Legacy of the Highlands (24 page)

Now this was intriguing, Serge thought, but
he only continued to show polite interest. “I’m sure your friend
had his reasons for taking off. Could he be in some kind of
trouble?”

“Jamie in trouble? Ha! That’s daft. Uncle
Jamie says the lad just took off one day. It could be that he’s
upset about his own Da being sent to prison. But when it happened,
he seemed all right with it,” she said, her brow furrowed. “I’d
help him if I knew what to do.”

Mairi had unknowingly provided a critical
piece of the puzzle and Serge’s mind began to analyze how it all
fit together. First, Mairi’s friend’s father, the son of James
Mackinnon, the shopkeeper, is arrested. Then this Jamie, the
grandson — shit, did they all have to be James or Jamie? — goes to
America for some unknown reason, returns and unexpectedly moves to
the far north.

“I imagine if my father were in jail I’d be
pretty upset and I might start to act weird too,” Serge said as
moved his hand to her milky thigh. “What did the police want with
your friend’s father? Did he rob a bank or shoot someone?” he asked
with an air of innocent curiosity.

“I didn’t see it myself, but people say that
soldiers dressed all in black, commandos maybe, came to their house
one night and took Jamie’s Da away. In his nightclothes, he was!
Can you imagine? There was a lot of talk, but even Jamie was
flummoxed. A few folk guessed that his Da must be connected to the
I.R.A. or some such thing, but the Mackinnons are definitely not
Irish so that can’t be it. Anyway, there I go blathering on about
people you don’t even know. Tell me something more about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, for starters, are you married?”

He laughed. “No, I’m not married.”

“Hmmm, a handsome man like you should be and
I’m surprised. Doesn’t really matter anyway. You’ll go back to your
sunny Florida in a few days and you won’t even remember me,” she
pouted.

“Mairi,” he murmured softly, “you
underestimate yourself. You’re not a woman that a man soon
forgets.” It was almost too easy to ingratiate himself with someone
so trusting and unsophisticated. “Maybe you can visit me. I could
send you a ticket.”

“What!” She pressed her body against his and
covered his face in excited kisses. “You would do that? You’d pay
my way to America?”

“Why not? It’s no big deal. I can easily
afford it and I’ve got a big house near the beach, so you can enjoy
the sun for a few days while I work. Think of it as the Mairi
Graham traveling scholarship.”

She wrapped her arms around him as if he were
a genie that would vanish back into his lamp while she imagined
herself in a tiny bikini, her skin baked to a golden tan. “Bloody
‘ell! My parents would never allow it. It’s one thing to do what I
please here in Inverness, but this…”

“They won’t guess that there’s anything
between us. After all, you said I’m about the same age as your
father and they’d never think you’d get involved with someone so
old. I’m sure we can come up with a good story.” He pretended to be
deep in thought. “I could tell them I’ve offered you a job in one
of my stores. Do you think that would work?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her brow furrowed.
“I’ve a better idea. Lots of local girls go to Europe or America to
work as nannies and my parents know I’ve helped raise my younger
brothers and sister. I could say you and I struck up a conversation
in the teashop and you told me you have young children — and a wife
of course — and need someone to help care for them. That might do
it.”

“Sounds great,” agreed Serge. “They’ll want
to meet me, of course.” The Grahams and the Mackinnons were close,
she’d said, so her father might know more about the arrest of
Mackinnon’s son and the grandson’s disappearance. He felt a brief
twinge of guilt that there would be no trip to Florida for the
gullible Mairi, but that was how the game was played. His betrayal
would toughen her up and even save her from future heartache.

“I know they’ll say yes. I just know it!” She
bounced up and down on the bed, unable to stay still. “But for now,
I’m expected home. I’ll talk to my parents tonight or tomorrow at
breakfast,” she said enthusiastically as she kissed her way down
his body and used her talented mouth to thank him in her own, very
satisfying, way. Before Serge allowed himself to surrender to
pleasure, he fleetingly thought about all he’d have to report to
Diego…but that could wait until later, much later.

