Legacy of the Highlands (12 page)

Diego’s jaw clenched and his face flushed
with anger. Alex knew that flirting with him was like waving red in
front of a bull and then expecting the taunt to be ignored. She had
to stop. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve embarrassed both of us and
insulted you, which is the last thing I want to do. Your friendship
is too important to me. You’re right, Diego, I’m not myself. I
don’t know if it’s tiredness or the wine or something else…”

Diego didn’t look at her as he strode back
onto the beach, stopping where incoming waves lapped the shore.
Alex watched him pick up stones and angrily fling them into the sea
while she tried to figure out why she was amping up the electricity
between them. She needed to explain it to herself as well as to
him.

“We have to finish this,” she said when she
caught up with him. His hands were on his hips, his expression cold
and unreadable when he turned to face her. “Well?” he asked
impatiently.

“I’m not sure who I am anymore. Can you
understand that? Part of me is missing and I don’t know how to be!”
Tears threatened, but she was determined to get the words out. He
took a step toward her. “Don’t!” She raised a hand to stop him from
coming closer. “You know how Will was, how we were together. He was
playful and we flirted like mad all the time. Maybe acting that way
with you is a way for me to try to seem normal, like nothing’s
different, although I’m very aware that you’re not Will.” She took
a shaky breath before continuing. “And…dammit, I miss his body. It
would feel really good to be held by a strong pair of arms right
now, but I’m sane enough to know that it’s Will’s body that I want,
not someone else’s, even yours.”

Diego nodded. He didn’t say anything until
they returned to the lighted path to the villa.

“It’s late and we’re both exhausted. I’ll see
you at breakfast and maybe we can go for a run.” He squeezed her
hand and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “Sleep well,
Preciosa
.”

“And you, Diego,” she replied.

Still wide awake hours later, Diego stared at the
bedroom ceiling as if he could find an answer there. Friendship and
responsibility be damned. The woman had no idea what it cost him
not to pull her to the sand and make love to her. The conflicted
emotions he’d forced himself to bury years ago as he’d watched his
best friend and Alex exchange vows had been resurrected, and he
wasn’t sure he could suppress them or even wanted to. He hoped he’d
convinced her to stop toying with him. Christ, he’d never even
kissed — really kissed — her and he couldn’t get that image out of
his head. If he were smart, he’d fly back to Abu Dhabi or home to
Buenos Aires and put a continent between them. But she said she
needed him and he was a man of honor. She was his brother’s widow.
He wouldn’t abandon her.

After just a couple of hours of restless sleep Diego
headed out for an early morning run. The mindlessness of hard
exercise always helped him work through a problem and he had a lot
to sort out. He was flattered by Alex’s flirtatiousness, but he had
to believe she was only taking her feminine muscles out for a test
drive, to see if her battery still held enough charge to rev a
trusted male’s engine. She’d pushed his tachometer’s RPMs near the
red zone and it took tremendous discipline to throttle back. But if
she wanted to play it that way, if that somehow helped her
confidence, he’d go along...but only to a point.

He was drenched with sweat by the time he
pushed thoughts of Alex aside and shifted his focus to Will. He was
sure — more than sure, one hundred percent certain — that Serge
would find the murderer, and once that happened the rage that was
building inside him like a volcano would have a chance to erupt.
Diego had little doubt that he’d want to kill the monster with his
own hands, but not until the bastard spilled the reason for the
murder and who was behind it. He didn’t trust the American justice
system to mete out adequate punishment. A smart lawyer could come
up with some minor technicality and the murderer could be
acquitted, free to live his life while Will’s was over. This killer
would pay. He’d make sure of it.

Later that morning he and Alex sipped coffee in
companionable silence in the villa’s courtyard. Showered, and
refreshed by his run, Diego intently scanned The Wall Street
Journal while Alex flipped through the glossy pages of the latest
Ocean Drive magazine. They were at ease again, the previous night’s
tension gone until Alex abruptly put the magazine down.

“I need a big favor.”

“Of course, anything, or at least anything
within my power.” Diego raised one eyebrow, but continued to read
the newspaper.

