by Cox, Suzanne
Lana flipped her hands in the air. “Do what you want. It’s your trip.”
“If it were my trip he wouldn’t be going.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Lana left to grab her bags as their flight was called. Emalea boarded the plane, finding her seat near the front, thankful to see complete strangers in the seats next to her. At least she wasn’t stuck sitting next to Jackson for the whole flight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“NO MORE ROOMS, SORRY.”
“You’ve got to have another room, anything, a broom closet.”
The woman behind the desk wrinkled her brow, not really understanding what Emalea meant.
“No more rooms,” she repeated.
“I’ll go to another hotel.” Hoisting one of her bags, Emalea swung round only to bump into Lana.
“Em, you’re making a scene. You’re only going to be next door to Jackson. It’s not like you’ll be in the same room. Now get over it.”
“Why don’t you and Lance trade rooms with me?”
Lana snorted. “Your room and Jackson’s have two double beds and ours has a king as do all the rest of the couples on this trip. You two are the only single people. Need I say more?”
A PALM FROND HUNG over the sidewalk and Emalea slapped it away. Neatly manicured grass with spots of red, orange and white flowering plants surrounded her. She wished she knew their names but she wasn’t very good at identifying plants. Nearby someone smacked a tennis ball, and she ran her fingers along the meringue-colored stucco walls of the building as she walked. The young boy assisting with her luggage didn’t speak English and her Spanish was negligible so they proceeded in silence while Jackson followed a safe distance behind her. He’d spoken to her when their luggage had been put in the cab, but she’d ignored him. He’d had the good sense to get in the other cab.
Stopping in front of a red door, the boy shoved the key into the lock then stepped back to let her enter. Handing him a tip as soon as he dropped her luggage, she hurried to the sliding glass door on the opposite side of the room, fumbling to get it unlocked, feeling trapped in this tiny space. On the small patio, she breathed in the clean salt air. A concrete divider separated her patio from Jackson’s. She put her hand against it, and Jackson suddenly appeared, then stepped into her space. The patio hardly seemed big enough for both of them, so she moved off the tile onto the grass.
“You don’t have to run away, Emalea.”
“What makes you think I’m running? I just wanted to go to the dive shop then maybe stick my feet in the water.”
“You’re running. I’m not trying to ruin your trip or mine. If you’ll just let me talk to you, let me explain what you saw yesterday. I know it looked bad.”
She spun around. “Bad? You think it looked bad? It was like a nightmare. There’s nothing you could tell me that would make what you did right.”
He seemed to cringe at her words, but she couldn’t feel sorry for him.
“I’m not saying I can make it right. I can’t. What I did was wrong. It was stupid and inexcusable. If you’ll just listen to me you might understand what could put me into that kind of rage.”
“You get so violent because that’s the kind of man you are. I’m not interested in hearing excuses from you.”
Her feet flew across the grass and then the sand. If Jackson Cooper thought he could give her a lame excuse then try his let’s-be-friends act, he was in for a rude awakening. Did he believe what he’d done yesterday would mean nothing to her? She stopped at the sea wall and took several deep breaths, blowing slowly through her nose.
As her tension eased, she tried to make herself think rationally. She banged her fist against the stone. Drawn to the wrong man again. Like a kid who had to touch the burner on the stove just to see if it was hot.
Below her, the water sparkled in the afternoon sun while two small yellow-and-black fish flitted back and forth. She was more than just attracted to him. She’d fallen in love with him. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but it had happened. Kicking herself wouldn’t be helpful at this point. She’d done it a thousand times already. This was her destiny, part of her genetic code, to fall in love with a man who was all wrong. She’d prayed her mother hadn’t passed that part of herself to her only daughter, but she had. Her education told her that kind of thinking was ludicrous, but what she felt went beyond book learning.
“Emalea.”
“Can’t you leave me alone?” The words tasted bitter with anger.
His mouth thinned to an angry line, and Jackson lifted his hand. “No, I can’t. I—”
He’d stopped in midsentence because she’d lifted her arm between them and ducked her head away. The automatic response to defend herself against a raised hand remained ingrained. She hated it, but couldn’t seem to prevent it.
“Good God, Emalea, I was only going to push your hair away from your face. Just because your dad hit you when he was mad doesn’t mean other men will.”
“It wasn’t just my dad.” The words left her mouth without her wanting them to. “I’ve always tried to consider Jean Pierre as a mistake.”
“Who’s Jean Pierre?”
“My ex-husband.” One look at his shocked face and she realized no one in town had told him.
“I hope you’re not going to end this conversation with that,” he said when she remained silent.
She shook her head. “I was living in New Orleans when I met him. I fell in love and never recognized what he could be. I like to say he hid his violent side, but maybe I was just too blind to see it. He was the kind of man I knew best, because I’d spent the first twelve years of my life with one just like him. Maybe that was why I gravitated to him, familiarity.” She sighed and sat on the rock wall.
