Marie Donovan – Royally Claimed (страница 2)

“We want you to come back with us,” her mother continued. “You can sleep on the pullout couch at their apartment.”

Julia winced. Aunt Elva and Uncle Paul had a modest two-bedroom apartment, big enough for them, but a tight squeeze for five adults plus whatever nursing staff they needed.

Her dad raised his eyebrows. “Come on, Evelyn, you know we’re going to be packed in like sardines, anyway. And what is Julia going to do all day with us old folks? Watch game shows and soap operas?”

No need to watch soap operas, her life had been one for quite a while.

“We can get you set up at your condo, and then you can come spend the day with us!” her mother exclaimed with a sudden bright idea.

Julia caught Dad’s sympathetic gaze. He knew she would be climbing the walls within a few days. At least it was spring in Boston, although mid-April was a toss-up with the real possibility of snow. “No,” she said impulsively, “I’ll stay here.”

“What? No, you can’t,” Mother protested. “By yourself?”

It sounded better the longer she thought about it. Go back to gray, cloudy Boston, bundle up in her down parka and stagger around in the slush or stay here in the sunny green Azores and eat fresh oranges from the trees? “I’m doing much better.” Julia ticked off the points on her fingers. “I haven’t had a bad headache in the past week, I’m not dizzy very often, and Senhor de Sousa can help with anything I may need. He would do that anyway.”

“Oh…” Mother fretted. “I would worry so, with you so far away.”

Dad unexpectedly came to her rescue. “Evelyn, we’d be only four hours away by plane. The girl is getting stronger and we can’t be hovering over her like a helicopter. She’d be more likely to have a nervous breakdown than a relapse with us.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He pointed a thick finger at her. “But we expect you to have some common sense. Carry your cell phone with you and stay away from cliffs and those rodeos they call bullfights around here.”

“And call Dr. da Silva if you start feeling funny.” Her mother rummaged in the papers on the table. “Here’s his number. But I don’t know…”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured her mother. “I’m just not…ready to go back to Boston yet.”

“Understood,” Dad said. “But just say the word and I’ll hop a flight back to São Miguel to collect you.”

“Thanks.” She smiled at him. Master Sergeant Robert Cooper, United States Air Force (ret.), was an expert at hopping flights and collecting people.

The rest of the evening was spent helping her parents pack, mostly her mother since Dad could pack anything into a small duffel bag and proclaim himself well supplied.

When Julia brushed her teeth that night, the memory of that dark-haired man in the plaza popped to mind. Was she staying behind just in case he was Frank? And what on earth would she do if it was her former lover? Her first lover, she mentally corrected herself. The first man she’d loved.

FRANCISCO DUARTE DAS Aguas Santas stared at a wall of paint chips until spots formed in front of his eyes. Yes, he knew the villa needed a fresh coat of paint, but why was he the one picking out colors? He glanced at Benedito, whose dark brown eyes were rheumy with age. Ah, that was why he was the one picking out colors. He supposed his mother or one of his sisters could have done it, but he had offered to get the villa ready for Stefania’s honeymoon and this was little enough he could do for her.

“What do you think, Benedito? What color for the kitchen walls? Does that yellow have too much green in it?”

The old man looked at him as if he had grown two heads, or more likely, lost both testicles. “Don Franco, this is a job for women. Women choose paint, men paint it on the walls. We are not supposed to know these kinds of things. And why do you think yellow has green in it? Yellow is yellow, green is green.”

Frank grunted. “We don’t have any women handy.”

“And whose fault is that? I am not a young, handsome duke who owns a huge ranch in Portugal and a private island here in the Azores. No, I am a poor, ugly old man whose devoted wife is far away.”

“And she’s probably glad to have you several thousand miles away, you old reprobate.”

“She is grateful for the rest. I am an insatiable man,” Benedito leered.

Frank rolled his eyes but didn’t doubt the bandy-legged old coot. After lifetimes of hard manual labor and plenty of olive oil and red wine, elderly Portuguese men were as hearty as men half their age.

“You should be so insatiable,” Benedito scolded him. An elderly lady picking out pink chips the color of a stomach remedy gave them an interested look.

