by Unknown
She blew out a breath and clutched him closer. “They’ll kill me before they let me talk. And you. And…” She lifted up. “Anyone who knows. So, you may think you’re just trusting your family, but if you tell them about this implant, you are endangering their lives.”
He couldn’t argue that. “The joker in the speedboat damn near killed us last night.” He sure as hell had tried, but they’d managed to stay alive and get the phone on the dock. “I love outsmarting those pricks.”
“But we haven’t outsmarted them. They’ll be back. Maybe we should all three get new identities and leave this place.”
Gabe practically spit. “And let them win? No fucking way.”
“But don’t tell your family yet. Not anything. At least wait until we come up with some way to get the implant out first, so I can deal with all the emotion and maybe not get killer headaches.”
Of course, he hadn’t even thought of that. “All right,” he agreed. “But they’re probably going to figure out who Rafe is. They’re all pretty smart out there.” He pulled closer and kissed her. “And when those headaches are gone, are we allowed to have sex under the same roof as that kid?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
He closed his eyes. “Fuuuuuuuuck.”
She laughed. “You sound like him saying no. And if you teach him that word, I’ll—”
He silenced her with a kiss. “I won’t. Can we have a place with a guest house, then, so we can get nasty morning, noon, and night?”
She inched back, blinking at him. “Gabe.”
“Yeah?”
“What are you talking about?”
What was he talking about? Life. With his kid and his…his kid’s mother. He pushed up. “I think I smell peppers and eggs.”
She didn’t move for a moment, then, as always, she put her fingers to her temples and pressed, instantly making his heart ache.
“I got to get that thing out,” Gabe said.
She rolled her eyes. “Even you can’t take an implant out.”
“Watch me.” He gave her a little nudge to get out of the bed. “Come on, let’s go lie to my family and friends. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun?”
“Don’t you remember? Everything’s fun with me.”
She let out a long sigh. “That’s the problem. It is.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Just listening to Nino and Rafe bantering in the kitchen made Lila feel like a jackhammer let loose in her head. She couldn’t even stand that much of a tug on her heart. But this was all she wanted—Gabe and Rafe and being surrounded by family.
Losing her parents hurt. Possibly losing Dex, who’d taken their place, hurt, too. But losing the possibility of this family? No, she simply couldn’t take it. And unless she found a way to fix her problem, she couldn’t enjoy this life. Any life, really.
“So let me get this all straight again.” Chessie leaned closer to Lila, planting her elbows on the kitchen table and resting her chin on her knuckles. Her eyes—so incredibly blue like her brother’s—were intent and unwavering as she looked at Lila. “You were with the CIA in DC, and you knew Gabe…when? How many years ago?”
Gabe surprised her by suddenly appearing behind Chessie’s chair and landing his hands on her shoulders. “We need a good surgeon. Anybody know one?”
That got Chessie’s attention—and that of everyone else in the room. Nino turned the sink faucet off and looked at them. Poppy froze in the act of clearing the dirty dishes on the table. And Mal put down his coffee cup to frown at Gabe.
Only Rafe, drying dishes next to Nino and uncharacteristically quiet, didn’t react.
“What kind of surgeon?” Mal asked.
“Who’s sick?” Nino demanded.
“Why?” Chessie chimed in.
Gabe closed his eyes in disgust. “Trustworthy. No one. Don’t ask.”
Poppy slowly put down a plate and looked at Gabe. “Mr. Gabriel, can I talk to you outside for a moment?”
Gabe didn’t hesitate, backing away from the table and reaching to open the sliding door to the patio. “Right this way, Popcorn.”
Lila watched them walk outside and close the door, a little surprised that he dropped the subject of finding a doctor so easily. At the beat of uncomfortable silence, she turned to the kitchen, her heart hurting just at the way Rafe looked at his great-grandfather.
“Rafe, you’re behaving so nicely here,” she commented.
He grinned at Nino. “That’s five points, right?”
Lila felt her brows rise. “Five points for what?”
