Chapter Six
When she stirred, Zara led her back to bed, tucking the covers in around Josephine’s legs. Her abuela had not returned to the room and was probably on her way to work already. Or maybe she was so disappointed in Josephine she just couldn’t bear to face her unmarried, pregnant granddaughter right now.
Pregnant. The word bounced around inside Josephine’s skull like a bagatelle ball ricocheting off its game pegs.
Her mother grabbed the plate with the dry toast from the nightstand and handed it to Josephine. “Eat this. It will settle your stomach.”
She took a bite but protested as she chewed. “How can you be sure I’m with child?”
“Your abuela couldn’t eat eggs while she was with child. I couldn’t either. That’s how she knew I was pregnant with you.”
“It’s not possible.” She and Rake had only made love once that night. Okay, maybe twice, but she knew lots of girls who were far more inappropriate and had been spared this fate.
Zara cradled her cheek. “It’s more than possible, Josephine. I should know.”
Josephine was surprised Zara was willing to talk about this, when she’d been so upset and uncomfortable sharing part of her story weeks earlier. But she was eager to hear more of her mother’s past.
“You’ve never told me how you got pregnant with me.”
Zara hesitated, still slightly uncomfortable, but began talking. “I thought he loved me. We had known each other as children, in school together, but then he…left. He moved around a great deal…”
Her voice trailed off as she hesitated and looked away, her pain obvious.
“Mami, it’s okay. You don’t have to say more,” Josephine said and covered her mother’s hand with hers, squeezing it reassuringly.
“You know he was a…soldier,” Zara said and continued. “He came back and we were together, but then… Well, I thought that once I told him about you, he would stay, but before I could, he was called away.”
“And he never came back?” Josephine asked, wondering what kind of man would just walk away from the woman he loved. Would Martin? Would Rake? But then she recalled Rake’s wife and fear gripped her hard. Rake could be that kind of man. Maybe Martin could too; he’d walked out of his office without a backward glance at her nearly a fortnight ago. How could he ever want to be with her again if he knew she was having another man’s baby? Panic filled her at the thought.
“No, he didn’t come back,” Zara said, “and I had no idea where he went. I always hoped that he would return one day, only…”
Her mother shook her head and suddenly pushed to her feet. “Why don’t you finish up that toast and get some rest? I’ll walk you to work when you’re feeling better.”
Josephine nodded and watched her mother rush out the door. In truth, she was already starting to feel better physically because the food had helped to settle her stomach. Mentally, however, she was at sixes and sevens. She didn’t want to believe that her mother was right, but doing a quick calculation in her head, she knew she was several weeks past the time when she should have gotten her monthly menses. Josephine pondered how she could tell the two men in her life about the pregnancy. She felt sick imagining how they would respond. And her abuela would be even more disappointed in her when she found out how it had happened.
Plus, she was worried about what kind of mother she could possibly be and how that would affect all that she wanted in life. She had only one more course to complete in order to be able to tutor, but what respectable family would hire a young woman whose virtue had been compromised? Her job at the hotel could likewise be in jeopardy, especially if Rake responded negatively to the news. As for her lifelong dream of writing a novel, how would she find the time if she had to also add caring for a baby to work and finishing her class?
But she had never been one to just sit and take things lying down, like she was doing now. She tossed off the covers, grabbed her reticule, and marched downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was cleaning up.
“I’m going to work,” she said.
“I’ll walk with you.” Zara tossed aside the towel she had been using to dry the dishes and met Josephine at the door. Smoothing her hand across Josephine’s upswept hair, she said, “It will be okay.”
“I wish I could be so sure about that. Were you sure?” Josephine asked as they started on the short walk from the cottages to the Regal Sol.
Zara shook her head. “Not at all. I had so many doubts and worries about raising you alone.”
“Not entirely alone. You had Abuela.” Josephine’s heart clenched. “Mami, do you think she’ll ever be able to forgive me?”
“In time, she’ll come around, you’ll see. She forgave me. Eventually.”
Josephine shot a half glance at her mother from the corner of her eye, hearing the upset in her tone. “Did you ever wish you had done it differently?”
Love shone from her mother’s eyes as she smiled and said, “I’m glad I had you.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Josephine said, though truthfully she felt relieved at her mother’s answer.
