ELEVEN 
ELEVEN Acadia squinted against the last of the tropical sun as it reflected blindingly off the light-colored buildings. The street was deserted, except for the chicken nesting on the remaining rung of an empty rocking chair outside the cantina. She’d left Dogburt guarding a sleeping Zak.
Heartbeat pleasantly elevated with anticipation, she yanked open the door to the cantina. As soon as it swung shut behind her, the room was plunged into shifting shadow. She doubted the atmosphere, or the decor for that matter, was deliberate. The useless fan overhead did its lopsided, uneven rotation. Thrup-thrup-thump. Thrup-thrup-thump.
The place stank of booze, cheap cigars, American cigarettes, and body odor. Overwhelming it all was the pungent stench of burned meat. She found the men in the back of the room at what was apparently their usual table. Acadia mentally rubbed her hands with glee. I am going to kick your ass, Mr. Police Chief.
The bartender, a tall man with lanky, greasy hair and a filthy, lime green T-shirt riding up his enormous belly, gave her a startled glance from behind the stretch of plywood that passed as the bar before scurrying through a thinly curtained doorway, leaving her alone with the foursome at the poker table.
None of them looked up. Oh, you know I’m here, you jerks. She deliberately walked with heavy steps as she approached the table and ignored the squelching popping sounds her boots made on the liquor-sticky floor.
Police chief, con man, and extortionist José Fejos was about to deal, but when she didn’t go away, he glanced up, deck in hand, fake-startled to see her. “Ah! The American. You are still here?” His tone said go the hell away.
“Sí,” she said with a slight shrug. Where did he think she could go with no money and an incapacitated husband?
“Señora Stark. Qué sorpresa maravillosa. How is your husband?”
“Much better, thank you.” She smiled and brushed a tendril of hair back behind one ear in a deliberately feminine gesture. “Asleep, actually. I hope you don’t mind me intruding, but I’m so bored I could scream.” The last time she’d been this sweet and girlie was when she’d conned a mother-made school lunch out of Skip Thomson in ninth grade by convincing him that the school bullies had threatened her and stolen hers. He’d had a turkey sandwich, cut-up apples, and a Ding Dong in there, for pity’s sake.
She’d even managed a few tears, if she recalled correctly. Poor Skip; he hadn’t had a chance. It had gotten her a mom-made lunch then, and it was going to get her the money she needed to get out of town now.
“No. No. Not at all. This is, after all, a place that people can go, yes?” He glowered at her. He wore the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, and had what looked like the same disgusting, smelly cigar smoldering in the filled ashtray beside him. The tortilla chips beside the ashtray were liberally scattered across the rounded table of his hairy belly.
She suppressed a small shudder. A hairy belly and food should never be thought of in the same sentence. She tried to maintain eye contact. “Hmm.”
“I would not recommend Teo’s food,” he warned, close-set eyes shadowed by the bill of his cap. He tap-tap-tapped the deck of cards on the table in an irritated fashion as he talked. “You are better off eating over at the mission.”
No kidding. Eating here would probably give her some deadly intestinal disease. “Thanks for the warning,” she said cheerfully, giving him a beaming, open smile. And waited, looking pointedly at the cards and the poker table. “I’m not hungry, anyway.” She cocked her hip out to one side and smiled shyly.
Police Chief José Fejos looked at her expectantly, lifting the cards in a subtle we’d like to get on with our game gesture.
“Oh! Am I interrupting you?” She put a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I love watching men play cards,” she explained, sliding her fingers casually into the pockets of her khaki pants as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “My daddy used to let me stay up once in a while and watch him and his friends when I was just a little girl. He’s been gone eight years now, and I still have great memories; it was such a rare treat to see men who really knew how to play well.”
Chips dropped from his shirt like golden snowflakes as he sighed. She was familiar with that sigh; it wasn’t the kind of sound that suggested he thought highly of women in general, and her specifically. “Do you play poker, Señora Stark?”
Acadia laughed softly. “Well, I wouldn’t say play. It’s been so long, I don’t really even remember the rules. But I used to enjoy watching. May I …?”
