"Zac... "
He reached for her. "Trust me. Wetting down a tree builds character in a boy's life." He kissed her, running his tongue across her lips, teasing, his eyes open, gaze glued to the tree.
"I love you," she whispered. "Every day, more and more."
"Do you trust me?"
"I worship you."
"Do you trust me to do what I believe is best for you? For all of us?"
"Yes," she said warily. "Is this a test? Are you and Marcus colluding?"
"Then trust me enough to let me talk to Coby first, without you."
"No."
"Why?"
"I have to be there to cushion the blow." "That didn't work with Tommy."
She pulled away. "Jesus, Zac. Sometimes you're—"
"Abrupt?"
She nodded; arms wrapping her breasts as apprehension crowded her consciousness.
"Let Marcus in," he said softly.
She unwound, strained backward to push the door open.
"How was it, niño? Did I lie?"
"Cool."
Some of her dread ran tranquil as she watched Zac extend himself to her son.
"Buckle up." Zac reached into his inside jacket pocket, producing a pack of Gummy Bears and passing them over the seat back. "Maybe this will hold you until Taco Bell." He put the truck in gear and pulled onto the empty highway.
After a while she announced, "He's sleeping too. Thank you, Zac. You're very kind— wonderful with him."
"He's wonderful for me."
"You have a deep affection for children. It's really out of the ordinary, judging from what I've seen in life."
"I have a lot to make up for."
"Allie. I know."
"There's more you don't know."
Her head jerked toward him, her chest constricting a little, yet something in his dark eyes quelled her dread. "Tell me."
"Maggie was pregnant when I left her for Carron, but I didn't know. Carron had gotten pregnant the first time we were together. I didn't know that, either." He took his eyes off the road, gazed out the side window for a moment, his throat moving as though he had swallowed something jagged. He seemed to regroup, glancing at her, then back at the blacktop. "Maggie carried Angel in grief and confusion because of what I'd done. She took Allie and moved away. Carron couldn't carry a baby because of her illness, but she didn't want me to know she was dying. She had an abortion and didn't tell me until it was over." His brown hands paled on the wheel. "I created two lives, Victoria, within the space of a few days. Carron destroyed one and I lost claim to the other—Angel—in the same amount of time. I'll spend the rest of my life making up for it."
"So sad." She fell quiet for a moment. "Most men would have been glad to be free of a complicated situation."
"Yeah. Maybe." He kept his eyes straight ahead. His hands tightened on the wheel, throat pumping. "God is good, though. He forgives and lets you try again. I want to try with you. Think about that."
"I am. It's all I'm thinking of."
"Do you trust me? Do you know how much I want to take care of you and your children?"
"I think I know, but I hope it's even more." They rode in silence as she contemplated his petition concerning Coby. She thought of Coby's request that she bring Zac, clung to the hope she dared to have. "All right. You can talk to him first."
"You're sure?"
"I have nothing to lose and everything to gain."
* * *
Coby Chandler was the most attractive Anglo man Zac had ever encountered. His blondness, tanned, angular stature, and appraising eyes the color or Ari's and Alex's, permeated the compact room. The striking resemblance between Victoria and Christian came to mind. The likeness between Coby and Christian, however, proved astounding. Sudden awareness of how significant that must have been when Victoria met Christian nagged.
Coby eyed him, a tiny, crooked smile never quite touching glacial eyes. He had been staring out the undraped window of the private reception room Victoria had requested. He came toward Zac, keeping his hands in the pockets of his tennis shorts, exuding the aroma of a vigorous game played in the hot, hill-country afternoon.
"Hi, Coby. I'm Zac Abriendo." He decided to give him both barrels. "The current Tommy Cordera in your life."
Coby's smile erupted into a quiet, natural sounding laugh. "Where's Tori?" The paramount priority.
"She took the children for a walk, by the lake."
Coby lowered his frame into one of four chairs surrounding a round table. He shifted to the side a bit, accommodating his long, muscular legs.
