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  DELIA’S GIFT

  V.C. Andrews® Books

  The Dollanganger Family Series

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  If There Be Thorns

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  Secrets in the Attic

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  The Delia Series

  Delia’s Crossing

  Delia’s Heart

  Delia’s Gift

  My Sweet Audrina (does not belong to a series)

  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews’ stories and to create additional novels, of which this is one, inspired by her storytelling genius.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by the Vanda General Partnership

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  V.C. ANDREWS® and VIRGINIA ANDREWS® are registered trademarks of the Vanda General Partnership

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5522-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4391-5522-4

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  DELIA’S GIFT

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 A New Home

  2 Custom-made

  3 A Bargain

  4 Visitors

  5 Clear Sailing

  6 Reunion

  7 Lockdown

  8 The Only Game in Town

  9 Little Adan

  10 We Lose the Ones We Love

  11 Farewell Dinner

  12 Ignacio

  13 Fani

  14 Blind Date

  15 Overdose

  16 A New Crossing

  17 Justice

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  My grandmother used to say that too much of anything is not good.

  Too much sunshine dries out the flowers.

  Too much rain drowns them.

  I know there can be too much anger, but can there be such a thing as too much love?

  Once, when Father Martínez was conducting Bible lessons in our church back in my Mexican village, Papan García, one of the brightest girls in our class, asked Father Martínez why Adam went and ate of the forbidden fruit after Eve had done so.

  “He knew it was wrong and what would happen to her. Why do it?”

  Father Martínez smiled and said, “Because he loved her too much, and he didn’t want to be without her.”

  Papan smirked and shook her head.

  “I cannot imagine loving anyone that much.”

  “You will,” Father Martínez predicted. “You will.”

  I thought about Father Martínez’s answer when I left with Señor Bovio to live in his house. I was pregnant with his son Adan’s child, and I accepted his invitation. I told myself I was doing it for him as well as for myself. I had nothing else to give him but the joy of seeing his grandchild.

  But deep in my heart, I hoped Señor Bovio’s love for his son was not as great as Adam’s love for Eve.

  I did not want either of us to do something forbidden, something to lock us out of paradise.

  1

  A New Home

  All of Señor Bovio’s estate employees were there to greet me the morning I arrived at his hacienda. No one looking at me for the first time since I had left the mental clinic would know I was pregnant, but from the expression on everyone’s face, even the way the gardeners stared at me when I stepped out of Señor Bovio’s limousine, it was obvious to me that they knew. There was such expectation and reverence on their faces. Anyone would think I was carrying a future king.

  Later, I saw that my mere appearance would stop conversations or lower voices and widen eyes, eyes that would quickly shift down either in deep respect or in deep fear. I suspected that the fear came from the remote possibility that he or she might do something to disturb me and that the disturbance would cause an aborted pregnancy.

  Although it was difficult for me to be treated as if I were fragile china by the employees, I couldn’t be upset with them. I sensed that in the back of everyone’s mind, I was ending the hard period of mourning over the death of Señor Bovio’s son, Adan, who was killed in an accident on their boat when I was with him. I was defeating death by giving birth to Adan’s child. Those who had truly loved Adan looked at me with reverence and gratitude. If I showed any emotion at all in response, it was to reveal my humility and how I did not believe I was worthy of such veneration and respect. I wasn’t the new Madonna. I was simply an unwed pregnant young woman. Back in my village in Mexico, it would be I who would lower her head, lower it in shame.

  Mi tía Isabela, with whom I had been living, had been preparing to send me back to my poor Mexican village in just such disgrace. But when Señor Bovio learned I was pregnant with Adan’s child, he came to the clinic where I had been taken after my nervous breakdown following Adan’s death and pleaded with me to live with him until the baby was born. I agreed, because I could see clearly that for him, my pregnancy and impending birthing were bringing back hope and happiness to a world shrouded in b
lack sorrow.

