KICK ASS: A Boxed Set (7 page)

“Lock it,” Marisela ordered.

“
Chica
, you look like shit.”

Marisela forced her gaze to focus on Lia’s face, pretty and perky with that certain pale shade of olive skin designed to soak up the sun from Tuscany to Sorrento. She’d tamed her naturally bushy eyebrows into sleek arches and even though their plan today included nothing more than a lazy trip to the beach, Lia’s dark green eyes were as expertly lined as her mouth, which she’d tinted with a lipstick that matched the fuchsia pink swimsuit she wore underneath a sexy, white mesh cover-up.

Such perfection so early in the morning made Marisela’s stomach turn. “Why are you here so early?”

“Early? It’s ten-thirty. Frankie’s court appearance was at ten. Didn’t you call me before dawn and order me to shanghai you before he came down here and kicked your ass for whatever mysterious trick you pulled on him last night? Which, by the way, I’m still waiting to hear about in tantalizing detail.”

Marisela groaned, but Lia’s reminder spurred her to scramble out of bed and stumble toward her dresser. She scanned the collection of makeup, jewelry, perfumes, and assorted accessories from bracelets and bangles to toe rings and nail polish for an old discarded bottle of water, not quite ready to venture out of her room for a drink to relieve the dry, cottony coating inside her mouth. She found nothing and cursed, but Lia solved the problem in her usual no-nonsense way, retrieving a half-frozen bottle from her beach bag without being asked.

After drinking greedily, Marisela started to feel alive again.

Lia crossed her slim arms. “What happened last night?”

“My parents went out to dinner and stayed out until after three o’clock in the morning. They didn’t even call. I should ground them.”

Lia frowned. “That’s not what I’m asking about and you know it. What happened between you and Frankie?”

Marisela blew out a breath. It was an attempt at a whistle, but her lips were still too dry. “What didn’t happen last night?” She tossed the bottle back to Lia. She turned to shuffle through several bureau drawers until she found a one-piece tanksuit that would cover the bruises on her back.

“Well, you didn’t sleep well, for one thing,” Lia guessed.

Marisela laughed, the vibrations awakening the pain in her back. “I’m surprised I slept at all. Last night did not go as I expected.”

And she wasn’t even talking about Nestor Rocha or Ian Blake.

Lia dropped her bag on the cedar chest next to Marisela’s bed and proceeded to untangle the sheets so she could inject her usual order into Marisela’s chaotic world. “And you thought meeting with Frankie would be all business. Not so easy seeing him again, was it?”

Actually, hooking up with Frankie had been as effortless as slicing through custard with a razor-sharp knife. Marisela thought she’d steeled herself for the conflagration of emotions Frankie invariably invoked, particularly that sense of nostalgia for those younger, simpler days when she didn’t have to worry so much about getting a job, keeping a job, finding her own place and avoiding an ass-kicking from a ex-boyfriend who had valid reasons to be seriously pissed.

She’d thought wrong.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lia slammed the drawer shut, catching the end of Marisela’s favorite black cover-up. “Listen here,
chica
, I didn’t get up early on my day off to take you to the beach and not get some serious dish. If you’re not spilling all the gory details,” she said, marching back to the bed and snapping the sheets tight, “then I’m going home to eat chocolate, lay out by the pool, and drink margaritas. Alone.”

Marisela whipped her nightshirt over her head. “You’re cruel. Bluffing, but cruel. You won’t ditch me until you’ve heard every juicy detail.”

She realized her error the minute Lia gasped, dropped the floral shams and rushed to her side. Lia planted her hands firmly on Marisela’s shoulders and turned her, slowly, her winces increasing with each black and blue mark.

“Marisela, what happened? Did Frankie do this?”

With care born of her pain, Marisela gingerly moved out of Lia’s reach. “
¿Estás loca?
Do you think he’d still be alive if he’d done this to me?”

Lia crossed her arms tightly, her size six-and-a-half foot tapping her hand-jeweled flip-flops on the carpeted floor. “If not him, then who?”

