Heaven Sent (16 page)

“Will you call me?”

Walking over to her daughter, Juanita pulled her close. “I’ll try to call every day.”

Serena kissed her scented cheek. “Thank you for that.” She forced an artificial smile. “Do you need help packing?”

“Yes, Baby.”

It took the two women less than half an hour to pack
and double check everything Juanita Vega needed to return to the land of her birth.

Juanita made her way to the first floor and informed Rodrigo to take her bags out to the car. She had less than two hours to take the commuter plane out of the Limón airport for a flight back to San José, where she would take a connecting one to Miami, Florida.

Serena waited in the car with Juanita for Rodrigo. The two women were silent, wondering whether Raul would come to see his wife off.

The seconds slipped into minutes. Serena exited the spacious Mercedes-Benz sedan when the front door to
La Montaña
opened and only the driver appeared. She did what she had never done before—she silently cursed Raul Cordero-Vega for his stubborn pride.

Rodrigo took his position behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove off without a backward glance. Serena watched as the car made its way down the curving, winding road, disappearing from view, then turned and walked back to the house.

Raul walked into David Cole’s bedroom, slamming the door violently behind him. He struggled to control his temper when the American did not move from his lounging position on the bed.

“I see you’ve recovered very quickly.”

David’s impassive expression did not change as he stared out across the room. “I had excellent care,” he drawled, his voice a monotone.

As he crossed his arms over his chest Raul’s features hardened with a sinister grin. “Lucky for you, Señor Cole, because I need you alive and well. I’d like you to make an international telephone call for me.”

David sat up, swinging his bare feet to the floor. “To whom?”

“Your father.”

“My father retired from ColeDiz years—”

“This has nothing to do with ColeDiz business,” Raul interrupted, his voice escalating with his mounting tension. “This little matter has to do with progeny. A son for a son.”

David’s forehead furrowed at the cryptic statement. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I want you to call your father and tell him that if my son is not released from that stinking Florida sewer within the next sixty days he will lose
his
son, body part by body part. I don’t care how he does it, but I want my boy out of that hell-hole.”

Every nerve within David’s body vibrated with a liquid fire that rendered him unable to move, speak. He couldn’t believe he was being held hostage for crimes Gabriel Vega had committed more than three thousand miles away from where he stood. A slow smile flitted across his battered face when he realized that Raul Vega was crazy, a madman drunk on his own power.

Resting his hands on his slim hips, he shook his head slowly. “You’re sick.”

Raul’s face darkened with a rush of blood. “And how do you think your father will feel when I amputate your precious fingers and send him one for each day he exceeds my sixty-day deadline?” He noted David’s expression of horror. “Fingers, toes, ears. I really don’t give a damn, Señor Cole. I’m willing to wager your father will bankrupt ColeDiz to buy and sell the politicians who are responsible for putting my son behind bars if it means getting you back in one piece. And despite your obvious shock, I know you’re going to agree to my
proposal, because if you don’t I’ll make certain you’ll never father children. Yes!” he ranted as his eyes took on a glazed look. “I’ll have you castrated before the sun sets on this very day.”

The fingers Vega threatened to amputate curled into tight fists. David longed to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and squeeze until he pleaded for him to spare his life. And the truth was he would probably spare the lunatic’s life, while Vega would take his as easily as he would swat a bug.

Folding his arms over his chest, he stared down at the floor before his head came up slowly. A hint of a smile touched his mouth. “You really have a lot of confidence in my father.”

“What I have is confidence in his name and his money. Enough talk. I’ll bring you a telephone and you will make the call. I shouldn’t have to warn you that what we’ve discussed in this room stays between us. Or else—”

“Or else you’ll geld me? Or better yet, kill me?” David whispered savagely.

Raul leaned in close to his face. “I won’t kill you, but when I’m finished with you you’ll pray for me to put you out of your misery.”

“
You
would do it? I doubt that, Señor Cordero-Vega. You’re too much of a coward, or too smart, to dirty your hands with murder and mutilation.”

“That’s for me to know and for you to find out. I can reassure you that I’m not a man without scruples. I’m prepared to make your stay bearable. Everything at
La Montaña
is at your disposal. Think of it as your home away from home. The only exception is that you won’t be able to leave until I receive confirmation that Gabriel has been released.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“Then the drama of an eye for an eye and a son for a son will play out until the final curtain.”

David thought about his father’s failing health. Samuel Cole had suffered a life-threatening stroke four years before, and David was certain he would never survive another if he had to undergo the strain of negotiating for the life of his child.

