“Ohhh . . . got it.” That made sense. “So Meg and Michael hit the island . . . then what?”
“Michael knows a lot about wine.”
“So he heard of Picano’s wine?”
“No. The opposite. And when Alonzo figured out Michael was on to his misleading label, Alonzo made their stay here very difficult,” Gabi said.
“Misleading label?” Hunter was lost.
“Alonzo may have owned the land in Italy, that did in fact grow grapes, but he didn’t make wine. He used his supposed status as a winemaker to smuggle drugs.”
“Ohh . . .” He followed along with relative ease. “He smuggled the drugs with the wine he brought onto the island.”
Gabi was silent for a few moments. “I could have destroyed everything my brother built here with my fiancé’s deceit.”
“I doubt you knew anything about the drugs.”
“Still my fault.”
The desire to reach for her was huge.
She’d all but curled up onto herself as she spoke, giving no indication that she needed comfort.
“What happened next?” They’d yet to get to the personal stuff . . . the part that shattered the woman in front of him.
Gabi hugged her bent knees, her gaze fixated on the ocean. “While Meg and Michael accompanied Val to Italy . . . in search of the truth, I was oblivious. He took me away for a short weekend . . . a vacation off the coast on his yacht.” She shivered and her skin grew pale. She swallowed, and continued. “I grew up on these waters . . . well, maybe not grew up, but certainly never found myself sick on them.”
Hunter felt his hand clenching the arm of the chair.
“From the minute I stepped on the ship, I wasn’t right. We ate, drank . . .” her nervous laugh left him cold. “I slept. Woke to aspirin . . .” She laughed again and Hunter’s back teeth ground together.
“He told me it was for my headache.” Her eyes were a hard stare on the water. “Everything blurred.”
Hunter was sitting on the edge of the lounge chair, his knees bumping her chair. He wanted to touch her, but didn’t. He waited for the words to tell him the worst of it. Knew the story was going to get worse.
“The morning we married, I was lucid. Well . . . blurry, but I can’t say I didn’t know what I was doing.” She blinked in his direction for a moment, then looked away. “It would be easier if I knew he forced the marriage certificate.” She rested her head on her knees. “Let’s get married, he said. Today . . . now . . . he talked about romance. I said yes.” She sighed. “I said yes.”
Hunter found his tongue. “You loved him.”
She shook her head. “I thought I loved him.”
The waves crashed a few times . . .
“I remember bits from there. A meal . . . the stateroom. The nausea. I thought I was sick. After, the doctors told me the drugs he slipped into my wine . . . my water . . . was triple the prescribed amount.”
Hunter couldn’t help his hand that found her ankle. It was a comfort that she didn’t back away.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, a tear fell from her eye. “He didn’t stop with pills.”
Hunter’s nose flared and his skin grew ice-cold.
“Alonzo smuggled heroin. I have a memory of his captain sliding a needle into me.”
Holy fuck. Hunter had to force the hand on her ankle to relax or risk breaking her delicate bones.
She looked into the star-filled sky. “They found me floating alone in a dingy in the middle of the ocean. I don’t remember how I’d gotten there, or how long I was bobbing in the sea. I remember a helicopter, then nothing until I woke in the ICU in Miami. I’d learned what he’d done to me, and why . . . he heard that my brother and Meg were on to him, so he forced his hand . . . used me . . .”
“Jesus.” No wonder everyone he’d met that knew Gabi threatened to kill him if he harmed her. Hell, he wouldn’t hesitate after hearing that story.
Hunter removed his jacket and took a chance.
He slid into the space beside Gabi and covered the two of them. The need to tell her everything, every reason he needed her as a wife, sat on his lips.
He couldn’t. The risk of her walking way, and him letting her, was too great.
“It’s a good thing he’s already dead,” he said a long time later.
She’d snuggled into his chest and finally settled into slow, easy breaths.
“Oh?”
“Yeah . . . I don’t look good in orange, either.”
Chapter Seventeen
They were cruising somewhere between 27,000 and 30,000 feet. The open book in Gabi’s lap sat unread. She and Hunter had fallen asleep under an open sky. Sometime later, he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her to her room. The connecting door to their bedrooms was left open, giving her space, but not closing her off. It was probably one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for her.
What surprised her more was a lack of dreams . . . of memories. Whenever she spent time talking about her tragic past, dreams plagued her for nights after.
Instead, she dreamed of Hunter covered in flour.
Hunter’s breath on her neck.
Hunter on the dance floor.
He had left the villa before she rose and showered for their return trip home. He’d kept their conversation polite, if not cold. The heat generated in her mother’s kitchen was a distant memory.
She shouldn’t be surprised. The image of her with a needle in her arm sickened her as well.
Gabi gave up on the language textbook and stood.