Rendezvous

by Sami Lee

  A memory, raw and graphic, of Reed ripping off her panties, bending her over the dining table and entering her with one solid thrust flashed through Cassie’s mind. Her blood heated farther, practically hitting boiling point. Their sexual life hadn’t merely been good or great. It had been intensely hot, so hot it had overshadowed their problems—for a while.

  Cassie crossed her arms over her chest, willing her body’s eager response to Reed’s nearness to cool. “Even so, I needed more than a husband who came home only when he felt like it and thought sex was a substitute for communication.”

  Reed pushed out a sigh and dragged a hand through his dark-brown hair until the ends spiked up. He always did that when they argued, and in the very beginning she’d thought it was cute. Cassie had once loved smoothing those abused strands back down before rising to her tip toes and kissing her husband’s beleaguered face.

  Unbelievably, that urge remained. Cassie had to clench her fists to keep from acting on it.

  “I’m here now, Cass. And if it’s communication you want, that’s what you’re going to get,” Reed said. “We have six days to communicate, if that’s all you want to do.”

  “Six days?” Cassie blinked in surprise. “You mean you really intend to charter The Rendezvous?”

  “I made a booking, didn’t I?”

  “For Robin Sherwood and his wife,” Cassie pointed out. “If I’d known who you were, I would never have taken the booking.”

  “I figured that, hence the cover name.”

  Now that she thought about it, Cassie couldn’t believe she hadn’t picked that name as fake. Robin Sherwood. Ha! At the time she’d taken the booking online, she’d been far too thrilled at the prospect of a full-paying customer to question it.

  “If you don’t take me on the trip, I won’t pay your fee,” Reed told her. “And I figure you need the money, am I right?”

  Cassie narrowed her eyes. Since she’d had the Sherwoods slotted in, she hadn’t been able to take any other bookings, and it was too late now. She couldn’t afford to take no income at all for the entire week. From the smug expression on Reed’s face, he knew it. It seemed she didn’t really have a choice but to spend the week in close quarters with the infuriating man, the one man who made her forget all common sense as easily as he smiled.

  What if he really does want to talk, to really talk?

  Cassie couldn’t prevent a seed of hope from germinating in her heart, even though she was deathly afraid she’d be disappointed with Reed’s definition of communication—whatever it was. Yet the hope was there, and she had to give it a chance—she had to give them a chance, one last one, before they decided once and for all if they had a future.

  After all, he was still her husband.

  “All right, Reed. You’ve hired yourself a captain.”

  Chapter Three

  As it turned out, Reed was prone to sea sickness.

  Something he would have loved to have known before he got stuck on the open water of the Whitsunday Passage on a forty-something-foot sailboat that never seemed to stop moving. Up and down, up and down…ugh. This was not something his stomach was used to.

  He’d lived all of his life in land-locked locations. He’d moved from his parents’ three-bedroom fibro house in Penrith to the police academy, then on to a series of postings in inner-city Sydney. He’d been on a joint task force with the water police when he’d met Cassie at a pub at The Rocks, Sydney’s famous harbour-side tourist precinct.

  To say it was love at first sight was too cheesy for Reed’s taste, but after talking and flirting with her all that night he would have been willing to crawl over broken glass for her phone number. Cassie hadn’t made him go that far, but he’d nearly been reduced to begging before she’d relented. She’d only been planning to stay in Sydney two weeks, while visiting her brother.

  Ten days later, Reed had asked her to marry him, and to his surprised delight she’d agreed. She’d ended up staying in Sydney three years.

  Up until last November, when apparently the fact he lived there was no longer reason enough for her to stay.

  “You all right up there?”

  Reed turned his gaze from the blue water rushing beneath the boat to the cockpit where Cassie was steering the boat. The act made a bout of dizziness assail him, but he grinned in the hope that Cassie wouldn’t realise how green around the gills he was. “All good.”

