“The arrangement was highly lucrative and highly illegal,” Eli said. “When I took control of the Rutherford empire and supposedly divested the family from the tobacco industry, I put the Cuba operation under a shell company incorporated in Trinidad. But I secretly retained full ownership. As far as Cuba’s concerned, the Rutherfords have never left, and business is booming.”
“And now we’re going back? To Cuba?” I asked.
“Where else?”
“But what was Henry so worried about? Not enough fuel and all that?”
“Oh, right,” Eli said. “Normally, to play it safe with passport issues, I fly to Mexico City before secretly continuing on to Havana. We don’t have enough fuel to reach Mexico City, but we have plenty to get us to Cuba. Since we’re not going back the United States any time soon, there’s no need to factor in the layover. It’s a straight shot to Havana.”
Eli glanced at my attire. “I like that T-shirt on you, by the way,” he said. “I like the belt, too. Nice job accessorizing.”
I swatted him playfully and then we kissed, and Eli stripped the belt from around my waist. He turned me around and bound my hands behind my back, and he bent me over and fucked me from behind. The thrill was indescribable, knowing that Eli was in total control of my body. I had the most intense orgasm of my life.
We reached Cuba several hours later. To my surprise there were no delays or any other issues during the flight. I should have known to trust Eli. When we landed, however, I refused to leave the airplane until someone fetched me some proper clothes. Eli rolled his eyes, then jogged off the plane and returned a few minutes later with a pretty white peasant dress. It was old but clean and felt very soft on my bare skin.
Eli whisked me into an ancient taxi cab decorated with a black-and-white checker pattern. Except for a couple of breaks at gas stations, we didn’t stop until long after we had left the city. At one point Eli leaned over and said, “This is our property line. Everything you see from here till home belongs to me. Only now, it belongs to you as well.”
I looked all around with wonder at the beautiful landscape. Our property was a mix of jungle and mountains and clear, swift streams in the valleys, and rolling hills as far as I could see. But nothing could prepare me for my new home.
Nearly an hour after we had crossed onto our property, we began a steep ascent, the road winding around a mountain taller than all of the rest. When we reached the top, our car finally stopped. We had reached our new home built on the highest peak of the Rutherford property. I looked out the taxi window, and the view took my breath away. I had never seen anything like it. I felt like I could touch the clouds. And then I noticed the house.
15.
Eli held the taxi door open for me and helped me out. I felt as though I was being guided through a dream. The Don Rutherford Hacienda, as it was known to the locals, was a beautiful four-story mansion perched on top of the highest mountain on the island.
Eli guided me to a patio made of elaborate hand-painted tile, and he pointed off to the distance. I shielded my eyes with my hands and saw miles and miles of green rolling hills. My eyes kept going and I saw the ocean.
“The Caribbean,” Eli said.
I said something clever like “ooh” or “ahh.”
Beyond the hills, I saw a turquoise sea that sparkled in the sunlight. The ocean lapped against white beaches, a sandy buffer between sea and jungle. The view was mesmerizing. I could have stared at it for hours, but I felt Eli’s hand at my elbow.
“Come on,” he said. “Let me show you inside.”
We passed a front door and entered a modestly-sized courtyard with a stone fountain that gurgled in the center. The walls were covered with ancient vines sprouting waxy green leaves and red and yellow flowers, which were shaped like trumpets. Our presence startled a pair of brightly colored parrots. They flew away.
Strutting at the edge of the fountain was a large peacock. It fanned its long tail feathers, displaying a pattern of intricate markings.
“He’s flirting with you,” Eli said.
Everything was so beautiful it left me speechless. This tropical paradise was my new home. Eli tapped my elbow again, and I followed him inside. The home kept getting better. The rooms were bright and airy, a delectable mountain breeze drifting through open windows.
“What do you think of your new home?” Eli asked.
“Oh, Eli. I love it,” I said. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”
“You know what I like best about this place?” he asked.
“What?”
“That you’re here.”
“Oh, Eli,” I said, my heart fluttering with love and gratitude. “That’s the sappiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Eli smirked. “You’re still a goddamn brat,” he said.
Eli grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder, smacking my ass as he carried me up the stairs to our new bedroom.
That night we released the passion that had been building between us since we got off the plane. The next day, and during subsequent days, Eli took me on little trips throughout the Rutherford property in an old jeep that had been abandoned by the U.S. military after the Cuban revolution. We rumbled through the jungles and fields, inevitably down to our private beach that we liked the best. There, we swam and picnicked and lay in the sand and made love until sunburn drove us back into the shade.
