by Neesa Hart
“And Kaitlin’s next to me,” Molly added.
Cora glanced at Kaitlin. Her eyes were still closed, but her lips had turned up into a smile. “Good,” Cora encouraged them. “Anything else?”
“Rafael,” Molly said. “He’s teaching Liza how to dance.”
“And saving Benedict Bunny,” Liza added.
Kaitlin tilted her head against Cora’s shoulder. “And telling us stories about Abigail and del Flores.”
Cora glanced at Rafael. His expression was intense. “Are they good stories?” she prompted, still watching him.
“Oh, yes,” Kaitlin breathed. “They’re wonderful.
Cora kept her gaze trained on Rafael. “I think so, too,” she said. His expression didn’t change. Cora held his gaze a moment longer, then looked at her nieces. “So now,” she said, “all you have to do when you miss me or Rafael or you want to remember what we did here, all you have to do is close your eyes. I’ll be right there in your memories waiting for you.”
Molly opened her eyes and a large tear trickled down her cheek. “It won’t be the same.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Cora said. “But you’ll come back sooner than you think.”
Liza sniffled and sat up. “Aunt Cora?”
“What, baby doll?”
“I love you.”
Cora hugged her close and fought a fresh surge of tears. “I love you, too.”
RAFAEL HELD CORA to him that night and wished she would scream or cry or lash out or something. Anything would be better than the implacable calm that had shrouded her through the evening. While his family had accomplished the Herculean task of keeping everyone’s spirits afloat during dinner and the too-long evening that followed, he’d watched Cora. His nieces and nephews had risen admirably to the occasion. They’d made fervent promises of visits and e-mail and instant messaging meant to settle the fears of their new friends. Kaitlin, Molly and Liza responded with growing cheer.
But Cora, Rafael noted, appeared to have found some deeply buried reservoir of stoicism that was about to drive him mad. When the children had finally been put to bed, he had felt unaccustomedly awkward. Cora stood outside the girls’ rooms for long minutes, simply staring at their sleeping forms. She had seemed completely untouchable, simultaneously strong and vulnerable—like a priceless piece of glass—able to withstand phenomenal pressure and heat, yet extremely fragile. When he’d said her name, she’d looked at him with a vacancy in her eyes that had him struggling for balance.
When, he wondered, had she become more than a passion? When had she become so necessary to him? Uncertain, he’d kissed her gently and left her at her door. He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d climbed the stairs minutes later to enter his room. He’d held up the sheet. Without a word, she’d slipped into the bed next to him.
He had not tried to make love to her, though he wondered now if he should have. If he coaxed a physical response from her, would an emotional response follow? He wasn’t sure. Her fingers were tapping a random rhythm on his chest, telling him that she was still awake.
It went against his nature to let life happen to him, he decided. He would make her respond to him, even if she killed him for it. “Cora.”
“Hmm?” She sounded noncommittal.
He stroked his hand down her spine. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m glad your family is here,” she said.
He waited. She didn’t elaborate. Frustrated, he shifted her until she lay on top of him. She raised wary eyes to his. “What?” she said.
“You know what.” He smoothed her hair from her face. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on in your head.”
Cora hesitated. He saw the indecision in her gaze. Deliberately he continued to stroke her back with slow, soothing sweeps of his hand. “Unless there’s something else you’d rather do,” he teased her gently.
She managed a slight smile. “There might be.”
“Hmm. Too bad. I want to talk.”
That sent her eyebrows up. “Are you kidding?”
“Hard to believe, I know.” He rubbed her lower lip with his thumb. “It’s a first for me.”
She dropped her head to his chest. “If I talk about it, I’ll probably get hysterical.”
“That’s all right.”
He felt her sad smile against his skin. “Are you a glutton for punishment?”
“No. I just know that you’re hurting. I don’t want you to think you have to do it alone.”
She trembled. “They’ll be all right,” she said, sounding only half-convinced.
“Yes.”
“They know I love them.”
“Completely.”
“They can count on me.”
“Forever.”
Her shoulders lurched on a sob. “I never felt that way,” she admitted. “There was never anyone I could count on.”
He swallowed. “Ah, baby, I know. I know.”
She nodded. “You felt the same way, didn’t you?”
He thought it over and realized that no, he hadn’t felt that way. He could have counted on Zack, just like everyone else. Zack would have been there for him. Rafael was the one no one had been able to count on. He didn’t answer her. She was rubbing her cheek against his chest. “I don’t ever want them to feel that way,” Cora said.
“They won’t,” he vowed. No matter what, he would never allow that.
Silence stretched between them as fathomless as a starless night sky. He resisted the urge to ask again what she was thinking. He feared too much that she might be thinking that, once again, she’d trusted someone she couldn’t count on. When the time came, he wouldn’t be there for her. Her silence lasted so long he thought she might have fallen asleep. “Rafael?” she finally said.
“Yes?” his voice sounded gravelly.
“Would you…would you make love to me?”
