“He belongs in a pen,” Mark said.
Soledad crossed her arms. “Keeping Toto in the pen will put your work to lose,” she warned.
Corinne knew she could end the standoff, but did she really want a pig in the house? “That's just superstition, Soledad. And Toto's likely to get hurt if he's underfoot.”
“He belongs in a pen, Soledad.” With all the authority of the jefe, Mark scooped up the pig. “End of story.” He turned to Corinne. “You're not buying all this, are you?”
“The magic no, butâ” She shuddered. “He did kill the snake. I hate snakes.”
Toto squirmed in Mark's arms. He wasn't a big pig, but he was heavier than he looked. “We can get a cat. Doña Violeta said the other day that one of hers had kittens.”
“But what if it doesn't hunt snakes?”
“
You
want to live with a pig?”
Corinne squashed a ready retort about already living with Mark. After all, it wouldn't be true. “If Soledad can keep him bathed and clean . . .” She hesitated, wondering if she was hearing herself correctly. “I mean, people do keep pigs as house pets.”
Soledad caught her breath. “And they are not witches?”
“No, they are not,” Corinne assured her. “The pigs are a special breed trained to be house pets. People pay good money for them.”
“I am
not
hearing this,” Mark said, shifting the contented pig in his arms.
“
Cuánto
. . . how much money?” Soledad's thoughtful expression suggested that a future beyond the chopping block might lie ahead for Toto.
At that moment, a horn sounded at the courtyard gate. Through the window, Corinne spied the nose of a truck through the wrought-iron rails, but the setting sun glazed it, making it hard to discern the color.
“Maybe that's the supplies I ordered to be delivered this morning from Cuernavaca.” With an exasperated breath, Mark put the pig down. “I leave the fate of the pig for you two to decide.”
As he started out the front door, Toto fell in behind him. Corinne had to admit, Toto was cuteâat a distance. His pinkish curled tail bobbed with each trot.
Soledad stepped next to Corinne, crossing her arms in satisfaction. “I think Señor Mark has made the right decision, no?”
With a laugh, Corinne gave the housekeeper an impetuous hug. “Yes, I think
he
did.” Had the outcome been anything else, both she and Mark would have been in the oven. “But I am serious about keeping Toto bathed.”
Soledad crossed herself.
“Cómo no,
I am already bathing him every day. Did you not smell his soap? It is orange citrus.”
Corinne screeched to a mental halt. “
My
orange citrus bath gel?”
Undaunted by Corinne's mingle of ire and incredulity, Soledad shrugged. “
Cómo no?
He is accustomed to the orange blossoms around his pen.”
Well, heaven forbid that Toto the pig suffer scent shock. Chuckling despite herself, Corinne retreated to the courtyard to see what was going on. Besides, arguing with Soledad was a lot like charging windmills. One might make some headway, but all in all, it was a no-win situation.
To her surprise, Mark and Juan Pablo were busy untying ropes that secured a pickup load of furniture.
Nice furniture,
Corinne thought, taking note of the dark mahogany head and footboard of a bed and matching chest of drawers. There were a mattress and box spring and a large secretary. Perched on top, its back secured to the cab roof of the truck, was a leather chair.
“Buenas noches,
Señorita Corina,” Juan Pablo said, peering around from the back of the vehicle.
“Buenas noches,
Juan Pablo. It is good to see you.”
Corinne managed a smile, but it was thinned with disgust. Evidently Juan Pablo's brother-in-law had made a sale. Just when she thought Mark was progressing from self-indulgence to hard work.
“Hey, look at this,” Mark called out to her. A kid-at-Christmas excitement infected him. “This must have been the surprise that Doña Violeta kept alluding to.”
“Doña Violeta?” she repeated. “You mean Doña Violeta sent this . . . for
free?”
Mark, who'd climbed up on the pickup bed to untangle one of the lines, gave her an incorrigible grin. “O ye of little faith.”
Corinne wrestled between being glad for him and peeved at him. Mark's problem was that everything came so easily for him. Whatever mess he got into, he could either buy or charm his way out. She watched as he shifted the load, his sweat-fitted T-shirt moving with him like a second skin.
