Cinderella in Overalls

chapter Four



Stepping off the noisy crowded street and into the Restaurante Roberto was a shock. Suddenly it was calm and quiet. A maitre d’ in a tuxedo glided forward across a tiled floor and bowed from the waist.

“Buenos noches, Guillermo,” Josh said.

Guillermo’s eyes flickered over Catherine for a moment, and a faint smile crossed his lips. “Dinner for two, sir?” he asked in heavily accented English.

Josh nodded and placed his hand on Catherine’s back. They followed Guillermo past deep leather booths that lined the walls. Sconces holding candles shone on solitary diners and large parties alike. In the far corner they settled into soft leather seats on opposite sides of a quiet booth.

The gilt-tasseled menu lying unopened in front of her, Catherine looked around wide-eyed at the understated elegance of the place. From somewhere on the other side of the room someone was playing an old Rodgers and Hart song on a piano. After lighting the candle on their table, Guillermo slipped discreetly away.

The candlelight flickered on Josh’s face. His firm jaw was clean-shaven. He didn’t look as if he’d spent the night in a hammock. She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in her skirt. What if she hadn’t bought these clothes? Would Guillermo have signaled his approval if she’d been wearing her bowler hat and shawl? She opened her menu and skimmed the entries: crepes des champignons, pasta primavera and grilled Chateaubriand.

“Oh, just like home,” she murmured.

“Not like my home,” he said, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

“Do you come here often?” she asked.

“Every night.”

Her mouth fell open.

He shrugged. “I feel comfortable here and my stove hasn’t arrived yet. When it does...”

She waited, fingering the menu.

He smiled. “When it does, I’ll probably still eat here every night.”

She shook her head in dismay.

“Does that sound boring to you?” he asked.

“A little,” she admitted, although looking at him across the table, boring wasn’t the word that came to mind. He’d taken his suit coat off, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves, exposing suntanned arms from his day in the country. The words that came to mind were strong, sexy and handsome. She tore her eyes away and looked down at the menu again. The prices horrified her. She closed the menu. “I’ll let you order,” she said, and leaned back against the soft leather. “Don’t tell me you have the same thing every night.”

He rested his elbows on the table, a glint in his eyes. “I’m not that unimaginative,” he protested. When the waiter came, he ordered a Caesar salad, wine from Argentina and two medium rare steaks.

There was a silence and she looked up expectantly. “You said you had news.’’

“Yes. You can have your truck.”

A smile crossed her face and lit her dark eyes, then faded abruptly. “It’s not a gift?”

“It’s a loan. The kind you wanted.”

She laid her hands on the table. “What’s the interest rate?”

“Three percent.”

She gasped. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is to pay it back in small weekly installments.” He swirled the dark red wine in his glass. “And you have to buy one of our repossessed trucks from the bank. I’ve never done this before. No one has. From what I’ve seen of the women I think it’ll work. But they’ll need your help.”

He explained the program to her while she ate her salad. Her eyes never left his as he told her they’d have to fill out application forms, have their needs assessed and attend information meetings before it would be official. Then they’d get their money. Then they could have first pick of the repossessions parked behind the bank before they were auctioned off.

“They’ll have checkbooks and deposit slips and everything?” she asked.

He nodded, refilling her glass. It had taken all day. It had taken every ounce of persuasion he had, every bit of clout to persuade the board of directors. It went against every principle they’d agreed on to set things straight in Aruaca. No new agricultural loans. No loans for high-risk creditors, no credit for the self-employed. He’d talked so fast and long that his mouth had hurt.

But he’d convinced them. And himself at the same time. It occurred to him that if it worked they might even extend loans to other self-employed people. If it didn’t, he’d feel like a fool, lose his credibility and his ability to do his job here before he’d even looked for the silver mines of Tochabamba.

Her eyes glowed. She reached across the table and took his hand. “Thank you.”

