His Bahamas Affair (The Albury Affairs) (13 page)

“You
wanna
talk about
your
nightmare?” he returned and Loraine responded with a silent touché. She was
ready to talk about anything but that. “Didn’t think so. Let’s eat.”

He turned away with the
bowl of bread and moved to the living room area and placed the bowl down on the
coffee table. He stared at her with a raised brow, his brown eyes so ice cold
that it made her shiver.

“I’ll serve up the
soup,” she blurted out, quickly moving to stand before the stove. She served
the soup into a bowl, carried it to their dinning setup and placed it on the
coffee table. She sank to the floor, sitting Indian style and Reno quickly
followed.

They served and began
eating quietly and Loraine was scared this was how the rest of their vacation
would be. And it was about time she spoke about Pierre, wasn’t it? But what if
he…no! If she kept thinking about it, worrying about his reaction, she was
going to talk herself out of opening up to him.

She placed her spoon
down, wiped her sweaty palms on her shorts and took a deep breath.
Here goes nothing.
“His name was
Pierre.”

Her admission was
followed by silence. Loraine looked up, scared she’d left herself open to
criticism but what she met shocked her. His face was expressionless as he
lowered his spoon into the bowl and the piece of bread on the saucer. Calmly he
dabbed his mouth with a napkin before he said, “Who is Pierre?”

Loraine’s hands shook
where they rested on her thighs. That man’s name still made her feel like a
little girl hiding under the blanket because she was scared of the monster in
her closet. She moved back, away from the table. She didn’t want to risk
breaking the dishes, the way she was shaking.

Reno stood up and came
to her side. She thought he was going to lower himself beside her, instead he
lifted her into his arms and moved to the couch. He sat down with her in his
lap. She watched as he weaved his fingers with hers, his other hand combing
through her hair. Loraine looked at her empty hand, wondering what to do with
it as it sat on her thigh. She wanted to hide it because it was shaking so bad.

“Lori, who’s Pierre?”

She swallowed hard
before she spoke, fisting her free hand tightly to stop the shaking. “He’s the
reason I’m hiding out here. I have a stalker and I swear, even as annoying as I
can be, I did nothing to attract him. He just—”

“
Shh
,”
he cut her off, pressing his lips lightly against hers. “You may be a lot of
things Lori, but you don’t deserve to be tormented by a sociopath.”

Loraine was taken
aback. She’d thought of a number of reactions—pity, condescending, mocking,
judgmental—but not this. It was the reason
noone
aside from her parents and Jeb knew about Pierre. After her father had blamed
it on her itchy feet and insistence to go abroad for a semester, it didn’t
inspire her to share her ordeal with anyone else.

“So he’s still
bothering you? Haven’t your parents done anything about it?” His eyes narrowed.
“Are you still in danger Loraine?” he demanded harshly.

“No!”
Ah hell!
Why did she just lie? The same
reason she was here, to be free. Free from fear, free from the protection, free
from the nightmares. He was her freedom and she wasn’t going to jeopardize it.

“He was arrested, it
happened eight years ago.” She played it off with a pitiful laugh.

His hand fisted in her
hair. “Lori, I hope you’re not lying to me!”

He was back to calling
her Lori; that was a good sign.

“I
still have nightmares on the anniversary, that’s all.”
                                               
`

“So you’re here hiding
or collecting yourself?”

She forced a smile down
at his worry filled face. “A little bit of both.”

His hand released her
hair and he began to lazily stroke it. “I’m worried about you, Lori. You came
all this way to run from a memory and I’m not sure it’s working.”

Loraine found something
to do with her hand as she raised it up to cup his rough cheek. He hadn’t
shaved yet and the scruff felt good against her soft palm. “Reno, you help more
than you know. How about you let me help you too?”

He exhaled loudly,
looking down at their intertwined hands. She hoped he would confide in her,
because it meant he trusted her. One can’t love without trust.

“We were arguing about
him when I crashed the car.”

Oh
God!
Loraine leaned closer, pressing her lips against his temple.

He took another deep
breath before he spoke again. “We’d just dropped off Riana at NYU and mom had
cried halfway back to LA before she finally dropped the bomb. Reno Sr. had died
two months before.” He snickered. “It explained her moping around for a month
and here we thought she was sad to let go of her baby.”

“It must have been
that, too. Your mom loved you both with all her heart, otherwise she wouldn’t
have left to give you all a new start,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I know. But
it really pissed me off when she started crying over not being able to say
goodbye to her only love and all that junk!”

Loraine wasn’t surprised
at the anger just at his words. Did he not care that his father was dead? Did
he hate him that much? That frightened her.

“Please tell me you
didn’t confront her over it?”

He sighed heavily. “I
may be an asshole, but I’m not heartless. I stayed quiet as she cried, saying
he wasn’t a bad person, just ambitious and misguided. Then she said two things
that shocked me. One that he’d left me
Albury’s
Place.”

Well from what Riana
told her, his surprise made sense. “Because he didn’t leave it to Ruiz?”

He nodded. “My mom said
Ruiz and his mom left just a few months after we did. I was surprised she left
it all, considering it was her money that kept the resort open.”

Yeah, Loraine
understood that. Ruiz would be the logical heir, not Reno. “What’s the second
thing?”

He shook his head
laughing but there was no amusement in it. “Reno Sr. was legally married to my
mother, not Ruiz’s.”

“What?”

“The bastard was
legally married to my mom a few months after she got pregnant with me. She gave
him a choice—either to make me legitimate or never see me.”

Loraine was stunned
beyond stunned. His father was the modern Don Juan from the looks of it. “How
do you know it was legal?”

