Chapter Ten
Micah’s nearly painful arousal deflated in an instant, leaving him aching and miserable. Why had he agreed to tell her about his wounds? She waited patiently on the far side of the pool, clearly expecting an answer.
How had such a perfect moment degraded to this? Listening to her describe her ideal kiss had worked him over like a massage. Not just physically, but it had wiggled tiny rays of warmth through the stone case around his heart, too. She was a closet romantic, who no doubt used to dream of her wedding day.
If he hadn’t gone digging under her shirt—but then, if they’d gotten where he thought things might have gone, he would have seen the scar, and she’d probably have freaked out, anyway. As it was, it felt enormous. Thick ridges began near her ribs on the right side, down toward her rear before dipping back up across her spine, in the shape of great claws that had taken several swipes at her. No wonder she hadn’t flinched at his damage. An incessant need to know who hurt her and why she’d hid it from him settled into the back of his mind, fading as he shifted into his own past.
“It was a blade,” he said quietly, startled at the effort it took to spit the words out.
She uncrossed her arms, revealing the peaks of her nipples that reached out for his touch even now, all the way from across the pool. Too bad she hadn’t actually fallen in and wet her shirt, because that would have been a sight. Anything to keep his attention outward, here in reality, instead of the hell where she wanted him to go.
“That’s it?” she asked. “A blade? I give you a short-story answer to your questions, and I get four words back? I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
“You have a really shitty way of shattering a man’s fantasies, you know. You asked me how I was scarred, and I told you. Why do the details matter?”
She folded her arms together. “It matters to me, probably more than it should.”
It actually sounded like she meant that. She appeared both sad and angry, the emotions flitting across her face in waves.
“The blade was in the hands of a twelve-year-old boy. Fernando. His father, our primary guard, was trying to teach him how to be strong, so he put it.” Why had he said the boy’s name? Words kept tumbling out of him.
“The third night we were there, he gave Fernando a choice. Either he had to choose someone and cut them with the blade, or Daddy Dearest would choose someone and do far worse.” The faces of his fellow prisoners—all strangers to him before that fateful day—haunted his inner sight. And Fernando, so young, so terrified. “He wanted to be a good boy. He begged his father to stop, but Fernando knew as well as the rest of us that bastard would do what he threatened. We hadn’t even seen it yet, but we all knew. His eyes were unlike anything I’d ever seen before, like staring into mirrors of pure evil. They’d seen death and enjoyed it.”
A gasp drew his gaze to Darcy, who held a hand to her throat. Not with pity but with pure rage and something else he couldn’t immediately identify. “Fernando didn’t choose you by accident, did he?” she asked.
Micah had no idea what had given it away, but she’d once again seen what he didn’t mean her to. It pissed him off, the flare of anger heating his face. He wasn’t about to give her anything else. Instead, he glared at the water.
Lips pressed together, she rushed around the pool, forcing him back a step with the urgency in her strides. “You volunteered to take the torture to save the others. No wonder they called you their savior. My God, Micah, the pain you went through for them is unimaginable.”
A growl burned in his throat. “Have you ever seen a woman so terrified, she vomited? Have you ever seen a grown man piss himself because another man simply enters the reptile-infested tent where they’re tied up to posts like pigs waiting for slaughter? Nobody can stare into the face of that and walk away, not even a spoiled bastard like me. End of story.”
Turning his back on her stunned expression, he stripped down to his underwear and stepped into the deep end of the pool, letting his weight carry him slowly to the bottom. Stalling, if he was being honest with himself. Giving her time to walk away, probably insulted and confused at what a complete ass he’d been. Why had he said so much? She’d twist everything he’d said in what she wrote.
Once his lungs protested the lack of air, he pushed off the bottom, shoving at his hair when he broke through the surface. As he searched the place where she’d been, finding nothing but the descending night, a wave of sadness crashed over him. Strange that he’d be disappointed. What had he expected?
A splash sounded behind him. He turned to find Darcy sliding under the surface fully clothed, eventually popping out near the wall at the far end.
She’d stayed.
His heart clenched, and for reasons he’d never understand, he came close to weeping like a child. Why had she done that? Because she was a reporter, of course, and she hadn’t yet gotten the dirt she came for.
