Carrera's Bride

by Diana Palmer

  “All these years,” Delia said on a sob.

  “I wanted to tell you a million times,” Barney said, in anguish. “But Barb couldn’t bear to have you know. You were brought up so carefully, sheltered so much, so that you wouldn’t make the same mistake Barb did.”

  “But I did anyway,” she said flatly.

  “Yeah.” He grimaced. “If we’d made you go home, maybe you’d never have had to find out. Damn Fred!”

  She looked up at him. “It would have come out one day, Barney,” she said, feeling oddly sorry for him. He did look so devastated. Not unlike Barb…

  “What will you say to Barb?” he asked gently.

  Her face closed up. “I don’t want to see Barb again right now. I want to go home, Barney. In the past week, my whole life has fallen apart. I’m leaving tomorrow. First thing.”

  “Okay,” he said after a minute. “If that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want,” she said flatly. Then she hesitated. “What about Marcus?” she asked reluctantly. “Will they try again to kill him?”

  Barney sighed. “I don’t know, baby, but I imagine they will. He’s got friends,” he reassured her. “Good friends. We’ll do everything we can to keep him safe. I promise.”

  She swallowed hard. “Thanks.”

  “Barb and I ruined your life,” he said. “You don’t owe me a thing.”

  She looked up, her eyes wet with tears. He was her father, and she’d never known. She wished she’d never had to find it out like this. Life, she thought miserably as she went back to her own room, could be cruel.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, Delia was up just after daylight and packed when Barb knocked and immediately came into the room.

  Delia stared at her as if she were seeing a stranger. Barb’s eyes were red and swollen and she looked as devastated as Delia felt.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me,” she said quickly. “But just give me one minute, please!”

  Delia didn’t speak. She was still devastated by what she’d learned.

  “I was sixteen. Mama was very strict and I thought she was an old fogy,” Barb said huskily. “So I snuck off one weekend and went to San Antonio with a friend of mine. We bought some cheap dresses and smeared on lots of makeup and went to a bar. Barney was there alone. We started talking and when he left, I went with him. I didn’t know he was married,” she added miserably, wiping at her eyes with a tissue. “But I knew I loved him, and he loved me. I had to go home, and I was afraid to tell him how old I really was, so I just left without a word.”

  Delia sat down and folded her hands, waiting for the rest.

  Barb sat down, too. At least Delia was listening, she thought. “When I knew I was pregnant, it was devastating, not only because I didn’t know what to do, but because I was going to have to tell mama what I’d done. I knew she’d be ashamed of me, but I couldn’t hide it. Daddy had just died and she was miserable. But the thought of a new baby sort of snapped her out of the depression,” she added with a faint smile. “I disguised my condition with big clothes and tent dresses until I was almost due, and then we went away for a couple of months and stayed with a cousin of Mama’s. We said the baby was Mama’s when we came back home.”

  “Why?” Delia demanded.

  “Because even today in small towns it’s hard for a child to grow up illegitimate,” Barb said, her tone sad and resigned. “I didn’t want your childhood to be any harder than it had to be. I figured Barney would hate me if he ever found out how young I’d been, and that I’d probably never see him again. So we let you think that my mother was your mother, too. But when you were two years old, Barney finally tracked me down. By then he was divorced, and he was still crazy about me. When he saw you, he just fell in love. So he married me. We wanted to take you with us,” she added, “but Mama went crazy. She said she’d do anything to keep you, right up to running away with you to another country and hiding out like a fugitive.” She grimaced. “Barney and I were afraid she might do it, so we got a house in San Antonio and I was at the house almost every day until you graduated from high school and got a job. We didn’t move to New York until you were self-supporting.”

  “I remember,” Delia said heavily.

  “We loved you so much, both of us,” Barb said, studying her closely. “We still do. We’ve been bad parents, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes. I know you need time to come to grips with it all. I won’t push and neither will Barney.” She stood up. “But I hope someday you can forgive us.”

  Delia was too confused and still too grief-stricken over Marcus and her baby to manage forgiveness for that big a deception. She didn’t look at Barb. After a minute, the other woman’s hopeful expression drifted into one of despair and she turned away.

  Barb lowered her head and moved to the door. She hesitated, but she didn’t look back. “We’ll always be there if you need us, baby,” she said gently. “And we’ll always love you. Even if you…can’t love us back, because of what we did.”

  Her voice broke with tears. She went out the door and closed it firmly behind her. Delia stared at it with dead eyes. It was just too much at one time. She had to go home, she had to get away from here! Maybe when she was back in a normal place, she could get her life back together again. Maybe she could accept that Barb had done the only thing she could have done, in the circumstances.

  The plane ride home seemed terribly long, because Delia dreaded arriving back in Jacobsville. So much pain overwhelmed her. She’d lost Marcus, her baby and now her own identity, all in less than a week.

