Footsteps(14)

Perhaps she had some kind of syndrome. Not Stockholm Syndrome, because she didn’t love her captor, not in the least. But something that made her not care one whit if he succeeded. In fact, a part of her, and not a small part, would welcome it. Not because she had a death wish, but because she craved freedom at whatever cost it might require. Fifteen years, she’d been unable to find her way free of him. Death was at least that, at least freedom.





So now, the wry thought she’d had when he’d first mentioned sending her to the shore had become a real hope, even a prayer—Please don’t let him kill me until the end of the week. Please give me this bit of enjoyment in this life.





Near dusk, she’d driven into town and gotten some Chinese take-out, then returned to the house. She’d sat on the veranda, overlooking the sea, and had eaten orange chicken and fried rice straight out of the little cartons. She’d washed it down with sugary soda. It had been her best day since she was twenty, her best day since the day after they’d returned from their honeymoon, when she’d woken to a life with a different man from the one to whom she’d said, “I do.”





After her happy little meal, she’d lounged on the veranda while the moon rose, feeling the cooling air of the night sea make a comforting kind of chill on her skin. She’d felt pulled by the susurration of the incoming tide, and the ever-so-light spray in the air, and she’d gone in and opened her bags to discover that, of course, they were perfectly packed for this week. She’d pulled out a pair of softly-worn jeans and her favorite sweater, and she’d dressed for a walk on the beach.





She’d walked and she’d thought, and she’d gotten lost in her mind. With no sense of how long she’d walked, she’d realized that she was coming up on a bonfire. As she’d approached, she’d been able to make out a vinyl banner strung between two posts—Pagano & Sons. The Pagano name again. Had she walked all the way to Quiet Cove? Well, that was more than two miles up the beach.





The scene at the bonfire had mesmerized her. Although she wanted, craved, the promised solitude that had been her sudden boon, the golden glow of the fire, the faint strains of music and voice rising up into the air with the sparks and smoke, the warm way the people were clustered near the flames, all of it appealed to her in a way that made her lonely. What she saw around that fire was friendship.





Sabina had multitudes of acquaintances but not one friend. She could not remember what it was like to have a friend. The sight of it on the beach had frozen her in melancholy.





Now, with the tall, dark stranger standing before her—no, not a stranger, her Good Samaritan from the night before, who was a Pagano…Carlo. Carlo Pagano—she felt awkward. Sheepish. It wasn’t a feeling that fit well on her. He’d hailed her, welcomed her. So she put on her meet-and-greet face.





“Um…Sabina? Er…Mrs. Auberon, I mean?”





“Sabina, yes. And you are Carlo? We met last night?”





He smiled, and when he did, his eyes crinkled deeply at their corners. “Yes, kind of. Not formally, though.” He held out his hand. “Carlo Pagano.”





For the space of one heartbeat, she hesitated, without knowing why she would. Perhaps because he’d seen her in an intimate weakness, dominated by her husband. But then she turned on her smile and shook his hand. “Sabina Alonzo. Auberon.” That, too, was interesting. Although her name was officially hyphenated—James, despite his refusal to allow her her language, the most important marker of her cultural identity, took great pleasure in the fact that she was foreign-born, which he thought exotic and alluring—she could not remember the last time she had not introduced herself as Sabina Auberon.





Rather than release her hand immediately after a polite shake, he held on. Not forcefully, but firmly. His hand was large and surprisingly rough. Men who wore tuxedos and attended high-profile civic events did not, as a rule, have rough hands. They had hands like James’s—manicured. Soft. Well-tended.





But she had noticed last night, in the brief, fraught seconds she’d been in his company, that this man had seemed not quite in place at that event. His tuxedo had been expensive and well cut, fitting his tall frame perfectly, but he’d seemed slightly awkward in it. His hair had not been so carefully coiffed as the other men’s; it had been then, as it was now, rather messy, but not in the studied, intentional way that some men affected. It was on the long side of short, and very dark, swept back from his face but not in a way that seemed like he had much control. He had a dark, full beard—that was neatly trimmed—and heavy brows that made his expression look particularly intense.