Island Affair (Keys to Love #1) - Priscilla Oliveras Page 0,73

to participate. The four of them had always been close. Until Enrique had broken Luis’s trust.

Their mami’s advice whispered through Luis’s head, imploring him to make peace with Enrique. But she wasn’t privy to everything Enrique had kept to himself.

Dark memories, the information Luis had learned after the fact, swooped in like fallen angels, dragging Luis away from the olive branch his brother’s grin extended.

How Enrique and Mirna had secretly messed around in high school, but Enrique had broken things off, preferring to play the field. How Mirna hadn’t gotten over him, inviting him to meet up with her and some friends one weekend during his last year of art school in Miami. The weekend when they wound up sleeping together. Even though Mirna and Luis had been dating for a couple months. Of course Enrique claimed he hadn’t known.

That had been Enrique’s first mistake. Keeping his tryst with Mirna a secret once he found out she was dating his brother.

Flash forward about a year and a half later. Enrique had finished art school and unexpectedly moved back home, giving up his artistic dreams for a reason he refused to elaborate on. Drunk at a beach party in Bahia Honda, Mirna propositioned him again. Ignore the fact that by then she wore Luis’s engagement ring.

That’s when Enrique threatened to rat her out if she didn’t come clean with Luis herself.

A threat that precipitated Mirna’s foolhardy decision to flee the party and drive back to Key West.

She never made it home.

Lying in her hospital bed, Luis by her side, she finally admitted her duplicity. The next afternoon she passed.

That day, Luis lost his fiancé and his brother. He hadn’t been the same since.

His mami nudged him, and he joined everyone moving into the center aisle. Lining up for communion in front of the altar, Luis did what he did every Sunday that he and his brother were both off shift; attending mass with the familia, he prayed for absolution. For his soul to heal, allowing him to find some way to breach this divide and make his mami happy.

So far, his prayers remained unanswered.

Back in their pew moments later, he knelt on the padded knee rest, the organ music and choral voices swelling with the notes and lyrics of “The Prayer of St. Francis.”

The irony of the hymn’s lyrics wasn’t lost on Luis. A prayer asking to be a channel of peace. Someone who consoles others, who brings hope and light to dispel despair and darkness. As a firefighter paramedic, he did his best to epitomize those words at the station and on every call. He took pride in excelling at his job, helping others.

And yet, with his own brother, he couldn’t let go of the past.

Staring blindly up at the large stained-glass rendition of Saint Mary centered high in the altar’s back wall, Luis steeled himself for the onslaught of remorse, pain, and disillusion he’d battled the past six years.

Battled, and continuously lost.

He looked at his younger brother, once the prankster who’d almost never failed to egg a laugh from Luis, the serious, follow-the-rules middle child.

A flash of color in the line of people along the front of the altar caught Luis’s attention.

Hands pressed together in prayer, Sara sang along with the choir. She turned the corner to proceed up the walkway between the rows of pews and the exterior wall with its tall shutter doors ajar. Her gaze met his, and her pink lips curved in the sweetest of smiles. For him.

Instantly, the warmth of peace filled his chest.

It felt right. Seeing her here, in this place that held deep meaning for his family’s traditions and values, a place he came to seeking solace.

In that moment, whatever had been off-kilter inside him shifted, falling back into place. With sudden clarity he knew what he wanted.

He wanted to spend the rest of the day with her as they’d done Friday afternoon when they first met. Just the two of them, swapping stories and laughing together.

He wanted to follow her to her own pew, let the church empty of everyone else, and share the tales of the antics that he, his siblings, and their cousins had pulled here. Like the time Carlos hid Luis’s black dress shoes when they stayed over a friend’s house one Saturday night. To Mami’s horror, Sunday morning Luis had been stuck wearing his red Spider-Man sneakers with his altar boy frock.

Or the morning of Anamaría’s First Communion, when she decided to paint her nails pink, accidentally