His smarmy smile was almost as repulsive as his fat, hairy body. Oral hygiene was another thing not high on his grooming list. “But we play for money, querida, and you are without funds, not so?”
Because you swiped my last twenty, you dishonest, unchivalrous, disgusting pig.
She faked disappointment, then brightened, digging in her back pocket. “I have this. It’s real silver.” Placing the chain on the table, she arranged the medallion carefully.
The care wasn’t fake. Her father would have enjoyed the hell out of what she was about to do. St. Christopher had better step up to the plate.
Acadia smoothed it with her fingertip. “Is that enough for a round or two?” Or twenty. Depending on how fast they decided to take it and send her on her way.
Cigar between two fingers, he picked up the chain on the nail of his pinkie. “This is worth nothing, señora. What else you got?”
Thank you so much for asking. She gave a disappointed sigh. “Nothing here, I’m afraid.” She brightened. “But I have plenty of money back home. I just won the Kansas lottery, you see, just in time for my birthday!” Her smile widened. “Which is today, in fact. So I thought maybe I’d try to see if I could play, to celebrate. But of course, I don’t have access to the lottery money here …” She trailed off, leaving the bait lying on the water like her father had taught her.
“You won a lotto?” Fejos’s heavy jowls quivered, his piggy eyes bright. “How much?”
Acadia cast a nervous glance to the biker guy and a tremulous, hopeful glance at the old man, and smiled shyly at the bald man, who was all but levitating out of his chair with glee. “I won ten thousand dollars,” she told them in a conspiratorial whisper filled with awe and excitement. They’d take her for ten. They’d kill her for five hundred thousand. “Can you believe it? I wish I could get my hands on some of it. But it’s the weekend, and besides, there aren’t any banks nearby.”
“You give me the bank and numbers and I will take care of everything,” Fejos assured her. More tortilla pieces rained down as he puffed up his already puffed-up chest. “I’d be honored to help you. Feliz cumpleaños, señora.”
Happy birthday to her. He wanted to rob her blind.
She opened her eyes wide at his cleverness. Snap went the trap. “You can? Well, if a girl can’t trust the chief of police, who can she trust?” She smiled happily. “Just take out … how much do you think, to keep me playing for a couple of hours until my husband wakes up? Maybe five hundred dollars? No. Make that a thousand.” She made damn sure her smile went all the way to her eyes. “I feel lucky. Okay. Take out a thousand dollars. Oh, this is so exciting! I’ll write down my account number for you.
“Do you have—Thank you.” Acadia took the pencil and piece of notepaper they’d been keeping score on, flipped it over, and wrote the bank account number she’d used for her father’s medical expenses. Barring any recent bank fees, the balance was still holding at seventeen dollars and eleven cents.
After a brief bit of business with multiple speaking glances among the men, Fejos motioned for the skinny old guy to bring over another chair from one of the nearby tables. Acadia didn’t have to guess where she’d be placed. Between Darwin and the rotund police chief, where she’d be on the dealer’s left. Which meant she’d have to place the first bet.
“Oh, this is so cool.” She scooted the chair closer to the table, all bright-eyed and eager and as girlie as she could be. “Thanks, guys.”
Darwin’s dark, wrinkled face scrunched up into a grin. Lots of teeth there. Big teeth. “¿Conoce usted el juego de cartas Texas hold ’em?”
Acadia shook her head, her ponytail, intentionally high and ingénue, bobbing on her shoulder as she gave him a wide-eyed look. “Just tell me the rules. I’ll learn as I go.” She turned to give Fejos a self-deprecating smile guaranteed to make him believe her IQ had just dropped another ten points. “I don’t want to slow you down or anything. But can you try to not take all my money too quickly? I’d like to play awhile—at least until my husband wakes up!”
The police chief gave her a spotty recap of the rules, leaving out a few pertinent details. Of course.
If she’d been Dogburt, she would’ve wagged her tail. Subtly, of course. Just because the cards weren’t in her hand yet didn’t mean the game didn’t begin now. Her poker face came wrapped in an airhead smile.
