"I sincerely hope so," he said with a warm smile at her sparkling face. "As Ramon rather bluntly informed me, he has no desire to marry a cocker spaniel."
Katie's smile faded. "He has no desire to marry me, either, right now."
"Do you want me to come with you when you speak to him?"
Katie shook her head after a moment's thought. "When I came into the church, that was what I was going to ask you to do. I was terrified of his anger yesterday, and he actually threatened to make David seem like a saint."
"Did Ramon raise his hand to you?"
"No."
Padre Gregorio's lips twitched. "If he did not strike you with the provocation he had yesterday, I am certain he never will.''
"I suppose I always knew that," Katie admitted. "It was probably just thinking about David that made me so afraid of Ramon yesterday and today."
Clasping his hands behind his back, Padre Gregorio beamed his general approval upon the mountains, the sky, the village and the villagers. "Life can be so good if you let it, Katherine. But you must trade with life. You give something and you get something, then you give something of yourself again and you receive something again. Life goes bad when people try to take from it without giving. Then they came away empty-handed, and they grab harder and more often, growing more disappointed and disillusioned each time." He grinned at her. "Since you are not afraid of Ramon doing physical violence to you, I assume you do not need me?"
"Actually I do," Katie said with a wry look at Garcia who was standing sentry beside the Rolls, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes following her every move. "I think Ramon instructed Garcia to get me off this island, and if I've missed my plane that man will put me in a boat, a box or a bottle, but he'll do what Ramon told him to do. Do you think you could convince him to take me back to Gabriella's, and also tell him I want to surprise Ramon, so he shouldn't mention that I didn't leave?"
"I think I can handle that," he said, putting his hand under her elbow and walking with her toward the car. "A 'self-important, self-righteous' man such as myself ought to be able to intimidate one chauffeur."
"I'm terribly sorry about the things I said," Katie said contritely.
Padre Gregorio's blue eyes laughed at her. "One has a tendency to acquire those rather unattractive traits after wearing these robes for forty years. I confess that since you said that to me, I have done some serious soul-searching trying to discover if you were right."
"Is that what you were doing when I interrupted you in church a while ago?"
His face shadowed. "It was a moment of deepest sorrow, Katherine. I had seen you passing by the church in Ramon's car, and I knew you were leaving. I had hoped and prayed that before it came to that you would realize what was in your heart. Despite everything you said and did, I felt that you loved him. Now, shall I see if I can convince the loyal Garcia that it is in Ramon's best interest for him to disobey Ramon's instructions?"
When the Rolls pulled into Gabriella's yard, Katie debated about having Garcia take her up to the cottage instead. The problem was that Ramon might not come back to the cottage for days, and Katie had no idea how to find him. Gabriella would help her, so long as Eduardo could be kept from finding out.
She lifted her hand to knock on the door, but it was flung open. Instead of Gabriella, Eduardo was standing there, his face uncompromising and forbidding. "You are not leaving?"
"No, I—" Katie began pleadingly, but the rest of her sentence was cut off by Eduardo's crushing bear hug.
"Gabriella said I was wrong about you," he whispered gruffly. With an arm thrown around her shoulders, he drew her into the living room to face Gabriella's shining countenance. "She told me you had courage." He sobered abruptly. "You are going to need a great deal of it to face Ramon. He will be twice as angry at being twice defied."
"Where do you think he'll go tonight?" Katie asked bravely.
Ramon sat with one hip perched on his desk, his weight braced on the opposite foot. His expression betrayed no emotion as he listened to Miguel and the four auditors who were seated on the luxuriously upholstered sofa at the far end of his office, discussing the bankruptcy papers that they were preparing to file.
Ramon's gaze was turned toward the windows of his high-rise San Juan office as he watched a jet climbing in a wide arc into the blue afternoon sky. Based on the time, he knew it was Katie's plane. His eyes followed it, clinging to it as it diminished to a silver speck on the horizon.
