"And the twins. Don't you see, Andrea? That old hotel is a Mecca of Puerto San Miguel history and heritage, and it enfolds all cultures. I'll raise the children—all of them—in the hotel, in the place Tommy recreated for me. For us. If I hadn't met Zac, I wouldn't have realized—"
"I haven't heard Christian's name in this plan."
"I know—or I don't, actually. I won't until London."
"All right, darling." Andrea sighed long and hard, a fatalistic acquiescence. "When you are ready to return to London I'll send Monique with you. I must say your management skills with the children don't qualify as state of the art, but I won't try to detain you any longer. I deem you are now sufficiently recovered from your three-year stay in the Indian hinterlands. Strength and beauty restored, and all that." She lifted her brandy glass in salute. "I'd venture to say, when Christian gets a good peek at you, you may be with child straight away, and trekking off to Baku after all."
"Would you prefer that?"
Andrea laughed heartily. "Darling, you haven't done one thing I would prefer since the day Tomas Cordera told me of your existence. Please don't even think of starting now. I hire people to please me, or seduce them into submission. It would be ever so dull if you began conforming."
"Andrea?"
She arched her auburn brows.
"I love you."
"Thank you, angel. I had an inkling, you know."
Victoria smiled. "I remember how I hated you when Tommy told me about you...of your influence on his life. I had never known such envy. But when he got into your bed all those years ago, he could never have known the significance that relationship would have on my life." She lifted her glass in return homage. "Thank you for being my friend."
"Nothing happens by chance, Victoria. My love for Tomas goes on through you and the children, just as yours does through Marcus. Nothing is face value. Try and remember that for me. Pick up the corners of situations and look underneath. If you can do that, perhaps we will all come out a little less scathed."
"I'm trying," she whispered.
"And what about Coby, my love? Have you given that a thought?"
Victoria frowned beneath the careful scrutiny, seeming to give Andrea further cause for concern.
"Are you all right with the issue of Coby, Victoria?"
"I don't know." She waited, hoping some sudden revelation would grant her solace. But a barrier prevented her looking too closely, even to speculate. "So much depends on the progress Coby has made."
"Everything depends of Coby being cured of his obsession. You have to think and speak clearly, darling. You no longer have the luxury of denial."
That luxury had never existed, no matter what she denied.
"If he's made no adjustment, can you handle that?" Andrea leveled her gaze on her, driving her words home.
"I won't know until Puerto San Miguel."
* * *
A month later, Ruffin Sloan's kicked back, feet propped on his cluttered desk, and eyed Zac over a tumbler of Glenlivit. "Well, Zac, my man." His tone held speculation. He puffed a scarred pipe. A strong apple-based aroma pervaded the close captain's quarters. "What do you think you've accomplished in this year of self-exile, other than a set of bulgin' biceps? Is runnin' away to sea all it's cracked up to be?"
Practicing a ritual developed over the past year, Zac slid low in the hard side chair and sipped the captain's scotch, Samson wedged onto his lap. Samson's warm vibration flowed into him as he rippled the cat's chinchilla-like pelt. "Yeah, Captain. Life at sea is a learning experience."
"Any you'd care to comment on?" Ruffin spared Zac a crooked grin that Zac had learned to appreciate early on, as opposed to a scowl that could last for days. "You was a sorry sight that first night on board, with that cat in a fancy Louis V-tone carry box, and your eyes waterin' up ever time anybody said a kind word to you. That cat's still wimpy, but you seem a little tougher now."
"Maybe."
"Gonna go back and take up where you left off?" Ruffin threw back the last of his scotch. He reached for the bottle on the desk between them, looking contrite. "Sorry, mate. You can't do that, I guess. Forgive my crudeness. But there's life to be handled. Maybe a little thicker skin would be a Godsend."
Zac smiled. "I'm contemplating a different approach. Texas has enough hard asses now. I think counterbalance could be effective."
"You was supposed to take advantage of the off'rin's from port to port, mate. Wear yourself out. Sew the proverbial oats and be ready to settle down." He eyed him. "You ain't done diddley—except read a lot."