Late one afternoon Eli and I were walking along the water’s edge when he stopped. He turned to face me and took both my hands in his. He said beautiful words that made me cry, and he dropped to one knee as I began to cry even harder, and he placed a ring on my finger. I could hear the waves crashing all around us. I said yes, and he laughed and leaped to his feet, throwing me into the air and twirling me in his arms.
It was here at our beach, only a few weeks later, when it was my turn to stop Eli during our stroll along the surf. Water lapped at our toes, and I couldn’t suppress a smile as I took Eli’s hands in mine.
“Thank you for being such a wonderful father, Eli.”
He grinned and shrugged. “Oh, that was nothing,” he replied. “You practically raised yourself.”
“I’m not talking about me, silly,” I said.
“No?”
I watched as a range of emotions washed over Eli’s face. His expression changed from puzzlement to realization to astonishment. He gently placed his hand on my tummy and looked at me with searching eyes.
I nodded and smiled.
“Congratulations, Eli,” I said.
Elation flickered in my husband’s eyes. Unable to contain his joy and excitement, he began to laugh, the same way he laughed when I had accepted his marriage proposal. Eli took me in his arms and kissed me with such ardor I thought we might topple into the ocean.
Then he scooped me in his arms, and he took me home.
16.
Eli sent a stack of cash and an anonymous note to the couple who had “loaned” us their farm truck the night after his prison escape. A second stack of money went to the trucking company who had provided our big rig.
Maurice, however, was not compensated for the damage to his SUV.
Eli and I remain fugitives from the law in the United States. The Cuban government refused the United States’ request to extradite us, as Eli predicted. We are safe, but it also means we can never go home.
Sometimes, early in the morning, I think of my old home in Virginia. I wonder how our lives would have been different if Mama had not killed herself out of spite, and Eli had not been convicted of her murder. I like to think that Eli would have eventually married me anyway—that true love would find a way.
But I don’t know that. No one really knows for sure. A close-minded society has a way of constricting people, of obscuring their innermost feelings for one other.
I’ve been thinking some. And maybe this nothing more than a way for me to assuage my own guilt for the mistakes I made when I was younger, but maybe the awful things that happened to
Eli were blessings in disguise. After all, they brought us to a foreign country where no one seems to realize that Eli was once my stepfather, and I was once his stepdaughter. If anyone knows about our past, they don’t seem to care. Or they don’t care to find themselves on Eli’s bad side.
It’s true that money can’t buy happiness. But money does have a way of solving those kinds of problems.
Nearly nine months after we arrived in Cuba, I gave Eli a little girl. And then a boy a year later. And then another girl.
The girls favor me, but the boy is a spitting image of Eli. When I look at my beautiful boy and my precious little girls—whenever I look at Eli, the man I always wanted and who is mine forever—I am so grateful my life turned out the way it did.
And maybe someday, when our children are older, Eli and I will sit them down and tell them a story. The ocean breeze will cool us, and the parrots will chatter as we explain to our children how they came to live on the highest mountain on the island of Cuba, raised by a man and woman who love each other so much, not even prison walls could keep them apart.
* * * *
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And now … a sneak peak at a modern-day classic … quick, turn the page before the suspense kills you …
My Forbidden Military Man
An excerpt
By Veronica Vaughn
I.
The instant I saw the Army helicopter on the horizon, I knew my stepfather was flying home to me. Somehow I just knew. It swooped over the brown hills of Fort Hood, drawing closer by the second.
Jumbled feelings of excitement, anticipation and a creeping sense of dread raced through my mind, competing for control of my emotions as the chopper descended toward the landing pad. A small welcome party of friends, family and fellows soldiers had gathered around the landing pad, and men grabbed their hats as the spinning rotor blades kicked up a storm of dust that swirled around us.
One by one, the uniformed military men disembarked from the chopper, their thick-soled boots landing on Texas soil for the first time in months. Then I saw him. Patton, my stepdad, in head-to-toe camo. He climbed from the helicopter a little more slowly than the others, then stopped and squinted in the harsh glare of the midday sun, looking around like he was almost surprised to be home again.
Overcome with excitement, I started to drop everything and run into his arms. I felt like a little girl again, and I wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around my stepdad’s brawny neck and let him give me one of those bear hugs I had missed so much since while he was gone.
I took a step forward, but something held me back. Something completely stupid and all my fault.
My stepdad’s gaze found mine. His blue eyes flashed with excitement, but to my horror, the warmth in his expression immediately turned cold and formal. The stern disapproval on his face twisted my tummy into knots. I wished I could sink into the ground, disappearing forever.
This reunion was going to be awkward.
Hesitating for just a moment, he reached into his pocket and found a pair of dark sunglasses to shield those blue eyes that had always killed me, ever since I was a little girl and he and my mom got married.