Zac remained standing.
"They've seen the lake before," Coby said.
"Right. I convinced her you and I should talk. Alone."
"How easy was that?" His smile was definitely diabolical.
"Easier than you might have wanted. Victoria and I have great communication."
A frown line mirroring Victoria's appeared in that exact spot above the bridge of Coby's perfect nose.
Zac wished circumstances were different. Getting acquainted, watching similarities emerge between Victoria and her surrogate twin, could have been fun. "I know you want to see her, and since I'm a whole man only in her presence, you and I have a lot in common." He shrugged. "So this won't take long."
The frown line deepened, brackets forming about his mouth. One brow arched. Zac could have been addressing Victoria.
He took Coby's place at the window. The lake was visible from there, and he wished he could see their subject. He'd just wait here until he saw her, make this worthwhile. "I had an interesting conversation with Andrea Von Felsberg last night." He glanced back at Coby.
His eyes quickened. One Reebok reared off the carpet.
"According to her, Tommy Cordera was diplomatic. I'm not. I believe in offense. Apparently, Tommy was so obsessed with Victoria he let her handle the situation between the two of you, and the way it involved him. He hoped for the best, I guess." He thought about Tommy for a minute, how out of his element he must have been. "I hope for the best, too, Coby, but I'm smart enough to know she can't handle you, and I love her too much to chance it all coming out right."
He gazed out the window again, turning his back on Coby. His spine tingled as he gave in to the verbal pictures Victoria had painted of Coby on that boat that day, brandishing the silver derringer, pointing it at Tommy. And her.
Through a willow tree half obscuring his view, he saw her now, coming into the curve of the lake. Marcus held Ari's hand. Victoria held Alex's. Straightening with a sudden surge of determination, Zac faced Coby.
"Am I making myself clear so far?"
"Crystalline. What else?"
"Bottom line stuff. She has her own life to live now. You being a sane and healthy part of that life can only make it better for her. And that's how it's going to be. You're going to cut her some slack, especially where I'm concerned. Every time you get a new drift of how things are going, you're going to smile and say, 'great.'" He stopped to study those vacuous eyes.
"We'll see." Coby smiled as though he held a palmed ace.
"See what?"
"How Tori feels about this."
"No. We won't see, Coby. Victoria is never going to know what we talked about. It's over between you and her. She's your adopted sister—no real mystery. I've got two sisters. When we get together at my mama's for Sunday dinner, I say 'hi' and give them a hug. That's how it's going to be with you and Victoria."
"Probably not. She's my alter ego. So to speak."
"It's over, Coby. Terminado." Zac strode to the table, gripped the back of one of the green leather chairs and stood with it between them. "It's not that hard for me to understand what happened between you and Tommy. I'd kill to keep Victoria too, if it came down to that."
A brow arched. "I recognize a threat when I hear one."
"Who'd believe you? You're crazy."
He laughed softly. "So are you, apparently."
Zac shrugged. "Maybe. But I'm smart enough
to mark my territory."
"Machismo." His lips curled around the term.
"You're goddamned right."
Coby lifted his face to meet Zac's eyes and smiled, seemingly undaunted. Pulling himself erect, he took Zac's place at the window, waving.
Zac's gut clinched.
"Cain married his sister." Coby's voice floated quietly on the charged air.
Zac had heard the incest theory based on the old testament, heard it from teachers far more astute in their field than Cailen Jacoby Chandler.
"There weren't enough women to go around then. God allowed that little event for the sake of propagation, and then Jesus came to earth and helped clear up all the muddled areas. It won't fly anymore."
Coby's smile, a bit condescending, portrayed amusement.
"I'm marrying your sister, Coby."
Coby flinched.
"And if any propagating goes on, where Victoria is concerned, they'll be little brown babies, and they'll be mine."
"Nice speech. She said you were articulate."
Slightly worn down by Coby's gentle resistance, Zac felt he understood Victoria a little better. "Give me a sign you're getting this. We should be friends, for her sake. But it's your call."