He felt the calluses on her palm, the warmth of her skin, and he held her hand for a long moment. Her gaze was warm and steady. She was so sure of herself. Sure of the villagers, sure of their ability. He knew it was just a truck, just one lousy truck, but no one knew where it would take them. No one knew if it would really make a difference. But it had forced him to do something he’d been avoiding for years. To take a chance. He felt as if he were standing on the top of that white-capped mountain out there with the whole world looking up to see if he’d fall flat on his face.

Catherine pulled her hand away and looked around. The piano player had been replaced by a Spanish guitarist playing something lushly romantic that caused shivers up and down her spine. It had to be the music. It couldn’t be the touch of his hand on hers. Whatever she felt when he looked at her over his cup of espresso could all be explained. It couldn’t be that she was falling for a big-city banker, a man who was more at home in a five-star restaurant than at a hoedown. That would be sheer insanity.

Then how to explain the sparks that flew across the table, the look in his eyes that made it hard to hold her coffee cup with a steady hand? The waiter brought flan in caramel sauce. She took her spoon firmly in hand and let the custard slide down her throat. She sighed contentedly.

“I see why you come here every night,” she said. “But you didn’t need to bring me along. You could have told me the news in the market.”

He shook his head. “This is a business dinner. Besides, I haven’t paid you back for the use of your hammock.”

“Forget it. Consider it paid back in full. I’ll even waive the interest.”

He tilted her chin with his thumb. “Maybe you can forget it, but I can’t. The interest has been building since the first day I saw you.”

She frowned. “Is that why you’re doing this? Because you’re interested in me?”

“Of course not. This is a chance for me to do something worthwhile. I have to take a risk. If it works, I’ll be known as daring and innovative. If it doesn’t...”

“You’ll be known as reckless and foolhardy,” she suggested.

“Something like that. And I’ll be back in Boston behind my old desk before I know it.”

She folded her napkin, and Josh put his credit card on a small silver tray. “Would that be so bad?” she asked.

“To be back in Boston? No. Behind my old desk, yes. It would mean I failed here.” The look in his eyes said he wasn’t accustomed to failure. “If everything works out, I’ll be back in Boston as vice president.”

“Vice President Bentley. It has a nice ring to it.”

“I’ve worked hard for it. Besides the loan department, I put in my time in investments and securities. All I needed was some international experience. I could have gone to Panama last year or Colombia the year before, but I was waiting, hoping for Aruaca.”

She smiled. “And you got it.”

They made their way to the door. The guitar music was louder now and rhythmic. Standing on the sidewalk, Catherine heard city noises far in the background, horns and gears shifting on steep hills. From behind her Josh put his hands on her shoulders.

“There’s something else I want to do here,” he said.

“You mean you still haven’t stemmed the tide of inflation or reduced the national debt?” she asked lightly, trying to ignore the vibrations traveling down her spine.

“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

He ran his hands down her arms, and she shivered involuntarily. The air was cool. His fingers were warm. He pulled her back against his chest, and she felt his heart pounding through his oxford cloth shirt.

Just in the nick of time he caught himself. He almost mentioned the mine. After keeping it a secret all these years, he’d almost blurted it out to a woman he scarcely knew.

“See that?” he said, pointing downtown to a tall building outlined against the ink-blue sky. “That’s where I live. On the top floor.”

She gasped. A penthouse apartment with a view of the whole city. Before she could speak a taxi pulled up and Josh offered the driver enough money to take them to Palomar.

From the back seat she looked out the window. The moon was hovering over the snows of Teregape. They drove up the street and looked down on a city ablaze with lights. She stifled a yawn. La Luz was a stay-up-late city and she was a go-to-bed-early person. She belonged in the country. She looked at Josh out of the corner of her eye, suave and urbane from his wing-tipped shoes to his dark, close-cropped hair. He belonged in the city. It didn’t matter which one. He was at ease eating in a five-star restaurant every night. She wasn’t.

