Solo Tu

Chapter 1 I had never been considered warm or affectionate. As a child, I had been closer to my mother and grandfather than my father, who, for some reason, never seemed very fond of me. However, as long as I had Mama and Grandfather, I could live with that. When I was six, I was struck with two almost simultaneous blows: Mama was lost when the Valkyrie, the private schooner in which she’d been sailing, sank in a gale off the Canary Islands in 1934. Shortly afterward, Grandfather succumbed to pneumonia, and I lost the two people I loved most, who cared most for me. Father had lost his wife and his own father, and I imagined he was grieving in his own fashion. Perhaps that was why he sent me off to boarding school the following year, shortly after he and my stepmother married and she and her son came to live with us. Addison was always climbing on Father’s lap—something he never permitted me—or raising his fat little arms and shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, up!” begging for a hug. I would have enjoyed a hug also, but I would never beg. Instead, I was sent to Hubbard’s Preparatory, the pre-eminent school for boys in the southeast. Father might have no use for me, but he would never permit me to attend a school that was anything less than prestigious. I rarely returned home, even when the other boys attending the school did. I had no desire to visit the once-sprawling acreage in Arlington, so I remained within the ivied walls of Hubbard’s and studied, and as a result, was easily accepted into Harvard. After graduating college—an event Father chose not to attend, since Addison was graduating himself, from high school—I set off to see the world, most specifically the Korean peninsula. I joined the Navy, which sent me there, and when my commanding officer discovered my facility with languages, I quickly rose to the rank of captain. By the time the ceasefire was signed in 1953, my expertise was so valued I was recruited to the CIA. For the most part I worked alone, and that suited me very much; I accepted the fact I would always be unloved and alone. The reputation for being distant had followed me through my school years, through my time in the Navy, and on into my work for the CIA, my chill exterior resulting in me being referred to as Mr. Freeze throughout the Company. As a result, I could number the affairs of the heart in which I’d indulged on the fingers of one hand, with fingers to spare. Lovemaking was messy and unsatisfying, and during those long stretches when I did without, I never felt as if I were missing anything. * * * * The first time I saw Portia Sebring, she must have been about twenty. She was visiting her brother Bryan, who analyzed data for the CIA, where I supplied him with that data. I felt my c**k stir, which startled me. I was willing to grant the young lady was pretty, but I’d seen many women who were prettier, had even appeared with some of them on my arm, but none of them affected me in this manner. However, I couldn’t afford distractions to my work. I forced myself to fade back into my office, unseen by either her or her brother. Things heated up over the years on the international scene—that summit in Geneva in ‘55, the Hungarian Revolution in ‘56, the launch of Sputnik 1 in ‘57—and I seldom thought of her. Whenever I did, my body no longer reacted in the same way, so I assumed it was a fluke, and I went about my job.