Chapter Fourteen
Nina’s mind spun so fast, she couldn’t think straight. Her thoughts collided and bounced off each other, splitting her mind. She stared at Hunter. He was kidding, right?
Slowly, he shook his head.
Wait. How could he mean it? She wasn’t married. She couldn’t be.
“But…” she said, turning to Boone for support.
Boone’s face was pale, and the space between them turned cold. “Your husband? You have a husband?”
“No!” she yelped. “I mean, I don’t remember…”
She could see the anguish all over Boone’s face. How could you not remember your husband?
She asked herself the same thing. No, she demanded it of herself, jabbing an accusatory finger in her mind. How could she love a man enough to marry him and then forget? If she had a husband, he’d been completely erased from her mind, the same way the traumatic memory of getting into the motorboat had been wiped out.
“Maybe…maybe…” She fished around for some foothold on the cliff she was sliding off. “Maybe he’s lying. I’d remember my husband, right?”
“It’s legit,” Hunter murmured. “He’s got ID, a marriage certificate, an affidavit…”
Nina took a step closer to Boone, but he took another step away.
“The paparazzi are out there, too,” Hunter sighed, dropping a newspaper on the table.
Missing heiress hiding at exclusive West Maui estate, the headline screamed.
“Shit,” Boone grunted, running a hand through his hair.
Nina’s jaw dropped. It was bad enough to have a murderer after her. Now the press was hounding her, too?
Cruz appeared at the side of the building, looking as stormy as ever. “So do we let Kramer and this guy in or what?”
“No,” Boone and Nina said at exactly the same time, then stared at each other.
“If we wait any longer, it’ll be a circus out there. There are more reporters arriving all the time,” Cruz warned. “Silas will be pissed.”
Nina cringed. Silas was the broody one who was in charge of the estate.
Look, Boone and the rest of us need to keep a low profile, Hunter had said.
God, she never meant to cause such trouble.
“Let them in,” she said in a wavering voice.
Boone’s chin dropped, and his chest rose with a deep breath.
Nina wrung her hands as five awkward minutes passed. She didn’t want a husband or a ruby or a fortune. She wanted Boone.
She could feel the strangers approach before she could even see them. A dark, oppressive force preceded them, much like the drop in air pressure before the onslaught of a storm. The foliage grew quiet and the birds stopped singing, and when the newcomers appeared at the edge of the meeting house — two men and a woman, flanked by Hunter and Cruz — Nina stared, waiting for the rest of her memory to sink back in.
But there was nothing. She didn’t recognize any of them. Wait — the big one with the cruel smile seemed familiar. Something about him reminded her of Boone — but in a twisted, scary way. She cringed. How on earth could she have married a man that arrogant? That mean?
But it was the scrawny guy at his side who cried, “Baby! I’ve been worried to death about you!” and rushed up to her. He caught her in a slap of a hug that sent her two steps back.
Boone jumped forward to halt the man then stopped cold, looking at the floor again.
Nina’s whole body tensed. This was her husband? He reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap cologne, and his natty beard scratched her chin. His hands reached much too high around her ribs, almost touching her breasts. Nina folded her elbows in, wrestling for space.
“It’s me. Mike!” he snorted in her ear.
Nina winced and shut her eyes tight. This wasn’t happening. Any second now, she would wake up in Boone’s bed, start the day over, and the nightmare would be gone, right?
“Happy reunion, eh?” the big, cruel one smirked.
“Shut it, Kramer,” Boone barked.
It was Hunter, not Boone, who stepped over and pushed Mike away from Nina. “Do you know this guy?” he asked her in his gentle giant’s voice.
“Of course she knows me. I’m her husband,” Mike protested. “We were high school sweethearts.”
A twitch started up in the corner of Nina’s eye. As vile as Mike was, something about him was familiar.
“The beard is new,” Mike said, rubbing his chin.
She did her best to give him a fair chance. His clothes and shoes were new, and he kept tugging at his tie. Had he spiffed up for the occasion?
“Got the proof right here,” Kramer said, holding up a certificate.
