by Dani Collins
The doctor rose and said, “I’ll check on your son.”
Scarlett gulped back sobs and raised her tear-ravaged face, alarmed.
“Not for medical reasons. I was disappointed when you delivered in Athens. I want to see him. You take a moment to gather yourself, then I’ll come back and we’ll discuss treatment.”
“I’m sorry,” Scarlett said as the doctor left. “I hate myself for being like this.”
“Don’t apologize. This isn’t something you’ve done.” It felt like something he had done. He hadn’t seen.
He soothed her and a short while later they left the clinic with a prescription for an antidepressant and one for a different type of birth control since the one she’d been using had a possible side effect of depression. The doctor had also endorsed Javiero’s suggestion that, rather than fly back to Spain, they take a week to sail among the islands.
They boarded his yacht, where Scarlett remained tense and jumpy. She checked her phone several times while they sailed toward a cove on a neighboring island that was reputed to offer excellent sunsets.
“Kiara is home safe,” she murmured, phone in hand yet again as they ate a light snack in the stern. “I hope she and Val can work things out.”
“Scarlett.” He gently took her phone. “Worry about you, not other people.”
Kiara had told him that Scarlett always put herself last and he saw it clearly now. The facade of infinite dependability he’d seen her wear all these years was not infinite, yet it was something she clung to as a means of reassuring herself she had value.
If I don’t look after Locke, how will he know that I love him? she had sobbed while Javiero had held her in the doctor’s office.
And if he wanted to look after her, if she cut him to his very soul when she refused to rely on him, what did that say about his feelings for her?
That thought was a land mine he walked back from, not ready to contemplate it yet. He had arrived in a temper this morning. His entire world had been flipped on edge by his own failings with his half brother. By the fact Scarlett was drowning and he hadn’t noticed.
They both needed a breathing space to assimilate things.
They needed what they had never had—courtship. Time.
He called to a steward and handed over Scarlett’s phone, along with his own.
“Put these in a drawer until morning. If one of us tries to pry them from you before then, drop both of them overboard.”
“He’s joking,” Scarlett said with a panicked look.
“I’m not,” Javiero assured the young man. “The world will not end if we take a few hours off.” He was as guilty as she was of burying himself in work to avoid stickier problems.
She looked at her empty hands as though she didn’t know what to do with them.
He realized she wasn’t wearing his ring. Everything in him screeched to a stop.
He took her hands. Maybe he just wanted to touch her. Hell, yes, he did. He had been aching to lie with her as he’d left the bed they’d shared in London. His heart was racing, hackles up over her removing his ring, but her cheeks were hollow, her hands tense in his grip. He felt her brace herself against whatever he might say.
He ground his molars, defeated by her fragility.
“You’re going to relax if I have to force you.” He was joking, mostly.
Her mouth twitched, then quickly went down at the corners. “How can I?”
She pulled her hands from his and stood to move to the rail in the stern. The breeze dragged tendrils of hair from her ponytail, whipping them around her face.
When he moved to stand beside her, her profile remained pale and strained.
“There’s so much that needs to be sorted. Look, I’m sorry about what happened with your mother—”
“Scarlett. Stop.” He squeezed her shoulder, then set his forearms on the rail, hands linked, and watched the wake of the yacht trail in a widening V behind them. “I’ve talked to Mother. She admitted what you really proposed. I said it sounded like a damned good offer and advised her to take it.”
“But—” Her eyes became big pools of blue, wide and depthless as the Aegean surrounding them. “I can’t. Not now. I need that allowance for myself.”
The possessive beast in him roared, wanting to lunge and grab and drag her back into his lair. He suppressed it, clinging to what shreds of civility he still possessed.
“If that’s your way of telling me we’re not getting married, don’t. We’re going to spend the next week not talking about that. We’re just going to be.”
* * *
They took a dip in the sea before dinner, then ate while indigo and fuchsia bled across the horizon. They talked about inconsequential matters and took turns holding their son. When Javiero rose to put Locke down for the night, she protested, “I can do it. Please don’t treat me like an invalid.”
“Maybe I should,” he said with concern. “If you had broken your leg, you wouldn’t try so hard to do everything yourself. You would expect me to help. I don’t think less of you for needing me, Scarlett. I wish you would quit berating yourself for it.”
Fine to say when he didn’t need any help and she would be the last place he’d look if he did.
He offered the baby for her to kiss.
She did, and when he cradled Locke against his shoulder, she died at the picture he made, this brutish hulk of a man securing Locke’s tiny form so tenderly with his wide hands.
Nervous about what would happen when they went to bed, she searched out a romance novel from the small library of books in the saloon and fell asleep reading it.
She woke much later in their stateroom, still in her summer dress, spooned into his body with the weight of his arm across her waist. Through the baby monitor, she heard Locke stirring.
“I’ll get him,” Javiero said before her foot reached the edge of the mattress.
