Sweet Christmas Kisses (54 page)

He holstered his weapon, and hauled her back a few feet.

“Hey.”  She tried shrugging out of his grip.

“Snake Bait.”  The nickname fit.  “Best we leave the area before that reptile changes his mind.”  Jax kept an eye on the foliage. 

“I need those beans, Tree-Hugger.”  The snap in her voice gave the impression she’d be willing to wrestle that snake for possession if it dared show up again.

“Don’t tell me.”  He kept an eye on the underbrush.  “Those are magic beans.”

She tried to loosen his fingers on her collar.  When that didn’t work, she struck his right in-step with her booted foot. 

He didn’t so much as flinch. 

“
Ow.
”  She hunched over.  “What kind of boot is that?”

“It’s no boot.”  He released her.  “It’s my prosthesis.”

He said the word, “
Prosthesis
,” like Tiff said the word, “
Snake
.”

“I’m sorry.”  Tiff grimaced at the pain in her foot and ankle, and caused by her embarrassing social blunder.  “You’re American and probably fought for my freedom, right?”  He nodded.  “Then you saved me, and here I am, acting ungrateful.”

Something snapped in the direction the snake had disappeared into.  She jumped back.

Her rescuer was tall enough to hide behind, with strong, almost gaunt features, and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.  “I don’t wear a sign that says my leg’s missing from the knee down.  I’m flattered you couldn’t tell I’m a…”

That awkward pause.  He could have filled it with harsh words–like cripple or invalid or something equally self-deprecating.  Her heart went out to him.

“That you’re a veteran,” she finished for him.  Actually, her first thought when she’d caught sight of him had been less charitable.  He’d been stumbling forward in camouflage clothing with his eyes closed.  She’d thought the zombie apocalypse had begun.

But now wasn’t the time for fantasies, creepy or otherwise (the otherwise being based on intense blue eyes and heroic rescues).  “I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to get my beans to a dry place and then backtrack for my wheelbarrow.”

Lightning flashed.

Tiff realized her hands had gripped his pack straps once more.  She released him.  “On second thought, I’ll leave the wheelbarrow rescue for another day.”

“What about your boot?” Her rescuer’s grin was lopsided, as if he didn’t trust himself to go crazy and get caught smiling.  Might ruin that intensely serious vibe he presented.

“My boot is probably at the bottom of the valley by now.”  If not on its way to being washed into the lower fork of the river and eventually out to sea.

He handed her the machete.  “You should have boots that lace up, not slip on.”  He said it kindly when he could just as easily have made her feel foolish for her rubber, flowery boots.

As if it hadn’t already ruined her day, the rain came down harder.

Heeding his advice about the snake, she crouched as far away from the undergrowth as she could and still reach her gun-shot cocoa beans.  She gathered up the frayed ends of burlap and black plastic, and slung what was left of the bag over her shoulder.  It was depressingly lighter than it had been before.  Hopefully, she had enough to convince her father the quality of the beans here were worth investing in.  Rejuvenating the family’s cocoa fields with a new strain of cocoa would save the family chocolate business. 

“Well,” she tried to sound cheerful.  As cheerful as one could sound with one boot lost and half her experiment destroyed.  “I need to get across the bridge.”  Or she’d be stuck on this side of the river with a big, hungry snake, and a handsome, wounded warrior.  Both of which were dangerous in their own way.

“I’m headed the other way.”  He reached beneath his rain slicker to adjust his backpack straps.  “Been nice bumping into you, Snake Bait.”

Tiff caught his arm.  “Downhill?”  Through her family’s cocoa fields and up the other side of the valley?

He nodded. 

“Uhm.  The buildings down there were washed away years ago.”  She rested her socked-foot on her boot.  “The river’s cresting.  If anyone’s going to be snake bait, it’ll be you.  Where are you headed?  Is it close?  Is there shelter?”

“I’m going to Quito.”

She must have heard him wrong.  “That’s three hundred miles away.”

His blue eyes turned as stormy as the sky above them.

“I know it’s none of my business, but do you realize the nearest village in the direction you’re going is thirty miles away?  And the track past my family’s cocoa fields is more like a goat trail?”  They were the last lowland valley before the Andes range officially began soaring to the heavens.

“I know where I’m going,” he said with all the cockiness of a man unwilling to ask directions when he was clearly lost.  “Besides, there’s nothing the way you’re going either.  Not for miles.”

