Hold Me

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Lucianne Rivers.All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Entangled Publishing is a subsidiary of Savvy Media Services, LLC. The Entangled Publishing name and logo are trademarks of Savvy Media Services, LLC.

Edited by Tracy March

Cover design by Heather Howland

ISBN 978-1-937044-16-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

Hold Me

by

Lucianne Rivers

For D and L

Chapter One

Jane Caldwell leveled her best hardnosed-news-anchor gaze at the family attorney. “Let me get this straight. Are you telling us our father is alive?”

Her two sisters stared in similar shock at the woman who had called them together for the reading of their mother’s will.

The attorney nodded, sympathy etched in the lines of her face. Dawn Madden had been the family attorney since Jane could remember, and also a friend.

She shifted in the rawhide chair which had been crafted from the leather of cows raised on the Five C Ranch during Jane’s childhood. A childhood spent missing her father, crying for him, then grieving his death. Now he was supposedly out there somewhere?

Jane’s confidence in her mother’s love had never wavered, yet the secret revealed by Candace Caldwell’s will had Jane doubting. Part of the vast Caldwell estate would go to the father she could barely remember. Her insides twisted with anger and hurt.

“How could she do this?” whispered Allison, who sat to Jane’s right, her long, brown hair swept back from her pale face in haphazard fashion.

Jane squeezed her youngest sister’s hand. Everyone expected the ranch to go to Allison. She had been the one who had stayed home with their mother all these years. Together, they’d turned the ranch into a group retreat, spring through fall. The rest of year, Ally ran a five-star bed and breakfast for tourists willing to brave the New Mexican winter.

And Allison had been there with their mother at the end.

Jane swallowed. She’d spent the last week crying into the well-washed cotton of her childhood pillow in the privacy of her old bedroom-turned-guest-room. Now her eyes watered afresh.

Her sisters grieved in their own way. Margo had subsumed all her emotion, as usual, taking a rifle from the family collection and hiking into the vast acreage to shoot at tin cans. Allison took her angst out on the vegetable garden, hacking at the still-frozen ground of late winter. Jane tried to keep it all together. After all, she was the eldest at twenty-seven.

Margo—
Detective Caldwell
, Jane remembered proudly—leaned forward and steepled her hands. “I thought I was the executor of Mom’s will. This isn’t what we discussed.”

Dawn squirmed under Margo’s scrutiny. The library of the Five C Ranch was more than big enough to hold them, but their mother’s last wishes had sucked the air out of the room. It wasn’t overly hot, but Jane began to sweat. Her chest tightened.

Dawn took a deep breath, then focused on Margo. “When Candace became ill last month, she called me to make a new will.”

“I’m finding this hard to believe,” Jane managed.

“I imagine you are, yet this is what your mother wanted.”

“Could you repeat the part about our father?” Jane asked, hoping she’d misheard.

Dawn put on her reading glasses. “A quarter of the estate goes to your father, Zach T. Caldwell, and a quarter each to the three of you. Except for the ranch. Your mother left that to the daughter who finds Zach. ‘Added incentive’ was how she put it.”

“So she knew he was alive but had no idea where?” Jane asked. Her mom must have been damn sure for her to stipulate such terms in her will. She looked at Allison and Margo, wondering if they were as stupefied as she.

“Yes,” Dawn said.

Allison shook her head. “Mom wouldn’t pit us against each other, making our home some prize in a contest.”

Jane shrank at the absurd thought of competing for the family ranch. In her eyes, Ally had given up a lot to stay out here in the high desert—the fun of moving to a city, socializing daily with people her age, living on her own. But Ally seemed to love living here, isolated as it was.

Margo ran her fingers through her dark bob. “Never mind the inheritance. I’m just trying to get my head around the fact that Mom lied to us about Dad dying.”

Jane grappled with the same challenge. Zach Caldwell, the fifth ‘C’ of the Five C Ranch, had supposedly died during the Gulf War when Jane was six. What else had her mother kept from them?

“Your mother honestly thought your father was killed in action over twenty years ago.” Dawn took a sip of water from a heavy crystal glass. “She told me she received a phone call several weeks ago from a man who told her Zach was alive.”

“What man?” Allison asked, arms crossed.

“He didn’t identify himself,” Dawn said. “He hung up when she asked his name. Very cloak and dagger.”