"I've been that proverbial route before, so to speak. I think I've got it all in perspective, sir. I just want to find someone to be good to. My wife, preferably." He gazed into the middle distance, chin resting on the glass rim, elbows on the chair arms. He savored Samson's contented purr. "It probably won't be Maggie, though. From what my brother Luke tells me, sounds as if that's over. I have my prior calloused skin to thank for that." He held out his glass to the offered bottle. Sharing Ruffin's precious libation had never cured his craving for Mexican beer, but that would soon be solved. "I've had a year to align my priorities and rehearse my speech for Maggie. I've got a plan. We'll see what happens."
"Such as?" Ruffin was feeling mellow enough, Zac supposed, to be insistent. "Give me the plan, man. I'll check in a year from now and grade you. If you've screwed up again—literally—I'll drag your ass on this boat for another hitch."
"I want to fish, sir, and go to school. I left a lot on the table there. All I learned with my philosophy degree was how to chastise humanity. Now I want to learn enough to apply to my own life. I want to teach. Maybe that could make a difference."
"Fish, you said."
"And teach and go to school. For the rest of my life."
"Let's talk about fishin' again."
Zac nodded. He had hoped they would talk again.
"You've got my marine number," Ruffin reminded. "I'll send you my itinerary as soon as I know it. You find us a boat, boy, like we talked about. Any boat. I trust you. I got money that's been stored so long it's gettin' dry rot. I'll back you, no interest."
Ruffin knew the story of Zac's finances. Stone-broke the night he'd walked on board the freighter a year ago, no better now. Almost every cent had gone back to Ramona to pay for the expenses generated by his father's stroke and the resulting lack of income. Luke had passed any left over money to Maggie and Angel. If Zac weren?t so homesick, so eager to resume life, the feasible solution would be to keep sailing around the world. Ruffin's solution might be better, if Zac wasn't too proud to accept his offer. He liked to think his pride might have smoother edges as of late.
"You listnin', boy?"
"Yes, sir." He smiled and repeated Ruffin's original offer. "We'll fish as partners. I can pay you back that way. Someday, when you've had enough female smorgasbord, you'll come back to Ramona and we'll start our own shrimp fleet."
Ruffin grinned, pleased.
"Have I got it?"
"You've got it. But you hadn't been actin' like you heard me, up to now." He squinted through thick pipe smoke. "Is the fact we can see land havin' an affect on your reasonin', boy?"
The porthole behind Ruffin's head framed the Houston skyscrapers and an indigo sky that Zac remembered. The hue turned sparse clouds to shredded cotton. Even his envisioning the scene throughout the weeks since they'd left Portofino, throughout the long crossing, hadn't portrayed it this good. He felt his chest leap in anticipation.
"I have a plan, Captain," he said simply. "Fishing is part of it, so I see no reason your offer can't be added in. I'm grateful. I'll do my best by you, sir."
Ruffin stood, then Zac. Their hands met, grasped, pumped up and down. The captain ended by slapping Zac's shoulder.
"Ruffin," the captain said. "Call me Ruffin, partner."
"Yes, sir." Zac smiled still. "Captain Ruffin, sir."
* * *
Victoria faced Christian Michaels in the golden light of the wanin
g afternoon. The opulent surroundings of Andrea's London flat, his headquarters in the last months, did little to cushion his agitation. "Do you realize what you're doing?" he demanded. "You're taking my children from me."
In the week she had been back in London, she had waited, seeking to know beyond doubt that her impending decision was inevitable. Today she had disclosed the decision.
He paced, whirled, paced and stopped.
"I don't want you to think of it that way. I'd never do that."
"If you take them back to Puerto San Miguel, that's exactly what you're doing." His brow creased deeply. "Had I known you were even thinking of this, it might have made a difference in the assignment I accepted."
Might? His ambiguity gripped her. "I didn't want to influence you, and in the end it wouldn't have mattered. To me. My reasoning really has nothing to do with where we live."
