Look What the Wind Blew In (4 page)

Juan looked down at Angélica, wincing visibly at whatever he saw on her face. Then his lips curled into a smile and he shook the newcomer’s hand. “Glad to have you here, Mr. Parker.”

“Please, call me Quint.”

Angélica’s left eyelid began to twitch. He couldn't have. He just couldn't have. “Dad.” It was more of an accusation than question.

“Angélica, this is Quint Parker.” Juan ignored her glare. “He’s a photojournalist who’s going to write a piece about what goes on behind the scenes at our dig site.”

What?
No. Absolutely not. No way in hell. Heat crept up her neck and singed her cheeks. She was going to pay Teodoro to torture her father with one of his shaman cures—the one using leeches would be a good start.

Juan gestured toward Angélica. “Quint, this is my daughter, Dr. Angélica García.”

How could he have done this to her? This year of all years?

Quint’s grin faltered. “Your daughter?”

“And please, call me Juan. My daughter is the only ‘Dr. García’ on this site. I hope the ride in wasn’t too grueling. Our motorcycle refuses to start, so we had to rely on backup transportation.”

“The ride was … interesting,” their visitor said, his smile returning. “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten that many bugs in one sitting.”

In no mood for polite conversation, Angélica grabbed Juan’s arm. “Could you excuse us for a moment, Mr. Parker?”

“Sure. I’ll just stand here and watch for passing snakes.”

Swell, a comedian. Her dad was going to love this guy.

Angélica towed her father a small distance from Quint, and then shot Juan a scorching look. “Why didn’t you tell me about this
before
he showed up?”

Juan held her gaze. “Because I know you.”

“Humph!” Then he should have known better. “And just who is he supposed to follow around while he’s here?”

“The both of us.”

“Really?”

Juan nodded. “But mainly you.”

“Ahhh!” Angélica threw her hands up in frustration. “Just as I suspected.” Her father had lost his mind.

“Well, since you’re the one with the crew, he’ll gain more insight into what we do here from you.”

“Dad, I don’t have the time—”

“I know, darling,” Juan said, waving at Teodoro as he passed them on the way to the latrine.

“Or the energy—”

“Yes,
gatita
.” He squeezed her shoulder.

“Or the patience—”

“Of course not.”

“To take care of this … this …” Words escaped her sparking brain.

“Photojournalist,” Quint supplied from behind her.

“Thank you, Mr. Parker,” she snapped without taking her eyes from her father. “To take care of a photojournalist right now. Especially with all of the other little problems we’ve been having lately.” Not including this damned curse bullshit.

Juan smiled. “I agree with you completely.”

“Great.” She blew out a sigh of relief. He’d come back to his senses. “Then what’s your solution?” They should probably offer to feed Mr. Parker first and then have Teodoro haul him to the village.

Placing his hands on her cheeks, Juan leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Play nice.”

He stepped back and said to Quint, “I’ll catch up with you after my daughter gets you settled.”

“Dad!” She jammed her hands on her hips when he turned to leave. “Don’t you walk away!”

Her father winked at her and did just that, whistling as he left.

* * *

Quint watched Juan stroll toward a small, crumbling temple, leaving his daughter standing there spitting and sputtering.

Angélica García.

In the flesh.

Damn.

He’d almost fallen over when Juan had introduced her. Jared Steel’s ex-wife was one of the last people he’d expected to run into down here.

That old newspaper photo had been deceptive. She didn’t look anything like the cold bitch he’d imagined her to be. On the contrary, she was fiery. He risked a peek down over her shirt, settling on where her khaki pants rode low on her hips. Curvier, too. The black and white picture didn’t do her justice, especially when it came to the flames of red in her hair.

His focus returned to her face and ran into her hard green gaze.

She waved him over to where she stood glaring at him.

He cringed, wishing he were wearing a cup—just in case she starting swinging.

“Mr. Parker.” The calm tone in her voice surprised him.

“Quint,” he reiterated. How had he missed that she was an archaeologist, too? He’d been too fixed on her father and his long association with Steel, maybe.

Her lips were pressed tight when she held out her hand, her expression schooled. “It’s nice to meet you, Quint.”

Figuring there was some anger smoldering beneath the surface, he cautiously shook her hand. She had a firm grip with rough calluses dotting her palm. A hard worker, too. Another misconception about Steel’s ex-wife crumbled.

“I apologize for being a surprise, Dr. García.”

She pulled her hand free. “That you were. My father has a habit of …” she sighed. “Well, let’s just say he keeps my life exciting.”

Quint stood there for a few seconds, his eyes locked with hers, not sure if she expected him to head back to the village or set up camp. Trying to break the standoff, he motioned toward his dirt-stained shirt. “You wouldn’t happen to have a place where I could clean up and change, would you?”

She glanced down his front, her forehead wrinkling as if she’d just noticed how much of a mess he was. “What’d you do? Fall off the bike?”

He didn’t want to make a big deal of the old woman and him almost becoming bug splatter on the bus grill, so he kept it short. “I rescued some chickens.”

Her grin was the spitting image of her father’s. The softening of her features made him do a double take. She needed to smile more often.

“Grab that.” She pointed at his backpack sitting next to him on the ground. “I’ll show you where you can park yourself for however long you plan to stay with us. You can take the afternoon to settle in and acclimate.”

In other words, she was going to let him stick around, but she didn’t want to deal with him at the moment. That was fine with him. He needed a break to figure out how to keep Dr. Angélica García from interfering with his reason for returning to this hellhole.

He hoisted his pack and followed her lead, debating whether to ask if she knew of Dr. Hughes. No, better to bide his time, step carefully. Her rigid spine and no-nonsense gait made it clear that she wasn’t in the mood for questions.