“I’ll make the call. But not to my father.”

“If not him, then who?”

“My brother Martin.”

Raul’s top lip curled under his neatly barbered, gray mustache. “No good. Call your father.” Turning, he opened the door, walked out, and returned within minutes with a cordless phone.

David took the instrument, staring at it before dialing the area code for West Palm Beach, Florida. A chill of foreboding numbed him when he heard the break in connection.

“Cole residence,” came a familiar female voice.

“Mother, it’s David. I have to speak to Dad.”

“No ‘how are you’?”

“How are you, Mother?” he queried impatiently.

“Well, for an old woman.”

“You’re not an old woman, and you know it.”

“When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. Mother, please put Dad on the phone.”

“He’s resting.”

“Wake him up.”

“David—what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just need to talk to him.”

There was a soft sigh before Marguerite Cole spoke again. “I’ll get him.”

David felt the throbbing pain in his head for the first time in hours. All he’d shared with Serena faded with her stepfather’s threat against his life.

“David,” came the wavering male voice in his ear.

“Dad, I want you to listen to me and listen good. I need for you to—”

His conversation with Samuel Claridge Cole lasted less than two minutes. He pressed a button and ended the call, then flung the phone across the room, bouncing it off the solid mahogany door before it fell to the floor.

Rage darkened David’s eyes, making them appear even blacker, while Raul gave him a satisfied smile. “Very nice, David,” he stated quietly, using his given name for the first time.

“I’ve done your bidding. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

Raul bowed slightly from the waist, picked up the telephone, then straightened and walked away, leaving David shaking with a fury that surpassed the pain threatening to bring him to his knees.

His trembling had not subsided when Serena knocked on the door and walked into the room. “Go away,” he ordered, unable to look at her.

A frown creased her smooth forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just need to be alone.”

She couldn’t believe him. He’d asked her to marry him and now he wanted to be alone. “Not a problem, David. You want to be alone? You’ve got it!” Spinning on her heel, she walked out of the room.

Sinking down to the mattress, he covered his mouth with his hand to keep from blurting out how much he loved and needed her. He lost track of time as he lay
on the bed, trying to sort out his exchange with Vega and the telephone call to his father. Vega’s threat did not bother him as much as the croaking sounds that his father made when he told him what he needed to do to save his last born.

Then he did what he hadn’t done in years—he prayed. He prayed not for his own life, but for that of Samuel Claridge Cole’s.

S
erena changed her sandals for a pair of running shoes, stopping long enough to inform her father that she was leaving the house.

“Wait,
Chica
.” He rose from his chair behind the massive desk in his study. A gentle smile softened the harsh lines in his face. “Perhaps we can talk.”

Her gaze swept over the tall, slender, stern man whom she had grown to love despite his gruffness. At sixty-two he was more attractive than he’d been at thirty-two. The weight he’d gained filled out his face, softening the sharp angles of his chin and cheekbones. His hair had grayed, along with his clipped mustache, and the overall effect was one of graceful elegance.

“I’m going for a walk, Poppa.”

“Would you like company?”

She wanted to say no, but couldn’t. What she wanted was to be alone to sort out what had just occurred
between her and David. It was apparent something or someone had upset him; what, she didn’t know. But she did not intend to become a scapegoat for his bad moods.

She gave Raul a gentle smile. “Of course.”

They left through the rear of the house, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the brilliance of the tropical sun behind the lenses of their sunglasses.

Raul reached for his stepdaughter’s hand and held it protectively in his larger one. “Her flight hasn’t even left San José, and I already miss her.”

Serena registered the fleeting glimpse of weakness in Interior Minister Raul Cordero-Vega for the first time in her life. She’d wanted to think that Gabriel was his Achilles heel, but he wasn’t. It was his wife. Juanita Morris-Vega held the power that could destroy the man so many feared with a single word.

“She’ll be back, Poppa.”

“I keep telling myself over and over that she’ll be back, but something won’t let me believe it.”

“Who are you afraid for? Yourself or Mother?”

Leading her towards the greenhouse, he wagged his head. “Both of us,
Chica
. If they don’t let Gabriel go, then Juanita won’t come back. She’ll stay with him until—”

“Don’t say it, Poppa. Don’t bury him.”

Dropping her hand, he curved his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to his side. “You’re right.”

