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Rubbing his hands together, he took a tiny step forward and went through his catch lines, but the ladies weren’t even listening; they were refilling their cups instead.
“Don’t be so boring, cutie, drink with us!” Christian turned to see a brown-haired girl with an oval face and pink lipstick.
The others laughed, and the blonde one tumbled forward: “Show us your six pack,” she mumbled, her speech slurred. Her fellow party warrior girlfriend, the brown-haired one, placed a hand on his chest. He caught the sharp scent of her perfume mixed with the stench of alcohol.
“How about this: we’ll go on your tour if you party with us after.” The others grinned and shifted closer, mumbling words of agreement.
“What do you say, pretty village boy?”
Christian looked past the girls at the other tour guides watching them closely, knowing they’d pounce as soon as he let these women go. He sighed and bit his lip. While he stared at them, they giggled continuously, puckering their lips, and one even ran a finger over his face. He sighed again.There’s no way I’m taking these women on a tour,he thought.
“So . . . what’s it gonna be, sexy boy?” the blonde one asked as she tilted her head back and took a long swig, the clear liquid spilling down her cheeks.
Christian slowly backed away, shaking his head in regret.
“I’m sorry but my, uh . . .” His eyes went to his bus. “I don’t drink and drive.” Which was the truth. If anything happened to these women, he would feel responsible. Besides, he wasn’t into getting sexually harassed for hours. Some men might make use of a situation like this, exploit these pretty young women, but he wasn’t one of them. His father had raised him to never treat a woman any different than he’d want his mother and sisters to be treated.
He felt a tug on his arm and a sharp pinch of fingernails. “Then we just drink.”
“Maybe some other time, ladies,” he assured them. “Would you like me to drop you off back at your hotel? I won’t charge you for that. It might be better to have your fun there.”
The ladies frowned in disappointment.
“What are you, my mother?” the blonde one barked and started toward the eagerly welcoming hands of another tour guide. But instead of stopping, she passed them and stumbled into a small grocery store—probably to get more alcohol.
“You’re boring,” the one with the pink lipstick said and gave his butt a tap, then stumbled off with the others.
He exhaled as they all went into the store. A few minutes later, the ladies came back out with more booze in their hands. Some of them waved at him on their way to the plaza.
“Bye cutie,” one of them hollered.
“It was the right thing to do,” he muttered after they’d disappeared into the plaza crowd. A bit deflated, Christian walked back to his bus to eat some of the dry bread and the apple he had packed for lunch. He bit into the rock-hard white bread. It had never tasted so stale.
***
Elena Rusu pinched her lips from where she stood outside a local bakery, watching the group of girls practically molest Christian, one of the tour boys. Even some locals stopped to look and mutter excitedly with one another. Her lips twitched as she longed to join in with her own remarks.
“I can see why they’re all over him,” one older woman said in the local dialect as she placed her grocery bags on the ground with a loud grunt. “He is pretty, Antonia’s boy.”
“His father was too, back in the day,” another added and went about her businesses. Elena had kept her eyes on Christian as the foreign women fussed over him like dogs in heat.
“It’s because they have money. Money excuses everything,” Elena said to the woman who was now bending over again to pick up her groceries.
“Money, money, money . . . that’s all that counts in this world today. Aside from a pretty boy like Christian, only that might count even more,” the old woman mumbled and left, her grocery bags dangling around her wrists.
An idea was forming in Elena’s head. She wasn’t sure what it was yet, so she played with it, all while staring at Christian.
With slow steps, Elena approached him. Christian was leaning against his bus, eating a piece of bread with those perfect lips of his.
She smiled at him when she got close. He leaned off the bus when he saw her and smiled back.
“Elena, don’t tell me you need a tour.”
“No.”
He nodded, still smiling, looking incredibly handsome.
“Well not for me, at least.”
