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“Have you talked with him?” she asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t call and tell him about the accident?”
“I figured he’d take the news better from you. I’ve never met him. As far as I know, he doesn’t even know we’re married, and since your life wasn’t in danger, I didn’t see a reason to worry him.”
“And my mother—”
He held up a hand. “¿La telefonista? Quiero llamar Seattle en los Estados Unidos. Comuníqueme, por favor, con el número de Ted Carrothers…” He rattled off her father’s number in Spanish, answered a few more questions, then, frowning slightly, handed her the receiver.
Nikki’s heart was thudding, her fingers sweaty around the phone. “Come on, Dad,” she whispered as the phone began to ring on the continent far away. She was about to give up when a groggy male voice answered.
“Carrothers here.”
“Dad?” Nikki said, her voice husky. Tears pressed hot behind her eyelids, and relief flooded through her. She felt like she might break down and sob.
“Hey, Nik, I wondered if I’d hear from you.”
“Oh, Dad.” She couldn’t keep her voice from cracking.
“Is something wrong, honey?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she assured him, shooting Trent a grateful glance. “But I did h
ave an accident….” She told him everything she could remember or had been told of her trip, leaving out her amnesia so that her father wouldn’t worry. As she talked, bringing up the fact that Trent McKenzie had been the man who had rescued her, she let her gaze follow Trent, who, whether to give her some privacy or to get some air, left her and walked onto the veranda. The wind had kicked up, lifting his dark hair from his face and billowing his jacket away from his lean body.
“Nikki! You could have been killed!” her father exclaimed, all sounds of sleep gone from his voice.
“But I wasn’t.”
“Thank God. I knew going to Salvaje was a bad idea. I tried to warn you not to go.”
“You did?”
“Don’t you remember? I thought that was why you hadn’t called, because you were still angry with me for trying to talk you out of the trip.”
Now wasn’t the time to mention her loss of memory. “Well, things worked out. And I got married to Trent.”
“You what?” He swore under his breath. “But I’ve never heard you mention him. Nikki, is this some kind of joke? You could give me a heart attack—”
“It’s no joke, Dad. I’m really married.” At least, that’s what everyone tells me. She heard his swift intake of breath. “It…it was a quick decision,” she said, giving him the same spotty information she’d gleaned from Trent.
“To a guy named Trent McKenzie. A man I’ve never even heard of?” Here it comes—the lecture, she thought. “Holy Mary! I can’t believe it. What about Dave?”
“Dave?” A lock clicked open her mind.
“Dave Neumann. You know, the man you’ve been dating for about three years. I know you two had a spat and that you said it was over, but hell, Nikki, that was barely six months ago. Now you’ve gone and eloped with this…this stranger?” Anger, disapproval and astonishment radiated over the phone. “I know you’ve always been impulsive, but I gotta tell you, this takes the cake!”
“You’ll meet him as soon as we get home,” Nikki assured her father, though her stomach was tying itself into painful little knots.
“I’d damned well better. You know, Nikki, for the first eighteen years of your life I got you out of scrape after scrape—either with the law or school or your friends or whatever—but ever since you turned into an adult, you’ve been on this independence kick and nothing I tell you seems to sink in. I warned you not to go to Salvaje, didn’t I? I knew that it would be trouble. Maybe if you’d told me you were going on your honeymoon, or at the very least confided that you’d found a man you were going to marry, things would have turned out differently and you wouldn’t have ended up in some run-down, two-bit hospital!”
She felt her back stiffen involuntarily. “How would your knowing change anything?”
“Hell, I don’t know. But you’ve gotten so damned bullheaded and secretive! Lord, why would you try to hide the fact that you were getting married, unless you were ashamed of the guy?”
“It…it just seemed more romantic,” she said, trying to come up with a plausible excuse.
