Second Chance Sweethearts (Love Inspired) (9 page)

“I don’t really know. I’ve been at the restaurant some, pulling out what I could, so Mamí and Papí can get back open sooner. Wow, the smell of the food rotting without refrigeration was terrible. I just put everything I could in trash bags and piled it out on the curb—I didn’t know what else to do with it. I hope I never have to do anything like that ever again. I probably will be at Mamí and Papí’s house later, seeing what all needs to be done there. Who knows when they’ll get back from San Antonio...”

The sigh at the end of her sentence told him Gloria had more to say. “But what?”

She raised her eyebrows. “That obvious I was hiding something?”

The MRE had come with a pack of gum. Rigo unwrapped one piece and popped it in his mouth. The crisp minty flavor cut through the lingering ravioli taste. He offered another piece from the pack to Gloria and she took it.

“A lot has changed,” he said, looking around what had once been a neat, organized neighborhood only a few days before. “But you haven’t.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But I am sure I’m avoiding my house. I’ve seen it. I know what I’m up against there, and I just can’t. Not right now.” She scraped her hands through her hair and tucked the flyaway layers behind her ears. “I know avoiding it isn’t going to make it any easier. But I just don’t know when I’ll be ready to go back.”

“Glo, it’s okay.” His fingers wrapped around the edges of the chair and he locked his wrists tight. It took all the strength he had not to reach out and try to wipe the apprehension off her face. “The recovery hasn’t even really started yet. There’s going to be plenty of time to do what needs to be done. In typical Gloria fashion, you’ve taken on the restaurant and your parents’ house. You’ve been to Gracie’s, too, haven’t you?”

She nodded. “They have a baby. They’re going to need help.”

“So do you, Glo. One thing at a time. You don’t have to bear everyone’s burdens.”

“I don’t really think of it that way.” She bit down hard on the gum in her mouth.

Rigo leaned forward slightly, wrists and elbows still locked. “Then what is it?”

“It’s just what I do. I’m a midwife. I’m there for others when they need it.”

He chewed his gum slowly, thinking about Gloria’s words. She was loyal. Doggedly so. Sometimes she cared too much and she could come across as pushy. But you could always count on Gloria to be there.

Unfortunately, Gloria couldn’t say the same for him.

It was past time to change that.

Lord, make me worthy of her forgiveness.

The prayer that had been on his heart the past few days now came into his mind without prompting. To be worthy of her forgiveness, he knew he needed to re-earn her trust.

He just needed to decide exactly how.

“In fact, Rigo, I’d probably better go. I haven’t had a chance to stop by the clinic yet to see how it fared.” She started gathering the trash from her meal. “I wish we had some kind of phone service. I want to know how Tanna’s doing.”

“I’m sure she’s fine. She got to ride in that helicopter in style. They took her to Mainland Regional Hospital. There are no better hands for her to be in—except yours.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s just so strange not to be able to check in with one of my moms after a birth. But I am going to check on the clinic. Thanks for lunch. It was good to see you between patrol shifts.”

He’d take that as a good sign.

“You, too, Glo. Leave a note in my room if you need anything. My schedule’s going to be crazy for a while, and I’m not at Tía’s house much right now. Speaking of Tía, I’m going to make sure she gets home safely, then I’ve got a few things to take care of myself.”

He’d been desperate for a pillow before pulling up to the makeshift church service after a twelve-hour overnight shift. But lunch with Gloria had energized him.

So much needed to be done all over Port Provident. One thing at a time, he’d told Gloria.

Suddenly, he knew what his one thing was.

And he couldn’t wait to get started.

All around, an island waited for hands to reach out and rebuild. Rigo had something even more pressing. He had trust to rebuild.

Chapter Eight

T
he walk between the church and the clinic could not be described as short. It took Gloria more than half an hour in the Texas September sun to make it all the way. But the steps and sidewalks gave her more than enough time to think about all the jumbled fragments in her mind.