“There’s the bus stop and the convent where the road widens on the other side of the river.”  The convent being her grandparents’ former plantation home, currently presided over by three elderly nuns. 

Their original convent had collapsed in an earthquake several years ago and Tiff’s father had given them the property.  Four days a week, the elderly nuns took the bus to the nearest village where they taught locals how to read, provided rudimentary medical care, and held religious services in a clearing behind the small grocery.  Living with the nuns was like living with three Jewish grandmothers–they bestowed upon Tiff equal parts love and criticism. 

“I need to be going.”  He must have moved into a shaft of light or perhaps the clouds above broke.  In either case, she noticed blood on his pants leg.

“Hey, you’re bleeding!” 

In typical military fashion, he did a full-body check when he most likely knew the blood was coming from the vicinity of his knee. 

“Predators smell blood,” she said.  Jaguars.  Panthers.  And maybe snakes?

“It’ll wash out in the rain.”  So confident. 

He pushed her buttons.  “If you don’t bleed to death first.”

More intense blue-eyed defiance.  “It’s oozing.  I didn’t slice an artery.”

“But – ”

“Snake Bait, it’s been fun.  But I need to make my miles for the day.”  In two steps, he was swallowed by the jungle.

Okay, then.  “Merry Christmas, Tree-Hugger.”  Tiff headed uphill, hacking a path with her machete. 

Worry for her rescuer lingered.  He hadn’t been able to see the snake.  Was he sick?  Seriously injured?  Feverish? 

The roar of the river drowned out the barrage of rain and her concern for anyone other than herself.  The bridge spanning its banks was a combination of rusted steel and rotted wood.  It would have been condemned had it existed in the states.  The water had risen significantly since the morning and was now within two feet of the bridge deck.  Further down, it spilled over the lower bank and curled onto the track downhill. 

Tiff wished there was another way back to the convent.  In the plantation’s hey-day, she and her brother had ridden her grandfather’s four-wheeler to-and-from the cocoa fields to the main house above the river.  Back then, she’d had no fear of the jungle.  As children, they’d never been left on their own.  Their days were spent in the fields under the careful supervision of her grandfather.  Their nights were spent listening to stories about starting the business and cultivating the land.  Tiff could still hear her grandfather’s voice as he spoke of the rich quality of Arriba chocolate, of the care needed to graft and cross-pollinate the cocoa trees for a richer, healthier crop. 

Years later, Tiff’s dad wasn’t buying any Arriba cocoa beans, their fields were in danger of being swallowed up by the jungle, and Bon-Bon Chocolate had been called out by competitors for skimping on quality.  Her father and brother were focused on maximizing profits, draining the company dry.  Tiff wanted the company to go on.  She wanted something to pass onto her children.  She’d come to Ecuador, cleared a small plot around the healthiest cocoa trees, and grafted different varieties to the family’s original stock.  The cocoa beans she carried were the first fruits of her labor.  All she needed to do was dry them out and test their quality.

Tiff kept one hand on the rickety railing the entire way across the bridge, only slipping once and sending her socked-foot plunging into the roaring river.  Her heart had plunged along with it.  A few heart-slowing minutes later, she reached the collapsed lean-to that served as the bus stop.  Tiff picked her way carefully over a narrow pebbled path behind it to the convent.  She arrived without stepping on anything jagged or mushy or alive. 

The convent was built on stilts.  Upstairs, the common area was a kitchen and dining room, and was smaller than most studio apartments in New York.  Off the common area were four small bedrooms, one bathroom, and a storage room.  Tiff’s drying racks were underneath the house.  She went there first, on the lookout for predatory wildlife–big or small–that might have sought shelter from the rain.  Finding none, she emptied her bag onto the rack, and spread the cocoa beans over the mesh.  She sent up a silent prayer that they’d dry properly.  With the soaking they’d had and the humidity in the air, it seemed more likely they’d mold.  Or taste like gun powder.

Tiff entered the convent through the cock-eyed front door, the wood having rotted through beneath the bottom hinge on the doorframe.  She shed her boot and muddied sock, hung up her rain slicker, and placed her empty, dripping bag on a hook.  She donned a pair of pink flip-flops.  With all the wildlife in Ecuador, no one ever went barefoot, even inside.