“Everything I’d learned as a psychologist couldn’t help me. I could counsel others but I couldn’t analyze what was happening in my own life. He was my first real boyfriend, the first man I’d ever made love with and the only man, besides my father, to send me to the hospital. I didn’t allow him a second opportunity. When I was released, I called Lana. We loaded her dad’s truck and hauled everything I owned home to Cypress Landing.” She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I’m afraid I have a problem with being attracted to potentially dangerous men.”
She looked up to Jackson’s starkly handsome face. No doubt he was the best-looking man she’d ever fallen for. That she’d fallen for him at all was a bad sign.
“I’m not like that, Emalea.”
“Aren’t you?”
He lifted his hands in exasperation. “I want to tell you what happened yesterday, but you’re not ready to hear it. I can’t change your past any more than you can change mine. But the future, it’s wide open. I’m sorry, but for some reason, I keep seeing you in mine.” This time when he reached to brush the hair from her face, she didn’t try to stop him. He let his fingers linger an instant on her skin then walked away.
She could chalk up Jean Pierre to being young and ignorant. But she couldn’t find a good enough excuse for falling in love with Jackson. Sure, he’d hidden his violence behind kind words, a soft voice and caring gestures. But yesterday she’d seen him unleash the monster within, and she wouldn’t put herself in harm’s way ever again.
JACKSON PUSHED HIS WET dive gear onto the hooks set in the patio’s wall. The group had spent the afternoon exploring a small reef just off the hotel beach. Their last excursion had been made at sunset. They’d used dive lights to view the myriad of colors on the reef, and for a few hours the events of yesterday had been pushed to the back of his mind. Matt had been right. He’d needed to get away. To think over what had happened and realize how wrong he’d been to lose control. He should have walked away, beat on the hood of a cruiser, anything, but he hadn’t. Now the price he would pay might be more than he imagined.
If Emalea would just listen to him. She might not care, but his heart kept telling him she would understand. She had to. He’d dealt her a double whammy
in two days; fixing that would be more than difficult. Jackson decided his first mistake had been telling Emalea he could never have another relationship. She’d been gone exactly one minute that day when he’d realized he wanted a relationship with her a thousand times more than he was afraid of it. He should have gone after her then and told her he was wrong. But he’d wanted to give her time to cool off. Before he could do anything, though, all hell had broken loose with the gun deal, and he’d kept thinking they’d have this time in Mexico. Finally, he’d done the very thing he’d hoped to prove to her he wasn’t capable of. But he was capable of being the kind of person she was most afraid of. She had to know he could never be that way with her, that he would never be that way under normal circumstances. But nothing had been normal for him the past two years—until he’d met Emalea.
EMPTY BEER BOTTLES were scattered around the table, and Jackson had lost count of exactly how many belonged to him. After the evening meal, Lance had produced a deck of cards and a box with enough toothpicks to supply a truck stop for at least two years. A pile of the tiny wooden sticks lay in front of him. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been in the open-air bar playing poker, but it was late, or was it early?
“Guys,” Jackson said while pushing back his chair, “I’m done for tonight.” A few groans followed as the others did the same.
He eased along the dimly lit path to his room, occasionally stumbling on an uneven tile. A few beers, even more than a few, hadn’t done this to him. His head seemed to float just above his shoulders. An act that caused his stomach a certain amount of concern.
With one foot on the tile of his patio, he dug in his pocket for the key. He didn’t want to wake his neighbors, one in particular. His second step onto the patio placed his foot directly in the water that had drained from his wet dive gear and completely thwarted any efforts he’d made at being quiet. As he lost his balance, he grabbed for the patio chair, sending it straight into the patio door. The glass didn’t break but the thunderous rattling echoed in the night. His other hand flailed and managed to latch on to his damp dive gear. Unfortunately, the hook in the wall had never been intended to hold a man of his size. Hook and dive gear crashed to the ground on top of him, and he imagined the whole building reverberated with the impact.
He opened his eyes to find a pair of bare feet directly in front of his nose. Flat out on his stomach happened to be a very bad position for meeting people.
“What are you doing?”
The words spoken in a very familiar voice bounced off his head.
“I’m trying to get to my room, but I slipped. This damn tile is slick when it’s wet.”
“Did you have to bring the whole building down with you?”
“It’s not like I had a plan.” He got to his knees before climbing to his feet, swaying, and feeling a little shaky.
“Jackson Cooper, you’re drunk.”
“I’ve had a few beers, well, maybe more than a few, but I’m not drunk.” Resting one hand on the wall, he used the other to wipe away the cold film of sweat coating his forehead. “I don’t feel very good, so could you just give it a rest and let me get to bed?”
She made a cackling sound and he tried to focus on her.
“Great, I’m sick and you’re laughing at me.”
“I can’t help it. You’re so pale, like the Incredible Hulk after he’s spent six hours in a pool of bleach.”
“Thanks, I—” He reached for the door but knew it would take too long to unlock. Instead, he bolted for the shrubbery between the building and the sandy beach, unable to finish snidely telling her how much he appreciated her candor. Wave after wave of nausea hit him as he was sick for what felt like an hour. A cold cloth covered the back of his neck, and he heard ice clattering against plastic. He tried to speak but was sick again. Finally, exhausted he sat back on his heels.
