Secrets of Bella Terra

  So he let the spring air cool her cheeks, and watched the dappled sunlight as it slid golden fingers over her dark hair and down her back. When the path widened and he judged she’d had a moment to regain her composure, he caught up with her. “You don’t need to spend all your extra time taking care of my family. I can go back to the hospital tonight and take care of my grandmother.”

  “No, you can’t.” Brooke glanced at him and shook her head as if he were nothing but a big, bumbling idiot. “Because of the concussion, they don’t want her standing on her own yet. You can’t help her to the bathroom when she wants to go. You can’t help her keep her cast dry while she showers.”

  “I’m a tough guy,” he said with a full helping of irony. “I can do it.”

  “She’d hate it. Whether you like it or not, she needs me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I don’t like taking advantage of you.” In the sunlight, Brooke looked weary and a little sad, as if recent events and resort duties were taking their toll.

  She shrugged off his concern. “I choose to do what I do. It’s only for a little while, only until Nonna is out of the hospital. Then Noah will hire a private nurse and I’ll visit less frequently.”

  “Why don’t the nurses at the hospital do this stuff?”

  Incredulous, Brooke asked, “Do you have any idea how overworked and understaffed they are at that hospital? They’ll give her care, sure, and they’re good at what they do, but there are so many patients and so few nurses.” Taking a long breath, she turned to face him. “Look. Every time I walk in there and she’s not in her bed—the nurses have her sitting on the sunporch, or she’s up in X-ray, or someone has helped her to the bathroom—my heart skips a beat. I know I’m overreacting, but my God, Rafe. If you could have seen her on the floor of the kitchen, blood oozing out of her scalp and her arm shattered. And she was on the phone! Somehow she had thought to call your aunts and they were talking to her, encouraging her to hang in there. When I see families like yours, taking care of one another, it’s, well, it’s cool. You know that. I’ve thought that forever.”

  “Yes. I remember.” He remembered far too well.

  “Your grandmother always made me feel part your family, and I don’t want her to have to wait for her bath or to get ready for bed. So I do what I can. That’s all. Don’t get hung up on thinking the reason I’m doing it is that I’m guilty, or the reason I’m doing it is that I’m a saint. It makes me feel good, like I’m repaying someone who has gone out of her way to be kind to me.”

  “Hm.” This he believed. But he was a man who dealt in solutions. He knew how to ease Brooke’s fears and take the burden off her shoulders.

  She must have heard something in his voice, for she asked, “What? Rafe?” But before she could pin him down, they broke out of the well-tended jungle of native plants and into the pool area.

  The complex had been Noah’s idea, to build a recreational center that consisted of three interconnected pools with waterslides, rocky waterfalls shadowed by exotic vegetation, and a river that wound around the perimeter. A retractable roof covered two of the pools, making them an attraction in the winter, and the atmosphere was more like Hawaii than central California.

  Rafe stopped at the edge of the first pool and took a deep breath. It smelled tropical, warm, welcoming.

  His little brother was some smart son of a bitch. He knew what worked, what made people shake their troubles off their shoulders and relax.

  Brooke was oblivious. “Part of the gardening crew is always working in the pool area. With children visiting the resort, we have vegetation emergencies on a regular basis.”

  “Vegetation emergencies?” Rafe lifted his brows.

  “Kids falling in bushes, kids eating leaves and berries, and parents freaking out and threatening to sue.”

  “Shouldn’t the parents watch their children?”

  “What a revolutionary idea.” Brooke had perfected her deadpan delivery. “But since that doesn’t always happen, we have gardeners here who extricate the children, and explain that we have no poisonous flora at the resort while dialing our on-staff nurse. In their spare time, the gardeners work on the planters.” She glanced around until she located a group of three men dressed in dark khaki uniforms. “I’ll introduce you.”

  The man giving orders was about fifty, with black skin, long, curly hair, colorful tattoos up and down his arms and neck, broad, deep shoulders, and a barrel chest. He nodded as they approached, held up one finger to indicate patience, and continued speaking to his men in a slow, deep, Southern-accented voice. When he had finished giving his instructions, he ambled over and said, “What can I do for you, Ms. Petersson?”