Why that made her sad she couldn’t say. She’d lived twenty-eight years without ever venturing into such a restaurant and had no need to ever set foot in one again. She was happy with her simple life. Especially now that she was getting the truck. If she weren’t so sleepy, she’d be jumping with joy. But her eyelids were drooping. She was determined not to doze through another trip between La Luz and Palomar.

The next thing she knew she was sleeping on Josh’s shoulder for the second time that day. She forced her eyes open and looked up at the sky. The stars glowed faintly. She turned to tell him she understood why he couldn’t see the constellations in town, but his eyes were closed. His breathing was even and his legs angled off to one side.

She studied his face. Were those worry lines there the last time she looked? Maybe this loan was causing him more concern than he let on. Was he going out on a limb for her and the villagers just to humor her? She wondered what kind of a name he would make for himself if they didn’t pay it back. What would happen to his future in the bank if the program failed?

The taxi hit a bump in the road and his briefcase slipped out from under his arm. She set it on the floor, then folded his suit coat and laid it over the front seat. Finally she leaned back and closed her eyes. But at the next steep turn his body swayed across the seat and his head landed on her shoulder. Her eyes flew open. His stayed shut.

She took his shoulders in her hands and firmly edged him back on his side. He groaned. She wedged herself in the corner and resolutely closed her eyes once more. But the next turn saw him careening toward her again.

She sighed. She couldn’t wake him and ask him to move when he only had five hours of sleep in the past two days. She couldn’t wake him when he felt so right where he was. She liked the way he smelled of American soap. And the way his chin rubbed against her cheek, slightly scratchy and smelling of after-shave, American after-shave.

Familiar, comfortable smells, and yet like nothing she’d ever known before. Like no one she’d ever known before. Was America full of men like this and she just hadn’t noticed? Was Josh Bentley an ordinary man who seemed extraordinary because she’d been buried on the farm? That must be it. Her shaking hands, the banging of her heart, these were the reactions of someone who’d been out of touch.

She told Jacinda she hadn’t known any men in America, only boys. And it was true. She had to come all this way to meet a man. Josh Bentley was all man. She was achingly aware of that fact for the next hundred miles as the taxi bounced along the narrow highway.

Josh felt himself sinking into the soft wool of her sweater. It wasn’t day and it wasn’t night. He wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t awake. He was somewhere in between, and Catherine was there with him, riding through the darkness. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder and caressed his cheek. He inhaled the fragrance of sunshine and flowers, ordinary homegrown flowers, but like nothing he’d ever smelled before.

He didn’t want the ride to end, but the taxi jolted to a stop in front of Catherine’s house. He sat up straight and paid the driver. With his briefcase in his hand and his suit jacket over his arm he stood in the road, wishing he could put his arms around her and feel her body melt into his. But she was looking around at her house, at her garden, everywhere but at him.

He felt strange, empty, disoriented. He managed a half smile in the darkness. “Good night. I’ll be off just as soon as I fix the car.” He opened his briefcase on his knee and took the new hose out.

“I see.” She hesitated. He imagined her inviting him in for a cup of coffee or an early breakfast or a nap in the hammock. He could almost smell the coffee, taste the food and feel the hammock sway.

She spoke. “Do you know what to do?”

“Of course. It’s just a matter of replacing the hose. They explained it to me at the garage. How hard can it be? I’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”

She turned toward her house. “Well, thanks for the dinner. .. and the ride... and the loan.”

He watched her go. “You’re welcome.” It wasn’t the way he’d hoped the evening would end, standing there watching her disappear into her house. He stayed for a moment in the warm night air, waiting to see if the gas light he’d seen last night would go on in her bedroom, but the house was dark and quiet.

Maybe she’d taken her nightgown from the hook on the wall and undressed in the kitchen. He pictured the pink sweater coming off over her head. And then her bra.

He looked down, and the ground seemed to rise up to meet him. He was losing it. He had to get out of there. The sooner the better. His car was just where he’d left it. Removing the old hose was easy. He tossed it onto the ground. Fastening the new one in its place was no problem with the screwdriver from the glove compartment. His eyes were getting used to the dark.

