Lady Moonlight (2 page)
Authors: Rita Rainville
"Okay, lady. You win."
"You mean you believe me?"
"Let's say that I think you believe what you're saying."
"But you really think I'm something out of the loony bin, don't you?"
"You said it, lady, not me."
"Well, right now I'll even settle for that as long as you get me back on U.S. soil."
"Okay. We're getting close. Just pretend you're asleep. I'll cover for you if they say anything as we go through Customs."
Two minutes later, they were across the border, in the town of San Ysidro, and driving north on I-5 to San Diego. Kara had never heard a sweeter sound than that of the powerful motor picking up speed.
Dane's large hand was removed from her head.
"Okay, you can sit up now."
He watched her scoot over, fumble with the seat belt and reach for her purse. Her hair had come loose from whatever arrangement it had been in and now cascaded down to her shoulders. Wispy tendrils of ash-gold curls clung to her cheeks and forehead.
Another quick, encompassing glance took in a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin and wide-set eyes so dark they seemed black. They were framed by thick brown lashes and brows. Cute, he thought. Crazy as a bedbug, but cute. And young.
His foot eased up on the gas pedal as he turned back to her. "I just thought of something. Are we leaving your car behind?"
"No," she replied absently. "It's parked at the Amtrak depot. I took the trolley down to the border."
Trying not to stare, she noted that his profile was as unyielding as his voice. So was everything else. If he were being cast in a movie, she thought whimsically, it would be as a mercenary, called in to single-handedly quell an uprising.
lt wasn't just a macho pose. It went far beyond that, she decided, continuing her assessment. He was tall, about six feet, and every inch looked hard, tough and capable. His face was all planes and angles. Not handsome, but fascinating, if you liked the type. Not that she did, she assured herself. She didn't like anything about him. Not his wavy, coffee-brown hair that was brushed back and obviously knew better than to fall forward, not his mustache, even if it was well-trimmed, not even his burnished, dark skin that proclaimed in a no-nonsense way that his waking hours were spent in the sun. And not, mind you, sybaritically lounging by a pool or near the lapping waves of the ocean. No indeed, he would be vigorously burning up calories and sweating. Nope, she agreed with herself, definitely not her type.
Maybe she could introduce him to Judy, she thought, biting back a grin. Her partner, and best friend, had always admired masterful men. She would have been a pushover in the days when men snapped their fingers and expected women to drop at their feet.
"I beg your pardon?" Kara was aware that, in her fanciful meandering, she had missed something.
"I just asked if you weren't a little young to be wandering around alone in T.J."
"No." She kept her answer deliberately brief, hoping to discourage the lecture she could see forming on his lips. For some unfathomable reason, most men took one look at her five-foot-three-inch frame and thought cute. They then equated cute with young and assumed she still had a ten o'clock curfew. For someone who had just celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday it was a bit aggravating. Closing her eyes in resignation, she leaned back, resting her head against the seat.
"Do your parents know where you are?" he asked sharply.
"No." She had her own town house and her parents, enjoying their empty nest, checked in with her when they returned from their various jaunts. "If you had a daughter my age, do you think she'd tell you where she was going every time she stepped out the door?"
"You damn well better believe that she'd know not to go across the border, or anywhere else, without my permission." Her silence provoked him. "And she wouldn't find herself being chased by two-bit hoods in a foreign country. Or having to trust a perfect stranger to help her out."
"Surely not perfect," Kara murmured. Her long lashes lifted in time for her to see his lean fingers squeeze the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. She had no doubt that he visualized his large hands wrapped around her slim, tan throat.
"I'm sorry." She strove for a properly repentant tone, wondering at the same time why he annoyed her so. "You didn't deserve that." For the first time he lifted his gaze from the road and turned to face her.
His eyes were silvery green, she noted in surprise. She had expected them to be dark, to match the rest of him.
"I really do appreciate the way you helped me, but I'm older than I look. Really," she insisted in the face of his obvious skepticism. "I've been on my own for some time now."
"And what about the rest of your story?" His eyes were back on the road. His voice informed her that he wouldn't be surprised if she shouted "April Fool!" and broke into insane laughter.
"All true, every word of it." She sighed in exasperation at his quick glance of disbelief. "You don't know how tired I am of trying to explain the inexplicable. Anyway, we've never had trouble before, and I doubt if we ever will again."
