by MJ Fredrick
“I don’t need much time.” She pulled the mask over her face and tumbled into the water.
Only after she was in the water did she realize she hadn’t said anything to Jonathan.
It took just a moment to dislodge the camera from the seaweed it had entangled in, but her short decompression time gave her the time, and courage, to do what she needed to do. She hated the relief that accompanied the thought that at least she wouldn’t be tying herself to staid, safe Jonathan.
Chapter Seven
“He’s a nice guy.”
Since when did her conscience have a Scottish burr? Mallory turned from coiling the rope on the deck to face Adrian. Jonathan had gone to help Linda with dinner, leaving her alone with Adrian. She unconsciously braced herself for his criticism of Jonathan before she remembered he’d just complimented him.
“Yes, he is,” she said. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
He rested a foot on the bench at the stern. “So why are you breaking it off?”
She whirled on him. If he saw it, did Jonathan?
Adrian straightened, holding his hands in front of him in a calming motion. “Don’t worry, I don’t think he realizes it. He doesn’t know you as well as I do.”
She dropped to a seat by the pilothouse, her head in her hands. “I don’t want to hurt him.” Unbidden, Jonathan’s proposal played in her mind, how eager he was, how pleased. God, Mallory, what are you thinking?
Adrian sat beside her. “I can’t say that won’t happen. The man loves you. Deserves you more than I expected. Worried himself half to death when you were down.”
“Which is why I have to end it.”
“Mallory.” He rested his hand on her wrist. “Not that I’m all anxious for you to get married because I’m not. But you need to understand why you want to do this. What about the white picket fence and the three kids?”
Yes, why did they no longer seem as important—at least the picket fence? The wedding they’d planned together, the house they’d chosen…nothing held the appeal it had before she came here. And the babies in her mind’s eye had Adrian’s silver-blue eyes. “I want to go back to archaeology, and I know I can’t do that and be married to him, not without doing to him what you did to me.”
“Ouch.” He withdrew his hand, sat back.
She rubbed the hand he’d released over her eyes. “You know what I mean. Putting the job before the marriage. It’s not fair to him.”
“But you need to remember that you walked away from the job, wanting everything this man can give you. You come here at the peak of the excitement. You’re forgetting all the hard work, the struggles. I don’t want you to make a decision like this based on emotion.” He pushed to his feet. “At least sleep on it.”
She leaned back to look up at him. “I thought this would make you happy.”
He frowned. “Why would you think that?”
“I know the idea of me moving on wasn’t easy for you.”
“I just want you to be happy, Mal. I want you to get what you want.”
He hopped onto the dock and walked away.
What the hell was he thinking, pushing her toward Jonathan like that? She wasn’t happy, and God knew he didn’t want her with anyone but him.
But Jonathan was willing to give her all she desired. She might think she didn’t need it anymore, but Adrian wanted her to be sure.
Because even if she was sure, he couldn’t guarantee she’d come back to him.
“Where am I going to sleep tonight?” Jonathan asked as they ate dinner around the fire.
Mallory sat beside him but not next to him. She was already breaking away. Did Jonathan recognize that? Adrian wished he didn’t feel this hope at seeing it.
“Jacob and I are already roomies.” Toney’s eyes crinkled with wicked humor. “You could bunk with Adrian.”
“I don’t think so,” Mallory said quickly, and Toney laughed.
“He could put a cot in with me,” Robert said. “It’s just the one night.”
“I’ll get it set up.” Adrian rose and nodded toward the beach. “It’s a nice night for a walk on the beach.”
Mallory glared at him until Jonathan cupped his hand around her elbow and drew her to her feet. Adrian remembered a different reaction when the two of them had had chances to be alone. No one ever had to suggest it, and, after catching them in compromising positions more than once, people learned not to follow them. Their hunger for each other hadn’t waned over the years, and Adrian wished his hand was on her arm right now.
“He’s right. We have our own private beach right here,” Jonathan murmured. “Let’s take advantage of it.”
Okay, Adrian didn’t want that picture in his mind, and apparently Mallory thought the same because she blushed a bright pink and turned her head as she walked past him.
“You’re different out here,” Jonathan said once they reached the other side of the dunes, the camp behind them.
Mallory’s pulse kicked at his observation. He knew what she planned to do. She wasn’t ready, didn’t have the words, couldn’t make him understand yet. So she stalled. “Really? How?”
“You’re so much more adventurous, more sure of yourself. I never would have expected the woman I knew to jump off that barge to go after the camera.”
She rubbed her hand over her arm, wishing she’d thought to bring a sweatshirt against the sea breeze. “I was the logical choice.”
“Right, but.” He stopped, shook his head. “Alone, in the ocean, nothing there to protect you. If anything had gone wrong, I couldn’t help you. Adrian couldn’t help you.”
Adrian would have found a way, but she didn’t say it. “I’ve done things like that all my life.”
“I understood, I guess, in theory. It was just unsettling to watch.”
She didn’t know how to respond, was grateful when he started walking again.