After leading him past several tents, including a large green one, she opened the flap of a weathered gray tent.

“You can bunk in here for now.” She stood aside and waited for him to enter.

He slipped past her. The smell of sun-baked canvas greeted him as he looked around his new home, taking in the stack of waterlogged boxes in the corner, the jumble of smashed and dented electronic equipment on the wooden desk, and the pile of thick books on the canvas floor next to a cot strewn with notebooks. He fanned himself with his hat. A sauna would be refreshing in comparison.

Angélica stepped in behind him and zipped closed a piece of fine mesh across the opening. She glanced around the tent. “Sorry about how cramped it is right now,” she said, lifting off what looked like a mangled satellite phone base from the desk and dropping it onto the tent floor. A laptop broken into two pieces followed it, along with a tangled nest of cables. “A tree fell on our communications tent last week. We’ve been storing the salvaged remains in here along with our other supplies. I’ll have someone remove this stuff after supper.”

He opened his mouth to ask if the so-called “curse” had taken out their electronics, too, but then reconsidered, figuring she might take a bite out of his hide in response.

The satellite phone being disabled was unfortunate, since Quint couldn’t get any cell phone service here under the thick canopy of trees. He’d left his own satellite phone at home because Juan had written that they already had one on the dig site. Maybe if he climbed to the top of one of the temples, he could get a signal. He needed a way to contact folks in the States in case he found something down here. For now, he’d have to rely on the backup plan—using the hotel in the village as a base for incoming and outgoing packages and messages.

“Don’t worry about it.” Quint dropped his backpack onto the floor next to the desk.

“Supper’s at seven. We eat in the mess tent, which is what we were standing next to when we met.”

“Great.” Right now the idea of eating in this heat made him nauseated. He’d have to be careful about heat stroke these first few days and drink lots of water.

He eyed the cot jammed against one side of the tent. Switching from the freezing Canadian Rockies to the sweltering Yucatán jungle in less than a week was taking its toll. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling every one of his thirty-eight years.

Later, he could ask Juan García and his daughter more about the curse Teodoro had mentioned and somehow convince them to share what they knew about the history of this place.

Angélica must have seen him staring at the cot, because she collected the mound of battered notebooks off the top of it and dropped them onto the floor over by the boxes. “If you need anything, find Teodoro. His place is behind the mess tent. He can show you where the latrine is located.” She glanced at his shirt, “And the showers, too.”

“A shower would be fantastic.”

“Yeah, well keep in mind this isn’t a Hilton Hotel.”

“Darn. I suppose a visit to the spa for a massage is out of the question,” he joked.

The only thing he needed right now was that cot. And some time to regroup and modify his plan of attack. There was also a certain newspaper picture he wanted to check out again.

She nodded and unzipped the mesh flap. “Be sure to zip this closed after I leave or the mosquitoes will drain your blood in an hour.”

“Got it.” Some things hadn’t changed in twenty years.

“I’m sorry to play bad hostess and skip out on you,” she paused to zip the flap closed behind her before he had a chance to do it, “but I need to go find my father and string him high up in the nearest tree canopy for the spider monkeys to have their way with him.”

Quint listened to the fading crunch of her footfalls in the dead grass as she marched away. When the coast was clear, he closed the main tent flap for total privacy and reached for his backpack. Unzipping the top of it, he sorted through several shirts and pairs of socks before finding the blue plastic file holder; his old friend, Jeff Hughes, had given it to him when they had met for drinks last month back home in Rapid City. He dropped onto the cot and unwound the string securing the cover.

He sorted through photos of Jared Steel that Jeff’s mother had hired a private detective to take before she’d died last year, double checking to see if Angélica was in any of them. She wasn’t.

Setting them aside, he fingered through the handful of yellowing newspaper articles about Jared Steel, his mind flitting back in time to that last summer here at the dig site with Dr. Hughes as it had many, many times before. Was there some clue he’d missed? Something he’d overlooked before flying back home and never seeing Jeff’s dad again?

He flipped past the magazine article covering Steel’s latest accomplishments in the archaeology community and an older university newspaper article with a picture of Steel kissing the hand of a good-looking brunette. Mrs. Hughes was amazingly thorough in her detective skills. He wasn’t surprised, really, when he thought back to the way she’d always been able to sniff out any trouble Jeff and he had gotten into back in junior high. Jeff used to say his mom didn’t have eyes in the back of her head; she had spyglasses.

“Ah ha,” he whispered, finding the newspaper photo from over a decade ago that he’d been thinking about since seeing Dr. Angélica García in the flesh.

Easing onto his back, he stared at the princess in the photo. With her frosty smile and poised demeanor, Quint had assumed she’d fit perfectly into Jared Steel’s high society life. Steel stood behind her in the engagement photo, acting the loving fiancé, flaunting his trademark smirk. The same smirk Quint had wanted to put his fist through twenty years ago.

His focus drifted back to the photo of Angélica in her high-collared shirt, her perfectly coiffed hairdo, her flawless skin. So different. He thought of how animated she’d been with her father when Quint had introduced himself. The sweat lining her brow and ringing her neck, the way strands of her hair escaped her braid and stuck out like live wires, her heated cheeks. So much more vibrant. She was not the porcelain doll he’d imagined.

Tracing the outline of Angélica’s face, he chewed on his lower lip. Should he tell the Garcías he’d been here before, back when it was mostly jungle with a couple of temples rising out of the brush? That he’d known Dr. Hughes and his family since childhood? That his reason for coming to this dig site had nothing to do with an article about the site and everything to do with a promise made to Jeff Hughes after his mother’s funeral?

He covered Jared Steel’s image with his thumb and focused on Angélica with her over-glossed smile. “Can I trust you, Dr. García?”