Boone all but tore the paper from his hand and glared. There was definitely some bad blood between those two. And there was definitely some history between Boone and the haute couture model-type at Kramer’s side. The woman was striking — tall and thin with thick, pouty lips, though cold and cruel like Kramer. The sultry, familiar looks she shot at Boone made Nina’s blood boil.
“Where did you get married?” Hunter asked, studying the papers Boone handed him.
“Atlantic City,” Nina murmured without thinking, her attention still focused on Boone.
“Atlantic City,” Mike said at the same time.
Nina wobbled on her feet. Wait. Was he really her husband?
“Princess! You remember!” Mike cheered, grabbing her again.
Princess? The word chipped at some stubborn memory that refused to loosen itself from the back of her mind.
“When did you get married?” Hunter asked, checking the certificate again.
June 17, three years after high school graduation. The answer popped into her mind.
“June 17,” Mike said, going on about the day, the dress she wore, and how they’d vowed to love each other forever.
Nina felt sick. She really was married to Mike. Bit by bit, the uncomfortable memories seeped back into her mind. But a foreboding cloud remained, harboring dark secrets. Secrets she was desperate to uncover because something wasn’t right about all this. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
She looked at Boone for help, and the expression on his face only cemented that point. There was something terribly wrong, all right. She never should have slept with him. She’d managed to forget her own husband the way she’d forgotten getting in the motorboat.
Out of nowhere, the details of that night played out in her mind.
Get her, one of the men had yelled, smacking at her with an oar.
She shook her head, trying to focus on one thing at a time.
“Get your things, princess,” Mike said. “We’re going home.”
She wanted to shrivel up and disappear. Home simply didn’t gel with Mike’s face. Her memory did serve up an image of him sitting on the porch of her tiny house in New Jersey, but that didn’t fit home either, because the rest of her memories of the house were of living there with her mother or living there alone. She’d spent the last few years alone in that house. She was sure of it.
“Boone…” she whispered.
He looked at her with the eyes of a trusting puppy who’d been kicked in the ribs. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I’ll get your stuff.”
She shook her head wildly. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. “Wait…”
“I’ll help you, Boone,” the beauty queen at Kramer’s side sang, prancing forward.
Nina’s hands balled into fists, but Boone’s reaction stopped the woman cold.
“Don’t,” he barked murderously, right in the woman’s face. She faltered and stepped back.
Boone even bared his teeth at the woman, and Nina gaped. She’d never seen Boone look so angry, so hard. A different Boone. But scary as he appeared at that moment, all she wanted was to run over and hold him. To reassure him that everything would be okay.
But nothing was okay, and she knew it.
She watched as he walked down the trail to his cottage. All the hope drained out of her, seeing the final rejection in that gesture. He didn’t want her in his house. He didn’t want her possessions around. He wanted her gone.
“You guys try to pull anything, and we’ll have a warrant for your arrest out like that.” Kramer snapped his fingers.
“A warrant for what?” Cruz practically spat at his feet.
“For holding a woman against her will. Kidnapping. You name it.”
“Kidnapping?” Cruz cried.
Nina nearly choked on the same word. She was the one who’d dragged Boone, Cruz, and Hunter into her troubles. All they’d offered her was a safe place to stay.
An insect scratched at the thatched roof over her head. The sea breeze teased her bare legs. Nina closed her eyes. Koa Point was a little slice of paradise, and she’d brought the devil in. She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at Mike, Kramer, and the woman. Instinct told her they were not to be trusted, but she had to go. They were her problem now, not a problem for the three honest men who’d gone out of their way to help her without asking for anything in return.
She took a deep breath and looked around the estate one last time. Boone appeared with her backpack, showing her the teddy bear near the top before flipping the top flap over it.
Her eyes grew moist. Boone knew what mattered most to her, and he respected it.
“Damn, don’t tell me you still have that old thing,” Mike muttered, grabbing the backpack.
Nina snatched it back and clutched it to her chest. “I’ll take it.”
“Oh. Don’t forget your mail,” Kramer said, waggling his eyebrows at the table.
