Chapter 18
18
G reer loved his easy manner with her since they’d had “the talk.” He’d been fun before, but now he was almost giddy, as if he wanted this as badly as she did.
Laughing, he said, “When I see something new, it’s a compulsion to find out what it is. I’ll let my fascinated mother know too.”
“So she’s the one you get your curiosity from.”
The lights went down and fog floated across the stage, lit up by green lights to turn it into a jungle, a pyramid as the backdrop. A little man dressed all in camouflage green ran onto the stage, calling out, “Now this is a jungle, and don’t be surprised if we’ve got animals coming out of the woodwork. So I want you all to make animal sounds for me.” He raised his hands, encouraging everyone to join in. And the audience did, with tiger growls and elephant trumpets and bird calls.
Their group sat close enough to the front that he picked on them. “I want you all to growl like the big cats.”
Instead of roaring like a lion, Dean meowed like a house cat.
The little green man pointed at him. “I said big cats.”
Dean laughed. “Don’t you know how ferocious house cats can be?”
Green Man narrowed his eyes. “Okay, Mr. Meow Man, do it again, and make it loud so everyone can hear.”
Dean played along, meowing loudly.
Cupping his hand over his ear, Green Man leaned in. “Good Lord. I think you’ve roused a lion up there.” Sure enough, a roar rose from the top of the stadium, followed by pounding feet as a lion bounded down the steps.
Green Man shrieked at Dean. “Now, Mr. Meow Man. Get up here. You have to save me from the lion. And you said you were ferocious.”
Dean looked back as the lion figure skidded to a stop at the stage and growled. Green Man shouted, “Save me!”
Greer elbowed Dean. “You need to save him.”
Seated on the end, Dean rose, walked the two rows to the stage, and climbed the set of stairs just as the lion—a man with a lion’s headdress and a long tail—leaped on the stage, roaring and growling. Hiding behind Dean, Green Man held on to his hips, peeking around him. “Save me, Meow Man,” he squeaked like a mouse.
Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “But I don’t want the lion to eat me.” Turning slightly, he grinned down at the little man. “Maybe a tasty morsel like you can hold him off.”
Green Man shrieked in terror.
The banter couldn’t have been planned, but Dean played along spectacularly. When the lion roared once more, Dean curled his hands into claws, bared his teeth, and meowed stridently.
Green Man shouted, “Louder. Louder. You’re not scaring him off yet.”
Dean lunged then, not far, just enough to force the lion to back up a step. His meow was truly ferocious.
The audience was in an uproar, with Nana yelling, “You go, Meow Man.”
Nana’s offspring erupted, Greer, too, shouting encouragement, and the audience joined in, cheering him on. The lion backed up, step by step, until suddenly he bounded across the stage and disappeared into the foliage.
The little man threw his arms around Dean—his head barely reaching Dean’s chest—shouting out for the audience to hear, “You saved me, Meow Man. Thank you. Thank you.”
Then three gorgeous women, with long curling black hair wearing costumes made of leaves tacked to green leotards, ran across the stage
Green Man shrieked all over again. “It’s the Amazons,” he cried out. “They’re coming to get me.”
Dean purred at the women.
The audience’s laughter almost drowned him out. Greer was ecstatic with his performance, clapping and cheering and laughing so hard, she felt tears in her eyes.
Instead of going for Green Man, the three beautiful women hung on Dean. And who wouldn’t? He was tall and buffed and gorgeous. Then, in a swift move, they threw a net over him, and together they lifted him off his feet, carrying him away and disappearing stage right.
The night’s green host slumped on the stage and wailed, “I’ve lost Meow Man.” When the audience did nothing, he whipped his hands through the air, wailing once more, “I’ve lost Meow Man. Aren’t you even upset?”
This time everyone roared, and he shook a finger at them all. “The only way to distract myself is by letting the nymphs frolic in the jungle.”
Once more, fog wafted down the pyramid and settled in a green glow around the man’s feet. Above him, three women perched on large rings were lowered to within ten feet of the stage. If they were the same three women—Greer wasn’t sure—they’d done a quick costume change into brightly colored leotards, blue and pink and teal, their dark hair pulled up in high ponytails. The rings turned in the air, and they flipped with them, falling upside down, their legs hooked inside the rings.
Dean slipped in beside her.
She wanted to hug him. “You were so good. You made the show for everyone.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “But I was jealous of those Amazons.”
Laughing, he put an arm around her and kissed her temple. “I had to play along.” Then he whispered in her ear, “Maybe you should get all dressed up like an Amazon and drag me away in your net.”
Loving it, she batted at him. “You gave that little green man way more of a show than he could possibly imagine. You had Nana and the entire audience peeing their pants.”
He chuckled, tightening his arm around her. “I aim to please.” She was sure he meant so much more than his performance on the stage. Holding up an envelope, he said, “For being a good sport, they gave me a gift certificate for a restaurant in town. Would you go with me?”