“You miss it, don’t you?”
Finally, a chance to be honest. “More than I thought.”
“You want to stay.”
She sucked her breath in through her teeth, laced her fingers together and turned to face him, still walking. “It’s not possible.” That would mean working with Adrian, being vulnerable to him. She never had resisted that too well.
“But you don’t want what you thought you wanted now.”
Another chance to be honest. “No.”
“You still love him.”
“Of course I don’t.” The denial came easier than she expected.
His brow lowered solemnly. “I saw the underwear on the barge, Mallory. I know the two of you were out there alone. I saw the way you looked at each other, how you communicated without talking. I remember all the things you told me you loved about him. I saw them today when he looked at you.” His matter-of-fact tone cut deeper than accusations would have.
“The underwear—it wasn’t what you think.” She pushed her hand through her hair. “I just got out of my wet clothes. There was nothing sexual.”
“With Adrian, who you told me yourself you made love to the first day you met, and never stopped, even when you hated each other.”
Adrian had been right about the whole confiding-in-Jonathan being a mistake. He knew all her secrets, all of Adrian’s as well. She shut her eyes and sought an answer that would appease him. “We were together ten years.” And had been as close as two people could get. “I didn’t strip to tease him. It was all very—businesslike.” Until he took her into his arms.
“So you’re denying you love him.”
“I’ll tell you what I told him. I wouldn’t have said yes to you if I still loved him.”
Her tone must not have been very convincing, because his face fell. God, she didn’t want to hurt him. “He thinks you still love him, too?”
She pivoted and took a few steps down the beach before turning to him, flinging her arms out to her sides in frustration. “Jonathan, you’ve met him. He’s arrogant. Of course he’s going to think I still love hi
m.”
Jonathan approached and curved his hands over her shoulders as he looked into her eyes. “But you can swear to me, after being here with him, that you don’t.”
“I don’t. I swear.”
Jonathan drew her against him, nuzzled her mouth with his. Mallory drew away when he touched his tongue to her lower lip. She couldn’t. She couldn’t kiss him with Adrian’s face clear in her mind, his warming touch so recent. Jonathan was a good man, but there was no thrill in his arms.
She’d forgotten how much she loved the thrill.
On impulse, she asked, “Would you go diving with me?”
“What?” He pulled back, blinking.
“I miss it. Will you let me teach you?” If he could say yes, maybe she wouldn’t have to end it, maybe she wouldn’t have to hurt him.
But she knew his answer before his eyes shuttered.
He released her and backed away. “I couldn’t do something like that.”
Her heart dropped. “Not even if it’s something I love to do? You wouldn’t do it for me?”
“Mallory, it’s very dangerous. You should be relieved it’s not something I want to do. I don’t think it’s something you should do. You could die.” He stroked her arm slowly, reverently.
Meant to reassure her, she knew. She longed to move away but didn’t want to hurt him. “What’s the difference between dying of old age after a life of doing nothing and dying doing something you love?” She heard Adrian’s voice coming out of her mouth and cringed.
Jonathan took her arms again. “Because you’ll be living those years with me.”
That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? A long, peaceful life with the man she loved, with the children they created from their love? And she shouldn’t base the future of their relationship on the answer to one question. But that one question encompassed so many things.
“You do want to stay.” For the first time in their relationship she heard anger in his voice. “What can you find in a place like this?”
She looked toward the ocean. “I need the mountains, I need the sea. I need to dive.”
“You need Adrian.”
She shook her head sharply. “No.” Not because of Adrian but because of the woman she used to be. The woman she’d turned her back on.
The woman she missed.
“I can’t think about what my life would be like if I never went diving or hiking or any of those things again. What will I do with myself?”
“You’ll be a wife and a mother and we’ll have our friends around us. All those things will fulfill you. You won’t need diving or hiking, or Adrian.”
He was so earnest, so sad. She felt like a selfish bitch. All the things he was saying—she wanted those things. The security, the love. The pretty little house they’d found on the edge of the Hill Country. But just like she had to wonder if she missed archaeology because of Adrian, she wondered if she wanted Jonathan because of the things he offered.
And now she craved adventure. She had to blend the person she used to be with the person she’d become. Until she did that, she couldn’t be with either man.
“I can’t stop being who I was, not even for you.” Her heart ached. She was turning her back on a good man.
Jonathan’s expression grew stony. “You’re going back to Adrian.”
“No.” He couldn’t figure into this. That wouldn’t be fair to Jonathan. With shaking hands, she pulled the chain over her head, let it spiral into her palm, ring first, before pressing it into his hand. She looked into his eyes, her own vision blurred. “Thank you. For loving me. But unless I do this, I’m not me anymore, and that’s not good for either of us.”
Where the hell was the mouthpiece for his regulator? Adrian tore through his tent searching for the octopus. He knew he’d put it in the same place as always—on a dive, he had to do that or things would be too easily mislaid. And this damn thing was impossible to replace out here in the back of beyond.
