CHAPTER TWO

      STEVI STARED DOWN at the man’s face. Scores of questions crossed her mind. Questions he couldn’t answer because he was unconscious.

      Crouching over him, Stevi gingerly placed one hand directly before his nostrils and one on his chest, trying to detect some signs of life. While she didn’t feel his heart beating, she did detect just the slightest bit of breath coming from his nose.

      She sighed with relief. He was still breathing. But who knew for how long? The makeshift bandage she’d created was discolored from all the blood it was soaking up. She needed to get him up to the inn and from there, to a hospital.

      But none of this was going to happen if she didn’t get someone to help her. However, what was she going to say? She didn’t know the first thing about this man who had washed up on her beach. Why had someone shot him? Was he some kind of a criminal?

      Well, whoever he was, sinner or saint, she couldn’t just let him bleed to death.

      Her father would know what to do. Rising to her feet, Stevi frowned. Or maybe, since he was stronger, she should get Shane. It was still early and her brother-in-law wouldn’t have gone to work yet. He was renovating a house not far from the inn, which meant that he wouldn’t be leaving until around seven. People didn’t like to hear construction before seven.

      The person she really wished she could go to was Wyatt. She’d grown up with him; he was like a big brother to her. Wyatt always knew what to do. But her brother-in-law was in L.A. rewriting one of his scripts.

      That wound needed to be treated now.

      Despite what the man had said, the right thing to do was to call the police.... Staring down, she hesitated. Something in her gut—and for the life of her, she wouldn’t have been able to say what—told her not to call them. At least, not yet. Not until this man had an opportunity to tell her what had happened.

      Until he could speak for himself, she was going to be his voice. And his protector.

      She just hoped she wouldn’t regret it.

      She looked up the hill toward the inn. Was it her imagination, or did it suddenly look to be even farther away than she’d thought?

      The winding road that led from the side of the inn down to the beach was just wide enough to accommodate a truck.

      Silvio, the inn’s gardener, had one.

      If she could pull off a last-minute double wedding for her two sisters, she could do anything.

      Stevi took off for the inn.

      There was an unconscious, bleeding man on the beach depending on her.

      * * *

      “TELL ME AGAIN—and this time I would like to hear the whole reason—why do you want my truck?” Silvio Armado Juarez asked his boss’s third daughter.

      He thought of the girls as his own. He’d found his way to the inn some eighteen years ago, after having been forced to leave Argentina behind. His wife had already taken their three-year-old son and disappeared, and he’d barely managed to scrape enough money together to make it to the United States. He’d already spent most of what was left of his meager savings trying to find them, but never had. And then his time had run out and he’d had to leave. Fast.

      The night he’d stumbled into Ladera-by-the-Sea, he certainly wasn’t looking for salvation. But in Richard Roman, Silvio wound up finding that and so much more.

      Stevi shifted beneath the man’s watchful, dark eyes. “I, um, found something on the beach and it’s too big for me to carry up.”

      “You found what on the beach?” It was clear that he wasn’t about to budge, or hand over the keys to the truck, until he was satisfied with her answer.

      Lying had never been her strong suit. “It’s big and clumsy,” she explained with a small, careless shrug, praying for the interrogation to be over.

      “Everything has a name, Miss Stevi, even big and clumsy things. And if it is that big, then I should put it in the truck for you. Come,” he said, putting down the rake, “I will drive us down.”

      She had no idea how Silvio would react to the man who had washed ashore. She couldn’t really even say why she was so determined to keep this whole incident as quiet as possible. Maybe because she’d been the first one on the scene and she felt that this man’s fate could very well be in her hands. She didn’t want to surrender that responsibility to her father or older sisters or anyone else for that matter.

      “No,” she insisted forcefully, “really, I can handle this by myself. I just need your truck.”

      Silvio looked at her for a long moment. Alexandra was the one who controlled things. Cristina was the one who mothered everyone. Stephanie, this blond-haired young woman with the sparkling blue eyes, was the risk taker, the one who would dive into the ocean without testing the waters first.

      “What is it that you are up to, Miss Stevi?” he asked.

      “Nothing,” she answered far too quickly in his opinion. “I just found something. It might even be gone by now.”

      For all she knew, the stranger might have come to again and this time, he might have managed to get up and gone—where? There was nowhere for a person in his half-drowned—not to mention shot—condition to go but up here to the inn and in her opinion, the man looked as though he was in no shape to climb the hill.

      “Then let us go look together to see if it is gone. If it is not, then we will bring this something you found up to the inn. Agreed?”

      The smile Stevi had pasted on her lips took a little more effort to maintain as she realized there was no way around this.

      Silvio was coming with her.

      She should have known this would happen. Over the years, out of gratitude and allegiance to her father, Silvio had appointed himself their guardian angel-in-chief. Guardian angels, apparently, had tremendous sticking power.

      “All right, sure, I could use the extra help,” she said.

      She followed Silvio to his vehicle, a truck he now owned after paying off his debt to her father over the years. The proud man had insisted on that.

      She and Silvio got in the cab. When Silvio placed his hands on the steering wheel, he glanced over toward her, waiting for her to finish buckling up. When she did, he nodded in satisfaction and started up the truck.

      As it rumbled to life, Stevi knew she had precious little time. “Um, Silvio, I’m going to need you to do something for me,” Stevi began hesitantly.

      “I am listening,” he responded, guiding the truck slowly down the winding path.

      She pressed her lips together, searching for the right way to phrase this. There really wasn’t one. She just had to hope he would grant her this request.

      “I would like to keep this a secret between the two of us.”

      “Keep what a secret between us?” Silvio raised one salt-and-pepper eyebrow.

      “It would be just for a little while, until I can get all the facts together,” she said, her voice rising as she spoke faster.

      “You are not answering my question,” Silvio said.

      Stevi had never heard him raise his voice. Even so, she and her sisters always knew when the man was less than pleased.

      “I need you to agree before I answer you,” Stevi blurted out.

      While