She wanted to so badly, but she said, “Shouldn’t you take your mother? It’s her birthday party, after all.”
He leaned past her to look at Nana down the row. “It’s for an intimate meal,” he stressed. “She’ll just tell me to take you.”
“Then I’d love to go.” She was dizzy at the thought of another intimate meal with Dean.
Bernice leaned past her, attempting to sock Dean’s arm. “You are one crazy Meow Man. Everyone loved you. Your mother wants to know what those Amazons did to you backstage.”
Nana leaned forward to punch the air at Dean. “You go, Meow Man.”
“Tell her a gentleman never tells.”
Bernice snorted, and laughing, she turned back to the stage.
The show turned out to be a series of amazing acrobatic acts. The girls in the rings twisted and flipped and did handstands, all while swinging above the stage. One acrobat performed flips and jumps on a huge seesaw, always landing precisely. Another woman and two men played with fire, circling flaming staffs around their bodies, throwing the fire in the air to catch it again. Stretched out inside a six-foot hula hoop, an acrobat revolved and twirled and circled, his feet and hands never leaving the hoop. And good Lord, held up only by her hair, a woman danced in the air, twirling, flipping, and swinging.
Greer especially loved the couple performing a gorgeous gymnastic love dance, the man holding her above him, arms straight, while she did a handstand on his palms. The performance was so stunning and sexy that Greer could believe they were lovers.
For the last act, four young women pushed out a giant air mattress, climbing onto it. Double-jointed, or just very practiced, they contorted their legs in exotic ways a body wasn’t meant to move, legs over heads, arms all the way back.
She murmured to Dean, “They’re pretzel girls.”
“They’re kinda scary.”
But they were incredible.
As the entire troupe gathered on the stage, fog swirling around their legs, the audience gave the acrobats and their funny green ringmaster a standing ovation until finally they disappeared into the fog as if they’d been mirages.
As the family filed out of their row and made for the exit, Nana skipped to catch up with Dean—how did a ninety-year-old woman even do that?—and grabbed his hand. “You made the whole show. You’ve got a new career ahead of you as Meow Man.”
He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “I definitely couldn’t contort myself like the girls in the last act.”
His mother snorted. “I’ll practice. It’ll keep me young.”
“Or break something.”
And she swatted at him.
Greer thought getting out of the stadium would take forever, but they arrived back at the boat in fifteen minutes. Nana was all aflutter about the wonderful show, the miraculous feats, and Dean’s brilliant performance. “Best show ever,” she crowed.
Once again, they took seats in the front row of the boat. Greer leaned around Dean to say to the whole family, “Thank you for inviting me. The evening was wonderful.”
Bernice did a nudge-nudge wink-wink pantomime. “I’m sure it was.” After all, she’d engineered that romantic dinner on the beach.
Dean hugged Greer close. “It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun without you.” She read his thoughts; there was so much more pleasure to come.
The boat ride back seemed to take far longer than the cruise out to the island, probably because Greer could think of nothing else but the night with Dean. Their group disembarked first and headed out to the taxi line.
As they waited, Bernice pulled her cell phone from her purse. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “There’s like six voicemails from Jenny,” who, Greer remembered, was her eighteen-year-old granddaughter.
Instead of listening, Bernice immediately dialed. “What’s wrong?”
As Dean waved down a couple of vans to handle their number, Bernice stuck her finger in her ear to hear better. “You mean?” Greer heard clearly, and then, “Okay, okay, don’t panic. We’ll get there.”
Phone still in her hand, she clutched Dean’s arm. “Jenny’s still in Puerto Vallarta, and she says Cynthia and Lisa have gone off by themselves. She couldn’t get them to stay with the group, and she doesn’t know where they went.”
Dean froze.
Terror coursed through Dean’s body. His girls were adults and free to do what they chose, but the thought of them alone… two beautiful young women walking the streets and looking like game to any male predators. It was enough to make his blood run like ice through his veins, and despite the balmy night, his skin chilled.
“Tell her to stay where she is, and I’ll come to her,” Dean said, his voice little better than a growl. He couldn’t control it.
When he found the girls—and he would find them—they would throw a fit. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was make sure they were safe.
Bernice repeated his words to Jenny and asked, “Where are you?” She stood as still as a deer scenting danger in the forest while she listened. Then she said, “We’ll be there soon.”
When Dean would have ushered Greer into a waiting van, she waved him off. “I’m coming with you.”
He could have argued, maybe he should have argued, but he wanted to hug her. “Thank you.”
“We should go too.” His niece Michelle, Jenny’s mother, was just as worried. Dean spared only a moment to wonder why Jenny had called her grandmother instead of her mother, but it was the least of his concerns.
“No,” Bernice said firmly. “Or we’ll have to take two cabs and everything will just get more complicated. Jenny and the others are fine. I’ll send them back to the resort. You should be there waiting for them.”
