benevolent if regretful shake. “No. You’d lose. And you’d lose everything.”
Daisy’s heart pounded as she drove the short distance home. His parting words filled her with dread. It wasn’t that his tone had been cruel. Far from it. He’d actually spoken most gently. Rather, she was troubled by the stark realization that he was right. Legally, morally, financially. They owed him.
She parked the old work truck in front of the house and climbed the four front steps leading to the covered porch. Stepping through the front door of the two-story Victorian farmhouse, she smelled the faint tang of the lemon oil and the musky spice of antique English roses, varieties planted by her mother over twenty years ago.
She yanked off her hat and shook her long hair loose from its ponytail, the heavy mass reaching the dip in her back. She tossed the hat on the stair banister, passed the mirror without giving it a glance and headed straight for the kitchen.
Twenty-year-old Zoe turned from the sink where she was washing pots and pans, her blond hair twisted into a knot on top of her head. Even though they were four years apart, people often mistook them for twins.
“More calls,” Zoe said softly, lavender-blue eyes wide with apprehension. “Five of them today.”
Creditors were always calling. They started early, sometimes before seven. Daisy’s stomach knotted, but she forced a smile, wanted to somehow reassure her sister. “It’ll be all right, Zoe. I’ll call them back this afternoon.”
Straddling one of the kitchen’s ladder-back chairs, Daisy sat down and rubbed her temples, trying not to be overwhelmed as the mountain of worries kept getting bigger. “How’s Dad this morning?”
Zoe leaned against the sink and slowly wiped her sudsy hands dry. A long blond tendril had slipped from the knot and fluttered against her cheek. “Not so good. He’s been asking for Mom.” She stared at her hands, rubbing the dish towel across one hand and then the other.
Daisy watched her sister methodically rub the towel, her hands constantly moving, her anxiety palpable.
Finally Zoe looked up, her eyes wide and wet with tears she wouldn’t shed. “I never know what to tell him anymore.”
Zoe shouldn’t have to go through this, Daisy argued silently. She’d never even had the chance to go to college or get out on her own. She’d jumped from teenage innocence to adult responsibility.
Daisy felt like a failure. She should have somehow been able to protect Zoe from all this. She should have shielded her better. “I’m sorry, Zo.”
Zoe twisted the dish towel tighter, her knuckles shining white. “But what do I tell Daddy when he asks for Mom?”
A lump wedged itself in Daisy’s throat. “The truth, I suppose.”
“But the truth makes him cry.” Zoe looked up, caught her sister’s eye, her lips trembling with emotion she could barely suppress. Her expression was pleading, the lavender-blue depths filled with an agony that neither knew how to deal with. “Daddy’s never going to get any better, is he?”
Daisy stood and headed for the stairs without answering Zoe’s question. She couldn’t answer. She didn’t need to anyway. They both already knew the answer.
He should let her off. Nearly half a million dollars! It wasn’t that much money, at least not now that he’d restored the Galván fortunes. But if he let her off, his adversaries would know and would broadcast his weakness. They were sniffing for his Achilles’ heel, certain that sooner or later they’d expose it.
They probably would, too, he thought with a sigh, changing hands on the phone as he paced his hotel suite.
First there were problems with the Zimco acquisition, and now trouble was brewing with his young half sister, seventeen-year-old Anabella.
It had not been a good day so far and it was about to get much worse because he was forced to deal with his stepmother who couldn’t roll out of bed without at least one or two good stiff drinks. It was now almost noon in Argentina, which meant Marquita must be halfway through a liter of vodka by now.
If he didn’t care it would be so much easier. He could walk from his family, walk from the unbelievable debt his late father had left them, walk away from all of it and just do what he pleased.
Unfortunately, what pleased him was knowing he wasn’t like his father. What pleased him was providing for his younger sisters. What pleased him was proving that he was as unlike his father as possible.
The screech of Marquita’s voice in his ear brought him back to the moment. The phone dangled from his fingers as he paced the floor of his suite. Marquita was drunker than usual for noon. She must have finished her liter and started on a new bottle already.
“What’s Anabella done now?” he asked with exaggerated patience.
Countess Marquita Galván immediately launched into an incoherent diatribe, gibberish words about Anabella and boys and running away from school.
Dante closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath. “Where is she?”
“At school, of course. She can’t come here.”
“Why not?” he asked. “She is your daughter.”
“Because I can’t deal with her. I can’t handle her problems. I have problems of my own.”
Yes, liquor, laziness, extravagance. His jaw hardened, a muscle popping close to his ear as he fought to contain his anger. Why had his stepmother ever had children? How could she have three and then abdicate all responsibility?
He suddenly pictured Tadeo, the lost one, the half brother who’d never made it to eighteen. Dante’s heart felt wrenched. It actually felt broken in places. Would he never get over Tadeo’s death? Would he ever be able to think of Tadeo without wanting to scream?
Tadeo was a great kid. Smart, funny, compassionate, sensitive. Sensitive. And it had killed him.
Dante was damned if he’d let Marquita’s indifference destroy Anabella, too. “I’ll be back in a couple days. Leave Anabella to me. I’ll call the headmistress. I’ll work this out.”
“Thank goodness,” Marquita breathed with relief. “I have a massage at two. I’d hate to miss that.”
“That’d be a real tragedy.”
Dante hung up, paced the suite another half dozen times before hesitating in front of the mirror hanging over the fireplace mantel.
Dark hair, light eyes, wide mouth. But he didn’t see himself. He saw his father. Dante looked just like his father. It was a curse, he thought, a curse because he was constantly reminded that his father had not only failed him, but had failed all of them—his father had brought them all to the brink of destruction and abandoned them there.
Dante felt his father’s sins again. Dante had saved the Galván family corporation from disaster, turned the bleak financial picture around, but that success meant nothing if he couldn’t save Anabella.
And he couldn’t do that here. He had to get back to Buenos Aires, which meant straightening out this mess with the Collingsworths and closing the door on what had been a very
