His Heir, Her Honor

by Catherine Mann

  Shifting uncomfortably in his leather seat, he shook his head. “Only a message from my youngest brother confirming our arrival time.”

  “I’m sorry. You must be frantic.”

  He stared at his hands clasped loosely between his knees. “It’s not like I haven’t known this day was coming soon.”

  “We’ve both seen enough cases at the hospital to realize that preparation doesn’t erase the pain.”

  “Talking about it won’t change anything.” He waved away her sympathy and straightened abruptly. “I apologize for springing the whole family on you so abruptly. I had planned to hold off on that until the end of our time alone.”

  Surprise cut through her. He’d never mentioned planning this trip to meet his relatives. More of those confused and warily hopeful feelings stirred in her gut. “Both of your brothers are already there?”

  “My brother Antonio, his wife and stepson. Duarte and his fiancée. And my half sister is there with her husband. I’m surprised she traveled so late in her pregnancy, but Antonio said she’s emphatic about being there.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if battling a headache. “Sorry to introduce so many people at once. The estate is large enough for you to have your own space if you need to escape. My brothers and I each have our own wing. There’s also a guesthouse if you prefer that to staying with me. “

  “I’m sure your wing will be fine.”

  “The island is secure, without question, but there’s everything you could need there. Our father built it all—from a clinic to a chapel to an ice cream parlor café. He said he wanted us to have ‘normal’ childhood memories, whatever those are.”

  “It sounds like your father tried to do his best in an unimaginable situation.”

  “The violence directed at our family was very real and damn dangerous.” He extended his legs in front of him, drawing her attention to the way his muscular thighs stretched the fine gabardine, the sinews defined so well that the veneer of luxury didn’t begin to mask the raw power of the man underneath the clothes. “Actually, I appreciated the privacy when I lived there. My brothers hated it on the island, but I didn’t want any part of the real world again.”

  Why had he left if he felt that way? Then she realized. “Now I understand how you work those insane hours at the hospital. You actually don’t mind being cut off from day-to-day life.”

  Carlos arched an eyebrow, half smiling. “Is that a loaded question to figure out if I can change enough where you could envision living with me?”

  Admiration and attraction weren’t going to be enough to make a relationship work. “You’re assuming I’m willing to live with you.”

  All humor faded from his face. “I want us to do more than live together. I meant what I said back in the kitchen. I want us to be married.”

  Married?

  The word still packed a powerful jolt. She knew part of her knee-jerk reaction to the idea had to do with the train wreck that was her parents’ screwed up union. But she knew this would be rushing it.

  As much as she didn’t want to upset him when he had such heavy worries about his father, she couldn’t let this marriage nonsense continue. What if he said something in front of his family? “If you keep proposing, I’ll have to sleep in that guesthouse. This was about no pressure, remember?”

  “Then let’s back up to the living together.” His eyes narrowed with that sleepy-sexy look she was beginning to recognize so well. “More importantly, let’s get back to not sleeping together.”

  His words stirred memories of frantic lovemaking on the counter, bringing the sweet taste of raspberries exploding through her senses like the aftershocks of a world-rocking orgasm. She suspected he wasn’t really serious, but rather found such outrageous talk a distraction from concerns about his father.

  All the same, she squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, leather creaking as the tension and the need inside her increased. “Now that you’ve mentioned sleeping, I think I’ll catch a catnap for the rest of the flight.”

  “Fine,” he said, a wicked gleam mingling with the steam in his eyes. “But remember that bacon cheeseburger and mint milkshake you said you’d been craving? The steward has both ready for you. Of course, I can cancel the order.”

  Her mouth watered. And quite frankly, she welcomed the lighter air he seemed determined to inject. Weightier concerns would come soon enough once they landed. “You’re using food to blackmail an expectant mother into conversation? That’s not playing fair.”

  “I’m only trying to help,” he said practically. “I want to take care of you. Not just what you eat or helping you with an aching back. Getting married makes sense.”

