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  The men didn’t talk much. A few comments about the weather, a brief discussion on the decline in profits at the grocery store managed by one of the sons, but mostly the men occupied themselves by giving Michael long, assessing stares. He kept his mouth shut, figuring the less he said, the less likely he’d be to offend them.

  After a while the men were called to the table. Pork stew filled a tureen at its center, chunks of meat mixed with peppers and tomatoes and redolent with spices. Orange rice was heaped in another bowl, and a pitcher of lemonade sweated in the heat. Señor Cesare took his place at the head of the table and said grace. Then they sat.

  Emmie wound up across the table and several seats down from Michael. He couldn’t even glance at her discreetly. Surrounded by one Cesare daughter and another son-in-law, he decided that much more than air-conditioning and water fountains, he missed America’s more casual approach to dating. What was he going to say to all these Cesares and in-laws? He could compliment the cooking only so many times before they’d start wondering what was wrong with him.

  Emmie must have sensed his discomfort, because she stepped into the breach. “Michael is a university professor,” she told the Cesares. “He’s here to do research.”

  The daughter next to him gave him a shiny-eyed look. “What research?” Senor Cesare wanted to know.

  Michael took a deep breath, using the pause to review the cover story he and Gallard had worked out. “My father grew up in San Pablo,” he told them. “My research involves monitoring the social and economic changes in the region.”

  “What changes?” one of the sons-in-law muttered. “Nothing changes here.”

  “There have been changes,” Michael argued gently. “Your school now has Internet access.” He shot a smile at Emmie, glad for the chance to look directly at her. “The economy is much stronger than it was twenty years ago.”

  This provoked a chorus of derisive laughter. “The corrupt politicians have gotten richer,” Señor Cesare grumbled. “The rest of us are where we were a hundred years ago.”

  Michael knew he shouldn’t say anything risky—but he couldn’t help himself. Not after sitting in church for ninety minutes, thinking about why he hadn’t been in a church in seven years. “I’ll bet the criminals have gotten richer,” he remarked.

  “What criminals?” one of the Cesare daughters asked. But Señor Cesare outshouted her. “The vermin! They’re worse than the politicians!”

  “What criminals?” Emmie chimed in, sending Michael a quizzical look.

  “I was talking to a mechanic yesterday,” Michael said with feigned casualness’ “He mentioned that a gunrunner lives in the hills outside town.”

  His observation was met with gasps and tongue clicking. “Don’t mention that beast in my house!” Senora Cesare hissed, crossing herself. “I don’t care if he’s rich, and I don’t care if murder is a sin. Someone should kill him.”

  Emmie’s eyebrows arched higher. “Why?”

  “What he did to a girl in town. It’s terrible. I can’t even talk about it.” Señora Cesare shook her head and crossed herself again.

  “I hear he’s afraid to come into town,” one of the sons-in-law remarked. “He knows he’d get torn limb from limb if anyone found him. He does all his business down in Aranal, where they don’t know him.”

  Michael stored that bit of information in his memory bank. Aranal was a good twenty miles to the west. If Cortez was hiding in the mountains, he was likely hiding in the mountains west of town.

  “We will not talk about that anymore,” Señora Cesare announced. “We will talk about what a fine mass Father Esteban gave today.”

  The conversation bent to Señora Cesare’s will, and they all discussed the mass. Michael ate his stew, sipped his cider and let his gaze veer to Emmie as often as he dared. Whenever he looked at her he found her looking back, her eyes bright with curiosity and amusement and something else, something he wanted to believe was an accurate reflection of what he was feeling: passion.

  Passion and a whole lot more.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “THAT WASN’T SO BAD, was it?” Emmie asked.

  They were walking to his temporary residence to get his Jeep. He’d warned her that the clutch was temperamental, but she’d agreed to chance a drive with him anyway, figuring that if he was plotting to have the vehicle conveniently break down so he could have his way with her far from town, he wouldn’t have mentioned the clutch problem.

