Safe Harbor (8 page)

“Dad’s got a big heart.”

“Runs in the family,” he noted, once again thinking that he would have most likely been dead if she hadn’t come along and helped him when she had. Someone else might have been afraid, especially once they saw the bullet wound. He was more grateful to her than he could possibly say.

“I’d like to think so,” she said, assuming that he was giving her an awkward compliment. “Now then, are you up to feeding yourself?”

The idea of feeding him sent an appealing warmth through her.

Mike took the fork from her. “I’ll feed myself, thanks.”

But when he tried to pick up his first forkful of eggs, his hand shook so that very little remained on the utensil by the time he managed to bring it to his lips.

“Here,” she coaxed, gently taking the fork from him. “It’s hard to feed yourself with your hand waving like that. Let me give it a try.”

“I hate feeling so helpless,” Mike complained, frustrated as he watched her.

“You’re not helpless,” she argued. “You just lost a lot of blood. That’ll all be in your past once we get a little good food into you—and the food is all good here,” she said, hoping her chatter would be enough to distract him as she fed him.

“Cris is the best chef around. You’ll be bending steel in your bare hands by the end of next week.”

“Don’t want to bend steel,” he murmured as exhaustion overtook him. “Just want to be able to use a fork.”

“Decidedly less challenging than bending steel,” she agreed. “Lifting a fork should fall into your bag of tricks in about a day. Day and a half, tops. You’ll be feeding yourself with the best of them before you know it,” she teased. “Now, here comes the plane, into the hangar...”

He was struggling mightily to fight off sleep and stared at her.

“What did you just say?”

How could he not know the plane into the hangar kid/food move?
“It’s a game we all played to get Ricky to eat,” she said slowly. When she saw his blank look, she realized that she was tossing names around and he probably didn’t catch anyone’s earlier. “He was the short one in the room.”

“The little boy,” he said. “And he belongs to...?” Stevi slipped another forkful of food into his mouth.

“All of us, but technically, he’s Cris’s son. She was the one next to Shane. Tell you what, when you’re stronger, I’ll give you a formal introduction to everyone. But right now, all you have to do is eat and sleep, like my dad said.”

That was when she realized that Mike had already taken her up on it. She sighed. “I guess you don’t need much practice with the sleeping part, huh?”

Rising, she set the plate on her bureau and then crossed back to the bed. Very gently, she tucked a blanket around Mike.

“Sleep well, sweet prince,” she murmured.

Well, Stevi thought, she could either sit here and watch him sleep, or seek out her father for that talk he wanted to have. And while the former really was tempting, she knew she really needed to get the latter out of the way.

“Okay, Dad,” she said under her breath as she slipped out of her room and closed the door behind her, “let’s talk.”

CHAPTER TEN

A
S
WAS
HER
habit for the better part of each day, Alex was manning the front desk. Two guests—a couple celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary—had just signed in and were being shown to their room. The staff had spent the morning decorating the room to resemble a bridal suite, as per the husband’s request.

Stevi made what turned out to be a vain attempt to get lost in the shuffle of suitcases and guests.

Alex saw her anyway.

“Stevi.”

The second her older sister called out her name, Stevi pretended not to hear, but she braced herself nonetheless. Alex was the oldest, she was controlling to a fault on occasion, and in addition she was organized beyond all normal standards. Alex was also the one given to lengthy lectures, something Stevi was definitely
not
in the mood for right now—not that there was ever a good time to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Alex was known for her sharp tongue.

Alex rounded the desk and blocked her from what might have been a successful exit. For a pregnant woman, Alex was exceptionally quick on her feet.

“Stevi, I was calling you.”

“Sorry, in a hurry to see Dad, talk later,” she said, talking in sound bites in an attempt to add credibility to the urgency of her excuse.

“How’s he doing?” Alex wanted to know, addressing the question to her back before she managed to get out. “The guy whose life you saved, how’s he doing?”

The question ground Stevi’s plans for a successful getaway to a halt and she turned around to look at Alex.

“He fell asleep again, but thanks for asking,” she answered guardedly.

“But he is okay, right?” Alex pressed, her eyes pinning Stevi where she stood.

“As near as I can tell, yes,” Stevi answered. “Why?”

Alex got down to the heart of the matter. “Just don’t want the inn getting any bad publicity.”

Stevi wasn’t sure she followed her sister’s reasoning. “Come again?”

“Well, if he died here, that wouldn’t exactly have guests flocking to the inn for summer vacation and this
is
the start of our busiest season.”

Retracing her steps, she came closer to Alex, not wanting their conversation to be overheard by anyone.

“He’s not going to die,” Stevi retorted. “Silvio took care of him—did you know that Silvio had medical training?”