  Deftly, he’d shifted the conversation right back to that confusing proposal of his. What was his real motive for this about face?

  Yet what did she want? Her heart clenched as she realized she was more like her mother than she cared to admit, because she did want the fairy-tale romanticism after all. “Thank you, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

  Silence stretched between them until she looked away, focusing instead on the view below where Carlos’s family waited. And what about her family? She couldn’t delay calling them for much longer. She just wanted to have her life more settled first.

  She wanted to have her feelings for Carlos resolved.

  In the distance, an island rested in the middle of the murky ocean. Palm trees spiked from the landscape, lushly thick and so very different from the leafless snowy winter they’d left behind.

  Curiosity about Carlos’s home drew her until she nearly had her nose pressed to the glass as she catalogued details. It was a small city unto itself, a surprise splash of lights in the sea so vast that, like a Lite-Brite design on the water, the island began to take shape. A dozen or so small outbuildings dotted a semicircle around a larger structure, what appeared to be the main house, bathed in floodlights.

  The white mansion faced the ocean in a U shape, constructed around a large courtyard with a pool. Details were spotty in the dark. Soon enough she would get an up close view of the place where Enrique Medina had lived in seclusion for over twenty-five years, a gilded cage for his sons to say the least. Even from a distance she couldn’t miss the grand scale of the sprawling estate.

  The intercom system crackled a second before the pilot announced, “We’re about to begin descending to our destination. Please return to your seats and secure your lap belts. Thank you, and we hope you had a pleasant flight.”

  Her stomach knotted with nerves over meeting his family.

  Engines whining louder, the plane banked, lining up with a thin islet alongside the larger island. A single strip of concrete marked the private runway, blinking with landing lights in the night. As they neared, a ferryboat came into focus. To ride from the airport to the main island? They sure were serious about security.

  She thought of his father, a man who’d been overthrown in a violent coup. The detailed planning of the island made her wonder if every step this family made had ulterior motives. Nothing seemed left to chance.

  If that was the case, why then had he brought her here?

  Carlos steered the SUV through the scroll-work gates separating his father’s mansion from the island. The machine gun-toting guards didn’t so much as flinch as he drove by. He and his siblings had agreed to gather at the house to reconnoiter, then go to the island clinic to see their father.

  He thought he’d prepared himself for this visit, prepared himself for his father’s death. But as he stared at the white adobe mansion where he’d spent his teenage years recovering, the past came roaring up like a rogue tidal wave.

  Slowing the vehicle, he eased past a towering marble fountain with a “welcome” pineapple on top. Ironic.

  When he’d been here for his brother’s wedding, he’d been able to numb himself. However, for some reason, he felt raw this time in a way that he hadn’t experienced since a surgeon had retooled most of his insides. His fingers
clenched around the steering wheel reflexively before he forced himself to relax and turn the vehicle over to the uniformed staff member opening the passenger door.

  His shirt stuck to his back, and Carlos tried to chalk up the perspiration to the warmer Florida climate. But he couldn’t lie to himself. The doctor inside him couldn’t deny the physiological reaction to the stress of being here.

  Carlos circled the front of the car and before he consciously registered the motion, he reached for Lilah. Strange how her presence here kept him going. One foot in front of the other, in spite of the stabbing pain increasing at the base of his spine. His body shouted subliminal alarms left and right. He tucked his hand against her waist under the guise of being gentlemanly since she would probably think he was nuts if he clasped her hand.

  This arrival together was important to him, a commitment from him to her, even if she didn’t realize it. Bringing any outsider to the island was a huge step. Especially for him. His family would recognize that right away.

  Lilah was his now.

  The butler motioned them toward the library. Lilah stayed silent, eyeing her surroundings as they walked through the cavernous circular hall, two staircases stretching up either side, meeting in the middle. He guided her through the gold gilded archway, past his father’s favorite Picasso.