No makeup ran down her face as she fingered her hair back and blinked at him. Droplets of water hung like crystals from her dark lashes, and the underwater lights sent cascading waves of blue and white light over her delicate features.
A smile broke over her face as she pointed up, her wet T-shirt clinging to her toned body and perky breasts. “Look, there’s the evening star. A night like this shouldn’t be wasted, so why don’t we call a truce on the deep stuff until tomorrow? It’s harder than I thought to talk about these things. I’ve never had to, with anyone, and it sucks ass.”
“And we haven’t even gotten to the hard questions yet,” he said, his sardonic tone betraying his utter dread. Skirting around her questions was proving more difficult than he first thought.
She groaned, the sound vibrating down his body, piquing interest in his shorts again. “Shit, I know; you don’t have to remind me.” The water parted as she glided on her stomach to the diving board and hung on to it, her gaze fixed on his face that was once again fully exposed.
Strange that he didn’t feel the need to cover it now.
“You don’t have any emotional investment in your pool, right?” she asked.
An unexpected grin lightened his mood. “No, why?”
“Well, I’m wondering why you’d have a pool on an island,” she said dryly. “You are surrounded by, you know, water.”
He chuckled. “It was here when I bought the place, but I like it now that I’ve changed the landscape and decking back here to fit in better with the area. There are no lights down at the shore, and with the slippery rocks, it can be treacherous swimming there in the dark or if the water’s rough.”
“Treacherous. Yeah, there are a few dangers here, it seems.” She bit her lip, and he imagined her reliving their kiss behind her bright gaze, which she kept stealing away from him. “I know you don’t trust me yet, but I’m not going to run from this. Even though I find you exhausting, being here with you, even for a few hours, has been oddly therapeutic. And annoying. And frustrating. And infuriating.”
Laughter caught him again, and he relaxed into the water, kicking toward her. “And intoxicating, let’s not leave that off the list. My driver’s license is going to need a new warning—kissing Darcy Delacorte and driving is strictly prohibited.”
“Yeah, well, speak for yourself.” Her lids lifted higher the closer he got to her, and she swam toward the corner, whirling around to face him again once she made it there.
“So much for not running,” he said, happy to be in control of the situation again. “I just want to see you close up.”
“Uh huh, right. Um…what do you like to eat? Obviously you like steak.” She spoke in a run-on rapid fire of words.
Every time he tried to push her out of his head, she crawled back in doing the simplest things.
Fuck.
“I like good pizza, a perfectly seared steak, and my dessert of choice would have to be raspberry pie with French vanilla ice cream. Or the empanadas my mother used to make.”
“Mmm, good choices.” She lowered her upper half back into the pool, seeming to relax again even though he’d stopped only a foot away from her. “What did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut? Porn star? King of the world?”
His amusement untied the last of his knots. “Actually, I wanted to be a chef. My favorite thing to do was cook with my mother. She was Venezuelan but moved to Canada when she was fourteen, so I had the best of both cuisines. Her desserts were amazing.”
She stared at him with a whimsical smile.
“What?” he asked, unable to tear his gaze away from her magnetic whatever-it-was.
“I just…most people who grow up with a silver spoon are neglected to some degree. Before I saw the picture inside, I figured you’d have wished they’d have come to your softball games or paid attention to you more. But you were close with your mother. That’s heartwarming.” Her smile fell, telling volumes about her relationship with her own. “You were lucky.”
“I was, very lucky. My father worked a lot, but he still took time for us. No, my parents didn’t ruin me. I did that all on my own.” Although his regret ran deep, it didn’t gut him this time. Darcy—the miracle drug that would destroy him if he wasn’t careful.
“Oh, that isn’t what I meant, Micah, I—”
“I know.” It came out quickly, genuinely. He studied her, trying to identify how she kept disarming him. There wasn’t a shred of malice, not a single hint of deception in her, only genuine interest. “What did the crusader for the betterment of humankind want to be when she was an adorable little girl?”
Even in the strange bluish light washing over her face from the pool, Micah could tell she’d flushed pink again. “You’d laugh at me.”
“Never,” he said, though a few chuckles fell out as he said it.
“I dreamed about white weddings with little curly haired girls throwing flower petals and pouty boys holding satin pillows tied with rings. If my man seemed nervous, I’d pretend to trip down the aisle to make him laugh. He’d sweep me onto the dance floor and bust a move until all I saw was him.”
