Chapter Nine
Yep, the bad old days. Mallory’s last time to drive a stick shift was when Jonathan was shopping for a BMW Roadster. The linkage had been much tighter than in this old Land Cruiser. Calisthenics were required every time she shifted. With the state of the roads, she couldn’t get above third anyway, especially without jouncing Adrian about. She couldn’t even hope that he might fall asleep, since every time he bounced in his seat, he sucked in a breath through his teeth.
The tension in the car stretched as the miles passed slowly.
“How’s the book coming?” she asked, too loud, and they both jumped.
He chuckled. “It’s not.”
Was he laughing at her skittishness or her question? “You never were particularly patient when it came to things where you had to sit down.” He had barely been able to sleep inside their little house in Pensacola. One would have thought she’d put him in a cage, the way the house vibrated with his restless energy. He’d signed on for the first dig that came along. Her choice had been between being left behind in her little house and going with him. She’d gone, abandoning her house, her dream. That time. “You must have been pretty desperate for the money to agree to write a whole book.”
“Once I knew what I’d found, I had to.”
“If you announce this find, you’ll get all the funding you need for excavation.”
He grunted, and her stomach clenched. “I’m not announcing until I find the box and it’s safe. I don’t want anyone else to get their hands on it.”
“Anyone else meaning Valentine Smoller.”
“He has the other three boxes and if he knew I was after this one, he’d be all over it.”
“Why? Just to foil you? He doesn’t hate you, Adrian.” Gears ground as she pulled the Land Cruiser into second.
“That’s what he told you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He wants the boxes. That’s why he partnered with me in Tunisia.”
She’d spent time with Valentine after the Tunisia disaster, when Adrian had been so driven to find the box. Mallory had found Valentine nothing but supportive. “But why do you think he wants the boxes?”
“Aside from the fact that they’re priceless on their own? Clearly Theophilius believed they needed to be separated. Smoller believes they need to be reunited, for whatever reason.”
“That’s only a myth. How many myths have we heard in our lifetimes?”
“They’re what drives us, these myths, finding out how true they are.”
Stubborn Scot. “But it won’t get us funding to get more divers. Only facts will do that, and we have to stick with that. We’re scientists, Adrian.”
“More divers means more chances for a leak.” Frustration tinged his voice. “That’s why I have Toney and Robert. I know I can trust them. And I checked out Linda and Jacob before I brought them on.”
“And me?”
He turned so his back was against the passenger door. He considered her a moment before he said, “I trust you the most.”
His words staggered her to silence. He observed the effect of his words, then turned to the jungle.
After everything, the hurtful words, the accusations, the ultimatums, he trusted her? She fought the tears of loss that burned her eyes. She couldn’t let him see her cry.
“The publisher,” she said after making certain her voice wouldn’t crack, and she chanced a look sideways. “You trust them as well?”
He lifted an eyebrow as if he would be that stupid. “Of course not. They think I’m diving off the coast of Africa.”
“Are you sure we’re going the right direction?” Mallory asked a short time later, battling through low-hanging vines and a road barely wide enough for a bicycle, much less a full-sized SUV. “I have no desire to be stranded and live on a diet of Spam.”
He grinned, looking up from the map jostling on his lap. “It’s a wonder you came back to archaeology, then.”
She tightened her grip on the wheel. “It certainly was easy to get used to hot water and refrigeration.”
“And diamonds the size of my eyeball.”
She gritted her teeth at the comment he’d made under his breath. “I wasn’t marrying him for money. I thought we’d decided to leave the past in the past.”
Adrian reached for his beef jerky and grimaced as his shirt sleeve pulled against the wound. She’d noted a ton of packages of jerky in his duffel when they’d loaded the car. Quitting smoking after nearly two decades must have been driving him out of his mind. She was glad she hadn’t been around for the early stages.
“This isn’t the past so much as me figuring you out all over again.”
She sighed and cranked up the air conditioner, which struggled to combat the humidity. He had never been much for introspection, not where their marriage was concerned. He could dig for hours on an ancient artifact, but he’d expected their marriage to come easily. “I became a different person after we split.”
“You were a different person before the split,” he retorted without hesitation.
She swung to look at him, braking at the same time. “What?”
He lifted his good hand, like it wasn’t a big deal, like he hadn’t meant to say it. “All you talked about was the house, what we could do to the house, what we could buy for the house. You changed.”
God, not this argument again. After all this time, didn’t he get it? “Adrian, it was my first house. Ever. Mine.” The one she’d planned to live in for the rest of her life, with Adrian. The one she’d planned to raise their children in.
The one she sold after he left.
“You had houses before.”
“Rent houses, temporary, wherever my parents stopped long enough to teach before the next grant came through. Never something that was my own, that I could put my stamp on. Surely you remember how much that meant to me.” He had to remember—she’d told him this a hundred times—how she was tired of never having a home base. And he’d been willing, even excited when they found their little house. He’d been so happy she was happy. That hadn’t lasted long. She glanced over to see the muscle in his jaw working as he stared out the window, before he turned to her, his eyes dark, sad.
“I didn’t know you anymore.”
She smacked her palm against the steering wheel in frustration. “You didn’t try. You didn’t stick around. The first call that came through, off you went. You’re a good man, Adrian, a dedicated scientist, but you were a lousy husband.”
“Not what you needed, you mean.”
“You knew me best. You knew what I needed and why. You just weren’t willing to give it to me.”
“I would have given it to you.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair and looked out the window again. “I just wanted to wait a little longer.”
She shifted and eased off the clutch as sweat trickled down her back. Stupid air conditioner. “A woman doesn’t have all the time in the world. After my parents died, even then it seemed too late. Every time you promised something would happen, you never followed through.”
“Like what?” he asked, disbelief in his tone.
“The house.”
“I bought you the house.”
“Which we left for a year.” She didn’t even try to avoid the next rut in the road.
Adrian grunted as the truck jounced. “It wasn’t going to pay for itself. We had to make money.”
He could have taught. She could have stayed behind and taught. But she’d chosen him over her home. Why hadn’t he chosen her over his career? If he’d even tried, would things have been different? “But you tried to take a home-equity loan out to fund another dig.”
He held out a hand as if to stave off the accusation. “I thought about it. Thought. That was all.”
“You had the paperwork. You’d filled out your part!” God, she’d forgotten how much that had hurt, to find that paper buried in his other work. Not that he’d been hiding it, but that he had made such a big deal about buying her the house, then wanted to risk it for his job—that had crushed her.
He turned and scowled. “So I was a selfish bastard who put my career first.”
“You know you were.”
He didn’t take his gaze from her, making her jittery and secure all at once. “Have I changed?”
“Not where your career is concerned.”
He whipped his head around and she caught a whiff of his breath, spicy, different than she was used to, but that immediately brought the taste of his kiss to her lips.
“It never mattered to you as much as it mattered to me, finding the box, finding the truth.”
She met his eyes. “No.”
“Why not?”
The emotion she’d held back since she’d arrived in Belize broke through. “Because you were more important than a damn box, because we were more important.” Her throat strained as she pushed the words out while choking on tears. “But you couldn’t see that and you let it eat through you. Let it eat through us as well.” She wished for a radio, a CD, anything for a distraction.
“I needed it. You knew that.”
She swallowed so her voice wouldn’t break. “You used to need me more.”
“You couldn’t be everything for me, Mallory.”
She could almost hear the snap as he lost control of his temper.
“And clearly, I couldn’t be everything for you. I couldn’t make the sacrifice you needed me to make. I guess Jonathan could. What did he give up for you, Mallory? How did he prove to you that he loved you more than your parents did?”
Damn, he’d taken it too far. Adrian pulled himself back, physically, emotionally, hating himself for making her eyes sheen, her jaw clench. Her parents had been killed in a mudslide in Nicaragua a few years after she’d married him. Her devastation had slain him. She’d cried for months, leaning on him for the first time in their relationship. He could still feel her in his arms, smell her tears. Never had he felt so helpless. That was when he’d bought her the house, hoping to make everything better. Instead, it had been the beginning of the end.
