Again, the men were looking at her.
“A dance pavilion,” Elise said. “A concrete form. Round. Then a building of lattice where she can sit. In the back, it has mirrors and a ballet barre.” She picked up the pad and began to sketch. She knew just where it could be built in the garden.
Hours later, when she fell asleep over her sketch pad, it was Alejandro who carried her to bed.
“I’m dirty,” she murmured, half-asleep.
“You can shower in the morning.”
She was too sleepy to notice that he spoke in English. “Pink astilbe. No! Red firecracker plants. What are those funny-looking ones that curve? They’re thick and fuzzy.”
“Coxcomb.”
“Right.” She yawned. “You have to choose the plants. What grows on Long Island? Isn’t there some kind of wild orchid around here?”
Her eyes were closed and Alejandro kissed her forehead—then wiped his mouth. She was indeed quite dirty. She was barefoot but otherwise fully clothed, but he didn’t dare remove anything. Smiling, he went to his own bed. He was glad to see that the scared look was beginning to leave her eyes. Maybe it was on its way to being permanently gone.
The next morning, Elise was at the kitchen table when the men came in to breakfast.
She still hadn’t showered.
Alejandro leaned against the counter, drinking coffee and smiling at her. He looked at Diego. “Tell her I’ll come by for her at noon and take her to get whatever she needs.”
“You tell her,” Diego said, and went outside to begin loading the truck.
But Alejandro said nothing as Elise was engrossed with the drawings, and the men left her there. At noon, Alejandro returned to the house. Elise had showered and put on some of her own clothes. As she got into the truck with him, she started talking. “I have no idea if my plan is any good or not. I’ve not seen anything else like it. Worse is that I can’t remember exactly what my mother said about Mrs. Bellmont. Maybe it was sarcasm and she never was a dancer. I’m planning what I call a Dancer’s Garden, but she may hate it.”
Elise sighed. “Anyway, I think the cabana should be wired so there can be music. I found some sculptures online for copies of Degas’s ballerinas. I like coming around a corner and seeing something beautiful. Mrs. Bellmont has over two acres so I could do a lot with that.”
She put her head back against the seat. “The truth is that I don’t know what I’m doing.” Alejandro just smiled at her as he pulled into a parking lot in front of a used bookstore.
It was one of those places that had lots of old hardbacks on shelves, on the floor, stacked on chairs. Nothing in the store had been cleaned in years.
“Perfect!” Elise said as she got out of the truck.
Inside, he held the books as she picked out ones on garden design and a few on dancing.
“It’s a good thing you can’t understand me because I want to tell you that you are the most beautiful pack mule ever put on this earth.”
Alejandro did his best to look blank, but she saw his smile.
After he paid for it all—and the books were wonderfully cheap—he drove her to an office supply store and she got paper, pencils, and a scale ruler.
*
When Elise awoke on Friday morning, she lay quietly in the twin bed and listened to Alejandro breathing. Usually, she woke thinking of pouncing on him, but today she wanted to slip in beside him so he’d hold her and say encouraging things—in his choice of language. In Swahili for all she cared. She just needed someone to tell her she could do this. Could push herself onto Mrs. Bellmont, who she remembered as a rather bad-tempered woman—like her mother.
Elise closed her eyes for a moment, thinking about how she was the product of two very aggressive parents. Win at all costs! had been their motto. And that included their daughter.
They’d never seen a reason for Elise to make any decisions of her own, from her clothes to her friends, her education, even to her husband. As a child, Elise had realized that the easiest way to deal with them was to just give in. They loved her, didn’t they? They had her best interests in mind, didn’t they?
It was only after she found out that her parents had always known about Carmen that she doubted everything.
When Alejandro turned in the bed, she looked at him. Sleepy-eyed, whiskery cheeks, he was one fabulous-looking man. He raised his eyebrows in question.
“I’m scared,” she said. “If I reveal myself to Mrs. Bellmont, what if she calls my father? He hired security guards. What if he shows up with them?”
Alejandro shook his head, then threw back the sheet and went to her. He took her shoulders and pulled her out of the bed to stand in front of him. For a moment, he put his forehead to hers, his hands tight on her shoulders.
She took a few deep breaths. “Okay, I get it,” she whispered. “Be strong. Have courage. Believe.”
He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to look into his eyes. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. But he didn’t. He spun her around and pushed her toward the bathroom.
Laughing, she shut the door behind her.
By the time she got out, showered and cleanly dressed, Alejandro and Diego were at the breakfast table. Her drawings and notes had been stacked up neatly, all ready to go.
“I was thinking,” Diego said in Spanish as he looked at his younger brother. “Since Carmen seems to be staying away, you should move into the room with me. Give our guest some privacy.”
Elise’s hands froze on her drawings.
“No,” Alejandro said mildly but with all the firmness of a rock talking.
She looked away so they wouldn’t see her smile. She was becoming used to waking to the sound of his breathing, to seeing him smile at her. To sharing thoughts and feelings—and adventures—with him.
Friendship, she thought. It was completely undervalued as an aphrodisiac.
Diego got them in the truck and he was silent as he drove toward Mrs. Bellmont’s house. Alejandro sat with his arm behind the seat, sort of around Elise, but not.
Elise suddenly realized that all her fears were for herself. What might happen to her. But it dawned on her that the success or failure of this venture would also affect them. It must be in their minds that she could, well, dump them. She could get the design job, then hire one of the more glamorous landscape companies, the ones with the green vans with gold lettering on the sides. Their workmen wore nice uniforms.
“You’re not going to let me down, are you?” Elise asked.
“What?” Diego asked.
“If I get this job, you aren’t going to tell me it’s too big for you, that you don’t have enough men or tools or whatever, are you? I’m not going to be alone in this, am I?”
Alejandro seemed to know what she was doing, but then he knew his brother well. Diego always worried that everything good was going to turn bad.
One of Elise’s hands was on the truck seat and Alejandro squeezed it.
“I have thousands of cousins at home,” Diego said, “and I’ll bring as many as I need to help. And I know men who do concrete. You want handmade tiles for your little house? I can get them.”
“Yeah?” Elise said. “What else can you get for us?”
The silence in the truck was broken as Diego began to talk. He hadn’t let on that he was seeing this as his big break, but it all came out as he talked nonstop on the way to the house.
When they got there, Alejandro got out, put his hands on Elise’s waist, and swung her down. “Gracias,” he said.
“Too early for that! I haven’t yet done anything to earn thanks.”
Alejandro just smiled, and they went to the back to get tools out of the truck.
Elise wanted time to go over her sales pitch, but Mrs. Bellmont was waiting for them—and she seemed to be in a bad mood. She was telling Diego to take out some flowers that she didn’t like.