  She also figured that, after last night, after that morning in church, after every minute she and Michael had spent in each other’s company, he must know he wouldn’t have to come up with a complicated scheme if he wanted to have his way with her. The attraction between them was raw and real and obviously mutual.

  What pleased her was that that attraction wasn’t the only thing between them. His behavior at the Cesares’ house had doubled her respect for him. He’d been polite and sociable, and she’d loved listening as he chatted with the Cesares’ extended family. She loved the way Spanish words glided off his tongue in the same tangy accent she’d been hearing since she’d arrived in San Pablo last summer. He seemed so patently American, yet surrounded by native San Pabloans, he was utterly at home. He knew just how much to praise Senora Cesare’s cooking-too little and she would have been insulted, too much and she would have been skeptical—and he knew how to jog the conversation when it lulled. His smiles for the Cesare daughters were discreet, containing just enough mischief to flatter the young women. He was even reasonably patient with the Cesares’ grandchildren. He didn’t get down on the floor and play with them, but he tolerated them with good humor.

  By one-thirty, he and Emmie had won their freedom. Señora Cesare approved of him; when Emmie said they were going out for a while, the older woman nodded and smiled. “He seems like un buen hombre,” she murmured. A good man.

  “We could take the Jeep for a spin,” he’d suggested once they had left the house. “Assuming my colleague isn’t using it. I sort of doubt he would be, though. He has a lot more trouble with the clutch than I do.”

  “Who is he?” Emmie asked.

  “A research assistant,” Michael said vaguely, his tone saying he didn’t want her to question him further.

  They passed the church where they’d attended mass that morning, and she might have only imagined the shadow that drifted across his face as he glanced up at the stark white spire. As soon as they were beyond the church he seemed to brighten again. “I haven’t had any real home cooking since I got here,” he remarked. “That dinner was great.”

  “Does your mother cook San Pablo cuisine?” Emmie asked, then rolled her eyes. “I forgot—she’s American.”

  “My grandmother taught her a few things,” Michael said.

  The plaza was crowded, and Michael took Emmie’s hand as they ventured into the throng. A sunny Sunday afternoon tended to lure everyone out of doors. Children careered about on their bicycles, young couples pushed toddlers in strollers and old people sat placidly on the benches, observing the activity around them.

  Michael moved purposefully through the swarming humanity, his hand folded snugly around Emmie’s. At the far side of the plaza they came to the cantina where the band had played last night. He paused to stare at one of the open-air tables, where a man in a T-shirt that displayed an abundance of muscle sat nursing a beer. The man’s aggressive physique and short hair made her think he might be a marine. His coloring—the buzz-cut hair was sandy brown, and his fair complexion was dotted with freckles—made her think he might be an American.

  “That’s my research assistant,” Michael announced.

  Emmie frowned. The man looked too old to be Michael’s assistant—he was clearly older than Michael—and he looked too rugged to be an academic. His blunt, thick fingers didn’t seem to have spent a great deal of time flipping through books and scribbling notes.

  She did her best to conceal her surprise, however, reproaching herself not to judge the man by his appe
arance. Just because he resembled a body builder didn’t mean he couldn’t be a brain builder, too.

  Michael wove through the tables until he reached the man. Somewhere along the meandering route he let go of Emmie’s hand. “Hey,” he said quietly.

  The man glanced up from his beer, grinned at Michael and then lost a bit of his grin as his gaze expanded to take in Emmie. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Emmie, I’d like you to meet my research assistant, Max Gallard. Max, this is a friend of mine, Mary-Elizabeth Kenyon.”

  Max gave her a sweeping inspection with his eyes. They were hard and gray, like chips of flint. “How do you do,” he said blandly, extending his hand.

  She shook it, once again hiding her surprise. His palm, tough and callused, felt like an overcooked slab of steak, and his fingers were strong enough to squeeze the life out of a snake. “How do you do,” she echoed, forcing a smile.

