Best Kept Secrets

by Rochelle Alers

  The exception had been the year Martin celebrated his second birthday when she found herself pregnant again. This pregnancy was different from her first because she’d been plagued with nausea. Her labor was long and difficult, but once she saw her daughter, M.J. knew she would willingly do it again.

  In less than a week she would celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday and fourth wedding anniversary. Her life had changed from the time she’d sat in the Moreno garden flirting with Samuel Cole. He’d changed her when he made her his wife and a mother. And it was being a mother that she revered most. She loved her husband, but her children more.

  “I don’t know,” Jose Luis said after a pregnant pause.

  M.J. peered closely at her father. He was thinner. “Are you okay, Papa?”

  “Sí,” he replied much too quickly.

  Her forehead furrowed. “I don’t believe you.” Her tone was sharp, waspish.

  “You forget yourself, daughter!” Jose Luis snapped angrily. “I am still your father.”

  She refused to back down. “And I am your daughter, and I have a right to know if you’re not well.”

  Jose Luis was saved from responding to M.J.’s accusation when Samuel walked into the garden with his dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter sitting on his shoulders. Martin, who would turn three in a month, raced ahead of his father and sister.

  “Abuelo,” he shouted excitedly. “Titi gave me papas fritas!”

  Luis reached out, picked up his grandson and settled him on his lap. “You like fried potatoes?” he asked him in English. The child nodded and smiled. Matching dimples creased his cheeks like thumbprints.

  “Please speak Spanish to him, Papa,” M.J. chided in a quiet voice. She’d promised herself that her children would be raised as Catholics and would be equally comfortable speaking Spanish and English.

  Jose Luis ruffled the boy’s coal-black curly hair. “Don’t worry so much, Marguerite-Josefina. The boy will learn Spanish.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Samuel said, swinging Nancy from his shoulders and putting her down. She opened her mouth and let out an ear-piercing shriek. “No, Dada. Arriba!”

  “Don’t, Samuel,” M.J. ordered when Samuel reached out for Nancy, who’d pressed her tiny fists to her eyes and wailed loudly. “You’ve spoiled her so much that she’s become impossible.”

  Samuel ignored his wife’s grumbling. “Who’s Daddy’s big girl?”

  Laughing hysterically, her open mouth displaying a dozen tiny teeth, Nancy clapped her hands over her head. “Nay-Nay.”

  “Yeah!” Samuel and Nancy crowed in unison.

  M.J. leaned over and kissed her father and son. “Good night. I’m going inside.” She stood up, glaring at Samuel. “You can put the children to bed.”

  Jose Luis watched his son-in-law as he stared at M.J. until she disappeared. “Are you still away from home a lot?”

  Samuel froze. It was the first time Jose Luis had broached the subject with him, and it was apparent M.J. had complained to her father about his business trips.

  “No,” he answered honestly. “I only took two business trips this year, and so far I only have one scheduled for next year.”

  The nostrils of Jose Luis’s aquiline nose flared. “I should not have to remind you that you are not only a husband, but also a father. Children need to see their father, especially sons, Samuel.”

  Swallowing a rush of rage, Samuel counted slowly to three. “Don’t ever chastise me in front of my children again.”

  Jose Luis offered a hint of a smile. “Put them to bed. Then we will talk.”

  Samuel nodded. “Come, Martin.”

  Martin wound his arms around his grandfather’s neck. “I want to stay with Abuelo.”

  Jose Luis shook his head. “You must obey your father. Now go with him. You and Abuelo will go for a walk along the Malecon tomorrow. We’ll see if we can’t outrun the waves coming over the seawall.”

  Martin’s smile was as bright as the rising sun. “I’m not going to get wet, Grandpa,” he said in English.

  “That remains to be seen, nieto,” Jose Luis teased. Hugging his grandson, he kissed him on both cheeks. “Good dreams.”

  Martin repeated the gesture, kissing his grandfather’s cheeks. “Good dreams,” he repeated in Spanish before scrambling off the elderly man’s lap and running to catch up with his father and sister.