The vulnerability in her tone ripped a piece of his heart out. Gently he rolled to his side so she lay against him. He took her hand and laid it against his heart while he held her gaze. “With the greatest of pleasure, Cora,” he vowed, and set about showing her, the only way he knew how, how much she had come to mean to him.
THAT HAD BEEN five days ago, Cora realized numbly as she glanced from the pile of research papers on her desk to the small calendar. It sat in a shallow tray made of brightly colored paper clips. Liza had made it with Rafael’s help one rainy afternoon. The girls had called every night since their departure. They sounded happy, which helped ease the lingering ache Cora felt when she remembered the teary goodbye they’d shared the morning Lauren and George had come to get them.
Molly had been full of stories about the ride home. Liza reported that George had purchased a new outfit for Benedict Bunny. Kaitlin was taking art classes at home. Cora had finally let herself weep when she’d found the gaily painted pottery bowl that Kaitlin had made on their first outing with Rafael sitting on her bed. The note inside had simply said, “Thank you for teaching me so much. I love you, Kaitlin.”
Rafael had found her clutching the note and sobbing into a pillow. Wordlessly he’d joined her on the bed and held her until the storm had passed. Cora had no reasonable explanation for the ache that had started that morning in her chest and steadily spread until it permeated every limb. But she knew that even if this unrelenting pain was the price of having loved them—her nieces and Rafael—it was better than the unemotional wasteland she’d lived in for most of her life.
Over the past few days his family had departed. The large house seemed unbearably quiet without them. Rafael alone remained. Like Cora, he stayed deeply immersed in researching the additional diaries they’d discovered. The media scrutiny was intense. There were more and more demands on his time as he and Cora released details of what they were learning from the journals. Del Flores had, it seemed, intended to sail north to Cape Marr. Abigail seemed certain he was coming for her. Her writings had grown more sporadic, shorter and less detailed. Often, she hinted that
she feared someone was watching her. She would beg del Flores to hurry back. The intensity was heartrending. Cora found herself deeply moved by the woman’s distress.
Yet she and Rafael never spoke of the research, as if they both felt the same sense of dishonor at intruding on something so intimate and painful. Instead, he entertained her with stories of his past expeditions, and he made love to her with such intensity that she felt her heart break every time.
He showed her what it was like to live in reckless passion, to embrace love without fear or insecurity. She could never—would never—go back again. For that, she would always love him. He had made her so much stronger than she could have been on her own.
And now, she thought, it was time to set him free.
Cora scooped up the papers on her desk and tossed them into her briefcase. Today she’d found the key to the last lock that chained him to Cape Marr. Tonight she would give it to him—because she loved him too much not to.
RAFAEL LOOKED UP, the phone still pressed to his ear, when he heard Cora enter the house. She looked tired. She’d looked tired since the day the girls had left. He’d been on the verge of calling one of his sisters to beg for advice more times than he could count, but the constant pressure of the media interviews, television appearances and academic inquiries had kept him on the run. She offered him a small smile when she heard him give a curt answer to a reporter and set her briefcase down on the counter.
Rafael listened, irritated and only half-attentive to the rambling voice on the other end of the phone line. When Cora walked across the room and put her arms around his waist, he forgot whom he was talking to. When she pressed her lips to the hollow of his throat, he simply hung up. He gathered her to him and kissed her deeply. Immediately the phone started to ring again.
Rafael jerked the cord from the wall with a sharp tug. Cora laughed, but didn’t stop kissing him. In a distant part of the house, he could hear the other extension ringing. He cupped her head with his hand and held her still so he could fully taste her. She made a little mewling sound in the back of her throat that drove him wild.
He kissed her until the room spun around them. Finally he dragged his mouth away and across her cheekbone. “Cora,” he breathed. Would he ever have enough of her?
She pulled at his shoulders, demanding more from him. “Rafael.” The way she said his name ricocheted off his nerve endings. She moved one hand to the buttons of his shirt. “Rafael, I want you closer.”
He was already shoving her suit jacket off her shoulders. She jerked her arms free of the restriction. Beneath the jacket, she wore a lacy camisole that cupped her body in a fascinating combination of shadow and light. He pressed his palm against her. She arched her back and sighed. “Closer,” she murmured. “Now.”
He would have taken her to bed, but Cora had other plans. She didn’t let him get past the table. Intrigued and totally bewitched, he willingly surrendered.
And ten minutes later he found himself marveling again at this incredible woman who affected him so deeply. He kissed a mark on her shoulder that was already turning blue. “I hurt you,” he said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“You’ll have bruises.”
She tugged her skirt into place, then pulled the lacy camisole back over her breasts and tucked it into the waistband. “You might, too,” she quipped.
Rafael froze while stepping into his jeans. He gave her a probing look. She hadn’t teased him in a week. “Are you cracking a joke?”
That made her frown. “Have I been that boring lately?”
He finished pulling on his jeans, then walked barefoot across the room to take her in his arms. “Not boring,” he said gently, “just sad. I’ve been worried.”
“I miss the girls.”
“Me, too.”
Cora pushed her hair back from her face. “They sound happy, though. Kaitlin’s enjoying her art classes.”