Nina froze. The man didn’t miss a thing. She’d completely forgotten about the mail and the touching letter from Lewis McGee. And whoa — the six-million-dollar ruby.
Boone and the others froze, too, and she remembered how troubled they appeared when they’d looked at the ruby. She sensed another silent conversation pass between the men. She wanted to scream. How did they do that? Did men who’d been through combat have a way of reading each other’s minds?
Nina looked at the black box that contained the ruby, then whispered, “Keep it.” She turned to Boone and looked him square in the eye, blinking back her tears. She could barely hear her own voice, and she ached to take his hand. “Please keep it. It’s the least I can do.”
An animal growl came from behind her, and Hunter tensed, ready for a fight. Boone, on the other hand, took on a softer expression for the first time since Mike’s appearance. He took the box and weighed it in his hand. His eyes slid closed, and for a minute, temptation flashed across his face. But then he opened his pure blue eyes, reached to her, and helped her close her reluctant hands around the box.
“It’s yours. Lewis wanted you to have it.”
Boone didn’t say more, but his eyes telegraphed the words from Lewis’s letter. The jewel of my heart. I wish you love, joy, and laughter…
Boone was saying good-bye. Nina squeezed her lips together, holding back the tears. I don’t want to go.
Cruz muttered a protest, obviously not pleased, but Boone glared back. “It’s hers, not ours.”
“Damn right, it is,” Kramer growled.
Nina shivered and pushed the box into her backpack close to the teddy bear, keeping it out of Kramer’s sight. She grabbed the rest of the mail next, because the lawyer’s information was on there, and something told her she’d need it.
“Let’s go, baby,” Mike said.
Her lips trembled as she carefully did up the straps of her backpack, buying time.
“So good seeing you again, Boone,” the woman purred, shooting lusty looks his way.
Nina felt sick. She wanted to chase that woman away from her man, but Boone wasn’t her man. Mike was.
“Hasta luego, bro,” Kramer said, pinning Boone with a haughty look of triumph that said, I win again.
Nina wanted to beat her hands on the arrogant man’s chest. You will never be as honorable or as good a man as Boone.
But Mike was already dragging her by the elbow, saying, “Right this way.”
Right this way, a voice in her past echoed. The memory flittered through her mind, there for a heartbeat, then gone again.
Nina twisted to look back, but it was too late. A bend in the path hid the akule hale, and while Hunter and Cruz were escorting her to the gate, Boone was nowhere in sight.
“Right this way,” Mike repeated.
Alarms went off in her mind. A dozen lightning flashes blinded her — enough to convince her to pull away. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t go with Mike. Every instinct in her body told her so.
But his grip was insistent, and his voice sticky-sweet in her ear. “Now, now. Don’t be shy. It’s just the paparazzi.”
She stared. The lights weren’t warnings in her mind. They were the flashes of a dozen cameras. The press was crowded outside the estate gate, shouting questions and taking rapid-fire photos.
Mike grinned. “Better get used to it. We’re rich and famous now.”
Nina squinted and tried to twist out of his grip, but it was impossible to do that and keep hold of her backpack at the same time.
“Miss Miller, where are you going next?”
“Miss Miller, how do you feel about bring reunited with your husband?”
I feel sick. Dirty. Used, Nina thought.
“I’m delighted to have her back,” Mike crowed.
More warning bells sounded in her mind. That wasn’t the first time she’d felt sick, dirty, and used by Mike, was it? She searched her memory desperately.
But it was too late. Kramer barked an order for the reporters to back up, and they complied immediately. He yanked open the back door of the black Hummer parked outside, stamped a huge, paw-like hand over her head, and shoved her into the back seat. “Let’s go.”
Mike piled in behind her while Kramer and the woman climbed into the front seats. Every time a door opened or closed, the shouts of the press changed volume from a muffle to a roar. The cameras fired away, blinding Nina.