  Finally, he reached the library, his father’s domain. Books filled three walls, interspersed with windows and a sliding brass ladder. Mosaic tiles swirled outward on the floor; the ceiling was filled with frescos of globes and conquistadors. Scents from the orange trees drifted in through the open windows along with the feel of the ever-present warm ocean breeze.

  Beneath a wide skylight, the family had all gathered while his father’s wingback chair loomed empty. Enrique’s two Rhodesian ridgebacks stood guard on either side of the empty “throne.”

  “Lilah, these are my brothers, Duarte and Antonio.”

  Duarte stepped forward first, his hand extended precisely. His middle brother would have made the perfect military officer if they’d stayed in San Rinaldo. Their assumed identities as adults had made it impossible for Duarte to sign on as a U.S. serviceman. Instead, he’d become a ruthless businessman.

  Lilah wore her overly calm expression, the one Carlos had seen her wear during stressful board meetings at the hospital. She shook Antonio’s hand next.

  The family maverick sported longer hair. He’d left the island at eighteen and signed on to a shrimp boat crew in Galveston Bay, working his way up to shipping magnate. His weathered face showed lines of worry today. His new wife tucked her arms around his waist in quiet comfort.

  Once intros were complete, the women circled Lilah in an impenetrable wall—of protection or curiosity? He wasn’t sure. But their half sister, Eloisa, Antonio’s wife, Shannon, and Duarte’s fiancée, Kate, were filling her ears with everything she could possibly need to know about the island.

  Carlos turned to his brothers. “Our father?”

  Duarte clasped his hands behind his back. “Still holding his own at the clinic.”

  “I want to know why he left the hospital in Jacksonville.” There had been a glimmer of hope when they finally persuaded their father to look beyond the island clinic for medical help on the mainland. Getting their father to agree had been a major coup given what a recluse Enrique had become. “I thought he was on board with seeing specialists.”

  Antonio shrugged impatiently. “He said he’s come home to die with his family.”

  Duarte’s jaw went tight for a second before he continued, “The doctors in Jacksonville support the clinic staff here. Transplant is the only way to go if he wants a chance at beating this.”

  “Then what’s with his whole death march?” Their father had options. A chance. A liver transplant could even be done with a live donor giving a lobe of his or her liver, and Enrique had a room full of possibilities in his children. “We need to get him back to Jacksonville immediately.”

  Duarte laughed darkly. “Good luck convincing him to agree.”

  Antonio braced a hand against the dormant fireplace. “Tests show I’m a match as a donor, but the old man shut me down. He’s fixated on the notion that he doesn’t want me to undergo the risk, even though it will save his life.”

  Carlos resisted the urge to bark out his frustration at the outright hypocrisy. His father had demanded his son fight to live after the bullets had torn into his back, to endure endless torturous procedures and rehabilitation in order to beat the odds and walk again. No way was Carlos letting the old man simply check out on the family when there was still a chance. “I will just have to persuade him otherwise.”

  “We would have called you about this sooner, but you’re ineligible to be a donor because of the damage to your liver from the gunshot wounds.”

  A gasp drew his attention. He turned to see Lilah staring back at him with wide—surprised—eyes, the color draining from her creamy skin. Hell. He’d never told her the real cause of his injuries and he hadn’t thought to warn his brothers to stay silent on the subject.

  It hadn’t seemed necessary to inform her. There hadn’t been the right moment. And he knew those were just excuses because he didn’t want to revisit that time in his life with anyone.

  Seeing the confusion in her eyes, he realized he’d screwed up with her yet again, and that unsettled him as he accepted just how important it had become to have her with him.

  Talking with Lilah would have to wait, however. He needed to prepare himself to see his father for what could be the last time.

  Nine

  Every minute spent on this island only imprinted in her brain how very little she knew about the man who’d fathered her child.