“I’m ready to go home. Do you think your
pilot can fly me up to Boston today or tomorrow or should I make a
reservation?”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he said
as he leaned toward her to study her face. She looked very
different from the shattered woman that he’d brought to Miami. She
glowed with health, but he also knew that she was still emotionally
fragile.

“Am I sure? Maybe yes, maybe no. But it’s
time to face reality and my reality is Boston, not Miami.”

“Fine. I’ll come too,” he answered
matter-of-factly and stood. He’d expected that once she felt ready
to break free of the villa’s protective cocoon, she’d fly away like
any beautiful butterfly, but he didn’t think he was ready to let
her go.

“Why would you do that?”

“Why not?” he said as he stretched and yawned
loudly. “Look, Alex, I’ll always regret that Will and I didn’t get
things right before he died, but I have to live with that. The
least I can do now is to help you. I don’t want to think of you
walking into that house by yourself.”

“But I won’t be alone. I have Francie and
David.” Damn him, she’d been so sure she was ready to be on her own
and now Diego was planting tiny seeds of doubt where her resolve
had been.

“I know Francesca’s a great comfort to you,
but she has her work and her own life with David. And as dependable
as David is, he’s not Will’s brother...and I am, whether I wanted
to know it or not. We’re family. He’d expect me to watch out for
you. If the situation were reversed, he would do the same for
me.”

“You obviously have this very masculine
compulsion to protect me and I’m grateful, but I need you to accept
that I can’t keep leaning on other people or I’ll never be able to
stand on my own two feet again. I think I’m ready and I have to
try.”

“Let me come along…just as your safety net.
Your place is big enough that you’ll hardly know I’m there.”

Diego’s determination and strength were
comforting, but the implication that she couldn’t take care of
herself was pissing her off.

“How about this. I’ll go home by myself. You
can call me every day, or even twice a day, if that will make you
feel better. I swear that at the first sign that I can’t handle it,
I’ll tell you and you can ride to my rescue.” She aimed a
captivating smile in his direction.

Diego had engaged in enough negotiations to
know when he was outgunned. “You win,” he finally said. He ran a
hand through his already tousled hair in a way that Alex noticed
was so like Will and turned his back to her as he texted his pilot.
“The plane can be ready in a few hours. Does that suit you?”

“That’s perfect. Thanks.”

“You know, life was a lot simpler for men
when women weren’t so damn independent,” he grumbled and left the
room.

Three months after Alex had fled Boston, the Navarro
jet brought her back to the starting point. The pilot had radioed
ahead for a car, which was waiting on the tarmac when the
Gulfstream touched down. Traveling Navarro-style was painless and
the limo pulled to the curb in front of her Commonwealth Avenue
condo in record time.

The trees on the wide boulevard that had been
bare skeletons when she’d left Boston in early April were alive
again and everything was in bloom. Hot pink azaleas had emerged
after winter’s bleakness and joggers vied with bicyclists for
supremacy of the road, taking advantage of summer’s long daylight
hours. She knew that a few streets away, the Charles would be
dotted with sailboats and Harvard crews racing their sculls.

As she walked up the familiar steps to her
spacious apartment on the top floor of a stately mansion that had
been converted to condos, she wondered why she’d let her pride
reject Diego’s offer to come with her. Then she reminded herself
that she was strong, she could do this. All she had to do was put
her key in the lock and turn it as she’d done countless times. How
hard could that be? Key in lock, clockwise twist, customary click,
open sesame. The door swung open and silence rushed toward her. She
paused, unsure of herself. Then she took a deep breath and crossed
the threshold.

The apartment smelled musty from being closed
up for months. She should have had the cleaning service come in,
but there’d been no time. So she opened the windows and hit every
light switch as she walked from room to room becoming reacquainted
with the home she’d known so well. She saved the master bedroom for
last. Its door was still closed as it had been since the night Will
died. Her last memory of that room was watching him cover his naked
body in faded jeans and a sweatshirt as she lay on their bed
admiring him, sated from their lovemaking.

She told herself that she had to open this
door too if she was ever to move on. It was time. She took a
steadying breath and turned the doorknob. The room looked as neat
and impersonal as one in a hotel. Someone, probably Francie, had
straightened the place up, damn her. She’d fantasized about
spending her first night at home in a bed that still held Will’s
scent, but the rumpled sheets from that long ago night were gone.
Like so many others, that choice had also been taken from her.

