“Alana Bernal,” she said, shaking mine. Her palm was hot, her grip firm. Somehow it grounded me. “Thank you for saving me, Mr. Calway. This bar is full of fucking idiots.”
She didn’t seem apologetic at all over her language. I liked that.
I gave her a nod. “No problem. Bars are always full of them.” I eyed her friend. “Tu nombre?” I asked her, butchering the language just enough.
She raised a strong brow. “You speak Spanish,” she said dryly. “How impressive. My name is Luz. Where are you from, Derrin?”
“Calgary, Alberta,” I answered. “It’s in Canada.”
“I know where it is,” Luz said quickly. “The whole of Puerto Vallarta is full of you Western Canadians.”
I shrugged. “What can I say, it’s a good place. Your English is very good, by the way.”
“We’re both flight attendants,” Alana said, leaning briefly against her friend in an affectionate way. “We have to know English to deal with drunken white boys.”
“Especially those who get too close,” Luz added although this sounded more like a threat. From the way she was staring at me, I had no doubt it was.
Time to play it cool.
“Well, have a good night.” I told them both with a quick nod and turned to head back to the bar. I’d only walked a few feet before Alana called out after me. “Hey!”
My heart stilled. It had been a gamble.
I turned and looked at her inquisitively.
In the dim light it was hard to tell if she was blushing or not. She attempted to walk over to me but Luz was immediately helping her along. “I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”
I feared the smile on my face was actually genuine. “I’d love that. But I’ll be buying you a drink. You’re the one all bandaged up.” I pretended to look around the bar. “What will you have and where are you sitting?”
Alana jerked her head in the direction of their table. “Beer would be great. Any kind. And don’t forget Luz here.”
“How could I?” I asked playfully before heading toward the bar.
As I walked I heard Luz mutter something to Alana and Alana say “but did you see his muscles?” in response.
Once at the bar, I put in an order for four Pacificos, knowing there was a chance that her friend at the table would want one too, and took a moment to compose myself. The new plan was working but I still wasn’t sure what the outcome was or really why I was doing it. A tired voice in my head told me to be careful, to bring them drinks and at the end of the night walk away. Another voice wanted me to keep tabs on her and figure out her importance and how I could make it work to my advantage. Yet another voice told me to take her out back and do away like her like I was supposed to and collect on the rest of the money.
But I didn’t want to listen to the voices for once. I wanted to run on instinct and my instincts were telling me to take this slow and cautious, one step at a time. Eventually the purpose would become clear, like a diamond underneath.
When I brought the beers back, the three of them were looking up at me with wide smiles. Actually Luz had more of a discerning sneer and the other girl’s smile was strained and polite, but Alana’s was big and wide. It was the kind of smile that made you stare longer than you should, the kind that made even the most dead men feel alive.
Thankfully I was too dead for even that.
“Here you are ladies,” I said, placing the beers on the table.
“Did you drug them?” Luz asked as she carefully slid the beer toward her.
“Not enough time for that,” I told her as I pulled out a seat. “Besides, I know better than to tangle with Mexican girls.”
“You got that right,” Alana said. She raised her beer toward the middle of the table and said, “Here’s to our new Canadian friend.” She looked me in the eye, so direct and unnerving that I had to fight the urge to look away.
I clinked the neck of the bottle against theirs, making sure to look all of them in the eye. “And here’s to such friendly women in Puerto Vallarta.”
And with that, the conversation came relatively easy to us. I found out her other friend was Dominga, a hotel maid, who didn’t say much but was a lot more welcoming than Luz was. When the questions turned to me and what I did and what I was doing here, I told them a bunch of half-truths. My whole life seemed to be built on half-truths.
“Well,” I said between sips of my beer. “I used to be in the military.”
“The Canadian military?” Luz asked.
“Yes. I was shipped off to Afghanistan. After that … wasn’t sure what I was going to do, so I became a personal trainer. Might as well do the one thing that I was good at.”
Alana almost fluttered her eyelashes at that.
Luz folded her arms, not impressed. There was something commendable about her obvious dislike for me. “And so what are you doing in Mexico?”