  “We need the wheels today,” Michael told Max. “Any problem with that?”

  Max shook his head. “I don’t know if you should trust it. That damn clutch—”

  “I can handle it,” Michael assured him, then grinned. “It requires a level of sensitivity that’s way beyond you.”

  Max laughed. Emmie wished someone would explain the joke to her, but neither man did. “Look,” Max said, “we’ve got stuff to take care of. There’s research we’ve got to do.”

  “It’ll get done later,” Michael said. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll be back in a couple of hours, barring a breakdown.”

  Before Max could say anything more, Michael touched his hand to Emmie’s elbow and steered her from the cantina. She waited until they were half a block away before daring to ask, “If he’s your research assistant, how come he’s the one telling you you have to work?”

  “That’s just his way,” Michael answered with a shrug. “He likes to think he’s in charge.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw Max’s head bowed over his beer bottle, his shoulders as hulking as rounded mountains. “He doesn’t look like a scholar,” she remarked.

  “He entered graduate school after a stint in the military,” Michael explained, ushering her around the corner to a block of small shops separated by narrow alleys. He led her down an alley next to an apothecary and opened the door at the rear of the building.

  The room was shrouded—the roller shade was lowered in front of the one window, which overlooked the alley. Despite the gloom, Emmie could see that the room was relatively tidy, neater than she would have expected of bachelor lodgings. One of the two narrow steel beds was made, and she couldn’t keep from hoping that that bed was Michael’s. The dresser top held assorted guy stuff—thick wood-handled hairbrushes, two different brands of aftershave, a casually tossed handkerchief, a set of keys. Michael scooped up the keys and turned toward the door.

  Still in the doorway, Emmie blocked his way. She could have stepped aside, but she was still studying the room. Her gaze lingered on the unmade bed, and the dark-red canvas duffel stowed underneath it. Next to the duffel stood a pair of mud-spattered hiking boots.

  “Do you hike a lot?” she asked Michael.

  He traced the angle of her vision, then shook his head. “Those are Max’s.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it and moved back out into the alley. She wanted to believe Max was a research assistant, but she was having difficulty. If she couldn’t believe that, then she couldn’t believe Michael. The possibility that she might be wrong to trust him was disturbing.

  She’d trusted him so much yesterday, trusted him enough to consider making love with him. She’d trusted him enough to bring him into the Cesare household today, to include him in a family dinner. She wanted to trust him...but Max Gallard tweaked her suspicions.

  She slowed to a halt in the alley. The stone walls on either side reflected the heat of the day, a dry warmth that seeped into her without causing her to sweat. Michael stood before her, peering down at her, obviously perplexed.

  “I don’t believe Max is a research assistant,” she said bluntly. She could think of no other way to deal with her doubts.

  Michael’s expression remained perplexed. She sensed no hesitation in him, no defiance or denial. “Why?” he asked.

  “He just...” The truth sounded so petty and close-minded. But she’d opted for honesty and saw no point in backing off now. “He doesn’t look like one. He doesn’t sound like one.”

  A faint smile curved Michael’s mouth. “What does a research assistant sound like?” he asked.

  She was being foolish—but still, doubt niggled at her. “Erudite?” she suggested. “Scholarly?”

  “Pompous? Pretentious? Just like me, right?” Michael’s smile grew. “Just let me know if you want me to lapse into academic jargon. I’ve got a whole lot of thirty-dollar words at my fingertips. I had to learn them before the university would hire me.”

  “I’m sorry.” She managed to laugh at herself. “It’s silly, I know. But when I think of graduate students, I think of skinny, sun-deprived bookworms anxious to get their research completed. And I say this as a former graduate student myself,” she added apologetically. She’d spent two years at the University of Virginia earning her master’s degree in education. “Skinny, sun-deprived and anxious” accurately described her at graduate school.

  “He’s anxious, for sure,” Michael confirmed. “That’s why he’d rather be working with me right now, instead of sitting by himself while I escort a lovely teacher around town.”

