Where It Began. Kathleen Pickering
She shook her head. “I have wasted too much time. I am ready to fight this black monster in my mind. Permit me use of the Honora, although God knows the thought of stepping on a ship again makes my knees quake.”
Elias frowned. “Then you must not go.”
“No, Poppa, you are wrong.” Her voice dropped in desperation. She fought to keep the tears and the tremor from her words. “I can no longer live not knowing. Nothing will stop me.”
Elias was a bear of a man whom few people crossed. His disease had ruined the joints in his ankles, yet his imposing frame continued to belie his useless legs. A silver mane of hair softened his dark, noble Latino looks. He wore his usual linen shirt and pants, white cotton socks to keep his swollen feet warm, even in the balmy, tropical evening. Elias still enjoyed good days, despite his wheelchair, but Maria had observed the signs of distress that seemed to occur more frequently. Besides her own overwhelming need to reclaim peace from these nightmares, she wanted to regain her memory so that she would be prepared for Poppa when he needed her. His blustering would do little to dissuade her.
Del Rio stood in the silence that had fallen, his plate untouched. He bowed slightly toward Maria, his spicy-warm, masculine scent filling her senses, before focusing his attention on Elias. “I cannot listen to this discussion. I seem to have lost my appetite. If you will excuse me.”
Maria looked straight ahead, refusing to watch the man’s exit. Del Rio might be thinking that his leaving could sway Poppa to deny her wishes, but she knew better. His absence would improve her chances to persuade her father of her plan. Elias added a splash of wine to his glass, which the doctor had forbidden.
She lifted her own glass. As he filled it, she offered Poppa an amused look. “Now that we are alone, I can explain myself more freely, Poppa. Here’s why I must leave as soon as possible…”
DANIEL STOOD IN THE TROPICAL morning sun, his world crashing around him like the surf hitting the beach stretching behind the villa.
He stared dumbfounded at Elias, this man who was like a second father to him while growing up, and now, since his parents’ death six years ago, his only father. Heat seared his back through his T-shirt as if exaggerating the hotbed from which neither he nor Elias had managed to extract themselves last night.
“Don’t ask me to do this, Elias. Not when you know I’ve decided to leave.”
Elias’s request—or should he say, demand—to take the reclusive Maria to the Bahamas was tantamount to emotional suicide for Daniel. He’d waited around patiently this past year out of sheer love, letting his career slide in an attempt to recapture something that he’d finally come to terms with as irretrievable.
No way would Daniel comply.
The set of the older man’s face made his intentions clear. This lion of industry might be restricted to a wheelchair, but confinement did little to curb his will. Elias Santiago hadn’t built his empire by backing down.
“I know you’ve made plans for Australia, Daniel. Please. Give me three more weeks.”
“No. I would have said so last night. You know it’s already been a year of hell.”
Daniel needed closure. He needed to get away. Staying dockside aboard the Honora with his life on hold had eaten away at him like rats gnawing dock lines. Aware that Maria’s studio balcony shadowed the patio behind them, he lowered his voice. “I have already waited too long. Maria doesn’t remember. I have no reason to stay.”
Seated at his table beneath an umbrella as he was every morning, cleanly shaved, wearing his crisp linen shirt and pants, his silver hair smoothed back and a pot of coffee steaming beside him, Elias spoke to Daniel as if he was holding a board meeting. The only difference was that his nurse, in her starched white uniform and sturdy shoes, sat beneath the shade of another umbrella, focused on a Heather Graham novel.
Unwavering, Elias held his gaze. “I think you are afraid.”
There was that, as much as it chafed him to admit it. Daniel had avoided sailing the Honora all these months for a reason. Self-doubt had stolen his confidence despite a notoriety for racing mile upon mile on the open ocean. He’d become so balled up after the accident that he hardly knew himself. He’d lost his love of the water and the love of his life with the simple turn of a boat’s wheel.
Since he had no control over his fate with the woman he loved, he’d decided to climb aboard another love and reclaim his power over the sea. Leaving for the Australian races had twin purposes. First, to get his sea legs acclimated once more, and second, to take him far, far away from Reefside and Maria.
Maria. She deserved the chance to reclaim her memory. This, he understood. But if he took her back to the islands, to the place where the boats crashed, and triggered her memory, would the most powerful love he’d ever experienced truly and finally end?
He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. The old man wasn’t thinking straight. “I’ll be damned if I hurt her, Elias. Hire someone else if she’s so pigheaded about going.”
A knowing grin crossed the older man’s face. “Ah, love.”
“Don’t taunt me, old man.”
“You’ll sail, Daniel. Tomorrow. You don’t have to tell Maria anything. Actually, I would prefer if you did not. Let her find her way. You’ll grant an ailing man this one wish.”
“How can you ask me to do this?”
Elias waved a swarthy, veined hand. “I know you, Daniel. Don’t let the dead kill the love you had. Take this one last chance and do as Maria asks.”
“Did she ask for me to take her?”
A dusky voice answered from the balcony above. “Of course, I did. You should do something to earn the money my father has been wasting on your salary.”
Daniel’s back tightened at her insult. Refusing to respond, he held Elias’s gaze as if to say, See? It won’t work.
He’d never adjusted to Maria’s critical, or worse, ambivalent, comments since the accident. In the beginning, Elias and the doctors wanted to give her time to heal from her trauma and instructed Daniel to remain silent about their relationship. His heart had ripped a bit more each day that Maria remembered nothing about him—about them—since the collision.
As the year wore on, he had lost hope of regaining her love, and she had become less and less tolerant of his relationship with Elias. It wasn’t until a few short weeks ago that he became truly honest with himself. His desire to win her back had died. Her ambivalence was the gun that had killed it. She’d pulled the trigger too many times.
Maria had made it clear that she didn’t believe her father should be so generous with the hired help. Ironically, it seemed Elias was depending on the “hired help” to take this last step to let his precious daughter regain her memory. Daniel had become a pawn in a chess match he was certain to lose.
Elias chuckled. “Late though she may be to our discussion, she has a point.”
Daniel looked at Maria standing above him in the yellow, paint-stained sundress she wore when working: her black hair caught at her nape, her dark bedroom eyes assessing him as a mere mortal. The muscles in his neck tightened under her gaze as he realized this exotic, exciting woman no longer did so much as bat an eyelash in his direction. He could not stay another day—heck, another minute—being so close, yet oceans away from her.
Daniel threw up his hands. “You both have lost your minds.”
“Captain.” She captured his attention with that one word. She leaned over the balcony, unaware of the enticing view of her neckline she offered. “I will, indeed, lose my mind if I don’t restore my memory once and for all.”
The laserlike intensity in her eyes reflected the torment haunting her. Darkness, she called it, from loss of memory. Daniel knew it encompassed more: the loss of a cherished twin, a mother, a life of possibilities