“I will be generous and lend you twenty American dollars, yes? Ladies first,” Police Chief Fejos told her expansively. Everyone anted up, and he dealt each player two cards. Acadia glanced at her red cards. Not bad. A ten of diamonds and a ten of hearts. A pocket pair.
Fejos ran his thumb over the pile of banknotes in front of him. As her daddy used to say, an obvious tell. He was anxious to bet. Bring it on.
She could afford to lose several hands before she had to win a little to stay in the game. Three or four hands should be enough to read the men and learn their tells. She’d lose this hand; she frowned at her cards.
“I’m not so sure about these cards.” she asked timidly, clutching them too tightly against her chest. “What do you call it when you don’t want to bet?”
José looked up at her. “Tap the table and say ‘check.’”
Acadia awkwardly tapped the table twice as if she wanted a second drink at a bar. “Check!”
The chief threw the equivalent of five dollars into the middle of the table. Darwin and gangster-prisoner Gomez followed and muttered, “Fold.”
Fejos glanced up and looked away. Oh, yes. The slime bucket had a decent hand, as well. He threw another five dollars into the pot.
Her turn. “I guess I’ll call?” She looked up innocently. José dealt the flop and put three cards faceup on the table. King of hearts, queen of spades, and ten of spades. Acadia noted the twitch in his lip and concluded he had either kings or queens in his hand. A pair, unless she was misreading the signs—and she knew she wasn’t.
Her heart twinged. God, she missed her father; he and his poker pals would be howling with laughter if they could see her now. Gomez threw the equivalent of ten dollars into the pot.
The chief leaned back in his chair, feigning disinterest while he stroked his stack of bills with his sausage fingers. “I’ll see your ten and raise you five.” He took a puff of his cigar and blew out a cloud of smelly smoke.
Acadia turned a cough into a sigh of frustration. “I don’t think I should bet this hand.” She threw her cards faceup so that the whole table could see them.
Gomez smiled at the perfectly good three of a kind she’d thrown away and glanced up at Fejos, whose eyebrows rose in surprise. “Next time, señora, throw your cards facedown,” he said with irritation.
“Oh! Sorry!” She reached over and flipped the cards over, giving him a sheepish look.
Alberto folded, the openmouthed cobra on his neck looking on a little too realistically, and the chief raked in the first pot. She felt a pang as her St. Christopher medal was swept up into a pile of crumpled banknotes, bits of chip, and cigar ash.
She played several more hands, carefully reading her opponents, noting their barely suppressed excitement. She held on to her very small winnings, feigning surprise and pleasure when she won and frowning with disappointment when she lost.
The chief dealt her a five and a four. Frowning, she shook her head, ponytail bouncing. “How come I keep getting such horrible cards?” Everybody bet a dollar all the way around.
The police chief’s pupils dilated in pocket-ace excitement. Oh, she’d seen that look before; he had a decent hand. Too bad she didn’t. Crap.
He dealt out three more cards. Acadia’s heart raced, and she struggled to look deflated. A ten and a two. Nothing by itself, but matched with the other three twos on the table, she knew she had it. “Check.”
Alberto bet five. Darwin and Gomez both called. The chief called and raised. Acadia just called, knowing she had to look weak. One more card.
An ace.
The police chief draw in a telling breath. He had aces, and everyone else at the table had—Her mind raced, calculating the cards she’d already seen with the probabilities of folded hands—a possible full house.
The four men played each other with bluffs. The pile of money in the center of the table grew and grew.
There was one last community card to be dealt. The fifth card, the river card, make or break. The jack of spades.
Alberto checked.
Gomez checked.
The police chief rolled his cigar from one side of his fleshy lips to the other, the saliva shiny on the outside of the tobacco. He could barely contain himself and pushed all-in.
Acadia called without hesitation. But she made sure her eyes were wide and guileless as she did so. Alberto paused and called. Darwin called. Gomez called.
With an innocent look, she asked the chief, “Is it okay if I see your cards?”