  “Rafe, this is Zachary Adams. He’s in charge of keeping our grounds groomed.”

  Zachary removed his glove and offered a broad hand, cracked and rough with calluses. “You’re the Di Luca who’s in security. I imagine you’re here to investigate the attack on the elderly Mrs. Di Luca.”

  “That’s right.” Rafe knew more than a few people would speculate correctly, and the shrewd expression in Zachary’s eyes proved he’d put all the pieces together. “How many people do you have working for you?”

  “Full-time, twenty men, five women. Right now, springtime, I add another five hands temporarily to try to keep up with the weeds.”

  “And the gophers,” Brooke added.

  “It’s a constant running battle with the gophers. We clean out one nest and ten more pop up.” Zachary looked disgusted. “Worst spring we’ve had. I’ve got the exterminators in to take care of the fuzzy little bastards.”

  “I understand one of your gardeners disappeared the day my grandmother was hit.”

  “Luis Hernández. Yeah. But he didn’t have it in him to strike an elderly woman, especially not that one. That guy was not too bright, but he was a good gardener who liked his plants. I always put him on the crew to go up to Mrs. Di Luca’s and work on her yard. He was amiable. He was religious, Catholic. She liked him, and she has a good gut about people.”

  Yeah, she did. “What’d he look like?” Rafe asked.

  “Hispanic, six-foot, a little overweight.”

  “Family?”

  “No one around here. Had a mama in L.A. Maybe he went back home.” But Zachary frowned as if he didn’t believe his own theory.

  “He was worried about something,” Brooke said.

  Zachary shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t babysit my people. I expect them to do the work and handle their own lives.”

  “Anybody else you’d suspect?” Rafe asked.

  “Most of the guys I hire have a record.” Zachary met Rafe’s eyes. “Hell, I have a record. But I pick out my workers pretty carefully, stay away from the violent types, stick with the petty thieves and marijuana smokers. I figure we all deserve a second chance.”

  A guy dressed in the gardeners’ dark khaki came up the walk. He hesitated when he saw the group, but Zachary gestured him over. “What is it, Josh?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Adams, Miss Petersson.” Josh’s gaze skimmed Rafe in acknowledgment. “The gophers have made it into the planter between the kiddie pool and the playground equipment.” He was young, lightly tanned, blond with blue eyes, as sober as if he’d announced the return of the black plague.

  “Damn it!” Zachary’s voice was virulent, but quiet. “We’ll have to shut the area, go in at night, and clean them out.” To Rafe, he said, “We can’t kill gophers in front of the kids.”

  “Right.” Rafe nodded.

  “Do you want me to stay late tonight to help?” Josh asked. “I can always use the overtime.”

  “Good. You’re on,” Zachary said.

  Rafe watched him walk away. “Why does he need the overtime?”

  “Josh Hoffman is one of our local hires,” Brooke said. “After high school, he was in and out of college. Worked around the country a little, and now he’s saving to go back. Figures he’ll have enough by next fall.??
?

  “Too bad, really. He works hard, doesn’t squirm at the tough stuff. I would have never thought it. Most of the locals don’t like to get their hands dirty.” Zachary glanced at the guys weeding the flower bed and bellowed, “Not those! We just planted those marigolds.”

  The guys froze.

  Zachary turned back to Rafe and Brooke. “Listen, I’ll keep an eye out for you, an ear cocked for conversations. If I stumble on anything suspicious, I’ll let you know. Now I’ve got to go before my temps take out everything we planted last week.”

  After Zachary walked away, Rafe said, “I like him.”

  “I like him, too.” Brooke started up a different path.

  “Straightforward. Smart.” Rafe followed and made his educated guess. “Did time for a murder, right?”

  Her step faltered. “Maybe.”

  “That’s an answer in itself, Brooke. Don’t sweat it. I work with guys like him—the ones who learn their lesson, pay their penance, and go forward with their lives. We fight the ones who discover they like violence, and go out to kill again.”

  She stopped by a small stucco cottage set off the path, with marigolds in the window box and a sturdy black door with a lock. “You’ve met the supervisors and a few of the workers. Do you think anyone is violent?”