Not only had Rigo stepped back into her life—run back in when she’d called him in a panic, truthfully—but she was coming to rely on him. It was as though the hurricane had blown away the ugliest pieces of their past as it pushed inland.

“Gloria!” Dr. Pete Shipley stuck his hand out from behind a brown-stained refrigerator balanced near the curb in front of the birth center and waved. “I’ve been wondering about you. How’s your parents’ restaurant? Huarache’s—that’s the name, right?”

“That’s it, and it’s a mess. About like that break-room fridge you’ve got there.” She gestured toward the rings of duct tape circling the appliance, holding the doors shut.

Pete wiped his forehead with the back of a rough work glove. “That’s for sure. I didn’t have it in me to even open this thing up. There’s not a big enough emesis basin in the world for how I’d handle this.”

Gloria nodded her head. “I was at the restaurant yesterday and had about the same experience. Except I couldn’t just move a commercial-sized fridge out to the street. I had to go in. I wished I’d had a Darth Vader mask.”

“Luke. I am your freezer.” Pete gave the James Earl Jones impression his best shot.

She let out a hoot of laughter at her boss’s joke. “Something like that.”

“It’s good to see a smile on your face, Gloria. I was worried about you when I heard you’d stayed with Tanna.” He continued picking up debris in the yard of the clinic and tossing it in a pile down by the curb. “Watch out. There are nails on the ground.”

She tossed the shingles toward the pile and dusted off her hands. “Fair enough. My work gloves are at Huarache’s. How’s the clinic?”

Instead of answering, Pete turned around and faced the little one-story cottage that housed the clinic. “Come on inside. We need to talk about what’s next.”

Gloria leaned against the doorway in what had been the waiting room of the Provident Women’s Health and Birth Center. She’d figured this was a real possibility, but hearing the news for certain made her knees buckle a bit.

“I’m really sorry, Gloria. I know this is tough. I hate having to close the clinic, but the loss is just going to be insurmountable.” Pete sat with a thud on the metal chair in the corner and focused blankly at his hands with a look of desperation. “Since the power failure was caused when the water swamped the substation, and business-interruption insurance is tied to the windstorm policy, we’re not going to get any kind of reimbursement for the days we’d be closed. It would take months to get the clinic reopened—months without any kind of income. And I just don’t see us getting enough from the regular insurance once we finish repairs to cover the difference.”

Although she knew Pete wasn’t exaggerating the dire situation, her head began to spin with knowing more big changes were now reality in her life.

“I think my home is a total loss, and now to go along with that, my job is a total loss, too. And then there’s all the other mess, too.”

“What mess? Everything okay?” Pete stopped staring at his open palms and looked up. “Well, aside from the obvious.”

Gloria could have kicked herself for letting that last part slip. She blamed it on the roller coaster of emotions. Pete had always been a great person to work with, a skilled doctor and a good boss. But she’d never discussed relationships or other deep personal matters with him, and it seemed strange to start now.

Then again, it wasn’t like they’d be working together anymore.

“I’ve been staying with the aunt of my ex-boyfriend from high school, Rigo. He lives there, too. And he helped me safely deliver Tanna DeLong’s baby.”

A smile cracked Pete’s face. “Gloria?”

“I know. I’m not sure what is more mind-boggling. Losing my house, losing my job...or wondering if I’m losing my mind from being around my ex-boyfriend.”

“Well, what are you going to do next?”

“I think my best option will wind up being to sell the house to someone who will tear it down and rebuild it so I don’t have to.” She kicked at a red Lego piece from the children’s area that had been swept to the waiting room.

Pete raised his eyebrows. “Really, Gloria?”

She nudged the Lego with her toe again. “Oh, you meant about Rigo.”

“Yeah.” He matched Gloria’s slowly emerging smile with one of his own. “About Rigo. You’re way too rational to think you’re losing your mind without already having thought of a plan to mitigate it. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Go with the flow, I guess.”

