First she’d talked a stern-faced judge out of sending him to a juvenile facility with a story that would have softened any heart. She’d spoken of a young couple in love, of a soldier who was only a boy, of his death on foreign soil and the child he had not lived to see.
Then she’d convinced Jake to use his intelligence to get good grades and a university scholarship instead of using it to get into even worse trouble.
“If you won’t do it for yourself, Joaquim,” she’d said, “do it to honor the memory of your father.”
And he had.
Jake turned toward his mother and looked at her again. He saw her as she must have been when she met Enrique Ramirez. Young, probably innocent, swept off her feet by a rich man with too much money and no morals, if the rest of the letter was true.
He’d almost forgotten the rest of the letter.
“Jake?”
Jake squeezed his mother’s hand. For now, that was as close as he could come to acceptance.
“I baked this morning,” Sarah said, a hesitant smile curving her lips. “That apple cake you like so much…Unless you’re busy this evening.”
Busy? He was supposed to be at Samantha’s in half an hour but she, the glitter of New York, the life he’d made for himself, seemed light-years away.
“No,” he said, “I’m not busy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m never too busy for your apple cake, Mama.”
He held a smile until Sarah left the room. Then he picked up the letter and sank down on the sofa, smoothing out the heavy paper with his hand.
The second paragraph was almost as shocking as the first.
According to Enrique Ramirez’s last will and testament, his fling with Sarah Reece hadn’t been the only dalliance that had resulted in a pregnancy.
Ramirez had sired two other illegitimate sons.
Two more Ramirez bastards, Jake thought coldly.
And he’d left his fortune to be divided among the three of them.
“As if I’d touch a penny, you son of a bitch,” Jake muttered through his teeth.
Should you wish to learn the identities of these men, the letter said, Senhor Ramirez has stipulated a condition.
A condition? Jake shot to his feet. If the SOB were alive, he’d fly to Brazil and tell him where to shove his condition.
He scanned the letter again. Ramirez had been guardian to some Brazilian kid. If he wished to learn the identities of the two other legatees Jake was to take over that role, be a kind of custodian to the child. Details would be forthcoming if he were interested.
“Interested?” Jake snorted. Right. That was just what he was in the mood for. Playing warden to some kid in another hemisphere.
He tossed the letter aside. To hell with the scum who’d sired him. To hell with conditions that were damned near demands from the grave. To hell with doing the bidding of the pig who’d never given a damn about him or his mother.
And to hell with ever learning the names of his halfbrothers. Because that was what they were. His half-brothers. The only other people on earth, aside from his mother, who shared his blood.
Jake stared at the letter once more. Then he cursed, folded it and put it in his pocket.
One thing he’d learned, building his empire. It was unwise to make important decisions in anger and just plain stupid to make them without gathering all the facts.
“Coffee’s ready, Joaquim.”
He’d make a couple of phone calls to this Javier Estes character. Or maybe he’d fly down to Rio, confront Estes in person. Yes. A face-to-face meeting might be best.
“Joaquim?”
“I’m on my way,” he called.
Damned right, he was.
CHAPTER TWO
ACCORDING to its discreet brochure, the Escola para Senhoritas Novas lay nestled in the mountains a short drive from the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The school is near enough to Rio de Janeiro for our young ladies to benefit from the city’s cultural opportunities, yet far enough from it to protect them from its temptations.
The truth was that the School for Young Ladies, run by the Little Sisters of the Mountains, might as well have been located on Pluto. The nuns took girls with no demerits on their records to the opera at Teatro Municipal twice a year. Except for that, nothing that happened in Rio or in what the girls called “the real world” had any impact on the school.
Days began at six and ended at eight-thirty, when the lights in the stark dormitory rooms went out. Even the older girls, like Catarina, who had their own rooms—if you could call four cots jammed into a ten-by-twelve space one’s own room—were forbidden to keep their lights on past nine.
No good had ever come of keeping late hours, Mother Elisabete told them.
She never said what benefit keeping early ones might bring.
Catarina had long ago figured out why the rules and the surroundings were so stark. The girls who boarded here during the week came from affluent homes; living a structured, even basic existence from Monday through Friday was expected to improve their character.
Curled in the window seat beside her cot, knees drawn to her chin as she gazed out at the dark night, Catarina Elena Teresa Mendes gave a deep, deep sigh.
The trouble was, Catarina lived that regimented existence seven days a week. Except for those twice a year trips to the theater, she’d never left the school in the eight years she’d been here.
You couldn’t go home for the weekend when you had no home.
It was a warm night. Catarina had cracked the window an inch, which was as much against the rules as not being in bed at this hour, but she wanted to smell the flowers that grew wild in the courtyard below. Not even Mother Elisabete had been able to get rid of them. The elderly gardener would dig them up one week and they’d reappear the next.
Catarina was pretty sure he didn’t really try very hard to kill the flowers. Once, when she’d walked by as he dug at them with a trowel, he’d looked up and closed one rheumy eye in a slow wink, as if to say that Mother Elisabete was powerful, but not powerful enough to destroy something as beautiful as a flower.