His grin smeared from ear to ear as he turned over his aces. “Aces over deuces. Completo.” Full house.
Alberto couldn’t beat the hand. He folded. Darwin and Gomez folded.
Fejos stared at Acadia, who maintained a serious, if slightly puzzled, expression with some effort. She wanted to punch the air.
“What do you have, señora?”
She slowly turned over her ten. “I’m not sure … I think I might’ve have won?” God, she loved seeing the dawning realization that she’d wiped the floor with all four of them.
Beginner’s luck, or skill? They’d never know.
Acadia plucked a stained bill from the pile of cash she pulled closer and set it in front of him gleefully. “What a fun birthday. Here’s the twenty you fronted me, Chief. Thanks for letting me play!”
His eyes narrowed. “Your other card, señora.”
With a wide grin, she flipped over the ten and slammed down the two. “Yes,” she said with a good deal more cheer than maybe she should have, “I do believe I did.” She scooped up the pot and shoved the notes into her pockets. “Thanks, guys, that was really fun! We’ll have to do it again. I better go check on my husband now, I bet he’s waking up and cranky at being cooped up inside.”
Shoving away from the table, she picked up her St. Christopher medal and dropped the long chain over her head, then strolled past the table.
Apparently old Saint Chris had ducked out for a coffee break. Hard fingers snapped around her wrist. Acadia’s heart plummeted into her stomach.
“Un momento, señora,” the police chief said, silky except for the underlying threat in every syllable. “I think you are mistaken.”
“No,” she began slowly, eyes darting to the three other men at the table, who stood with deliberate intent. Oh, crap. Did she really think it would be that easy? Her lashes flared, wide as she could, as she asked uncertainly, “I won, right? That’s how people win.” Assholes. “Right? And I paid you back, so now you don’t even have to withdraw the money from my bank account,” she added brightly, to remind him he had plenty to gain by letting her go.
The fingers on her arm were brutally tight, but the expression on his face changed. He had forgotten the bigger prize. He held on as he decided if he wanted both the cash and the lotto fortune, which didn’t take long. But before José Fejos could say or do anything more, the doors behind Acadia slammed open.
“¡Señora!” The shrill old voice sliced through the cantina like a rusty saw blade. Acadia watched the chief’s eyelids flinch. “Durante una hora, su esposo ha estado buscando a usted, y ahora ¿le encuentro aquí, en la cantina?” Sister Clemencia strode across the uneven cantina floor like a miniature soldier in Hawaiian blue. Her beady little eyes were pinned on Acadia as she pointed at her, her tirade reaching a crescendo. “¡Bebiendo como una borrachera! ¿Jugando las cartas?” she spat. A drunk, playing cards. “¡Usted es una mujer ingrata!”
Acadia winced. She was not an alcoholic, ungrateful wife. She was getting them money to get her impatient husband the hell out of here! Still, she gritted her teeth, bowing her head. “I’m sorry,” she said plaintively, and slid José a sideways glare. “I was just going back to the mission, if Police Officer Fejos is done.”
Sister Clemencia fired off a rapid spurt of Spanish that had José’s lips tightening to a thin, pale line. “Sí,” he all but growled, letting her go. Perhaps he’d settle for the lotto fortune after all. He gave the other men a quelling look and, turning his face away from the fierce little nun, a knowing smirk.
Acadia, shoulders hunched, dutifully moved to the old woman’s side as Clemencia shook a gnarled finger at all of them. She didn’t catch all of it, but she got enough to know that the diminutive nun didn’t think highly of men who encouraged a young wife to sin.
She flinched as the nun rounded on her. “Your husband,” she said flatly. “He is awake and seeking his wife. You go. Be a good wife.” Or else hung in the air just long enough for Acadia to march beside the nun across the bar and toward the door.
The men watched her all the way out into the evening light.
As the door swung closed behind Sister Clemencia, Acadia sucked in a breath, whispered, “Muchas gracias,” and ran like hell across the street back to Zak.
Happy birthday to her. She’d just won safe passage out of there.
