The driver nodded and checked over his shoulder for traffic before clicking to his horse. Still slightly dazed to find herself clip-clopping down Central Park West, Zia felt compelled to ask.
“Did you stop by Natalie and Dom’s just to pick up a blanket and brandy?”
“Pretty much. Although abuelita suggested it would be a smart move to let your brother know I intended to ask you to marry me. I wasn’t too keen on the idea,” he admitted with a grimace. “At best, Dominic considers me a half step above a freebooter. But I figured I...”
“Wait! Back up!”
“To what? Freebooter? It’s an old Dutch term for pirate.” He attempted to look innocent but the gleam in his eyes gave him away. “Or do you mean the part of about telling Dom I intend to propose?”
“You know very well that’s what I mean!”
“Well, I have to say His Grace wasn’t all that happy about his sister hooking up with a lowlife Texas wharf rat. But after some abject begging on my part and several comments from Natalie about his lifestyle prior to marriage, Dom conceded it was your decision.”
Zia’s mind whirled with images of swashbuckling pirates and Dom assuming his haughtiest grand duke demeanor and Mike trying his best to appear abject. She was still trying to sort through the kaleidoscope when he used the arm draped across her shoulders to angle her into a close embrace. His breath warmed her cheek, and his eyes smiled down into hers.
“Why look so surprised? What did you think was going to happen after you threw that bombshell at me over the phone?”
“I thought we were going to talk about it this weekend, at a time and venue to be decided.”
“We could talk, I suppose, but it makes more sense to me to cut right to the chase. I love you. You love me. What else matters, Anastazia Amalia Julianna St. Sebastian?”
“Did Dom make you memorize all my names?”
“No, that was Natalie. Your sister-in-law,” he added with a touch of awe, “is a powerhouse packed in a very demure, very deceptive package. I’m not sure I want to get her and my sisters in the same room at the same time. The males on both sides of our respective family trees might never recover.”
A thousand questions had swirled through Zia’s mind. Where would they live? How would marriage affect her appointment to Dr. Wilbanks’s research team? When, if ever, would she return to her homeland? But his comment about family trees pushed everything else out of her head.
“We do need to talk, Mike.” She threw a quick glance at the driver and dropped her voice. “We’re making a life decision here and I don’t even know how you feel about adoption. Or fostering. Or using a surrogate or...or not having children at all.”
“Look at me.”
His eyes lost their teasing glint and he, too, lowered his voice to give her gut-wrenching worry the seriousness it demanded.
“I’m good with any of those options, Zia. As long as we make the decision together.”
“But your family...your sisters...”
“This isn’t about them. It’s about us. You and me, spending the rest of our lives together. I want to sail the Pacific with you and show you my world. Tag along behind you at the hospital to learn more about yours. When and if we decide to bring children into the world we create together, we’ll figure out the best way to do it. All that’s required at this moment is a simple ‘yes.’”
The old hurt, the sense of loss Zia had carried since that long-ago ski trip, was still buried deep in her psyche. She suspected it would never fully disappear. But a burgeoning joy now overlaid the ache. The duchess was right. She had to reach out and grab the future with both hands.
Literally and figuratively. Sloughing off her doubts, she hooked both hands in the lapels of Mike’s overcoat and tugged him closer. “Yes, Michael Mickey Miguel Brennan. Yes.”
When he moved in to seal the deal with a kiss, Zia knew she would always remember this snapshot in time. Whatever came, whatever the future he’d sketched for them brought, she would feel February’s nip. Hear the horse’s hooves clacking on the cold pavement, the carriage wheels rattling out their winter song.
Then he surprised her with another memory to tuck away and savor. This one included a jeweler’s box. Her second of the night, Zia thought with a wild thump of her heart. She raised the lid, her fingers a little shaky, and gasped when the pear-shaped diamond caught the glow of the streetlamps.
“I had to guess at your ring size,” he confessed as he plucked the ring out of its nest and eased it over her knuckle. “The fit looks pretty good to me, though.”
Not just the fit. The size and clarity and the fact that it adorned her finger had Zia swinging between delight and disbelief. She’d met this man less than two months ago and now wore his ring. It was only a symbol. A very expensive token. Yet it shouted to the world she and Mike intended to make a life together. She’d never appreciated the awesome power of symbols before.
She tucked her hands under the blanket and fingered the ring throughout the ride. The raised mounting and sharp, V-shaped prong protecting the pear’s pointed tip had almost drawn blood by the time they arrived at the New York Yacht Club.
Hemmed in on three sides by towering skyscrapers, the club was a bastion of old Manhattan now immortalized as a National Historic Landmark. Light poured from the huge windows fronting West 44th Street. Fashioned to resemble the elaborate transoms of Spanish galleons, the windows gave tantalizing views of an immense interior room lined with scale models of members’ yachts.
Hundreds of scale models, Zia discovered after she and Mike had checked their coats and joined the glittering crowd. Thousands! Some with sails furled, some in full rigging. They were mounted on lit shelves that filled almost every inch of the fantastic room’s walls, leaving space only for a monstrous white marble fireplace decorated with tridents and anchors and an oval painting of a ship in full sail. Zia rested her arm lightly in the crook of Mike’s arm and craned her neck to take in all the nautical splendor.
