Stunned, Emily shook her head. “Oh, no.”
He gripped her hand firmly as she attempted to wrest the ring from her slender finger. “You don’t have to give me an answer now. I’ll talk to you when you get back.” She held on to the sleeve of his jacket, but he was too quick and too strong when he escaped her grasp.
“Keith Norris!” Her shout reverberated throughout the terminal.
A small group of passengers, several airport personnel and members of a flight crew stopped and stared at her. A rush of heat suffused her face as she stared after Keith’s departing figure as he disappeared from sight. He had just proposed to her.
Biting down on her lower lip, she tried composing herself. Keith was willing to wait a month for her answer, but she would not change her mind. Her answer was and would continue to be a resounding no. Trancelike, she passed through customs, then made her way to the gate that led to the ColeDiz International Ltd. corporate jet. It had become a family mandate that anyone who claimed Cole or Kirkland blood was expected to use the corporate jet for air travel. The decree had gone into effect after Martin Cole’s eldest daughter had been kidnapped.
Her father and uncle had transferred control of the family-owned conglomerate to the next generation of Coles but continued to attend monthly board meetings to provide indirect oversight of the many coffee plantations in Belize, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, as well as vacation properties throughout the Caribbean.
The copilot took her luggage and assisted her into the luxurious aircraft, waiting until she was seated and belted in before he returned to the cockpit. Fifteen minutes later the jet taxied down the runway in preparation for liftoff. Emily sat motionless, staring at the brilliant stone on her left hand. It was only after the plane was airborne that she twisted the ring off her finger and dropped it into the cavernous depths of her handbag.
Chapter 3
December 28
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Christopher Delgado sat on his favorite chair in the family room in his parents’ ranch house, watching a Christmas movie he had seen at least a dozen times. He would’ve gone to bed soon after his parents had bid him good-night, but he chose to stay up to catch the late edition of the nightly news.
He had celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday on Christmas Day with his mother, stepfather, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, long-time Sterling Farms resident employees, horse trainer Joseph Russell and housekeeper Marisa Hall.
There had been the usual exchange of gifts, but this year’s celebration had become more momentous. Matthew Sterling had raised his glass of champagne, his brilliant gold-green gaze shimmering with unabashed pride when he toasted his stepson as the next governor of New Mexico. Everyone had followed suit, raising their glasses—everyone except his mother, Eve Blackwell-Sterling. She had verbalized her apprehension when he had announced his candidacy for state senator two years earlier, because she’d feared the secrets she and Matthew Sterling had put to rest regarding Chris’s biological father would surface during her son’s campaign against William Savoy. Her fears were temporarily allayed when the name of Alejandro Delgado-Quintero was never mentioned.
Chris did not attempt to belie his mother’s consternation, because Eve had stubbornly refused to discuss it with him. She had voiced her opinion, and nothing he could say would make her change her mind.
The telephone rang, and he reached over and picked up the cordless instrument. “Hello?”
“This is Grant.”
Chris sat up straighter. Why was his fraternity brother and campaign manager calling him at his parents’ home?
“What’s up, Grant?”
“A source told me that Savoy uncovered some information about your father.”
Vertical lines appeared between Chris’s black eyes. “Matthew Sterling?”
“I said father, not stepfather.” Grant had stressed the word.
Chris inhaled, unable to move or breathe. “Who’s the source?” he asked when he finally let out his breath. He hadn’t realized how fast his heart was beating when the name Alejandro Delgado-Quintero—the man who had been responsible for giving him life—whispered in his head.
“I can’t reveal my source.”
His fingers tightened on the telephone. “Do I have to remind you that you work for me, Grant?”
There was a prolonged pause before Grant said, “No. But I do know that I don’t have to reveal my source. You’re going to have to trust me with this, Chris. He’s reliable, and I promised him that I would never compromise his anonymity.”
Closing his eyes, he ran his free hand over his graying hair. “I suppose I don’t have a choice with this one. You know I don’t want a campaign run on smut and lies.”
Grant Carsons had run a squeaky clean campaign for him in his state senatorial bid, but had verbalized his doubts whether it would be the same in the gubernatorial race.
“What did your source tell you about my father?” he continued, not recognizing his own voice. It sounded old—tired.
“He’s returned to Mexico,” Grant said softly, “to die. The Mexican authorities received his request to return home six months ago and finally granted it last week.”
Chris opened his eyes. The movie had ended and the familiar image of a news anchor appeared on the screen. “Where is he?” The three words came out flat, emotionless.
“He was permitted to return to his family’s estate in Puerto Escondido.”
There was a pregnant pause—a full sixty seconds—before Chris spoke again. “Thanks for the information.”
“What do you want me to do?” Grant asked.
“Nothing right now. I’ll handle it.”
There was another pause. “How?”
“I have to decide whether I’m going to see him.”
“When do you think you’ll know?”
“Probably next week.”
“Whatever you decide to do, just be ready for the kickoff fundraiser on February seventeenth.”