“It’s a little game we’re playing,” Nino said. “Points, not dollars, for good stuff. Some taken away for bad stuff.”
“And at the end, I get to go help in the garden with Nino!”
Lila pushed her chair back, intrigued. “You have a magic touch, Nino.”
Nino shrugged a thick shoulder, returning to his work in the sink. “I’m just doing what I did when Gabe was this age because he was the same ragazzaccio that this little guy is.”
Lila felt the blood drain from her face but forced herself to keep a blank, pleasant expression, any Italian she knew eluding her in that moment of panic. Did he know? “Ragazz…”
“Bad boy,” Chessie supplied. “And he was. If a Rossi or Angelino—that’s our cousins who lived with us—was out of line, you could put good money on Gabe being the one in the middle of the trouble.”
Lila turned to her, hoping nothing in her face gave her away. “I bet that made him the most fun.”
“You got that right.” Chessie rocked back on the chair’s two legs and studied Lila. “Pretty sure all the bad-boy genes in the whole family went to Gabe. And maybe”—her gaze shifted to Rafe—“they pass on.”
Oh, they were smart all right. Of course they would look at Rafe and see Gabe stamped all over him. And they could do math, and they knew where Gabe was when a child Rafe’s age would have been conceived. Mal had been there, too.
Was that why he was looking so hard at her?
She looked around from Chessie, whose face practically begged for truth, to Mal, a man she’d once called a trusted friend, to Nino, who had a mysterious ability to connect with her son.
All three of them looked right back at her, waiting. Just waiting. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was bone-dry. Gabe was right. It was time to trust them but not about the implant.
She turned to the patio, seeking Gabe’s help, but he was on the phone and talking to Poppy at the same time. She seized the possible change of focus.
“I wonder what they’re talking about,” she mused.
“Jamaica,” Nino said, coming away from the sink to get closer to the table and peer outside. “Her nephew’s going in the slammer, and the two younger ones might get shuffled off to whatever the government does to kids like that.”
“I’ll tell you what the government does with kids like that,” Chessie said, an undertone of bitterness in her voice. “They give them to strangers and let them die.”
Lila sucked in a soft breath, tearing her attention from the patio back to Chessie.
“Not every government, Francesca,” Mal said, pushing back from the table. “And you’re just looking for someone to blame.”
“Damn straight I am.” She stood, too. “Lila, has Gabe told you the whole story of what happened to us in Cuba?”
Digging into her training for every imaginable ounce of nonchalance, Lila shook her head, not trusting her voice. “Not everything.”
“He will, eventually,” she said.
“Maybe,” Lila managed. “He’s pretty secretive.”
Nino snorted. “And the Pope’s holy.”
“Catholic,” Chessie corrected. “But he will tell you, I’m sure. I would, but he’d get all over my case for telling stories that are not ‘need to know.’”
“Then don’t,” Mal said, coming around the table to put his hands on Chessie’s shoulders. “Don’t interrogate people, at least not obviously, and
don’t spill secrets.” He pressed a kiss on her head. “Let’s go take a walk, and I’ll teach you more about being a good spy.”
Chessie softened a little, her eyes still on Lila. “I’m surprised he hasn’t told you about the woman he—”
“Francesca.” Mal inched her away. “Don’t.”
She blew out a soft sigh and reached out. “I’m sorry,” Chessie said. “I know you’re going through a tough time with baiting this guy and all, but you need to know that Gabe…had a…”
“A relationship?” Lila offered.
“Actually, a…” But it was Chessie who paled this time, as her gaze moved beyond Lila to Rafe. “I was going to say a…”
Lila actually saw the moment it hit Mal and Chessie at the same time. Chessie still looked confused, like nothing going through her head could make sense. But, behind her, Mal’s jaw slackened slightly, and his whole muscular frame seemed to draw back as shock and realization hit him.
He started to say something, but was literally speechless. They knew Rafe was Gabe’s son. And right at that moment, they may have figured out who Lila was. At least Mal had.
