by Jill Barnett
He cocked his head and crossed his arms over his chest, which she was staring at.
“Oysters, Smitty, or pearls?”
“Oysters, actually, but more pearls would be nice, too.”
He held out his hand. “Then come with me.”
She stared at his open palm, then slid her hand into it. She didn’t move, just stared at their hands as his closed about hers. His was rugged and tanned, his fingers thick, and his palms huge. Her hands were paler, her fingers long and slim. So different, she thought.
“Come on, Smitty.”
They ran into the water, holding hands even when the waves slapped against them. “We need to swim out a short distance, then walk along the sandbar, and I’ll point out the oyster bed.”
She nodded as another wave rolled past them. “Those oysters were marvelous. One of my favorite foods.”
He laughed. “I could tell.”
She followed him. “All they needed was a dash of Tabasco sauce.”
He stopped and laughed harder.
“What’s so funny?”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe it.”
They moved across the lagoon as shallow waves slapped against them and the tide pulled at their feet and legs. Once she had to slip an arm around him to keep from slipping. He put one arm around her and lifted her in front of him as if she hardly weighed a thing.
It was a new sensation. Men didn’t carry women who were almost as tall as they were. It gave her a small thrill when his hands spanned her waist.
Now though, he stood behind her, and whenever a wave would pass, he was like a wall that kept her in place, his body there for her to lean against. And she did. She felt the brush of his body hair against the back of her arm, the firm, solid muscle of his chest and thighs whenever a wave would shove her backward. Once, a wave pushed her suddenly, and he slid his thigh beneath her bottom to keep her in front of him. Within a few minutes, they moved onto a sandbar, then walked along it near the edge of a jagged coral reef.
Hank gripped her arm. “This is it. You want to go down?”
She nodded.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
“Okay, sweetheart. Take deep breaths of air. Ten or more.”
They both began to breathe together. Then he looked at her, squeezed her hand, and nodded.
And they dove deep, hand in hand, down the blue green waters that were clear as air. A whole new world opened up to her, foreign and fascinating.
Fish in a multitude of colors—yellows, reds, oranges, and violets—swam about them, dancing in and out of the rocks where red and purple anemones four feet in diameter lay like prayer blankets. Sea plants with pink and yellow and purple leaves waved with the lazy current.
He pulled her down with him, his hand tightly holding hers. As they moved through the water, he pointed at the white and pink and black coral that grew like giant mushrooms from the nearby rocks. Small fish of every color—thousands and thousands of them in fluid, rippling schools—darted around blue water that must have been the color of heaven.
Margaret and Hank swam into this other world—a world so magical it was impossible to imagine. They kicked downward into an underwater paradise that was like walking through a Milky Way of color, like being deep inside a rainbow. The sunlight would catch iridescent colors of the fish and the plants, making them shimmer and sparkle more than any jewel.
Hank stuck his thumb up and they surfaced. Margaret gasped for air. “Let’s go down again,” she said, still gasping, and she started to dive.
“Not so fast, sweetheart. Give yourself a few minutes of air. Take shallow, deep breaths.”
There was something mesmerizing about the sea that made one understand the myth of sirens. Such brilliance, such magic. It called to her in a special way that had nothing to do with common sense or intrigue or curiosity, but something more elemental, as if a small door had opened only now, just this once, into a world made for just her to discover. She was still panting, wanting to take air in faster so she could dive again.
Hank laughed. “Calm down. It’s not going to go away.”
“I want to see it all, Hank. Everything. Now.”
“What about the oysters?”
“I want to see those, too. It’s lovely down there.” She looked into his face and placed her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and she smiled sincerely. “Thank you for taking me down there. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
His look was somehow different out here, no cynicism, nothing but an intensity she could feel. He treaded water and looked at her that way for a long time. She ducked her head a little, embarrassed that she was affected by something as silly as a man’s look.
Then he ruined the whole thing. Ruined it completely, because he reached out and pulled her to him. And he kissed her.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re so mad about.” Hank followed her out of the water.
“You wouldn’t!” She glared at him, slapped her wet hair out of her face, and marched on. “You’re too thickheaded and single-minded to understand.”
“It was just a kiss, dammit.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Hell, I didn’t feel you up.”
She gasped and spun around.
“I could have. I could have stuck my hand wherever I damn well pleased. Your tongue was halfway down my throat, sweetheart.”
“I hate this. I really do.”
He laughed and walked past her, then stopped. “No, you don’t.” He whacked her on her backside. “You don’t hate this, sweetheart.”
She almost took a swing at him.
“You love it.”
He swaggered away, his handprint still warm on her behind, his taste still lingering in her mouth. She looked around for just a second as if she didn’t know where she was.
Slowly she raised a hand to her mouth and took deep breaths. She couldn’t do much else. She realized she knew where she was. She just didn’t know who she was.
Because to her horror, to her dismay, to her regret, she knew he was right. She did love it.
For the next week Margaret set out to change things. She was going to learn to cook and she was going to understand why Hank Wyatt was affecting her so strangely.
A baptism by fire, so to speak.
And it was. She burned three fish, two pans of gull eggs, a coconut—Hank informed her that no one on the face of the blankety-blank earth would cook a coconut—four breadfruit, some yams, her skirt, a wrist, and three fingers.
Margaret had spent a great deal of time watching Hank, searching for answers. Hank spent the next few days adding another room onto the hut—a room for the children when it rained or for sleeping. This was after Annabelle woke him three mornings in a row. She pulled his eyebrows the first morning, then giggled when he woke up yelling. She grabbed the hammock and dumped him out of it the second morning, and that very morning she had tried to stick a banana up his nose.
Actually, the room wasn’t for the children. It was for Hank.
Margaret watched him work, watched him sweat in the sunshine, watched him play with Theodore. He included the boy in everything, even included Lydia.
One morning Margaret had been busy dousing their burning breakfast with handfuls of sand when Lydia came running past her, her dark blond hair in two perfectly even braids. Later that day, after Lydia and Theodore had ridden the waves with Hank, