a flight could leave a message and Hugh could call them when he got back.
“Mol’? Sorry I missed you. Thought you’d be there.”
Oh, God! She stumbled across the room and punched the speaker button with her elbow. “Carson? Hi! I’m here! I’ve got oil, er…” She didn’t need to spell it out for him. “Never mind. How are you? Where are you?”
“In Miami. Just got a break in a meeting. Just wanted to say I ran into a couple of islanders last night and we got to talking. Got a little homesick.” There was a catch in his voice that made Molly smile.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Missed it. Missed you,” he said gruffly. “God, it’s so damn hectic all the time. The business. The house. Stuff…We never really got to talk last time I was home.”
Molly’s heart kicked over. “No,” she said carefully. “But I knew you were busy.”
“I was. Still am,” he said. “But some things are more important, you know?”
“I know.”
“Good. So I just wanted to let you know I’ve rescheduled Ireland. I’ll be there for homecoming.”
Molly grinned. “You will?”
“Yep. And we can talk and— Oh, hell. Gotta run.”
“Carson—”
“Not now, Mol’. Can’t talk. Sorenson’s off the phone. I’ve gotta go. We will, though. Promise. See you next Saturday.” There was a click and Molly stood staring at the dead phone.
Outside she could hear the Pelican Youth Soccer team yelling as they practiced and her brother Lachlan shouted out instructions for a drill. Inside she could hear the pounding of the blood in her ears.
Carson was coming home!
A surge of hope shot through her, followed at once by the tempering memory of his promise that they were “going to talk.”
Fine. Good. She wanted to talk. But she and Carson had been talking for years. That’s pretty much all they had ever done beside some dreaming and some kissing and some teenage groping and fooling around. Everything else had been set aside because Carson had been far too busy.
And because he’d never been especially inclined to make love to a woman who smelled like engine oil and wore steel-toed boots? Molly wondered.
Well, she could get rid of the smell and buy a new pair of shoes.
And then what?
Joaquin Santiago would know, her irritating little voice reminded her.
And yes, that was true. He would. But she did not want to ask him!
OF ALL THE PLACES ON EARTH Joaquin Santiago had been—and he’d done his share of moving around in more than a dozen years of playing professional soccer—he had always liked Pelican Cay best.
He’d first visited the tiny Caribbean island at age nineteen when he’d come to spend a holiday with his soccer teammate Lachlan’s family. It had seemed an idyllic lazy paradise to a boy born and bred in the hustle and bustle of Barcelona. It had been his bolt-hole ever since, the perfect getaway from the demands of his fast-paced frenetic lifestyle.
Not that he hadn’t loved that lifestyle, too. In those days he’d sat on the beach, relishing the quiet, yet always aware, whenever he’d stared east toward the horizon, that it was out there—his fame, his fortune, his “fantastic foot” which had made him one of the most feared strikers in football.
No longer.
For the past four weeks he had tried not to even look at the horizon. He knew what it held: nothing. It was empty. Distant. Barren. Bleak.
He had no future.
People hadn’t forgotten him yet. It had only been five months, after all, since he’d been at the top of his game. Five months, one week and five days. If he thought about it, he could have come close to the number of hours since his accident, since he’d leaped up to head a ball at the same time as Yevgeny Pomasanov.
He’d hit the ball. Pomasanov’s head had hit his. And his career had ended—just like that.
It was ridiculous. He still couldn’t believe it. God only knew how many times he’d been hit in the head before Pomasanov’s blow. Thousands, no doubt. It meant nothing, was an occupational hazard.
But this time it had been different. This time when he’d attempted to get up he couldn’t. His arms, his legs didn’t respond. He felt nothing. Couldn’t move!
His brain still told his body what to do. But it was as if the connection had been severed. Unreal. Unthinkable!
He was young. In his prime! Soccer was his life!
But life as he’d known it for thirty-three years was over. They’d taken him off the field on a stretcher in a neck brace. For four days he’d lain in the hospital, paralyzed, motionless, as doctors hovered and poked and prodded. He’d felt nothing but an occasional tingling sensation and a desperate sense of panic.
The sports pages and tabloids had been full of speculation. Would he move again? Would he walk? Would he play?
Of course he would. He had to!
Life had always been about soccer. Soccer was what had saved him from having to spend his life in the mind-dulling Santiago family business. Of course he knew that one day it would be his destiny, but not right away. Not yet!
He loved soccer. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
So the morning that the tingling sensations in his fingers and toes actually led to his moving them, he’d breathed an enormous sigh of relief. If he could move, he could come back.
It was just a matter of time. After all, he’d been hurt before. Three years ago he’d lost his spleen as a result of a motorcycle accident. He’d nearly died from loss of blood before the injury was discovered. But he’d recovered from that. He’d come back. And this time would be no different.
He’d worked his tail off. He’d done everything the docs told him to—and more. He’d rehabbed until he was sure he was as fit as ever. It had taken him four months. Then, a month ago, he’d walked into the training room and said to the docs, the trainers, the team owners, “I’m back. I’m as good as new. I can do everything I ever did.”
And he went out onto the pitch and showed them.
They had watched politely. And then, to his amazement, they had shaken their heads. “You’ve recovered wonderfully,” they agreed. “But you can’t play soccer. It’s too risky.”
“What?” He’d stared at them, disbelieving.
“Spinal stenosis—” the congenital narrowing of the spine that had contributed to his paralysis and which they had discovered while treating him “—is nothing to mess around with. Next time you might not recover feeling at all.”
“How