“I’m sorry, Mal, I didn’t mean—”
She waved off his concern, bumping his forearm and snatching her hand away. “It’s been five years since they died.”
And he’d thought she’d meant to leave archaeology, leave him, after only a few years of marriage. She’d been that upset. Her parents had been archaeologists who carted her around the world before she decided to follow in their footsteps. At that point, he would have done anything to keep her with him. What changed in the intervening years?
The silence that followed was interminable. Damn it, he didn’t want to hurt her again. He didn’t want her to regret returning.
Okay, yes, he knew she hadn’t come back to him, but here she was, with him, working side by side with him again, something he’d never thought would happen, something he’d missed more than he cared to admit.
See, this was why he wasn’t good at communicating. He’d tried a conversation and ended up at an uncomfortable dead-end. How did he get out of this topic? “That was a stupid thing for me to say,” he ventured.
She waved him off, her jaw so tight he thought she’d crack some teeth. He’d just wanted her to see she was being unfair. His timing was shit—they were alone, unable to escape each other’s company for another few hours. She was probably tempted to drop him in the jungle, though.
Back in the old days, he’d make it better by nuzzling her throat, seducing her out of a bad mood. He could count on one hand the number of fights that hadn’t ended in sex. But maybe it was good that he didn’t have that crutch, that neither was able to walk away. If they hadn’t walked away from each other three years ago, maybe they would have had this discussion then, maybe they would have worked things out.
Maybe they’d still be together.
“Your parents weren’t bad people. Just single minded.”
She cast him a look that singed his good intentions. “You’d know about that.”
“I’m sorry, Mallory,” he said. Again she waved him off. “I’m apologizing here. Pay attention. I think it may be a first.”
A smile twitched her lips. “I suppose I should be honored.”
“You should be.” He nodded emphatically, relieved that his charm had worked, if not his seduction.
She eased the car out of gear and pulled the parking brake. Automatically, he looked around, though he knew there were no cars for miles.
“What?”
Mallory shifted to look at him. “Look, Adrian, we share a past, but if this is going to work between us, we can’t live there, all right? We have to start fresh, like we were never married, never—” She bit off whatever she was going to say and looked around. “We can’t be taking trips down memory lane. It’s too painful. So I’m just here as an archaeologist, no different from Dr. Vigil.”
He tried the smile again, but she looked away before he could offer her that comfort. “I hate to tell you, but the prof and I often discuss the past. It kind of goes along with being an archaeologist.”
“You and Dr. Vigil don’t have the past we do. Don’t be a stubborn ass, Adrian. Can we just keep our conversations professional?”
Damn, he loved a challenge. He wondered if she realized just how she was challenging him. He nodded, not agreeing to what she thought he was agreeing to. “No more stubborn ass.”
She snorted and put the car into gear.
She didn’t talk for a long time and he wondered if she remembered how he had loved her or if she only remembered how he’d hurt her.
“You did an admirable job of stitching him up,” the doctor told her after inspecting Adrian’s arm, four hours after they’d left camp. Mallory’s own arm was sore from shifting, her leg cramped from the clutch. At least Adrian wouldn’t have to relive forty-two stitches.
The doctor, a bearded American in a tropical shirt, walked over to the aluminum-fronted cabinet to put away the gauze. “I’ve given him another antibiotic shot and have rewrapped the arm so he doesn’t tear anything loose. He needs to keep it that way at least a week. No diving for at least two. And see that he takes these antibiotic pills.”
Mallory stepped back, her ears ringing with the news. They couldn’t afford to lose their most experienced diver, no matter how many other divers they hired.
Adrian took the bottle of antibiotics, bounced them in his palm. “Doctor, I can’t stay out of the water that long. We have a limited window here, and I have to go in.”
The doctor shook his head. “You shouldn’t get those stitches wet, and you won’t have full use of your arm, in any case. The two weeks will go quickly enough.” He walked out, dismissing them.
Adrian pocketed the pills and hopped off the exam table. “Let’s go get checked into a hotel.” He looped a companionable arm, his good one, around her neck. “It’ll be a nice change to get a real shower, yeah?”