55836232859675625355565583623285967562535556558362328596756 …
Zak saw the same unending sequence of numbers moving continuously in his mind’s eye with crystal clarity, streaming left to right like some goddamned securities exchange ticker.
They weren’t going away. In fact, they seemed to be permanently lodged in his head. Day or night. Lights on, lights off. No matter where he looked, the numbers were superimposed over the bottom edge of whatever he was looking at. If he closed his eyes, he saw them just as clearly. The only time he didn’t see the damn things was if he was asleep.
Morse code? Some sort of algorithm? An encryption?
Fuckit. He had to stop trying to make sense of something that was a figment of his imagination.
He never got sick. Hell, he rarely went to doctors for anything short of the required travel vaccinations or getting a broken bone set, but he’d get on this shit quick. It was both distracting and cause for real concern. He didn’t like it, even though he imagined—hoped like hell—it was some sort of temporary hallucination. It looked damn real to him. Maybe it was a lingering sign of fever? Or the knock on the head back at the hotel where this had all begun must’ve knocked a screw loose.
Wouldn’t Gideon find that amusing?
He and Acadia sat in a long curiara—a wooden dugout canoe; an elderly Pemon man and his grandson were taking them down the Orinoco River as far as Ciudad Bolívar.
The sky was a deep blue. Not fully dark yet, but several stars were popping up in the vast overhead canopy. The trees lining the riverbank were filled with flocks of red, yellow, and blue squawking parrots, and hundreds of large black-and-orange troupials, with their long tails and bulky bills, swooped and dived, feeding on the insects swarming the water. A heron stood on one leg and watched them skim by. A log or alligator lurked between the tall grasses on the bank. Zak kept an eye out for any quick movements.
“I’ll miss him,” Acadia said as the kid stood on the riverbank waving madly, the skinny dog at his side.
“He probably gave us fleas.”
“Nah.” She waved back just as enthusiastically, causing the canoe to list. “Not Dogburt.”
“Sit still before you tip us over. Pace your excitement, it’ll be a while.”
Even in the wilds of the rainforest, anything was possible when one threw money at it. Acadia and the kid had shown up at the mission clinic within minutes of one another. The kid was there to retrieve his dog. Acadia, flushed and heart-stoppingly beautiful as she’d bounded in, had surprised the hell out of Zak by emptying pockets full of cash.
It was like providence. The kid’s uncle’s brother’s second cousin—he was sure he’d missed something in the colloquial translation—had a boat. He was also unafraid of the police chief whom Acadia had relieved of his cash.
Something Zak didn’t share, not with her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling and hands full of money, was that he was scared shitless that Piñero would finally track them down. He wanted them out of there, immediately. Zak had ignored Sister Clemencia’s admonishment that he wasn’t well enough to leave. He’d died, she reminded him. Several times. God had a plan for him.
Yeah. Meet with his brother. Uncover who the fuck the kidnappers worked for, get back to his life. It was a fine plan. But he couldn’t hold a candle to Acadia—the woman planned everything down to the last peso. He wished he’d seen her playing poker against the crooked police chief and his cronies.
She was an intriguing female.
“What do you think happened to Piñero and her men?” Acadia stared at him like she wanted to see inside of his head. No, thank you. Too damned cluttered as it was.
The old man and his son paddled them into the center of the river, where the water was clear and deep, and the current helped move them along briskly. “Maybe she just gave up.”
She huffed out a breath, shifting to get comfortable on the hard bench seat across from him. “With sixty million U.S. dollars up for grabs? No, she didn’t.”
Loida Piñero hadn’t given up. And if she hadn’t given up, where was she? Zak scanned the lush vegetation on either side of the riverbank, as if Guerrilla Bitch might suddenly appear like a jack-in-the-box from among the trees.
While he didn’t have the itch on the back of his neck he usually got when shit was about to hit the fan, he had a distinct waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling lying like a stone in his stomach. Sixty million American was a shitload of ransom to give up on. And Piñero hadn’t looked to Zak like a woman who gave up easily, if at all. No, she was after their asses.
