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 do you know there will be a next time?” he’d demanded.
They’d just looked at him. “How do you know there won’t?”
He’d argued. Damn it, he’d had to argue!
But in the end, it was the insurance companies who carried the day. They wouldn’t insure him. It all came down to liability. Joaquin Santiago was too big a risk for any team.
Ergo, he couldn’t play.
His world collapsed. He felt fine. He felt fit. He felt gutted. His father expected him to come back to Barcelona and get on with life.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Martin Santiago had said. “You just need something to do. A job,” he’d added pointedly, “which has been waiting for you for fourteen years.”
But Joaquin couldn’t face it. Not yet.
“Take your time,” his old teammate Lachlan McGillivray advised. “I know it feels like the end of the world. It felt like it to me when I retired. You get over it,” he promised. “You just need some space while you find something else to do with your life.”
Easy for Lachlan to say. Lachlan had long ago found something he wanted to do. He’d begun buying property and rebuilding and restoring old buildings, turning them into a series of one-of-a-kind small elegant inns across the Caribbean. Since retirement he’d made his home here on Pelican Cay where he’d married a local girl and had a baby son. His future, even out of soccer, was of his own making.
Joaquin’s was not.
His future had always been a given. Soccer had given him a reprieve, but his life had been foreordained since birth. Santiago men went into the family business. It was as simple as that. For the past five generations all of them had devoted their lives to the company Joaquin’s great-grandfather, for whom he’d been named, had begun.
Since there had been telephones, the Santiagos had been involved in communications. The company had evolved with the times, and now had its corporate fingers in a lot of pies. It was thriving, growing, facing daily challenges.
“Santiago men always faced the challenge,” Martin was fond of saying.
Joaquin would, too. He knew that. His father expected it. So did he. Martin had been tolerant of the years Joaquin had spent playing soccer only because he was a strong vigorous man in good health who didn’t need his only son and heir trying to take over before he was ready.
“So you play a while,” his father had said, waving a hand dismissively.
But it had always been understood between them that when Joaquin’s soccer-playing days were over, Santiagos was waiting and real life would start.
Joaquin was no fool. He’d always known he wouldn’t play forever. He’d accepted that.
But that had been when “real life” was somewhere in the future. Not now.
Not yet.
But with one blow yet had become now. His father and the business were waiting. His mother with her lineup of prospective brides—more “real life”—was waiting.
But he couldn’t face it.
He had been back in Barcelona two days when he knew he needed more time.
“I just need to get my head together,” he’d told his father. “I need a little space before I start.”
“Space? You’ve had four months!” Martin sputtered.
But his mother, Ana, the more patient of his parents, had taken his side. She’d patted his hand and said to his father, “Give him time, Martin. A month. Two. What’s the difference after we have waited all these years. He needs to grieve for what he has lost.”
His father had been skeptical, but in the end he’d agreed. “We will be waiting, though,” he’d said giving Joaquin a stern, expectant look.
And Joaquin had nodded. “I know. I’ll be here.”
“Of course he will,” his mother had said. “And then we will all be happy and Santiagos will be waiting and—” she’d kissed his cheek “—finally you will get around to giving me those grandchildren I’ve been waiting for!”
That was the other half of his future—getting a mother for the inevitable Santiago offspring.
His mother had shaken her head with bemused tolerance at all the groupies who’d trailed after him during his soccer career. She didn’t take them seriously. They were silly and transitory.
None of them would become “the Santiago Bride.” She knew that. So did Joaquin.
“Time enough for you to find the right woman when you are done playing games,” she’d always said.
Something else to look forward to, he thought grimly now as he lay on the chaise longue on the small balcony outside his room at Lachlan’s trendy Moonstone Inn and tried not to think about it.
He’d been here over three weeks now, every day trying to psyche himself up for his new life.
He wasn’t there yet.
Listlessly he picked up the book he’d been trying to read for the past hour. Lachlan’s wife, Fiona, had told him he’d love it.
“It’s a real page turner,” she’d assured him. But he’d been on the same one now for what seemed like a week. The words made no sense.
Weary, he lifted his gaze and stared across the water at the empty horizon.
“You read?” The sudden sound of an astonished female voice made him jump.
He turned his head and saw Lachlan’s grubby sister, Molly, standing on the balcony of the room next door.
He lifted a brow. “Are they keeping engines in the guest rooms now?”
Molly was the mechanic at Fly Guy, Hugh McGillivray’s island charter service. She was also a pilot, occasionally taking charters when Hugh was otherwise committed, but most of the time she was eyebrows deep in some greasy engine on a plane, boat, helicopter or motor vehicle.
Not, Joaquin thought, your average girly girl.
Probably
