The Tycoon's Proposition

Terri began to tremble. She removed her hands and hurried to the door to turn on the overhead light.

Without hesitation she rushed to his side and bent over him so she could peer into his eyes.

Pain-filled gray eyes stared back at her between dark lashes. There was a frantic urgency in his look she could feel to her bones.

“You poor man,” she whispered in a shaky voice. “All this time everyone has thought you were my ex-husband. No wonder you’ve been so upset.”

He let out a moan which she took for a yes.

Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry it took me this long to discover the truth. Last evening when I arrived, Dr. Dominguez told me they were keeping the light off in here so you could sleep. If I’d been able to look into

your eyes, I would have known immediately you weren’t Richard.

“The fisherman who brought you in said you called out my name. That means you knew Richard. I assume you were friends or colleagues. Were you both in the accident?”

The stranger lifted his head enough to nod, but it was clearly a strain. Nevertheless it meant he understood her English.

“Lie still,” she begged. “Please don’t exert yourself. Obviously you have family and friends looking for you. They must be in agony wondering where you are.

“I’ll alert the staff right now, then I’ll leave and go straight to the police to find out if the Herrick company or someone else has put out a missing persons report for you. I suppose it’s possible Richard was taken to another hospital in the city.”

This time the stranger shook his head.

She was trying to understand. “If he’s not at a hospital, do you know where he is?”

He nodded again, but the strain on him had taken its toll. His eyelids closed. The unidentified man had to be in grueling pain. She could feel it.

“That’s all right. You sleep while I’m gone. I swear I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She covered his leg and tucked the sheet in place. Then she put the lotion on the table. After turning off the light, she grabbed her purse and tore out of the room.

To her relief the same doctor happened to be at the nursing station down the hall. She took him aside and told him what she’d discovered. He looked shocked and said he’d immediately notify the staff as well as the head of the hospital.

Within a half hour she’d told the same story to Captain Ortiz, an officer at the main police station in Guayaquil. He knew nothing about an accident at sea and proceeded to ask a lot of questions. She gave him a full description of her ex-husband. As for the stranger lying in the hospital bed, there was less to tell about him.

The captain said he would send another officer to the hospital to interview the doctors who were taking care of him. If the police could find the fisherman who’d brought him in, it would answer a lot of questions. At some point he would get back to her either at the hospital or the hotel.

Terri in turn said she would find out where her ex-husband was living. The bandaged stranger had indicated that Richard wasn’t in a hospital. That had to mean he hadn’t been badly hurt in the accident and was convalescing at his apartment or wherever it was that he lived. If she found him first, she would phone the captain right away. He agreed that it sounded like the best plan of action.

After agreeing to stay in close touch, Terri left the police station for the Herrick head office. The taxi driver knew the name and drove her to the heart of the city where he deposited her in front of a complex of buildings, one of which housed the company in question.

A Latin beauty sat at the main reception. When Terri told her she needed some information about one of the employees who worked for the Herrick Corporation, the woman told her she couldn’t give out confidential information.

However as soon as Terri mentioned Martha Shaw, Mr. Creighton Herrick’s secretary, her tone changed. The woman made a quick phone call before looking up Richard’s record on the computer. She gave Terri his address, but there was no phone number listed.

After thanking the receptionist, Terri asked her to call for a taxi. Once that was done, she went outside to wait.

When the driver pulled up in front and she showed him the address, he told her it was located twenty-five miles south of the city and would take close to an hour to get there.

Terri didn’t care about that. She climbed in the back seat and handed him fifty dollars to cover the round-trip. Then she told him to step on it.

He smiled before starting up the taxi to merge with the other cars. The drive turned out to take fifty minutes in the early-afternoon traffic. By the time they reached the city limits, she could tell that the barrios in the outskirts were more run-down.

Eventually he pulled up in front of a small three-story apartment called the Mirador. There was no landscaping to speak of, and a cluster of little children played on the stairs. She asked him to stay put while she went to the door. In case Richard wasn’t there, she needed to be sure she had a ride back into town.

The driver nodded and reached for a magazine to read.

Number ten put Richard on the second floor. She stepped past the curious children to find his apartment, then knocked. When there was no answer she knocked again.