It had been a long time since Marisela had seen Lia’s face so pinched and disapproving. The outwardly straight-laced Angelia Santorini knew nearly everything about Marisela’s life, from her lovers to her jobs to her occasional run-ins with the law. But she’d disapproved only once—when Marisela had started hanging out with
las Reinas
. After Marisela finally decided to fight her way out of the gang, Lia had been her staunchest supporter. This morning, Marisela wanted to tell Lia about Nestor, about what he’d done, about what she’d done to stop him—but she kept her mouth shut. They weren’t kids anymore and murder was too much of a burden, even for her best friend.

“Can we stop talking about last night? Trust me, the guy who did this looks a lot worse.”

As in pale and dead.

Lia rolled her eyes, huffed and finished her project with the bed before turning her attention to Marisela’s clothes-strewn floor. “You’re in trouble again, aren’t you? Don’t deny it,” she said, tossing her hands up. “I know and you’re going to tell—”

At a knock on the door, they both jumped.

“Marisela, do you and Lia want
café con leche
? I’m turning off the stove.
Papi’s
on his way to pick me up.”

Marisela released the tight breath she’d been holding in her chest. “No,
Mami
. We’ll stop at Starbucks.”

As expected, her mother launched into a Spanish language rant on the less than acceptable brewing techniques of the Seattle coffee chain. As she retreated down the hall, back to the kitchen, her primary domain, her volume grew fainter. Lia covered her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, the humor erasing the picture of Nestor Rocha dead and bleeding on her Mother’s linoleum from Marisela’s mind.

“You always know how to yank your mother’s chain.”

Marisela tugged her cover-up free and tossed it on the bed. “I just want to get out of here.”

And avoid telling me what happened last night.”

Sooner or later, Lia deserved at least a portion of the truth, but right now all Marisela wanted was to leave. She had a strong suspicion that her house would be Frankie’s first stop after his court appearance. He’d promised to exact revenge after she’d left him handcuffed and horny last night. And Frankie kept his promises.

“When you came in, did
Mami
say anything about the neighbors this morning? You know complaining about noise?”

“Neighbors? What, did you and Frankie get a little too loud last night?”

Marisela slipped out of her panties and squeezed the rest of her size eight body and 36D breasts into her Lycra suit.

She’d probably get Lia out of the house a whole lot faster if she lied and said that she and Frankie had fucked like bunnies all night long. That was, after all, what Lia expected to hear. Unfortunately, there was a hell of a lot more to the story.

“Let’s take my car, okay?” Marisela said, opening her closet door and ignoring her friend’s suspicious stare as she dug out her sandals and beach bag. Since Lia drove a choice Ford Mustang convertible, Marisela never volunteered to drive. But when leftover sand and shells spilled onto her carpet from her bag, Lia agreed to the change in normal procedure.

For once, Marisela would play smart. Smart people knew how to move ahead of trouble, not stand around and wait for angry, revenge-focused ex-boyfriends to charge into their bedrooms and demand retribution for the humiliation of being tied naked to a bed then left for his mother to find him. Before she’d headed back to the club, she’d hooked the handcuff key over the doorknob, right where Frankie’s parents would find it. Didn’t mean he’d be any less pissed just because she’d ensured his quick release. So to speak.

Sufficiently packed, Marisela shot to the door. “Let’s blow.” Lia grabbed her arm. Marisela winced as pain shot through her. Lia’s eyes widened with rage.

“He did hurt you!”

“No,
mija
, I swear it wasn’t him.”

“Then why are you so afraid of Frankie finding you today?”

Bravado was wasted on Lia, who thought Marisela was pretty darned awesome most of the time, for whatever unfathomable reason. “When I left him last night, he was not a happy camper.

Lia shifted her weight to one hip and tried to lighten the moment with a suspicious half-smile. “Didn’t you satisfy your man, Marisela? I mean, I thought you took pride in that sort of thing.”

Marisela grabbed Lia by the cover-up and yanked her toward the door. “Right now, I’m taking great pride in staying alive.”

* * *

Marisela couldn’t catch a break. Though her mother had gone out back to the lanai where her washer and dryer shared space with her plastic patio furniture and rusting hibachi grill, Marisela’s father pushed through the side door from the driveway just as Marisela was about to grab the doorknob.

“Sneaking off again?”

“I’m twenty-eight years old,
Papi
. I don’t sneak.”