Muscles had no right to ripple like that. She crossed her arms against the unbidden provocation to her sensesânot unlike that of the predusk breeze catching the bougainvillea spires that spilled over the courtyard walls with its faint breath, making them quiver ever so slightly.
“Although, I was hoping it was the supplies from Cuernavaca,” Mark admitted. “They should have been here this morning.”
“Then I am sorry that is not the case for your sake, Señor,” Juan Pablo spoke up with a doleful look. “It always puts me to satisfaction to order from the local store.”
The plumber nodded to where some of the arches supporting the second-floor overhang had been removed and temporary posts of nailed-together two-by-fours put in their place. “They replace the whole arch when only part is rotten? That is much presumption, in my humble opinion.”
Glad for the distraction, Corinne pretended to study them, too, focusing on Juan Pablo's disapproval. She'd had concerns about hiring outside the village. At least when no one showed up, Mark could track them down to find out why. But to date, things seemed to be going well.
“I wondered the same thing,” Mark answered. “But fact is, Gonzales gave us a contract price, so if he wants to put more into the project than needs be, that's his problem.”
“Perhaps.” The plumber didn't seem as confident as Mark. “Perhaps not.”
Mark was unruffled by the man's doubt. “What, are you a carpenter too? Juan of all trades?” he teased.
The idiom threw the villager.
“Qué?”
Not that Juan Pablo would laugh. Unlike his brother Juan Pedro, who laughed at everything, business was business.
“It's an English saying that means you can do all kinds of work,” Corinne explained.
The plumber's expression brightened. “Ah,
sÃ.
For plumbing and electricity it is a necessitation to be able to fix what must be pulled apart, no?”
“You're right about that.” With a wry chuckle, Mark jumped to the ground, but as he made his way around the truck to join Corinne and Juan Pablo, he stumbled.
His startled oath was followed by a loud squeal. In an instant, Toto barreled around the pickup and bolted straight for the house.
“That blasted pig had better learn to stay out from under my feet or he's going to the butcher, magical or not.”
Juan Pablo didn't bother to look after the pig as it rushed into the house. Livestock running loose in Mexicalli was not an unusual sight.
“Pues,”
he said, pulling down the tailgate. “We must hurry to get your furniture inside. I have much work this coming week to prepare for the fiesta.”
“What, another fiesta already?” Mark eased a matching leather ottoman out from between a swivel desk chair and the mattress. “Sheesh, you guys have one a month or what?”
“It's the Festival of Saint James,” Corinne informed him. “And yes, there is one almost every month. You'll hear all about it in church Sunday . . .
if
you go.” She hadn't seen him attend since his arrival.
“You can fill me in.” Mark gave her a wink and offered her the ottoman. “Think you can handle this?”
Another strike against him on her scorepad. The man seemed to avoid church like the plague.
“Wait,” he said on second thought. “Maybe you should carry in the chair cushion orâ”
“I can handle a stool.” With
I am woman
insistence, Corinne took it from him. Her mistake was instantly evident. The stuffing topped a base made of lead, making it much heavier than it looked. Refusing to let on, she waddled under its weight toward the house. She was woman . . . stupid woman, but woman nonetheless.
“Perhaps if we hurry ourselves,” Juan Pablo said to Mark in the wake of her retreat. “I can be home before the moon takes over the sky and my Maya is put to romance without her man, no?”
On reaching the front door, Corinne rested the ottoman on the rise into the hacienda from the courtyard, heaving a breath somewhere between a pant and a sigh. She'd seen Juan Pablo with his wife at the market, walking with a protective arm around Maya's plentiful waist, or sitting together in church, sharing a hymnal.
Wiping perspiration from her forehead, she shoved down a rise of envy and despair with resolve and picked the stool back up. In God's time, she'd know such joy. She just had to wait on Him and not take less than she'd asked forâwhich meant Mark Madison.
Granted, romantic notions regarding him plagued her, but Corinne had no place for a self-indulgent unbeliever in her life. Perhaps there was a place for him in her heart as a friend. After all, they'd shared some secretsâhis reason for not taking the easy way out, her repugnance regarding alcohol. But the way he stirred her as a woman meant no more than the breeze moving the bougainvillea blossoms.
