Montega's Mistress by Doreen Owens Malek Page A

you’ll think of me when you see it.”
    Helen slipped it onto her ring finger, closing the hand that wore it into a fist.
    “Now go,” he said huskily, pushing her toward the dock. “I can’t delay any longer.”
    Helen accepted his assistance in climbing up to the wooden walkway, turning to look down at him once she was out of the boat.
    “Go,” he urged her. “Walk to your car and don’t look back.”
    She hesitated.
    “My safety is in your hands,” he warned her. “Farewell, majita.”
    That convinced her, as he had known it would. She hurried back to the car, not risking a glance at the basin until she was behind the wheel.
    The Estrellita was still there, but its deck was empty. He had gone below.
    Helen started the car and drove out of the marina, seeing the road before her through a blur of tears.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    The night Matteo left was the longest night of Helen’s life. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t sleep without him. She, who had prized solitude since childhood and had lived alone since she graduated from high school, was surrounded by the emptiness of the beach house as if lost in the Siberian wasteland. The compact, functional rooms seemed cavernous, and the bedroom where he had slept was a desert. She wound up dragging her pillow and blanket out to the living room couch and sleeping there, where the memories weren’t quite so painful.
    In the days that followed she tried to go back to her old routine, but the 1500’s no longer held the charm for her that they once had. She found she didn’t much care any more what had inspired Christopher Marlowe to write Tamburlaine ; she had met her own twentieth-century adventurer, and he was the one on her mind.
    Helen spent a lot of time sitting on the beach, staring out to sea, thinking about the changes Matteo had brought to her life. She finally decided that she wasn’t going to get any work done as long as she remained in St. Augustine, so she made arrangements to go back to her apartment in Massachusetts. On the day before she was to fly north she went to the supermarket for cleaning supplies, intending to leave the house the way she had found it. Her father employed a housekeeping service, but Helen always felt an obligation to tidy up before she left. When she was younger her mother used to tell people laughingly that Helen cleaned her room before the maid could get to it; she didn’t want the poor woman to face a mess.
    After she parked her car in the lot, Helen entered the air- cooled supermarket, picked out a cart and wandered the aisles aimlessly. She stared at the array of sprays and cleansers, soaps and scouring pads, seeing instead the empty deck of the Estrellita.
    She missed Matteo terribly. She felt half alive without him, purposeless, incomplete. She didn’t realize until he was gone that she had admired his dedication, the single mindedness that took him away, because while he was with her she had also resented it. She felt, no, she knew that he had wanted to stay with her, but he had put his ultimate goal before his personal desires. And after twenty-five years of her mother, Helen found his attitude a refreshing, even enlightening, change.
    She picked up a box of steel wool pads, looked at the price stamped on it and put it back. She couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to make a decision and finally started tossing items into her basket in rapid succession, eager to finish. She was at loose ends. Taking care of Matteo had made her feel needed for the first time in her life. She had never before experienced the fulfillment associated with helping someone she had grown to care for, and she felt its loss deeply.
    She got in line at the checkout counter and picked up a newspaper on a nearby stand, scanning the stories for word of Matteo, as she did every day. She had seen nothing and, as desperate as she was for answers, she kept silent and made no inquiries, determined to keep his presence in her life a secret, as he