He brought Locke for feeding and took him back to bed after. She was asleep again before he rejoined her.
Perhaps it was the medication or the lull of the boat or maybe straight up boredom, but she seemed to sleep constantly for the next few days. In between, they swam and snorkeled and used the paddleboards. They read and ate the chef’s eclectic mixes of French pastries, Spanish tapas, Greek delicacies and freshly caught fish.
As for work, they allowed themselves one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, just enough to answer a few pressing emails.
As Scarlett handed off her phone to the steward one afternoon, she said to Javiero, “Can I ask your advice? I completely respect that you want nothing to do with managing Niko’s money. I want to do it. I want to do it well. However, I don’t want to burn out and obviously that was starting to happen. How could I manage myself better? How do you do it?”
“Can I ask a very obvious question?” He paused in opening the spy thriller he’d been reading whenever she picked up her own book.
“Of course.”
“What did Niko have that you don’t?”
She tried to ignore the voice in her head that suggested Niko had been smarter than she was. She didn’t really believe that. By the end, he had often gone along with her suggestions even when she contradicted his first instincts. Still, she had to shrug.
“More experience?” she hazarded.
“For God’s sake, Scarlett. He had you. Hire yourself a PA as good as you were. Hire two. You went above and beyond far too often.”
“But I have me. I can do all the mindless things Niko couldn’t. I can type my own emails and summarize my own reports—Okay, I hear it.” She rolled her eyes at herself. The transition had been so gradual she had wound up over her head without realizing it.
Hiring an assistant wasn’t a silver bullet, but she felt she was doing something savvy and constructive when she put in a hiring request with a headhunter the next m
orning. The weight that had been suffocating her had eased a little, leaving her feeling more buoyant than she had in a long while.
They gave up their phones and took the Jet Skis with a picnic lunch into a small cove where an old ruin was reported to be hiding among the trees.
“I’m always astonished when a structure this big is reduced to almost nothing,” Scarlett said as they walked idly from one ancient room to another, stepping over walls that had disintegrated to knee height. The villa had been roofless long enough for the floor to have become only sand and patches of wildflowers. Sheep grazed the green hillocks beyond. “Even if people took the stones to build other things, it’s so much work to dismantle it.”
“Less work than cutting and carving new ones.”
“I guess, but what made them give up on what they had?” She found a spot where overarching trees framed the water and a view of their yacht. She paused to admire it. “It looks as though they had everything they could want right here.”
“Is that a rhetorical question or something more profoundly related to our situation?”
She cocked her head. “I suppose that is the nature of our conflict, isn’t it? Where to live. Whether we have anything worth salvaging.” She sent him a cheeky grin. “I’d love to say I’m clever enough to talk in metaphor, but I’m really not.”
“There it is,” he said with a tone of relieved discovery exactly as if he’d found something he’d spent months hunting for.
“What?”
“Your smile.” His big hands cupped her face. “You haven’t smiled at me since London.”
“Have I been that sour? I didn’t mean to be.”
“I know.” His thumb skimmed a light caress across her mouth. “And that’s why we haven’t talked about where we’ll live or any other heavy topics. We do, though.” His thumb traced her lips again, this time slower, bringing her nerve endings alive.
“We do what?” she asked dumbly, leaving her mouth parted against the pad of his thumb.
“Have something worth salvaging.”
She shook her head, unsure, as he continued to cradle her face. He lowered his head and let his mouth brush hers, redoubling the tingle in her lips. Gently—very, very gently—he stole one kiss, then another. Kisses that were light and lovely and sweet. Tears pressed behind her eyes.
They hadn’t made love since London. He hadn’t made a move and she had been convinced that if she did, he would read it as acquiescence to fully resuming their relationship.
“I want to believe we do,” she said as he drew back. “But I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he commanded. Maybe it was a plea. “Never be afraid of me.”
Something deeply emotional lifted her hand to cradle his cheek. Her hand flexed subtly, inviting him to return.
This kiss was not so chaste. She tasted the hunger in him and it fed her own.
She moved her hand to the back of his head and returned the kiss, moaning with a mix of pleasure and happiness as he drew her up against him. She wore a bikini and sarong; he was in board shorts. They had nothing else between them except a layer of sunscreen and a dwindling sense of decorum.
He lifted his head and glanced to the handful of sheep in the distance, the trees providing a shady bower, the yacht barely visible through the leaves, bobbing on the water.
“Are you sure you want to do this here?” He was rueful as he looked at her with tender indulgence, and she saw something more serious behind his gaze.
She understood what she would be signaling in resuming intimacy with him, but the very fact they had come this far—able to read each other’s thoughts—made the moment too precious to turn her back on.
She stepped away and untied her sarong, then let the filmy cotton of abstract patterns drift down to form a thin bed on the grassy sand next to the low wall.