The weight of his arm across her shoulders was so familiar, she almost found herself tucking her head in the crook of his neck, a move as natural as breathing, once upon a time. Pulling away would be the smart thing to do, but that would let him know her thoughts had veered into dangerous territory. Best to play it off, pretend it didn’t matter. But the gesture put her on guard. Was it casual, or did he plan to take advantage of their time alone to make her want more than just the ship?
Because that was so far out of the realm of possibility.
It was.
“You can’t shower,” she reminded him. “You can’t get your arm wet.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Arrogant man. No doubt he was cooking up some scheme to get into the water himself. Damn it, she was going to have to play wife.
Adrian managed to get reservations at a nice hotel within walking distance from the beach. Mallory had thought they wouldn’t be able to get one room, much less two, but he sweet-talked the desk clerk into adjoining rooms. Mallory frowned, silent, unreadable, on the way up the elevator, then didn’t say a word to him as she peeled off to go to her own room.
Once in his room, Adrian stopped at the connecting door and placed his palm on it, imagining her on the other side, tossing her duffel into a corner, stripping off her clothes as she headed for the shower. She never had managed to do just one thing at a time.
He couldn’t stand here fantasizing about her. He turned from the doorway that was nothing but a temptation and picked up the phone to call the campsite.
No answer. They must be out on the boat. Adrian glanced at his watch. A little later than he would dive, but his brother always lived a little closer to the edge than Adrian. He’d left strict instructions for Toney to keep an eye on Robert, make sure he continued his medicine, make sure he didn’t work so hard. The old man shouldn’t even be here, but Adrian couldn’t make him stay away. And the prof had refused to let anyone else in on his secret. Adrian wished the old man would at least tell Mallory, so Adrian could talk to her about it. As much as he longed to confide in her, he wouldn’t betray Robert’s trust.
He sat in the low-backed chair and rubbed his hand over his jaw, the rasp surprisingly loud in the quiet room. The thickness of his stubble surprised him, and he looked toward her room. Mallory had a good idea there, with the showering. He should clean up before dinner.
Mallory shoved her hair away from her face and opened the connecting door at the knock. She should have shut it again, right there.
Adrian leaned against the jamb on his good arm, bare-chested, head tilted, that stupid charming smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “I need help.”
Wariness rose, along with other, baser emotions. She folded her hands together to resist running them over his shoulders. She’d always loved his shoulders. Her tongue curled in her mouth as she remembered the taste of him. “With what?” Okay, that didn’t come out as casually as she’d hoped.
“I can’t get my arm wet and I can’t wash my hair one-handed.”
“You want me to wash your hair.”
He lifted his eyebrows, charm on high. “Please.”
That would require her getting closer and, God help her, she’d have to touch him. Her brain battled with every other nerve in her body that wanted to jump up and down at the chance and scream, Yes, please.
“We can try to fashion a sleeve. Do you have a plastic bag or something?” She looked past him into his room. He’d dumped his duffel out on his bed. Maybe he’d been thinking the same thing. Maybe he wasn’t just trying to seduce her.
“No. Do you?”
She shook her head. Okay, if he was coming to her as a last resort, maybe she could be impersonal and help him out. “How do you think we should do this?”
He straightened, and while his smile disappeared, his eyes glinted. “I thought I could get in the tub. Make it easier for you to reach.”
That sounded reasonable. Anything that kept her clothes on sounded reasonable. She’d thought he’d want her to strip down and get into the shower with him, but maybe he’d gotten the message that she was not here because of him. His learning curve must have improved.
She made a twirling motion with her finger. “Okay. Let’s go.”
His eyebrows climbed higher, just for a second, as if he hadn’t expected her to cave so easily, then he turned and led the way into the bathroom.
The teeny tiny bathroom.
He leaned over the tub to start the water running while she tried to figure out what to do with her hands, what to look at besides the play of muscles across his back. He straightened, turned away from her and shucked off his shorts.
“Are you kidding me?” He was already sporting an erection. “Can’t you control that thing?”