They wandered through the greenhouse, stopping to examine and inhale the sweetness of the many flowering plants. Serena picked a variety of white and pale pink blooms for the bedrooms and the dinner table, filling a large wicker basket from the dozen or more stacked on a shelf. Before she’d left Costa Rica to attend college,
she’d assumed the responsibility of selecting flowers for the house.

It was when they entered the aviary that she decided to bring up the fact that David still resided at
La Montaña
. “When will you conclude your business with David Cole?” she asked quietly.

Raul stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing suspiciously as he stared at her. “Why? What has he told you?”

She shrugged a slender shoulder and shifted the basket filled with flowers from one hand to the other. “He mentioned that he’d planned to stay two weeks. But with his injuries I just wondered whether you’ve changed your schedule.”

“Nothing has changed. We will discuss the sale of his banana plantation as planned.”

What he did not reveal was the price he’d set for David Cole’s freedom. A sixth sense also warned him that his daughter’s interest in his houseguest was more than that of a nurse for a patient.

“I trust you and
David
are getting along?”

Nodding, she smiled. “Well enough. I find him a little arrogant, but then so are you, Poppa.” Much to her surprise Raul threw back his head and laughed. “Well, it’s true,” she confirmed.

He sobered, his eyebrows lowering. “A successful man must possess a bit of arrogance, while David Cole has amassed a monopoly on it. I much preferred conducting business with his older brother. Martin Cole was quiet, but lethal, whereas David is loud like a clanging bell.”

“He is as lethal?”

Raul hesitated, trying to come up with a fitting metaphor for the Cole brothers. “Yes. Martin was like a
shark, circling beneath the surface before he struck, while David is a rattlesnake. He sounds a warning, then strikes while he’s still rattling.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to be warned?”

“Not from someone so young and disrespectful. He wasn’t quite thirty when he came to see me for the first time. I rearranged important meetings to accommodate him, and when I would not agree to his demand that I rescind the additional tariff on his banana crop, he walked out of the meeting. It had taken me three weeks to bring all of my ministers together, and we sat like stunned jackasses staring at one another. I swore from that day that David Cole would pay for his impertinence.”

A flicker of apprehension coursed through Serena. “Pay how, Poppa?”

“I don’t know,
Chica
. But his time is coming.”

How could she tell her stepfather that she’d slept with his most combative challenger and planned to marry him? That she would eventually make him a grandfather and that his grandchildren would carry the blood of his archenemy?

She stared at Raul, unable to disclose the secret she held close to her heart. She knew the time would come when she would be forced to choose between the two men in her life, and because she knew her destiny the man whom she called Poppa would be the loser in the undeclared war. She jumped when the sound of thunder shook the earth.

“I’m going back to the house to put the flowers in water.”

Leaning over, Raul kissed her cheek. “I’m going to stay here for a while to wait out the storm and talk to my feathered friends.”

Serena stared at Raul as he turned to a cage of
toucans, and for a brief second she felt like sobbing. Life had thrown Raul Cordero-Vega a cruel curve. He’d temporarily lost his wife and son, leaving him to grieve in silence.

David stood on the veranda, watching Serena and Raul. He noted the tenderness in the older man’s touch when he wound an arm around his stepdaughter’s shoulders, wondering how one man filled with so much venom could be that gentle. Was it possible that Raul Cordero-Vega was schizophrenic?

Seeing Serena lean against her father while smiling up at him reminded David of his own response to her hypnotic feminine sensuality. They’d argued more than they’d made love, but the one passionate encounter had obliterated all of the acrimony that preceded it. And instead of holding her to his heart he’d sent her away. Her father’s unexpected threat swept away the promise of his taking her for his wife, since his existence was now dependent upon her brother’s freedom.

He stood motionless, watching the dark clouds roll across the sky, obscuring the brilliance of the tropical sun. He listened for the first rumble of thunder, followed by the distant rustling and screams of jungle wildlife scurrying for shelter.

Closing his eyes, he registered the same ancient rhythms in his head and in his veins that he’d experienced when he entered Serena’s body. Why did he connect a tropical thunderstorm, jungle sounds, the pounding rhythms of ancient Africa with making love to her?

What was there about her that reached deep inside of him to make him want her? Just being who she was
unlocked his heart and his soul to make him fall in love with a woman for the very first time in his life.

A large drop fell, landing on the tip of his nose. Then another. The heavens opened up, the rain pouring down on his head and soaking his clothes. It cooled his warm flesh and washed away the madness turning his life upside down.