  His comment made sense. Emmie decided to shrug off her misgivings. Assuming Max wasn’t what Michael claimed didn’t reflect his lack of credibility but her narrow-mindedness.

  The Jeep was parked at the rear of the alley. Rather than one of those swanky suburban models that filled the parking lot of her parents’ country club, it was an old, canvas-topped model of army green scarred by shapeless blemishes of rust. Michael helped her up into the passenger seat, which was cracked and patched with duct tape, then settled himself behind the wheel. He twisted the ignition key and the engine rumbled to life.

  “I want to see where you teach,” he told her, bouncing along the rutted alley to the street. “Where’s the school?”

  She gave him the address and he nodded, steering down the crowded side road. Wagons and cars parked at bad angles formed an obstacle course, but he navigated deftly around them, cruised past bicyclers and pedestrians and avoided the stray dogs and cats that roamed the street, sniffing and scavenging for food. Emmie thought to give him more detailed directions as they proceeded, but he clearly knew the route.

  As they neared the drab building where she taught, Michael let out a low breath. She was afraid he was going to insult the building, which resembled a small prison, its walls intimidating gray slabs of cinder block and its windows tucked high beneath the flat tin roof. The building was indisputably ugly, but it had reliable plumbing and heat in the winter, plus sufficient electricity to run a computer and enough phone lines to link that computer to the Internet.

  She was gearing up to defend the building when Michael spoke. “I can’t believe it! It almost looks like a real school!”

  “As opposed to what?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “When I used to come down here as a kid, the school was this rickety wooden shack. One room, well vented thanks to all the cracks in the walls. There was an outhouse... and that tree. See that tree?” He pointed to the lone palm at one corner of the dusty school yard. “They’d hold classes under the palm tree when the weather permitted. It was too crowded in the one room inside, so the kids would come outside and sit in the dirt and try to concentrate while the teacher taught. No blackboard, no maps—certainty no computers.”

  “So...you’re saying you think this school is good?”

  “Compared with what used to be, it’s fantastic.” He shook his head again. “I bet even the rural kids come to class.”

  “Most do,” she agreed. “Sometimes their parents hold them out of cla
ss when there’s fieldwork to do.”

  “The parents hold them out of class because they don’t want their kids rising above them,” Michael said, his voice tinged with bitterness. She remembered his comment as he’d walked her home last night—that his parents resented his rise into the ranks of the professionals—and she wanted to question him about it.

  But she had already risked offending him by questioning him about Max. She couldn’t risk offending him by questioning him about his parents.

  He gave her a measuring gaze. Perhaps he read her questions in her eyes, because he said, “I’ll show you where I came from.” He pulled back onto the road.

  “I thought you were born in the U.S.”

  He grinned, but his eyes were pensive. “Yeah, I was born in the States. But this is where I came from.” He headed north, leaving behind the bustle and traffic for the outskirts of town. The road slithered up into the hills, where the houses were more widely spaced, more rudimentary, surrounded by vegetable gardens, chattering ducks and chickens, pens of grunting pigs and fields of corn. Some yards had the carcasses of stripped automobiles on display; some were nothing more elaborate than packed dirt. Scrawny children chased scrawny dogs and lugged buckets of water from outdoor pumps.

  The Jeep groaned when Michael downshifted on the inclining roads, which gradually deteriorated into crumbling strips of rutted asphalt. She watched him play the gear stick gently, his touch light and graceful. “The car isn’t going to die on us, is it?” she asked, not sure how safe they would be, stranded so far from town in such impoverished surroundings. She had little on her worth stealing—a wristwatch, her locket and simple gold-hoop earrings—and Michael had said he came from here. He would know how to extricate them from a bad situation.

  “It wouldn’t dare,” he said, tapping his foot on the clutch and steering around another S-shaped wiggle in the road. He slowed the Jeep as they crested a hill, slowed it some more as they came upon what might have been an archeological ruin had it had any grandeur at all.