More memories rushed back into her mind — so many, she felt dizzy from the onslaught. Memories of Mike, yelling at her. Her, crying back. Her mother, holding her hand. Lawyers, telling her to sign on a dotted line…
Kramer started the engine and put the vehicle in gear, and Mike grumbled, “Finally. We got her.”
The lights flashed relentlessly, heaping the rest of her memories back into her mind.
Get her, the man who’d thrown her from the motorboat said.
She turned to Mike, gaping. “What did you just say?”
He smiled a crooked smile and flashed his tobacco-stained teeth. “Finally got you back, Princess.”
Princess. She hated him calling her that.
One last camera flashed outside the window, snapping the last of her memories into place. “You tried to kill me,” she said, recoiling. “You were on the boat that night.”
The woman in the front seat twisted around to scold Mike. “I told you she’d remember.”
Nina was flabbergasted. Were they all in on this? She reached for the door handle, ready to leap out of the car, but Kramer hit the central lock. He flashed a pointy-toothed smile at her in the rearview mirror.
“Now, now. Is that any way to talk to your husband?”
Husband. Lawyers. Signing papers… Slowly, the memories arranged themselves in her mind. Mike had been her boyfriend through her last year of high school, though her friends and teachers had hinted she’d be better off without him. She had married Mike in Atlantic City, because she’d been young and clueless, and Mike hadn’t started his downhill slide into unemployment and drinking yet. But it didn’t take long for him to become a mess of a man, and when he turned to gambling, the debts racked up quickly — debts she’d had to mortgage the house to repay. When her mother fell ill, Mike hardly seemed to care. That was the image she’d remembered on the porch — Mike swigging down another beer when she dragged herself home after classes, a shift at the diner, and a visit to her mother. All Mike had done was demand dinner, and at some point, she’d had enough.
“You’re not my husband,” she hissed as it all fell into place. “I divorced you.” She remembered it clearly now. Having to hand the lawyer a check written for the last few cents in her account had been a slap in the face, but at least it had freed her of Mike. “I divorced you,” she insisted.
Mike shook his head. “You tried to divorce me, baby. The second check to the lawyer bounced.” He feigned surprise at her look of horror. “What, didn’t you get the letter? Oh, now I remember. I took that letter out of the mailbox the day I came to pick up my stuff.”
She stared.
“I guess you were at work. Anyone ever tell you that you work too much?”
No, Nina wanted to scream. A person had to work to make ends meet. Her mother had taught her that.
“But, lucky me—” Mike stretched and put his hands behind his head “—some old coot dies, leaves you millions, and we’re still married.” His voice dropped to a threat. “What’s yours is mine, till death do we part.”
She turned to pound on the window for help, but the reporters were out of sight, the car rushing down the road.
“Aw, she misses Boone,” the woman in the front seat chuckled.
If Nina hadn’t been busy trying to work the lock, she would have gouged the woman’s eyes out.
Mike scowled. “I don’t know what made you shack up with those guys. They probably just wanted to cheat you out of our money.”
I didn’t shack up with them. I washed up on their beach after you tried to kill me, Nina wanted to say, but her throat was too dry, too tight with panic. As for the money, she still couldn’t think of it as her own, but it certainly wasn’t Mike’s. It was Lewis McGee’s. And Boone sure as hell wasn’t interested in money. He’d only been interested in her. The real her.
“Boone is an awfully good fuck,” the woman went on in a bittersweet tone.
Kramer growled. “Watch it, Tamara.”
“Just speaking the truth.” Tamara shrugged. “And yeah, what woman wouldn’t shack up with those guys? I’ve never slept with Hunter, but I bet he’s a monster in bed, too. And Cruz… Yum.”
“Tamara,” Kramer warned.
The woman just chuckled and teased his ear. “A woman can dream. Right, honey?”
Nina couldn’t believe her ears. What was with that woman? What Nina and Boone had shared wasn’t a monster fuck — it was a true connection, far beyond the physical. It was…it was…
Destiny, a tragic voice whispered in her mind.
Nina covered her face with her hands and huddled into a tight ball, screaming to Boone in her mind.
Boone, I’m so sorry. Boone, help me. Please…