He sank down with her, kissed and covered her. Drew her along the path of passion with a sensitivity she hadn’t felt from him before. It was beautiful. Cleansing and healing. The way they came together was ancient, there against rocks carved hundreds of years before by hands as strong as his own. It was renewal in the same way Mother Nature had begun to reclaim the space with wildflowers and blades of grass stealing into the cracks in the stones.
It was exulting, making love with the clouded heavens above, the pagan gods witnessing their earthly act.
It was enduring and eternal and left them in glorious, sated ruin.
* * *
They made love again that night and at breakfast Scarlett was still blissed out when Javiero said, “I’ve made arrangements for our return to Madrid. I’d like to set a wedding date as soon as possible once we’re there.”
Scarlett supposed this was what she got for letting him make all the decisions while they’d been aboard the yacht. It had been enormously freeing to let him tell her when to eat and when to swim. Now it was time to start thinking for herself again.
Her doctor had warned her that the medication wasn’t an overnight cure-all, but sleeping and eating properly felt like one. It went a long way to clearing her head and lifting the cloud of despair that had weighed on her. Whether Locke sensed her relaxation or was simply growing out of his colic, she didn’t know. He was sleeping for longer stretches and smiling more. She was beginning to feel as though she might be a pretty good mother after all.
That didn’t mean she was confident in becoming Javiero’s wife.
“It won’t be the way it was, Scarlett.” He read her like his spy thriller now. “Mother has used this week wisely. Her things have gone into storage. She’s leaving for New York in the morning and will stay with friends until her new suite at Casa del Cielo is finished. She’ll come back for the wedding, of course.”
Scarlett’s engagement ring had come with her from Niko’s villa, but she’d asked the steward to put it in the safe while they were in and out of the sea a dozen times a day. Now Javiero held it out to her.
She tucked her hands in her lap and looked out to where the mainland was growing larger as they neared Athens. Real life was closing in.
“Why can’t we go back to the way things were,” she pleaded softly. “Talk about marriage later, when we’re sure.”
He waited a beat before he pocketed the ring, his voice cooling. “Why aren’t you sure now?”
Because he didn’t love her. For the first time in days, hot tears pressed behind her eyes, but they stemmed from legitimate hurt, not depression.
“How are you sure? Two weeks ago, you were accusing me of plotting my takeover of your empire.”
A steward tried to approach with fresh coffee. He shooed the man away with a flick of his hand, a signal that would keep all staff at bay until they were finished this discussion.
“I wouldn’t want you to judge me by Val’s actions. I shouldn’t have let your sister’s words color my view of you.”
“Ellie is the tip of the Titanic-sinking iceberg, Javiero. My mother is asking me to pay for a lawyer to secure my father’s early release.” She had to laugh at that outrageous request or she’d cry.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t want to think about it, let alone fight with you about the actions I decide to take. Not when I don’t even know what they will be.” The desolation that threatened to cloak her was an old one. Heavy and suffocating.
“We’re not going to fight about it,” he said firmly. “I’m asking you why you haven’t brought this up sooner so I can help you find solutions.”
“There are none! Every single option is lousy. What am I supposed to do? Refuse to hire someone so she uses her living allowance and goes hungry? Because she will. Do I kick her out of the house I own if she brings him into it? Do I pay for a lawyer who will help him leave prison so he can move in with her, take advantage of her again and probably start throwing his fists? He’ll try to
blackmail me, you know. Not in so many words, but he’ll work on my fears for her to bleed me dry. You don’t want to be married to this, Javiero.”
She dropped her head into her hands, exhausted just imagining it.
“Scarlett, I have very good lawyers who can attach conditions to any assistance we offer.”
“I’ve tried that,” she said miserably. “I get called selfish or heartless or something else that implies I’m a terrible daughter. Protecting my mother means I’m hurting her at the same time. It’s impossible.”
“Well, you’re not the one insisting on his good behavior, are you?” he said in the ruthless tone she hadn’t heard from him since they’d reunited. “Your tyrant of a husband is. And I will press charges if he so much as glances out of line. There will be risks, I understand that, but we’ll make sure they’re as minimal as possible, and there will be very firm and dire consequences for him if things go wrong.”
“Good cop, bad cop?” She blinked in astonishment at the idea this might not all be on her for a change. It would be such a relief to let someone else be the villain. “Would you really do that for me?”
He shook his head, snorting with bafflement.
“Of course I would do that for you.” He leaned forward, a frown of impatience on his face as he cupped the side of her neck. “All you have to do is ask me for what you need. I will give it to you every time. I don’t know how to make that more clear to you.”
It was the most beautifully tragic thing he had ever said to her, because the one thing she needed above all else, he would never give her.
Give me your heart. Love me.
The words were right there, trembling on her lips, and she didn’t say them. Helplessness overwhelmed her.
His hand dropped away and fell on the table hard enough to rattle the dishes.
“Why don’t you trust me? Because your mother can’t trust your father? We are entirely different people, Scarlett.”