"Wait a minute. You're not telling me that you're actually going back there, are you?"
"Well, of course!" Kara shifted her gaze from the traffic, which was thickening as they neared the center of town, to the angry man beside her. What on earth was the matter with him now? "In about a month they'll need money again," she explained matter-of-factly.
"And that's all it takes? Someone yells for help, and you go running?"
"Of course. Isn't that what friends are for?"
"Not my friends."
"You helped me," she pointed out.
"That was different."
"How?"
"You were a woman, alone and in trouble."
"You mean if a man ......"
"Right now we're talking about you," he interrupted briskly. "How many people do you do this horse racing thing for?"
"On a regular basis, only Juanito and Carmella. But there have been a few individual cases, strictly one-time things. Like my friend, Molly. Her husband left her. She had no job, no insurance, nothing. Bobby, her little boy, was in an accident, and she didn't have the money to get him out of the hospital. So we went to the races. A few things like that."
"I don't believe it," he muttered. "In case you haven't heard, there's a word for people like you."
Knowing she would hate herself for asking, she bit anyway. "What?"
"A patsy."
They were still arguing as he drove into the Amtrak parking lot. She directed him to her green Camaro and opened the door as he pulled up beside it.
"I won't say it's been fun," she said, taking one last look at his hard, unsmiling face before she stepped down. "But I do thank you for the rescue." She slammed the door and grinned up at him. "I'll pass your favor on to the next unfortunate soul I meet."
She stepped back, undaunted by his glare, waving as he drove out of the parking lot. And that, she thought, is that. At least she wasn't adding a permanent member to the growing number who disapproved of her life-style. He was only a temporary critic. Putting her car in gear, she headed for her home, her work and her friends in La Jolla.
❧
Thirty minutes later, she walked through the door of Cachet, the craft shop that had metamorphosed into one of the town's most distinctive gift boutiques.
"Thank God you're back!" Kara found herself almost smothered by Judy's impulsive hug. Her normally unflappable friend looked suspiciously bright-eyed. Her black hair, usually drawn back in a smooth knot, hung in wisps around her face, and her lipstick looked as if it had been slowly and methodically chewed off.
"I told you I'd be back about four. I'm only a few minutes late."
Judy eyed her grimly. "Don't pull that innocent act with me. Juanito has been burning up the telephone lines for the last hour, and you know how he is when he gets excited. What I managed to understand I didn't like. He was babbling something about pistoleros, and that you had disappeared. Why were gangsters chasing you, and where did you go?"
Kara mentally heaped curses upon the head of the absent Juanito as she put her arm around her distraught friend. "Beth," she called to the college student who helped in the store on weekends, "can you take over for a while? We're going to be in the back."
"Sure thing, Kara." A tall, slim girl with brown hair turned away from the blown-glass creations she was dusting. "Take your time. I'll sing out if it gets busy."
"I told you this crazy stuff was going to get you in trouble." Judy eyed Kara darkly as she herded her into the corner of the stockroom they had furnished as an office. "Are you going to listen to me now? No, of course you won't," she answered herself bitterly.
"You'll keep running down there doing your crystal-ball routine until everyone at the racetrack knows what you're up to."
She dropped down into a wicker chair, scowled at Kara, who sat across from her, and plowed on without coming up for air. "Don't you understand that there are people who would do anything to get the information you conjure up? Doesn't it worry you at all?"
Experience had taught Kara to sit quietly and listen. Or at least look like she was paying attention.
Why was it, she wondered for the hundredth time, that almost everyone who knew her tried to organize her life? It must go back to that cute thing, she pondered. They took one look at her and decided that she didn't have a brain large enough for two thoughts to rub together.
It wasn't as if she were mentally deficient, she thought, as Judy's words flowed over her. Quite the contrary. Under her optimistic and humorous approach to life she was actually pretty levelheaded.
Only a few people, however, were discerning enough to detect the intelligence that was an integral part of her makeup. Judy knew, but at times such as these she tended to forget.
She was beginning to run down, Kara noted with relief. She was now in the you've-got-to-get-rid-of-this-Florence-Nightingale-complex stage.
