Island Affair (Keys to Love #1)(22)
“There you are.”
The sound of her mother’s cultured voice had Sara stumbling a step. Luis’s hand slid from her waist to her hip, tugging her against his side to steady her. Instinctively her right arm looped around his waist for support.
Casually dressed in navy capris and a light blue blouse, her dirty-blond hair styled in a cropped pixie cut now that it had finally started growing back, Sara’s mom stepped through the open front door. Despite her diminutive stature, her strong personality loomed large in Sara’s mind.
“It’s wonderful to see you two,” her mom greeted, hands spread in welcome. “I was beginning to worry you’d gotten lost trying to find your way here.”
“Hi, Mom, how was the flight down? Not too rough for you, I hope?” Sara asked.
Her mom had been prone to airsickness before chemo. Since starting her treatment, the nausea had gotten worse whenever she traveled.
“Oh, I’ve been better. But I’ve also been worse. Nothing a little reading or morning yoga in the gorgeous sanctuary out back won’t cure.” Her mother’s easy quip, so unlike her usual staid personality, had Sara slowing her steps with caution.
She and Luis reached the end of the brick pathway, and he deftly lowered the handle to carry her suitcase up the stairs.
Sara’s mom stared at him, her oval face, still thin from the weight loss during her treatment, alight with interest. The tiredness that had weighed down the corners of her light gray eyes had mostly lifted since Sara’s last visit to Phoenix over the Christmas holidays. Now a strange softness, vastly different from the usual keen determination, loomed in their depths.
“Mom, this is Ric Luis.” Sara rattled off the double name they had agreed on, looping her arm around Luis’s waist again as they climbed the steps together. “Sweetie, I’d like you to meet the best pediatric surgeon in the state of Arizona, if not the entire West, my mom, Dr. Ruth Vance.”
Luis held out his hand when they reached the verandah. “It’s a pleasure, Dr. Vance. I was just telling Sara, you selected a beauty as your Key West home away from home.”
“That I did. But please, call me Ruth.” Sara’s mom clasped Luis’s large hand between both of hers, the typical reservation with which she had met Sara’s previous boyfriends curiously absent. “It is such a joy to meet you, Ric.”
“Uh, likewise.” Luis shot Sara a glance she interpreted as here we go. “Actually, with family and close friends I usually go by ‘Luis.’ It’s nice to welcome you to my childhood home, Ruth.”
“Oh, I hadn’t realized . . .” The tiny lines crossing her forehead deepened as her brows rose in obvious surprise.
“I look forward to showing you and the rest of Sara’s family what makes the island so special to us locals,” Luis finished.
“Sara, why didn’t you mention Ric, or”—Ruth’s eyes crinkled with a smile she sent his way—“Luis, was from Key West?”
“I thought I did, didn’t I?” Heart pounding with unease at the fib, Sara leaned in to press her cheek against her mom’s cool one for an air kiss. “It probably slipped my mind in all the trip preparations.”
Once again, her mom surprised Sara by reaching her slender arms around Sara for a hug. After a stunned second, Sara stiffly reciprocated the gesture. The bony shoulder blades along her mother’s back were a stark reminder of Ruth’s frailty. Despite whatever happy front she was putting on for Luis, she was still regaining her strength. The stamina that had driven her for hours at the operating table not quite what it used to be.
Her mom’s frailty reminded Sara that this trip was meant to be a rejuvenating, mood-lifting vacation. No matter how nervous Sara felt about lying by pretending with Luis, her mother’s peace of mind held more importance.
Leaning back from their hug, Sara gently grasped her mother’s shoulders. “You’re looking great, Mom. I think a little island sun and balmy weather will do you good.”
“Yes, well, this humidity will probably turn my hair into a frizzy football helmet. But at least it’ll be a full helmet now.” She palmed several spots around her head where, until recently, the hair had only grown in patches.
Angling toward the lush front yard with its thick green grass, dark pink bougainvillea vines trailing across the picket fence, and stately palms, Ruth sucked in a chest-lifting deep breath. “There’s something about the ocean air, isn’t there? I’m anxious to dig my toes in some sand and stare out at the vastness of the open water. It has such a calming, Zen-like effect. We don’t get this in Phoenix, do we?”
Sara stared in disbelief at the woman whom she favored in coloring and facial features but who stood a good three inches shorter in stature while towering over her in strength of character. Who was this introspective woman? Dr. Ruth Vance didn’t talk about calming effects and Zen anything. She was more interested in learning about cutting-edge procedures and medical devices. Pushing herself to the limits if it meant saving another patient.
Rest and relaxation? That was for the weak.
“Ruth, are you out here?” Sara’s dad poked his head around the door, his brow wrinkling as the blue-green eyes his DNA had given her widened with joy when he spotted her. “Sar-bear, you made it!”
He opened his arms for a hug, and Sara scooted around her mother, happy as always to oblige him. “Hi, Dad, it’s great to see you.”