Free The King's Gold by Yxta Maya Murray Page A

Tiny cans of gourmet nuts, Baci balls, little Parmesan cheese twists, a squeaky-new paperback novel, and a miniature bottle of L’Air du Temps for me.
    Even while a few stray Baci balls tumbled to the ground, however, his gaze moved up to Marco, who still stood behind me in the hall. “But I still didn’t get drunk enough to survive the freaking Christian Slater movie they kept on playing over, and over, and blah, blah, and yadda, yadda, yadda, and what I’d actually really like to know is, What the hell is this guy doing in your room? ”
    If Erik Gomara, Ph.D., pitched a jealous fit at the sight of Marco Moreno, it was the first that I could recall in our two-year relationship. Healthy-bellied, with dark chocolate eyes, large pink ears, and a tall Diego Rivera frame, Erik usually proved too busy reading, teaching, writing, eating, or rigorously seducing me to bother with the annoyances of romantic rivals. Nor could there have been any, because he was fabulous. Erik was an archaeology prof at UCLA, along with my mother, Juana, and two years back, we had gotten together while searching for her in Guatemala. He had been born in that country, before immigrating to the United States and its Ivy Leagues, then carpet-bombing UCLA’s humanities deans and female undergrads with his shaggy-dog sex appeal.
    When I’d first met him, he was as famous for his sophomore-deflowerings as his medal-winning digs in Maya burial sites, but it took only a couple shakes of the Sanchez hips—and the whole near-death experience in the Guatemala jungle—for him to make me the sole beneficiary of his extreme coolness. Erik had struggled with Colonel Moreno during our adventure in the rain forest, and also watched as Lieutenant Estrada had beaten that man to a dead bloody pulp. This tragedy had both bonded us and plagued him with bad nightmares. Still, we had settled into a very happy life, dividing our time between his apartment in L.A. and my family home in L.B. Our romance, moreover, was to very shortly detonate into a wild wedding. This was to be a one-week affair that my mother and father Manuel had organized, complete with mariachi bands, live cockatiels, bowling, and a tracking demonstration by Yolanda, who had dyspeptically agreed to take the wedding party on a scavenger hunt around the Long Beach suburbs. So it’s understandable that he became agitated at the sight of Marco grabbing at me in a lavish penthouse, a mere twelve days before we were to exchange vows.
    “Why is this guy in your room?” he repeated.
    “Oh, they’re staying together,” Adriana helpfully offered, while kicking the dropped candies into a beautiful iron-wrought waste can. “Sharing a suite, you know. Most economical.”
    “No, we’re not,” I objected loudly. “That was a mistake.”
    “Mistake?” Erik asked.
    “Why is our party being crashed by a sweaty chimpanzee, Adriana?” Marco smoothly asked.
    “He said he wanted to surprise his fiancée,” she replied.
    Erik’s face flushed red and white. “And who are you, bud?”
    I still had the letter in my hand, and I waved it around. “Honey, let me explain. There’s this letter—”
    “Lord, Adriana, just get this person out of here—”
    “I can’t, Marco. I’m afraid Dr. Riccardi was more than welcoming. She thought his presence might be amusing—”
    I said, “Erik, he came into the store, talking about gold and Tomas’s grave, and Col—”
    “Yeah—I got that part. I told your sister and she’s flipping out about it. I’m surprised she’s not here herself. Everybody at home wants to know what’s going on. You’re missing your dress fittings, the shower, the caterer, the music—”
    “He basically abducted me, Erik. At first, anyway.”
    “Abducted you.”
    “Yes, that’s what you call it when handsome men make you tart up in one of my red dresses and hurl you into suites that cost a thousand euros a night,” said Adriana, drily. “Sir.”
    “What a wonderful way to