never missed a beat, and she was clearly still as direct as ever.
Rigo took a breath and stared into his cupped hands. He just wanted to get her and the young mother in his truck and get out of there, but he knew he owed her an answer that had already been put off for two years.
“A couple of steps behind, Gloria.”
“What? I had no idea what your answer would be, but I at least expected it to make sense.”
He promised himself a long time ago in a poorly lit, practically bare room that he wouldn’t run from his past anymore. He wanted to break that promise now. Badly. But he’d already broken too many promises where Gloria Garcia Rodriguez was concerned.
“I’ve been around, Gloria. I’ve just tried to stay out of your way since I’ve been back in town.”
“Are you saying you’ve been avoiding me?”
Rigo shrugged. “It hasn’t been coincidence that you didn’t see me, Glo. But it hasn’t been some ulterior motive, either.”
“Then what is it?”
The rain began to fall more steadily from the solid wall of gray overhead.
“It’s complicated, Gloria.” The left corner of his mouth twisted bitterly. “Can we just leave it at that for now? The only thing you need to do is get out of here and off this island. You still have about an hour to get your things and go before they close the causeway. This isn’t the time to conduct an interrogation.”
She started to say something, but Rigo raised a hand and cut her off. “Not that you’re not the best I’ve ever known at it. The CIA should have posted a recruiter at your door before you went to nursing school. They lost out.”
Gloria rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do. I know a lot about you, remember?”
Rigo’s mind did a quick rewind past recent history and stopped on a sunny day in the late spring almost fifteen years ago. Had it really been that long?
In his mind’s eye, he could see a version of the woman standing in front of him now, with hair teased a few inches higher and lipstick a few shades brighter. She stood at the end of the baseball dugout at Provident High School, just before practice was about to start. His arms wrapped around her waist, and he could almost feel the softness of her curves again under his tight arms, muscular from hours in the weight room and swing after swing that sent baseballs flying over the outfield fence. He remembered her saying something completely serious about where they’d be in the future, and as usual, he’d laughed it off.
“Glo...I’ve told you a thousand times. You’re not going to be happy taking over your parents’ restaurant. You just need to be around babies. Lots of them.” He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the mouth, teasing her out of her scowl and back into a smile. “Preferably mine. After I make it to the big leagues, you can stay home, knee-deep in being a mom, and we’ll pay someone to take over the restaurant. Just because being a madre is a traditional role, it doesn’t mean what’s in your heart is less valuable than being some big-shot career woman. Just be who God made you to be—and He didn’t make you to be a restaurant owner. Don’t let anyone tell you what’s in your heart is wrong. Trust me. I know you. I know you better than you know yourself, Gloria Garcia.”
“Maybe you do, Rigo. Maybe that’s why we’ll be together forever.”
Rigo pushed the daydream away like the windshield wipers he’d been using all afternoon. He forced himself to gain control of his thoughts, to put them back into the here and now. Gloria had called Rigo today only for Tanna’s protection.
Not her own.
He could only assume she’d been honest about dialing his number because she didn’t have any other options right then. She didn’t call because she needed him in her life.
Felipe’s death was in the past. Felipe and Gloria’s son’s death was in the past.
But in the present, Rigo Vasquez needed do his job, take Gloria and her client back to Gloria’s house so Gloria could collect a few belongings and get off the island.
Then, once he knew they’d be safe, Rigo knew where he needed to go—back to Gloria’s past.
After dropping Gloria, her bike and her patient off at Gloria’s house to gather some things and then get to safety, Rigo headed back to his office in the Provident Island Beach Patrol headquarters. Located on the top floor of a three-story concrete behemoth of a building that sat directly on the sand about fifty feet back from the shoreline, it looked out on an empty beach today.
He dug through a few piles of papers, looking for a set of ATV keys, but paused and picked up the small framed picture of his mom that was still sitting on the corner of his desk. He’d always loved this picture of the two of them at a baseball tournament in his youth. Cancer took her when he was just eighteen, but it hadn’t robbed him of the memory of her steady, sweet smile.
First Gloria, now his mom. Too many old memories were coming back to his mind today.
Chances were that if Hurricane Hope truly came in as a strong category 3 hurricane, much of the island would be ruined. Storms like that brought feet upon feet of storm surge, and very little on the island would not be touched by it in some way, Rigo feared. The way Provident Island looked today would likely become a bittersweet memory, just like his mother and those carefree high school days when he was in love with Gloria.
He shoved the picture in his pocket, turned off the light and locked the door.
He didn’t know if he’d ever unlock it again.
Taking the ride back down the elevator, Rigo realized it would probably be one of the last rides he’d get to take for a while. He held out absolutely no hope for the squeaky old elevator, which had to basically be overhauled at the end of every season because the saltwater in the air rusted out just about every part and sand wedged in every nook and cranny. No way it would survive this hurricane.
“Goodbye, old girl,” Rigo said as he got out of the elevator and gave the buttons a small tap. He quickly tossed the picture of his mother on the front seat of his truck and headed back to the storage area underneath the Surfside Beach Pavilion to move the ATV.
The wet sand made the ATV’s tires a bit sluggish, but Rigo was able to get some traction and speed as he headed toward the main road leading to Gulfview Boulevard.
At the stoplight, Rigo tightened the hood of his rain jacket around the baseball cap he was wearing to keep the water out of his eyes as much as possible. This particular ATV had a sun cover on it, and while there wasn’t a drop of sunshine in the sky anymore, it did keep some of the rain out. Just not much.
Kind of like Gloria. Now that he’d seen her, had talked to her, the sound of her voice and the look of her face played in his mind like a video loop. He couldn’t shake her from his thoughts, not even with all he needed to do to finish securing the island’s beaches and providing support for water rescues before Hurricane Hope arrived.
As