  Her heart was broken. She cried until her eyes were swollen. She didn’t know how she was going to cope with it all. She loved Marcus. That was never going to change. But he didn’t remember her, and he might never. She couldn’t get their last meeting out of her mind. He knew there was something between them, but he had no memory of it. The sight of his tormented face, his sad eyes, would haunt her always. But what they’d had for those few weeks would last her all her life.

  She needed time to mourn her child, get over Marcus, and come to grips with what she’d just learned about Barney and Barb. They were her parents. She’d always believed that her father had died before she was born, and that Barb’s mother was also her mother.

  Now she began to see the past for what it was. Barb had always been more protective of her than her grandmother had, and she’d been sheltered by both of them. But her grandmother had always blamed her for Barb’s lapse of judgment. Her grandmother had taken out all her resentments and anger on Delia, without Barb knowing. Looking into Barney’s face was like looking in a mirror, not to mention that she shared Barb’s coloring, but Delia hadn’t wanted to see those things. She’d accepted a lie. Now she knew everything.

  She had to find a way to cope. It would take time to get used to the idea of her changed identity. She knew that, in the end, she couldn’t hate Barb. She’d done what she thought was best for Delia, without realizing that Barb’s mother was going to make Delia pay for Barb’s mistake by persecuting her child. She was only disappointed that Barb and Barney had lied to her for so many years. Maybe they did have a legitimate reason. And they certainly didn’t know how hard her grandmother had been on her all those years.

  Marcus had been brooding ever since Delia’s visit with her sister and brother-in-law. The feelings he had were unexpected and inexplicable. She wasn’t his type of woman, so why did he feel such turmoil when he was with her? Why did she look at him as if he meant something to her? Why did she look as if he was hurting her every time they were together?

  He couldn’t find any answers, and nobody would talk to him about Delia, not even Karen Bainbridge. His memory wasn’t any closer than it had been, either. All of it combined to make him irritable and frustrated.

  Roxanne Deluca was still around, and she was behaving very suspiciously. She was trying to coax him into taking her to one of the deserted islands in the Bahamas chain. She’d even chartered a
boat without telling him.

  “You need to get completely away from here for a day, and I’m taking you to a deserted island with me, tomorrow morning.” she said, cuddling close to him. “We’ll be like Adam and Eve, darling,” she teased breathily.

  He knew she was up to something, and it probably had to do with a new contract on his life. He was grateful that Smith had been so forthcoming about the situation, or he might have been killed without ever knowing the reason.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Come on over about nine in the morning, and we’ll go from here. That suit you?”

  She smiled broadly. “Yes, it will. I’m so glad you’re better, darling.”

  “When were we getting married?” he asked her.

  She hesitated. “Oh, in December,” she said, thinking fast.

  “December.” He nodded, pretending to go along with it.

  “We’re going to be so happy,” she exclaimed.

  Later, when she’d gone back to the hotel, he called the cab company and asked for John to come to his house. He paid the cabbie, John, for a double trip that he wasn’t going to take, to allay suspicion, and gave him a note for Dunagan.

  “Give it to Barney Cortero,” he told John quietly. “He’ll get it to Dunagan. Don’t do it yourself. Got that? And make sure he gets it today. Or you can come to my funeral.”

  John grimaced. “Yes, sir, Mr. Carrera. You can count on me.”

  Unfortunately John went across the bridge too fast and T-boned a passing jitney. The wreck gave him a light concussion and a broken rib and sent him directly to the hospital for treatment. It wasn’t until the next morning that he was conscious enough to remember the note. He asked the nurse for the shirt he’d been wearing. She handed it to him. He extracted the note and grimaced as he read it. Carrera and Roxanne were going to the marina at nine for a trip to one of the Out Islands. It was now ten o’clock.

  “I must have a telephone, at once,” John croaked to the nurse. “It’s a matter of life or death!”

  Barney was just about to leave the room to join Barb downstairs for brunch. They’d overslept and he was still a little groggy. But as he reached the door the phone rang. He ignored it and went out into the hall.

  But something nagged at him. He hadn’t heard from Carrera, and he’d expected to. What if it was Marcus?

  He unlocked the door and went back inside, lifting the phone just as it stopped ringing.

  “Hello? Hello?” he repeated.

  A thin, weak voice came on the line. “Mr. Cortero?” a husky voice queried. “This is John. I drive a cab. Mr. Carrera sent me with you last evening with a note, but I was in an automobile crash. I’m in the hospital.”

  “I’m sorry. What’s in the note?” Barney asked.

  John read the note to him. “You know which island this is?” he added and gave directions.

  “Thanks, John. There isn’t a minute to lose!” Barney hung up and dialed Dunagan on his cell phone. “It’s me,” he said when Dunagan picked up. “We’ve got an emergency.”

  Marcus had packed a gun, just in case, and he wore it in an ankle holster under the flaring denim of his jeans. If they took him out, he was going to go down fighting.

  Roxanne was dressed in a flirty white sundress, her long dark hair sleek and expertly cut. She smelled of expensive perfume, and she was beautiful, but she had the eyes of a cobra.

