because of it, Margo seemed to handle growing up motherless with a certain ease. She was a wild child, a rule breaker, an iconoclast. She searched for answers where there were apparently none to be had. And she usually found them.
Her father had packed her off to one boarding school after another, but she had always found a way to return to their home on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. She had managed to get herself thrown out of some of the finest schools in the country by creating nothing but trouble.
Whether her father had decided to give her a chance, or just gave up, was never really clear. But finally she was allowed to do what she had wanted all along, which was to stay in the big Lake Shore Drive apartment alone with the help. And to hang out with her partner in crime, Billy Berlind, the boy genius from next door, to study what she wanted to study, which was just about everything.
The fact that she had graduated magna cum laude from the University of Chicago at the age of nineteen was purely accidental. It was not something she had intended or planned. She cared nothing for degrees. She just wanted to know everything, experience everything, try everything. There they had let her study what she liked and rewarded her with a degree.
Margo had always believed there would be plenty of time for fence-mending with her father. They’d get to it when they both weren’t so busy. But he had died suddenly when the Senator was in the midst of election debates. She had sleepwalked her way through the elaborate public memorial for her father with Billy at her side. She was bereft, mourning not what had been, but what might have been.
Then she had gone back to the campaign and put that jumble of feelings on a shelf until later. This was the later she had been waiting for. The morning after the Senator’s victory party she had gone to a travel agent and asked to be booked on the next cruise going somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was warm.
Her best friend, Billy, was now a much sought after concept developer for the nation’s finest eateries. He was also a jazz musician of note, a polyglot who spoke eight languages, and master of about ten other disciplines. He had offered, no, insisted on putting his life on hold to come along.
Margo was finally able to convince him that this was something she needed to do alone. But convincing Billy of anything wasn’t easy. ‘If you change your mind, I can be there in twenty-four hours. Twelve if the ship has a helipad.’
‘I appreciate it but I’m going for low profile, Billy. That last thing I need is you arriving by helicopter in the middle of the ocean.’
So while Billy sulked, Margo had secured a last-minute reservation on a small ship sailing out of Florida. It would visit several ports before transiting the Panama Canal, circling Mexico and docking in Los Angeles. Twenty days would be time to figure out the rest of her life.
Although Margo did not know it at the time, it would only take six days.
The trip had turned out to be just what Margo was hoping for. Each morning she would put on a bikini, wrap herself in a pareo, and head for her secret space. She had brought a stack of books in her suitcase and there were three more in the big straw bag she had bought on the pier in Aruba. But so far she hadn’t opened one.
It had seemed enough to lie in the sun and sleep and think and dream. She took her meals alone on the balcony of her stateroom, watching the sky show off its multiple colours. The idea of having a conversation of any sort with anyone was just too much for Margo to contemplate.
She had brought several scrapbooks, mementos of life with a father who, despite his long absences, had done his best to understand a daughter who was nothing like himself. Looking through the photographs, remembering, she was finally able to put away regrets over what they hadn’t had, and celebrate the life they did have together.
The fact that he had left her an immensely wealthy woman was of little consequence to Margo. But she was aware that money would give her freedom to choose how to live the next chapter of her life.
On the sixth day out of Miami, the day everything would change, the ship had sailed from Cartagena just before five. The sky that evening was a vivid blue streaked with pink the colour of flamingos. The wind had gone down and a gentle breeze touched the warm air.
Margo had convinced her steward to set up dinner at her special place on the deck. She had decided on pink champagne to accompany her Dover sole. It felt right, somehow. She felt right too; finally at peace with her memories.
After dinner she lay down on her lounge chair to watch the light leave the sky. She had certainly not intended to fall asleep.
Margo would never be quite sure what had awakened her. Was it the soft ‘clunk’ she heard, or thought she heard? Or was it the rumble of an engine, different, somehow, to the slow thrumming of the cruise ship’s giant turbines? She didn’t move a muscle. Whatever was happening, she sensed she wasn’t supposed to witness it.
Then, suddenly, he was in front of her. It was a toss-up as to which of the two was more startled.
‘Don’t scream!’ he said quietly.
‘I wasn’t going to scream,’ she said indignantly, when she was able to speak.
He smiled at her. ‘You don’t look like the screaming type.’
‘I am, however, thinking of hitting you over the head with this champagne bottle.’
It was hard to sound fierce looking into those intense blue eyes. He was ruggedly handsome and was wearing a very unseasonable trench coat that appeared to have lots of mileage on it.
The man had some hard miles on him as well, she decided.
Also, there was something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Pain? Sadness? She wasn’t sure. But she knew immediately there was more to this man than met the eye.
He eyed the champagne bottle she had threatened him with. ‘Is the bottle full?’ he asked.
‘Half.’
‘Using it as a club would be a terrible waste of good champagne.’ The man’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. ‘At least, I would assume everything on this ship is good, given the price of my ticket.’
‘Your ticket?’ she said, eyeing him.
He took her glass from the table, filled it, and handed it to Margo. He emptied her water glass over the rail and poured some champagne for himself. He raised his glass. ‘Bon voyage.’
She never took her eyes off him. ‘Bon voyage.’
He drank down the glass in one gulp. ‘Warm.’
‘Had I known you were coming I would have ordered more ice.’
For some reason she was not the least bit afraid of this man who appeared out of the night in the middle of the sea. ‘And if you actually did buy a ticket, you got cheated on the embarkation. The rest of us boarded via a wood-panelled gangway rather than scaling the side of the ship on a rope. Plus, there were hors d’oeuvres.’
‘I’ll ask for a refund,’ he said, taking off thin leather gloves and stuffing them into the pocket of his coat. He took a lethal-looking knife from