  High heels echoing down the marble corridor, Lilah trailed the other women as they gave her a crash course on the Medina mansion, a palatial retreat that felt nearly as large as the Tacoma hospital. They’d already seen the library, music room, movie screening room, pools, more than one dining area and her own suite. Now she was learning where to find the others in their quarters.

  Too bad she couldn’t just MapQuest the place.

  Maybe as she wandered she could collect clues about Carlos from the priceless art collection on walls and pedestals.

  Her heart clenched as she remembered the only painting on the wall in his hospital office—a canvas by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, one of the Sad Inheritance preparatory pieces. She’d always thought the image of crippled children bathing in healing waters to be tied into his own work.

  Now she realized how he was connected to that image in a far more tragic way than she could have ever known. Shot in the back? Tears stung her eyes as she envisioned his scars with a deeper understanding.

  So far the house wasn’t revealing much more about him other than relaying an utter isolation and wealth beyond anything she could have imagined. Her only other option? Ask.

  Passing yet another heavily armed and stoic guard, she eyed the women in front of her. Carlos’s dark-haired sister Eloisa. Then the girl-next-door blonde sister-in-law, Shannon. And the savvy-eyed brunette fiancée, Kate.

  The time with them would be better spent picking their minds about the family than memorizing the floor plan of this mansion maze. She just hoped they weren’t as closemouthed as Carlos. Angling to the side, she passed a man vacuuming the molding over a high archway. Given the late hour, she wondered if the staff around here ever slept.

  As they walked through a small courtyard, she ran her hand along a sleek jade cat keeping watch over a fountain nestled between the property’s vast wings.

  Shannon opened yet another door in their marathon tour. “This hall leads to my quarters.” Her Texas twang coated each word as silk Italian drapes rippled with their passing. “I hope you won’t mind if I check on my son real quick and relieve the nanny. Then we can have that late-night snack I promised.”

  “Please, take your time,” Lilah said, waving the younger mother into the room, balcony doors already parted to admit a gusty
ocean breeze. “I’m wide awake on West Coast time.”

  Soon she would have those same responsibilities, the privilege of a child in her life. Making sure her child had the most stable life possible increased the urgency in settling her confused feelings about the baby’s father.

  Her shoes sunk into the Persian rug until the toes blended into the apricot and gray pattern as she followed the other women into the rooms Shannon shared with Antonio. The suite sported two bedrooms off a sitting area with an eating space stocked more fully than most kitchens. Seeming to know her way around, Kate brought a tray with a bone china teapot alongside a plate of tiny sandwiches and fat strawberries.

  Lilah lingered by a Waterford vase to sniff the lisianthus with blooms resembling blue roses that softened the gray tones in the decor. Trailing her fingers along the camelback sofa, she hesitated, surprised to find a homey knitted afghan.

  Softly, Shannon closed her son’s door and crossed to the sofa, caressing the worn-soft pewter yarn with reverence. “Their mother made this for Antonio shortly before she died.” She looked up, her blue-gray eyes sad. “Antonio was only five when they left San Rinaldo. He told me he thought of the blanket as a shield.”

  Five years old.

  As the other women settled into fat, comfy chairs, Lilah wrapped her arms around herself, chilled to the core by the image of three young boys fleeing the only home they’d ever known. Dodging bullets. Losing their mother. She squeezed her eyes shut briefly. In the four years she’d known Carlos, she hadn’t a clue just how deep and dark those shadows in his eyes went.

  Sweeping her sleek, black ponytail over her shoulder, Eloisa propped her feet on an ottoman, balancing a plate of shrimp and cucumber sandwiches on top of her pregnant belly with a wry grin. “It’s more than a little overwhelming, isn’t it? I’m still growing accustomed to all of it.”

  Resisting the urge to touch her own expanding waistline, Lilah focused on the woman’s words instead, eager to learn more about these people who would be family to her baby. “Didn’t Enrique have visitation rights when you were a child?”