Closing his eyes and raising his arms, he gloried in the wrath of nature’s untamed fury for the span of time it took the rains to sweep over
La Montaña
. It washed away the stench of evil pervading the enormous structure erected on the mountain overlooking the sea and jungle, and it also cleansed him.

His lips mouthed the words that the wind tore from his silent tongue: “
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned
.”

Serena walked into her bedroom, her bare feet making no sound on the cool, wood floor. She’d returned to the house before the storm broke, filling the vases in the dining room and bedrooms with the freshly-cut flowers. After settling a vase on the table in the sitting area, she opened the French doors. The refreshing scent of rain-washed earth filtered through the space. The soil soaked up the moisture like a thirsty sponge, unwilling to give back a drop. Waiting until the downpour subsided, she stepped out onto the veranda, turning her face skyward. The moisture cooled her face and seeped into the light fabric of her sleeveless dress. Her eyes opened, and at the same time she shifted to her left. Then she saw him.

The sight of him on the veranda, arms raised, sucked the breath from her lungs as she inhaled audibly. The vision of his finely woven, white shirt pasted against his
chest was more sensual than if he’d stood completely naked. The rich, deep brown of his wet flesh showing through the fabric elicited a familiar throbbing in the lower portion of her body.

David felt, rather than saw, Serena even before he opened his eyes. An invisible force propelled him from where he stood until he was next to her, a secret smile curving his mobile mouth as he registered her delicate beauty. She did not move when he reached out for her. Burying his face in the hair swept atop her head, he pressed his mouth to the fragrant curls.

“Forgive me,
mi amor
. I didn’t want to send you away.”

Serena fused herself to him, becoming one with him. She wanted to refuse him, reject him, but she couldn’t. Her life was entwined with a stranger she’d lain with after three days of their meeting. A stranger whom it was prophesied she would marry. A stranger who would fill her womb with his seed. A sensual, passionate stranger she was falling in love with.

Her trembling fingers feathered over his mouth. “Shh-hhh, David. There’s nothing to forgive.”

“Yes, there is,” he insisted. “I sent you away when all I wanted was to hold you to my heart. Everything was perfect until—” His words trailed off.

“Until what?” Her voice was muffled against the solid heat of his chest.

He couldn’t tell her what had transpired between him and her father. She would never believe him. And he did not trust Raul’s mental state not to go through with his proposed threats to mutilate him.

“Until I called my father,” he began, deciding to tell her half the truth. “He’s not doing well.”

Pulling back, Serena stared up at his wet face. “What happened?”

“He suffered a stroke four years ago that left him with limited use of his right side and some speech impairment. Extensive therapy restored his speech so that you can understand him, but when I spoke to him this morning his words weren’t clear. They came out garbled.”

He wanted to say it was because of what he was forced to tell him. That if Samuel Cole didn’t use his money and influence to have her brother released from prison he would lose his own son.

Compassion softened her delicate face. “I’m sorry, David. When are you planning to leave?”

His sweeping eyebrows lifted. “Leave?”

She blinked in bewilderment. “Yes. Aren’t you going back to Florida to be with him?”

I can’t, because your father has made me a prisoner
, he replied silently. “No. My family will take care of him. I’ll stay and finish what I have to do here.” His head came down slowly, and he wasn’t disappointed when her lips met his. He drank deeply from her soft, honeyed mouth, and when he pulled back both were breathing heavily. A wild, untamed fire burned in his coal-black eyes, searing her face. “When I leave here, you’re coming with me.”

Serena felt a surge of elation, followed by a shock of despair. “I can’t leave, David.”

“Why not?” The two words sounded like a crack of a whip.

“My mother just left for Florida. I promised her that I’d stay with Poppa.”

What he wanted to shout at her was that her
Poppa
had threatened his life. That her Poppa had made her an
unwilling prisoner so that she had to wait for her mother’s return before she could go back to the States.

His lean jaw hardened. “I’ll wait for you,” he said instead.

Her gaze swept furtively over his face. “It may take a while.”

“I have time.” What he had was a sixty-day reprieve so that Gabriel Vega could be released from prison. He refused to think beyond the sixty days. Cradling her face between his hands, he brushed his mouth over hers. “Lock your door, but leave your window unlocked. I’ll come to you tonight,” he whispered.

Serena nodded, pulled out of his embrace, and reentered her bedroom. She glanced briefly at the flowers on the table, a secret smile touching her face. Everything was going to be all right. The voice in her head confirmed that fact.