“Yes.” He tilted his head to the side. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
She nodded. “Yes. Sorry I’ve been pouting.”
“You’re entitled, Cora. It’s been a tough week.”
She shrugged. “I suppose. No tougher on me than it’s been on you, though. I saw that piece in the Times today.”
He winced. He had hoped to keep that one from her. The article, about the lack of progress on the Conrad diaries, had been a particularly blistering. The reporter had interviewed several of Rafael’s most vocal critics, including a certain North Carolina legislator who frequently used the Underwater Archeology Unit’s funding as a punching bag. “It wasn’t so bad,” he told her.
“No? Dr. Peter Rhimes questioned your effectiveness.”
Rafael laughed. “Rhimes questions my effectiveness every time he gets the chance.”
“If you don’t find the Isabela, some people might say that your time here has been wasted.”
She was going somewhere, and it gave him an uneasy feeling. “They might.”
“You’re functioning on state money, Rafael. They’ll crucify you if you’re wrong.”
He shrugged. “Archeology isn’t an exact science. We have to take risks. That’s my style. Besides, we use significantly more private funding than public.”
“But the pressure’s on to find the ship.”
“It is,” he admitted. “But I’m not worried about it.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
“Really.”
She looked almost disappointed. He looked at her closely. “Cora, what are you up to?”
She leaned back and crossed her arms. “I have something for you in my briefcase. Why don’t you look at it?”
He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. Something told him the next several minutes would be some of the most profound of his life. He walked across the room and snapped open the locks on her briefcase. Inside lay a carefully preserved page of Abigail’s diaries. He scanned the date—1862. It was one of the new volumes. Cora had highlighted a passage on the laminated page. He reached for it and realized his fingers were shaking.
“Read it,” she prompted softly.
He looked at her swiftly, then held the page to the light. Abigail’s firm script came into focus. “‘I can hardly credit it, dearest,”’ he read aloud. “‘After days of fruitless search and waning hope, I stood on the widow’s walk today and gazed at the sea through the glass you’d given me. I saw it then, that flash of red and blue against a white sail that told me you were coming for me—just as you promised. Father has insisted you are dead, lost at sea just a few months ago. My heart would have shattered with the news, dearest, but I knew it could not be true. You promised you would come. You promised you would find a way and that the winds would bring you to me this last time. You fly another’s flag, I realize now, but the ship is yours. I could not have mistaken it, or the way my heart raced with the knowledge that very soon I will be in your arms again. Perhaps, in a few days, I will join you. My heart is full, dearest, and know that I await you with the most anxious longing for the sweetness of your presence.”’
He looked at Cora. Her eyes were shining. She smiled at him and said quietly, “You were right, all along. You were right.”
He had imagined this moment for years, yet now, he felt a shocking absence of emotion. Cora crossed to him and took the paper from his hands. “Rafael,” she said, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw this today.”
“He came for her,” he said.
“Yes. And it goes on to describe an island where he’d promised to take her.” Cora hugged him again. “The last entry is three days before Abigail’s purported death.”
“He took her with him.”
“To an island he’d prepared.” Cora beamed at him. “If the Isabela did sink, then del Flores sank it after they were safe in paradise.”
He felt slightly dazzled. “You think so?”
Cora nodded. “He wouldn’t have let anything happen to Abigail. I’m sure of it.” She pressed against him. “
He loved her.” She paused. “And she loved him enough to risk everything for it.”
Rafael crushed Cora to him so she wouldn’t see the host of conflicting emotions on his face. She could have kept this information to herself, he knew, at least for a little while. She knew that by giving it to him, she was terminating whatever reasons he had for staying here. The administration at his office was already pressuring him to take a new assignment. Now, with evidence that del Flores’s ship was, at the very least, far north of its supposed site, he could not justify remaining in Cape Marr when he should be organizing an expedition to locate it.
Cora was stroking his back and brushing featherlight kisses against his throat. Cora, he realized, who had been disappointed by so many people in her life, who had yearned for the attention of self-centered parents, who had longed for a deeper relationship with her shallow sister, who had grieved the absence of her three nieces whom she loved without reservation, had just given him license to walk out of her life. And she’d done it because she loved him. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name. Cora loved him.
The thought left him feeling shaken. Just like all the others, he would be one more deserter in a long string of people who had failed her.
Overwhelmed, he swept her into his arms and headed for the stairs. He could think of nothing except showing her how incredible, how indescribably, breathtakingly passionate and beautiful he found her. Perhaps she would forgive him then, for failing to be the man who could stay and love her.
Chapter Thirteen
There was a time when I thought I could deny what she’s done to me. There was even a time when I thought I wanted to. But that time is no more. Because of her, I am better than I ever could be on my own. And soon, beloved, so soon, I will show you all the wonders of life.
Juan Rodriguez del Flores
Captain’s Log, 13 June 1862
Zack frowned at his brother. “It’s a little late, don’t you think?” he asked. He was wearing a pair of low-slung sweatpants that suggested he’d rolled out of bed to answer the door.
Rafael frowned back. “You don’t have to be rude. It took me a while to get here.”