Aztec Sun Read online

  Diego’s grin turned wolfish, and he jerked his hips in an obscene motion. “Hey, man—taking care of two women is nothing for me, you know? Piece-a-cake.”

  In spite of himself, Rafael smiled. But as soon as Diego left the room, closing the door behind him, Rafael dropped the smile.

  Something was going to go wrong. Diego might not know it, but Rafael did.

  Diego never sensed these things. He scampered through life like a frisky puppy, figuring that if he looked cute and smiled enough, the world would scratch his belly and feed him steak. He never saw the shadows, never noticed the storm clouds riding the horizon. What he did he was good at, and Rafael would be forever in his debt. But Rafael had faced the worst before. He knew the shadows, he knew the clouds, and he knew that luck could be bad as often as good.

  Maybe this time he’d aimed too high. Signing an Anglo TV star, giving the film an eight-figure budget, blue-printing a major promotional thrust with wide distribution... Maybe this time he was reaching too far, wanting too much.

  He carried the ashtray into the kitchenette adjacent to his office and rinsed off the sooty residue. He used to smoke himself, but once he’d quit he’d lost his tolerance for the odor of dead ashes. Setting the dish on the counter to dry, he left the kitchenette for the main room of his office. The couch could open into a bed; the credenza hid drawers of spare clothes and other necessities. He frequently worked late, and he’d designed his office suite so it could double as an apartment when he was too tired to drive home for the night.

  During the day, however, it was just an office, with a broad teak desk, shelves full of pretty but useless objects that Carlotta dusted every week, and a door leading to a separate storage room filled with shelves of scripts, locked cabinets full of budget analyses, financial records, paperwork—exactly the sort of material a reporter would love to get her hands on.

  Sandra Garcia wouldn’t have to come to his office to do her snooping. Between Melanie Greer and the streets of East L.A., she would find plenty of leads juicier than anything in Rafael’s storage room.

  He crossed back to the window and stared down at the parking lot. The cars below his window shimmered in the afternoon sunlight; the painted white lines marking the spaces seemed to waver in the heat.

  Rafael sighed. He was used to the pressure. Diego had promised to hold Melanie together for the duration of the shoot, and the investors believed they would get their money’s worth from Aztec Sun. Rafael had never lost money on a picture. Never.

  He didn’t intend to lose money on this one, either. It had a box office draw in Melanie, enough romance to bring in the women and enough violence to bring in the men. John Rhee knew his way around car chases and nude scenes. White Angel was going to be a hit—as long as nothing went wrong.

  Sandra Garcia.

  Hell.

  He visualized her as she’d looked when he’d last seen her, standing near the sound stage inside Building B. He pictured her ginger-colored skin and her wide, cinnamon lips and her eyes as sweet and warm as melting chocolate. And her hair, long and straight and black like the silence of a moonless night, all darkness and texture. He wanted to feel that texture, drown in that darkness. He wanted her.

  Hell was right. He must be out of his mind, thinking about her that way. Even if she weren’t a reporter who could make serious trouble for him, she’d issued no invitations and offered no hints. In her crisp slacks and blazer, she was dressed about as provocatively as his sister Rosa, and Rosa was a nun. Like Rosa, Sandra Garcia wore no make-up, little jewelry, not even a whisper of perfume. She was definitely not a woman on the make.

  Which might be the sexiest thing about her, Rafael admitted. Not her exotic mestizo features—the high cheekbones, flat nose and angled eyes. Not her full mouth and slim hands and long legs, not her clear, direct gaze, but the fact that she hadn’t come on to him.

  He was used to women making plays for him, and he knew better than to take their advances seriously. Women were turned on by his wealth, by the fact that even though the college-educated critics turned up their noses at his movies, they made oceans of money. Aztec Sun knew its audience and delivered the goods. And in a company town like Los Angeles, that kind of success made Rafael a powerful man.