  Her gaze remained on him, and Reed fancied he could sense her assessing him from behind her wrap-around sunglasses. He gave her a thumbs-up signal. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do anything?” he asked, while mentally praying she didn’t tell him to get up and try to walk around on the rolling deck.

  To his relief, Cassie shook her head. “You’re a paying passenger. You don’t need to help out.”

  Inwardly, Reed winced. Technically it was true, but he felt useless sitting on his butt while Cassie moved around deck doing things with ropes and winches that he didn’t understand. The fact that Cassie had grown up around boats couldn’t be more evident. Here on the water, she was in her element.

  As she hadn’t been in Sydney. Had she felt back then as he did now—unbalanced and ineffectual? If so, how come she’d never said anything?

  Maybe she hadn’t wanted to burden him. Or maybe she had tried to tell him, and he’d been too busy with his own stuff to listen.

  They sailed for hours, Cassie filling him in on some of the area’s history like she was a tour guide and he any other tourist. Reed was too focussed on the pitching of his stomach to insist she treat him any differently. Finally, Cassie told him she was going to anchor and take the dingy to a nearby island.

  Thank Christ, Reed thought.

  But in the dingy, the motion was even more pronounced than it had been on the yacht, and afterward the stillness of the sandy beach they landed on seemed alien. After only half a day sailing. How was he going to manage the entire week?

  Somehow, he had to. He couldn’t wuss out now or Cassie would never give him another chance to patch things up with her.

  Cassie led him to a stretch of shady sand beneath a palm tree. Once there, she opened up the small cooler he’d insisted on carrying for her and pulled out a bottle of soda water and some plain crackers. She handed them to him. “They’ll settle your stomach.”

  Chagrined, Reed took a grateful gulp from the bottle. Then he looked at Cassie. “How did you know?”

  Her lips tilted. “Experience. And I know you. I’ve never seen you sit still for that long.”

  “Speaking of sitting,” Reed said, and dropped his butt onto the cool sand. He gestured to the spot beside him. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”

  She looked as though she wanted to refuse, but then she lowered herself beside him—just far enough away to prevent any accidental contact from occurring. Then, for good measure, she placed the cooler between them.

  Reed might have laughed if he were feeling better. “Relax, I’m not up to starting anything at the moment. I only want to sit and talk for a minute.”

  “You?” Cassie enquired archly “Talk?”

  “I talk, Cass. I talk all the time.”

  “Not to me,” she said. “You always talked to your mates about what was going on with you, but never to me.”

  “My mates were in the job too. They understood what I was going through.”

  “And it wasn’t possible for me to understand simply because I didn’t drive a patrol car?”

  “I don’t drive a patrol car anymore,” Reed said. “I made detective nine months ago.”

  For a moment, Cassie must have forgotten they were separated and on the path to divorce. Her face lit up with her smile. She touched his arm and his skin tingled beneath her slim, slightly callused fingers. “Oh, Reed. I’m so happy for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Reed studied her. He put his hand over hers and traced the line of her ring finger where the gold wedding band he’d placed there still sat. She hadn’t taken it off, and the
realization made his heart dance, even as it lurched a little at the words he spoke next. “I figured you left because of the job, because you hated that I was a cop. I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

  Cassie’s expression darkened, took on the characteristics of a tropical thunderstorm. She scowled down at the place where he touched her before snatching her hand away. “I did not leave because you were a cop. I was proud of you, you idiot!”

  “Then why did I always get the feeling you resented it?” Reed dipped his head, trying to see her face and not merely her rigid profile. “That you resented the hours I worked, the other guys—”

  “I missed you sometimes, that’s all,” she snapped. With a sharp flick of her wrist, Cassie brushed an unseen speck of sand from her tanned leg. “The other guys were fine, it was the sense that you were all in a secret boys club that I wasn’t fond of. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt that way if you’d talked to me about what was going on sometimes, and not just to them. You shut me out, Reed. That was the problem. If you’d told me about your day every once in a while I wouldn’t have cared if you cleaned toilets for a living.”