The flowers had a right to bloom. So did Catarina. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anyone like the old gardener to make sure she got the chance.
She didn’t hate the school, or the girls, or the Sisters for the limitations on her life. She didn’t even hate Mother Elisabete who was, after all, only doing her job.
It was just that Mother’s “job” was to be Catarina’s keeper.
Catarina’s long chestnut hair, free of its severely braided coronet only when she slept, tumbled down her back as she raised her eyes to the sky. On such a clear night, the stars seemed brighter than ever.
Maybe that was because of what lay ahead.
Maybe it was because of what would happen tomorrow, when she turned twenty-one.
Just thinking about it made Catarina tremble with excitement.
No more lights out at nine sharp. No more classes in such useless things as How To Arrange Flowers for a Dinner Party, interspersed with hours spent sneezing her way through the dusty files in Mother Elisabete’s office.
“If we had a computer,” she’d said, after a couple of weeks at the impossible task, “and a scanner, I could probably transfer all your files in a few days.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Mother Elisabete had reacted as if she’d suggested inviting the devil to dinner.
“We need no modern temptations, Mendes. And how do you know of such things in the first place?”
By reading magazines smuggled to her by the grocer’s delivery boy, that was how. But admitting it would have led to trouble for the both of them.
“I just do,” she’d said.
She’d been banished to her room each night after supper for the next two weeks. Locked in her room, as if she were twelve instead of almost twenty-one.
Catarina let out a breath.
Why dwell on the past? One more night, that was all, and she’d finally have back the freedom t
hat had been taken from her at age thirteen, when her mother and father had died in a boating accident. An ancient great-uncle she’d never met had become her guardian, and he’d sent her to live at this school run by the Little Sisters of the Mountains.
At first, she’d been too wrapped in grief to question anything. She’d settled, numbly, into the school’s routines. She watched girls reach the age of eighteen, graduate and leave. Five years after she’d first arrived, she’d waited with excitement for that glorious day.
“What will happen?” she’d asked Mother Elisabete. “Will a car come for me? Will my great-uncle be in it? Where will I go?”
“Your uncle will come that day, yes,” Mother Elisabete had replied. “He will explain everything.”
Catarina had been thrilled to know she’d see her uncle a second time. Surely he was going to take her home, wherever that might be. The morning of her birthday, she almost trembled with excitement as he wobbled into Mother’s office on a cane and sank into a chair.
“Uncle,” Catarina said, “I’m very happy to see you.”
The old man folded his hands around the golden head of his cane and told her that on her twenty-first birthday she would inherit a considerable fortune.
Then he told her the terms of that inheritance.
She had to remain here until she turned twenty-one.
The news had stunned her. Twenty-one? Surely eighteen was the age of majority in Brazil? Mother Elisabete had given her a stern look, no doubt because Catarina should not have possessed such worldly information. Her uncle had simply said yes, she was right, eighteen was the age of majority, but the will had been written when Brazilian law didn’t always protect women. The stipulation about her remaining in the convent school, in the event of their deaths, had been her parents’ attempt to safeguard her from unscrupulous suitors.
Catarina argued that the law had changed. It did offer women protection now.
“Perhaps,” her uncle said, “but what has that to do with the terms of the will?”
The terms, he told her, were unalterable.
The law might have changed, but the will—and Catarina’s life—had not.
Of course, she could always forfeit her inheritance.
Catarina knew better than to do that. Even at eighteen, cloistered in a place that might have seemed unchanged since colonial times, she understood that real freedom came with economic security, especially if you were female.
So she’d bitten back her disappointment, asked her uncle if he would look into the possibility of changing the will, even though he said it couldn’t be done, and settled in for three more years spent learning little that would be of value in the real world.
The time crept by. Then, a few months ago, Mother Elisabete had summoned Catarina to her office again.
“There has been a change in your situation, Mendes. I thought it best if you heard about it directly.”
Catarina’s pulse had quickened. Had her uncle finally found a way to set aside the terms of the will? She was fast approaching twenty-one, but even a few months off what she thought of as her sentence would have been a joy.
A white-haired man, not her uncle, was waiting for her with a solemn look on his face. His name, he said, was Javier Estes; he was her uncle’s attorney. Her uncle had died. He paused; Mother Elisabete glared at her and Catarina realized she was expected to express her sorrow at the death of an old man she’d seen twice in her life.
“I’m saddened to hear it,” she said, but her heart raced even faster. Did her uncle’s death negate the terms of the will?
It did not. Javier Estes told her she was now the ward of a man named Enrique Ramirez. Regrettably, Senhor Ramirez was too old and too ill to visit her personally.
Nothing new there, Catarina had thought, but she’d nodded politely.
Estes told her that Senhor Ramirez wished to assure her that she was not to worry. Nothing would change. She’d go on living in the convent school until she was twenty-one…
And then she’d have two months to find a Brazilian husband her guardian would find suitable.
After that, she could claim her fortune.