  Samuel found Jose Luis sitting where he’d left him. The sky still bore streaks of red, orange and blue as nightfall descended on Havana. He’d managed to cool his anger when he bathed Martin and Nancy, then dressed them for bed. As he passed the sala, Gloria asked if he wanted to join her and M.J. for coffee, but he’d declined because he wanted to clear the air between himself and his father-in-law.

  “Sit down, Samuel,” Jose Luis ordered unceremoniously. “Do you have a mistress?”

  Samuel froze as if he’d been shot or impaled with a sharp instrument. “What!”

  “Answer me!”

  “Hell—no! And why would you ask me that?”

  Jose Luis’s left hand shook slightly, and he gripped his knee to conceal the tremor. “Because that is the only reason I could come up with why you leave my daughter alone so often.”

  “That was before…” His words trailed off.

  The older man’s impassive expression did not change. “Before what, Samuel?”

  “When I was setting up my businesses.”

  “Are you saying it’s different now?”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Samuel focused on a profusion of frangipani. He nodded. “Very different. I have coffee holdings in Costa Rica, Mexico and Jamaica, and I’m currently in negotiations to acquire a failing banana plantation in Puerto Limon.”

  He hadn’t lied to his father-in-law about other women. He hadn’t been unfaithful to M.J. since becoming a father. And his love for her deepened each time he returned to find her and their children waiting to welcome him home.

  “What about your United Fruit-Cole Brothers soybean contract?”

  “It expires the end of March.”

  It was due to expire and he and Everett had agreed not to renew it. Mark and Thomas had received offers from several European food-processing companies who’d expressed an interest in their soybean crop. He’d suggested they consider a more global market, but Thomas was apprehensive about expanding beyond the Northern Hemisphere. The meeting ended with Mark’s and Thomas’s deciding to renegotiate with their former Mexican food processor.

  “Has it been five years already?” Jose Luis asked.

  Samuel lifted his eyebrows, nodding. The years had passed so quickly that whenever he returned from a business trip he found his children changed. It was the reason he’d curtailed his traveling.

  “Are you a millionaire?”

  Attractive lines fanned out around Samuel’s eyes. His aim had been to become a millionaire by age thirty, but he had exceeded his own goal by a year. Everett had worked well into the night, completing the profit and loss, balance sheet, and the upcoming year’s quarterly projections for Mrs. Harris to type when she came in the next day.

  Samuel knew something was afoot when Everett presented him with the financial statements, instead of his secretary. There was only the sound of their breathing when he read and reread the figures. It had taken only three years for his newly renamed ColeDiz International, Ltd. Inc. to net more than a million.

  “I was before I built and furnished the new house,” he admitted.

  Jose Luis released his knee and ran his hand over his hair. “I’m sorry if I implied that you were keeping another woman, but I had to know before I tell you something.”

  Lowering his arms, Samuel stared directly at Jose Luis. “What?”

  “I’m dying, Samuel.”

  There came a long, thick silence that grew more uncomfortable with each passing second. Samuel looped one leg over the opposite knee, struggling not to break down. Jose Luis had become the father Charles couldn’t or did not know how to
be.

  “We’re all dying, Papa.”

  Jose Luis stared at the younger man as if he were a stranger. It was the first time he related to him like family and not a business partner. Samuel had changed. He wasn’t the arrogant and brash man who’d come to Cuba five years ago. But after marrying his daughter the brashness was tempered by confidence—confidence and a boldness that seemed to make him invincible.

  However, it was fatherhood that had made the greatest impact on Samuel; he’d openly lavished affection on his children and they worshipped him as if he were a god. Jose Luis knew Samuel loved Marguerite-Josefina as she did him, and that he would always provide for his daughter and grandchildren.

  “That is true, but I am dying,” he repeated, his voice quivering with fear and dread. “It’s my heart. There are times when it stops beating for a few seconds, causing me a great deal of pain. The doctors say there is nothing they can do for me. They tell me not to do anything strenuous, and that I should take a lot of rest. That is why I cannot travel.”