"You can't keep running around putting Band-Aids on the whole world, Kara. What would happen to these people if you weren't around? They'd survive, that's what. You can't take the whole world on as your personal charity." Judy leaned back, wondering if this time she had said the magic words that would make Kara less vulnerable to appeals for help. As her friend's husky voice reached her ears, she knew that once again she had failed.
"I haven't adopted the whole world, Judy. Only a small part of my neighborhood." Kara shifted to a more comfortable position. "And I am discriminating, you have to give me that. I never take on anyone who's lazy or incompetent. Only those who are hard-working, but for some reason temporarily unable to help themselves."
"What's so temporary about the Estradas? I don't see them working to the point of self-sufficiency. Their reputation is spreading, and every week they find at least one more kid sitting on their doorstep. Pretty soon they'll have to open another place, and then you'll be down there twice a month."
Kara grinned. Judy wasn't nearly as tough as she sounded. Once, just once, she had crossed the border to help at the orphanage. She had spent the day hugging babies, playing with the older children and fighting tears. Ever since, she had been playing shamelessly on the heartstrings of friends and business associates, wangling large and small donations for the children. She also spent hours at rummage and garage sales, buying good used clothing with the money. She never worried about sizes. Every item would be put to use. She also never went back.
Kara sighed. "We've been talking about that. We're all concerned about how fast they're growing. We either start going to the dog races at Caliente during the week, in addition to the horses, or come up with something new. I've been thinking about some of your rich friends, the ones who own businesses. Maybe they'd like to adopt an orphanage or sponsor a few of the kids. With all the wealth in this town, we should be able to come up with something. Why don't you ask Bill, your CPA friend, if a charity in another country is tax deductible." Kara stood up. "Let me know what you find out."
Before she could move, Judy pointed a stern finger at the empty chair. "Sit, Kara! You're not walking out of here until you tell me what happened this afternoon."
Kara flopped back down, scowling hideously at her friend. "You sound just like the man who rescued me. Nag, nag, nag."
"Then he's a man after my own heart," Judy assured her. "Now talk."
Kara heaved a sigh and launched into an imaginative and well-edited version of the day's activities.
". . then he drove me to my car and left me. If I'm lucky, it's the last I'll ever see of him."
"Was he that bad?"
"Yes."
"What's his name?"
"I don't know. He was too busy telling me what he thought of my antipoverty program to answer any questions."
"What'd he look like?"
Kara grinned. Trust Judy to get right to the heart of the matter. "He's just your type. You'd love him."
"Meaning you didn't." Judy had more than once expressed her opinion of Kara's penchant for quiet, understated men.
"Precisely. He's big, tough, has go-to-hell green eyes and manners to match. He reminded me of Charles Bronson in that movie you made me watch on TV last week."
"And you didn't get his name?" Judy regarded her friend through blue eyes round with shock. She didn't believe in passing up heaven-sent opportunities.
"Listen to me," Kara urged. "By the time we reached the depot we could hardly wait to say good-bye. And since we argued all the way from the border, neither of us was in the mood for polite introductions. He's a hard man, and he thinks I'm soft in the head."
She rose, stretched and looked down at the desk they shared. "Sorry I couldn't bring him home for you," she finished absently, picking up a letter. "You'll just have to manage with the ten or so you have hovering around." She looked up, flourishing the letter. "What are we going to do about this?"
"The Business Association charity thing? We'll go, of course. I've already sent them a check. We haven't missed one yet. It's a good cause, and if we need other reasons, we've made some good local connections in the past, and it's tax deductible."
"What more could we ask for?" Kara queried lightly. "What are you going to wear? Something severe, to remind people that you're the brains of the outfit?"
Judy stood up, looking down at Kara from her five-inch advantage. "Sure," she agreed. "As long as your dress is some romantic bit of fluff. God forbid that anyone should think I'm the artistic one," she said piously.
Harmony restored, they turned toward the door.
Judy stopped, gesturing dramatically. "Wait a minute! I bet if you really concentrated, you could remember his license number. Then maybe you could track him down through the DMV. What do you think?"
"I think it's a rotten idea," Kara said dryly. "I'm not about to try. I don't want to know his license number; I don't want to know him. With luck, I'll never see the man again."
But luck, elusive and unreliable at the best of times, was not with Kara.