  “If it were that easy, I’d be out of a job. I know Nonna said her attacker was a white man about six feet tall. I also know that almost every person, male and female, that I’ve met today, was white and about six feet tall.”

  Brooke viewed him as if he’d lost his mind. “Zachary is not white.”

  “It’s easy to buy a pale mask and gloves. And your Ebrillwen Jones could easily dress the part of a man.”

  “The criminal could be, as DuPey said, a drifter.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “It could be.”

  “That’s also an answer in itself, Brooke.” Deliberately, he loomed over her. “I wish you would tell me what you know.”

  Naturally, she wasn’t intimidated at all. “Believe me or not, I don’t care. But I don’t know anything about the attack on your grandmother.”

  He couldn’t believe that she did, and yet—something was wrong. Something was off. Brooke was lying to him, daring his disbelief. And why?

  She stopped in front of the narrow cottage isolated by lush vegetation, with window boxes where bright golden marigolds grew. “Here we are—Millionaire’s Row, home to the priciest places on the property—and me. And now you. Yours is the next cottage on the left. Is there anything else that you need from me?”

  Yeah, but you’re not going to give it to me. “No. Go rest.” He stripped off his leather biker jacket, revealing for the first time his white T-shirt stained at the pits, grimy at the neck—the red, healing line of his newest scar slicing up his arm and over his elbow. “I’m going to get cleaned up, and I’ve got work to do.” He walked down the path and out of sight, knowing she was watching him . . . and wondering. Wondering what work he would do. Wondering why he hadn’t muscled his way into her cottage to look the place over, and maybe to look her over, too.

  She was smart and wary and curious.

  And that was fine with him.

  Chapter 15

  At seven that evening, Brooke walked into Sarah’s room wearing a smile and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers Zachary had sent.

  She stopped short.

  Nonna wasn’t in the bed.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  Then the bathroom door opened, and a strange woman helped Sarah out.

  Sarah looked good, dressed in her robe with her hair damp.

  The stranger was a brunette, diminutive, and supporting Sarah with her arm around Sarah’s thin waist.

  “You’re stronger than you look,” Sarah was saying.

  “I work out a lot,” was the reply.

  Brooke noted a few things: Sarah looked tired, but she looked happy, too.

  And the stranger resembled an Asian martial arts instructor, with beautiful, smooth, tanned skin. With a single pass, her eyes cataloged everything about Brooke and dismissed her as unimportant.

  No, not unimportant. Nonthreatening.

  “Brooke, dear, how good to see you!” Sarah called as the stranger maneuvered her toward the bed. “This is Bao. Rafe sent her over to help me so you and the nurses don’t have to.”

  Brooke came over, put the flowers on the table, and helped Bao ease Sarah onto the mattress. “Nonna, I like to help you.” She was, she realized, calling Sarah “Nonna” to emphasize their warm relationship. But it stung, being replaced so easily.

  “I know you do, dear, and I love having you.” Sarah settled on the pillows, then took Brooke’s hand. “But you’re running yourself ragged with everything you’ve got to do.”

  “Did Rafe tell you that?”

  “No. But I could read between the lines. He’s worried about you. He’s so thoughtful, my Rafe.”

  Brooke contained a burst of explosive laughter.

  Bao did not. She laughed long and hard. In perfect English, she said, “Thoughtful he isn’t.” She spoke to Sarah, but met Brooke’s gaze, sending her a wordless message. “He wants to make sure you remain safe and secure, Mrs. Di Luca, and you don’t suffer any setbacks in your recovery.”

  Brooke made the leap of logic.

  Rafe had sent Bao to be Sarah’s bodyguard.

  She looked at Bao again.

  Bao was a dangerous woman. She had calluses on her hands, the kind a martial arts expert developed from breaking bricks. Even in here, in the confines of a California hospital room, she wore close-fitting jeans, boots, a dark button-up shirt, and a jacket, and somewhere underneath those clothes she hid weapons, and knew how to use them.

  Brooke had two choices: Be resentful. Or recognize the good sense of having someone to help and protect Sarah here at all times.