Sister Mary Ofelia sat at the kitchen table, giving a garlic clove a good pressing and giving Tiff an assessing once-over.  Her black habit hung askew from her thin frame, like an ill-fitting hospital gown.  “
You’ve lost a pretty boot
,” she said in Spanish. 

“
Another tragedy
.”  Another urgent trip to the large market three villages away.  Tiff washed up in the sink. 

After Tiff changed into dry clothes, she joined Sister Mary Ofelia at the table to help cut vegetables for dinner.  Meals in this part of Ecuador were mostly vegetable-based with a side of rice. 

“
One boot
.”  Sister Mary Ofelia tilted her head.  “
Pray to Saint Anthony and it will show up
.”

There was a higher likelihood of Prince Charming appearing with a glass slipper and a marriage proposal.  That boot was halfway to the Galapagos by now.

Hunched over her cane, Sister Mary Lucia did a slow shuffle into the room toward the table.  Reddish-brown freckles blanketed her features and disappeared into her wrinkles.  Sister Mary Rosa trailed after her, wheeling a walker over the creaky wood floor.  She was a spritely thing, about Tiff’s size, with a gap-toothed smile that was contagious.

Sister Mary Rosa detoured from the table to the remains of Tiff’s bag by the door.  She fingered the shredded burlap and sniffed.  “
Gunshot
?”

Three pairs of eyes turned to Tiff with curiosity. 

“
There was a stranger and a snake on the road
.”  It sounded as if Tiff was telling a bad joke. 
A man with one leg bumps into a woman and a snake during a rainstorm.
All she needed was the addition of three nuns and a punch line. 
Ba-dum-bum.

Silence descended, with a backdrop of steady rain on the tin roof.  The nuns weren’t conversationalists.  They were put on the earth to spread the gospel, not gossip.

“
You brought the wheelbarrow back
?” Sister Mary Ofelia asked.

Tiff had been hoping they wouldn’t ask.  “
It’s at the bottom of the hill
.”  She hoped.

The nuns sighed in unison, as if they knew they’d never see their wheelbarrow again, as if they knew Tiff had no idea what she was doing alone, in Ecuador, on an abandoned cocoa plantation.

She was afraid they were right.

Jax slid in the mud on his backside. 

A long way this time. 

Down the hill and into a bush at the bend in the road. 

At least it’s the direction I’m headed.

He had trouble getting traction with his prosthetic.  Even if he’d had spiked cleats on both feet, he’d probably still slip-and-slide down the hill on his butt.  He’d chosen this route for its directness to Quito.  It might have been smarter to keep to the well-traveled roads. 

His leg hurt.  His prosthetic wasn’t sealing on the short spur of bone beneath his knee.  He’d tried to adjust it after he’d left Snake Bait, but he needed to dry everything off.  The layers of sock and polyurethane were supposed to be lubed, not wet.  Certainly not wet with blood from skin rubbed raw.

This wasn’t how he envisioned his trek for a fallen comrade.  The rain wasn’t the issue.  It was the mud and the way the road had turned into a river.  And how he felt hungry and weak and pitiful.  Like a cripple.

Familiar resentment roiled in his gut, boiled over through his limbs. 
A cripple?
  He rejected the label.

Jax scrambled to his feet.  Wet.  Muddy.  In pain.  But not helpless.  Never –

The mud beneath his prosthetic gave way and he clutched at the bush.  Something popped free from its lower branches – a pink, flowery rubber boot.

Jax grabbed it before it was carried away by the rushing water. 

Snake Bait.

Thinking about their encounter made him smile.  She’d mentioned a bus stop and a convent on the other side of the river.  Up the hill.  Subtracting precious mileage from his trip odometer.

Up the hill was a roof over his head and a woman who smelled of wildflowers, talked a tough game, and was missing a pink boot.

His goal was the opposite direction.  More than three hundred miles.  And it didn’t look like there was any shelter ahead.

Not that being with Mother Nature bothered him.  As a kid, he’d roughed it on overnight hikes.  As a soldier, he’d bedded down in a lot of hell-holes.  But this was different.  Until he reached flat ground, it’d be like sleeping in a river, no telling what washed down his way.  Tree branches, rubber boots, snakes.  He had to move on.  But it was becoming increasingly apparent to him that Snake Bait might have been right.  The safest place to wait out the storm was above-river.