  Cassie stood abruptly, like a jack leaping out of its box. She took several angry strides away before Reed managed to stand. He went to follow her but his knees were more unsteady than he’d anticipated. Before he could get too far, he stumbled and had to grab the trunk of a palm to avoid falling back on his ass. “Cassie, come on!”

  “Enjoy your crackers, Dalton!” Cassie threw over her shoulder. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Reed stood in mute frustration, watching her stride away from him.

  Then he turned and threw up behind the base of the palm tree.

  *****

  If only Reed weren’t sick, Cassie would be having a much easier time of it. However, his vulnerable state of health led her to empathize with him, which led to all sorts of other tender feelings she was afraid to let take root. Reed was tough, a cop who put himself in danger every day in his line of work, and as such he’d always seemed invincible to her, almost untouchable. Like superman with a potty mouth and a gun.

  But seeing him struggle with the urge to throw up over the course of that first afternoon, before having to give in time and again, quelled her earlier anger and activated her nurturing instincts. She insisted he rest in the double-berth cabin she’d set aside for him, and then found them a mooring for the night. She anchored off Hook Island and took Reed some dry vegemite on toast in lieu of the shellfish feast she’d planned for her guests.

  When he’d eaten most of it and once again lay down on the bed, she turned to leave. Reed’s hand on her arm stopped her. She was kept motionless by the solemnity in his blue gaze.

  “I’m sorry about this.”

  “Not your fault. It happens to the best of them.”

  His lips twisted. “Not to you.”

  “I’ve lived most of my life on the water and even I get sea sick occasionally.” Cassie smiled, unable to resist one small taunt. “Although never in the serene waters of the Whitsunday Passage.”

  Reed grunted but returned her smile with a rueful one of his own. “You try to take down a meth head with a grudge against the cops and we’ll see how you fare.”

  Cassie’s smile faltered and she ducked her head so he wouldn’t see the fear that must surely have marred her expression. She knew Reed’s job was dangerous, but sometimes the way he so flippantly shrugged off those dangers made her blood run cold. “No, thanks, that’s your department.”

  “And this is yours—the open air, the water beneath you.” Sadness came into his eyes. He cleared his throat, but his voice still rasped. “I’m sorry I took you away from it.”

  I’m not, Cassie wanted to say, but the lump that formed in her throat prevented speech. Did Reed really think that she regretted the years she’d spent with him? Nothing could be further from the truth. Although she’d missed Airlie Beach, missed the ocean and the warm sunshine that bathed the area in a special glow even in winter, she’d never longed for it with the kind of intensity as she’d longed for Reed every night for the past year.

  Succumbing to the need to touch him, Cassie brushed a hank of his thick brown hair back from his forehead. He made a thankful sound, but his eyes were closed. In the rising starlight filtering in through the cabin’s porthole, she could see he’d fallen asleep.

  Cassie couldn’t help yielding to another temptation. She stretched out beside him and watched him rest, listening to the rhythmic sound of his breathing until she too drifted off.

  *****

  A little over twenty-four hours later, Reed sat at a gently rocking table, making a serious dent in the plate of grilled barramundi and vegetables Cassie had prepared.

  “I’d say you’ve definitely located your sea legs,” she remarked.

  Reed glanced up from the plate of food, and the devilish sparkle in his blue eyes caused Cassie’s heart to jump. “Seems that way. Must have been all your tender loving care.”

  “I didn’t do much.”

  “You took care of me. And as humiliating as it is that I needed you to, I appreciate all you did for me, Cass.”

  Reed hadn’t actually come out and said so, but Cassie suspected he knew she’d spent most of last night curled up beside him in the aft cabin simply because she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

  Cassie lifted a shoulder and hid her blush in her own meal. “I’m just glad you’ve got your appetite back.”

