Slightly Imperfect Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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 th
e 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.

  "Victoria Chandler Michaels," she whispered.

  Abruptly his resemblance to Marcus's father, which had attracted her that afternoon, made sense. "Tomas Cordera was Marcus's father."

  "Did you know him?" Hope, spurred by something in his voice, maybe, characterized her tone.

  "Not actually. But everyone knew him. At least Hispanics. He was a folk hero."

  "Was he?" Reverence swept over her face, settled in her eyes, arresting his consciousness. He hoped he would live long enough to elicit an expression like that from a woman like her. "Tell me about—why was he a folk hero?" she urged.

  "His rags-to-riches story, I guess," he said tenderly. "The community watched him come up through the ranks from shady character to respected businessman when he bought the hotel." A historical bastion of Texas coast society, decaying and up for grabs. Cordera had grabbed it.

  She nodded, her gaze quickening as she waited.

  "That gratis Chicano Pride Day party he threw at the Valdez sealed it for him. He was a definite champion." A historic event, thousands in attendance, poor Hispanics who would otherwise never have seen the inside of the grand hotel.

  "That party replaced my wedding reception, which had been planned the day I was born, I think." She smiled. "Tommy wouldn't let me use the hotel. He devised the party instead."

  Her grudging, yet worshipful, smile awed Zac. "Tomas was opposed to the marriage?"

  She nodded, her smile waning. "An understatement."

  He remembered the rancid part. "Your brother shot him."

  "My cousin, actually. He killed him," she corrected, looking away quickly. He watched her throat move once, twice, before she faced him. "He also tried to kill my husband that day. Christian." The declaration lay like an oozing fester, her emotion accounting for her original reluctance to share, he supposed.

  "I guess you're eaten up with anger. Hate can do that to you." How would he know? He had never hated anyone in his life.

  "No, I'm not," she said adamantly.

  He had misinterpreted.

  "I understand what happened between my—" Her mind and mouth seemed to balk, to search, "—between my cousin, and Tommy, and Christian. I'm to blame."

  A stirring on the back of his neck rankled him, made him want to erase the regret in her eyes, the defeat in her voice. "Did you pull the trigger?"

  "I could have kept Coby from pulling the trigger. I was as sick as he...was."

  "Coby?"

  "My cousin. Cailen Jacoby Chandler." Light rippled in her eyes, and he thought she tried to smile. "The twins are named after him. Alexander Jacoby. Ariana Cailen."

  Coby. Her soul mate. That, too, was evident in her voice.

  She opened a tiny bag that hung on the corner of her chair and handed him a worn, frayed-edged photograph of two blond children. Toddlers. They slept intertwined in one another's arms, on a plaid blanket spread near a large tree trunk.

  "This is Coby and me, not Ariana and Alexander," she half whispered.

  And it meant so much to her that she changed it from one purse to another when she went out to dinner? The twins' present ages lined up approximately with the subjects in the photograph, their resemblance to Victoria and her cousin haunting.

  "I found this in my mother's things and gave it to Coby when we were fifteen. He had it in his pocket the day he killed Tommy. Coby and I had—" She searched again, eyes clouding. "—a strong attachment." She gazed away, mute. Running her hands up and down her arms, she closed her eyes as if to shut herself in with her memory. And shut Zac out. "My father sent me this old photograph, when everything was over."

  "Over?"

  "Tommy was dead, Coby had been hospitalized, and I had fled. My father wanted me to have no doubt who was to blame."

  Zac had never heard more evident fatalism. "So your father's the villain?"

  Her eyes flew open. "Why do you say that?"

  He shrugged. "Every arresting story has to have a villain. Is it him in this case?"

  "You're very...insightful," she murmured.

  "That's a yes."

  Her pensive smile was delayed. "I'm so frightened for Ari and Alex. That the same thing—"

  He nodded, waiting. What same thing? Without understanding her fears, he was unwilling to tell her they were groundless. He didn't know that, or her, as she'd said. Not knowing what led to the rancid turn her life had taken the day Tomas Cordera died, gave him no knowledge with which to encourage her. But he wanted to know. He wanted to keep her talking.

  "Why did your cousin kill Tomas?"

  "Coby hated him. I had left Christian for Tommy. We were taking Marcus to Mexico to live, so Coby stopped us." She looked away, out the open window. "I loved Tommy," she declared for the second time in their brief acquaintance. Her throat moved again, her hand stealing there, stroking. She looked back. "I loved Coby, too."

