Slightly Imperfect (2 page)

"I've been gone-almost five years." Her fading merriment was easy to detect in his close scrutiny. "I was in Switzerland-Lucerne-for two years. Then India, and London for a while." She rallied. "What about you? How long?"

"Almost a year. I'll be going back to Ramona in a month."

"Do you have family there?"

He wore no wedding band, symbolic of his suspended marriage. The
Andrea Elena
—big, beautiful, impending—glared at him. He listened to the faint slap of the sea against the hull, the creak of the mooring lines and the drift of music from the main cabin. "Why don't we have dinner and trade histories?" Infeasible, but no guts, no glory. He wasn't ready to let her go. She reminded him too much of Ramona, Texas, and all he had once cherished. Before he'd given up the right to do so.

Her smile was polished. "Dinner would be nice, but..."

"Bring your husband. Is he American? Bring the children."

"Oh... They eat early and go to bed. I...don't think so."

"Then you aren't as homesick as I am." He didn't mean to chastise her. He simply spoke his mind, as usual.

"I'm deathly homesick. A profound understatement," she qualified softly, stopping at the foot of the gangplank. Food aromas wafted out from the ship, along with music filtering through the quiet. She offered a handshake, then drew back abashedly. His hands were occupied with her children. "It was wonderful meeting you. Thank you for helping with the twins."

She wasn't on board yet, sequestered. How would she accomplish that without further assistance? Two uniformed figures approaching down the gangplank supplied his answer.

"I'll shave and cut my hair if you'll go to dinner." He smiled, knowing he presented a disreputable disguise. "Working freighters is not my real life."

Her cheeks colored. "It isn't that," she assured him before turning her attention to the emerging constituency and addressing them. "Thank you for watching for us, Dario—Monique. If you could start their baths, I'll only be a moment."

The man in blue eyed Zac skeptically as he peeled the twins off him. Zac felt naked.

"Marcus, could you say goodbye to...?" She looked at Zac helplessly.

"Zac," he offered and she frowned. "Abriendo," he whispered a reminder.

"To Mr. Abriendo."

Zac caught the boy's tiny brown hand. Warm and a little damp. "
Adios
, Macario," he said smiling. His instincts told him the child was Mexican, genteel breeding. The high cheekbones, the chiseled nose and chin. He couldn't have one drop of Anglo blood. Those eyes couldn't lie, and Zac had looked into them before.
"Hasta luego, amigo."
His heart was wrung a second time by the boy's curious innocence.
"¿Habla español?"
Zac prompted.

"Phir sé bolnaa."

Victoria smiled at Zac's quirked brow. "Hindu. He asked you to repeat."

"¿Habla espanol?"

"Sí, señor."
Marcus smiled.
"Poquito."

With a smile edging on regret, Victoria said, "He doesn't."

Zac had gathered that from Marcus's accent.

"But we're trying to learn. We're getting a tutor, aren't we, darling?"

The boy nodded. Zac felt like a spy, rocked by the love he saw in the dark eyes when Marcus looked at Victoria.

"He
can
say goodbye," she offered.

Marcus spoke on cue.
"Adiós, señor."

Victoria nodded to Monique. The maid led him away, Zac's gaze trailing after. He was far from ready to relinquish Marcus. Or any of them.

Victoria surprised him. "Why don't you have dinner with us, on the boat. It?s lovely." Her tone was obligatory. "Andrea—my hostess—and her friend, Fellippe, will be back in a while. They took the helicopter to Rome for the day."

"Believe it, or not, I've done that."

"Rome?"

"The boat. Or one very similar." He thought of the
Irish Lady
back in Ramona. Green and white, not navy. At Christmas a wreath hung over the galley door. Green ornaments, a big white bow to wave in the morning breeze. A flame-haired woman. In a white-terry robe monogrammed
IL.

Victoria tried not to look skeptical. He granted her that. "Really, we'd love to have you. They aren't American but—"

"Have you ever had dinner on a freighter?"

Her brow knitted, assuring him she wasn't an adventuress.

"You'd be surprised. Sailors don't suffer. Come to dinner. My guest."

"I don't really know you, or..."

Or any of the other longhaired, bearded reprobates she would encounter. All male, starved for blond companionship. He couldn't keep from smiling. He found her fear amusing when compared to the women he had encountered on his tour the past year. "Your husband too, of course. I know he'd enjoy seeing the ship. I'll give you a tour." He was definitely trying too hard.

She shook her head. "He isn't here. I don't think— I shouldn't come alone."

"Probably not." He allowed nothing final into his smile or his tone. "We'll take a rain check for Ramona and San Miguel. Coors, cheeseburgers and fried oysters." But doubt rankled him. After today their paths might never cross again. He might never again see the boy. What reason would there be? There had been no reason today. Except—

"Come for cocktails. To meet Andrea," she petitioned him, abruptly. "Then you and I will go to the piazza restaurant. I just don't think the freighter would be a good idea—"

He didn't think so either when he studied her more closely. She was too appealing. Vulnerable, wistful, slender, jade-eyed. He would be okay with it, but he couldn't speak for the rest of the crew, especially Ruffin Sloan. "You're sure. We could do it in Texas. Whenever."

"I'm sure. Seven?"

"Seven."

She smiled and went up the gangplank.

* * *

Zac waited out five phone rings. "Luke? Hi. It's Zac."

"I recognize the voice. It hasn't been that long."

"It has to me."

"Where are you, bro?"

"Italy. Portofino. Are you in the middle of a crowd? I could call back?"

"The restaurant is closed Mondays."

Zac had forgotten.

"I'm doing paperwork. How are you, bud? Ready to come home?"

"I'm ready." Especially now. "I'm calling about Papa. How is he?"

"He's talking again."

"Thank God! When? How did that happen?"

"Just in the last few days. Jan took a speech therapy class when she moved back to Ramona. She works with him every day."

"You married Mother Teresa," Zac commended. "Twice, as a matter of fact." Gratitude flooded in. "That's great, Luke."

"He's still paralyzed, but he's getting some use of his hands and his right arm. He asked about you. Actually, he asked for you." Silence ensued. "Does that surprise you?"

"No. I ask God to give me back
my
son everyday. I think maybe He did. Today."

"What the hell are you talking about, Zac?"

He laughed, weighing Luke's news. "Can Papa hear, too?"

"Think about it a minute, Zaccheus."

Humor felt good. "He couldn't learn to talk again if he couldn't hear. Got it. Then tell him I love him, and when I get home I'll make it all up to him. Will you tell him that for me? Kiss Jan for me?"

"Got it."

"I have to go."

"What's the hurry?"

"I have to remove a year's growth of beard in half an hour. See you, Luke. In about a month.
Chorizos
and Corona. That's what I'm living for."

And to beg forgiveness of Alejandro Abriendo, Sr.

Zac found himself conducting a thorough scrutiny of Victoria through flickering candlelight. She had pulled her hair back and up into some kind of simple knot at the crown of her head. Her exposed features left her looking vulnerable.

The term classic came to mind. Delicate but definitive bone structure and a heart-shaped face. He thought of his Siamese cat, Samson, back on the freighter. Her eyes—not their green color, but the shape—mirrored Samson's.

In the soft light, pearls gleamed gently at her throat and ears, but the long-sleeved, square-necked black dress had betrayed her. The fine fabric hugged her full breasts and exposed almost-sharp bones guarding the hollow of her throat. He watched her pulse beat there, a little erratically in keeping with her disjointed speech. Her lips, full, artfully carved, caressed a tumbler of Chianti.

Victoria Michaels untouchable appeal affirmed Zac's life-damaging experience with Anglo women. Beyond that, he couldn't get her son Marcus out of his mind.

"Is Zac short for something?" The bland table talk matched the table wine, accentuating the fact they were strangers. They'd been twirling garlic laced pasta and clam sauce between fork and spoon, managing a meaningless bite now and then.

"Daniel Zaccheus."

Her smile exposed perfect teeth. "Is that Biblical?"

"It was once. Lots of water under the bridge since then."

She seemed to ponder that. "Have you always been a sailor—worked on freighters?"

"First time. I'm a shrimp fisherman by trade. I'm sure you've seen the fleet out of Ramona." Puerto San Miguel, her habitat, was more of a pleasure-craft center.

"Of course." She didn't sound like she had ever seen a shrimp vessel in her life. "You didn't have to shave for me. The beard probably kept the elements off your face." She fell quiet, started again. "That's presumptuous, I suppose. To think—I mean shaving probably had nothing to do with me."

He knew the meaning of presumptuous, but apparently the absence of the beard hadn't given him any more intellectual credibility. "Shaving had everything to do with you. Your hostess might have thrown her body in front of the gangplank and forbade you to come with me. I needed some quality peer time." Her reaction was polished, but he caught his faux pas. "Now
that's
presumptuous. Aligning you and me as peers."

"Not really. You did say working freighters isn't your real life."

He topped off her wine glass from a carafe, then dabbed his napkin at an errant drop on the shiny oilcloth covering the table.

"Did I say my other life revolved around the yacht crowd?"

"Actually you did, vaguely." She smiled.

"Well, it doesn't. Anymore."

She laughed, then fell silent a moment, frowning. "I'm sorry you missed Andrea. She doesn?t always meet her schedules. You would have enjoyed her. She's English."

"Is she an old friend?" He sensed a story there, too.

"We're business partners, although I haven't really been active for a while. I met her through Marcus's father. About six four ago, when Marcus was a baby. She took me in recently, a kind of surrogate mother act—although she's nowhere near that age. She's just the concerned type."

Concerned.
A distinct clue, but he wasn't prone to wait for more. "Well, since I'm obviously a surrogate too, why don't you expound on whom I'm beholden to, in absentia, concerning this honor."

"What?" She lowered her fork; brows rising, her puzzled expression evolving to laughter.

He laughed too, relieved he could amuse her. Then he sobered. "Tell me about Marcus's father. If not for him, I'd be eating with sailors tonight."

She appeared hesitant and then reticent. "I don't think so. This dinner is too enjoyable." He held her green gaze until she said softly, "It's not a pretty story."

"Neither is mine." But she hadn't asked for his story; she probably
presumed
its tawdry characteristics.

He studied her intently. The candle flared in a sudden breeze from an open window, bathing her skin in liquid gold, altering her jade eyes to congealed moss. He had to look away. He'd been alone too long in the male masses aboard the freighter. A ship's horn cut the fog outside; someone laughed raucously, the sound carrying from the bar area.

"I'm a good listener," he prompted.

"My story is rancid."

He twisted the word in his mind and rotated the wine tumbler in his palms. Rancid. He doubted anything connected with her could fit that bill. She appeared too regal. "Rancid... let's see. Fetid comes to mind—or rank." He cocked his head, feigned thought. "Rancid: smells to high heaven. A paraphrase."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"I've read the bible three times in the last year, Victoria. It's the only thing I found on the ship that was printed in English. After the old testament nothing could shock me."

"You don't even know me," she half whispered.

"Then I'll have less of a criteria to judge by. Go for it."

"I'm not Marcus's mother." He tried to look surprised, but she said, "You had guessed that, I see."

He thought of his brother Luke's little girl. Tita. Beautiful mocha skin. Her Anglo mother's blond hair grew pale brown on Tita's tiny head. "If you were his mother, Marcus would have gotten one Anglo characteristic somewhere."

"God." Her soft sensual moan stirred him. "How can I put this delicately?"

He waited.

She went for it. "Marcus's father was my lover. I married someone else, but I couldn't—I began seeing Marcus's father again. My husband found out about it." She lost velocity, sucked the inside of her lower lip into her teeth, falling quiet. "I adopted Marcus when his father...."

"Does Marcus's father have a name?"

"Tommy. Tomas, actually."

He voiced his gathered conclusion. "Tomas is dead."

She nodded, looking stricken, as though hearing the news for the first time.

It should have been enough for him. But her fragmented disclosure and the blatant grief in her eyes stirred his curiosity, nagged him. Four years seemed a long recovery time when Zac considered the strides he liked to think
he
had made in only one year.

"Was the twins' father the wronged husband?" And where the hell was that husband and father? She was obviously hurting badly, needing him, no matter how wounded he might be.

"I'm Victoria Chandler."

The announcement jolted him. That was why she'd seemed familiar. Her picture had monopolized the front page of the Houston paper for days on end. Four years ago.