Absentee Love Returns

[Revised]Ready to fight, she found Rico on the front porch and walked up to him, poking his chest. “You had us brought here!” she said with her voice raised a hair below yelling. “Do you know how frightened I was? How I feared we were a pawn in a war between your father and one of his adversaries?” She backed him up against the wall of the building. “How is what you’ve done different than him?”

“Kitten, if you’d—”

“No! Men came here with guns last night. They could have killed my son.”

He grabbed her shoulders. “Gail,—”

“No! Too late. Answers should have come months ago.”

“I couldn’t.”

“That’s crap!” She poked him harder.

Rico grabbed her head and planted his mouth on hers, ignoring her struggle to get away. She didn’t want to taste him, to let him melt her anger and bring back the heat. But he made her succumb all too easily. She slipped her hands up his chest and wound her arms around his neck, letting him bring their bodies closer.

He lifted her into his arms, mumbling, “Harriet, keep an ear for my son. We have talkin’ to do.” He took her down to the beach and planted her on a rock amongst bamboo and palm trees.

“Don’t think you can waltz in here and the last twelve months disappears.”

“I don’t.” He hung his head for several seconds, and then looked up at her, fatigue lacing his eyes. “Had I known, I could have done something.”

“Would it have really mattered? Or would it have been the fact that your father staked claim over something of yours?”

He raked his fingers through his hair as he turned toward the ocean, but not before she saw the flash of pain. Once, she thought she understood him and as much of the rift between him and his father as he’d told her, but she didn’t know him as well as she thought. And no longer wanted to, she had a life to return to and a son to raise.

“Rico, I’m returning home and to my job; and give Enrico a normal life.”