He tightened the clamp and cinched it down. One final twist and he’d be heading back down the road to civilization. But the clamp sprang up and snapped in two. He bent over and picked up the useless pieces. Then, very carefully, he closed the hood of the car. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry. Most of all he wanted to sleep.

He didn’t look back at her house. He didn’t think about the hammock. Even if she came out and begged him to come in, he wouldn’t go. He had his pride. And he had his car. It didn’t run, but he had it. He climbed into the back seat. Out of his jacket he made a pillow. He folded his legs like a jackknife and closed his eyes. What he would do in the morning he didn’t know. Right now he didn’t care.

When Catherine woke, the sun was streaming through the window, making a rectangular pattern on her bed. She sat up with a guilty start. She’d fallen asleep so fast she hadn’t heard Josh’s car start up. She imagined him driving through the night, stopping at his apartment and going to the office, while she slept through the raucous rooster’s crowing.

After dressing quickly, she walked out through the kitchen to the back of the house. She inhaled deeply the clean air fragrant with sage and rosemary that grew along the fence. It was good to be home. She felt unsettled and anxious in the city. Especially this last time.

There were goats to milk, eggs to collect and melons to pick, but first she had to find Jacinda and tell her the good news.

She walked around the front of her house and stopped dead in her tracks. Josh’s car was exactly where he’d left it. She dropped her wicker basket and ran to peer in the back window. He was folded in the back seat, sleeping soundly. She rapped on the window. He raised his head and blinked at her. Her mouth curved into a reluctant smile at the sight of his rumpled, sleepy appearance.

She heard herself asking the obvious question. “What are you doing here?”

He sat up and rubbed his head. She opened the door and stared down at him. “The clamp broke,” he said, holding up the two metal pieces.

She took them out of his hand to examine them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He got out of the car and ran his hand through his hair, feeling like an idiot, his last words still ringing in his ears, and probably in hers, too. “How hard can it be?” And “Out of here in ten minutes.” She must be wondering if he was creating these problems as an excuse to hang around.

“What would you have done?” he asked irritably. “Made a new one out of bailing wire?” He paused, regaining control. “Sorry, but it’s just a damn inconvenience being so far from... from...”

“Civilization? Go ahead and say it. We’re in the sticks, the boonies. Away from tall buildings and polluted air.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I sounded critical. I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself. I want to get out of here, and I’m sure you want me out of here as soon as possible so you can go back to your prize potatoes and I can go back to reducing the national debt.” He raised the hood of the car. “That’s the new hose. But it’s no good without the clamp.”

She rubbed the broken pieces together thoughtfully in the palm of her hand. “We could try Old Pedro,” she said after a moment.

“Old Pedro? Who’s Old Pedro? You said all the men were working the tin mines.’’

“He’s too old and crippled. He hurt his leg in a mining accident years ago. Now he makes drain gutters and fixes things.”

“What kind of things? Metal things?” he asked. She nodded and he grabbed her arm. “Let’s go see him.”

With the new hose under his arm and the broken clamp in his pocket, Josh followed Catherine over the same rutted road the taxi had taken last night, past fields of tiny green onion shoots and brilliant tomatoes. He wanted to apologize for being irritable, but the silence had gone on for too long and stretched between them like the road to Old Pedro’s shed across the footbridge. He wanted to talk to her about the loan program, but his throat was dry and the walls of his stomach were knocking together.

Yesterday he was on a high. Anything seemed possible. The loan. The truck. Catherine. His career. Today he was racked with doubts. The program was too big, too ambitious. He wanted to absorb some of her confidence. He wanted to run his hands over her cool skin and bury his face in her dark hair. But she had work to do and so did he.

At the end of the path was a small shed with a misshapen figure of a man bent over a piece of corrugated metal with a pair of tin snips. He looked up from his work. A lantern hung from the ceiling and illuminated his lined face. Catherine introduced Old Pedro to Josh, and Pedro peered into his face for a long moment.