“Not specifically, but I don’t think I’d be surprised by anything he did. I don’t know his backstory,” she added quickly when she saw that Stevi looked as if she was about to ask for details. “All I know is that he grew up in Argentina and that his wife and son left him—although that might have been part of his cover.”

Confusion highlighted Stevi’s features. “What do you mean, his ‘cover’?”

Alex grinned. “Well, you know. When we were younger, I was the one who used to think that Silvio had a mysterious past like Zorro.”

“Didn’t hurt that he sort of looked like a slightly older Antonio Banderas,” Stevi added.

“Then you remember how we used to imagine that maybe he was with one of those alphabet agencies. You know, CIA, DEA, NSA, bureaus like that, and they had turned on him.”

“Right,” she said. “Or like Cris used to believe, maybe he found something that made him turn on them.”

“In any case, you know everything I know—he showed up here one night, trying to figure out his next move. Turns out, his next move was to remain here and help Dad with the garden. Anything else you want to know, you should ask Dad when you have that talk with him. Although, good luck with that—he’s never given us any details when we asked in the past.”

“Right. The talk.” Stevi looked over her shoulder. “Is he in his office?”

Alex nodded. “The last I saw, yes. If he’s not, don’t worry. He wants to talk, so he’ll find you.”

Stevi sighed. “I never doubted it for a minute.”

Like a soldier bracing for a dressing-down—or a demotion in rank—Stevi marched over to her father’s small office.

The nine-by-twelve converted alcove was located just off the reception area, tucked in next to the kitchen.

More than an office, it was her father’s private refuge. She suspected that after her mother had died, her father had come here to let his guard down.

Her father kept up appearances, she knew, for their sake. If they collapsed and cried, their father would be there to make it all better for them.

But who did he have to depend on when their mother died? Stevi now wondered. And now, even when his best friend and Wyatt’s father, Dan—the man she and her sisters had grown up thinking of as an uncle—had died, she knew that her father had come here, to his office, to close the door and be alone with his thoughts and his memories and just possibly, to pretend for a little while that life was continuing just as it always had, with her mother and Dan in it.

She didn’t like intruding on him when he was in the office with the door closed, as it was now. But he was the one who wanted to talk to her so she felt that she had to interrupt his solace.

All it took was one quick knock.

Her knuckles had hardly touched the wood before the door opened and her father was standing in front of her.

“Hi,” he greeted her as if they hadn’t just been together a little while ago in her room.

“You said you wanted to talk,” she said. “So here I am.”

“Come on in,” he invited, gesturing. When she crossed the threshold, her father closed the door behind her. Indicating the chair in front of his desk—an antique desk that had been handed down from generation to generation, right along with the inn.

Stevi perched on the edge of the chair, ready to spring to her feet if need be.

Sitting down himself, her father leaned back in his chair and observed his third-born. “You can relax, you know. I’m not preparing to drag you over hot coals—twice.”

If possible, she sat up a little straighter. “I know that.”

He went on to tell her, “I wanted to ask for a few details about Mike.”

“That’s what I have,” Stevi said, forcing a cheerful note into her otherwise nervous voice. “Just a few details. Very few,” she emphasized. And then, before her father could say anything more, words began to spill out of her.

“He was just lying there yesterday, Dad, on the beach, when I was jogging back to the inn. He was bleeding and he grabbed my wrist and said...” She hesitated. What he’d said was “No police,” but she didn’t think her father was ready to hear that.... “He said, uh, ‘Help me,’ then he passed out. I couldn’t just leave him there,” she cried, then doubled back on her sentence when she realized it wasn’t factually accurate. “Well, actually, I did leave him there—”

He tried to stop her. “Stevi—”

“—because I went to get someone to help. I was going to get you, or Shane, but I saw Silvio first, so I asked him and at first he didn’t want to—”

He tried again. “Stevi—”

“—because he felt it was being disloyal to you, but I convinced him he had to come and he brought his truck so we could get Mike up to the inn and—”

“Stevi!”

Stevi stared at her father, startled into silence. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard him raise his voice—to anyone.

After a beat, she asked, “What?”

“Breathe,” he ordered. When she looked bewildered at the instruction, he added, “Now.”

Stevi nodded and took in a huge breath, her eyes riveted to her father’s face. He signaled that she needed to take in another breath when she let the first out, so she did, still keeping her eyes on her father. Her breathing became more regular.

“Better?” he asked.

Stevi nodded. “Better. I was just trying to explain how Mike got into my room.”

“I really just wanted to know if you’d ever seen him before you came across him on the beach.”

“No. But I—”

Her father held up his hand to stop another possible flood of words.

“You don’t have to explain anything else. I understand that you saw someone who needed help and you helped him. Considering that I’ve been doing that myself all these years, I can’t really fault you for doing the same thing, now, can I?”