An expression of implacable determination crossed Chris’s face. “I’ll be ready. Thanks, buddy.”
“Thank me when you’re governor. Good night.”
“Good night, Grant.” The call was over. His no-nonsense campaign manager had hung up. Pressing a button, Chris replaced the instrument on the table.
He sat motionless, staring at the television screen. He could not believe that his life was suddenly spinning out of control.
The moment Chris had announced his decision to seek the office of governor of New Mexico he’d known he had embarked on an odyssey that would permit the residents of the state to dissect every infinitesimal fact of his past.
Representing an election district as state senator would be far different from assuming the responsibility of handling the affairs of an entire state. He had won his senatorial seat in a hard-fought campaign and a hotly contested election when he’d opposed William Savoy. Savoy, still smarting at his loss to a virtual unknown who had had no prior political experience, reluctantly conceded, then promised that the next time they faced off it would be very different from their initial encounter.
Christopher Blackwell Delgado and William Alan Savoy had been given two years to plan strategies for the gubernatorial race, and the time had provided the incumbent governor’s son the opportunity to delve deeply into his opponent’s past to unearth a scandal that had besmirched the Delgado name.
The professional investigators hired by Savoy had deliberately leaked the news that terminally ill Alejandro Delgado-Quintero, who had fled Mexico thirty-two years earlier to live in an undisclosed South American country after informing on several corrupt Mexican officials, had returned to the country of his birth—to die.
Chris knew Savoy was waiting for him to begin his campaign tour; then everyone i
n New Mexico would become privy to a family secret Matthew Sterling de Arroyo and Eve Blackwell-Sterling had buried more than three decades ago.
He did not remember the man whose genes and surname he shared, because Matthew Sterling had become the only father he knew, loved and respected. Now his mother’s worst fear after he’d decided on a political career was about to be realized: her life with Alejandro Delgado would be played out before the residents of New Mexico and the entire United States.
How had she known? What special powers did his mother possess to see into the future? The ghost of Alejandro Delgado will rise up and destroy you.
Her premonition echoed in his ears, drowning out the sound of the sportscaster’s voice recapping the day’s sporting events. The images of Keith Norris and Emily Kirkland flashed across the screen, superimposed with a logo of interlocking wedding bands. Chris sat dazed, his heart pumping painfully in his chest. He felt as if someone had slammed a hammer into his chest, had pierced his heart with a dagger, leaving him to hemorrhage unchecked.
“No!” he whispered aloud. “She can’t.” How many more shocks would he be faced with before the year ended and a new one began?
He could not believe Emily was going to marry Keith Norris. He had had dinner with her at her Santa Fe home the day before she left to celebrate Christmas in Florida, and she had said she wasn’t going to marry the ballplayer. He had left her home before midnight, kissing her gently on her lips, with the promise that they would see each other in the new year.
The phone on the side table chimed again, and he reached over and picked up the receiver before it rang a second time.
“Hello.”
“Chris!” The sound of Sara Sterling-Lassiter’s strident voice brought him out of his paralyzing stupor. His sister had married their parents’ neighbor, and within her first year of marriage had made Matthew and Eve Sterling grandparents for the first time.
“Sara? What’s the matter?”
“Did you see it, Chris? Turn the television on to Channel—”
“I’m watching it,” he countered, interrupting her, knowing what she was referring to.
“When? When did Emmie decide to do this?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Of course I didn’t know. When I spoke to her this morning, she never mentioned that she was getting married.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in Ocho Rios at her parents’ vacation home. She’s going to be there for two weeks, then she’s coming here.”
Closing his eyes, Chris whispered, “Is she alone?”
“Of course she’s alone!” Sara snapped. “You’re going to lose her, Chris,” his sister warned, this time in a softer tone.
It wasn’t the first time Sara had warned him about Emily Kirkland. He had known Emily all his life and had always treated her like a sister. But with each passing year it had become more difficult for him to think of her or interact with her as if she were family. And he wasn’t even certain when he realized his feelings for her had changed.
But what Sara failed to understand was that he couldn’t lose Emily because he had never had her. Whenever she dated she usually saw several men at the same time, refusing to commit to any of them. Most seemed content to wait until she was able to fit them into her busy schedule—all except the Colorado Rockies persistent outfielder.
“What are you going to do, bro?”
A frown appeared between his dramatic black eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Go after her.”
In a moment of weakness, Chris had confessed to his sister that he was in love with Emily—had been in love with her for a long time. He saw other women, slept with a few of them, but not once had he ever permitted any of them to see the real Christopher Delgado.
He’d tried discerning what had drawn him to Emily, aside from the fact that their parents were lifelong friends, and it was only recently that he had concluded that she was his female counterpart. They were more alike than dissimilar: organized, goal-oriented and very ambitious. While he was compassionate, generous, loyal and dependable, he was also controlling and a workaholic. And so was Emily Kirkland.