Josh brought out the hose and the clamp and Catherine explained what had happened. Old Pedro merely nodded. While they watched he cut and hammered and bent the scrap metal until he had fashioned a rough copy of the broken clamp. Josh breathed a sigh of relief and reached into his wallet, but the old man shook his head with a rush of words in Spanish.

“He says he has done it for a favor,” Catherine said. “It is too small a job to accept money.’’

“But I have nothing else to offer,” Josh protested.

“He says not to worry. The gringos have always treated him well. Back in the old days when he worked the mines.”

Josh studied the man’s wrinkled face and watched him hobble across the dirt floor to see them to the door. “You mean the tin mines,” he said.

Catherine translated and Pedro shook his head. “Plata,” he said. “Silver.”

“Where?” Josh asked.

Old Pedro waved his hand in the general direction of the mountains to the south. “Out there.”

“If I wanted to go there, if I wanted to see them, could he show me?”

The eagerness in Josh’s voice, the intensity of his gaze, startled her. “I don’t think so. He’s old as you see, and lame.”

“Maybe he could show me on a map. Or tell me how to get there.” Josh felt a surge of excitement rush through his veins.

Catherine asked, but the old man shook his head. “He says he couldn’t tell you. And he couldn’t take you because the God of Thunder closed the entrance and put a curse on the mine before even one piece of silver could be extracted.”

Josh stared at the old man. It was just as he had heard. His father and the Tochabamba silver mine. His hopes to strike it rich, to find his fortune. But as usual it slipped away. This time it was an avalanche. It was always something—a natural disaster or unscrupulous partners, but all his life the Tochabamba stood as a symbol of hope and riches and loss.

For a moment Josh felt what his father must have felt on the brink of a discovery, the excitement and the anticipation. And then, just as surely, the disappointment. Outside the entrance in the bright sunshine, Josh hesitated. He had to know, whether he ever got there or not.

“The mine, was it the Tochabamba?”

Without waiting for the translation the old man’s eyes widened in surprise. He spoke rapidly in Spanish, gesturing with his short, muscular arms while Josh watched and strained to understand. ,

“What’s he saying?” he demanded.

Catherine’s eyebrows drew together. “He says he’s surprised you know that name. He’s the only one left who remembers around here. The others were killed when the God of Thunder shook the earth.”

“Everyone?”

She shook her head. “Everyone but Pedro and the padrón. The padrón paid off the workers with shares in the mine. Pedro still has his.”

“Who was the padrón? Where can I find him?”

“He went away for good. Far away. It wasn’t safe to stay. It isn’t safe to go.”

Old Pedro shuffled impatiently, and they thanked him again and left. Josh had one more question, but he already knew the answer. The padrón was his father. Escaping death by the skin of his teeth. And coming that close to finding his fortune.

They walked back to the car, the new, improvised clamp in Josh’s pocket, thoughts of avalanches and falling rock and silver flooding his mind. Catherine watched silently while he raised the hood, inserted the new hose and tightened the new damp. He held his breath, but the clamp stayed in place.

He turned to say goodbye, his eyes the clear blue of the sky. But there were lines of fatigue around his mouth, and the shadow of a beard along his jaw. She felt a stab of guilt. She’d slept comfortably in her bed while he was doubled up in the back seat of his car. He’d taken her to dinner. He’d gotten than the loan. She owed him something. She owed him a lot. Besides, she wanted to ask him more about the mine. She touched the sleeve of his wrinkled shirt.

“Come and have breakfast before you go.” He looked surprised, and that made her feel guiltier. “It isn’t a big deal. Just some coffee and bread. You must be hungry.”

“I am,” he said, and they walked into the house where it was dark and cool. While she watched he ate four slices of bread spread thickly with sweet butter and strawberry jam. She refilled his coffee cup and sat down across from him at the rough-hewn pine table.

“How did you know about the Tochabamba Mine?” she asked.

“From my father.”

