"I was there... that night." Emilio's voice cracked with emotion. "It was magic between them the moment they saw each other."
The words were like a tight fist squeezing at Nate's heart. Once, he would have thought the notion of love-at-first-sight ludicrous, but since meeting Cyn, he admitted that it was possible. Hadn't she trapped him in her spell the first night he'd seen her on the beach? Had it been that way for his father the first moment he'd seen the young and beautiful Grace Hodges?
"They were very much in love," Emilio said. "He wanted to marry her, was willing to give up everything to have her."
"Then why didn't he?" Nate asked, hating Ramon Car-ranza for allowing his sweet mother to have gone through the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate child.
"Luis Arnaz found out about your mother. He threatened her life." Emilio placed his hands on Nate's shoulders, his thick fingers tightening. "Arnaz demanded that your father break all ties with your mother. He swore that he would have her killed. Señor Carranza knew that his father-in-law was capable of carrying out the threat."
Jerking away from Emilio, Nate stood. He felt like running, hard and fast. But he knew he couldn't run away from the truth. Ramon Carranza was his father. He had loved Grace Hodges, and had deserted her in order to save her life. All the bitterness and hatred of a lifetime churned inside Nate, his anger nearing the boiling point. He needed something to hit, some faceless enemy to pulverize.
He balled his hands into tight fists, corded the muscles in his back and neck with such tension he could feel the strain in every nerve ending. And then she touched him. Gentle, soft, loving, her touch ignited the tinderbox of emotions within him. He turned on her, his eyes fierce with a slow burning heat that became white-hot.
Cyn gazed up into the eyes of the man she loved and saw such torment, such pent-up rage, that she couldn't bear to look at him. Mindless of anything except the need to comfort him, Cyn wrapped her arms around his tightly coiled body.
Swiftly, brutally, he encompassed her in his arms, hugging her to him with the savagery of a dying man holding on to his last hope for survival. "Cyn... Cyn..."
"I'm here. I'll always be here. I'll never leave you." She felt his body shaking as she held him, her hands caressing his broad back.
They heard a woman's commanding voice ask, "Is there someone here with the Carranza family?"
Nate and Cyn turned around. Emilio stood. All three of them moved toward the nurse who was waiting in the doorway.
"I'm Ramon Carranza's son," Nate said. "How is my father?"
"They've brought him down from surgery," the white-uniformed woman said. "You may go in to see him shortly, but Dr. Brittnell wants to talk to you first." * * *
Ramon Carranza was dying. The doctors gave them no hope. It was only a matter of hours, perhaps even minutes. Emilio had sent for a priest.
For forty-two years, Nate had wondered about his unknown father, sometimes hating him, sometimes longing for him as only a child can long for a missing parent.
In the last few minutes he had remembered everything his mother had ever told him about his father. She had painted the man in glowing terms. Nate had never doubted that she loved his father, the mysterious man she had called Rafael. Grace Hodges had told her son that his father had been half Cuban and half Seminole Indian. That he had been a handsome man with a smile that could charm the birds from the trees.
When Nate had questioned her about why his father wasn't with them, Grace Hodges had told her son that his father was dead. As a child, he had not understood; as an adult he had accepted his mother's explanation as the truth.
"We can go in to see Ramon now," Cyn said, squeezing Nate's hand.
They entered the critical care unit together, hand in hand. Ramon looked very old and very tired as he lay on the pristine white sheets. But even surrounded by monitors and life-saving machinery, the big, dark-skinned Cuban dominated the room.
As he neared his father's bedside, Nate experienced a battle of emotions raging within him, creating uncertainty and dread. What could he say to this man? What would Ramon Carranza want from his only son?
The minute Nate and Cyn stopped by his bedside, Ramon opened his eyes. "Nathan." His deep voice was a whisper.
"I'm here." Dammit all, I don't want to be here, Nate thought. I don't want to have to confront this man, to have to face all the ghosts from my childhood.
Ramon tried to lift his hand, but was unable to do more than wiggle his fingers. Nate reached down and clasped the old man's hand in his.
"I promised her that... you would never be... a part of my sordid life." Each word seemed torn from Ramon, as if the utterance was painful. "I loved her so."
"It's all right," Nate said, squeezing his father's hand. "Don't try to talk."
"The day she died..." Ramon gasped for air, his lungs struggling for each breath.
"Hush, now," Cyn pleaded, her eyes filled with tears. This shouldn't be happening, she thought. Not now, when these two had just found each other.
"She called... she was so sick. I went to her." Ramon's limp hand tightened slightly around his son's tenacious grip. "I promised to leave you...with her brother...to never tell you..."
"It doesn't matter." Nate tried to reassure the dying man. "It was so long ago. Another lifetime."
"I wanted you...my son, but she did not want you growing up... in my world." Ramon's soft grip loosened, his hand falling limp within Nate's grasp.
"Father." Nate's voice trembled, his throat tortured with unshed tears.
"I love you. Always, I have loved you...my son." And with those tender words that said far more than the sentimental confessions of a dying man, Ramon Rafael Car-ranza accepted death.
"Father? Father!" Not yet. Not yet, his mind screamed. We haven't had enough time.
Emilio Rivera stepped forward from his watchful position by the door. With her arms around Nate, Cyn turned in time to see the tears streaming down Emilio's battered old face.
Nate pulled out of her arms, staring at her with moist eyes, the look of a lost child on his face. "I need to be alone. Just for a while. Try to understand."
Cyn watched him walk away, stunned that he didn't want her with him, hurt that at the most traumatic time in his life, he didn't need her.
"So like his padre," Emilio said, placing his enormous arm protectively around Cyn's shoulder. "So much a man that he does not want his woman to see him cry."
"See him... Oh, Emilio, I didn't understand."
Emilio hugged Cyn to him, as together, Ramon Carran-za's gargantuan bodyguard and Nate Hodges's woman cried for a father who had loved a son he could never claim, a mother with the courage to bear her married lover's child and a boy who had grown into a man without the love and protection his parents were powerless to give him. * * *
Cyn slipped on her aqua robe, belting it tightly. Before leaving the bedroom, she gave Nate's sleeping body a loving glance. Quietly, she made her way to the kitchen, seeking out the coffeemaker. As she went about preparing morning coffee, she thought about the past two weeks since Ramon's funeral. It had not been an easy time—for Nate or for her.
Although Nate had spoken to her very little, preferring to keep his emotions bottled up inside him, Cyn had not left his side. Determined to carve out a future with the man she loved, Cynthia Ellen Wellington Porter was willing to wait it out, to give Nate all the time and space he needed to come to terms with his past.
She knew that Nate had already come to terms with Ryker's death, but not with her kidnapping. He still blamed himself for not being able to protect her. She realized that he probably always would. Even the fact that Art Bedford had been apprehended in flight to South America had not lessened Nate's self-imposed guilt.