  Still, I expected it would be painful living in Adan’s home without him. With the memory of his handsome, loving face still so vivid, I was sure I would see him everywhere I looked. These were the same front steps he had climbed all his young life, I thought when I stepped out of the car and gazed up at the portico and the hacienda’s grand front entrance. I knew when I entered and looked about, I would see the dining-room table where he had sat with his father and taken his meals. These people looking at me now were the people he had greeted and who had greeted him daily. I felt his absence too deeply and saw the sorrow in all of their faces. My heart turned to stone in my chest. I was afraid I would stop breathing, but Señor Bovio’s strong hand was at my back, almost propelling me forward. He kept his head high and his eyes fixed on the front entrance, as if he were truly taking me into a magic castle.

  Once we stepped into his hacienda, my eyes were immediately drawn to the dome ceiling in the large entryway. It had a skylight at the center through which sunlight streamed and glittered off the white marble tile floors and walls. It was as if I had entered a cathedral, not a palace. Because of the way everyone moved timidly around us, it was church quiet.

  “We’ll give you a tour of the hacienda later,” Señor Bovio said. “First things first.”

  He immediately led me up the curved black marble stairway to show me to my room. When he opened the large mahogany double doors embossed with two beautiful black panthers with ruby eyes, I gasped, overwhelmed. The bedroom suite was larger than mi tía Isabela’s. The four-poster, bloodred canopy bed was wider and longer than hers and had enough fluffy pillows to serve a family of ten. Hanging above just beyond the foot of the bed was a gilded chandelier with teardrop bulbs raining light.

  On the wall to my right was a large framed picture in velvet of the same two panthers that were embossed on the door, and there were black statues of them in crimson-tinted marble on pedestals. The velvet drapes were scarlet, and there was a red tint to the furniture. Even the bedroom carpet was red. Fresh bouquets of red roses were placed in vases on the bedside tables.

  “You will stay here, Delia,” he said, nodding at the suite.

  “It’s beautiful, Señor Bovio, but it is so big.”

  “It was my wife’s suite,” he said.

  “Your wife’s? But…”

  “This is where you will stay,” he said more firmly.

  As my father used to say about his employer, Señor Lopez, “He is a man used to having his words immediately carved into concrete.”

  Nevertheless, I was surprised at Señor Bovio insisting so strongly that I stay in his wife’s bedroom suite. Surely there were many other rooms, any of which would have been more than adequate for me in this grand hacienda, a hacienda that was easily a few thousand feet larger than Tía Isabela’s.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but it’s far more than I require, Señor Bovio,” I said softly.

  “What you require?” He smiled and looked at the bedroom and the adjoining sitting room as if I had said something quite foolish.

  “Sí, señor.”

  He shook his head. “This is where my wife was pregnant with Adan, where she spent her pregnancy. It’s only fitting that you stay here while you’re pregnant with Adan’s child.”

  He paused, nodding softly and looking about the suite.

  “Yes, you’ll be safe here,” he said in a voice close to a whisper. “Safer than anywhere else.”

  The way he looked around that first day, with his eyes almost blazing excitement, actually gave me a little chill. I sensed he believed the room held some magical quality, believed that his wife’s spirit was still there, a spirit that he was confident would look after me and the baby growing inside me.

  Belief in spirits or ghosts had always been part of our lives in Mexico. I had no doubt that even though Señor Bovio had spent most of his life in America, he still held on strongly to these ideas. I didn’t imagine it was something he talked about, especially with his business and political associates, but I could see that his faith in his wife’s continual spiritual presence was strong.

  I would never criticize anyone for such thoughts. My grandmother had these same beliefs. Holding on to them as primitive and superstitious as they might seem to others, kept Abuela Anabela close to those she had loved and lost. I wanted very much to believe in spirits as strongly as she did. I especially did not want to give up my parents, and, like her, I would often talk to my mother and my father, hoping, praying, that they still heard me. Why not grant the same hope to Señor Bovio, I thought, especially now?

  “If this is what you wish, señor, I am honored to occupy this bedroom. Gracias.”

  The head housekeeper, Teresa Donald, who looked every minute of her sixty-three years, brought in my meager possessions, clothing, and shoes. She was about my height but stout, with roller-pin forearms. Yet she had small facial features, including thin, pale lips and very small light-saffron-colored teeth. Her cheeks were full of pockmarks. It was as if she had been caught in a sandstorm when her face was just forming.

