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The news had been all over her campus at Boston College. The journalists had been from New York, but they’d worked for a station that broadcast to the Boston area. Marcel and her colleague had been held six months before being let go. But at the time, many other prisoners had been brutalized and killed, often in front of rolling cameras to the horror of their families back home.
“Christina is our cousin.” Jack’s green eyes were haunted and murky.
The pencil rolled off the sketch pad and onto the deck while Alicia tried to absorb the news.
“What do you mean? How?” The questions didn’t make sense, but neither did what he was saying. He was related to that woman and never told her?
The whole country had been glued to their televisions as they worried about the kidnapped journalists. Why wouldn’t he mention a connection?
“My mother is from an extremely wealthy New York family. Most people don’t know her background because she eloped with a poor kid from Brooklyn and her family disowned her.” Jack flexed his fingers at the knuckles before fisting them. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Plus, Christina doesn’t share her mother’s name since her mom didn’t marry her father. Anyway, it’s not common knowledge that she’s related to a wealthy family—not her New York clan or her relationship to the Murphys. We were advised to keep that connection a secret since her captors might have increased their demands if they’d known about us. Not that we wouldn’t have paid—far from it. But the government advised us not to let it be known that she was potentially a very valuable prisoner.”
Alicia’s mind reeled with the picture she was beginning to form. Jack’s family had been a part of some international horror and she hadn’t even been aware of it. His thoughts had been on a kidnapped girl overseas while she’d been whining that he missed another one of her swim meets.
“Your whole family kept it a secret.” It wasn’t just Jack who’d withheld the information then. His whole family had been trying to comply with a hostage negotiation. “I wish I’d known,” she said softly. Then, once again, realized that was probably the selfish thing to say. “That is, I would have been more supportive. All those trips overseas for your father’s business…”
“Some of them were for business, but several were to meet with people we thought might be able to help free Christina. Travelling for the resorts was an easy cover and my brothers and I took turns trying to urge various businesses and governments to get involved with demanding her release. We tried to keep it low key so no one put together our personal interest. But after a couple of months went by, my brother Danny decided to put on a uniform and – go make peace the old fashioned way.”
Jack stood and moved toward the helm to make a few adjustments to their course. Alicia used the time to peer around and see the day remained quiet and calm on the water. Her insides were anything but.
“He convinced you to join too?” She tried to remember what she and Jack had talked about during those months when he’d had all of this weighing on his heart.
And while she regretted not being more supportive during such a trying time, she couldn’t help a stab of resentment that he hadn’t trusted her with any of it. She’d felt like part of his family. But she hadn’t been allowed into the fold with the most important Murphy affairs.
“No. He never asked me to join. You know what a rebel he is. He just made the decision and never looked back. But while Ryan was off learning the family business, from the inside out, my part in Murphy Resorts was smaller and I didn’t enter the business until a few years after him. So I was the stand-in oldest brother for a long time. Maybe that’s why it felt wrong to watch Danny go to war while I--.”
“Stayed home and went to my spring formal.” She shook her head, the last sad bits of her fallen bun coming loose from the twist in her hair. “No wonder my world seemed so juvenile to you.”
She’d just qualified for the women’s NCAA swim championship in three events that year. She’d been a junior captain on a team full of promising talent. But damn it, she would have been more understanding about all the time Jack spent away if he’d given her any inkling what had been going on in his world. Finger combing a few snarls from her wind-tousled hair, she tied it into a low ponytail.
“Never.” He didn’t return to the foredeck, remaining in the captain’s chair. “I looked forward to being with you and not thinking about what was going on in the family. Christina’s capture stirred up a lot of old resentments between my dad and my mother’s family. And she was stressed because she couldn’t reach out to her relatives. Then Danny…”
“What?” She knew the least about Daniel Murphy. She’d gotten to know the patriarch, Robert, and his oldest son, Ryan, through her internship with Murphy Resorts. In high school she’d been in the same class as Kyle, so she’d witnessed his rise to hockey star in college and then in the NHL. Keith had been so friendly at family gatherings that he’d been easy to get to know. And of course, she’d fallen head over heels for Jack.
But Danny Murphy remained a mystery other than his stint with a rock band that had gone on to achieve fame and fortune without him. Also, that he’d taken a Navy contract the same day Jack had.
“He was crazy about Christina’s journalist friend- the camerawoman who was taken in the kidnapping.”
She tried to process what that meant. “He didn’t think he’d… save her?”
Both hostages had been returned safely three months after they’d been taken. But no doubt those twelve weeks would have been harrowing for someone close to the captives.
“No. If anything, we knew we’d be farther from the negotiations if we entered the service, but Danny was going nuts thinking he wasn’t doing enough.” Jack scrubbed a hand through his dark hair, his gaze a million miles away even though he stared at a yacht cruising out to sea just ahead of them. “He said he’s always felt called to serve and if he didn’t answer the call then, he’d never get out from under the family business to make it happen.”
She could see that argument resonating with the younger man Jack had been.
“And you realized you felt the same way.”
His focus cleared, narrowing on her. “How did you know?”
Shrugging, she couldn’t remember the exact conversations they had that made all of this make sense for her, but somehow, she’d always known that Jack had never felt comfortable with a life of wealth and privilege.
“Any other guy your age would have been over the moon to make all those trips to Europe on a company credit card, but you’d call me at midnight from a glitzy hotel, jet-lagged and cranky.” Her heart ached a little at the memory of hour-long conversations. Phone sex that left them both breathless and hungry to be together for real. “It doesn’t surprise me that you would appreciate that sense of purpose the military could give you. I just wish you’d let me share that side of it instead of thinking you ditched me because I was too young and superficial for you to share something so monumental in your life.”
She exaggerated the case since he’d never come out and expressed it that way. But when he didn’t say anything to contradict that long held fear for his disappearance from her life, queasiness churned with a premonition in her belly. Rising, she left the forward deck to join him at the helm, her eyes never leaving his face.
“You trulydidthink I was too young and superficial.”
“Not superficial.” He tugged the wheel to the right to avoid another boat’s wake. “But you can’t deny we were at different points of our lives. You didn’t deserve to shoulder all of my worries with the family when you were dealing with your father. Remember? The hostage situation took place when he was trying to get you to transfer to Harvard--”
