Finally, Carmen opened the door. Her pretty face was nearly green with morning sickness and it got worse when she saw Elise. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was a sneer.
Elise pushed her way into the room. “I’m running away and you’re going to help me do it.” She shut the door behind her.
“I’m just the gardener’s sister,” Carmen said. “I can’t—”
Elise glared at Carmen’s stomach. “Do you really want to go that way? You want to turn me over to them so I can marry your boyfriend?”
Carmen’s only reaction to that revelation was a couple of blinks. She put the chain on the door. “Your father called in men with guns. You’re in a lot of trouble.”
When Elise sat down on the bed, the dress billowed up so high that she got a mouthful of it. Sputtering, she said, “I’m not going to be bullied into a marriage that I don’t want.”
The green look was beginning to clear from Carmen’s face, and for the first time Elise thought of it from her side. She was here to attend the wedding of a man whose child she was carrying. Elise’s voice softened. “I need to borrow some clothes and you have to help me find a way to get out of here.”
Carmen’s lips tightened. “My clothes won’t fit you.” She gave a pointed look at Elise’s much flatter chest.
“You’re going to be catty now?” Elise said. “Really?”
Carmen gave a shrug, as though it didn’t matter what she did. For a moment, they stared at each other. Then Carmen picked up her cell and called her brother. She told him, in Spanish, that he needed to come to the hotel right away, that it was an emergency. She listened, then hung up.
“My brother will be here soon,” Carmen said. Neither her eyes nor her voice had softened. She was still looking at Elise as though she were the enemy
. Not Kent, who was playing the women against each other, but Elise.
She started to say she’d heard the call, but it dawned on Elise that this was years earlier. No one knew that she’d learned to speak Spanish. Nor did anyone know that she and Alejandro were friends. The first time around, they didn’t meet until after she was married. “So Diego is coming for me?” she asked.
“No. He’s out of town. My younger brother, Alejandro, will be here as soon as he can, but it’ll be at least an hour. He’s one of the men who’s been working at your father’s house for a month.” She looked Elise up and down in contempt. “If you plan to sneak out, you need to change now. My brother has to work for a living. He doesn’t have all day to wait for you.”
Elise was trying to steady herself as she grasped the facts. Alejandro was coming for her!
She turned away from Carmen, pointed to the buttons down the back of the dress, and reluctantly, Carmen began unfastening them. When the dress was unbuttoned, Elise managed to step out of the thing and let it drop to the floor. She was glad she’d worn her yoga pants.
Reverently, Carmen picked the dress up and put it on the bed.
As Elise took a robe off a chair, she looked at the way Carmen was smoothing the dress. It was as though she was imagining her own wedding. Softly, Elise said, “What is it that you like about Kent?”
Carmen didn’t turn around, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet. “He makes me laugh. He’s generous, always doing things for me.” She straightened her shoulders, then turned to look at Elise. “And the sex is great.”
Elise stifled the hurt that she felt. “He sounds like he is truly in love with you.”
“Yes, he is. And I’m in love with him.”
Elise nodded toward the dress on the bed. “It must have hurt to see him planning his wedding to marry me.”
Carmen grit her teeth. “I wanted to kill you. No offense.”
“None taken.” Elise went into the bathroom and closed the door. For a moment she leaned against it and tears came to her eyes. Generosity, laughter, fabulous sex. She’d seen none of those in the years she’d been married to Kent.
She pushed away from the door and wiped her eyes. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she just stand up to all of them? Why couldn’t she look into her mother’s eyes and say she was not going to marry Kent? Not going to spend her life with a man who didn’t love her?
But then what? Elise had no money. She had a useless education that had prepared her for being a wife to an executive. She’d studied art and poetry, and done lots of exercise to keep herself fit. If she defied her parents, she knew of no one who’d risk their wrath to take her in until she could get on her feet. And that thought terrified her. What could she do?
In the shower, she washed off the quarter pound of makeup her mother had insisted on. She was trying to combat the “blandness” of Elise, meaning her blonde hair and eyebrows and lashes. What her “family” was planning to do to her wasn’t fair. Where were those parents who said, “We support you no matter what you want to do?”
She got out of the shower, dried off, put her underwear back on and the thick hotel robe, then began to blow-dry her long hair. Okay, so now she had a second chance, but what had changed? Her parents were going to be so angry that they would cut her off completely.
Maybe she should have asked Arrieta to go back to when she entered college so she could major in business. But then, when the three weeks were up, her old self would probably still believe she was in love with Kent. What was she going to do? Write herself a letter about her future? No, she needed the years of marriage to show her that Kent wasn’t who she thought he was.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a low rumble of a sound that she recognized.