Patton had always been in great shape, and my friends had been voting him the most handsome dad at sleepovers since junior high. But this was different. War had chiseled him into even more of a man. With his wide shoulders and tapered waist Patton’s body perfectly filled his desert fatigues.
Patton strode forward. I had always liked the way my stepdad walked, and his gait had not changed one bit during several months of fighting in Iraq. He marched like a man with purpose, standing upright, his burly chest thrust forward and his wide shoulders thrown back, like a proud and highly decorated officer of the National Guard. He was still the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on.
When he was just a couple of feet away from he, he removed his dark sunglasses. My heart nearly stopped beating when my eyes met his cold stare.
“Evie,” he said.
“Hi, Daddy.”
He just stood there, face to face with me, and I felt incredibly small. Like a deer frozen in the headlights of those icy blues, I did not dare to move a muscle. He looked me up and down, his eyes raking over the recently developed body that I was still getting accustomed to. Finally breaking through the tension, my stepdad reached in and gave me a quick hug.
I nestled my cheek against my stepdad’s firm chest and breathed his comforting and instantly familiar scent. The touch of his hands felt electric as always, sending tingles from the small of my back that raced up and down my spine.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” he said. “Let’s get the hell off this base.”
For a second or two, everything felt right again between us. But then he pulled away from our embrace, and the feelings of disappointment washed over me. That was the best greeting I would get from the man who was, for all intents and purposes, my father? We weren’t biologically related, but Patton felt more like a dad than my real father ever did. When my mom died a few years ago, Patton had stepped forward and selflessly raised me like his own.
Then Uncle Sam called up his detachment and sent them to war, leaving me to fend for myself during my senior year of high school. Now I was eighteen years old and all grown up. A little too grown up, it seems.
Oh, well. All I knew was that Patton was home for two weeks. He hadn’t told me why the military had given him leave from the war, but that didn’t matter to me. I would use our brief time together to try to make things right between us.
Patton marched away from the whirring helicopter and the small crowd that had gathered around it, and I practically ran to keep up with his long, fast gait. We rounded the corner of the commissary building, and my stepdad’s mouth dropped, then spread into a wide, silly grin. It was good to see him smile.
“You brought my truck,” he said. “You learned to drive a stick? And you drove all the way from Austin?”
“A small sacrifice for my war hero,” I teased, tossing him the keys.
Patton grabbed them in one hand and turned his attention back to the old pickup. He tossed his duffel bag in the truck bed, then ran his fingers down the rough, rusty paint, savoring the touch of his prized possession. I didn’t know anything about cars and trucks, but sometimes I wondered whether Patton loved that old clunker more than he loved me. The engine was completely rebuilt, although he had refused to update the aged exterior with slick new paint.
“Talk about a sight for sore eyes.” Patton clapped his palm against the metal, like a normal person might pet a good dog. “Good old farm truck. You know, this belonged to my grandpa when I was a little boy. Grandma gave it to me when I was sixteen.”
“No! You’re kidding!” I said with feigned surprise. The truth was I had heard the story a thousand times, though his grandparents had died long before I entered the picture.
“Very funny,” he deadpanned. “Get in the truck, you little brat. Let’s hit the road.”
II.
Patton slid behind the wheel of the pickup and I hopped in beside him.
Teasing and joking with him had felt like old times. When I w
as younger he often seemed like more of a fun uncle than my parental guardian. Even when Mom died, when both of us were heartbroken and grieving, he managed to remain upbeat for my sake.
I hoped the levity would continue, but Patton grew silent again as we left the military base and began the hour drive back to Austin. He mostly kept his eyes fixed to the road. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, admiring his rugged jawline and close-cropped, golden-brown hair.
I was studying his features and lost in thought when he turned and caught me looking at him. He gave me a searching look that seared into me, forcing me to turn away.
As we rode in silence, my mind wandered to that moment just a few weeks ago when I had made the mistake that jeopardized my entire relationship with the most important man in my life. Like I said, it was all my fault. But you could also blame the second-most important man in my life, my boyfriend Chase.
Chase is nineteen, but he still lives with his parents. I don’t blame him. They have a huge house and a swimming pool that’s bigger than my backyard. It was a lazy June afternoon a few weeks after my high school graduation. Chase’s dad was at the golf course, and his mom was wherever she went during the day. They had inherited a Texas oil fortune, and none of them had worked a day in their lives.
Chase was sleeping off a hangover in one of the lounge chairs beside the pool. He had wrapped a beach towel around his face, shielding his eyes, as his pale, narrow frame soaked up rays from the Texas sun. I was swimming in the deep end, letting the water cool my body, when my phone started ringing. I had left it on the chair next to Chase.
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