  Power attracted two kinds of people: those who wanted to benefit from it and those who wanted to decimate it. What troubled Rafael more than Sandra Garcia’s unadorned beauty, more than her lithe, statuesque body and her proud posture and the erotic tension she aroused in his gut without even trying, was the understanding that she was a reporter. Reporters made their names by destroying powerful people.

  A muted beep from the speaker on his phone tore him away from the window. “Martin Robles is here,” Carlotta’s voice squawked through the box. “You’re booked with him till three-thirty. After that you’ve got a conference call scheduled with Tracy Hester at Freeman, Barr.”

  Screenwriters pitching scripts, attorneys dissecting contracts. Rafael had no time to think about the reporter with the prim apparel and the alluring eyes.

  Diego had vowed to keep an eye on her, and he would. He would steer the lady from the L.A. Post in the right direction. Rafael depended on him for such things, and Diego never let him down.

  ***

  IT WAS NEARLY FIVE O’CLOCK when he was done talking about income from residuals with the legal hacks at Freeman, Barr. He felt drained from the effort of concentrating on business while one region of his brain clung stubbornly to thoughts of Sandra Garcia.

  His preoccupation with her wasn’t merely a result of healthy male attraction. Something about the woman unnerved him. Her uncompromising gaze, maybe. The doubt shading her smile. The grip of her hand when he’d shaken it. The glint in her eyes that seemed to say, “I’m going to get you.”

  He wished there was nothing about him for her to get. No revelations, no sordid truths, no past.

  Once again he made a pilgrimage to the window and gazed out. He spotted her three stories below him, peeking through the windshield of his car.

  He cursed under his breath, then moved across the thick brown carpet to the storage room and locked the door. Then he locked his desk, locked the kitchenette and stormed out of the office.

  Carlotta was diligently hammering at the keyboard of her computer. “Where are you going?” she asked. Although she wasn’t much older than Rafael, Carlotta had the starchy bearing of an Old-World duenna. She clucked at Rafael like a mother hen, insisted on tidying up his office even though he paid a janitorial service to do that, and constantly demanded an accounting of where he was going and whom he was with. One of these days he expected her to ground him for breaking curfew.

  He smiled. “Out.”

  “Did you finish reading—”

  “I’ll finish later.” He kissed her cheek, the way he used to kiss his mother’s cheek when he was a kid, on his way out the door in search of fun and trouble. “I promise.”

  “Tracy said those contracts—”

  “I promise.” He held up his hand as if he were taking an oath, or else trying to ward off Carlotta’s reprimands. Still smiling, he backed out of her office, then turned and raced to the elevator. He had to get to the parking lot before Sandra Garcia disappeared.

  An evening breeze, tangy with citrus, tempered the air. He moved in long, quiet strides down the walk, past the visitor’s parking area to the lot his office overlooked. She was still there, alone, lurking near his car.

  “Looking for something?” he asked, his tone cool and dry.

  She flinched and straightened up. “This car is magnificent,” she said. “Is it yours?”

  “Yes.” He shouldn’t let her enthusiasm for his classic Thunderbird sway him. It was probably some sort of journalistic tactic: she assumed that if she made a fuss over his car, he would open up to her.

  “What model year is it?” she asked.

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “It’s glorious.” She circled the car slowly, admiring its polished whit
e veneer and elaborate chrome from all angles. “If I had money to burn, I’d burn it on one of these.”

  She’s playing with you, he warned himself. But the game seemed harmless enough. “What do you drive?”

  She shrugged, and the strap of her leather tote bag slid down to the bend in her elbow. “That maroon car,” she said, pointing out a Japanese sedan no more than a couple of years old. “It’s terribly practical,” she added, her grin indicating she didn’t think much of practicality.

  “I’ve got a terribly practical car at home,” he told her. It wasn’t like him to volunteer information, but his owning two cars wasn’t exactly front-page news. “It gets me through all kinds of weather.”

  “How terribly practical,” she said, then laughed.

  Her laughter surprised him. It was lush and throaty, perilously sexy. He kept his smile in place and his body perfectly still. Not in a million years would he let her know the effect she had on him.

