Stolen Chances (30 page)

Thad laced his fingers with hers and led her toward Patrick’s casita. Her insides were a mass of nerves when he pulled open the screen and drew Maren in behind him. Her eyes scanned the room. She saw her father’s set and rigid face and behind him, Lisa.

Her spirits dropped. She’d hoped it would just be Patrick. Confessing her sins in front of her best friend seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. But Lisa deserved to know what was going on as much as anyone, and at least this would save Maren from having to rehash it all with her later.

Patrick turned from the chart he and Lisa had been discussing and pinned her with a look. “Maren, where the hell have you been?”

So much for polite. His expression wasn’t just irritated, it was furious. A vein near his temple looked like it could explode at any moment.

She didn’t respond, just let him vent while he could. She knew in a matter of minutes it would only get worse.

“Well,” he said. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

She glanced over at Thad. A small smile curled his lips, encouraging her, and he squeezed her hand. On a deep breath, Maren slipped off her sunglasses and looked back at her father.

Lisa gasped. Surprise flickered across Patrick’s face just before it turned to pure rage.

Patrick shot toward Thad. “You goddamn son of a bitch.” In a split second, he had Thad by the collar and was shoving him back against the wall.

Maren scrambled between the two. “He didn’t do this to me!” She wedged her way in front of Thad and pushed her father back. “He’s not the one who hit me. You know him, Patrick. You know he wouldn’t hurt me.”

Doubt flickered across her father’s face, but slowly, he released Thad’s shirt. His gaze shot to Maren. “Who, then?”

Maren pursed her lips.

“Tell him,” Thad said at her back.

She blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Declan.”

Patrick’s eyes grew wide. “You saw him? When? Where?”

“Five days ago. On his yacht.”

“Here in the Caribbean?”

“Yes.”

“You went to see him?” He raked a hand through his hair. Confusion swamped his rugged features. “Why?”

Thad stepped up behind her. His hands closed gently over her shoulders. “Because he threatened Isabel.”

Patrick’s gaze drifted back to Maren. “You told him about Isabel.”

She nodded, and on a deep breath, dove headfirst into the story, starting with Isabel’s disappearance and her first meeting with Evan. She ran through everything like she had with Thad, right up until the point Evan hit her and sent her to the emergency room. She omitted the part about sleeping with him, but knew from the look on Patrick’s face, he’d already guessed she’d used whatever means possible to keep Isabel safe.

When she finished, she glanced up. Shock ran across Lisa’s face. Patrick appeared ill.

She steeled herself for her father’s wrath, but instead, he almost knocked her off her feet when he wrapped his arms around her.

In all her life, he’d only held her once like this, and it was after Colin had died in Mexico and she’d been racked with guilt. She couldn’t remember a time before or after when he’d ever let his emotions flow so freely, not even after she and Thad had come back to camp after nearly being trapped in that cenote.

“I’m so sorry, Maren,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me. You should have come to me from the very beginning.”

She rested her head against his chest, closed her eyes, and breathed in the spicy scent of his aftershave. For a moment, she was eight again, not thirty-three. “I didn’t know how to do that. I thought you’d hate me after what I’d done.”

When he eased back, she saw tears in his eyes, and the sorrow. “I could never hate you. Never. I love you. I just… I don’t show it well. Ask your mother. She’ll tell you.”

He pulled her close again and held her tight, rocking her back and forth, and the moment was surreal. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she let him hold her. And felt a bond with him she hadn’t realized was missing from her life. Tears filled her eyes. “I love you too, Dad.”

She wasn’t sure how long he held her, but at some point she was faintly aware of Lisa sniffling in the background. Maren drew back, wiped her eyes, and glanced over at Thad, who was rubbing Lisa’s back, trying to console her. “It’s just so damn beautiful,” Lisa muttered between sobs.

Maren looked back at her father, who still had his arm around her waist, and smiled at him, probably for the first time in years.

He skimmed a finger over her bruised face. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s better now. I’m okay.”

Patrick’s gaze moved back to Thad. “I owe you an apology.”

Thad returned her father’s handshake and shot her a look. “See? Told you.” Then to her father, “I’d have done the same. When I saw her, I was ready to commit murder myself.”

Patrick rubbed his eyes. “What about Isabel? Where is she?”

“She’s fine,” Maren said. “She’s safe. With Candace. I spoke to her this morning.”

“I’d feel better if she were here,” Thad interjected, “where we can keep an eye on her.”

“No.” Maren said. “I don’t want her here. I don’t want her anywhere close to him. If she’s here, I’ll worry about her. I won’t be able to work, and I want to get this done. I need to finish it.”

Patrick nodded. “Let’s leave her where she is for now. We can bring her in if we change our minds.” He glanced at Thad for affirmation. When Thad nodded reluctantly, Patrick looked over at Maren. “Did you call your mother?”

“Yes. She knows Isabel is safe. She wasn’t happy with me because I wouldn’t elaborate, but it was the best I could do.”

“I’ll smooth things over with her. Don’t worry. In the meantime, we have to think about what we’re going to do. When are you supposed to contact Declan again?”

“Two days.”

He nodded. “Thad?”

Thad drew in a deep breath. “As much as I hate it, I think she needs to stick to his schedule.” He glanced at Maren. “If you keep up the charade, it’ll give us a better chance to find
La Malinche
and figure out what we’re going to do about the bastard.”

Patrick nodded, then looked between the two again. “Maren, what do you think?”

“It makes sense. He’ll figure out soon enough Isabel isn’t at the hotel. The longer we keep him on the line, the better it will be for us.”

“Okay.” Patrick nodded again. “We’ll start back to work tomorrow if you’re up to it. You’ll call Declan the following day. We’ve made good progress while you’ve been gone. Lisa and Rafe found the cargo hold on the ship, and my team ruled out another two cenotes.”

