Vistaria Has Fallen (The Vistaria Affair/Vistaria Has Fallen #1)(20)

After that, she would stay in bed with Peter and thank him the only appropriate way possible. All that remained now was to get to the end of the evening.

Peter looked around for a waiter. “Would you like another drink?” he asked. “They have excellent tea here.”

Tea. Calli shook her head. “I’d prefer coffee if I must, but—”

“Coffee. No problem.” He waved his hand.

“No, really, I could live without it.”

“It’s no problem,” he assured her.

She sighed and sat back.

“It’s Kaestner, isn’t it?” said a new voice from behind her.

Calli didn’t have to look to know Nicolás stood there. The voice could belong to no one else. The American accent with the deliberate pronunciation, as if he concentrated on every word, which he might well be. Even without the accent, no man she knew had that gravelly, low timbre that caressed her spine and made her gut turn with a slow roll that left every nerve in her body awake and tingling.

Peter stood up again, grasping the napkin in his lap and trying to shake hands at the same time. He did it awkwardly, caught by surprise. “Yes, Peter Kaestner, Se?or Escobedo. I didn’t realize you dined here—I wouldn’t have ignored you.”

“No, it’s all right,” Nicolás said, waving him down. “I am here on private family business—Ashcroft’s is good for not being noticed, I’ve found. You too, I see.”

“Yeah, you can really get away from people here,” Peter agreed. “Please...sit down.”

Nicolás sat in the chair to Calli’s left and looked at her. “Miss Munro, yes? You were at the General’s birthday party last night.”

“That’s right.” Calli’s voice emerged husky.

Peter looked shocked. “You got an invite to that?”

“Callida has made an impression on Vistarians in her short time here,” Nicolás said.

“I guess,” Peter said with a half laugh, half exhalation.

“We met at Las Piedras Grandes, didn’t we?” Nicolás asked him. “At the opening ceremony for the mine?”

Peter nodded enthusiastically. Nicolás drew him out, getting Peter to talk about his work, his worries. Calli tuned out the conversation. Instead, she watched them. While Peter spoke, Nicolás played with the stem of the empty water glass in front of him, absently sliding his fingers up and down the length of it. Calli watched the motion, almost hypnotized by it. His fingers slid around the bottom of the glass itself, to cup the curve there.

She released the breath she’d been holding. Was he doing it deliberately? Yet he did not glance at her even once.

Abruptly, she stood. “Will you excuse me?” she murmured before either of them could react and hurried to the door into the wide hallway that led to the main entrance. A waitress with a starched apron spoke to her. Calli heard ‘help’ amidst the blur of Spanish.

“Sí,” she said. “Washrooms? Um...” She frowned, recalling the phrases she had been studying, groping for an appropriate word. “La conveniencia?”

“Sí.” The woman pointed toward the wide carpeted stairs running along the opposite wall of the hallway. The heavy paneling repeated there, and a thick railing of carved wood glowed with age and care.

“Up?” Calli questioned, also pointing.

“Sí, up.” The waitress agreed with a wide smile.

The stairway broke into a square landing close to the bottom of the case. The wall there featured a large picture window, framed with lavish green velvet swags and curtains. At ninety degrees to the rest of the stairs, three more steps reached down to the hallway floor. Calli climbed the steps and saw why the window had been placed there. The lights of la colina spread out before her, undulating down the hillside and off to the north and south for miles.

She didn’t admire the view, for she wanted to reach a place where no one could find her, yet she moved slowly. The longer she stayed away from the table, the higher the probability that Nicolás would be gone when she returned.

Why had he come over? There had been no reason she could see. His talk with Peter had been mindless, yet someone like Nicolás Escobedo did not engage in superficial conversation without reason.

She found the washrooms with the universal symbol for women and stood at the basin, staring blindly into the mirror while she tasted her roiling anger and frustration. Last night and again tonight. He was toying with her.

Only, that wasn’t accurate. Her mind, trained for critical thinking, nagged her into acknowledging the inconsistencies.

Calli spread her hands and leaned on the counter, letting her head hang as she pushed aside all the hurt feelings and her bruised ego and separated out the facts. He had said...what?

“I saw the light leave your eyes when you heard my name. That is why I stand here. I did not like watching your spirit die as you put it together.”

The caress of his voice in her mind: “I dreamed of you, Calli.”

She shivered.

He hadn’t been playing with her at all. He had revealed himself to make her feel better, then explained why he could not give in to the desire.

Calli rubbed her temple. God and she had been at the point of dragging Peter to bed to get even with him. How stupid! How could she not have seen this before? “I’m out of practice,” she whispered to the mirror.