Alex left the Ritz Carlton and strolled back to her
apartment in a daze as she tried to process all that had happened
in the past twenty-four hours. Her father-in-law’s mind-blowing
confession about his role in Will’s death had been horrifying
enough to send her to bed for a week, but when combined with the
night she’d just spent with Diego it was like she’d been hit by a
knockout punch. Despite it all, she felt the kind of exhilaration
that followed a couple of glasses of champagne.

Back in her apartment, she quickly exchanged
the now-wrinkled designer outfit for comfortable jeans and a snug
Rolling Stones’ T-shirt, hit “play” on her blinking answering
machine and stretched out on the couch. She was bubbling with
feel-good endorphins and wondered what Francie would say about it
all.

My friend’s a mind reader, she thought, as
she listened to three voicemails from an increasingly impatient
Francie demanding to know every detail about the meeting with
Will’s father. There was also one from John Cameron apologizing for
his behavior. But it was the last message, from Francie’s husband
David, which captured her attention.

“Hi Alex, it’s David. Call me at the office.”
He was her lawyer and she hoped whatever he had to say wouldn’t
spoil her mood. She decided to get his call out of the way to
reassure herself that he only wanted to check in with her.

“Hey David. What’s up?” she asked
cheerfully.

He skipped their usual banter and got right
to the point. “A few months before he died, Will left a letter with
me that I was to give to you if you survived him.”

“What?” Alex bolted to her feet. Will’s
estate had been settled quickly and he’d left everything to her —
apartment, investments and a very hefty trust fund. Could he have
changed something, added something without telling her? She gripped
the phone with hands that were suddenly ice cold and forced herself
to breathe. “Why did you wait until now? You can’t drop something
like this on me, David.”

“All I can tell you is that he left the
timing up to me. It’s a letter size envelope, but I have no more
idea than you do about what’s inside. When Will brought it to me a
few months before he was killed, he told me that if he died before
you, I was to give you time to recover and then hand this over to
you.”

“Cut out the lawyer bullshit, David! This is
me! Talk to me like a friend, not my lawyer.”

“Sometimes I think being a friend’s lawyer
isn’t the smartest thing in the world,” he said and paused for a
long moment. “Look Alex, the last thing I want to do is to upset
you, but I’m bound by law to carry out Will’s instructions on this
matter. When he brought this to me he seemed pretty upset and was
adamant that I not even ask him to explain. His also left a letter
for Diego and since he’s in town I figured I’d give them to each of
you now. If you can come in this afternoon, we can get this
settled.”

Alex sighed, resigned to whatever was to
come. If she’d been able to handle everything that had happened so
far, she’d have to dig down and find the courage to get through
this too.

“Fine. I can be at your office at one. You
coordinate it with Diego.’”

“Okay. And Alex, try not to worry.”

“Yeah, sure, easy for you to say,” she
muttered sullenly. That blew her plan for a laid-back gossipfest
with Francie.

Five minutes after Alex arrived at David’s office
Diego strode in, shook hands with the lawyer and sat next to her.
“Do you know what this is about?” he whispered.

“No. I haven’t a clue, only that Will left
letters for each of us,” she said. His presence calmed her and she
welcomed the hand that he wrapped around hers. She wondered if he
felt as guilty as she did to have Will reach out to them hours
after they’d had sex. It was almost as if he knew.

“You look like two kids who have been sent to
the principal’s office,” said David. Their tension was contagious
and he was as curious as they were to finally find out what message
Will had left.

“Along with the two envelopes, Will left
specific instructions for me. The contents of these envelopes are
your property. The decision to reveal what they contain to each
other, or to me, is entirely yours. Will asked me to be present in
case either of you had any legal questions.” He extended the first
envelope to Alex. Her hand trembled as she reached for it. He gave
the other to Diego.

The sight of Will’s familiar scrawl made her
eyes fill, but if she cried now she wouldn’t be able to see and she
had to know what he’d wanted to tell her.