I need someone more reliable than the breeze,
she thought, putting the stool down in the salon. For good measure, she gave it a little kick. It worked on the stool, which moved, but the thoughts regarding one irresponsible but charming gringo would not.
And now,
she thought as she limped out of the room,
I have a sore toe.
The following morning Mark was awakened by Soledad's frantic rap on the salon door. “Señor Mark, it is after the rooster's crow, and the supplies are here from Cuernavaca.”
Mark rolled over in the comfort of his new bed, with which his thoughtful benefactress had included a box of linens, and squinted at his travel alarm. Nine o'clock? He groaned, tossing back the covers in a sleep daze. He hadn't set the alarm because the workmen usually got him up and moving by now. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he struck something warm, round, and bristly. Its startled squeal impaled Mark's sluggish senses. Before he could recover, the sliding door cracked open just enough for the intruder to make its escape.
“Soledad?” Annoyance strangled Mark's voice. “How did this pig get in here?”
“Puesâ”
Exasperation edged in. It always began with that word. “Never mind,” he called out, pulling on jeans over his boxers. As he stood, his right foot would not follow the lead of the left, wedging somewhere around the knee. With a grunt, Mark hopped around on one foot, trying to push out the object blocking his pant leg.
“Mark?” Corinne sounded uncertain from the other side of the door. “You'd better come see this.”
She was usually up and gone by now, but then they'd both worked late setting up and arranging the furniture. It was hard to keep the impatience from his voice. He wasn't exactly Clark Kent
à la
Superman in a phone booth. “I'll
be”
âa shoe popped out ahead of his footâ“right there.”
“Omigosh, they're coming through the gate.”
And what was wrong with that? The courtyard was big enough to stack the supplies to one side and still use the other. “I said I'llâ”
A horrible scraping noise, akin to a log of chalk on a giant blackboard, blotted out the rest of Mark's answer. Outside, someone chattered like an excited monkey in high-pitched Spanish over the roar of an engine.
“Ay de mÃ!”
Soledad rushed past Mark as he emerged into the hall with Toto at his heel. She stopped, peering over Corinne's shoulder through the open entrance as if she beheld a monster rather than a delivery truck.
Corinne bit her lip. The slow shake of her head sent a shot of panic through him. Soledad got hysterical over something as inconsequential as her
boogses,
but Corinne wasn't as easily rattled.
“What?” Even as he said the word, Mark bolted to the door and looked outside in the direction of the commotion at the gate.
Or rather,
in
the gate. A giant delivery truck was wedged in the opening of the stone wall, and the intricate, hand-forged gates lay twisted off their inset hinges to either side of the bull-nosed vehicle.
Mark swallowed the oath that came to his lips. Waving his arms at the driver, he vaulted onto the patio. “Stop! Don't!” A sharp stone gouged his unshod arch, stopping him short on the lawn. While he hopped toward the gate, throbbing foot in hand, the driver of the truck gunned the engine.
“No, no, no, no, no!”
Despite his pain-grazed protest, the behemoth on wheels pulled back through the opening. The screech of metal against stone riddled every nerve in his body, making his bruised foot complain even more. In seeming slow motion the truck broke free and rolled backward. It struck a gnarled cypress on the other side of the dirt drive that had guarded the entrance for at least a hundred years, meeting its match with a ground-shaking thump.
The driver's companion bobbed up and down in fast forward, spitting Spanish at the driver of the truck. Aside from a few words, most of the phrases Mark had not learned in academic Spanish, so he had no idea what the guy was saying. All he knew was that now the little man was pointing at him and expounding with the same vigor.
Mark turned toward Corinne and, still holding his wounded foot, nearly fell over. “Will you tell him to wait until I get some shoes on?”
The sound of a thousand pistol cracks split the air, cutting through the rumble of the truck's engine. Awash in another tide of disbelief, Mark swiveled in time to see the truck, trailer tipped as though finished with the entire scene
.
In its wake lay a pick-up-sticks pile of lumber and miscellaneous supplies, interwoven with the metal bands that once held the various sizes of wood together.