In the severe silence, the twins' soft laughter, the vague suggestion of Victoria calling to them, settled on Zac's ear. The sound grew more distinct, closer. Coby waved again, his somber face taken over by an expression both moving and frightening.
He turned, extended his hand to Zac. "I'm getting it. I'll give it my all. I love her that much."
When Victoria came into the room she walked past Zac as though unseeing, into Coby's embrace. He enfolded her, engulfed her, rocked her slightly, whispering something in her ear that made her smile. Something Zac wasn't privileged to. Coby looked over the top of her head, his smile bordering on triumph. Their eyes pushed. A fear sprang up in Zac's consciousness.
Had he attempted to intimidate the wrong Chandler?
* * *
Kerrville's best motel boasted dim lights, sagging beds, inferior air conditioning. Zac helped get the twins to bed and went into his adjoining room with Marcus, where they shared a Spanish comic book until Marcus fell asleep.
In the night, Victoria's voice came through the fog of twilight sleep.
"Zac?"
He opened his eyes to make out her form sitting on the side of the king size bed he and Marcus shared. "Hi," he whispered to her outline, overly aware of Marcus's gentle breathing. Reaching, he found her thigh, rested his palm there. "Is something wrong?"
"No," she whispered back. "I want... to be with you."
Marcus stirred at the sound of his mother's voice.
"Nice." He stroked her thigh, feeling her warmth through the thin robe, enjoying his reaction to her disclosure. "But not advisable," he added, putting a smile in his tone.
Marcus stirred again when she leaned down, the bed shifting with her weight. Her breasts pressed Zac's forearm, her lips touched his chest before she rested her cheek there. He eased his hand onto the back of her neck beneath her heavy hair, caressed her, listened to her faint verbal encouragement.
"I've been thinking of this—having you—since we left Puerto San Miguel this morning," she murmured. Her hand stroked his chest, moved down his ribcage, up again, seeking his face. Her fingertips lingered on his mouth.
He caught her hand, kissed her palm, held it.
"I spent this day, Zac, remembering how you hold me."
He couldn't hold her now, not really.
She sat up slowly, trailed her hands along the sides of his neck, across his shoulders, brought them to rest at the chest muscles forming his breasts. One finger tweeked a nipple.
"Victoria..."
"Come outside with me."
He felt as if part of his soul had been excised when she stood, backed toward the sliding terrace door, opened it, and went out. He found his pants, stepped into them and followed. After easing the door closed, he crossed to where she waited in the shadows of the sudden, hellaceous heat of the July night.
Her mouth was hungry, her body eager beneath his hands. She backed against an iron rail that fenced the tiny terrace and drew him against her, her hands at the small of his back, pulling, pressing, urging.
"What about the twins?"
"They won't wake up," she said against his mouth. "I need you so much, Zac."
His resistance ebbed, flowed, diametrically errant.
"Love me." She tugged the tie of her robe, opened it and pressed her bare breasts against his chest. "Love me."
He lifted her into a sitting position on the waist high rail. Her legs clamped around his middle, her surprising strength staggering him. He lowered his face to nuzzle her breasts, then kissed her mouth, stifling and swallowing her emerging moan.
"Not here." His voice was hoarse, ragged with the effort of holding onto resolve. He had thought for a moment—wanted it to be possible, too. It wasn't. "Marcus will hear us."
She unleashed him, eased him back, and slipped down from the rail, moving out of his hands gradually. She left the terrace and crossed a portion of the grassy lawn before turning to look at him through the darkness.
Her face was darkened, but remembering her expression at moments like this encouraged him to follow her into a dense growth of oleander, mere yards from the terrace door. A stand of blue spruce hovered, rendering the alcove a haven of privacy. She had done her homework well.
She sank to her knees, pulling him down with her. His hands followed hers to the beltless waist of his pants. She lay back on her side, opened the robe, took him against her, her mouth wet, warm, insistent.