“And Mom believed him?” Jane wasn’t sure she did.

“Candace hired a private investigator with connections to the military. He found no record of your father’s death.”

Margo raised an eyebrow. “Who’s the investigator? Maybe I know him.”

Margo probably knew everyone in local law enforcement. She’d been promoted often, and Jane suspected she’d make police chief someday.

“His name is Robert Rivera,” Dawn said, referring to her notes. “He’s a former Navy SEAL.”

“Never heard of him,” Margo said.

“Excuse me.” Allison stood and strode to the door, her face grim. Jane knew from the set of her shoulders that she was garden-bound. Jane stood, intending to comfort her most fragile sister. News of their father’s existence, coupled with the loss of their mother had brought chaos to their orderly existence. She wanted to reassure Ally that, Zach or no Zach, Jane and Margo would never take the ranch away from her.

“Wait,” Dawn said, handing each of them an envelope with their name on it. “Candace left one for each of you.”

Staring at her name scrawled on the envelope in her mother’s hand, Jane bit back a gasp of despair and cleared her throat. “Thank you for making the trip, Dawn. You didn’t have to come out here for this.”

“Candace was my friend, and I care about you girls. It was the least I could do.” Dawn rose and hugged each one. They murmured their goodbyes and she gave them a last, pitying glance before
clacking
down the wooden-floored hall to the front door.

The sisters stayed in the library until the sound of Dawn’s car on the gravel driveway disappeared.

Jane looked at each of their faces—Margo’s watchful, Allison’s glum. “If Dad’s alive, I want to find him.”

Allison, who Jane knew didn’t remember Zach Caldwell, paced across the room and stared out the window at the acres of dirt and cacti.

“Don’t worry, Ally.” Jane glanced at Margo, eyebrows raised. “Neither of us wants you to leave the ranch. I’m certain Mom knew that when she made her will. We’ll find Zach. You stay here and run the place as only you can.”

Margo nodded, eyes on their youngest sister.

“You really mean that?” Ally, usually so sure of herself, asked in a tremulous voice.

“Of course,” Jane said. She and Margo moved to flank Allison by the window. The winter sun appeared from behind a gray cloud. Its beams shone through the glass, lighting their faces.

“So what do we do now?” Allison asked, her words hollow and haunted.

Fierce protectiveness and determination rose in Jane’s chest. “We find our father.”

…

Two weeks later

Jane’s suit was past saving—the cream-colored, dry-clean-only fabric creased and sullied with stale-smelling coffee. Her flight to Cancun had been uneventful, but finding her way to the bus station had involved an altercation with an unscrupulous taxi-driver. College-level Spanish hadn’t prepared her for the pace and patois spoken in Mexico. No doubt the cabbie had taken her on a circuitous route to the bus station and charged her accordingly.

Managing to buy a ticket to Chetumal had also been a feat. She’d rewarded herself with a much-needed coffee, and promptly spilled it down the front of her suit and into her purse. Jane quickly pulled her dripping cell phone from her purse and found it dead and unrecoverable, fried by the liquid.

Fabulous.

Night had fallen by the time the coach pulled into the small, open-air terminal in Chetumal. Spicy, humid smells of Mexico assailed Jane as she emerged from the bus, exhausted. She grabbed her bag from stowage, rolled it past a rickety covered seating area, and approached the ticket office.

At the ticket window, she gestured at the haggard clerk, purple-tinged bags beneath his eyes. “El Remate, Guatemala.”

Jane got a rush of incomprehensible Spanish in response. Why hadn’t she picked the other destination where they had found a Zach T. Caldwell?

She and her sisters had hired the same private investigator out of Albuquerque, who was former military himself. He had discovered two Zach T. Caldwells who might be their father. One lived in the Virgin Islands, the other in El Remate, Guatemala. Margo would leave tomorrow for the Virgin Islands. At the moment, Jane regretted her irrational choice to head to the unfamiliar territory of Guatemala. Jane and Margo had decided to give the ranch to Allison, no matter who found Zach first—
if
they found him—so Allison had stayed home to oversee business at the ranch.

Impatient rumblings came from the queue behind her, but she had no intention of stepping aside. She needed to find her way out of here—soon. “Tell me,
por favor
, that there is a bus leaving for El Remate tonight?”

“
Mañana
.”