“Mike!”
A short, sturdy fireplug of woman with iron-gray hair and leathery skin cut through the crowd. A distinguished and much taller gentleman trailed in her wake.
“That’s Anne Singleton,” Mike advised as the woman plowed toward them. “Her husband and I served in the navy together.”
Zia appreciated the brief heads-up, especially after Anne latched on to Mike’s lapels and hauled him down for a loud, smacking kiss. She broke the lip-lock but hung on to his tux.
“Can’t believe we finally got you up here to the Frostbite Regatta and the damned thing gets postponed! Promise you’ll come when we reschedule.”
“We’ll see.”
“If you’re done with him, Annie, mind if I say hello?”
The mild exposition came from the man Zia assumed must be Singleton’s husband. His wife relinquished her hold and used the brief interval while they shook hands to inspect Zia from head to toe. All of a sudden she let out an earsplitting whoop.
“He did it!” Her leathery face creased into a wide grin. Eyes alight, she jabbed an elbow into her husband’s side. “Harry! He did it!”
“I see,” he replied, wincing.
Zia didn’t, until Mike explained. “After cooling my heels so long in Pittsburgh this morning, I wasn’t sure I’d get here in time to pick up the ring. Tiffany’s said they would courier it to my hotel, but just to be safe I called Anne and asked her to pick it up, then meet me at the airport.”
“Which I was so thrilled to do! You have no idea how many women I’ve tried to hook this man up with in the past three years. I’ve run through every one of my single, divorced and widowed friends, the daughters of those friends, the friends of those...”
“I think she’s got the picture, Anne.”
“Oh hush, Harry! You paraded a few past him, too. Remember that bottle blon
de you invited to the races in Newport? Worst weekend of my life,” his wife confided with a shudder. “The woman had a laugh that could strip the paint from a steel hull.”
“True,” her husband conceded good-naturedly.
They were so different, Zia thought. One so tall and elegant in his tux, the other wearing what was probably a ten-thousand-dollar designer original with complete disregard for the way it hitched up on one shoulder and bunched around her sturdy hips. Yet the affection between them was obvious and heartwarming.
“I’m Harry Singleton, Dr. St. Sebastian. I don’t know if Mike told you, but he and I go way back.”
“Please call me Zia. And, yes, he mentioned that you served in the navy together.”
“Did he also mention that he saved my ass when I went overboard in the Sea of Japan during Typhoon Ito?”
“No.”
She threw Mike a questioning glance, but Anne Singleton waved an impatient hand. “You can bore her with your war stories later. Right now we need to toast this momentous occasion.”
She detached Zia from Mike, caught her arm and hauled her toward a table groaning with crystal and china bearing the yacht club’s distinctive insignia etched in gold. Two other couples lingered by the table, cocktails in hand. While her husband signaled to one of the hovering attendants, Anne introduced Zia to their obviously close circle of friends.
“That’s Alec, former conductor of the Lincoln Center Orchestra,” she said, stabbing a finger at each of the four in turn. “Judy, his wife and the lawyer you want if you’re ever charged with tax evasion. Helen, mother of five and the world’s greatest cook. Dan, who’s yet to miss one of Helen’s meals. Okay, now listen up, crew. This is Zia St. Sebastian. She and Mike are about to hook the bight.”
Zia’s puzzled look generated grins all around and several equally unintelligible phrases.
“Fit double clews,” Harry supplied, his eyes twinkling.
“Get spliced,” the retired conductor put in.
“Also,” Judy drawled, “known as getting hitched.” She rounded the table and took both of Zia’s hands in hers. “I know protocol says you’re supposed to congratulate the man in this situation, but I think everyone at this table will agree you’ve won a real prize.”
Zia didn’t need to hear Mike’s low groan to know his friends had acutely embarrassed him. She, on the other hand, was delighted to discover yet another dimension to his multifaceted personality. A side of him this group obviously cherished. A side she was suddenly, voraciously eager to explore.
* * *
The rest of the evening passed in whirl of color and music. The seven-course dinner was a gourmand’s delight. The live band provided dreamy music during and after the meal. What kept Zia laughing, though, were the personal recollections that grew more incredible and less believable as the night progressed. Interestingly, there was only one mention of Mike’s previous plunge into stormy matrimonial waters. It was couched in an obscure nautical term that dropped Zia’s jaw when Anne whispered a translation.
Her sides were still aching when she and Mike collapsed in the backseat of a taxi well past one in the morning. By unspoken consent they went to his hotel. And, again by mutual consent, they called the duchess the next morning to ask her permission for a family gathering at the apartment later that afternoon.
Natalie and Dom showed up. So did Gina and Jack and the twins. Maria made a special trip in, and even Jerome managed to pop up for a quick glass of champagne.
After the toasts and hearty congratulations, Dom engineered a few moments alone with Zia. They stood at the windows overlooking Central Park, two foreigners with unbreakable ties to America...and Americans.
“This is what you want?” he asked softly in their native Hungarian.
“Yes.”
“It’s not easy to blend two worlds, two nationalities.”