Catarina felt the blood drain from her head. “What?” she’d said. “What?”
“Didn’t your uncle mention this?”
“No. He didn’t. And I don’t believe it. It’s not possible!”
Estes had pulled the will from his briefcase. He put on a pair of glasses, cleared his throat and read her the salient passages. Midway through, deaf to Mother Elisabete’s hiss of outrage, Catarina snatched the document from the advogado’s hands and read it for herself.
It was true. Not only did she have to be twenty-one to gain her inheritance, she had to be married to a “Brazilian her guardian finds suitable.”
Catarina had lost all her composure. She’d argued. She’d raised her voice. She’d banged her fist on the desk. Estes shrugged and said there was nothing he could do about it; Mother Elisabete ordered her to her room.
“You cannot tell me what to do,” Catarina had shrieked—but, of course, Mother could. Catarina wasn’t alone in this: there were a handful of other girls at the convent school who’d stayed on well past their eighteenth birthdays. Some were happily studying all they could learn to become obedient wives; a couple of others were considering joining the Little Sisters.
Catarina wanted no part of either future. She wanted to live her own life.
She thought about running away, but she didn’t have a real to her name. Besides, if she ran, she’d give up her inheritance, and she knew it was her ticket to the independence and freedom that had been stolen from her.
Now, finally, she was only one night from her twenty-first birthday. She’d be leaving this place. So far, though, Javier Estes hadn’t contacted her.
Catarina caught her breath.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
Maybe her birthday would arrive and she’d walk out the gates a free woman. No more men dictating the terms of her existence, no more Mother Elisabete forcing adherence to the rigid code of an earlier century. Above all else, no more impossible stipulation that she marry a suitable Brazilian husband within two months.
Footsteps were coming down the hall. Catarina shut the window, climbed into bed and pulled the blanket to her chin before she realized she hadn’t said her prayers.
She said them now. One prayer, anyway. A prayer to St. Teresa, her name saint, that her hopes for tomorrow might be realized.
She knew she ought to be satisfied with that, but Catarina’s genes weren’t one hundred percent Latin. Her mother had been a Boston-bred O’Brien. The nuns had done their best to make her forget that, but they hadn’t succeeded.
It was the O’Brien in Catarina that added an earthy pledge to the prayer.
A suitable Brazilian husband? No way. She didn’t plan on marrying anyone, let alone a horrible old man, which was what she knew those words meant.
Not even God would demand such a sacrifice.
Jake had never been to Rio before.
He’d read about it, knew that it was big, brassy and filled with contrasts, and, from the reactions of his fellow passengers in the American Airlines first-class cabin, he knew the approach over water had to be spectacular. But a glimpse of Sugar Loaf Mountain, another of waves breaking against the sand at Copacabana beach, and he lost interest.
He had a four o’clock appointment with Javier Estes. That was all he cared about. He’d get the names of his half-brothers—assuming Enrique’s will hadn’t been a lie—and head home.
Stepping out of the terminal was a shock. New York had been shivering in anticipation of an impending snowstorm. Here, the temperature had to be at least ninety. The sun was so bright it was damned near blinding.
Jake took a taxi to his hotel, showered, changed clothes, downed two minuscule cups of thick, sweet Brazilian coffee in hopes the combination of caffeine and sugar would reverse the effects of the flight, and headed out the door. He could hardly wait to tell
Estes what he could do with his dead client’s insane demands.
Estes’s secretary ushered him right into the attorney’s office. Some of the wind went out of Jake’s sails when he saw the man’s age. It was hard to take an aggressive approach to somebody who looked old enough to be your grandfather. Worse, Estes began the discussion by saying he assumed Jake was angry and he could well understand the reason.
“I tried to convince him not to make such demands,” Estes said, with a shake of his head, “but I am afraid your father was a very stubborn man.”
“He wasn’t my father,” Jake said stiffly. “Not in any meaningful sense of the word.”
Estes raised an eyebrow. “Some would say he was your father in the only meaningful sense of the word.” He held up a hand before Jake could speak. “Let me be sure you understand what he has left to you. One third of a very considerable estate, and—”
“I don’t want his money.”
“And,” Estes continued, “some information of a personal nature.”
“The names of my half-brothers.” Jake nodded. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Then, I must ask you, Senhor Ramirez, are you prepared to meet the terms of the will?”
Jake sat back in his chair. “If you mean am I prepared to dance to a dead man’s tune, the answer is no.”
“I feared you would say that, senhor. Well, in that case, our meeting is at an end.” Estes began to get to his feet. “I wish you a pleasant flight home, and—”
“I haven’t come all this distance to turn tail and go home, Senhor Estes.”
“But you just said—”
“I want that information. I’ll take you to court to get it.”
“The document is unbreakable.” Estes smiled. “I know that because I wrote it myself.”
“Does the name José Marin mean anything to you?”
“Of course. He is a fine lawyer.”
“Let’s not play games, Estes. He’s the best lawyer in Rio.”
“So some would say.”
“He will represent me.”
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