Now
that
she understood. She shook her head, desperation creeping around the edges of her calm façade.

“He said ‘tomorrow.’” A deep voice resonated from behind her.

“Thank you,” she said dismissively, turning to the American who had spoken. “I know what
mañana
means.”

She stared, slack-jawed, at one of the most handsome men she had seen in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever. She’d know for sure if she could see his eyes, which were hidden behind dark glasses. Shiny brown hair grazed his strong cheekbones and fell to his shoulders.

Self-conscious about her coffee-stained suit, Jane eyed his pristine, casual white T-shirt and admired the tight muscles that pulled the fabric taut.

The man was built.

Jane tempered her thoughts and raised her eyes to his shaded ones. She could see them well enough to catch him giving her a once-over—eyeing her suitcase, her high heels, and lingering on her soiled suit.

He raised one of his eyebrows. “Lost?”

“I know
exactly
where I am,” she said. Grumblings from the line urged her to move to one side.

The hot American leaned toward the ticket window and spoke in rapid-fire Spanish. He paid the clerk and got a ticket in return.

“You should probably buy your fare today,” he said. “The seats fill up pretty quickly.”

Wise advice. She hovered, glancing at the ticket window then back at him.

“I can do it,” he offered.

Jane could accept his help or fend off a line of impatient customers while she language-wrangled. She nodded.

He spoke slowly to the clerk, allowing Jane to follow his Spanish, his voice deep and a little gravelly. She listened closely as he requested her ticket to El Remate, Guatemala, in case he was a murderer trying to lead her astray, like Danny DeVito in that Kathleen Turner movie set in Colombia.

“The bus leaves at six tomorrow morning,” he translated, handing the clerk her wad of pesos.

She took the ticket from his sun-browned fingers and gave him a demure smile. She had learned never to smile too widely, except on television, or men tended to get the wrong idea. Not that she would mind if he did. Her pulse did an impression of “The Little Drummer Boy.” Attraction stirred.

He nodded, hiked his backpack higher on his shoulders, and politely moved past her.

“Wait, please.” God, she sounded desperate.

He stopped, but didn’t face her, so she moved beside him. “You’re American?”

He stilled.

“Can you recommend a hotel?” she asked.

“Don’t know of any that would suit you. I’m afraid I’m slumming it tonight.”

He walked away, and Jane glanced around. The clerk was serving the last customer, leaving the bus lot almost deserted.

Two heavy-set teenage boys lurked by the terminal entrance. Were they eyeing her suitcase? Clutching her purse tightly, she trotted after the American, avoiding eye contact.

Jane stepped onto the main street, into a cloying swarm of people. Chetumal certainly had nightlife, unlike Albuquerque, which shut down around ten p.m. Music swelled from stores and cafes, scoring the pulse of the crowd with a Latin rhythm. Street peddlers offered exotic foods. Shaking her head at one who’d spotted her—the gullible-looking American—she almost lost sight of the man from the bus station. She gulped and gripped the handle of her suitcase tighter.

Don’t panic, Jane.

Distracted by voices to her right, she turned to see two men shouting at one another a couple of yards away. One pushed the other against a storefront amid a torrent of curses. Jane’s gut tightened as she witnessed a street fight for the first time. Both men pulled knives and onlookers gasped or jeered as the men tousled. Adrenaline and sick fascination kept Jane riveted. One fighter landed an elbow on the other’s cheekbone with an audible
crack
. She winced. Someone’s fingers gripped her arm and she jumped. The American had come up beside her.

“It’s Fiesta,” he said, as if that explained the violence. “I’ll get you a taxi.”

She let him guide her away, risking a last glance at the bleeding fighters as he whistled for a cab.

An approaching taxicab pulled to the curb and he gestured toward it. “Your chariot.”

He didn’t wait for Jane to get in, but turned on his heel, hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, and walked away.

The cabbie leered at Jane through brown, gapped teeth, eyeing her exposed neckline. She gave him a sharp look and shook her head. No way was she doing battle with another taxi driver today, especially one who looked at her like a sex offender would.

The cab screeched back into traffic and Jane stood contemplating her next move. Vehicles crept along the narrow street, bumpers touching. Vendors and shopkeepers waved her into their stores. One woman tugged Jane’s arm, the too-personal gesture making her stomach clench. Jane tried to shrug off the woman’s surprisingly strong grip but failed.