I shrugged as casually as possible. “I like it here. The people are friendly. The weather is perfect. The girls are nice.” I flashed Alana a smile. “I wish I could stay longer.”
“How long are you here for?” Alana asked.
“It depends if I have something to stay for.” I was really laying it on thick now. “I was going to spend a few weeks here in Puerto Vallarta, I was thinking of maybe buying a condo here, a vacation home or something, so I wanted to really get to know the city. Maybe I’ll be here a month if it suits me.”
Alana gave me a half-smile. “Well, this town may seem like a dream come true to tourists, I’m sure, but it has its bad sides too.”
I jerk my chin at her. “When you say bad side, does it have something to with what happened to you?” I hadn’t asked her earlier about her appearance, I wasn’t really sure what to say.
She pursed her lips, thinking it over. “Yes. I was in a car accident.”
“Oh no,” I told her, hoping my shock was coming across as genuine. I at least knew my concern was. “What happened?”
She paused. “It was a hit and run. I got hit, he ran.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah it was shit.”
“Did they catch the guy?”
She nodded. “They found him.” But then her lips clamped together, signalling that the conversation was over. Interesting how she didn’t divulge any further. I wondered if she just didn’t want to get into it with a stranger – it wouldn’t be easy to talk about how the man who hit you ended up shot in the head – or if she just didn’t know. Both were possible.
“When are you out of the hospital?”
Luz fastened her eyes on me. “How did you know she was still in the hospital?”
Fuck.
I lifted one shoulder. “I just assumed. Her arm still has the tape from where the IV goes in.”
They all looked down at Alana’s arm. Sure enough on her vein in the crook of her elbow, the clear sticker remained.
“Playing hooky?” I asked, turning the question on them.
She blushed then coquettishly bit her lip. “Promise not to tell anyone?”
I made the sign of the cross over my heart. “Hope to die.”
Her brows furrowed for a half a second before she eased back into her sex kitten grin. I wondered what that was about. She cleared her throat. “They said any day now. It’s what they keep telling me.”
“Well, I’m no doctor, but if you’re well enough to be out at a bar, accepting drinks from strange Canadians, then you’re well enough to be out of the hospital.”
“I agree,” she said, raising her beer. “Let’s all cheer to that.”
We all raised our drinks and clinked again. I held eye contact with her the whole time, trying to read her while trying to tell her something. Mainly that I was a good guy. That I could be trusted.
Even though, at the heart of it, both of those were lies.
We sat there for another half an hour until it became apparent that the mention of hospital had taken the wind out of their sails. Dominga kept eyeing the clock on her phone and Luz monitored Alana’s alcohol intake. All the while, Alana was trying to talk with me, ask me question upon question. It was a good thing I came prepared and I knew my fake history as if it were my own. It was a lot easier that way. Some days I even lied to myself about what once was.
“Well I think we should get Alana back to the hospital before she gets in trouble,” Luz said as she and Dominga got to their feet.
I rose too, hoping to help Alana out of her chair. “If anyone gives you any trouble, you report them to me,” I told her with a wink.
“I will,” she said, then gave a resigned sigh as Luz darted over to her to help, beating me to it. Then the two of them started arguing in Spanish, Alana saying she wanted to stay and talk to me, Luz telling her there are other boys when she’s good and ready for them. For some reason, what Luz said rankled me and I had no idea why. Jealously was not my thing. Caring wasn’t either. Couldn’t have one without the other sometimes.
I walked with them as far as the door – walking them to their car seemed borderline stalkerish – but just as they were about to leave, Alana leaned into me and whispered in my ear, “So if someone does give me trouble, like a mean old nurse, how am I going to get a hold of you?”
This was unexpected. I knew Alana was flirty and forward from what I’d seen so far, but I didn’t think this would continue beyond this. I don’t know what I really thought would happen after but it wasn’t her basically asking for my number.
Little warning flags started going off. They weren’t as bold or urgent as the ones I’d gotten when dealing with her arranged assassination, but they were telling me my life would be a lot easier if I let Alana Bernal go and I went on with my sorry little life.