“She organized the
wedding. She wasn’t going to take any chances. But with Ruiz’s mother, he hired
his friend to pretend to be a priest. My mom knew she existed but she did
nothing because she wanted him to have his dream. She tolerated it for years,
but when she found out about Ruiz and the fake wedding, she was already
pregnant with Riana.” He ran a hand down his face then over his head. “He
managed to convince her not to leave him but when she found out she was having
a girl, she just couldn’t. She didn’t want Riana to follow in her
example—settling for crumbs when someone else had the entire cake.”

“Does Riana know this?”

He shook his head and
with a warning in his eyes he said. “No, and I don’t want her to.”

She nodded. “And what
about Ruiz?”

“It’s the reason why
his mother left and by then, Senior had cleared her of all she had. Ruiz only
found out about the resort when he got the notice of death but he doesn’t know
that his mom wasn’t the old man’s legal wife. I’m not looking forward to
telling him. He was really pissed off about the inheritance thing, I could tell
the first time we met and I don’t want to make it worse.”

“You’re going to have
to tell him the truth, and soon.”

He sighed tiredly. “I
know. I’m still taking care of that man’s mess ups.”

Loraine wished there
was more she could do to help except talking. But there was something that bothered
her. “Why do you say you killed your mom?”

His face creased with
anguish. “We were arguing about the resort. I wanted nothing to do with it but
my mom was trying to convince me to obey the old man’s last wishes. Sort of
make up for not seeing his kids—as if that was our fault! I lost my temper and
I started yelling at her, punching at the steering wheel. She kept trying to
calm me down, telling me I was going too fast but I just kept raging on. The
next thing I knew we were hit. The car rolled a few times and when it finally
came to a stop, I was hanging upside down, caught by the seat belt. When I
looked to my right, it was empty. My mom was gone; her side of the car was gone
as well—seat, door everything. The first thing I felt was fear then relief and
hope. I thought if she was tossed out, maybe she had been spared the brunt of
it and I hoped she wasn’t hurt as bad as I was because Riana needed one of us
to be alive. The way I felt, the excruciating pain in some part of my body,
numbness in the rest…I could see the blood run out of me and pool under me and
I knew I wasn’t going to last long. I blacked out and when I woke up, weeks had
gone by, Riana was crying at my bedside and my mom was dead.”

Loraine felt nauseas.
Relieved and glad that he survived but sick to her stomach at the image he
painted. “Did she suffer?” she croaked through the lump in her throat.

Reno sniffed, wiping
his tears as he shook his head. “They don’t think so. Her body was mangled with
the part of the car that was ripped out.”

Bile rose in her throat
and she closed her eyes wishing she hadn’t asked. She could see it in her head
and she was going to be sick soon if she didn’t banish it from her mind.

“Does Riana—”

“No!” She jumped at the
force of his answer. “And I don’t want her to know. The cop investigating the
accident made sure she didn’t see what was left of our mother. I’d rather she
be remembered whole and not body parts that had to be scraped off metal. He
showed me the same consideration but I insisted on seeing.” He pressed his eyes
tightly shut, tears squeezing out. “God, I wish I’d listened to him.”

The pain in his face
broke her heart. His eyes had been glazed over as he told the story, like he
had been stuck reliving the horror, a horror she had made him speak about. But
now with his eyes tightly shut, she knew he was trying to get rid of the
memory.

“Guilt, that’s what
made you take on
Albury’s
Place.” She was practically
talking to herself because his eyes were still clenched shut, as he fought to
push the memory away.

She kissed his closed
eyes, his cheeks, his lips as she stroked his hair, willing him to come back to
the present. “Did the police say it was your fault?”

He shook his head. “I
had the right of way and the semi driver was drunk.”

She winced.
Dear God, a semi!

She cupped his face and
turned his head up to her. “It wasn’t your fault, so stop blaming yourself. I’m
sure your mom doesn’t blame you for it.”

He snorted looking up
at her with wet lashes and tear streaked cheeks. “How do you know that?”

“Because that’s not
what you are blaming yourself for. You blame yourself for your last words to
her. They were angry, accusing nothing like what you would have said if you
knew that would be the last conversation you would have with her.”

Fresh tears welled up in
his eyes and he buried his face in her chest, his arms tightly wrapped around
her waist as he sobbed his pain away quietly. She soothed him, her own tears
flowing freely. After a while he looked up at her and whispered, “I could love
you, Lori.”

Loraine swallowed her
surprise and tried not to be over excited but it was useless. Any other
circumstance, she would be screaming her elation, but instead she whispered
back, “I could love you too, with all my heart, Reno.”

* * * *

Loraine stared down
into the clear waters of Nassau harbor as the catamaran sliced through it. It
looked so inviting and relaxing she couldn’t wait to go swimming. That morning
when Reno woke her up to tell her they were going on a catamaran tour she had
expected it. Not the tour but the dodging. He was going to keep them busy
enough to forget their heart to heart conversation the night before. He was
never one to voluntarily be vulnerable and it must have made him uncomfortable,
and she knew he wasn’t going to open up to her again anytime soon. He was back
to being him—confident and emotionally distant.

She didn’t mind. In
fact, his mask was her shield from her own horrors. But his confession, when he
said he could love her still had her on her toes. She was ready to wish on
stars, toss coins into a fountain, and whatever other superstitious ritual she
needed to do to make that come true. When she said she could love him with all
her heart, she already did. She realized that after he was vulnerable with her
and sought comfort from her. That sealed her fate. She was in love with him and
even more determined to stay in his life, by his side.

“Hey, Lori!” Reno
called out to her as he walked toward her, pointing to the houses lining its
shore. “If you ever think about buying real estate on my side of the world,
that’s our Hamptons. These are million dollar vacation homes.”