Chapter Two
“Son of a…bishop.” Curtailing his language when in the presence of his five-year-old son was always a challenge for Gabe, but never more than when Lila’s diamond-encrusted wedding ring was lost. And the culprit was helpless and howling and scared enough to literally pee his pants.
“Daddy, I’m sorry!”
And he was pulling out the Daddy Card.
“Listen, bud. Stop crying and think.” On his haunches to stay eye level with his son, he dragged his hands down Rafe’s little arms and took both hands in his. “When did you last have them?”
“I’m so sorry!”
“Shhh.” He pulled him closer to comfort him with a hug. “I know you are. Everybody makes mistakes, and you’re not in trouble.” Although he shouldn’t have taken the rings in the first place. They’d reinforce that lesson later—after they found the rings. “Did you have them out here? By the pool? Outside?”
Rafe looked at the gate. “Maybe out there. Maybe here. Maybe…I don’t know.” He shook his head, a quivering lower lip warning of another wail. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, we’re going to look.” Gabe stood, still holding Rafe’s hand, starting with a cursory glance around the patio. “You and Mom look here, and I’ll…” His voice trailed off as his gaze landed on Lila, who was bone-white and wide-eyed. “We’ll find them,” he promised her.
“I know, but…” She looked over her shoulder at Poppy standing a few feet away with the same look of horror in her eyes.
“We’ll find them,” he insisted. “Nino and I will take the grass. You guys look in here, and…Lila, it’s just jewelry.”
She swallowed visibly. “It’s not the rings,” she said under her breath.
Then what? And he figured it out. “Oh, for God’s sake, not you, too, Lila.” He narrowed his eyes at Poppy. “Both of you, please. We don’t have time for that insanity. Find the damn rings!”
Both women seemed paralyzed with fear. Gabe shifted his attention to the one he knew understood common sense. “Lila, it’s crazy and stupid, and you know better than to listen to that.”
She nodded several times, as if trying to convince herself. “Of course. Go outside and look.” Then she reached for Rafe, and Gabe noticed her hand quivered. “Honey, we’ll find the rings.”
“Mummy.” Rafe gave in to the lower lip and sobbed. “I wanted to be the Ring Man.”
“You will be.” Lila folded him into loving arms, closing her eyes. “Great-Grandpa and Dad will look in the grass. And we’ll look out here. He’s right. We’ll find the rings. He’s right about everything.”
Damn right I am. “Chill, Mama,” he whispered to Lila. “It’s voodoo, not life.”
“I know.” She flashed him a shaky smile. “It was just that weird dream. And nerves. Go.” She nudged him. “We’ll comb the patio.”
An hour later, there were still no rings. They’d dug through grass, searched the car, scanned every inch of the patio, and Gabe even dove to the bottom of the pool while Lila took the filter apart.
Nino had calmed Rafe down with some food, and Poppy had somehow scared up a metal detector from one of the other resort housekeepers. They found a quarter, a paperclip, and a tiny screw from a pair of eyeglasses. No wedding rings.
“We better go back home and look,” Gabe said to Lila after he dried off from the swim. “He may have picked them up and put them back in the drawer and doesn’t remember.”
“He said he had them here.”
“He’s upset and confused,” Gabe said, looking inside where Rafe and Nino sat at the kitchen counter, the older man with his comforting, gnarled hand on his great-grandson’s shoulder. “You want to stay here while I go back to the house and look? Or leave him with Nino and Poppy?”
She considered that. “He’s calm now, and I really don’t have much to do today. Gussie and the Barefoot Brides team are coming late this afternoon, and I’ve had my mani-pedi.” She wiggled her fingers, drawing his gaze to the diamond engagement ring he’d given her on bended knee in the middle of CIA headquarters. At least she had that ring, if not the wedding band he’d had designed to match it. “I’ll go with you. Poppy and Nino are doing fine with him, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” He leaned over to kiss her. “What a way to spend our wedding day, huh? Hunting for rings.”
She met him halfway with a peck that always turned into more. “Hope that’s the only thing that goes wrong today.”
He drew back, narrowing his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you are buying that Jamaican black magic, Lila. Rivers of blood, my ass.”
“I’m not.” But she didn’t sound convincing.
He whispered in her ear, “Come on, let’s get out of here for a few hours. I know how to make you forget.”
“Mmm. Okay. But we’re probably not supposed to do that before the ceremony on our wedding day, either.”
“Like hell we’re not. It’s probably bad luck not to.”
They went inside to tell Rafe where they were going and make sure he was calm. Nino had convinced him they were going to cook something special that only big boys ate on their parents’ wedding day, and Poppy wanted to clean the villa. Which Gabe knew meant she was going to continue looking for the rings.