“I know.” Zara stopped short suddenly, the anguish apparent on her face. “Do you wish I had?”
Since Zara was her best friend in addition to her mother, she had to be truthful. “I always wished I knew my father. It’s why I have to tell Rake about the baby.”
Her mother looked discomfited at her confession. “What do you plan on doing about Martin? Do you plan on telling him as well?” Zara said, her tone filled with concern.
“I think I owe it to Martin to be truthful and tell him what’s happened.” She started walking again, and Zara matched her pace to Josephine’s.
As they neared one of the entrances to the hotel, a small billboard heralded an upcoming show by a well-known troupe of actors and singers. The handsome male lead, Ronaldo de la Sera, beamed a toothy smile from the billboard and Josephine could swear that there was a real twinkle in his eyes a second before he suddenly winked at her.
She blinked, clearing her vision, and stared back at the billboard, but it was just paper and ink pasted on wood.
Surprisingly, some excitement rose up at the thought of seeing the troupe and its handsome male lead. Ronaldo had been one of her abuela’s favorites since she had heard him sing many years earlier. Whenever her abuela could afford it, she would visit the phonograph room in town to listen to one of his latest recordings and take Josephine with her.
Josephine clapped her hands and said, “Look who’s coming to the Regal Sol. Abuela will be so excited, Mami.” If she ever speaks to me again, Josephine thought.
“Yes, she will,” Zara replied, but there was a flatness to her response that caused Josephine to peer at her mother intently.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Zara just shook her head and said, “We need to go. You don’t want to be too late for work.”
The Valencia women seem to be having a very difficult morning. Even the great Ronaldo de la Sera couldn’t help! Maybe we should see how Josephine’s employer paramour love child’s father… Ahem, how Rake is doing this fine day, shall we?
Penelope ran a finger along the edge of Rake’s desk and scrunched up her nose in distaste. With a regal tilt and pivot of her head, she glanced around his suite and with an indignant sniff said, “This place really needs some style. It’s so…pedestrian.”
Rake laid down his fountain pen and peered at his wife as she strolled around the room examining the various furnishings that he had chosen. “This is my suite, and I like it just the way it is,” he said, trying to fight the anger that Penelope could rouse in him so easily.
Penelope made that face again, as if she were smelling something bad. “If you want to impress your father—”
“I don’t,” he shot back, although secretly he very much did want to make his father take notice of his accomplishments. Penelope knew that and never failed to find a way to use that for her own advantage.
His wife—soon to be ex-wife—arched a perfectly shaped brow and said, “Come on now, Rake. We both know that everything you do is to prove to your father you’re just as good as he is, but you’re not, are you?”
Rake pictured wrapping his hands around that long, elegant throat and squeezing it tight just to shut her up. Instead, he fisted his hands on his desktop and inhaled deeply, battling that urge. He wasn’t a violent man by nature, but Penelope brought out the worst in him. It made him wonder what he’d ever seen in her until the inner voice inside him that sounded too much like his father said, That blonde hair like silk. That face and body and those legs. Dear Lord, those long, delicious legs.
“Why are you here, Penelope? Did you come to Miami just to torture me?”
Penelope beamed him her siren’s smile. The one that used to move him but no longer did since he’d learned just how fake it was. How fake she was.
“Come now, Rake. Don’t tell me you don’t miss me? Miss what we can do together?” she said and sashayed sexily toward him. When she reached the desk, she sat on its edge and leaned toward him, giving him a clear view of the creamy skin and plump bosom above the line of her bodice. She laid her hand on his chest and trailed it down, but he snared it before she reached her desired destination.
“Miss you lying to me? Being indiscreet with the manager at my father’s hotel in Palm Beach?”
She pouted, slid her hand back up to his chest, and splayed it directly over his heart. “It was a mistake, Rake.”
He picked her hand off his chest as if he were removing a distasteful bug. “A mistake that went on for how long? A year? Two? And what about all the other men?”
“I took care of you while you were sick all those months,” she reminded him, her cajoling voice changing to crisp and icy on a dime.
He couldn’t deny that. “I appreciate what you did, but everything changed after that. We’re not the same people anymore. We’re not good for each other.”
