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children. Los Niños. Los Niños and Tommy Cordera. The photographs had been removed in deference to her grief. And to Andrea's. Victoria examined a large oil of menacing value, which had replaced the photographs. "Look at them," she murmured as though the wall still offered up children, and as if Alex and Ari had even existed when the banished photographs had been taken, and were honored there, too. "The twins will never want for anything. I have to make that happen for Marcus."
    "They may not want, but they do have needs, love, and they will hurt if you close your eyes to those needs." She paused as if to measure the effect of her warning. "Marcus is your child, darling, by design, but he deserves no more, no less, than Alexander and Ariana."
    Victoria turned from the wall, drawn by the wisdom in Andrea's voice, giving it validity. "I want to go home."
    "Christ! Have you heard nothing I've said?"
    "Yes. Yes, I have, Andrea. You're so kind to be concerned, but I've been thinking about this—"
    "Especially since this afternoon," Andrea interjected. "I am clairvoyant, and a woman. I see into your soul. This Zac person tapped some instinct in you. He is somewhere down the pier now, tucked into some stale bunk, clutching a girlie magazine and sleeping off his Chianti. You are here wrestling with the future of three defenseless children."
    Victoria smiled, trying to imagine Zac in a stale bunk. Her failed attempt melded into the mystery of him.
    "Do I deserve the culmination of your thoughts," Andrea urged. "Or are you planning to leave me a note and steal away in the night with your charges?"
    "I want to go back to London for a while—spend some time with Christian. I can put in an appearance at the London boutiques as well."
    "You've decided then?" Her question reiterated the fact that Victoria's coming to a decision had been the point of the cruise. "Baku isn't in your future? Is this what I'm hearing?"
    "No—Yes, it's what you're hearing."
    "Oh, God." She rolled her eyes, her perfect mouth souring, uncharacteristically. "A rather expedient decision, dare I say?"
    Victoria looked at her in question.
    "Expedient as in convenient, after wrestling with it for weeks. Weeks prior to a candlelight dinner with Pancho Villa in a piazza cafe." She smiled derisively.
    "He made me realize how difficult it will be to impart Marcus's own cultural heritage to him, because of me, because I can't cross the line without creating hardship on Marcus. Zac also helped me realize that trying to cross the cultural line would create the same hardship for Alex and Ari that Marcus faces now."
    Andrea smiled. "Insightful. I'm sure he had a suggestion of value that included him in some profound way." In harried fashion, she ran her long fingers through rust-tinged, curly hair, lifting it from around her face. "I cannot believe that in the space of one afternoon, halfway around the world, you two just happened to share a table in a piazza. That would never have happened in Galveston County, Texas. Not in one million years. Fate is truly an asshole."
    Victoria smiled, contrite. "He offered to help."
    Andrea slapped her thigh in triumph, eyeing her skeptically.
    "Zac Abriendo would be good for Marcus," Victoria mused.
    "You don't know that. His skin is the same color, his hair, his eyes. And I'm sure he speaks Spanish well enough to order from a Taco Bell menu. Perhaps there may be nothing else you want your son to glean from this interloping stranger."
    "Zac is only a catalyst for my returning to Puerto San Miguel, not the reason."

    "What is the reason then?"
    "The hotel. That's Marcus's heritage. That's what Tommy left him. I'm taking Marcus back to the hotel."
    Interest flicked across Andrea's face.
    "And the twins. Don't you see, Andrea? That old hotel is a Mecca of Puerto San Miguel history and heritage, and it enfolds all cultures. I'll raise the children—all of them—in the hotel, in the place Tommy recreated for me. For us . If I hadn't met