  She loved him still. That went without saying.

  "I haven't seen him since the day he killed Tommy."

  Zac supposed propriety kept her from crying. She was drowning on the inside, and it wouldn't get better until she sobbed long and loud, grieved hot, wet tears. He understood that, for sure. "Why did Coby try to kill your husband?"

  "God." She actually shuddered. "That's another story."

  "We have time. The sun doesn't come up for hours." She shook her head. He took a long, pacing drink, and tried again. "How were you able to adopt Marcus?"

  "No one cared. His mother was dead. Do you remember?"

  He nodded, stayed noncommittal, waiting for her to go on.

  "Tommy had no family." She had been staring across the room, or into infinity. "He died because of my heritage, Zac. Because I couldn't give up Chandler House and my image in Puerto San Miguel, not soon enough, anyway." She looked straight into his eyes. "I know this is hard for you to understand. It would take so long...and we're strangers."

  "I want to hear." Then they wouldn't be strangers.

  He thought she was finished, but then she sighed and took a long acquiescent breath.

  "Tommy loved Marcus so much. That structured his life. Our lives really. I hold on to Tommy through Marcus. And I want to give him a heritage. In Puerto San Miguel." Her lips tightened. "That town killed his father—because of me—because I couldn't turn loose of superficial trappings. I'm taking Marcus back there. I'm going to change that."

  He wanted to ask when, but he only commented, "That's a big undertaking." His thoughts skidded backward, memory of trying to pump life into a dying woman and failing. He hoped Victoria's restorative efforts would prove more fruitful than his had. "Maybe you could just love Marcus, raise him with decent principles—"

  "No." The fervor of her refusal surprised him. She hadn't shown much mettle up to now. "I want him raised Mexican." No trendy, ethnic labels for Tomas Cordera's surviving lover.

  Zac couldn't help smiling. "How's a gringa princessa going to accomplish that?" he asked tenderly, studying her, waiting for her smile. Instead, her eyes moistened.

  "I'm not sure. Not in India or London. Not on Andrea's yacht, sailing the world in luxurious disregard."

  Her picturesque language snagged him into thinking he could listen indefinitely.

  "Tommy had friends in Houston. The Valasquez family. There are children. Older than Marcus, but children. Marcus was born in their neighborhood." Her teeth caught h
er lip, painted it white.

  "And you're going to move there? You won't fit in, Victoria. That would be a problem, once Marcus is old enough to sense it. And what about the twins? Their heritage?"

  "I don't know." She shook her head. "Sometimes I forget about the twins."

  Her most disturbing divulgence, thus far. He wasn't fast enough to hide a grimace.

  "Not really," she rushed. "Try to forget I said that. It isn't true."

  "I know." He didn't. "Crossing cultures is hell." He thought of Luke, Jan and Tita, again. "Especially with children. You've taken on a lot with Marcus. An admirable enterprise." Guilt was a hellaceous motivator, all right. "Do the twins have a father? Or did they result from Immaculate Conception?" He had figured it out, but he wanted to hear it from her, for her sake, he thought. Or maybe just to hear that beautifully cultured and comforting South Texas drawl.

  "Christian is their father. He was an Episcopal minister."

  Zac remembered from the much-publicized scandal. No wonder she recognized his Biblical name. She'd had in-house training. He sat back smiling, adjusting his body at an angle in the rigid, armless chair and extending his long legs. "A minister named Christian. Sounds contrived."

  Some of the tension dissolved in her soft laugher.

  "Is Christian a saint?" Was that why she felt so guilty, so responsible for the rancid past?

  "He was once. Actually, he still is, on my better days."

  Yeah. That was it, all right. She based her guilt on cause and effect.

  "I don't think transference applies here," he said. "We're only responsible for our own actions. The bible's full of it. Trust me, I'm an aficionado." But then so was her husband an aficionado on the Bible. Zac was more proficient in guilt.

  She smiled again, but didn't ask how he'd gotten so qualified on the subject of culpability.

  "Where is he? Christian?"

  "In London now. Since the—when Tommy died—" She fell silent, then started over. "Because I exposed my relationship with Tommy to the media, Christian lost his church. He's between missionary assignments now. He's being briefed in London to go to Baku. That's in—"