Pete’s smile jumped to a full-fledged boyish grin. “You? Go with the flow? You
have
lost your mind, Gloria Rodriguez.”

They’d worked together for several years, and it hadn’t taken the doctor long after meeting Gloria to diagnose her need for order and organization. “Probably so, Pete.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“To everything there is a season.” The quote from Ecclesiastes had never seemed more appropriate.

Her now-former boss nodded. “Indeed there is.”

“So what are
you
going to do?”

He looked out the window framed by dingy brown curtains that had once been white with colorful polka dots, then back at Gloria. “I’ve already put in a call to the director of Global Medical Mission. I’ll get the clinic cleaned up and closed up, put the property on the market and get the insurance paperwork in motion. And then I think it’s time for me to leave Port Provident and move on. I don’t know where they’d send me, but I’m open. You know it’s been a dream I’ve had for a long time.”

She nodded. Gloria knew about dreams, the ones that never strayed far from the corners of the mind. She’d tried for so long to put the memories of her relationship with Rigo to sleep. But time and circumstance had acted like an alarm clock in her life, wrenching her out of the motions she’d been subconsciously going through for so long.

“So I guess that’s it.” Gloria looked around the little clinic she’d grown to love. She’d started working here as a refuge from the worst moments in her life. Not having to work on the L&D floor at the hospital gave her a buffer from memories that, until this week, had brought her to tears every time she thought about them. Working at this out-of-hospital birth center had restored her faith in birth and her ability as a midwife after she hadn’t been able to save her own son.

She would miss this little clinic. But she’d never forget the lessons she’d taken to heart here.

Pete stood up and pulled a slip of paper out of the back pocket of his dirt-stained jeans. “I guess so. Here’s your last check, Gloria. I’m sorry it had to come to this. I hope things work out for all of us in this new chapter we’re being pushed into.”

“I think they will, Pete.” A smile crept into the corners of Gloria’s lips. “You know what they say—‘That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

Losing liters of blood, her own child and her husband hadn’t killed her. Starting over alone hadn’t killed her. It had taken a hurricane to make her see the reality, but she would never deny the truth again.

“I know I’m stronger now,” she said, and she meant every word.

* * *

In the time of her life that Gloria now thought of as “PH,” or prehurricane, nothing settled her mind like an evening walk around the neighborhood. She would use the sidewalks of Port Provident to organize her thoughts about a birth she’d attended, something Gracie had said or even her sadness about being alone.

Today, though, walking back from the clinic, Gloria’s mind raced at a pace far more quickly than her feet had ever taken her.

Pete had laughed at her declaration that she was just going to see where things led. But she’d witnessed a different side of Rigo lately and she didn’t see how she could do otherwise. She’d seen a man who defied Mother Nature herself to bring people to safety. She’d seen a man who held her while she faced her deepest fears and opened up about his own.

And she’d seen a man who quite literally would have saved her and those who depended upon her from drowning if it had come to that, even though they hadn’t talked for years or parted on good terms. Concentrating on both her thoughts and not stepping on scattered debris, Gloria realized she hadn’t thought about where she was going. But all the same, her footsteps had brought her back to the place they’d always brought her.

Home.

Right in front of her stood 909 Travis Place. But it looked very different than it had last time she saw it. Just as at the clinic, the refrigerator sat on the curb, sealed with bands of duct tape. All of her living room furniture had been pulled out to the covered front porch. The plywood that had covered most of her windows had been removed and stacked against the side of the house. Beige carpet, now stained darker brown from sand and seawater, had been rolled up with its blue-and-yellow-flecked under padding. They looked like amorphous logs at the edge of the grass.

A flash of movement was visible in the open windows. Cautiously, she walked up the sidewalk to the front door, which stood wide-open.

Rigo came into view, dragging a jagged piece of drywall almost as tall as he was.