“He had a child,” Chessie said softly, a subtle note of accusation in her voice. “That boy would have been five in a few months. When is Rafe’s birthday?”
The sliding glass door opened with a noisy rumble. “Let’s go, Lila,” Gabe said.
Everyone turned to him. “Go where?” she asked.
“Just come with me. Now.”
Without offering some explanation to these two people staring at her in shock?
“Mummy!” Rafe came running over, reaching for her, and she automatically picked him up. “Will you leave me with Uncle Nino?”
“Uncle Nino?”
“That’s what the whole family calls him,” Chessie explained. “Ever since our cousins came to live with us.” She stepped forward and put her fingers on Rafe’s cheek, her touch gentle and tentative. “Everyone calls him Uncle Nino. Even his grandchildren and great…” Chessie’s eyes filled as she stared at Rafe. “Great kids like Rafe,” she finished.
Gabe took a step closer, putting an arm around Rafe and Lila, no doubt making the father/son likeness as obvious as possible. “You can stay with Uncle Nino, little man. I think you’ll be here for a few more days because your mom and I have to go somewhere on business. Is that okay?”
“Yayyyy! Ninooooooo!”
Lila turned to throw a grateful glance at the old man, who stood drying his hands on a kitchen cloth, looking proud. And then she caught a glimpse of Chessie and Mal, who were trying so hard not to react or respond to the fact that Rafe was the child they’d gone to Cuba to find. The child they thought was dead.
Oh, my friends. It gets worse…or better, depending on how they’d feel when they found out everything. Would they welcome her or want to kill her all over again?
A knife of pain sliced through her head, reminding her that until she took care of that agony, she couldn’t love any of them, anyway.
“Let’s fly, baby.” Gabe grabbed her arm, planted a kiss on Rafe’s cheek before Lila put him on the floor and Gabe pulled her to the door.
“We have half an hour,” he said as they walked toward the street. “On the way, you can tell me what the hell was going on in that room.”
“As if you don’t know,” she said, hustling to keep up with him. “Half an hour for what?”
He didn’t even slow his step, but did tighten his arm around her shoulders. “They guessed.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “Please tell me where we’re going. Jamaica?”
Now he did stop. “Why the hell would we go to Jamaica?”
“Isn’t that what you were talking to Poppy about? Nino said she’s having trouble with her family.”
“No, but I need to help her solve those problems. And I will. She was helping me this time.” He reached the GTO parked on the street and opened the passenger door. “Remember the doctor we met at the Christmas party?”
“Oliver? Oliver Bradbury? Isn’t he a cancer specialist?”
“He is.” He nudged her into the seat and bent down to plant an unexpected kiss on her hair, suddenly reminding her very much of the affection Mal had just shown Chessie. “And a surgeon. And he loves Poppy, but then, who doesn’t?”
She sat in the car, feeling her whole body decompress for a few seconds while he darted around to the driver’s side. The pain in her head was steady and strong, and so was the one in her heart.
Gabe slid into his seat and started the car in one fluid, graceful motion, glancing at her while he reached for his seat belt. “Did you really think they were all blind and couldn’t do math?”
“You’re happy about it, aren’t you?”
“I’m not upset, if that’s what you’re asking. Chessie looked a little blown away, though.”
As she should be. Lila turned to look out the window at the passing scenery, putting herself in Chessie’s shoes, who’d found a gravestone with her nephew’s name when she’d gone to Cuba expecting, or at least hoping, to find the child alive and well. And now…he was in the kitchen doing dishes with Uncle Nino.
“She’s going to hate me.”
Gabe just laughed. “Chessie doesn’t do hate. No one in my family does. Well, JP, but he’s just a douchebag. Don’t worry. They might be a little perplexed, but my family has known me as a spy, in some capacity or another, for a long, long time. They won’t question anything too much.”
She shifted in her seat, thinking of Mal. “I stood there and pretended I’d just met Malcolm Harris a few days ago.”