“For God’s sake, Emalea, what are you doing?”
She squatted beside him holding one cloth to his forehead and one to the back of his neck. “I’m trying to help you while you’re sick.”
“I’d rather do this in private if you don’t mind.” He tried to push her away but he swayed and had to steady himself instead.
“Well, I do mind, so get over it.”
He sat for a moment without speaking, still fighting his roiling stomach. “I thought you were mad at me, weren’t speaking to me.”
“I am, but I’m not going to lie in my bed while you roll around in the grass or your bathroom sick. I’ve got a couple of tablets if you think you can keep them down. Next time don’t drink so much.”
“I didn’t drink too much.”
“What did you eat?”
“I don’t know. They brought all kinds of stuff to our table while we were playing cards. I just ate it. Could we not discuss food or drink right now?”
She shook her head. “To be such a big tough guy, you’re pretty pathetic when you’re sick.”
He had a smart comeback, but forgot it as he fell forward and was sick, again.
THE CLOTH ON THE PILLOWS scratched his back, but it beat leaning against the rough, cold wall in the bathroom, where he’d sat after coming inside. When he’d finally been able to stand, he’d found Emalea had set his toothbrush by the sink and fresh towels on the counter so he could take a shower. He’d heard her on the phone earlier, then she’d shouted that a couple of the other guys were sick, too. She had disappeared when he’d finally left the bathroom behind. Now, resting in the bed, he imagined he might survive, and he gave a silent prayer to the porcelain god that he’d paid his last respects.
The door rattled and Emalea blew in. “Can you believe a store was open at this time of the morning?” She set crackers, a lemon-lime soda and a small tablet on his bedside table, then fell onto the other bed. “If you can keep that pill down it should help with the nausea and vomiting. You might want to pass on the crackers till the morning.”
He could only nod, swallowing the pill with a few sips of the soda.
“I doubt you’ll be able to go on the dive tomorrow, but you can catch one the next day.”
“I’m going tomorrow or today, whatever it is.”
“Jackson, it’s three o’clock in the morning and the boat picks us up at eight.”
He slid under the sheet. “That’s why I’m going to sleep right now.”
She watched him for a minute while he tried to ignore her, then she clicked off the bedside lamp and crawled under the covers of the bed in the shorts and T-shirt she’d worn to the store. His eyes adjusted to the dim light coming from the bathroom.
“Emalea, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to sleep here tonight in case you get worse or need anything. If you happen to have a bad case of food poisoning, we might be making a trip to the clinic.”
He didn’t bother to argue with her. Why should he? Less than three feet away, in another bed, was the woman he wanted to have next to him forever. She might as well have been on another continent. He was sick and she was just sick of him.
“Emalea.”
“Good grief, Jackson, what is it?” She turned over, her features shadowed but visible.
“Are you still angry at me?”
Her pensive expression didn’t give him much hope while he waited for her reply. “I’m not angry at you, Jackson, I just don’t think I trust who you are.”
“You don’t know who I am.”
“I know enough.”
“You only know what you’ve made yourself believe. If you think I’m so dangerous and so bad, why did you do all this tonight? Why not just let me wallow on the floor and be sick?”
Her answer was so long in coming he’d begun to think she wouldn’t give one. She rolled on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
“Maybe because I don’t know who I am anymore. Now go to sleep.”
He lay on his side wanting to tell her everything. But she didn’t want to listen, not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe then he could set things right.
A solitary grilled shrimp coated in tangy barbecue sauce clung to the wooden skewer. Emalea shook it at Jackson. “At least it’s not fried and we are south…of the border.”
The last rays of the sun sank below the horizon as they finished their meal in the hotel restaurant. In the bar, music hummed and people crammed onto the dance floor.
Jackson turned to answer a question from one of the guys sitting next to him. Emalea had decided to be civil to Jackson after he’d been sick. If she treated him rudely, it would ruin everyone’s trip, or at least that’s how she’d justified it. Once she’d stopped rebuffing him, he’d managed to show her all the reasons she’d fallen for him in the first place. But she hadn’t forgotten what she’d seen him do. She didn’t want to get closer to him than she was right now. In fact, she was planning on calling Paul Jones as soon as she got home. A few safe dates with him and this whole Jackson Cooper mess would be a distant memory. In her heart, she knew that wouldn’t work. Every time she concocted the perfect plan to forget him, she caught herself trying to get closer to him. The dress she had on tonight only proved that point.
Jackson wanted to explain the incident at the bait shop, but she couldn’t hear it. What if it wasn’t a good enough explanation for what he had done? Or even worse, what if it was? She didn’t imagine he could say anything to make her think differently about what she’d seen, although sitting next to him right now she wished she’d never given Kent a ride, wished the whole thing had never happened.
“Let’s go, Em.” Jerked away from her thoughts, she found herself alone with Jackson.
Before she could protest, Jackson had pulled her to her feet and was dragging her to the dance floor.
He locked his arms around her waist, and she put her hands flat against his chest. “I don’t want to dance with you.”
