From the Heart

by Eva Shaw

  Then there was a clunking sound. Trust me, it was not a bullet because I felt no hot pain. I was not dead because my eyes flew open as Victoria Dupris hissed, “Inez, how dare you interfere with what I am doing—you are hired help.” She gasped, teetered, and tried to reach for the oxygen tank.

  “You are not going to kill anyone, Miss Dupris. This is wrong.” Inez’s voice thundered through the sitting room and if I had not been paralyzed with fear, I would have hurdled myself over the back of the sofa to hug the maid because somehow that toy gun was no longer in Auntie Evil’s claw.

  “Get out. You are fired. Get out right now. I have always disliked you. Father forever praised you, said you were bright and I was the dull witted one. He said I was not even half as intelligent as a stupid maid right off the boat from Cuba.” Victoria screeched and it all came out in a child’s voice, as if she’d regressed sixty or seventy years.

  Inez walked over toward Victoria and picked up the gun. Then she grabbed the softball off the floorthat she had pitched straight at the gun, and that saved my life. She tossed the ball in to the air, smiled at me, and placed it into a pocket of her denim work apron. She was not only a baseball coach. Apparently, true to her words when we’d talked, she still had a mean pitch.

  Inez pulled a cell phone from her crisp white apron pocked, pressed some numbers, spoke calmly to the operator and asked for the police and paramedics to come to the house. Then she commanded to her mistress, “Sit down and inhale on the mask, ma’am. Come now, here’s your oxygen. Breathe in. It’s right here.” She sounded like she was speaking to a child who is spent from a tantrum.

  Finally, Inez looked at me. My legs felt like over-cooked pasta and I flopped against the back of the sofa.

  • • •

  Looking back on that afternoon and my near-death experience, I contribute the wobbling legs, so different than before the cancer, to just that. Before the cancer, like lots of women, I thought I could handle anything. I was woman, hear me roar. The cancer made me mortal, and honestly that wasn’t so bad.

  I have bossy Cousin Jane to actually thank for my near miss. She told me she had a frightening feeling, hearing I’d been commanded to come to the Dupris’ mansion, and do-gooder that she is? She barged into Payton’s debate with the incumbent governor. Jane pulled a microphone away from some citizen who was asking a question of Governor Flint, so she could use it. The governor, true to her base instincts, used a string of four-letter words before attempting to have security grab Jane. As they were dragging her out of the debate, she screamed at Payton, telling him where I was. She told me later, “I let him know that Victoria Dupris was dangerous, a nut job, and if he loved you even half as much as those gooey eyes indicated, he’d better get his backside over there to help you. I never saw a man move so fast, especially Payton, who at least on TV always pretended to be Mr. Joe Cool. The guy loves you, Nica.” Payton called the mansion on his way there, and Inez took the call. Hence, I am alive.

  Back at the mansion? Payton arrived with the Honolulu fire department and he raced to me. We held each other tightly as Miss Dupris was strapped onto a stretcher. From the grim faces of the EMTs, my guess was that she’d expended too much energy attempting to murder me. Later, I would learn that was right.

  Moments after the ambulance pulled out, Diamond dashed in the front doors and Inez held her as she learned everything that happened. “Oh, oh, Nica, I am so very sorry.” She rubbed my arm up and down and cried. “I took the car and drove to Carlton Villas. Oh, had I only been here . . . ”

  “Sweetie, if you’d been here, who knows what would have happened. It was Inez and her killer curve ball that saved the day.” We hugged and then I pulled away. “Why did you visit Babes?”

  “You said Mr. Waller was a friend of my father’s. Your uncle Henry told me so, too.” Diamond stopped for a moment, inhaling deeply, and said, “We must sit in the garden. It’s lovely outside and this room is too stuffy. It stinks of lying and death. I need sunshine.” She threw open the patio doors, which creaked from little use and we followed her to the lanai.

  That’s when I saw something in her that hadn’t been there previously. There was determination. Yes, she was a Dupris.

  Inez, Payton, Diamond, and I sat on the terrace, the Pacific glowing blue in the distance, and Diamond said, “The trust, thanks to Mr. Yu’s family, has had Mr. Waller on a new drug, Seniella. It has been used for years for sufferers of migraines, and now there’s a drug trial to study if it can assist those with dementia.”

  “And Babes is one? He’s on this medication?”

  Payton put his arm around my waist. “Nikky, yes, like I told you, Babes saved Dad’s life. We’ve been trying to help him. When we heard about the success of the drug in Europe, I sought out information and we got him into the initial testing.”

  Diamond smiled and nodded. “He’s starting to remember things from the past. Not just way back, but that too. He told me about the night Jimmy died. He saw the gun in Victoria’s hand, saw Jimmy slump over, saw the blood. He knows, because he told me, that my father pushed my mother aside. He saved her life. And in that instant, the bullet hit him in the chest. Mr. Waller and a Mr. George Stratford loaded Jimmy’s body into the back of a van. Victoria was with them and they drove to the Dupris ranch on the north shore. Daddy’s buried in a grave in the family cemetery there. It’s where Grandfather and Grandmother and aunts and uncles are. I brought Mama ashes with me, and I hope you’ll come with me, Nica and Inez and Payton, when I place her ashes next to Jimmy’s.” She swallowed hard, but there were no tears. She walked to the edge of the patio, put her slender face into a cluster of yellow plumeria as Inez silently went to answer the phone.

  I could see Inez talking and then she came back to us. She walked close to Diamond and held her hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Diamond, but the paramedics did everything they could. She had a heart attack they believe and, and . . . she’s been released from all her anger and pain.” Inez hugged Diamond.