“You and Natalie don’t seem to have had any problems.”
“We haven’t,” Dom agreed, his gaze drifting to his wife. “But Natalie is altogether unique.”
“So is Mike.”
His glance came back to Zia. The love in his eyes flooded her heart. “Then I wish you all the joy that I’ve found, little one.”
“Thank you.”
An hour later, Zia kissed Mike goodbye. She hated to see him go. This separation loomed so much larger than their previous weeks apart. It also resurfaced her concerns about where they’d live and how they’d merge their very different careers.
“We’ll work it out.”
“Before or after we’re married?”
“Whenever.”
“Mike...”
Her snort of exasperation made him smile, but his eyes turned dead serious as he curled a knuckle under her chin.
“We Texicans are thickheaded as hell, darlin’. Stubborn, too. But I’ve been down this road before. Nothing and no one matters to me more than you do. We’ll work out the minor details.”
* * *
Mike made pretty much the same declaration to his family when he returned to Houston and announced his engagement. Eileen took considerably more convincing than the rest. Probably because she’d seen him at his lowest point after his divorce.
Mike hadn’t been happy then, when his sister had tracked him to one of Houston’s sleaziest waterfront dives. And he wasn’t happy now, when she marched into his office unannounced and uninvited. It didn’t faze his sister that he was on a teleconference with Korea. She planted a hip on the corner of his desk, crossed her arms and waited.
“I like Zia,” she said the moment he disconnected. “I do! And I get down on my knees every night to thank God she was there to drag Davy out of the undertow. But you’ve known her for what? Six weeks?”
Mike set his jaw, but she ignored the warning.
“That’s two weeks less than you knew The Bitch before you waltzed her to the altar.”
“Eileen...”
“I don’t want to see you hurt again, Mike. None of us do.” Tears filmed her eyes. “Please tell me you know what you’re doing.”
The tears took the sting from his anger. He pushed out of his chair and came around to drape an arm across her shoulders.
“Jill was heat and hunger and lust. Zia’s...” He searched for the impossible words to describe her. “Zia’s what you and Bill have,” he said finally. “What Kate and Maureen and our parents and abuelita all found. What I need.”
His sister heaved a resigned sigh. “Since you put it that way...”
* * *
He thought he was home free after that. Right up until the middle of March, when Rafe came into his office just hours after Mike’s return from a three-day meeting in Seoul. A frown creased his brother-in-law’s forehead and his dark eyes telegraphed trouble. Still, Mike wasn’t prepared for his uncharacteristically hesitant opening salvo.
“You remember the bottom line on Zia’s MRSA study?”
“One point two mil and some change.” A knot formed low in Mike’s belly. He’d worked with Montoya long enough now to read his VP for Support System’s unspoken signals. “Why?”
Rafe scowled at computer printouts in his hand and framed a slow, careful reply. “The change seems to have multiplied since the original proposal. And I’m damned if I can figure out why.”
Ten
With Rafe’s words hanging heavy in the air, Mike got out from behind his desk. “Let’s take this to the conference table. You need to show me exactly what’s got you concerned.”
The table was a slab of thick glass supported by a bronze base. It seated twenty and had hosted too many high-level negotiations and contract signings for Mike to count. Those billion-dollar deals weren’t on his mind as Rafe spread out his pencil-annotated reports, however. What concerned him was a specific project that GSI had helped fun
d to the tune of a quarter-of-a-million dollars.
“The study’s direct costs track,” Rafe said, spreading out a series of documents. “Zia’s initial report accounts for every hour her team spent refining their objectives and setting up their base of operations. Ditto expenses for supplies and equipment, hours logged on the center’s computers and fees paid to their outside funds consultant.”
Mike frowned as he skimmed the fees charged by Danville and Associates. The total was on the high side, but not out of the ballpark compared to those charged by other firms that specialized in securing and managing grant monies. He just couldn’t get past his instinctive and purely personal gut reaction to Danville himself.
“The discrepancy’s in the indirects,” Rafe was saying as he flipped several pages.
Well, hell! Mike had warned Zia to check her indirects.
They were tricky at best. A soft area encompassing overhead expenses like administrative support, utilities and depreciation for buildings and equipment. Usually the parent institution—in Zia’s case Mount Sinai’s school of medicine—negotiated with the United States Department of Health and Human Services every four years or so to determine its indirect cost rate. Unfortunately, those negotiations weren’t based on any hard-and-fast mathematical formula. They had to take into consideration such intangibles as the school’s academic standing, salary levels of their professors compared to other institutions, and so on.
“As you know,” Rafe said, echoing his thoughts, “indirect rates can vary anywhere from twenty to forty percent depending on the reputation of the institution involved. And even when HHS agrees to a rate, there’s still considerable flex in the process.”
He flipped to another printout. This one showed the amounts contributed by private foundations and corporations.
“Not all of Zia’s investors funded her indirects at the same percentage. These two didn’t fund the indirects at all.”
Mike zeroed in on a single entry. “But GSI did.”
“Yes, we did. We also approved the formula the university uses to determine how much of the money we send them goes into their general operating fund and how much goes back to Zia’s project.”
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