With a flex of muscles he bobbed it at her before stepping into the tub, his injured left arm on the edge of the tub near her. “It remembers you.”
She snorted. “It’s just going to have to savor those memories. Let me get something to rinse your hair.” She ducked out of the room, spotted the ice bucket on the dresser and, for a moment, considered actually filling it with ice before dumping it over Adrian’s smug head. How could she blame his body’s obvious reaction when her own body hummed from the sight of his? She sucked in a breath, like before a dive, and turned into the bathroom.
Adrian sat in the tub, long legs drawn up, looking ridiculous and so male all at once.
All that breath whooshed out of her lungs and she twisted around to the sink to find the shampoo.
“Looking for this?”
Lips quirked with enjoyment at her discomfort, he wiggled a small plastic bottle. Smirking herself, she turned the sink on full blast, stuck the bucket under the faucet, then dumped the cold water over his head.
He sputtered and wiped a hand over his eyes. She set the bucket down, snatched the shampoo from his slick fingers and squeezed the contents into her palm. Already anticipating how his short hair would feel against her skin, she rubbed her hands together.
“Lean your head back so you don’t get soap in your eyes.”
Yes, she was stalling. But when he eased back, well, she wasn’t thinking about how his hair would feel against her skin anymore. She dragged her eyes away from his still-impressive erection and met his gaze that told her, damn it, he knew everything going through her head.
“Say one word and I’ll leave you in here.”
He pressed his lips together in an exaggerated gesture of silence, so she bent over and scrubbed her hands over his hair, blocking out the sensation of the short bristles against her skin, the hum of pleasure in his throat. Her gaze drifted to his forehead, the lines there even in rest, his lashes resting on sun-kissed cheeks, a gentle smile curving his soft lips.
“Feels nice,” he murmured as she lathered his hair.
She released him, considered rinsing her hands in the water of the tub, but there was no place in the tub where he wasn’t. She reached over to turn on the faucet and rinsed her hands before she refilled the bucket.
“Warm this time, please,” he said, without moving, his gaze intent on her when she moved to kneel by his head. And damn it, she recognized that look, used to live for that look.
“What? It’s warm.” Knowing she had to get out of here and fast, before she did something stupid, she snatched a washcloth from the edge of the tub, tossed it over his eyes and poured the water from the bucket over his head, working the lather until it was gone. Drawing away, she jumped to her feet. “Okay, you’re good.”
Adrian whipped the wet cloth off his face and sat up, sloshing water onto the floor. “Mal, wait. I can’t reach my back.”
Oh, for— But she hesitated in the doorway, eyeing him to see if he was serious. As if to demonstrate, he flipped the washcloth over his shoulder and slapped it against his broad back.
With a grumble of frustration, she stomped over and grabbed the cloth. She spread it over her hand and thrust it at him. “Soap.”
He fumbled the wrapped soap out of the soap dish and held it up to her helplessly. Her gaze on his, she took the packet, lifted it to her mouth and tore it open with her teeth.
“Lean forward.”
He did, and once again she hesitated. All that sun-browned skin covering an expanse of muscular back, shoulders she’d ridden upon in playfulness, had clutched in passion, had clung to in sorrow. She wasn’t touching him, though. The cloth was touching him. The heat of him seeped through, the strength of him, the masculinity. She stroked the cloth in broad sweeps, from one shoulder to the other, down the indentation of his spine, stopping just at the small of his back before gliding up his right side, under his right arm. He wouldn’t be able to reach that either, so she shifted around to reach across his chest.
And caught her breath to see the way he looked at her. All playfulness was gone now. His eyes had darkened, his lips parted, his breath came hot against her cheek.
“Mallory.”
Her gaze was riveted on his mouth for one terrible moment of longing before reason returned. Time to go. Now, or it would be too late. She dropped the cloth into the water and bolted.
A shower of her own didn’t clear her head. When another knock came at her door, more than an hour later, she still hadn’t gathered her wits. She should have known better than to think she could handle being alone with Adrian. And what devil had compelled her to put herself in a room with naked Adrian?
Who’d only gotten better with age. How was that possible?