But I guess my sorry little life felt like it was missing something.
Stupidity, perhaps.
So I told Alana where I was staying and the room number. And when her friends helped her hobble away into the dark parking lot, she shot me a look over her shoulder that told me that I was in for it.
If only she knew.
CHAPTER FOUR
Alana
I could not get that man out of my head. For once, instead of thinking about pain and injustice, I was thinking about a 6’2” man with tree trunk arms, caveman shoulders and the most sculpted, masculine face I’d ever seen. His wide strong jaw, his straight nose, his slicing cheekbones and piercing blue eyes became my drug of choice to keep the aches at bay. He even had the perfect-shaped head.
But of course when I told Luz this, I was met with a scowl.
We were sitting in my apartment, having hot chocolate. I sprinkled a bit of hablano pepper onto mine, liking the burn more and more these days. Making hot chocolate – or any food, really – was about the extent of what I could do around the apartment. Luz had to come over and help me clean since I couldn’t move my body very well.
“Perfect-shaped head,” she repeated with a sound of disgust. “Will you listen to yourself?”
“Maybe he has the perfect-shaped dick too,” I teased her, though somehow I knew he did. Men like him had to.
“Alana, please get a hold of your hormones. Goodness, woman, you’ve been out of the hospital for three days now, you’d think you’d forget about it and get back to your life.”
I folded my arms across my chest even though I winced as I did so. “Maybe my life isn’t so fun anymore.”
She tried to give me a sympathetic look but failed at it. That little bit of Luz hardness shown through her dark eyes. “Look, it’s just temporary. All of this. Every day you’re getting better. The doctors told you so.”
“Every day is another day away from my job. Luz, you knew that was my life.
Is
my life.”
“Well, ever think that perhaps this accident was God’s way of showing you what’s important?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start with that God crap.” Though it didn’t seem like it, Luz was a pretty earnest church-goer. That’s par the course for Mexico but sometimes she came across as preachy. And by preachy, I meant bossy, because that’s the Luz way.
“It’s not crap, don’t say that,” she chided me before taking a hearty sip of her drink. “Besides I think I’m right. Why not take this time to reflect a little.”
I snorted. Like hell I’d want to reflect on anything except the massive, gorgeous white dude I’d met the other night. Derrin Calway.
I guessed Luz caught the dreamy look in my eyes because she said, “You still haven’t called him, by the way. So if you’re going to get all smitten kitten on me, you should at least do something about it instead of pining away here like some forties housewife.”
I gave her a look. “First I’m all hormonal, then I’m a forties housewife. Make up your mind, you’re slipping a little.”
But the fact was, she was right. After I saw him at the bar and he told me he was in room 1600 at the Puerto Vallarta Sands Hotel, I had every intention of following up on him. But then I got back to the hospital, was caught as I was going back into the room and lectured by the night nurse Salma, then again the next day by the day nurse, and finally discharged by a very disproving doctor (apparently news around the hospital travelled fast), I kind of lost my nerve.
As much as I fantasied about this Derrin and his thick forearms and strong hands, as much as I wanted someone like that to take my mind off of things, I was too scared to follow-up on it. Normally I didn’t have a problem with chasing a man but then again, normally I didn’t have to. But Derrin … I felt like he would have let me walk out that door and out of his life. That’s usually how guys on vacation are. They don’t bother pursuing anything beyond one night and if one night doesn’t even happen then you’re pretty much out of luck.
Besides, what would he really do with a cripple like myself? Throw me against the wall and fuck me crazy in my condition? No, I didn’t think so. I didn’t even know how I’d go down to see him, not without someone like Luz driving me and I didn’t see a chance in hell of that happening. Luz was always a bit suspicious of the men in my life and seemed especially suspicious of everyone since the accident. I couldn’t really blame her. I needed to borrow some of that suspicion myself.
But maybe I didn’t have to go to Derrin. Maybe he could come to me, at least half way. I’d never know unless I picked up my phone and gave the hotel a call. Hell, there was even a chance that he’d already checked out and left or that there never was a Derrin Calway and it was a decoy to throw me off the scent. Stranger things have happened.