He walked out of the tent, calling to Toney, just as Jonathan came over the rise of the sand dunes. The set of his shoulders, the tension in his steps told Adrian Mallory had called it off. For a moment, he rejoiced.
Jonathan saw him and changed direction, straight toward him. Before Adrian could work out what was going on, the other man plowed a fist into his face. Surprise dropped Adrian to the sand. He brought his hand to his mouth to check for blood before he looked up at Jonathan.
“What did you do to her?” the older man demanded.
Adrian rose slowly, body tight, on alert now. Damn, he wouldn’t have thought the other man had it in him. His admiration for the man grew a bit more. “I didn’t touch her.”
“She’s chosen you over me. What you have to offer”—he spread his hands to include the camp with a contemptuous expression—“over what I have to offer.”
“She’s staying here?” Joy washed through him, though he struggled to hide it from the other man. The man he’d beaten.
“Don’t act like it’s a surprise.”
“Okay.” Adrian couldn’t stop himself from looking to the dunes, waiting for sight of Mallory. What would she think of her fiancé’s violent reaction to having his heart broken? “I knew she was missing it, but I didn’t know she wanted to stay here.”
“Hell, why should you know?” Pain darkened the other man’s eyes before he turned away. “She doesn’t even know what she wants. But at this point, it’s not me.”
Past Jonathan, Adrian saw Mallory struggle over the rise of the sand dunes. He looked at Jonathan. “My one regret was that I never fought for her.”
“Now’s your chance.” Jonathan started for Robert’s tent. “I’d like to leave tonight.”
Adrian shook his head. “You’ll never find your way through the jungle in the dark. Toney can show you the way into town in the morning.”
Jonathan sucked in a breath as if to protest. Then he looked at Mallory, who stood still, watching the two men. Jonathan nodded and ducked into Robert’s tent.
Adrian looked up when Mallory stepped out of the tent she shared with Linda the following morning. He tried not to appear as though he’d been waiting to get her alone, to find out what her take was on the whole Johnny thing.
He didn’t expect to see her with her duffel over her shoulder, her face tear streaked and pale.
He pushed to his feet. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” She didn’t look at him.
She rested the duffel on the bench in front of her. He recognized her defensive posture but didn’t sense defensiveness in her calm tone, though he heard the tears.
“I thought—”
“I’m not staying.” She said it like he should have known all along.
“But—” He gestured to the tent behind him just as Jonathan stepped out, straightened, regarding them as if they were bugs he’d found in his shoes.
“I’m going home,” she said, quieter now as Jonathan passed them to get to the SUV he’d rented. “I don’t imagine it will be hard to get a job with my qualifications.”
Before he could twist that arrow from his heart, she widened her eyes, looking horrified by her thoughtless words.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” He did. Still didn’t hurt any less. After all, he couldn’t waltz in somewhere to get a job, not with his reputation in tatters.
“I just—as exciting as this find is, I don’t think it would be good for the two of us to work together. And if I go work on another dig, I can know for sure—” She glanced around, looking for Jonathan. Once she saw he was out of hearing distance, she continued. “—if it’s the archaeology I miss.”
Goddamn. Another bull’s eye. She’d always been a sharpshooter where he was concerned. “And if it’s not?”
She lifted her chin, met his eyes. “It is. Good luck, Adrian. Let me know—how it goes,” she said, a catch in her voice.
“Are you sure you want me to?”
She forced a smile. “Of course. I feel like I ha
ve a stake in this.”
He took her hands in his and leaned close to kiss her cheek. “Be happy,” he whispered.
The sentiment had her clouding up and turning away. Without answering, she climbed into Jonathan’s rented Range Rover and he drove off.
*
Adrian swam over and struck his brother’s shoulder. Toney turned sharply, looking past Adrian for danger. Adrian hit him again, to focus him, and gestured toward the silt.
A glint of metal.
This could be it. The ship’s hold, where he could have everything he wanted and more.
Together the brothers brushed at the sand, revealing more splinters. Adrian frowned. A medallion? The metal came into sight again. No, something was attached to it, another loop, so that the artifact was about the size of his palm. He dusted to reveal an engraving on the medallion—a square cross. He looked past it for more clues to what part of the ship they were in.
Before he could investigate further, his dive alarm went off, damn it. Toney brought over a basket. As gently as he could, his heart pounding, his breathing coming faster than recommended for this depth, Adrian slipped his hands under the object and lifted it, careful with the sudden weight of the water on the fragile object. He motioned for Toney to wait. He wanted to keep an eye on it as he ascended, even if it had to make the decompression stops with him. If he could find something, anything to prove it was Mediterranean…
Mallory had left three weeks ago, too soon. As excited as he was, the one thing lacking here was Mallory. After what he’d put her through, she deserved to be in on this.
Decompression took about a year longer today than any day in the past, and he had to employ every archaeologist fiber of his body not to touch, to stroke the medallion, to reassure himself it was real.
Finally, the light filtered through the water and he finned toward the top, Toney behind him. Robert came over to the edge of the barge, alarmed.