She sighed, then, and her lashes fell lower. “All I ever wanted was to be someone’s nightingale. I grew up believing I’d get married, and we’d have a couple of kids and grow old together. I even had Gran teach me how to play the piano and make her famous spaghetti sauce, in case my husband might enjoy those things like Gramps did.”
Those perfect lips flattened out. “In reality, there are no happily ever afters. There are no ‘until death do us parts.’ There’s love and loss. It’s just the way of things, and I know that now. It’s much less bone-crushing now that I’m wise to it.” She drew circles on the water with her finger. “I told you, stupid and silly.”
A sudden violent desire to prove her wrong gripped him by the throat, but hadn’t he done just what she feared all his life? His relationships had been little more than surface fun, and when it came time that his girlfriend wanted something more serious, he took off. “No wonder you hate me.”
“What?” Her head snapped up, and she squinted at him. “I don’t hate you. I don’t even know the real you, but I’d like to.”
That she hadn’t given up on him, even as strangers, began that chain reaction in him again, as her kiss had done. Without a clue what to do about it, he concentrated on her body language, how she leaned toward him as if needing to touch.
He needed a distraction, before he kissed her again. “Tell me about your parents,” he said. “I’m guessing there’s a story there, because other than the somber undertones about your mother, you haven’t mentioned them once.”
The color drained from her face as she crawled up the steps and hugged her knees. “We used to be close, but I don’t see them much anymore.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re happy, and I’m okay. What more do you need to know?”
Everything. “Why did you choose to write about child victims of the drug trade? Why not political scandal or corruption in the mayor’s office? Was it your father who inspired you?”
“Good lord, no. My dad was a keep-to-himself kind of guy. Kind and was always there when I needed him, but he was into his own stuff. Mom’s interests didn’t venture far from her own reflection. No, it was my gran who started me on this path. She filled my summer evenings with stories as the three of us rocked on the porch swing, me in the middle. It was the safest place on earth.”
“What kind of stories?”
“She used to be a social worker for children’s aid. She had this theory that most of us walk through life without seeing what’s really going on around us. Our blindness is a defense mechanism, because if we let ourselves see what lies beneath the smiling faces we pass, then we’ll feel obligated to help. It wasn’t until…well, a few years ago, when I found myself standing at the corner of Yonge and Dundas with a group of homeless teenagers, and the world suddenly looked different, darker. I came back every night for a week and spent time with them, asking about their lives. Their stories broke me. It was then I knew what kind of journalist I wanted to be.”
“You can see. You said that to me back in my office when you were looking at my photos.”
“I had a theory that your trauma gave you the awakening I had, and that’s why you started the foundation. But you were looking even before then, even if you didn’t know what you were looking for.”
He’d never heard a more profound truth about himself. He had been looking for purpose since his parents left him, and he’d found it in the eyes of a boy in the middle of hell. One glance at his photos, and she might have known more about Micah than he did, at least on the surface.
“Now, tell me about what the famous Micah Laine was like in school.” A smile shattered her melancholy, and his heart kicked again. “I bet you were trouble even then.”
“More than you can imagine.” He launched into an animated retelling of times he’d almost forgotten, while she listened and commented with enthusiasm. They talked back and forth until the last of the sun’s glow had left the sky a royal blue and stars had added their glittery shine.
“We should probably get out now,” she said, sounding sad to admit it. “I’m all pruny, and I’m a bit cold.”
Micah took her hand, happy she let him, and led her up the steps all the way to the upper part of the deck where their plates still sat on the table. The moonlight frosted the tips of her hair and cast an ethereal glow over her face. “Beautiful,” he said, aware of a deep resonance in his voice. It was how his father had sounded when talking to his mother. What the hell was wrong with him?
Darcy looked down at herself and around the deck before placing that star-bright stare back on him. “What?”
Shaking his head free of the odd thoughts tromping through there, he said, “Nothing. Good night.”
He’d sworn off feeling anything long ago. The incident in Colombia had turned his emotions on again for a while, but he couldn’t afford to care for this woman beyond lust, or let her get attached to him. Only the foundation mattered. He had no business getting distracted from his work by a relationship. And the moment she got what she wanted, she’d walk away from his hot mess, as she should.