She ran to the closet, desperate to see if
his clothes were still there. They were, and his belongings drew
her to them the same way she’d been drawn to the man who’d owned
them. She tenderly ran her fingers over each of his shirts and
could almost visualize him wearing them. Finally, she slid a light
blue one with frayed cuffs off a hanger and pressed the soft fabric
to her face. It was only cloth, but it had touched Will’s skin and
not just his scent, but his very essence was woven into it. His
spirit would always remain in this room, the last place they’d been
together.

As she prepared for bed, she fished one of
his unwashed T-shirts out of the hamper, pulled it on and buried
herself under the covers. Depleted, she quickly fell asleep and
dreamed that she was wrapped in her husband’s strong arms.

The instant she woke the next morning, Alex
realized she was starting a day totally and absolutely alone for
the first time since Will died. Francie had stayed with her until
the funeral and then Luisa and Diego had taken over. Her chest
tightened and her heart began to pound as an adrenalin overload
pumped into her bloodstream. She imagined the walls closing in and
her lungs cried out for air. She tried to convince herself that she
wasn’t going to die, but it didn’t work. The crippling panic
attacks that began in the days following Will’s murder had
gradually disappeared in Florida. She’d thought they were gone for
good. She grabbed the phone and hit Francie on the speed dial with
trembling fingers. “Please be there, please be there,” she
murmured.

“Alex? Is that really you? You’re in
Boston?”

“Yeah. I’m having a panic attack. My heart’s
racing, my hands are shaking, I can’t breathe and I think I’m going
to throw up.”

“I’m not going to tell you to relax, but I’m
headed out the door on my way to you. Let’s keep talking and maybe
you can try to calm down.”

“I can’t...I can’t.” She tried sitting first
on a chair then the floor, but she felt like she was going to jump
out of her skin so she paced from one side of the apartment to the
other. She was out of breath and her voice was tinged with hysteria
as she gasped, “God, I can’t breathe!”

“Alex, you know what this is and you know
it’ll pass. You’re not going to die. Now listen to me. Listen! Do
you know where your tranquilizers are? Good. Take one, then get one
of those paper bags the doctor gave you.”

Alex didn’t say anything and Francie was
alarmed by her friend’s labored breathing, but then she heard a
paper bag crinkling as Alex slowly breathed in and out, and she
knew the hyperventilation would taper off.

“You’re doing fine, you’re going to be okay,”
Francie said as calmly as she could although the intensity of this
episode scared her silly.

“I hate this! I was fine in Florida and I was
sure these damn panic attacks were gone. Oh, God, Francie. I don’t
know if I can do this.”

“Of course you can, but you shouldn’t expect
to do it all by yourself. You’re strong, but there’s only one
Wonder Woman and she’s that Linda what’s-her-name actress chick
from the TV show we used to watch as kids.” Then she switched
gears. “Isn’t Diego there? Didn’t he come back with you?”

“No, he’s still in Florida. I convinced him
I’d be fine and he believed me. Jeez, men can be so dense. Doesn’t
he understand that I see Will everywhere I look? His shaving
stuff’s in the bathroom, his towel is still on its hook, his dirty
clothes are in the hamper. What am I supposed to do?”

Only Alex could answer that question so
Francie switched the focus to another subject. “Talk to me about
Diego. Remember how we used to think he looked like a hot, hunky
pirate? I only saw him for a few minutes at the funeral, but he
still looked gorgeous and a little bit dangerous.”

“Gorgeous? That’s a serious understatement,”
Alex’s voice became more animated as the terror retreated. “That
man is beyond hot and he is most definitely dangerous. Even the way
he moves is a combination of threat and seduction. On top of that
he’s kind and thoughtful and isn’t too macho to let me see him cry.
Put it all together and you’ve got a lethal combination. I wouldn’t
admit this to anyone but you, but for the past few days I couldn’t
stop myself from flirting with him! His pheromones must be really
potent. Watch out, married lady! No one is immune.”