Michelle finally agreed, her husband Oscar ushering her into the waiting minibus.
After the two vans winged away, his mother’s objections ringing in Dean’s ears, Ralph had already signaled a taxi. The four of them climbed in, Dean saying, “What was the name of the bar Jenny’s at?”
Bernice leaned through the seats to tell the driver. Then Dean faced the longest twenty minutes of his life on streets packed with cars and motorcycles and people enjoying all the nightlife Puerto Vallarta offered.
He was an idiot for letting the girls go without an adult. An older adult, someone of his generation. The only thing that saved him from melting down was Greer’s hand in his as she sat in the back between him and Bernice.
“You told Jenny to stay where she was? Right?” he asked Bernice.
She shot him a look. “I’m your older sister and I’m far smarter than you. And you actually heard me tell her.”
He had, but he felt obsessive-compulsive, needing to check again and again.
Ralph said from the front seat, “They’ll be fine. No worries. Lisa and Cynthia are smart girls.”
Yet he could imagine them throwing themselves onto the dance floor and leaving a glass or a beer bottle behind on the table for anyone to drop in a date rape drug. He was afraid that saying it aloud would make it real. Thinking it was bad enough.
Greer said softly, “We’ll find them. And like Ralph said, they’ll be perfectly fine.”
Somehow, he believed her more than Ralph. Because he needed to.
Then she asked Bernice, “Did your granddaughter say how long ago they split up?”
Bernice scrolled to her phone. “The first message was half an hour ago. And they’d already been looking for about fifteen minutes. So, forty minutes by now.”
That did nothing to ease his tension, and his foot bounced uncontrollably on the floorboards. But at least it indicated how far they could have gotten.
After his heart tried to stop over a dozen times, they pulled up in front of a hopping bar, people hanging out the windows, the outside patio full to the brim, the music blasting.
The four of them climbed out to find Jenny and the rest of the grandchildren standing on one side of the patio. Bernice hugged her granddaughter as if she’d just rescued her from the bowels of a castle dungeon where she’d been imprisoned for ten years.
That was a bad thought, bad-bad. It reminded him of tales of young women kidnapped and held for years.
He clutched Jenny to him in a tight hug. “Thank you so much for calling. I’m glad you didn’t wait until you all got back to the hotel.”
“I told them not to go,” she said, tears in her voice. “I said we should stick together.” The girl was far more responsible than her eighteen years. Unlike his daughters. How could they just leave all the other kids behind?
He rubbed her shoulders. “I know you did. And I thank you for that. You’re very smart. Do you know which way they went?”
When he let her go, she pointed down the crowded street. People clogged the sidewalks, tourists stepping into the road to get around the overflowing bars, cars honking loudly at them. The music was so loud his head ached. Or maybe that was the fact that he’d lost his daughters.
Bernice took over. “I’ll send all of you back in the taxi.” Its motor was still running on the side of the road. “And the four of us—” She waved a hand at Dean, Ralph, and Greer. “—will search for them.” Holding up her phone, she added, “I’ve got lots of battery, so if you hear anything from either of them, call me, okay?”
“I will, Gramma.” Jenny sniffed, tucking a curl of her long dark hair behind her ear. “I’m really sorry. We checked some bars right around here, but we couldn’t see them.”
Dean curled his arm around her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. And you did the best thing by calling us. Now go back to the resort and get a good night’s sleep.”
Once all the kids were in the car and the door slammed, the taxi pulled out into the seemingly endless stream of barely moving traffic.
Bernice spoke through gritted her teeth. “I will murder my nieces when I see them.”
Dean visibly shuddered at that word as it brought up all the worst of his visions.
Bernice clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just a figure of speech.”
Greer slipped her fingers around his, squeezed, and he tried to get his brain to work. “Jenny said they checked the bars around here. So we should split up,” he said to Ralph. “You and Bernice, me and Greer.” Because he sure as hell wouldn’t let either Greer or Bernice wander around alone. “You go down this side of the street, and we’ll cross over.” He prayed the girls were in one of those bars.
“What about side streets?” Ralph asked.
Dean exhaled harshly. “Only check the side streets if you see a bar that’s really jumping. They’ll want to go where there’s a lot of action.”
In agreement, Dean crossed through the stalled street traffic, Greer’s hand in his. He wouldn’t lose her in this mob. “I know Jenny said they checked nearby, but let’s pop in just in case they missed something or the girls doubled back.”
“Good idea,” Greer agreed. Thankfully, she didn’t ask him if he was okay. Because he wasn’t, but he couldn’t let that stop him.
The cantina they entered blasted Mexican music, but the clientele looked mostly tourist. He glanced over the dance floor, the tables, the bar, didn’t see anyone he recognized.
Greer backed outside. “We’ll keep trying.”
Dean thought it would be the death of him.