  “Can I interest you in a drink?” she asked.

  Oh, God. That sultry laugh and those astonishing brown eyes, and now she was asking him out for a drink. A weaker man wouldn’t even think before accepting.

  Rafael wasn’t weak. He thought.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” she said forthrightly, as if anxious to remind him of what this was all about. “I know you’re busy, Mr. Perez, so I won’t take too much of your time.”

  Perhaps it would be best to get this over with right at the start. He could set limits, point out the boundaries, let her know that he had no intention of opening up to her.

  “There’s a cantina a block from here,” he said. “We can walk.”

  She sent a final, lustful look at his car, and he decided he was glad he hadn’t offered to drive. He didn’t want to earn points with her. He sensed she was the sort who’d get suspicious if an interview subject acted too nice.

  Side by side, they strolled to the front gate. The guard nodded silently to Rafael, who returned the nod and stepped aside to let Sandra precede him out. Cars streamed down the street; workers trickled out of the spark-plug factory across the way. They were mostly young men, Latinos, low-wage laborers. More than a few of them had applied for work at Aztec Sun. People in these parts knew that Rafael Perez understood where they were coming from because he’d come from the same place himself, and that if they could get a job with him, he would teach them what they needed to know and pay them enough to live comfortably.

  Not that he considered himself a hero—or aspired to be one. Even with a beautiful woman like Sandra Garcia beside him, he didn’t want anyone looking up to him. Adulation had never been what he was after.

  Some of the factory workers liked to patronize Cesar’s, but mostly it was an Aztec Sun hang-out. The small, dark tavern was still fairly empty at this early hour. In a while, though, it would be teeming with his techies—carpenters, electricians, camera operators. Rafael himself had trained most of them. He’d learned the business by working his way through it, which made him a better instructor than any film school professor with a theory-stuffed brain.

  He led Sandra to a booth near the back. The lamp above the table shed a dim amber light that layered her skin with gold. He gave himself a stern reminder of who she was and what she was after.

  A story. His story.

  A waitress materialized at the table. “Hey, Raf.”

  He acknowledged her with a nod, then turned back to Sandra. “What would you like?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “Two beers,” he ordered for her. “Dos Equis Gold.”

  The waitress departed. Rafael settled against the red vinyl seat, waiting for Sandra to light into him for his presumptuousness.

  She only smiled. “I like Dos Equis.”

  “Good.”

  Her eyes were uncannily dark in the cantina’s gloom. She studied him with disarming confidence, then reached into her tote and pulled out a small recorder. “I hope you don’t mind if I record our conversation,” she said. “It’s for accuracy, to back up my notes—”

  “No recording,” he said, reaching across the table and covering the machine with his hand. Without planning to, he covered her hand as well. Her knuckles were angular, her skin cool and smooth, like marble arching up into his palm.

  He didn’t let go right away. Perhaps holding her hand immobile would intimidate her. It would let her know he was more powerful than she was, not someone she could mess with. Besides, her hand felt good against his, strong and graceful, capable. Feminine. He found he didn’t want to let go, ever.

  She discreetly slid it out from under his and tucked the recorder back into her bag. As pleased as he was to see her put the machine away, he regretted losing the physical contact.

  “The only reason for taping our interview,” she explained, “is so I can make sure I’ve got your words right. Sometimes when I’m writing fast, I—”

  “No writing,” he said, halting her before she had her notepad out of her bag. “No interview.”

  His touch might not have gotten a rise out of her, but his words did. She arched her eyebrows, turning her eyes round and bright. “What do you mean, no interview?”

  “We’re talking. Nothing more.”

  The waitress appeared with their beers and a bowl of taco chips hot from the griddle and glistening with a sheen of oil. Rafael waved her off, then poured Sandra’s beer into her glass for her. She waited until he’d poured his own before taking a sip. “I was hoping we could get started—”

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said.

  Her glass in midair, she paused. This time her brows dipped, and she tilted her head slightly. “So what?”