Frank ducked around to the next aisle, filled with bolts and screws. Benedito followed him. “Enough about my personal life. Besides, I am thinking of asking Paulinha to start accompanying me to social functions.”

Benedito made a phlegmy sound of dismay. “Don Franco, you know that is as good as becoming engaged to her. She has been chasing you since she was old enough to walk.”

Frank shrugged. Paulinha was his sister’s best friend and had been unofficially matched with him, like the princes of Portugal who became engaged to French princesses at the age of six. A dynastic merger, rather than a matter of love. “I am thirty. It is past time for me to settle down.” He’d had enough of the hardware section and turned into the garden aisle. Everything grew well in the fertile, volcanic soil here, so all they had to do was weed and trim the grounds.

“If you had gone wild like some of the other lazy noblemen, drinking, womanizing and acting like an idiot, then I would welcome you settling down. But you have never done anything to settle down from.” Benedito shook his head. “Bah, you have wasted your youth.”

“What, working on the family estate with you, your wife, my mother and four younger sisters all looking over my shoulder?” Once he was finished with his education, he’d returned home to the family estate, or fazenda, as it was called in Portuguese. The fazenda, named Aguas Santas after the natural spring’s “holy waters” that bubbled up in the churchyard fountain, was a huge outfit on the Portuguese mainland with several farms, ranches and vineyards. His mother, the Dowager Duchess, still lived there in a smaller house on the property. Two of his sisters and their families lived nearby and the other two were at university in London and Lisbon, respectively.

“I’ve barely been alone to take a coffee break, much less waste my youth. Besides, isn’t that the speech the disappointed father gives to a dissolute son who wanders back after blowing all his money on wine, women and song?”

Benedito grabbed his wallet, yanking out a handful of euros. “Here, take my money and waste it. Waste it on wine, women and song. You are like the virgin who chooses the convent before she can experience life.”

“Ah…” Frank pushed the money away in disgust and Benedito shook it at him. “Stop shoving your money at me.”

A middle-aged male clerk walked around the corner, eyeing them with interest. Frank groaned and grabbed some seeds. “No, Ben, you don’t have to pay for these, I’ll pay.”

Disappointed, the clerk wandered away. Benedito let out a wheezing laugh. “If only you were here with a beautiful lady, he wouldn’t have gotten the wrong idea.”

Frank rolled his eyes. Maybe he could text his sisters for some paint ideas. “Come on, old man, let’s get some coffee.”

“Ah, you finally have a good idea.” Benedito slapped him on the back.

Frank followed him out of the hardware store and down the street to a café where equally wizened men lounged around tables and eyed the surprisingly scantily clad local girls walking around. He didn’t remember seeing quite so much exposed flesh in his last visits to the Azores and mentioned it to Ben.

The older man gave him an amused glance as he sipped his thick black coffee. “You sound like a cranky grandma. All they do is complain about the racy Brazilian soap operas influencing the girls nowadays, but the old ladies watch them all the same. Why not just enjoy the view?”

Frank shrugged. Girls half his age were children, not women. “Like I told you, I have Paulinha on my mind.”

“Ah.” He was uncharacteristically silent.

“What does ah mean?”

“Let me be blunt, Franco.”

“How could I prevent it?” he murmured.

“Do not settle for a marriage without fire.”

Well, he hadn’t expected that. “What are you, a couples’ counselor?”

“And how long have you been married, you young punk?” He took another sip. “You know I don’t like to interfere…”

Frank almost snorted hot coffee out of his nose. “Since when?”

“Shut up and listen—this is serious. You would be miserable with her—not because she is not a nice woman, but because you are not in love with her.”

“And how do you know?”

“Because you are fifteen hundred kilometers away on an island with an old man and not back on the mainland with her.”

Frank made a dismissive gesture. “I have business here, not in Portugal.”

“So you can’t buy her a ticket to come with you? Are you too cheap or do you not want her here?”

He knew he was beat. “Love can come later.”

“Or not at all.”

“Enough about me. We have other errands to do.” Benedito was one of his oldest friends and mentors, but he wasn’t Frank’s first choice for a romance advisor. Especially when what he said cut too close to the bone.