“Glo?” He rested the dusty rectangle of white against a corner of the living room wall. “I thought you were at the clinic.”

“I was. I thought you were running an errand.”

He wiped a hand carelessly across his sweaty brow. His dark hair clung to his forehead in damp tendrils.

“I am. More or less. I’m helping out a friend.”

Gloria ran her fingers along the door frame, tracing the grain of the wood. A lump settled into her throat. She tried to swallow it away before speaking. “You’ve been here the whole time since we left the church?”

Rigo nodded.

“You did this for me?” She almost couldn’t believe it.

“You said it was going to be too hard for you to come over here for a few days. Mold is already setting in. I just didn’t want things to get any worse than they already are.”

Gloria looked up at his sweat-stained face. She’d seen him a million times in the heat of the day, usually killing time on the beach after surfing or getting in a workout by running up and down the sand. But she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before.

Truthfully, she never had seen him like this before.

Even when they’d been teenagers, head-over-heels for each other, he’d never done anything on this level for her. The old Rigo would have been more concerned about himself. He would have been helpful, but not all in.

“I don’t know what to say,” she finally got out.

He smiled. The confidence in that simple gesture spoke wordlessly, straight to her heart.

“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to do anything. The electricity is scheduled to come back on in the morning and they plan to open the causeway in the afternoon. People can start coming back home. Take care of your parents. Take care of the restaurant, of Gracie’s place. Do what you need to at the clinic. I’ve got this.”

She shook her head. It didn’t seem right. He’d done enough. She wanted to find a way back to friendship again. Not to be in his debt, or for him to be in hers. “I just need a little time, Rigo. You have a job to do. You don’t need me in the way.”

He pushed the sweaty hair back off his forehead. “You’re right.”

She was glad he saw it her way. Just friends. Clean slate. No one beholden to the other.

Rigo looked straight at her. He reached out a hand and lifted her chin so that their gazes met. A decade melted away in an instant as his eyes turned two shades darker, the iris almost matching the black of the pupil in the center.

She knew this look. She’d once lived for this look.

“I don’t need you in the way, Gloria. I just need you.”

Gloria’s breath came short. That sounded like more than just friends, more than she was willing to give.

She opened her mouth to say something, to set him straight. He pulled his finger from under her chin and laid it lightly upon her lips, warning her to silence. She felt a tingle like a minty lip balm across the soft skin.

Rigo shook his head, telling her he wasn’t finished. “And I’m going to do whatever it takes to prove I came back for the right reasons. I’m going to earn back your trust.”

He trailed his finger off slowly. She stood perfectly still, unable to break that hard stare.

“And once I do, I’m not stopping there.”

* * *

Rigo couldn’t believe he’d been so direct. The look on Gloria’s face told him that he should have thought that one through before he spoke. But he couldn’t help it.

“I came back to apologize to you, Gloria. To set things right between us.” He needed her to know. “But I know now I’m not going to be right without you. Not ever.”

She still didn’t speak. The silence began to spread, threatening to shut down the hard-won emotional truce that had settled between them since her unexpected phone call. His heart still pumped furiously, but the adrenaline began to turn to ice. In the past, Rigo had dealt with overwhelming emotions and uncomfortable situations by numbing them with alcohol or just turning and walking away.

But he’d learned he was stronger than that. Rigo’s counselors had shown him that he had never backed down from a wave, he’d never backed down from a bullet—and he used that knowledge to know he wasn’t going to back down now.

“Glo. Please. Just say something. If I’m making you uncomfortable, tell me. But I’m not leaving. Not this time.”

She spoke, so softly he almost missed it. “You can stay.”

He watched the rise and fall of her chest. Measured, steady. Almost too measured, as though she were focused on the simple act of breathing.

“I don’t want to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me. You surprised me.” She paused and ruffled her fingers through her hair, shifting her gaze downward. “You scared me.”

Rigo nodded. That was understandable. He’d scared himself. “How so?”