Yes, part of the reason she hadn’t gathered her wits was because her ridiculous imagination kept wondering what would have happened if she’d stayed.
Now she opened the connecting door with equal parts trepidation and anticipation. Maybe more forty-sixty.
The dim light from her bedside lamp cast shadows over his face, shrouding him just for a moment before he stepped through the door, clean-shaven, bearing food, smelling better than a man had the right to smell. Apparently she had developed x-ray vision, because she could see right through his thin T-shirt, the kind he’d been wearing since she’d known him, to the muscular chest beneath.
“I hope you don’t mind if we eat in your room,” he said, holding the white bag aloft. “I’ve been working.”
Right. That could keep her mind off dangerous paths. She glanced past him into his room and saw yellow paper from a legal pad scattered from table to dresser to bed. “Writing?”
“Yeah.” He passed her to set the bag down on the table by the window and opened the drapes to look out on the beach.
“You don’t use the computer?”
“Computers have batteries that die.”
“Yeah, if you don’t plug them in.” She closed the door.
“While I don’t like to admit to being an absent-minded professor…” He trailed off as he unpacked the bag.
Enticed by the appealing spicy scent of the food but wary of the man, she moved closer. She tried to recall the last time she’d seen him clean-shaven. She closed her fingers against a desire to stroke the smooth skin, against the memory of how his strong back felt beneath her hands. “What is it?”
“Meat pie. Smells good.” He lifted a paper-wrapped package to his nose.
“Mm.” She sat, took the bottle of beer he handed her, careful not to brush his fingers with hers. The bed was not three feet away, and they were alone. She was too conscious of their past behavior whenever temptation presented itself, too conscious of how easily she remembered how he felt inside of her. She returned to that safe topic. “So did you get a lot of writing done?” Or did you obsess over what might have happened as I did?
He snorted. “It’s not as easy as I thought it would be.”
She took the thick, greasy meat pie in both hands and bit. The taste was even better than the smell, the sauce thick and spicy, the meat tender. “You’ve written before.”
“Articles.” He sopped up some of the grease from the pie with the pastry. “Not something meant to be four hundred pages long.”
“You’ve never been at a loss for words.”
“Talking is completely different.” He chuckled.
The rumble of it skittered right over her nerves. “So how far are you?”
He rolled his eyes and took a bite of pie, then set it on the waxy bag and held up his fingers. Six of them.
“Page six?” Adrian was not a procrastinator.
He wiped at his mouth with a paper napkin and nodded glumly. “It’s kicking my butt.”
Huh. Adrian Reeves never admitted defeat. “Can I read it?” Okay, where had that come from?
His eyes flashed in the dim light. “You want to?”
His agreement was shocking. He’d never allowed her to read his articles till they came out in the trade publications. A sense of competition had run deep between them; they’d be on the same digs, but submit separate papers on each. If her paper ended up in a more elite publication, well, the interlude would be unpleasant until he could best her with the next paper.
So she was surprised to find herself reading his work after a dessert of potato pone, a kind of bread pudding with sweet potatoes. She curled her legs in front of her as she tried to get comfortable in one of the low-backed chairs in his room, squinting to decipher his handwriting. She shifted, glancing at the bed. No, if she lay on the bed, which would be more comfortable, he would get the wrong idea. After the bit in the bathroom, she didn’t want to tempt fate. Or Adrian. “Your handwriting has gotten worse.”
Focused on the pad in front of him, he grunted. He’d slipped on glasses when she hadn’t noticed, silver-rimmed ones that, if she was honest, looked really sexy in a professorial kind of way.
She tapped the bridge of her own nose. “What’s this?”
He glanced up, his eyes incredibly blue behind the lenses.
Definitely sexy. She tried to hide the hitch in her breathing.
“Your nose,” he drawled.
“Are you getting old, Adrian?”
He took off the glasses and set them on the table. “Too many term papers.”
“You never did like teaching.”
“Despised it.” He dragged out the words, in case she had any doubt. He set the pad aside and folded his arms on the table, nodding toward the pad she held. “So what do you think?”
