“I didn’t know they were here,” Trudy said, her brow furrowing a little. Until she realized the camera was still on her, at which point she instantly smiled, corrected her posture, and sucked in her gut “Well, whatever,” she said, tapping Leah’s arm. “You’re so not fair. Two hunks in one gig!”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Leah insisted, her head in her hands now. “It’s not what you think.”
“Right, whatever,” Trudy said cheerfully, and stood up. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do—” She turned to the camera and in an imitation of Groucho Marx, added, “which pretty much gives you license to do whatever you want to do.” She laughed, looked at Leah, and her smile faded. “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Leah said, although her head felt as if it weighed one hundred pounds. “Just too much wine, I think.”
“Don’t drink too much. You won’t want to miss out on all the fun, right?” She laughed, and Chuck laughed with her. “Okay, girl, talk to you later. I’m going to take my camera around and show some of the Serious Actresses who I caught. They’ll die. Are you ready, Chuck?” she asked, smiling at the camera.
“I’ll follow you wherever you want to go, baby,” Chuck growled.
“Well, now, that opens up a whole new world of possibilities,” Trudy responded as the two of them went off.
As Leah watched her friend’s figure turn watery, she decided that she’d definitely had too much to drink and needed to go outside for some air. This was weird. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she wasn’t a teetotaler, either—she could usually hold her own. Maybe she was feeling so thick because she had drunk on an empty stomach. When Michael came back—oops, Adolfo came back—she’d suggest some food.
But when Adolfo came back, she found herself thinking about what he’d be like in bed instead of food. He was really sexy in that Spanish-pirate sort of way. He had nice, thick hands, which led to juicier, lascivious thoughts. But they were only thoughts—no matter that Adolfo was handsome and really smelled so good, and had those hands—she couldn’t any more fall into bed with him than she could drink another glass of wine. She really couldn’t fall into bed with any guy except one, and she’d probably spend the next five years trying to get over him again.
The thought sobered her a little, and she glanced down . . . and realized she had, indeed, drunk another glass of wine. How was that possible? What did that make, four glasses? No wonder her head felt like a bowling ball and her legs were so damn rubbery—
“Mi amor, you are funny in the face,” Adolfo said suddenly, and leaned forward, cupping her face with his hand.
“Really?” she asked weakly. “I am feeling a little mushy inside.”
“Mushy?”
She made a face and wiggled her fingers. “Mushy,” she muttered, and felt, all at once, very flushed.
Adolfo was instantly on his feet. “Come then, you must take cold mountain air to be less mushy.”
“Do you think?” she asked uncertainly. “Maybe if I just ate something—”
“Yes, of course, you must eat. But first, you must walk. Come, then.”
“Okay,” she said meekly. “Just let me find my feet.”
That proved easier said than done, because her limbs felt so fluid. But she finally managed to put them down one after the other with Adolfo’s help. He put his arm securely around her waist, held her tightly against his side, and led her outside, doing the walking for them both on the two occasions her feet refused to cooperate.
As they passed through a sea of nameless, swimming faces, Leah thought she should tell Trudy she’d be right back, but with a very sickly feeling burgeoning inside her, she just let Adolfo lead her out.
In the parking lot, the cold mountain air did indeed feel wonderful on her flushed skin, but it didn’t make her feel any better inside, and if anything, she felt even fuzzier. She was only vaguely aware of Adolfo talking to her, asking her how she felt, if she could walk, if she could look at him. On the inside, however, Leah was panicking—she knew she’d had too much to drink, but she didn’t think she’d had so much to be so suddenly incoherent and unable to move her limbs. Something felt seriously wrong with her body. This didn’t feel like a drunk, this felt like a coma.
She felt the slide toward oblivion and could do nothing to stop it. The last thing she remembered was Adolfo’s smiling face before her. “You will be fine, mi amor. I will look after you as if you were my own.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE next thing Leah knew, it was daylight. At least she thought it was—it was hard to make out what was behind the yellowed and torn roll-up blind on the window. But whatever it was, she was slowly coming to the realization that not only was she absent from camp, she was in a strange, lumpy bed with musty sheets in a room that looked like it was built in the Stone Age.
How she had landed here was something that was not coming to her very quickly. Her first thought was Michael, but then she remembered that they were not exactly close at the moment.