  Samuel closed his eyes and swallowed painfully. “Have you told M.J.?”

  Jose Luis placed a hand on Samuel’s shoulder. He opened his eyes with the slight pressure. “No. And I don’t want you to tell her.” A muscle twitched in Samuel’s jaw. “Swear to me on your children that you won’t tell her.”

  “Don’t bring my children into this.”

  The hand on Samuel’s shoulder tightened. “Swear it!”

  It was a full minute before either man spoke again. Samuel was the one to break the impasse. “I swear.”

  M.J. woke up the morning of her twenty-fourth birthday and fourth wedding anniversary to find her husband staring at her. Her lips parted in a smile that always softened his heart wherein he could not refuse her anything.

  “Happy birthday, baby.”

  “Thank you, mi amor, for four years of the most exquisite happiness any woman could ever hope for.”

  Tiny lines fanned out around Samuel’s eyes when he threw back his head and laughed. “Four down and seventy-one to go.”

  M.J. stared at the man she’d married. She still found his features interesting. His lean face had filled out, softening the sharp angles of his prominent cheekbones and along his jawline. His salt-and-pepper hair gave him an air of sophistication not attributed to thirty-year-old men.

  What hadn’t changed were his eyes. Dark, deep-set and penetrating, they seemed to see everything in one sweeping glance. His deep voice was the same, and she discovered he didn’t have to raise it to prove a point.

  Although she hadn’t liked his traveling so much, she’d reconciled that as an international businessman this was what Samuel had to do. He had his companies and employees, whereas she had her home and children.

  Looping an arm around her waist, Samuel pulled M.J. atop him, her legs sandwiched between his. “What do you want for the next five years, darling?”

  She rested her chin on his breastbone and stared down at him staring up at her. “I don’t know, Sammy. I can’t think of a single thing. I have the house I’ve always wanted, I get to have you home practically every night now, and I have my children. What more could I want?”

  “Do you want more children?”

  Her expressive arching eyebrows lifted. “Why are you asking me this? After Nancy was born I remember you saying that with a son and a daughter our family was complete.”

  Samuel closed his eyes. “You’re right. It’s just that every time you go into labor I keep thinking that I’m going to lose you.” He opened his eyes, meeting her startled gaze.

  “You are not going to lose me, Sammy.”

  “But the pain and—”

  “Stop it,” she whispered, halting his plea. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll have the next one in a hospital.”

  “You want another baby?”

  M.J. nodded. “Of course. I want more of your children.”

  He frowned. “Children?”

  “Yes. I want to teach all of them to speak, read and write Spanish. I want them to learn to play the piano, go to college, fall in love, get married and give us lots of beautiful grandchildren.”

  Samuel cupped her hips, massaging the firm flesh under her silk nightgown. “You’ve really planned our future, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t you make projections for your business projects?”

  “Yes—I do.”

  She offered her husband a confident smile. “That means we’re very much alike, my darling. You take care of your businesses, and I take care of my family.”

  The fingers of Samuel’s right hand gathered fabric as he bared M.J.’s thighs. “When do you project we start increasing our family?”

  M.J. moaned softly as the flaccid flesh between Samuel’s thighs stirred. “I want to wait until Nancy turns three.”

  Without warning, Samuel reversed their position, supporting his greater weight on his elbows. “I don’t want to wait that long.” Lowering his head, he trailed kisses along the column of M.J.’s scented neck. “Let’s start now.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Really,” he repeated, easing her nightgown to her waist. He took his time arousing M.J. until she pleaded with him to take her. Samuel complied, sheathing his penis in her warm, moist, throbbing flesh.

  He forgot everything and everyone as pleasure, pure and explosive, sucked him into an abyss from which he did not want to escape. Making love to M.J. wasn’t merely filling a moment of physical desire and release, but a communion of love and life that would continue long after they’d ceased to exist.

