by Dani Collins
As his flickering gaze went from her mouth to her eyes and noted where her attention strayed, her pulse began to flutter.
Something flared behind his eyes before he set his jaw. “Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll be primed for another twelve hours.”
There was absolutely no reason she should hear that as bedroom talk, but she did. Which made her blush and shift out of his way in a small fluster, still clutching the bowl of porridge as she hitched herself into the pilot’s seat.
He didn’t bunk in with Illi, only went as far as the galley, where he settled on his back on the settee, knees bent because he was so tall. He crossed his arms and fell asleep in a blink.
She ate her cinnamon-flavored porridge slowly, wishing she could enjoy it more, but her stomach was really unsteady. Maybe it was the coffee. She hadn’t had any in a while and it was pretty strong, but it was such a treat she refused to let the cup she’d made for Leon go to waste.
Maybe her tummy’s protests were anxiety. Now that she was awake again, a tidal wave of apprehension was creeping up, threatening to drown her. Was there a Canadian consulate in Malta? She’d had three stopovers on her way to Istuval and doubted there were direct flights back. That meant she’d have to show a passport in Munich or Paris or some other country. Officials would want to be sure that Illi—who didn’t look anything like her—was really hers.
Would her credit cards work? Tanja hadn’t had internet access in ages and had failed to turn up for her first day of work at the accounting firm, even when they extended her job offer to accommodate her. Her last paycheck from her previous job had been twenty weeks ago and her sublet had only been confirmed for the three months she was supposed to be gone. That meant rent would have come out of what scarce savings she had left...
She sighed. Zach would scrape up what he could to get her home, but he wasn’t flush with cash, given the new house and new wife and expected baby. Did she have a niece or nephew, she wondered? She would have to ask Leon if she could use his phone. Hers had been traded for food weeks ago. Which meant she would have to get a new phone and why did that feel like the most daunting task of all?
Then there was Leon. She glanced at his shins. How was he going to react when she asked for a divorce? When he realized what she’d done?
She had built him into such a sleazeball in her head. Too handsome. Smarmy. A horrible womanizer, a liar and an all-around reprehensible excuse for a human being.
Part of that had been defensive anger. She knew she was as much to blame for their rushed marriage. It hadn’t felt like a hurry at the time, though. She had mooned after Leon for weeks as he came and went with Zach. Her brother had raced with Leon and had nothing but admiration for him, but when their father had decided to retire, Zach had come home to take over the marina. That’s when Zach had cooked up a plan for Leon to invest in the expansion.
Leon had agreed to invest once he turned thirty and Zach had quickly been caught up in the excitement of purchasing more oceanfront property, chasing permits and rezoning bylaws, hiring engineers and architects. He’d borrowed heavily, expecting to pay it all down once Leon injected capital and the real work started.
Tanja had still been doing the books for the business. She’d tried to warn Zach against moving too fast, but she hadn’t tried very hard. She’d been excited, too. In some ways more. Each time Leon came into the office, her entire being had sprung to life in the most mind-scattering way.
She had known it was only chemistry. Sexual attraction. Infatuation. She hadn’t really known him as a person, but she had wanted to. When he finally flirted back, claiming to be too old for her even as he bent to kiss her, she had been over the moon.
Once they were intimate, her crush had bloomed into full-on enchantment. How could it not? Leon was gorgeous and led a glamorous life. For such an incredible man to look twice at her had been enormously flattering.
Then, a week into their affair, he’d proposed. Of course she had said a captivated and breathless yes. Their marrying would be perfect for everyone.
Given all the activity around the marina and Leon’s travel schedule, they’d had a marriage commissioner come out on his yacht for an afternoon with just her father and brother in attendance. Leon hadn’t wanted his parents to find out through online gossip so they’d kept the whole thing on the down low, tentatively planning a honeymoon in Greece to introduce her to them.
The honeymoon hadn’t happened. Leon’s father had died suddenly. Leon left and his promised investment money had never manifested. The marina her father had built had spiraled into bankruptcy. They had all felt duped.
Tanja hadn’t wanted to admit she was married to the man who had ruined them. She’d gone back to school because she was enrolled, but she’d spent weeks hoping Leon would turn up and explain himself.
As the hurt of his abandonment solidified into anger, however, she had convinced herself that whatever she had felt for Leon had been for a man who didn’t really exist. Had the sex even been as good as she remembered? Or was her memory of that as skewed as her vision of him had been?
Based on their kiss last night, he still had the same physical effect on her. She cringed inwardly at suffering that soaring euphoria and wanton hunger again. It was so superficial! Great sex did not equal “great guy,” as he had brutally demonstrated.
Yet here he was, upending her view of him again, sailing into genuinely treacherous waters to extricate her and her daughter from a dangerous situation.
That didn’t exactly put her in a position to disdain him when she, a woman who prided herself on doing things by the book, had pulled a fast one to get what she wanted. Which was her baby. She would make no apologies for fighting dirty to keep Illi fed and safe and with her, but still.