His expression, completely doubtful, softened when she smacked his leathery cheek with a kiss. The edge of his salt and pepper mustache tickled her lips. He smelled like Old Spice and dark, brewed coffee.

“
Sí
, and I’m Antonio Banderas,” Ernesto Morales quipped, his trademark eye twinkle offsetting the gruff set of his square jaw. “Where are you two troublemakers going on a work day? Does the mayor know my daughter is corrupting his assistant, Angelia?”

Lia batted her lashes with that special little-girl finesse that all Latina daughters learned when dealing with their
muy macho
fathers. Technically, Lia wasn’t Latina—her mother and father were second-generation Italian American, but having grown up just two blocks over, Lia had balanced between the two distinct cultures with the skill of an Olympic gymnast. She spoke Castilian Spanish courtesy of the teachers at Tampa Catholic High School, Italian thanks to her parents and grandparents, and Ybor City Cuban picked up in various and sundry conversations with the Morales family, who considered her one of their own. Lia added diversity to Marisela’s distinctly Cuban-American experience—not to mention the added value of having Lia’s mother’s fantasy-inducing meatballs every Sunday, followed with coffee and fig cookies that nearly caused spontaneous orgasms.

“It’s my day off, Mr. Morales,” Lia explained. “Even city employees deserve a vacation day every once and a while.”

He sniffed derisively, but with a smile. Marisela wondered if her father understood the concept of time off for good behavior. For as long as she’d been alive, her father had missed work maybe three times—the day she was born, the day her sister Belinda was born and the day he’d had to bail Marisela out of jail. She winced, realizing that last event had actually happened on more than one occasion.

“What about you, Marisela?” He leveled his dark gaze on her, his black irises piercing. “A job isn’t going to come looking for you.”

“I have some leads on work,
Papi
, but today I’m working on my tan.”

“Nonsense! You were born with a tan.”

“I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“Right here, Ernesto.” Aida Morales squeezed her petite body through the screen door, a pile of folded towels clutched in her thin arms. How her mother remained so skinny had been a topic of frustrated conversation between her and Belinda for years. Their mother didn’t serve a meal that didn’t include at least one fried item—from steaks to potatoes to
platanos
.

The only thing the sisters could figure was that their mother rarely remained still. She rose early every morning to fix breakfast for their father, then proceeded with the housework until sometime after nine-thirty, when their father came home from opening the store at six
A.M.
to collect his wife who ran the deli at their small but popular corner store. The Morales’ bodega, on the corner of Habana and Tampania, provided sundry items from cold milk to fresh-baked Cuban bread alongside neighborhood gossip and local politics.

Aida plopped the towels onto a chair, knocked her fists onto her slim hips, and glanced around the kitchen with her lips turned down. “Something’s wrong in here.”

Uninterested, Ernesto shook open his newspaper. The hard crack of the newsprint nearly sent Marisela into the ceiling.

Her mother’s eyes snapped on her, then narrowed into inky slits. “What aren’t you telling me, Marisela?”

Marisela folded her lips inward and did her best “I’m innocent and didn’t kill a criminal in your kitchen” imitation. She followed her bewildered expression with a quizzical look, shooting it first at her mother, then at Lia, then back.

Her mother wasn’t buying. “Something is not right. I know my house. I can feel these things, and you,” she said, pointing directly at Marisela, “know it.”

Marisela fought the urge to shift her balance or offer denial too soon. Her mother was a sweet, loving, trusting woman, but her maternal radar could spot a lie with frightening accuracy. With a shrug, Marisela turned back toward Lia and lifted her eyebrows.

Her friend instantly took the hint.

“So,
señora
, how was your fancy dinner last night?”

Saved!

Aida launched into an excited and animated description of the entire night, causing Marisela to decide to buy the first round of drinks at the tiki bar at whatever beach she and Lia ended up at. Of course, she had been the one to tell Lia about her parent’s wild night out in the first place, so she deserved a little credit.

Her father intruded on her thoughts of piña coladas with his deep, level voice. “Marisela, Manolo Diaz had some interesting news for me this morning.”

He didn’t look up from his paper—he didn’t have to. Her father could scare the shit out of her from another room with that calm, controlled voice of his.