Safe Harbor Read Free Page A

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 Silvio had come to love all four of the girls as if they were his daughters, that didn’t mean he would allow any of them to lead him blindly. Love, to him, meant giving the other person the benefit of your experience and your honor.
    “I cannot agree to something until I know what it is I am agreeing to—and why I am doing something,” he said as he kept a watchful eye on the road before him, taking it as slowly as he could. If he went too fast, there was a very real possibility the truck could flip over.
    She was running out of time. “Please, Silvio.”
    “I am not thinking of myself right now,” he told Stevi in a very serious voice. “It is you I am worried about.”
    Ever the guardian angel, she thought. She should have realized that she would be his first concern. She should have set his mind at ease first thing.
    “You don’t have to be. It’s just that you