My darling Alex,

Since you’re reading this, I guess I’m dead and
obviously you’re not. I hope that at this moment you’re a very old
lady with age spots on your wrinkled hands, hands that held mine as
I passed from this world into the next. But my guess is that’s not
the case. It makes no sense and I pray I’m wrong, but I have this
feeling that I might die young. If it’s an accident or happens some
other way and without warning, I hope it comforts you to know that
I wasn’t alone — you were with me, as always, because you are my
heart.

Alex could hear Will’s voice and felt him in
the room. She was stunned that he’d had a premonition about his own
death, but she wasn’t surprised that he’d never mentioned this
feeling to her. If he had, she would have hovered over him in a way
he’d have never tolerated, so he’d kept quiet.

Diego’s envelope remained sealed. He and
David watched Alex close her eyes and press the letter to her
breast, but they remained silent observers. She took a few
steadying breaths, sipped some water and continued to read Will’s
words.

One reason that I’m writing this letter is to tell
you I love you one last time in case I wasn’t able to say it before
I died. If I made you even half as happy as you made me, I know
I’ve done well. You brought more joy to my life than I ever
imagined. We always said we would love each other forever and
beyond. Those aren’t just words, darling Alex. My body may not be
able to love you any longer, but my soul is yours for eternity.

And there’s something else — something I expect
we’ll have already gotten past, but as I write this it’s still new.
I should have told you the truth about why I banished Diego from my
life and yours. I’ll never understand why I couldn’t confide in
you. I swear it was the first lie of our marriage and the last, but
you have a right to know what happened.

Diego found out that his parents and mine slept with
each other before either of us was born. My birthday and Diego’s
are just weeks apart, so I couldn’t get it out of my head that
either man could have impregnated either, or both, women. I
insisted that Diego and I should have our DNA tested so that we’d
know for sure which man had fathered each of us. I don’t know why
this became so important to me, but it was. The test confirmed that
John Cameron is my father. The shocker is that he’s Diego’s
biological father too although Diego is, and always will be, a
Navarro regardless of his DNA. He never wanted to know and I should
never have told him the results of a test I had done without his
knowledge. To say I violated his trust is a huge understatement. He
had every right to be furious and never speak to me again. I
behaved like a jerk and lost the friendship of a man I‘d always
thought of as my brother. And then I lied to you. I beg you to
forgive me.

So, my beloved, it’s time to end this and move on to
the next. I know you’ll grieve, but you have to let me go. Please
don’t spend the rest of your life unhappy and alone. We both know
that you and I shared something rare. I can’t imagine either of us
ever finding that kind of love with anyone else, but love comes in
many forms. I beg you to find it again because your happiness is,
and always has been, my own.

Yours forever and beyond,

Will

Alex’s tears flowed with the intensity of a
tropical storm. Will was gone, but what they’d had together wasn’t.
She would always have that. This letter was Will’s final gift to
her.

“I’m okay...I am...really.” She said the
words as much to herself as to the two men who’d witnessed her
distress. She finally turned her tear-streaked face to Diego.” You
must be dying to know what’s inside your envelope. It’s not fair to
make you wait any longer.”

“I can wait,” he said as he dabbed at her
tears with a handkerchief.

“Me too,” added David. “There’s no rush.”

“I never thought I’d hear from him again. And
what he said was so beautiful…but there’s something I need to tell
Diego. Privately. Can you excuse us for a minute David?”

“Of course. I’ll be down the hall if you need
me,” he said and left them alone.

Alex didn’t say anything until Diego’s eyes
met hers. “Thank you for telling me the real reason for the fight
that you and Will had or this letter would have come as a shock. He
wanted to apologize for not being honest with me about the
paternity tests. There’s probably an apology in your envelope
too.”

Despite her attempt to reassure him, Diego
wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Will had to say to him. “Will
was my best friend and my brother, but right now I’m not ashamed to
admit that I’m scared. The last news he delivered almost killed
me,” he said, and laughed nervously. There was a sheen of sweat on
his forehead. Finally, jaw set in determination, he ripped the
envelope open and scanned its contents. Alex watched his expression
go from soft to hard until he finally crushed the letter in his
fist.