She set her coffee on the table. “Was he the padrón?”

“Yes. I don’t know why, but I’m sure he was. So I’m not the only one holding shares to a worthless silver mine.”

“You said your father had incredible stories to tell.” A vision of a small boy, his blue eyes round with wonder, filled her mind.

He nodded. “That was one of them. The one I liked best.” He rubbed his hand across his chin. “It had everything—danger, treasure and excitement. It was such a good story that when I grew up I wondered if it was true.” His gaze drifted over her shoulder to the window, to the fields, to the faint outline of the mountains beyond. There was a longing there she couldn’t ignore. She put her hand on his.

“I’ll talk to him again. I’ll ask him where the mine was. We’ll get a map and go look for it,” she said impulsively, catching the excitement, sensing that there was more than silver at stake.

His gaze turned from the horizon back to the room. Back to reality. “No, don’t bother him. It’s not important. There’s probably nothing there.”

Puzzled by his sudden change of mood, she shrugged. “Whatever you want.’’

Abruptly he stood and pulled her up from the chair with him, his hands holding hers tightly. “This is what I want,” he said. Her heart pounded so loudly that he heard it. He’d shared his secret with her, and now he wanted to share even more. How much more he wasn’t sure.

He kissed her forehead, and she lifted her face to his. The look in her eyes told him she wanted this as much as he did, that she’d been waiting for this moment for days, for weeks, forever. A voice in his head told him he couldn’t afford this kind of distraction, that already he’d let her influence him too much. More than she should.

He could still stop. It wasn’t too late, the voice in his head told him. But whatever the voice said, his brain chose not to hear. Instead his lips chose to brush against hers, testing her response. Just one kiss, he thought, one kiss after all this time. But when she buried her fingers in his hair his control snapped. He covered her mouth with his and kissed her over and over with all the force of his pent-up desire.

Her arms tightened around his neck. Her kisses were sweeter than the jam she had made, warmer than the freshly baked bread. And he couldn’t get enough. The more she gave the more he wanted. Finally they pulled apart, breathless and panting. His heart banged against his ribs. It was excitement; it was panic. He had to get out of there while he still knew what he was doing. Before he picked her up and headed for a hayloft somewhere. Before they did something they’d both regret.

He jerked himself back to the present. Unsteadily he walked to the open door. She followed him. “Thanks for the breakfast.” His voice was like gravel. He paused and ran his hand lightly over her dark hair. He was sorry. Not sorry he’d kissed her, but sorry he didn’t have room in his life for a woman like this. His goals lay ahead of him almost within reach: his promotion and security. He couldn’t afford any distractions. No women, no silver mines.

Breathless and shaken, she followed him to the car, wondering what it all meant. She stood there, making a dent in the dirt with the heel of her shoe while he started the engine. She leaned down and looked through the window. “When will I see you again?” she asked.

“Friday,” he answered. “Can you bring your group to the bank in the morning?”

“Yes, sure.” She clenched her hands tightly at her sides. Her stomach churned. She told herself it meant nothing to him. It was just a kiss or two, that was all. She forced herself to think about the loan. It was really going to happen. He’d made it happen. She was grateful for that. He reached for her, holding her face in his hands, mesmerizing her with his eyes. Then he kissed her again, slowly and thoroughly. Trembling, she pulled away. Without a word he drove off into the dust.

She watched until his car was out of sight Long after it was gone she stayed rooted to the ground, staring straight ahead to the horizon. Thinking about the distance between them, she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. But there was more than the miles separating them. Much more. He was obviously a man with a dream. What business was it of hers if he refused to follow it?

She had other things to worry about. At the sound of a bleating goat she turned and faced the chores she had to do every day. She couldn’t let thoughts of Josh and his father’s mine interfere with her own life. She coaxed the goat into the yard and brought a clean bucket from the shed. She tried to think about making goat cheese and how to sell it, but in her mind she traveled across mountains to a distant mine, where a man could find his dream and a woman could make it come true.