  Brooke was, above all things, reasonable—even when she didn’t want to be. “I understand. Rafe really is very thoughtful.” She picked up the vase with its wilted flowers. “Let me throw these away and replace them with the new bouquet.”

  Bao took the vase away. “I’ll do this. You sit down and chat with Mrs. Di Luca. She’s been waiting for you to come.”

  So while Bao arranged the flowers in the vase, Brooke sat and talked to Sarah, who looked better tonight than she had since the attack, alert and in some nebulous way herself again. Brooke told herself it was Rafe’s arrival that made the difference, but when she got ready to leave and leaned over Sarah to kiss her cheek, Sarah caught her shoulder in her good hand and held her still. With a grin that looked like the old, mischievous Sarah, she said, “I’m so glad not to be a burden on you, Brooke, and I hope you’ll visit even when you don’t have to help me pee.”

  “Next time I come, maybe we can find some Australian football on TV,” Brooke said.

  “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” Her grip tightened. “Today I’ve been talking to Annie and June.”

  June Di Luca lived at the family’s southern California beach resort. Annie Di Luca lived at the family’s resort on the wild Washington coast. The three women were very different, but for as long as Brooke could remember, Sarah and her sisters-in-law had always formed a little female cadre of support known as “the girls.”

  “What have you been saying?” Brooke asked.

  “The girls think I should tell you what happened.”

  Brooke’s nerves grew taut. “What happened . . . you mean when you were attacked?”

  “No. What happened a long time ago. I don’t want to. I’d thought we’ve moved beyond it. I’d rather hide my head in the sand.” For the first time that evening, Sarah got that soft, out-of-focus expression. “But they’re right. When Rafe has a moment, bring him up to visit me.”

  “He always has a moment for you, Nonna.”

  “Eli and Noah, too, I suppose. Everyone needs to know.” Sarah let her go. “But not tonight. I’m tired. Bring them tomorrow. In the afternoon. I fee
l sharpest in the afternoon.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon for sure.”

  With a sigh, Sarah settled back and closed her eyes. “Good night, dear.”

  “Good night, Nonna.” Brooke pressed a kiss to her cheek, then lingered over the bed.

  Yes, Sarah was better, but that moment of confusion when she mentioned the past . . . it worried Brooke. What was so awful that Sarah herself said she wanted to hide her head in the sand? That her sisters-in-law had to insist she tell them?

  Bao leaned against the wall by the door, her sleepy appearance at odds with the nod she gave as Brooke passed.

  As Brooke headed for the parking lot, she pulled out her cell phone and called Rafe. “Nonna wants to see you and your brothers tomorrow afternoon.”

  “We’ll be there,” he said.

  “She wants me to be with you.”

  “Is she matchmaking?” Like the jerk he was, he laughed.

  Brooke was not amused. In fact, she thought she’d completely lost her sense of humor. “No. It’s moral support. For her. And while we’re talking, who’s Bao?”

  “You didn’t figure it out?” His voice was deep, warm, soft.

  The sound sent an unexpected shiver up her spine. “You couldn’t have warned me before I went over?”

  “I thought you’d want to meet her, assure yourself that Nonna was in good hands.” However many times Brooke talked to Rafe, she was always aware of that undercurrent that flowed between them, like foreplay for the mind, like verbal sex.

  But she could ignore that; right now, the words were more important. “Nonna seems to think Bao is a nurse-companion.”

  “My original intention was to send one of my men in to keep her safe, but when you told me she needed help only a female could give, I called Bao and asked if she was up-to-date on her aide license. She is, so she went in to take care of Nonna.”

  Brooke heard it in his voice; he liked Bao, and he was proud of himself. “You have a bodyguard who’s a nursing aide?”

  “Most of the people who work for me can at least fake their way through a couple of jobs,” Rafe said patiently. “Don’t worry about Bao doing anything to accidentally hurt Nonna. Bao’s grandfather was the South Vietnamese karate champion, fought for our side in the war, survived five years in one of their prisons. Her father was born on a beach over there while the family was boarding a boat into the South China Sea. The whole bunch of them is tougher than nails, but I’d trust Bao with my most precious possession—and in fact I am.”