Stevi pressed her lips together, then began to frame a reply. “Well—”

She never gave up, he thought fondly. Stevi was his scrapper. “That didn’t really require an answer, Stevi.”

She exhaled another long breath. “So you’re not angry?” she asked, still carefully watching him for a sign that perhaps she’d assumed too much.

“For following the example I set for you?” he repeated. “How could I be?”

Relieved, Stevi grinned broadly. Her father was a terrific guy and she could think of nothing worse than offending him enough to get him angry with her—or worse, disappointed with her.

“And, Dad, please don’t blame Silvio for anything,” she added. “I asked him not to tell you. He wasn’t very happy about it. I could see that he really felt terribly disloyal about that.”

“I don’t blame Silvio for anything,” Richard said honestly. “Silvio is nothing if not loyal.” For now he left it at that. Stevi didn’t need to know that it hadn’t taken Silvio all that long to make up his mind as to where his loyalties were aligned. “He’s a good man.”

Since they were talking about Silvio like this, Stevi had a burning desire to know more about him. It had been nagging her since she’d watched the gardener sew up Mike’s wound.

“What’s Silvio’s story?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he sewed up Mike’s wound like a pro. I watched him,” she added.

Richard smiled. “That’s because he is a pro,” he confirmed.

She wanted to be sure she and her father were on the same page. Something still felt off. “Then he
was
a physician’s aide?”

“Is that what he told you?” her father asked. There was a touch of surprise in his voice. The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “I see.”

She was into nuances. The inflection in her father’s voice negated her initial belief. “Then he wasn’t a physician’s aide?”

Richard paused for a moment, reflecting. “Silvio was a doctor in Argentina. A doctor who didn’t believe that medicine should take sides in a civil war. There were others who didn’t quite see things his way. When he saved the wrong person’s life, he had to flee for his own. Silvio lost everything,” he concluded quite frankly.

She remembered that story. That much hadn’t changed. “You mean his wife and son, right?”

Her father inclined his head. “In a way. They left before he had run for it. His wife, he told me later, sided with the opposition. She was angry that he didn’t take advantage of certain opportunities that had come his way, choosing, instead, to honor his Hippocratic oath. She told him she could do better. The next day, she and his son were gone.”

While she’d known he’d lost his family, she’d never heard the exact particulars before. Hearing them made her heart ache for the man.

“Oh, poor Silvio,” she murmured. Being deserted after choosing to do the honorable, right thing had to have devastated the man.

“Don’t ever let him hear you say that,” her father cautioned. “Silvio won’t stand for pity—from anyone.” He knew how fond the man was of his daughters, especially Stevi, who was the closest in age to his own son. Having her pity him would have been a huge blow to Silvio’s pride. “What I just told you was something he told me only after he’d been here for several years. It’s not for general knowledge,” he warned.

“Why did he tell you all of a sudden, out of the blue like that?”

“I wondered the same thing,” her father admitted. “He told me that it was his son’s birthday. My guess is that he just missed him more than he could stand and needed to talk to someone.”

Stevi shook her head. “I can’t picture Silvio needing to talk to anyone, much less confessing something. Can’t see him missing anyone either, even if it was his own son.”

Richard smiled. It was the sort of smile that was forged out of years of hard living and even harder lessons.

“People have a way of surprising you, Stevi,” he said.

She nodded absently, her mind already moving on to a bigger problem. “What do you want to do about Mike?”

“Do?” he repeated. “We allow him to heal. Once he is healed, we’ll see what happens after that.”

She nodded, rising. That sounded more than fair. That meant that she had to be fair to her father. Which in turn meant that she couldn’t leave until she was sure that he had been made aware of one fact.

“That wound he has, the one that Silvio stitched up—” She stopped for a second, took a deep breath and then forged ahead. “It’s a gunshot wound.”

Her father nodded. She couldn’t decide whether he was just being calm for her sake, or he already knew what she was telling him. “Does he know who shot him—and why?”

Stevi shook her head in response. “He says he doesn’t remember.”

Richard’s eyes met hers. “Do you believe him?”

Stevi paused for a moment, not because she was trying to decide whether or not she believed Mike’s story, but because she was surprised that her father was waiting to hear her evaluation of the situation.

“Yes, I believe him,” she answered.

That was all he wanted to hear.

“Okay, that’s good enough for me, Stevi,” he said. “So we wait until he heals and regains his strength. And maybe, if he’s lucky, his memory will come back to him, as well.”

Instead of leaving, Stevi came around the desk and pressed a kiss to her father’s cheek. “How long have you been taking in strays, Dad?” she asked him fondly.

The man really
was
simply the best, she thought.

He laughed softly.

“For as long as I can remember, Stevi,” he replied. “For as long as I can remember.”