as a doctor,” he said. “Let’s get that clear right up front. My malpractice insurer would kill me if I started doing anything medical out there. I’m sure there’s help standing by.” He gave Cliff a quick glance that was answered with a nod. “You get a blister, I’ll take a look. Anything worse,
call
for help.”

Mira was still readjusting when the final couple began to introduce
themselves
, but looked up in surprise as she heard the woman give their names.
Hank and Zara.
Hank and Zara Carrington, to be exact.
Wow.
Her mouth formed the word as she exchanged a wide-eyed glance with her friendly neighbor.

Although she hadn’t yet been born during their heyday, Mira had grown up listening to the sound of Hank and Zara’s smoothly intertwined voices on the folk rock albums her mother loved. She hadn’t recognized them by sight, of course. The photos on her mother’s CDs must have been taken thirty-five or forty years earlier. Zara’s trademark long hair shone silver now, pulled back from her thin face in a braid nearly as long as Mira’s own. Beaded silver earrings drew attention to a long, graceful neck, and her body still looked lean and strong. Her face might be more weathered than it had been in her heyday, but her dark eyes shone with the same luminous glow, the nose and chin still faced the world with determination, and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth gave mute evidence of her habitual outlook.

Hank’s face was equally lived-in. No plastic surgery for either of those two, Mira thought, and liked them the better for it. He was lean and gray as well, his features large and not handsome, but he shared the same sharpness of eye and quirk to the corners of his mouth as his wife and longtime partner. Mira hoped that, however this show was going to be arranged, she’d get to spend some time with the two of them. Because that looked like it would be a lot of fun. And who knows, they might even sing.

 
“And now that we’ve done the hard part,” Cliff said after the introductions were complete, “we’re going to take a fifteen-minute break to sort out some logistics here, and give you all a little more opportunity to chat. Coffee’s over on the
side wall
, and I strongly advise you to take advantage of it while you can. Because your life is about to get a whole lot tougher.” He disappeared through his door again, and the group stood, headed in the general direction of the coffeepot,
broke
into little groups.

“Hank and Zara. Well,
that’s
pretty thrilling,” Mira’s neighbor
Kevin
said as they stood and waited for their turn at the coffee. Scott, she saw, was chatting to their other neighbors, the Zero Technology People, as she’d privately dubbed them. “I do love me my celebrities.”

“I’m so excited,”
Mira
confessed, “I’ll probably do something embarrassing like ask them for their autograph. I grew up on their songs.”

“Probably best not to say that,” Kevin’s sister Rachel laughed behind him. “That wouldn’t be too diplomatic. But by the way, what’s the deal on the name thing?”

“What name thing?”

“Yours. You renamed yourself, and your boyfriend doesn’t like it? Or what?”

“Oh. No big deal. My name’s
Almira
,” she said, looking around to make sure Scott wasn’t watching before adding a generous dollop of half & half to the coffee she had just poured. She turned, discovering with a start that Alec and Gabe were standing directly behind her. Only realized she was tilting her coffee cup when she felt the fiery touch of the hot liquid hitting her hand, running down her dress. She exclaimed in distress, hastily transferred her cup to the other hand and shook her right hand in the air to rid it of the scalding liquid. What an idiot. What was she, sixteen? And her dress was pale yellow.
Pale yellow with brown splotches, now.
That
was attractive.

“You OK?” Alec asked her with concern. “Burn yourself?” He handed his own cup to his brother and took her hand in his, patted it dry with a napkin.

“I’m fine,” she said, fully embarrassed now. “Just clumsy. I’m all right.”

“Sure?” he persisted, still holding her hand.

“
Positive,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It just startled me.”

“You were explaining your name,” Alec said. “Or should I say, your dual personality.” His brother stood by, his dark gaze intent on her, and she felt more awkward than ever.

“Your name,” Alec prompted, finally letting go of her hand.

“Oh.” She shrugged. “They’re both my names.
Almira
Grace. I go by Mira, normally.”

“
Almira
. Princess,” Alec said. “In Arabic. Perfect.”

“How do you know that?” she asked in surprise. “It’s not exactly a common name. It was my great-grandmother’s. Old-fashioned, I know.”

“I know many things,” he said portentously. “Many useless things,” he added with a charmingly sweet smile that, Mira thought, he’d used before.
And often.
“But they come in handy sometimes.”