  Reed had insisted it would be ridiculous if she didn’t eat with him, that it would be a crime to waste all the gourmet food she’d stocked up on to feed what she’d thought would be two guests, not one. Cassie saw the logic in his argument, which is how they’d come to be sharing a meal of fresh fish, oysters and champagne on the deck of The Rendezvous while the sunset painted a vibrant tableau upon the endless acres of sky and sea around them.

  Only in hindsight did she realise it might not have been the best idea to share a meal with her husband in such a romantic setting. It made her wonder what other things she might enjoy sharing with him again.

  What other appetites Reed might have regained.

  The memory of his body pressed against hers yesterday morning came back to her like a sudden, enveloping heatwave. Cassie took a sip of champagne in the hopes the chilled liquid would cool her flushed skin. Yesterday, while she’d been busy alternating between fuming at Reed’s Robin Sherwood deception and taking care of him, Cassie had managed to keep at bay the emotions that had churned to life when she’d seen him again. Today, he’d woken partially recovered, and as the day wore on he became more and more like the playful rogue she’d married. It was growing increasingly difficult for Cassie to deny the fact she was still extremely susceptible to Reed Dalton’s charms.

  Coming to the end of his meal, Reed pushed his plate to the side and smiled across the portable table at Cassie. “You are one terrific cook. But then I already knew that. I always loved your home-cooked meals—maybe too much.”

  Cassie tilted her head. “Too much?”

  “With you at home, I never wanted to leave the house to eat at some fancy restaurant,” Reed replied soberly. “I didn’t take you out enough, Cass. I didn’t send flowers or do any of those romantic things women like men to do. I guess I was a shitty husband.”

  “I didn’t need any of those things.” Cassie gestured to her plain white polo shirt and khaki shorts. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a girly girl.”

  “Then what was it? What did I not do—besides the not-talking-about-my-day thing?”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “No. Christ, no,” Reed responded hotly. “My job is just that—a fucking job. So I didn’t want to rehash everything I’d done during the day the second I got home. That wasn’t enough reason for you to give up on our marriage.”

  Cassie shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then make me.”

  Fury lay banked in his eyes, turning them a glittering dark o
nyx in the waning light. He sat back and laced his hands on top of his head, the pose a challenge, an expectation. It said, “Impress me. Give me the best story you’ve got.”

  Cassie wondered if that was a body-language tactic Reed used on suspects he was interrogating.

  Cassie refused to be cowed. If Reed wanted the truth, he was going to get it at long last. “Reed, I gave up my life for you. I’d never lived anywhere other than this stretch of Queensland coast. I’d never wanted to do anything with my life other than sail. Look around you.” She moved her arm in an arc, encompassing the lapping water and the glittering first stars around them. “This was my world for twenty-five years. Then I met you, and all that changed. You became my world, and all I wanted was to be a part of your life. But I wasn’t. I was on the edges. I changed everything for you and you sat me on the sidelines. It wasn’t fair.”

  “I never meant to do that. Jesus, Cass.” He leaned forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. “My life—my job—isn’t always pretty. In fact, most of the time it really sucks. Don’t you get that I didn’t want that shit to touch you? Tales of underage prostitutes and druggies who rob little old ladies don’t exactly make entertaining dinner conversation.”

  “Don’t you get that whatever you had to deal with, I had to deal with too, whether you wanted me to or not. Since you didn’t tell me what was happening, I was flying blind all the time, left to guess what was on your mind. I felt useless because you wouldn’t let me help you.”

  “The sex helped, Cass,” Reed said, his blunt statement causing heat to flush through Cassie. “Losing myself in you washed everything away, every time.”

  Anger spiked inside her, sharp and painful. Her fury was intensified by the fact his crass words actually made her body respond, like Pavlov’s dog at the ring of the dinner bell. Heart thumping hard against her ribs, Cassie shot to her feet. “I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to know that my pussy was of some use to you.”