  Waves of ecstasy washed over him, drowning him in a fiery explosion wherein he surrendered all he had and all he wanted to be to the woman he’d sworn to love forever.

  Chapter 21

  Wife and servant are the same, but only differ in the name.

  —Mary Lee, Lady Chudleigh

  West Palm Beach, Florida—May 1, 1929

  Samuel held his breath as he watched the Pan American Airways plane touch down in a bumpy landing on a runway in Key West, Florida. He’d been waiting hours for the plane to arrive. An early-morning thunderstorm had delayed the flight originating in Havana.

  A smile softened the lines of tension ringing his mouth as his wife, son and daughter deplaned. His family had come home following a four-month mourning period.

  Jose Luis Diaz de Santiago had died in his sleep on New Year’s Day at the age of sixty-nine, and his passing had taken its toll on M.J. She’d refused to believe her father was gone and wasn’t coming back. The funeral Mass was interrupted twice when she fainted, and it was the first time in Samuel’s life that he felt completely and utterly helpless.

  Out of respect for his wife’s relatives, he stayed a month longer than he’d planned to remain on the Caribbean island. Most days it was he who’d gotten up with Martin and Nancy, feeding, washing, and dressing them. M.J would not get out of bed, refused food and wouldn’t see anyone. It was when she’d lost her temper, screaming at the top of her lungs at Martin because he’d knocked on her bedroom door, that Samuel had been forced to take action.

  He’d unlocked the door, picked her up and forcibly held her under the stinging spray of a cold shower until her teeth chattered and her lips turned blue. Tears that she’d held back, when informed of her father’s death, fell. He’d comforted her as he would a child until she crawled atop him and went to sleep in his protective embrace. She woke up hours later asking for food and water. It was a fragile beginning; he’d broken through the wall of grief to reconnect with his wife.

  Martin saw him first. He ran toward him, arms outstretched. “Daddy!”

  He caught his son in midair, swinging him around and around. At four, he was taller, heavier, and the hot sun had darkened his skin to a gleaming copper-brown.

  Martin’s arms tightened around his neck as M.J., clutching Nancy’s hand, came closer. A shaft of sunlight slanted across M.J.’s face, and Samuel felt his composure slip. Dressed entirely in black, she a
ppeared thinner, a specter of her former self, but her face radiated a maturity that had come from a healing he hadn’t been able to offer her. Closing the distance between them, he went to his knees and hugged his wife and daughter, struggling not to weep with joy.

  He’d given in to M.J.’s wishes and hadn’t returned to Cuba after his extended stay. She’d claimed she needed to be alone, to commune with her ancestors, and to reconcile with her country of birth.

  “My baby. My sweet, sweet baby,” he whispered over and over. He pressed his mouth to Nancy’s fragrant silky hair.

  “No!”

  Samuel felt a small fist hit his chest. His eyes widened when he stared numbly at his daughter. Her large, dark eyes were filled with tears. Standing, he looked at M.J. “What’s wrong with her?”

  M.J. patted his shoulder as she rose on tiptoe and brushed her mouth over his. “Please be patient with her, Sammy. She cried when I told her she had to leave Cuba.”

  Samuel’s eyes grew hard. “What about you, M.J.?”

  She flashed her dimpled smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Her smile faded. “And I’m not going to. You asked us to come back, and here we are. I’m tired and the children are tired. We were up early to catch the plane, but had to wait three hours before we could take off. Please take us home.”

  Samuel set Martin on his feet, one hand going to the small of M.J.’s back. He glanced at her delicate profile under a stylish black cloche. “I’ve chartered a boat to take us up to West Palm.”

  The driver Samuel Cole hired to drive him to the airport got out of his taxi with their approach. In less than five minutes he stored luggage in the trunk and drove away from the airfield for the short ride to the pier where a boat awaited their arrival.

  Samuel, M.J., Nancy and Martin lay together on a large bed in a spacious cabin of a sleek cruiser. The rocking motion had put the children to sleep as soon as their heads touched the pillows.