  “Don’t bring that stuff up here,” Señor Bovio told her sharply. “Find a place for it in the laundry closet. She will have new things, clean things only.”

  She nodded and hurried away, avoiding looking at me, which only made me feel more self-conscious. When would they stop treating me like some divinity descended from the clouds?

  “But that really is all I have, señor,” I said. “Mi tía Isabela took back what she had bought me.”

  He ignored me, closed the double doors, and nodded at the sitting room. In it were two sofas, a love seat, two large cushioned chairs, a wide-screen television, a stereo, and what looked like a wine closet. The carpet in the sitting room was the same soft red color and just as thick.

  I sat on one of the cushioned chairs and folded my hands on my lap. Señor Bovio did not sit. He paced a little with his hands behind his back and then stopped and looked down at me. I realized this was the first time since we had left the clinic that he actually looked at me when he spoke.

  “I have hired a nutritionist, who is also a private-duty maternity-ward nurse, to design your menu,” he began. “As you probably know, pregnant women have different needs because of what the forming child requires. Her name is Mrs. Newell, and she is in the kitchen right now giving my chef instructions. She’s already purchased much of what we will require, but the preparations are also very important.”

  He already had a private-duty maternity nurse? That gave me pause to wonder. Had he been so confident that I would agree to come live here that he could go and hire someone special and have her in the house even before I had arrived? And why did he say “what we will require”? Surely, he wasn’t going to follow the same diet. But I didn’t question him. I could see he didn’t want to be interrupted.

  “I happen to be close friends with one of the best obstetricians in the Coachella Valley, Dr. Joseph Denardo. I know women who have come from as far away as Los Angeles to have him as their OB. He will be your obstetrician, and as a special favor to me, he will come here to examine you regularly or as he sees necessary.”

  “Why couldn’t I go to his office?” I asked.

  He ignored my question and continued, pacing. “I know that pregnant women should exercise, walk regularly, keep busy, and that you are used to doing household chores, but my servants will perform all the necessary duties. Besides Teresa, I have two other maids who handle the downstairs area. However, only Teresa will be up here to attend to your needs. Your room will be cleaned and dusted daily. And oh,” he said, pausing and looking at me again, “Dr. Denardo asked me if you had any specific allergies. I haven’t had time, of course, to ask your aunt, but…”

  “No, señor. I have no allergies that I know of.”

  “Good. You always looked like quite a healthy young woman to me, despite what you’ve just been through. Adan had described some of what you experienced living in your aunt’s home. I can assure
you, Delia, that cousin of yours, Sophia, will not be permitted within a hundred yards of this property. We will take no risks regarding our baby. The first chance I get, I’ll make sure Isabela understands that,” he added.

  “Gracias,” I said. I had no desire to see Sophia. I knew that as soon as she found out what Señor Bovio was doing for me, she would choke on her envy. I had not seen her since I was taken to the clinic after my nervous breakdown at mi tía Isabela’s hacienda following Adan’s death. She surely thought that all of the events had soundly defeated and destroyed me, and I had no doubt that once she had learned I was pregnant, she had worn out the telephone gleefully telling her friends how I was to be sent home in disgrace. Now, she would once again be bitterly disappointed.

  “From Adan, I understood that you were friends with Fani Cordova,” he continued. “Is that so? You know that Fani is a cousin. Her father is my second cousin.”

  “Sí, señor, although I have not spoken to her since…”

  He spun around, with his eyes widened in anticipation of the possibility of my mentioning Adan’s death, but I had another thing in mind.

  “Since I returned from Mexico,” I added, and he nodded.

  Fani had had nothing to do with me after I had been returned from Mexico with my cousin Edward and his companion, Jesse. I had talked them into taking me back to my little village, ostensibly to show them our culture and visit my parents’ and my grandparents’ graves, especially mi abuela Anabela’s grave. I was the closest to my grandmother.

  However, I really had been there to meet with my boyfriend, Ignacio, with whom I had fled across the desert after he and his friends had gone after Bradley Whitfield. Sophia’s rich boyfriend had taken sexual advantage of me when I accepted a ride from him on my way back from where the bus stopped on my return from school. I was attending public school then. Bradley took me to see a house he and his father were restoring, and there he performed what other girls called a date rape.