"As long as it's Puerto San Miguel." He strode to a leaded French door and gazed onto a rainy, mid-March day. "Even after all that happened there, that town rules our lives."
Familiar regret coursed through her when his shoulders rounded in defeat. "It's not Puerto San Miguel."
"What then?" He didn't turn around. "Can it possibly be Coby? You don't know how that scares me. Not only for you, but for the twins."
"No. At least I don't think so—or want it to be. We've talked about this before." So many times. "Do you simply want to hear me say again that it's about Marcus?"
He turned abruptly, crossed back to stand before the oversized wingback where she scrunched into a corner, gripping a brocade pillow to her breasts.
"I'm trying with him, Victoria. Give me credit for that."
"You shouldn't have to try," she whispered. "Not for the rest of your life. You shouldn't have to live with the failure. But most of all, he shouldn't." And I can't.
"He does well with it. He's perceptive enough to accept the difference between him and the twins. We've talked. He understands he's not my son. He doesn't expect to ever be."
"And I'm wrong to expect it," she surmised. "But I was wrong, Christian. I wanted so much to believe it could be right, that we could be a family, to believe you could love him enough to make up for—" Wild images hurled across her mind, like film from a run-away projector. "But that's not the way life's supposed to be. You can't make up for what I did, and I won't go on punishing you for that."
"I have to get this right in my mind." His crystal-blue eyes importuned her. "I have to know what to blame this on when I'm without you and Alex and Ari. Even Marcus."
Her head jerked up. Her lips tightened.
"Yes, Victoria. Regardless of what you believe, I don't want to give Marcus up. But reiterate for me. You're taking my children and going back to Puerto San Miguel to raise them alone because of some imagined failure. Could you outline that for me once more?"
"I won't put either of us through years—no—through the rest of our lives having you feel me watching you every time you look at Marcus. Knowing I listen and judge you every time you speak to him, to prove to myself the difference you make between him and the twins." She shifted in the chair, tucking her legs again, crushing the pillow to her. Nothing eased the image of Tommy's face, or salved the necessity of her decision. "Imagined or not, to me your rejection of Marcus is real, and through my paranoia it will become real to him."
"Then let Marcus go. Don't sacrifice the twins for him."
Her chest wrenched. "I can't believe you said that."
"Damn it. You should have thought of all of this before you got pregnant with the twins." She cringed, reminded of her conviction theory that Christian's sainthood depended on her. She tried to believe it didn't, to recall Zac's reasoning when she?d shared the conviction. Shaking her head, she looked away, lost in retrospect.
Two years had been spent in Andrea's home on Lake Lucerne, grieving for Tommy, for her part in his death, grieving for the rancid reality of Coby's obsessive actions. Bittersweet were her memories of that night almost three years ago when Christian had appeared, petitioning reconciliation. Three-year-old Marcus had slept across the hall, innocent and trusting, while she and Christian made love. The twins had been conceived that night, in trust and naïveté . As she lay in his arms, she outlined the condition of Marcus in their lives, if they were to have lives together. A condition accepted willingly, and sworn to solemnly, by the man who stood before her now, angry and resentful.
She left the chair and crossed to where he had stood by the door, hugging her breasts, warding off the chill of actualization. If she had learned anything since Tommy died that day, since she felt his blood seep like hot wine across her feet as she gazed into Coby's eyes, seeing a new eternity, she had learned the value of honesty.
"I have a love in my heart for you that I never expect to lose... that I have no desire to ever lose. You're the twins' father. That will always be a bond between us." She felt his presence beside her, turned to face him. "I married you for all the wrong reasons, and you know them well. You knew then. The reigning factor, Christian, is you aren't man enough to overcome those reasons, and I'm not woman enough to stay and hope you do. I won't raise Marcus, or our children, in a dissension-filled home, the way I grew up, no matter what country it's in."
"You prefer to raise them alone."
"No. I don't prefer that. But I'll raise them alone if that's what it takes. At least I'll have no one other than myself to blame for my inevitable mistakes."