Perhaps he sensed the waves of conflict and culpability rolling off her. Tanja heard him awaken with a long, indrawn breath. His legs disappeared from her periphery. It had been more like an hour than the twenty minutes he’d asked for. She heard him clatter around the galley, setting the kettle to boil before he appeared beside her.
“Stay there,” he said when she started to shift off the captain’s chair. “I’m going to adjust the sails. I’ll clip on,” he added in reassurance.
He clicked through the screens first, pausing to listen to a weather report in Italian, then went out on deck.
When he returned a few minutes later, the kettle was whistling. Tanja moved to make him porridge and coffee, then washed her bowl and sterilized Illi’s bottle so it would be ready when she needed her next one.
She glanced in on Illi, who was fast asleep, then made herself a fresh cup of coffee and took it up to sit in the nook across from Leon where the sparkle off the water didn’t blind her. No matter what happened from here on in, she had to say one thing.
“Thank you.”
* * *
Tanja’s voice was thick with such heartfelt gratitude it caused an itch in Leon’s chest, one that made him think he should have known all along where his wife was, that she was in trouble. She shouldn’t be sounding like he’d done her a huge favor when he’d only done what any decent man would do for his spouse.
Was he a decent man, though? The jury was definitely hung on that one.
He’d spent the night thinking about her, intensely aware of her in the berth below. His wife. A woman he’d married on impulse, mostly because her brother had learned they’d slept together. The expectation of Zach that Leon would propose had loomed like an aircraft carrier.
Which didn’t explain why he had. Leon had never been one to buckle to peer pressure, but he’d liked Zach. They’d been embarking on a business venture together. And Leon had been a different man then. He’d been blinded by lust and living in the moment. Carefree, some would have called him. Oblivious to consequences was another way to put it. He hadn’t expected their marriage would last, but that hadn’t phased him. At the time, he
’d seen marriage as something that served many purposes so he’d leaped in without regard.
Tanja had been different then, too. Inexperienced more than immature, but brimming with vibrant youth and promise. She’d had plans for her life, not big ones, but solid, sensible ones. She was always in steady pursuit of them, too. Always in motion, talking and laughing and bustling, not given to sitting still as a wraith, wearing dark shadows beneath her eyes, her profile difficult to read.
Motherhood had changed her, he supposed.
“Zach didn’t tell me you had a baby. Where’s the father?” He flicked his gaze to the horizon, ensuring they still had a clear course.
“Dead.”
Before he could mutter I’m sorry, she continued.
“I didn’t have Illi. Not in the pregnancy and delivery sense.”
“But you told the soldiers your milk hadn’t come in.”
“It didn’t,” she said wryly. “Because I was never pregnant.”
“You adopted her?” The unexpectedness of that news caused a bizarre shift inside him, like a seesaw that moved weight across his shoulders, lighter in some ways, heavier in others. It was disconcerting and left his ears ringing.
“Illi is the reason I didn’t get on the flight when the other teachers were evacuated.” She flicked him a glance. “I was fostering her. Zach put me in touch with officials in Canada to help with the adoption process, but internet was sketchy. Then I had to trade my phone for groceries and couldn’t contact him at all. I warned him I would be off-grid, but I guess he panicked when he didn’t hear from me and called in the reserves.” She nodded to indicate Leon. “I should let him know you got me out.”
“I only brought a burner phone and they took it. We’ll have to wait until Malta. How did all of this come about? You being on Istuval?” Istuval was a popular destination for tourists, but usually travelers from Europe and Africa, not North America. Definitely not for anyone since the takeover.
“When I finished my degree and started—”
“You’re an accountant?” He wasn’t sure why that surprised him as much as the adoption. It was the career Tanja had been pursuing when she’d been at university. Once they married she had talked of putting off school to travel with him, though, leaving him with the impression she might have been after an MRS. degree instead of a real one.
“I’m unemployed at the moment, but yes. I’m a CPA. While I was articling, one of the firm’s accountants returned from a stint on Istuval as part of a voluntourism program. It sounded interesting so I applied. I had to pay for my flight, but Kahina’s school offered room and board for a nominal rate in exchange for tutoring women and girls in English. I also taught entrepreneurial skills. Basic accounting for small business, things like that. I signed up for twelve weeks, but it turned into six months.”
“Is that how you met Illi’s mother? She was a student?”
“I never met her. Both her parents are dead. I met her brother.”
Leon let that roll around in his head. It just kept rolling, never coming to rest in a way that made sense.
“You’re going to give me radiation burns, staring at me that hard.” She sipped her coffee. “Brahim was fourteen. He showed up on my first day of class and said his mother was enrolled, but she was too sick to attend. He asked if I could give him a refund. I arranged it, but gave him some course material to give to her. He came back a few days later to ask me about it. He wanted to know how to start his own business so I invited him to join the class.”
“That’s shrewd business right there, getting his education for free.”
“Don’t be cynical. That’s not how he was.” She grew pensive. “Brahim is a very good person. He was trying so hard to support himself and his mother. His stepfather had recently died and he had a new baby sister. I presumed his mother was unable to work because of pregnancy and having a newborn, but she had refused cancer treatment because she was pregnant.”