“We are,” she insisted, but her words lacked conviction.
“As I told you months ago before I returned to Miami, our marriage is over. As soon as I can get some business things settled, I plan to file for divorce.”
She flounced off the desk, her crystal-blue eyes flashing. “I won’t agree to it. You owe me for all I’ve done for you.”
He couldn’t argue with the fact that he did owe her in some ways. They had loved each other at one time. They’d had plans together until he’d gotten sick, and that months-long fever had changed so many things.
“I will take care of you, Penelope. You needn’t worry about that, but if you fight me…” He didn’t need to finish for her to understand what he meant.
“I love you, Rake,” she said, but it lacked the vehemence with which she’d once professed her love. It was almost mechanical, as if she said it because it was expected she say it.
“No you don’t, Penelope. It’s why it’s better that we go our separate ways.”
With an elegant sniff, she regally tilted her head up and said, “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
Without waiting for his reply, she hurried out of his suite, leaving Rake to ponder just what it would take to be rid of his troublesome and unfaithful wife.
The small fishing boat rocked side to side beneath Martin’s feet as he peered through the binoculars, searching for the caves that supposedly existed along the riverbank. He and Nita had been keeping an eye on some saloons of interest in North Miami when he suddenly noticed a group of Tequestas had appeared near one of the locations. After some digging around, one of his informants had mentioned that the native people had tunnels that led down to the river, which they used to bring their goods to market.
He scoured the riverbank as the boat chugged upstream; however, there was little but rock, sand, mangrove roots, and tangled underbrush. As they neared the North Fork, the vegetation thinned and the rock outcroppings grew more abundant. Suddenly, he caught sight of an opening in the rocks.
“Over there,” he pointed to the riverbank and shouted to the boat captain to be heard over the noise of the engine.
“Do you see something?” Nita asked, coming to stand beside him.
He gestured to the spot and handed her the binoculars. “Over there. That opening.”
Nita took the binoculars and raised them. With a nod, she said, “It looks like the entrance to a tunnel or a cave.”
“I’ve seen the Tequestas paddle up to them in their canoes,” the boat captain said.
Martin and Nita looked at the man in surprise. “Who else knows about them?” Martin asked.
The boat captain shrugged. “They’re not common knowledge if that’s what you’re asking. Besides the Tequestas, maybe those white folk who’ve worked the waterways for years,” he said and brought the small ship as close as he could to the edge of the bank and the rounded opening in the limestone. “The river is high now on account of last night’s rain, but normally you could anchor on the riverbank and walk right into the caves. They exit a little way up in North Miami.”
And from there, it’s just about a dozen or so blocks to reach the heart of Miami and the Regal Sol, Martin thought.
He and Nita shared a glance that said she was thinking the same thing as he was.
“Could you please take us back to the Regal Sol marina?” she said, and the captain steered the boat around and toward Miami. With the current moving in their direction, they returned to the hotel’s marina in under fifteen minutes. Someone with a powerful yacht could do the trip upstream to the caves in about the same time, Martin figured. If a crew of men was waiting, they could unload their contraband and be back at the hotel in little more than an hour.
It would be easy enough for Solvino to disappear for that length of time without calling much attention to himself.
Once they were back on land, Martin and Nita walked toward the Regal Sol and ran over the evidence they had so far.
“You say this Sin Sombra came to the attention of the Palm Beach office about four years ago?” he asked, just to confirm he had the timeline correct.
“Yes. Right around the time Solvino returned from Miami. I talked to some of the workers in his Palm Beach hotel, and they say he had some kind of tropical fever that he contracted while he was overseeing the construction of the hotel.”
“And right around the time that Sin Sombra’s activities in Miami went quiet,” Martin said. “We also know that when Solvino and the other railroad barons started building the hotels, nearly six years ago, the first problems and murders began in this area,” he added.
“We do, and while it’s all circumstantial—”
“Cases have been built on less,” he urged, anger kindling in his gut at the hotel owner who had seduced Josephine.
“You really don’t like Solvino, huh? Are you sure there isn’t more to this that you’re not telling me?” Nita said and paused as they reached the steps of the veranda.