“It’s going to be okay. We found a doctor, and he’s going to meet with you right now, at his home. If he agrees to help, we’ll go to his surgery center. They are open and staffed, but because it’s Christmas week, there are no other patients.”
“Oh my God, that’s perfect. Thank you.”
“Thank Poppy. You can thank me later, because if I have anything to do with it, that bastard of a bug is coming out of your head today.”
“Today?”
He squeezed her leg. “If I have my way.”
“When don’t you have your way?”
He just grinned at her.
Chapter Twenty-five
Gabe had his way.
He paced the waiting room of an upscale medical center tucked into a swanky side street in Naples, less than forty minutes from Barefoot Bay. The place was called IDEA, an acronym for some overblown bullcrap like Integrated Diagnostics through Experimental Analysis.
The place could have been called Joe’s Bar and Surgery Center for all Gabe cared, as long as the Ken Doll doctor knew his stuff. He certainly seemed to. In fact, Dr. Oliver Bradbury, husband of the pretty hot-air balloon woman named Zoe, turned out to be an exceptionally cool dude who liked to push the medical envelope and made his name by refusing to follow the rules.
Gabe liked that, as Poppy, the world’s most unlikely super spy, knew the minute he’d mentioned needing a doctor.
Gabe and Lila had talked with the doctor in the living room of his home in North Barefoot Bay while a precocious toddler named Maya careened in and out of the room, followed by her mother, Zoe, who was also too cool to ask questions.
Gabe was straight-up blunt with the guy, telling him enough of Lila’s backstory that no one with a brain would think they were making this shit up.
Bradbury was no stranger to the scalpel, and even though what they explained to him was obviously nothing he ever trained for in med school, he agreed to help them in his surgery center that very afternoon.
Despite its hip name and pricey leather sofas, the place was, essentially, a hospital. Maybe not a traditional one, but Gabe was, for all intents and purposes, alone in a hospital room while the woman he…
Oh hell. Did he love her? Or did he love who she used to be? Or did he love the idea of loving her? Or was he just—
His phone buzzed with a text from Chessie.
We gotta talk, bro.
Yes, they did. Who paced a hospital room alone, anyway? He needed his sister. And brother-in-law-to-be. And grandfather. And son. He tapped the screen, issuing orders he knew would get him another thing he wanted today: the people he loved the most right here in this room with him.
Forty-five minutes later, he heard Rafe squeal as the elevator doors opened and then a low-pitched warning from Nino, followed by a sudden hush. Who knew the old man was a kid whisperer? No wonder Gabe loved that man so much. Gabe had been getting the same treatment Rafe was his whole life and hadn’t even realized it.
Chessie came around the corner, her eyes bright with expectation and the determination she used when she was facing an impossible computer bug that she fully intended to squash.
“Is Lila okay?” she asked, reaching to hug him.
“She’s going to be.” He hoped.
Mal followed close behind, giving Gabe a fist bump. “’Cept she’s not Lila,” he said under his breath.
Gabe gave a quick and silent nod. “Not in front of the kid,” he said.
As if on cue, Rafe came running in and flew at Gabe. “Where’s my mum?” he asked, using, as always, the British reference she must have taught him. Even poor little Rafe had a cover and didn’t know it.
“She’s talking to a doctor right now.”
His eyes grew wide. “Does she have to get a shot? I hate shots. Don’t you?”
“Depends on what kind.” Gabe easily shifted him to his hip, catching Nino’s eyes as the old man lumbered into the area.
“What kind of doctor’s office is called IDEA?” Nino asked. “They’re not supposed to have ideas. They’re supposed to have answers. That’s what I’d want my doctor’s place to be called: Answers.”
Chessie rolled her eyes, but Poppy came in next, looking around like she was on a White House tour. “Very, very nice, Mr. Gabriel.”
For crying out loud, he wasn’t buying the place.
But she kept nodding with approval, running a finger over the mahogany panels of an armoire that housed a TV he’d shut off when he walked in. “I heard Dr. Oliver’s place was high class and now I see why.”