A few minutes later, Gabe and Lila were cruising out of Barefoot Bay, headed to their home on the south end of Mimosa Key. The wind whipped through his ancient GTO’s open windows, making Lila’s blond hair fly in the breeze.
He stole a look at her, noticing how deep in thought she was. Normally, he’d take a few minutes to study the profile and features he’d grown to love. It never mattered that technology and plastic surgery had taken his heartbreakingly adorable Isadora and re-formed her into a woman with sculpted cheekbones and a defined nose. Some days he couldn’t remember the CIA translator he’d fallen in love with and once believed he’d lost. Now, he was head over stinking heels with this version of the same woman.
But sometimes, he could see Isa fighting to get free. Like now, when she gnawed her lower lip and looked straight ahead.
“You’re still worried,” he said.
“Damn dream.”
“Damn woman who planted that ridiculous idea in your head. Once we find the rings, nothing will be ‘lost’ and nothing will be broken and no one will die.”
She gave him a sideways look. “It is pretty silly.”
“Fucking ridiculous,” he said.
She grinned at him. “I love you, Gabe.”
“You love when I swear, which is wretchedly rare these days.”
“I love everything about you.” She reached over and put her hand over his, just her touch enough to stir something low in his gut. “I love that you kept your promise to curb your colorful language around him. And I love that you didn’t get angry at Rafe for taking the rings or losing them.”
Gabe snorted a laugh. “If I got mad at that kid every time he did something bad, I’d have had a stroke long ago.”
She smiled. “He’s much better than he used to be, thanks to you, Dad.”
“Hey, he swims in my troublemaking gene pool. You heard Nino. The claw machine.”
“But JP put you there.”
“Because I dared him.” He grinned. “I wanted to go in that machine. What a cool place to hide, huh?”
“Always a spy.”
“Always. Plus…” He laughed softly. “I knew my dad would hang JP’s balls out to dry, and I kind of lived for that.” He started to pull into the driveway of their house, but stopped and parked at the curb instead.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“If he dropped the rings in the driveway, I don’t want to run over them.” He turned the car off and let the very real possibility sink in that the wedding ring he’d designed so carefully was gone. He didn’t care about his; it was a simple silver band. But he’d planned to surprise Lila with a stunning ring that he knew would be on her finger until the day she died.
He swallowed at the thought. “I never want to lose you again, blondie,” he said, his voice surprisingly gruff.
“What brought that on? Jamaican voodoo?”
“Love,” he said simply. “I fucking love you so damn much.”
“As only Gabe Rossi could say.”
He leaned over the console and reached for her, pulling her closer for a kiss. A real kiss. A prelude-to-much-more kiss. Screw the rings. He wanted her. Now. “Sometimes I think about how close we came…”
She quieted him with her mouth on his. “Speaking of coming…”
“That’s my girl. Cheap sex jokes. You’re too good to be true.” He kissed her again, sliding his tongue home to meet hers and letting his hand freely roam the body he couldn’t seem to get enough of. “Inside or backseat?”
“Backseat?” She choked a laugh. “Gabe, it’s the middle of the day, and we’re on the street.”
“It’s the middle of our wedding day, and it wouldn’t be the first time for us in this car.”
She tapped his chest. “You’re crazy. Inside. And we better look for rings on the way.”
“Speaking of rings.” Gabe reached into his pocket. “Is that my phone buzzing?”
“No, it’s mine in my purse.”
“It’s…both of ours.” They shared a quick, silent look that only parents could understand. “Shit,” Gabe murmured, pulling out his phone just as Lila got hers from the side pocket of her handbag.
“It’s Nino,” he said.
“Mine’s Poppy.”
“They found those mother-effing rings!” Gabe stabbed the green button as Lila did the same, both of them putting their phones on speaker, getting a cacophony of Italian and Jamaican accents screaming over each other.
“One at a time,” Gabe ordered, laughing. “Where were they and who found them?”
“Gabriel,” Nino said. “You need to come right away. There’s been an accident.”
“What?” Lila exclaimed.
“Rafael climbed the mango tree and fell.”
“Is he okay?” Lila and Gabe asked at the same time.
“Miss Lila!” Poppy howled. “He broke his arm!”
Gabe muttered a dark curse, turning the engine back on. “Naples Community Hospital. Get him there now, and we’ll meet you.”
As he threw the car into drive, he glanced at Lila, who was staring straight ahead.
“Babe, it’s okay. I broke my arm three times by the time I was five. It comes with the—”
She turned to him, ashen. “Something will be broken. Something that can’t easily be fixed.”
“Lila—”
“The third thing is someone dies.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then he shut it. Silent, he drove to the hospital.