She tossed the pages toward him. “It’s too dry.”
A corner of his mouth quirked. “Ironic for a book about underwater excavating.”
She would not react to that sardonic grin. She was a grown woman who could resist his arrogance. Even that was a turn-on, always had been. “Exactly. It reads like a textbook. It’s not going to be a textbook, is it?”
“No, but—”
“You need more emotion in it. You love diving, you love excavating. Let it show.” Nothing of Adrian was in the words she’d read, none of the passion she knew so well. “This can be a breakthrough book that not only students of archaeology will read. Spice it up.”
His brow furrowed as he picked up the legal pad and studied it. She wondered if even he could read that chicken scratch. “How can I do that?”
“Write the way you talk. You, Adrian, not Dr. Reeves, professor of underwater archaeology. If you can do that, I think it will come easier.” She stretched her arms over her head, cracked her spine. “I’ll read it again when you’re done if you want.”
He tossed the pad onto the table and folded his hands over his stomach. “Why are you helping me?”
“What?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, surprised.
“After what happened between us, why are you helping me?”
That was not an easy question. She drew one leg up on the chair in front of her, as if that would give her another layer of protection against him. “Just because I can’t be married to you anymore doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you succeed.”
“That’s kind, I suppose. I just never thought of us as, you know, being able to stay friends.”
“Why not?” She looked at him sharply, heart squeezing.
“Well, we used to be able to talk, kind of like we have the past few days. But I always thought if we’d still been friends when we were married, we would have been able to work through a lot of the stuff.”
Her throat burned with tears for missed opportunities. Where would they be now if they could have worked things out then? Would they be in Belize or in Pensacola or someplace else? Would they have a child? She’d always wanted to see Adrian with their child.
“Friends don’t hurt each other the way we did,” she said instead, standing and walking to the connecting door. “Good night, Adrian.”
Friends don’t hurt each other the way we did.
The words played themselves over and over in Adrian’s head as he lay sleepless in his big bed, sensing her on the other side of the wall. He knew what she was talking about, even though he’d hoped she’d forgotten.
But she couldn’t have. He’d left bruises on her body and tears in her eyes.
They’d been fighting in their little house in Pensacola. Nothing unusual, they fought all the time in those days. He didn’t even recall what this particular fight was about, and that dragged at him, too. His mouth had been punishing when he’d pressed her up against the counter and kissed her. He still felt the way her soft lips had been crushed beneath his, and he rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand to erase the sensation.
They’d ended nearly every fight with lovemaking, so he could only hope that the reason he’d kissed her was to advance the peace. He could only hope.
She’d kissed him back but had been just as rough as she used her teeth. She had been the one to start tearing at his clothes. He was sure he remembered that right. Then they’d been naked and ravaging each other, first on the countertop, her head banging on the cabinet, then on the floor. Her nails scored his biceps as he drove into her with a violence he hated to claim.
Rough sex wasn’t unusual for them. Hell, most times they ruined at least one piece of clothing in their eagerness to get at one another. But this time was different. When he climaxed, he felt nothing. Not relief, not joy, nothing. He’d backed away from her, saw the tears in her eyes, saw the marks on her arms and hips that would become bruises from his touch.
This wasn’t the marriage he wanted. This was his parents’ marriage, and he’d lain awake too many nights listening to his mother cry. He wouldn’t do that to Mallory.
He’d left that day and never came back.
Friends don’t hurt each other the way we did.
He should make her go home before he hurt her again.
He wasn’t going to be able to sleep, not with that image in his head. He rolled out of bed and walked over to open the sliding glass door onto the balcony. The rhythm of the waves, the scent of the sea had never failed to calm him, but being up here—he was too far away. He needed the sand, the water.
Mallory was right—he wasn’t meant for four walls.
Wishing for his sleeping bag, he grabbed a towel instead and headed downstairs.
The beach was mostly empty this late—it had to be close to two in the morning. But there, knee deep in the surf, illuminated by the moon, stood a blonde in a thin T-shirt, facing the open water, arms stretched over her head.
Mallory.
The feeling hit him hard, like a kick in the chest. Mine.