She just hadn’t sprung out at them. Yet.
Another possibility—one he didn’t even want to consider—was that they’d caught Gideon, and would use his brother as bait to get to him. But Gideon was smart and resourceful, so that scenario was as unlikely as it was unwelcome.
“What are you going to do?” Acadia asked. “You and Gideon.”
“Turn the tables, and hunt her down like the bitch she is. She has answers we want, and I sure as hell don’t like having to look over my shoulder. Something tells me she didn’t instigate the kidnappings. But dollars to doughnuts she knows who did. Gideon and I are professionals at shaking bushes and rattling cages.”
“You could just go home to …?” She left it hanging, waiting for him.
The muscles along his jaw flexed. “Seattle,” he supplied, “and not just no. Hell, no. Not until this is over.”
“Okay, then.” She trailed a finger in the water. “Are you going to recover physically before you hare off on this wild scheme? Or are you hoping to push yourself until you’re really sick, and you—” He noticed she caught herself before she asked him if Gideon was right, if he really did want to die. Again.
“Until you can’t do anything but lie in bed flopping like a—like a beached tuna?”
God, she was funny. A beached tuna? Where the hell did she come up with this shit? His lips twitched. “I’m plenty recovered.” Except for the annoying numerical crawler in his brain, he actually felt surprisingly great for a guy who’d died recently. “Get your hand out of the water,” he added. “Things bite down there.”
Her eyes widened and she snatched her fingers back into the boat so quickly, he had to double-check that something hadn’t taken them already. “Then why are you scowling?” she demanded, with a scowl of her own.
He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I’m not.”
“You have a headache, don’t you?”
He watched an anaconda swish through the water a few feet from the curiara. Thing was as thick as his thigh, and six feet long if it was an inch. “Even my mother never gave a rat’s ass if I had a headache.” His tone lashed. “Don’t mother me, Acadia; I don’t need it.”
“Everyone needs mothering once in a while.” Her gray eyes were calm, mouth set in the lush line he was coming to recognize as Acadia Gray at her most determined. “What happened to yours?”
“Twenty questions?” His shoulder ached, and he shifted to ease the dull pain, annoyed and out of sorts that he couldn’t help with the rowing. He tried to figure out what the numbers could be. A bank account number? Safety deposit? Hell, random numbers with no rhyme or reason? There were a lot of fives …
She did some ultra-feminine thing with the high ponytail and twisted it into an untidy nest on top of her head. Her nape was going to be feasted on by mosquitoes. Zak reminded himself he wasn’t her mother either.
She dropped her hands to hold on to the sides of the canoe. “Got anything better to do?”
He could think of a few—Whoa. “Has anyone told you that you talk too much?”
“Strangely, no.” She cocked her head, and the muted light streaming across her clear skin made her eyes look almost transparent. They got dark and smoky while she was being fucked. And hazy and foggy when she was limp and replete in his arms afterward.
“Okay, yes,” she admitted with a rueful smile that pleasantly kick-started his heart. “Once in a while. And do you know why?”
“I probably don’t, but tell me anyway.” He liked listening to her talk. Liked hearing how her agile, funny mind worked, how her brain ticked through problems, and how she came up with solutions in her own convoluted way.
“It’s a nerves thing, I mentioned that once.” He remembered. “But it was also to get a little attention. My parents loved each other to distraction, usually to the exclusion of anyone else around. They waited ten years to have me—went through in vitro, and so on. When I finally arrived, they loved me to distraction as well, but they were pretty set in their ways, and sometimes they didn’t notice me waiting to be noticed.”
Her gaze drifted past him, out to the lush jungle bracketing the river around them. The noise was different out here; muted, somehow, but no less full. The sudden slap of things skating under the surface, the rustle of animals—even the birds harangued them from all sides.
And yet, aside from the blaring trail of numbers in his brain, Zak was momentarily at peace, and fascinated by all things Acadia Gray.