“Oh, hell.” Leon winced.
“Yeah.” She nodded and bit her lip. “That’s how we lost Mom, so his situation hit me really hard. I wanted to do anything to help him. I offered to watch Illi if he needed to take his mother to treatment, things like that. His mother went back into the hospital and Brahim was staying with a neighbor, one who had other children including a baby. Brahim left Illi with her in the mornings so he could clean pools. That paid for the woman to watch and nurse Illi, but she couldn’t keep it up. He washed dishes in the evening so he could buy formula, but he was so tired between that and looking after her, when he showed up for my class he fell asleep at his desk. I started taking Illi in the evenings and that turned into suggesting he sleep on my couch. We had a good little system for a few weeks.”
“Why didn’t you meet their mother?”
“I tried, but Brahim didn’t want me to. He said the hospital thought Illi was with family. He was afraid if they knew he was relying on a foreigner, they would take her away from him. He loved Illi so much. I loved them both.” She rubbed her breastbone. “When he told me his mother was terminal, I started looking into adopting them. It was going to be months of bureaucracy, but Kahina offered to extend my permit so I could stay and teach. It would have worked out eventually, but the café bombing happened. All the teachers packed up and left on any flight they could get. I couldn’t leave Brahim and Illi. They were... I won’t say they were like my kids. They were mine. In my heart, they’re both mine.”
She was pale as bone china. Her eyes glistened, and her voice was husky with an emotion that dug like nails into him. She was calm in her conviction, though, not trying to persuade him. These were the facts as she knew them. It was eerie, making his scalp prickle.
“Where’s Brahim now?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke. She took a sip of coffee and her hand shook. “He disappeared a couple of times, came home with bruises. He didn’t want to talk about it, then he got the news his mother had passed. He was devastated. She didn’t even get a proper funeral because the military was cracking down. They closed the school. I kept thinking if I could just get them to Canada... But I couldn’t even go shopping by myself. All the flights were canceled. Kahina took us in, but Brahim refused to come to her cottage. I realize now he was being pressured to enlist and was afraid to put us in their crosshairs because he knew they’d use us against him.”
Leon swore and pinched the bridge of his nose. “He’s a soldier?”
“The last time I texted with him, he begged me to take Illi to Canada. I said I wanted both of them to come, but he said he would be okay as long as he knew she was safe.” Her breath hissed and she swiped at her cheek. “I saved those texts to my cloud account before I wiped my phone. As if anyone will give weight to a teenage boy’s texts when deciding the custody of his little sister. I can’t even prove she was his sister. Although they look alike. I have photos of him saved, too.”
“How far have you gotten with the paperwork in Canada?”
“Not far enough,” she said despairingly. “Kahina’s uncle, the man who came last night? He and his wife pressured me to give Illi to an agency. Istuval is her home, I get that, but I couldn’t—” Her voice broke again and she cleared her throat. “I kept asking him, ‘Who will love her?’ I really wanted an answer. Who would be her mother if her birth mother is dead? He tried to tell me she would be adopted, but we could hear gunshots the whole time we were talking. I finally said, ‘If I have to stay on Istuval to be her mother, then I’ll stay.’ He said I could continue to care for her as long as I didn’t draw attention to the family, so I never left the house.”
“You’ve been under house arrest?”
“Only for the last two months, but most women are living that way. Kahina has a garden and a few chickens. We grow lettuce and tomatoes and peppers. It’s been okay, but formula has been a killer to find. Lately I’ve been giving my share of our eggs to the mother
down the street. She’s been nursing Illi a few times a day so I could conserve what formula Kahina managed to beg, borrow or steal.”
“That’s why you look like you haven’t eaten in weeks? Because you haven’t? Bloody hell, Tanja. You need to eat, too.” His alarm came out as fury, making her flinch.
“So does a woman nursing two babies,” she fired back. She added in a mutter, “And that’s how I knew I was Illi’s mother for real. I didn’t care what I had to do or whether I ever ate again so long as she wasn’t going hungry.”
He didn’t know whether to commend or berate her. He only knew it made him furious to think of her withering away even as he respected her level of devotion. The frustration of being sidelined and helpless to go back and fix any of that put an edge in his voice when he asked with exasperation, “Why didn’t Zach tell me all this?”
“I don’t know if he believed I was serious about adopting them until I refused to leave before it was finalized.” She heaved a sigh. “He’s had other worries. His wife was having complications with her pregnancy. He wasn’t in the mood to indulge what sounded like bleeding-heart antics on his sister’s part. The truth is, once the rebels took over, I was afraid to tell him how bad it really was. I didn’t know how much they were monitoring, and I didn’t want to stress him out any more than he was. We were as safe as we could be at Kahina’s.”
“He still could have told me.” Leon had to wonder if Zach had feared Leon would refuse to help if he knew there was a baby involved, but he didn’t want to believe he’d fallen that far in his old friend’s estimation. “You have the paperwork now, though? The cleric approved the adoption or whatever?”