Martin was tempted to spill it all out to her, but Nita was so by-the-book that he was certain she’d report him to their superiors and get him kicked off the case. “I just want to catch Sin Sombra and put an end to his crime spree.”
Her gaze narrowed, but then she dipped her head and visibly relaxed. “I’ll take your word on it…for now. It’s almost time for supper. Would you like to get something to eat?”
Martin was a little taken aback at her forward suggestion, but then again, Nita was an independent woman. She wasn’t afraid of pursuing what she wanted, and as he examined her features, it occurred to him that since the other morning when he’d comforted her, there was something different there.
His bruised ego was tempted to grab at it eagerly. Nita was smart and attractive and having her interested in him was a salve on the wounds from Josephine’s actions. But he wasn’t ready just yet to move on.
“I appreciate the invitation, but I still have a few things to do around the Regal Sol.”
She eyed him speculatively and smiled sexily. “Some other time maybe. I’ll see you in the morning, Martin.”
“Have a good night, Nita.”
He waited for her to walk away and then he bounded up the steps, intending to explore every nook and cranny of the hotel. He was determined to discover whether the caves extended farther than they’d been told or if there was some other kind of secret passage from the marina into the hotel that would make it even easier for Sin Sombra to come and go without being seen.
For the next hour he scoured every entrance in and out of the hotel in the basement area as well as each and every closet and storage area.
He found nothing.
He headed up to the main floor and was making his way toward the now closed kitchen when he ran into none other than Rake Solvino.
The hotel owner stopped short, surprised at finding him there. “What are you doing back here?” Rake asked.
Martin pulled back his lapel to display his badge. “Investigating, Mr. Solvino. It’s what you pay my agency to do, which you might remember if you weren’t so busy seducing my fiancée.”
Rake’s eyes widened in surprise. “Your fiancée? I’m not sure—”
“Which of the women it was that you seduced?” he said and grabbed hold of Rake’s shirtfront, anger overriding his common sense.
“Since I’m only aware of one woman with whom I’ve been intimate—”
“Other than your wife up in the Empress Suite?” Martin shot back and tossed Rake away like he weighed nothing.
Rake hit the wall but easily bounced back and nonchalantly dusted off his shirtfront. “What’s happening between my wife and me is none of your business. For that matter, neither is what’s happening between Josephine and me.”
A red haze swept across Martin’s gaze and he lunged at the other man and pinned him against the wall, his forearm tight against Rake’s throat. He got up so close to Rake’s face that his nose nearly brushed across the other man’s as he said, “She’s my fiancée.”
“Funny that she never mentioned you at all,” Rake challenged and grabbed hold of his wrist. “And you may want to consider taking your hands off me if you want to keep your job.”
“Martin! Martin, what are you doing?” Josephine shouted as she raced down the hall and forced her way in between the two men.
Rake arched a brow and glanced at Josephine. “I understand this man is your fiancé.”
Josephine grimaced at the condemning tone in Rake’s voice, and as Martin manhandled Rake again, she pleaded with him. “Please, Martin. This isn’t going to help the situation.”
Martin reluctantly released the other man and stepped back. Staring hard at Josephine, he said, “Is that what this is now? A situation?”
She laid her hand over his heart. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant to, but this is not going to solve anything.”
Maybe it won’t, but it sure had felt good for a moment, Martin thought. And what would feel even better was telling Josephine what he suspected about Rake, but he needed more proof before he did that. Still, he had to warn her.
“He’s not the kind of man you think he is, Josephine. You can’t believe anything he tells you,” he said and cradled her cheek gently.
Josephine smiled at him tenderly. “I know you only want what’s best for me, Martin.”
He nodded, then glared at Rake. “You know who you are, Sin Sombra.”
Rake examined Martin as if he had two heads, then laughed heartily. “Sin Sombra? The criminal? Sorry to disappoint you, Detective, but I don’t know a thing about him.”
Martin scoffed. “I will prove it’s you, Mr. Solvino.”
He returned his gaze to Josephine. “I’m here for you whenever you’re ready to talk, Josephine,” he said and walked away without waiting for her reply.
Whoa. What happened to our patient, kind, caring Detective Martin? I think he’s reaching the limits of that famous patience. And exactly what will happen when Josephine drops her little bombshell? Oh baby!