His penis shot rigid, bursting.
Moaning, she raised a leg across his hip, moved him onto his back and positioned herself on him, sitting, arching, thrusting forward, gasping, her head back. A cry issued from her, loud enough to bring him up on one elbow to clamp his palm across her mouth before he joined her in that state of oblivious completion.
"Oh... God, Zac." She lay beneath him now, the sharp-edged St. Augustine grass sawing their bare skin. The call of locusts was suddenly inordinately loud, the buzz of hovering mosquitoes profound. "I want to lock you inside me forever." Her legs tightened on his diminishing zeal.
He lifted her tangled hair away from her face, kissed her wet temple. "What happened to passive?"
"I have a desire to give back to you. You awaken all kinds of unfamiliar urges in me."
"Like spending your life with me?" He sat up, drew her up with him, fitted the robe around her, and tugged at his own clothing. He felt suddenly wary, naked and spied on, as logic returned on the wake of passion.
"Like wanting to, Zac. Wanting to so much."
* * *
Two mornings later, Zac opened the Puerto San Miguel Sun to Pierce Chandler's second scathing editorial attacking Gerald Fitzpatrick and Fischer's Landing. This time Chandler had embellished his tirade with the dreaded element of gambling.
"Gerald Fitzpatrick's timing is to be commended, even if his intentions are questionable. The completion of his supposedly philanthropic Fischer's Landing, inferior in every way according to county building inspectors, will be interestingly convenient for the inferior quality of people who will infiltrate Galveston County in connection with the gambling casinos Fitzpatrick and local fisherman, Zac Abriendo, are advocating. Judging from statistics, gamblers' priorities are not home and family, and they will be willing to chance sub-standard quality, lower priced housing, thus creating a thriving market. The shoddy construction and price-cutting of Fischer's Landing, in the middle of a potentially affluent environment, will go far in the Fitzpatrick tradition toward lowering the overall value of our sister city of Ramona. Just as the advent of gambling will be the initial step taken to scar beyond retrieval, this heretofore, Gulf Coast family Mecca."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Zac, did you see the morning paper?"
He had put down the Sun to answer her call. "Yeah. I saw it. I l
ove you this morning even if you are Pierce Chandler's daughter."
"I'm so sorry."
"That I love you?"
Her pause was too long. "I'm sorry Pierce has revived his opposition to Gerald. I did try to tell you."
"Victoria, are we missing the all-important factor here?"
"Pierce's ire will become the all-important factor. Gerald is only part of it."
"It can only become what we allow it to be."
"I love you, Zac. Please remember that."
He had a mental image of her departing on a treacherous journey from which she wasn't certain of returning. An illogical suspicion raised the hairs on his neck, gave way to a second mental image of packing her, the twins and Marcus on board the Irish Lady and sailing for parts unknown. That image melded into another time in which she had tried sailing away and lives had been altered forever. One unsolvable point loomed in his mind.
And how could he leave Angel?
* * *
Gerald bustled around the office, a cellular phone stuck in his back pocket, shuffling papers, packing a briefcase. He looked pink, scrubbed and purposeful in the inevitable three- piece suit. "I've read the Chandler editorial. I get up the minute the paper thumps on my front porch to see the sweet bastard's latest literary concoction."
"You don't sound disturbed."
Gerald shrugged elaborately. "What the hell good would it do to waste a lot of energy? It's time to play defense."
"Send me in, coach." Zac smiled, wishing he felt that committed or confident. "Do you have a game plan?"
"We're having a party."
What little confidence Zac had, dampened. "Is that defense for rich people?"
Gerald laughed. "I've already called the finest caterer in South Texas. We're setting up an air-conditioned tent at Fischer's Landing. We're hiring two bands. One for the old fogies who believe in me, one for generation X, who believes in nothing." Gerald checked Zac's reaction before continuing. "We'll have displays with the history of Fischer's Landing from the first doodle pad to the last blueprint. Are you with me?"
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