Anne Marie Duquette - Castillo's Bride

Hot anger made Jordan’s already pounding head hurt even more. Could this be true? Could she really have found the San Rafael? The ship held more than just the possibility of treasure. A decade ago, a killer hurricane had widowed all the Castillo wives and left the Castillo children fatherless. Which made the last surviving Castillo male—himself—responsible for their welfare. That Spanish treasure galleon meant the difference between his family’s future and their eventual destruction. It meant enough money to ensure educations for his nieces and nephews. And it meant a resurgence of pride in their family’s name, their family’s history.

How dare this woman claim it as hers?

“I was hoping to interest you in a partnership.”

“Never. The San Rafael is Castillo property, and I’m a Castillo.”

She had the audacity to shrug. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. International salvage laws are basically the same today as they were centuries ago. The courts say if I find it, I keep it.”

“The San Rafael is my property.” Suddenly the sheets and the rails of his bed seemed too confining. Jordan struggled to sit up and failed. “You’ll never claim her,” he gasped, falling back against the pillows.

“You’re wrong. I already have.” She suddenly held a gold coin before his eyes. Not a coin, he saw upon closer inspection, but a gold medallion stamped with a crest—the Castillo family crest. Every salvager’s instinct he possessed cried it was no forgery.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“From the San Rafael, of course.” She flipped the medallion over so he could see the opposite side, the stamped Roman numerals spelling the date 1809. “She belongs to me now. And since I saved your life, so do you.”

For a wild moment, Jordan wondered if he was hallucinating. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am. You’re both mine.”

Jordan stared at the conviction in those calm blue eyes. She meant every crazy word. She placed the medallion in the palm of his right hand and gently closed his fingers around it. The gold held the warmth of her body, which mingled with his.

“It’s yours, Jordan Castillo, but since you’re in no position to safeguard it, I will.” Then, as she took back the medallion and made way for the doctor’s approach, he heard her softly add, “For now…”

U.S.A.–Mexico border, San Ysidro–Tijuana crossing

July 6, 5:20 p.m.

INSIDE HER TRUCK, Aurora swore at the rush-hour traffic, the slow crawl of cars in all twelve lanes, the droning of the radio traffic reporter.

“…We’re talking a thirty-five-minute wait to get across the border, San Diego commuters. Forty-five minutes at the Otay Mesa crossing. Still, it is Friday on a gorgeous July day, and the beaches are waiting. So, be as patient as you can, and while you’re waiting to get home, here’s a message from…”

Aurora impatiently reached for the radio and shut it off, then shoved a strand of blonde back from her sweating face. In this heat, the air-conditioning in any stationary vehicle barely worked at all.

Ordinarily, she’d be at the beach herself, preferably La Jolla Cove, California’s only state diving park. A dive master since her eighteenth birthday twenty years ago, Aurora taught scuba diving to provide herself with a regular income, and speculated on professional salvaging when she could. She used her own ship, Neptune’s Bride, which she docked at Oceanside Harbor. But all of that—her treasure-hunting as well as diving into the cool green of California’s Pacific—had to wait. Tanya, my daring, difficult, wild niece. The trouble you’ve caused us.

Two weeks before Aurora’s scheduled meeting with Jordan Castillo, sixteen-year-old Tanya Atwell had brought a stash of recreational marijuana on the family vacation to Rosarita Beach, Mexico. They’d been stopped at the border by Mexican Customs on a random search, and now Tanya, her father, Gerald, and her mother, Dorian—Aurora’s younger sister—were locked away in separate men’s and women’s jails. Gerald had been transported south to a brand-new facility in Mexico City. Gerald and Dorian had been charged with harboring a “known drug dealer,” while Tanya herself had been charged with “international trafficking.” Tanya’s parents faced a possible twenty-five-year sentence when their case came to trial. Tanya faced life imprisonment—or execution. In Mexico, the Napoleonic Code held that Tanya was guilty until proven innocent, just the opposite of the United States. Worse, Tanya was guilty…and had taken her innocent parents down with her.

Hence Aurora’s trip across the border. Her plan to spring her sister’s family was simple.

She’d get money—lots of money—and grease palms. Not exactly what a good citizen of either country should do, but she’d tried everything else. So had the lawyers and the embassy. I have no choice. Dorian claimed the marijuana was hers, not Tanya’s. Tanya was letting her mother take the blame, while her father—

They were all worried about Gerald. He was being kept in a men’s prison, and neither Aurora nor American consulate staff were allowed to see him. Worse, Dorian and Gerald didn’t speak Spanish, although state law required Tanya to learn it in high school. Dorian and Tanya had been given no news of Gerald. U.S.-Mexico relations were friendly except when it came to the fight against illegal drugs. No smuggler of any nationality crossing the border in either direction was shown mercy. Nor would a sixteen-year-old’s act of rebellion—growing cannabis in laid-back Southern California be excused in Mexico.

Even more of a problem, Gerald’s business—a small but lucrative computer-chip manufacturer—was ripe for the picking by any bigger corporation. Without Gerald to run the business and Dorian to keep the books, funds were tied up and the handful of employees understandably nervous. Aurora had made the last two payrolls from her own bank account. She earned a good living, but her pockets couldn’t hold out forever. There was another payday next week. After that, Aurora would be scraping the bottom of the barrel herself. Sadly, the astronomical legal fees she’d paid out so far had been totally unproductive.

She couldn’t keep the family’s business solvent much longer. She had no money left to salvage the San Rafael on her own, either. But she’d found a single gold medallion at the wreck, and her salvager’s instinct told her there was more. That could mean millions in profit, millions she and Jordan would share—once he agreed to a partnership. The key to your freedom is Jordan Castillo—if I can keep him alive…And if you and Tanya and Gerald will work with me.

Sadly, that was easier said than done. Aurora’s family considered her the proverbial black sheep, and consequently they didn’t have the best relationship.

Following the dictates of her heart, she’d run away from home to join a salvage crew and dive in Florida when she was sixteen. No one had ever forgiven her. Her parents still talked about how she’d broken her mother’s heart and given her father his ulcer those two years before she turned eighteen and finally visited them.

“Too many bad memories,” fifteen-year-old Dorian had taken pleasure in telling Aurora back then. “Phone calls to and from the police, the FBI, relatives, your friend Donna. Mom said she can’t bear to look at the old place—let alone celebrate your eighteenth birthday. You don’t deserve a party, they said, and I agree. Bad enough I end up with Mom and Dad becoming my jailers after you ran away. Now I lose my house, thanks to you! And maybe my friends and my school.”

“What?” Aurora hadn’t believed her parents could sell the family home.