“She’s not in a cenote.”

Frustration seeped back into Patrick’s eyes. “Maren, let’s not start that ag—”

“I don’t know how I know,” she said, “I just do. She’s with the ship. I feel it.”

Her father was silent. From the other side of the room, Lisa said, “Intuition can be a lot more reliable than science sometimes.”

Maren’s gaze slid her way, and she remembered her conversation with Nate on the beach. He’d said the same thing.

She looked back at her father. Rehashing this with him wouldn’t help. “I want to go out to the boat today and see what happened while I was gone.”

Patrick nodded. “We can do that.”

Maren turned toward Lisa before her father could dive into plans for the day. “I need to talk to my father for a minute, alone.”

Lisa wiped her eyes, then hugged Maren. “We’ll talk later. You have a lot of explaining to do, girlfriend.”

Maren smiled. “Find some wine, and I’ll fill you in.”

When Lisa was gone, Thad glanced at Maren questioningly. “No,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I want you to stay.”

She looked back toward Patrick. “I need to ask you something. When I was on Declan’s yacht, he said something that bothered me. I didn’t ask him what he meant, but I have a feeling you know the answer.”

His brow lowered. “I don’t know that I do, but I can try.”

“He said my being with him wasn’t an accident, that it was fate. He said, ‘His blood flows through my veins, hers through yours. Time and distance could never keep us apart.’ What did he mean?”

Patrick leaned back against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Evan Declan has always believed
La Malinche
is his birthright. He’s not interested in the monetary value of the piece. He’s interested in having it for himself. He’s a direct descendent of Hernando Cortés and can trace his bloodlines all the way back to the Conquistadors.”

Maren digested the words. “
His blood flows through my veins.
That part makes sense, but what about the rest?” When he hesitated, she knew he was holding back. “Patrick. Dad. Tell me.”

He heaved a sigh. “You know I’ve always been interested in
La Malinche
, Maren. When I told you the bedtime story as a child, it was with the interest of an avid archaeologist. I never believed in the curse. I only believed in the artifact itself. Highly prized, extremely sought after, never found. I began researching the relic, but like anyone else, got sucked into the lore and mystery. And when I was tracing Doña Marina’s descendants, I came across something of interest. It caused me to do some research into our own family. Declan obviously has done the same, although why, I can’t say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, just like Declan can trace his roots back to Cortés, you can trace yours back to Doña Marina.”

She was silent for a minute as Evan’s words of love and destiny filtered through her mind. Easing herself down onto a chair, she looked back at her father. “
Her blood flows through my veins.
That’s why he won’t let me go. That’s why he came looking for me instead of the rest of you. He thinks he owns me the way Cortés owned that poor slave girl. He thinks I really am the key to finding
La Malinche
.”

“It seems that way now.” Patrick glanced toward Thad. “I-I didn’t make the connection before.”

“Love and hate are so closely related, he can’t tell the difference.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “He’s not going to stop whether we find the statue or not.”

“He will,” Thad said with so much vehemence in his voice a shudder ran through Maren.

There was no denying the hatred in his eyes, or the revenge still brewing there, fueled now by everything she’d told him last night. Her spine tingled at the rigid set of his jaw and the tension coiled beneath his broad shoulders.

“Let’s focus on finding that damn statue first,” Patrick said, “then on what we’re going to do with it once we have it.” He straightened. “Why don’t you go change, and I’ll take you out to the boat and show you what we’ve done while you’ve been gone.

“There’s something else,” Maren said. “Evan knew we’d found the wreck. He knew about the cannons. Someone on the project is feeding him info.”

“I’ll take care of it,” her father said.

“But—”

Her father held up a hand. “I don’t want you to worry about it. You have enough other things on your mind. Let me take care of this one.”

Reluctantly, Maren nodded. He was right. She had plenty of other things to stress over. But as she stood, she couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom.

When Patrick reached for her again, she hugged him without reservation. “Thank you, Dad,” she said against him.

He held her for a minute before letting go. “We’ll work this out, Maren. Don’t worry.”

She nodded against him and wished she could believe what he told her was true. But where Evan Declan was concerned, she would always worry.

T
he sun was setting low in the sky that evening when the boat finally quieted and the rest of the team headed back to the mainland. As Thad stowed the dive gear, his mind drifted to Maren and her conversation earlier with her father. The woman was all strength, whether she saw it or not. And every time he thought about the things she’d had to deal with on her own all these years…

His heart squeezed and threatened to steal his breath all over again, just like it had when she’d finally confided in him. Like it had when he’d listened to her confess to her father. Locking the cabinet, he swallowed hard and forced the guilt down. Dwelling on a past he couldn’t change wasn’t going to help Maren and Isabel. And now it was his turn to be that strength for both of them.

Familiar notes echoed from the salon, and a slow smile slid across his face when he recognized the tune. ‘Glory Days’. The Boss. Her favorite. Following the raspy sound of Springsteen’s voice, he eased down the few steps into the salon and felt his heart roll.

Maren stood in the galley, rummaging through the cupboards. Her back was to him, and she couldn’t see him, but he could sure see her. Long, bare legs, tight, sweet ass in those short denim shorts, trim hips swaying to the beat, small waist, and toned, beautifully bronzed shoulders in that black ribbed tank. Her hair was piled high on her head, and late afternoon light shone through the porthole window, showering her in strands of gold.

God, she was beautiful. And still not his.

His heart squeezed tighter as he watched her move, reminding him of every fear he’d played over in his mind last night after she’d fallen asleep in his arms. Yes, she’d confided in him. Yes, she’d finally leaned on him. She’d even given him her body. But she hadn’t given him her heart. And that was what he wanted most. That was the key to everything.