  He grinned. No false modesty on her part, no indignation, no warning that he ought to act like a professional. Sandra Garcia was clearly not going to let him rattle her.

  His interest was piqued. “I don’t talk to reporters,” he said. “I don’t talk to people I don’t know.”

  A faint smile skimmed her lips. “Okay,” she conceded, lowering her glass and leaning back in her seat. “Why don’t you ask me questions, instead?”

  Fine with him. He wanted to control the discussion. But then he realized that by permitting him to control it, she was the one in control. She’d yielded nothing.

  Her cleverness only sharpened his interest. “You’re not from the neighborhood, are you,” he said.

  “If you mean East L.A., no. I live in Westwood.”

  “Westwood.” Rich people lived in Westwood. “You grew up there?”

  She shook her head. “Up north, in Berkeley. My family still lives there.”

  He absorbed that with a nod. There were so many things he wanted to ask her, so many things he had no business asking her. Like how a young journalist could afford to live in Westwood, how a Chicana happened to grow up in Berkeley, how come she had no accent, how come she had so much poise. Why she was here, what she wanted from him, whether her self-confidence evaporated the minute she stepped out of her career and became a woman—or whether she was just as self-confident in bed, in a man’s arms.

  “Berkeley,” he said. “College town.”

  “I regret to say your movies aren’t very popular with the university set.”

  “Don’t regret it. I like my market just fine.” He drank some beer, his eyes never leaving her. If he couldn’t intimidate her, he might as well try to make friends with her. “How did your folks wind up so far north? It’s a long way from the border.”

  “I’m a long way from the border,” she told him. “My grandparents came to California when they were young. My family’s been here for a couple of generations.”

  “Ah.”

  “My folks own a restaurant. Alessandra’s. That’s my grandmother’s name. I was named after her, sort of.”

  “So how come you’re not up at Alessandra’s in Berkeley, frying tortillas with your family?”

  Her smile widened, a crescent of white teeth against her tawny complexion. “They wanted someth
ing better for me. They sacrificed so I could attend private school and college. After all that education, they wouldn’t want me to wind up frying tortillas for a living.”

  Private school. Rafael struggled to think of anyone he knew who’d gone to private school. Maybe some of the bankers he had to work with, or Tracy Hester, his attorney. No one with his skin color.

  He took another long drink of beer, his gaze locked onto Sandra as he tilted back his glass. Private school. College. And now she lived in Westwood. Rafael didn’t doubt that he could buy and sell her and her Americanized restaurant-owning family many times over. But that didn’t matter.

  What mattered was that he was a punk from the barrio who had walked too close to the fire too many times. He was a thirty-five year old millionaire who’d skirted the flames and felt the heat and still wore the scars.

  Those scars were exactly what a reporter like Sandra Garcia would be looking for. It was her job as much as making movies was his job.

  But those scars were his history, his truth. He didn’t deny them, but he didn’t trade on them. And he sure as hell didn’t want Sandra Garcia publicizing them. He wasn’t going to be the next freak out of Hollywood, the next feature story in the tabloids. He wasn’t going to have his life turned into a scandal, a morality tale for people to thumb through while they were waiting to pay for their groceries.

  He made his mind up right then and there: Diego would take care of the reporter from the Post. He would give her his press releases and keep her out of Rafael’s way, out of his sight. He’d show her the studio, get her to hype White Angel, and then get rid of her.

  If he didn’t...

  Rafael stared into Sandra’s exotic face and understood how easy it would be to succumb to her, how easy to expose himself, scars and all. He was rich and successful, but she was too self-assured to let his status daunt her.

  No matter how much Rafael tried to intimidate Sandra Garcia, she intimidated him more. She was the strong one. All he could do was try his damnedest to protect himself.

  ***

  HE WAS HIDING SOMETHING.

  She wasn’t sure what. But she’d been a reporter long enough to trust her intuition. And in Rafael Perez’s case, her intuition was sending signals she couldn’t ignore.