“I’m going to tell you something I promised Emily I would never tell you,” Sara continued in a hushed whisper.
“What is it, Sara?”
“She’s in love with you.”
There was a pregnant pause before Chris was able to respond. “She can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“She sees other men.”
“You sleep with other women.”
“Careful, Sara!” The lethal warning in his voice was like the crack of a whip.
“Shut up, Christopher Delgado, and listen to me,” Sara ordered. “After I hang up I want you to call the airport and reserve a flight to Jamaica. Then rent a car—anyone in Ocho Rios will be able to direct you to the house and property the locals call Sunderland. Be a man, Chris. Get up off your ass and go after her, because I don’t want to see you or speak to you again until you’ve settled your business with Emily Kirkland. Goodbye, brother.”
He sat there, listening to the drone of the dial tone in his ear. His sister had hung up on him. A slow smile eased the lines of tension ringing his generous mouth as he depressed the button on the telephone, then dialed information for the number of any carrier that flew to Jamaica. Sara’s revelation that Emily was in love with him was even more shocking than Grant’s or the sportscaster’s announcement.
It was an hour later—after he had reserved a red-eye flight from the Las Cruces International Airport to Miami, with a connecting one to Kingston—that he remembered his younger sister’s unwarranted reference to his masculinity. He would settle with her—after he returned from Ocho Rios.
He made his way out of the family room and into Matt Sterling’s office. He scribbled a note to his parents, explaining that he was going to Ocho Rios. What he did not write was that he was going to try to convince a woman he had fallen in love with not to marry another man. He taped the sheet of paper to the telephone receiver, then retreated to the bedroom he’d occupied when growing up to shower and shave. A car service was expected to arrive at Sterling Farms within three-quarters of an hour to take him to the airport. He was ready—ready to challenge William Savoy again, ready to reunite with Alejandro Delgado and ready to bare his soul to Emily Kirkland.
Chapter 4
December 29
Ocho Rios, Jamaica
Emily swam out into the clear blue-green waters of the Caribbean, glorying in its warmth and the healing rays of the tropical sun on her back and shoulders. It was only her second day in Ocho Rios, and when she arose that morning to the scent of lush fruit and tropical flowers drifting in through the open windows she could not believe it had been seven years since she had taken advantage of her family’s Caribbean retreat. The last time she had come to the house was the spring her parents renewed their marriage vows for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Her former career army officer father had taken over as CEO of ColeDiz International Ltd. after his younger brother, David Cole, resigned to set up his own recording company. Joshua and his older half brother, Martin Cole, who had assumed the responsibility as Chief Operating Officer of ColeDiz, diversified and expanded the empire their father, Samuel Cole, had set up more than a half century earlier. Earlier in the year, Joshua and Martin, at sixty-eight and seventy-four respectively, had successfully turned the day-to-day operation of ColeDiz over to their sisters’ sons, who had inherited the business acumen of their elderly grandfather, Samuel Claridge Cole.
Emily’s brother Michael had followed in his father’s footsteps when he attended and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, then joined the same branch of the army from which their father had retired
as colonel and former Associate Coordinating Chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Michael had also inherited his father’s proficiency with languages. He had mastered Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Arabic and Japanese.
Her certified public accountant mother had left the world of finance for motherhood but continued to manage her husband’s investments. After a number of extraordinary ventures resulted in phenomenal windfall profits, Vanessa Blanchard-Kirkland had become the ColeDiz investment guru.
Turning over on her back, Emily closed her eyes and floated with the gentle rise and fall of the tide. Her semiretired parents had elected not to return to Santa Fe with her. They claimed they wanted to take advantage of the warmer Florida temperatures, but Emily suspected her father hadn’t wanted to leave Samuel Cole. At one hundred and three, the Cole patriarch barely clung to life as he drifted in and out of lucidity. When he was rational he demanded his illegitimate son’s presence. Joshua usually spent hours at Samuel’s bedside, reassuring him that he loved him and would remain with him until he drew his last breath.
She got to see the members of her extended New Mexico family on a regular basis—her mother’s sister, Connie, her husband, Roger, and their two sons, both of whom were married and had started their own families. However, whenever she traveled across the country to visit with her Florida relatives it was usually for a festive occasion. Her cousin, Regina Cole-Spencer, had invited her to come to Bahia to spend time with her, her husband, Aaron, and their son and daughter, Clay and Eden. Emily had never been to Brazil, and even though she had found the offer very tempting, she had not found the time to accept their invitation.
Kicking her feet gently, she floated toward the shore until she found herself in shallow water, then stood and walked back to the beach. Sitting down on a large towel, she leaned over and brushed the minute particles of white sand off her damp feet. A gentle northerly breeze ruffled the fronds from a nearby palm tree and the distinctive fragrance of bougainvillea hung in the warm air. Droplets of water dotted her brown shoulders and raven-black hair. Smiling, she picked up a pair of sunglasses, perched them on the bridge of her nose, then lay down on her belly to sleep.
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