  “You love to go exploring undeveloped islands,” she said in a chatty tone as they sailed out of port. “We’ve done this several times, but not lately.”

  He didn’t believe her. She didn’t look like the sort of woman who liked exploring primitive places. He was betting that she planned to lead him right into a trap. He was going along with it. By now, Barney and Dunagan would be waiting for the gangsters when they made their play. He smiled to himself, thinking how surprised Roxanne was going to be when her father found himself in federal custody.

  The crew of the sailboat seemed oddly familiar, but Marcus couldn’t place them. He was getting bits and pieces of his life back, in odd dreams that woke him in the middle of the night. A shadowy woman had been the main attraction in them, a woman with a loving, sweet personality who made him whole. It hadn’t been Roxanne, he was certain. He’d thought that perhaps he’d run into the unknown woman at the casino. It was a magnet for beautiful, rich women. He was sure that she was extraordinary. He sensed that he hadn’t been involved with anyone for a long time, until just recently. But so far, he hadn’t run across the mystery woman. Sometimes he could almost feel her in his arms, the sensations were so real. Then he woke up, and he had no memory of what she looked like. It was, he thought absently, like the powerful, odd sensations he felt with Barney’s sister-in-law Delia. His attraction to her was as inexplicable as it was shocking. But, then, Delia was a plain, sweet down-home sort of girl, not the type to appeal to his sophisticated tastes. It couldn’t have been her.

  Well, he had plenty of time, once he got rid of Deluca, to search for his mystery woman. He’d have the leisure, then, to wait for his memory to come back.

  “You’re very quiet,” Roxanne commented as they approached the deserted island she’d described to him.

  “I was just trying to remember my recent past,” he said easily. “I remember my childhood, my parents, the place I went to school.” He shrugged and slid his hands into the pockets of his beige slacks. “But I can’t remember what I did a week ago.”

  Roxanne seemed to relax. “Don’t force it,” she said. “It will come back.”

  He glanced toward her. “Think so? I wonder.”

  “We’re here,” she said, pausing to give the crew the order to drop anchor so that she and Marcus could go ashore in the small rowboat.

  “You can still row, can’t you?” she teased.

  “I suppose I’ll remember how when I start,” he agreed. He gave the crew a searching look, because they still looked familiar to him.

  One of them, a tall Berber with the traditional mustache and beard, raised an eyebrow and gave an imperceptible jerk of his head to indicate that Marcus shouldn’t look at him too hard.

  That was when he knew that the crew of the sailboat wasn’t working for Roxanne. He actually grinned before he climbed down the ladder into the dingy.

  “You’re very cheerful all of a sudden,” Roxanne remarked.

  He chuckled. “I have a feeling that I’m going to get my memory back very soon. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  “You may be right,” she said, without looking at him.

  He rowed the boat into the shallows and they jumped out. He tugged it up on the beach so that it wouldn’t wash out to sea.

  “Now what?” he asked Roxanne.

  “Now, let’s go exploring!” she said enthusiastically, catching his big hand in hers. “If I remember right, there’s a little shack just through there…”

  All his instincts for self-preservation were standing up and shouting at him. He moved along with her, but vigilantly, his eyes ever searching for the glint of the sun on a gun barrel, or a shadowy figure nearby.

  “I’ll bet we’ll find a nice cozy little nook in here,” she told Marcus, and went up onto the porch of the rundown shack. “Why don’t you go on in, and I’ll look around for some driftwood so that we can build a fire in the fireplace, like we did before,” she added deliberately, smiling. “I’m sorry you can’t remember it. We had a really good time here!”

  She turned to go down the beach.

  He stepped up onto the porch. But instead of going inside, he bent, as if to retie the rawhide lace on his deck shoes. As he squatted down, he palmed the ankle gun.

  His heart raced madly. He wondered what the sailboat crew had in mind. If a contract killer was hiding here waiting for him, he’d have to manage alone.

  Roxanne, sensing something, turned around and frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Nothing, I just had to tie my shoelace,” he called, rising.

  “Go
on in and wait for me, darling,” she cooed.

  Wait, the devil, he thought, gritting his teeth. He opened the door and threw himself to one side just as a shot rang out.

  He fired without even thinking, reacting to the shot as he had in the old days. The old days…

  Everything became crystal clear in seconds. The man in front of him clutched his chest with an expression of disbelief and slumped to the floor, a red stain spreading over the back of his shirt as he landed facedown on the wooden floor of the shack.

  “Did you get him?” Roxanne yelled.

  “No such luck, baby,” Marcus returned. He kicked the killer’s gun aside and stepped onto the porch, his dark eyes blazing as he looked over the rail at her. “And that’s the second time you and your father have struck out.”

  Roxanne’s mouth fell open. Before she could do anything, say anything, three men came out from the back of the shack with leveled guns.

  “Put your hands up, Miss Deluca,” the Berber said pleasantly, “unless you want to join your father’s hired man in hell.”

  Roxanne put her hands up at once. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. “He’s…dead?”