"That's awfully final," he said quietly. "It sounds as though you've made up your mind."
"About Puerto San Miguel only. We have flights two days from now. I don't know what I'm going back to. I only know I have to start now to think of the children. The three of them. Not myself or you or your plan to indoctrinate Baku."
His brow furrowed deeply.
"The rest is out of my hands."
"Do you want me to make the trip with you? To help you with the children?"
So many people had always come ahead of her. Parisoners, counselees, higher authorities. That would never change. But he had told her as much, back in the era of Tomas Cordera, when Christian had been her absolution.
"No. Monique will go. We'll be fine."
He massaged his forehead with a strong hand, a hand she knew well. "I can come to Texas in May, just before I leave for Baku. It's the best I can do, Victoria. I haven't even learned the language."
She smiled and moved against him. He opened his arms to her, his embrace big and warm, but no longer a solace. She closed her eyes, murmuring, "Puerto San Miguel is perfect in May."
CHAPTER FOUR
Zac's heart hammered, and his throat tightened when he recognized Maggie's diminutive figure approaching from the other side of the frosted door glass. "Hi," he ventured when she opened the door. "The wandering husband is home."
Her silence gave him time to second-guess his decision to surprise her. He thought her smile escaped in spite of her.
"Hello, Zac." He heard more resignation than fervor.
Her gaze fell on the gear on the step. A duffel bag, a carton wrapped in brown paper, tied with a rough cord. And Samson in his mesh-sided Louie Vuitton carrying case. She raised her ebony eyes to the taxi backing into the street. The yard boasted a realtor's sold sign, and Zac had asked the driver to wait, to make sure Maggie was there.
"The wandering husband isn't quite home yet." She indicated his belongings, mouth grim, but her eyes began to take on a more lenient quality.
"He isn't?" He gave her his best smile, the one he'd been saving and could once have counted on to work.
She stood back and swung the door open, tabling the discussion. "You'd better set those things inside. The neighborhood didn't improve while you were gone." The old house was in a fringe area, near the Houston ship channel.
After taking her advice, he stood looking around the foyer. He had been there only once before, but remembered the house well. Now he noted new wallpaper that managed to look old, gleaming white woodwork, refurbished har
dwood floors.
Maggie had always held a penchant for hardwood floors.
"Good job, querida," he commended. "You saved this old house."
"I like to think I gave it new life. It and me." She spoke softly, tilting her head to meet his eyes. "It's sold. That was the bottom line."
Light streaked her dark hair when the sun caught it, and he began swimming in more familiar waters. "I guess so." He wondered if she had gotten attached to the structure in the year and a half she had lived there, considering the sweat equity expended to transform it. Probably not, based on what had happened to Allie, right there in that busy street fronting the house. "Do you have any of that pecan coffee? I thought about it all the way around the world."
She nodded, smiling.
"Could I please see Angel? I've lived for this since the moment I knew you carried her." Did she hesitate, or was it his guilt-ridden imagination?
"She's sleeping. But you can watch her sleep."
They stood beside the crib, gazing at their seven-month-old daughter. Even though their bodies didn't quite touch, Zac knew their minds and hearts were in complete accord for the first time in a long while. Too long.
Intermingled emotions rushed through him. Guilt, excitement, curiosity and something so intense it left him breathless. Before him in that pink-shrouded crib, among the toys and soft quilted blankets, rested the essence of perfection. Love rose in him, perfect as well, purified by a father-daughter relationship as yet unmarred. He prayed it would never be.
Angel's skin was cast in bronze. The morning sun filtered across her face, streaking her dark, curly hair with amber. He ran his index finger along the contour of her cheek, into the moist folds of her neck. A part of him began to live again.
"Thanks, God," he whispered.
Maggie's head jerked up. She met his full gaze, her eyes moistening for a split second. Then he watched her settle into resolve.
"Thank you, Maggie. I know it wasn't easy. Alone." But she had believed it to be the only way, shackling him with her convictions. "I'll be here for you now. Please remember that."
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