  “It’s better for her. The world has changed so much and Auntie hated change. It was hard for her,” Diamond whispered and then turned to Inez. “You won’t leave me? Please, don’t leave me now that Auntie is gone. I don’t know what I would do without you, Miss Inez.”

  “Oh, baby, I would never do that.” She hugged the woman again. “I never really wanted to retire, but Miss Victoria made it clear that she didn’t want me here anymore.”

  “You’re going to be fine, Diamond,” Payton said in his practical, grown-up voice. “My trust attorney also handled the trust for your aunt. I asked some questions, nothing personal, and everything is set to come to you, from this house to the family estate where your father is buried.”

  I was about to console Diamond, although like Payton said, she would be okay surrounded by good people, especially Inez, when my cell rang. Jane’s photo came up and I knew it wouldn’t do to ignore her. It never did.

  “Hi Jane, it’s over and I’ll tell you about it when—”

  It was Gramps. “We’re at Queen’s Hospital, Nica. Jane’s delivering a baby boy right now. Tom’s with her. I am way too old fashioned to be there, but how about that. Me a greater-than-ever-Gramps. Come over when you can and bring that boyfriend of yours. Since it looks like it going to be permanent with you two, he may as well get used to Jane, Tom, and me.”

  After we’d seen Henry Angieski Morales, all of two hours old and the spitting image of his daddy and the loud mouth of his mama (don’t tell her I said that), Payton and I found the hospital café and sat.

  We didn’t talk for the longest time and then suddenly questions burned for answers. I swallowed a long drink of ice tea and asked, “Did you know Victoria was in back of the threats, the attempt on my life, getting George Stratford to check in on Babes, and even drive the black car that nearly killed me? Did you know Victoria had Pinkie and Mil Finger on her payroll of evil
, too?”

  His hands slid to my face. “I want to hear everything, Nikky, but right now, I have to tell you that I am not going to let you get away from me ever again.”

  Then the guy actually took my breath away. “Nikky Wikiwiki Ticky Wainwright-Dobson.” He got down on one knee and a crowd of doctors, nurses, technicians, and visitors who by now had recognized Payton formed a circle around us. “Would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife? Will you marry me? At once? Now, before the election?”

  “Yes. But? Before the election, Payton? But what if Governor Margaret Flint stirs up a scandal? Remember the dead husbands?” I tried to pull him up, but the guy was more stubborn than me and became more so as the crowd cheered.

  “Let her. Nikky, precious, this is Hawaii. Scandals and dirt are in every family. These are the islands. You either learn to man up to scandal or you move to the mainland.” He laughed and kissed me. “And there are even a few skeletons in the Yu family, but we’ll talk about that on our twentieth wedding anniversary if I wasn’t dreaming and you actually said yes.”

  “I actually said yes. Nikky Wikiwiki Ticky and P. Yu are officially engaged.”

  So we became engaged. For three days. And we did, marry that is. Payton won the election with a significant victory. Even now, when people meet him on the street or at events or walking along Waikiki, they laugh at him and rib him for taking twenty years to ask his high school sweetheart for a date and then marrying her in just two weeks.

  Baby Henry is too young to understand, but he’s going to have twin cousins once we return from the orphanage in Beijing with our own babies. And every member, even the extended aunties and uncles and cousins plus more than I can keep track of, have been celebrating our merger, um, marriage. The Yu and Angieski clans couldn’t be happier. Especially me.

  About the Author

  Eva Shaw, Ph.D. is the ghostwriter and author of more than seventy award-winning books.

  Her latest novels include Games of the Heart (a best-selling novel for Crimson Romance Books) and Doubts of the Heart (also for Crimson Romance Books) and the ghosted novel Poisoned Fate, which is scheduled to be made into a major motion picture.

  Other books include Ghostwriting: The Complete Guide, Writeriffic 2: Creativity Training for Writers, Write Your Book in 20 Minutes, Shovel It: Nature’s Health Plan, What to Do When a Loved One Dies, For the Love of Children, There’s No Business Like Show Business, Insider’s Guide to San Diego, The Sun Never Sets, My Affair with Art, and many more.

  She was selected as one the country’s premier ghostwriters and asked to write an article for the 2013 Writer’s Market, called Ghostwriting 101. Other articles have been published in a wide range of magazines and publications, such as Woman’s World, Shape, Country Living, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Costco Connection, Publisher’s Weekly, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal plus she has ghosted more than one thousand columns, articles, and short stories.

  Eva is a regular presenter at conferences speaking on writing, grief, and recovery. She teaches six university-level online writing courses (with Education to Go, www.ed2go.com) that are available at two thousand colleges and universities worldwide. A breast cancer survivor, she’s an active volunteer with causes affecting women and children in her community, church, and internationally as a board member with Days for Girls International. A portion of the profits of this book will be given to the Breast Cancer Research Fund.

  Eva lives and writes in Carlsbad, CA with husband Joseph and their rambunctious Welsh terrier, Miss Rosy Geranium.

  Eva is available for speaking engagements, conferences, and book discussion events. Contact Eva or her personal assistant, Frannie, at 760-434-6445.

  For more information about Eva, her writing, teaching, and ghostwriting, please visit www.evashaw.com.

  This edition published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  57 Littlefield Street

  Avon, MA 02322

  www.crimsonromance.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Eva Shaw

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-6828-6

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6828-2

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-6829-4

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6829-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © istockphoto.com/Chad Kruzic

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.