"As far as you personally are concerned, Ramon," Miguel spoke up, "there is no need to file bankruptcy. You have enough to cover your outstanding debts. The banks that loaned you the money, which you in turn loaned to the corporation, will foreclose on the island, houses, plane, yacht, art collection, etc., and recover their money by selling them to others. The only other personal debts you have are for the two office buildings you were constructing in Chicago and St. Louis."
Miguel reached across the large coffee table in front of him and picked up a sheet of paper from one of the stacks. "The banks that loaned you part of the construction money are preparing to sell the buildings to other investors. Naturally, those investors will make the profit when they finish the buildings and sell them. Unfortunately, they will also be able to keep most of the twenty million dollars of your own money that you put into each building." He glanced apologetically at Ramon. "You probably knew this already?"
Ramon nodded impassively.
Behind him, the buzzer on his desk sounded and Elise's agitated voice burst over the intercom. "Mr. Sidney Green is calling from St. Louis again. He is very insistent about speaking with you, Senor Galverra. He is swearing at me," she added tersely. "And shouting."
"Tell him that I said to call me another time when he feels more composed, and then disconnect the call," Ramon said curtly.
Miguel smiled. "No doubt he is somewhat distressed about the rumors his competition is now spreading that his paint is defective. It is all over the Wall Street Journal and the business sections of the American papers."
One of the auditors glanced at Miguel with wry amusement for his naivete". "I imagine he's a hell of a lot more upset about his stock. Green Paint and Chemical was selling for twenty-five dollars a share two weeks ago; it was down to thirteen dollars this morning. There seems to be something of a panic."
Miguel leaned back into the sofa and folded his arms complacently. "I wonder what could be wrong?" He straightened immediately at Ramon's sharp frown, however.
"Are you talking about Sidney Green from St. Louis?" The thin, bespectacled auditor on the right end of the sofa looked up for the first time from his ledger sheets. "That's the name of the man who heads the group who is planning to take over the office building you were constructing in St. Louis, Ramon. They've already made the bank an offer to buy it and finish it."
"That vulture!" Miguel hissed, and launched into a string of savage expletives.
Ramon didn't hear him. All of the roiling pain and fury he felt over losing Katie was exploding inside of him in a volcanic surge of pure rage that now had a target he could strike: Sidney Green. "He is also on the board of directors of that same bank, and it refused to extend my construction loan so that I could finish the building," he said in a low, threatening voice.
Behind him the buzzer went off on his desk. Ramon answered it automatically while the auditors gathered up their papers, preparing to leave. "Senor Galverra," Elise said. "Mr. Green is on the line. He says he feels more composed now."
"Put him on," Ramon said softly.
Green's voice exploded over the speaker system. "Bastard!" he screamed. Ramon nodded a curt dismissal to the auditors, and flicked a look at Miguel that invited him to say. "You dirty bastard, are you there?" Green shouted.
Ramon's voice was quiet, controlled and very dangerous. "Now that we have exhausted the topic of my legitimacy, shall we get down to business?''
"I don't have any business with you, you—"
"Sid," Ramon s
aid in a silky voice, "You are annoying me, and I become very unreasonable when I am annoyed. You owe me twelve million dollars."
"I owe you three million," he thundered.
"With interest it is now over twelve million. You have been drawing interest on my money for nine years; I want it back."
"Go to hell.'"he hissed.
"I am in hell," Ramon replied with no expression in his voice. "And I want you with me. Beginning today, it is going to cost you one million dollars for each day the money remains unpaid."
"You can't do that, you don't have that much influence, you arrogant son of a—"
"Just watch me," Ramon bit out, then he broke the connection.
Miguel leaned forward eagerly, "Do you have that much influence, Ramon?"
"No."
"But if he believes you do—"
"If he believes it, he is a fool. If he is a fool, he will not want to risk 'losing' another million today, and he will call back within three hours so that he can get the money into my bank in St. Louis before it closes tonight."