Her fingers trailed over the boat’s edge again before she caught herself and tucked her hand around the curve of her thigh. He wondered what she’d do if he asked her to tuck it into his. “I’d talk a lot,” she continued quietly, matter-of-factly, “and really fast, so I could tell them about my day or whatever before they lost interest.”
He forced his mind to get into gear. “And they live in Kansas City?”
“My mom died—” She paused, and Zak frowned as something soft and squishy welled up in his chest. Sympathy?
“A pretty routine surgery, but she never woke up.” Her mouth twisted. “Breast reduction, actually. So you can imagine—or maybe you can’t,” she added wryly, “but I was terrified my breasts would get so large that I’d have to deal with the same issues she had. I’d just turned thirteen.”
Tough for a teenage girl. Zak felt compelled to say something, anything, and settled for the first thing that popped into his brain. “Your breasts are perfect in every way.” He loved it when her eyes crinkled up in amusement. “And your father?”
The amusement faded. “Died a month before I won the lottery, as a matter of fact.”
Jesus Christ. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Acadia drew her knees up, resting her chin on them. The canoe wobbled and splashed water around their feet. She shot the father-grandson team an apologetic look over her shoulder. “Lo sentimos!” Then she said to Zak, “Me, too. He was a wonderful man, and I adored him. I guess you could say I had about thirteen awesome years with both of them. Then my mom died, and my father started getting … strange. I thought he was absentminded with grief. They’d been so close—It was years later that he was diagnosed as early-onset Alzheimer’s. It was a slow, scary road. But those first years were … magical.” She smiled. Not sad, not woe is me. A quiet smile filled with love.
She scooped up a handful of water and let it drip off her fingers. Behind her, the old man shook his head. But he didn’t say anything. “I hope one day to have the same kind of marriage my parents did. They were so happy together.” She paused. “Although I fully intend to pay more attention to my kids. What about you and Gideon and your folks? Close?”
“Not even geographically,” Zak admitted. “Crystal gave our father what he wanted. A couple of heirs to the empire he’d built up around him like some kind of kingdom. She never professed to like kids. Which was fine,” he added quickly, seeing her eyes go all soft and dewy. “We had sexy nannies, a stellar education, world travel, and absolutely no boundaries.”
Her sympathy only deepened. “No wonder you both dare fate for kicks. What about your dad?”
“Unless he needed us for a photo op, we were pretty much invisible to him.” His father had been an egotistical ass. Filled with self-importance. It had chapped his hide that Zak and Gideon had started ZAG with Buck and a few grand they’d managed to scrape together as seed money.
He’d always had Gideon. His brother had been his real family. “His indifference would’ve been better. It was just Gideon and me.” And for a while, there was Jennifer, but he definitely wasn’t going there.
“I’m sorry about your wife. That must’ve been so hard. At least there weren’t children?”
Christ. Another fucking can of worms. “We were about to adopt. I stopped proceedings when Jen—” He hadn’t wanted to do it. Jen’s idea of family hadn’t been that much different from his own. And her idea of mothering had been to get nannies and continue her wild ride of life unimpeded. His lips moved in a grimace he couldn’t control. He’d not only lost his wife the day Jennifer died. He’d lost a child as well. Nobody had known that.
“She wanted six, she always said. Six multiracial kids.”
Acadia frowned. “You didn’t want to adopt, or you didn’t want multiracial kids?”
“I didn’t give a flying fuck what color my kid was, but I thought starting with one and seeing how that went made more sense.” He didn’t mention that the subject of children had been dropped the year after they were married, or that he and Jen had had sex for the first time in six months a few months before she’d been killed. She’d been barely three months pregnant and had called him in flight on his way to Cape Town to tell him.
He’d felt a surge of joy mingled with a surge of disgust. Divorce was on the table. Her timing couldn’t have been worse.
God damn these fucking numbers! He pressed his fist between his eyes in an attempt to block them.
In fact, he was pretty much done with the sharing-life-stories business, so he made a big deal of rubbing his forehead. “I’ll just close my eyes for a bit and rest.” And not let you drag my life story from me one painful oar stroke at a time.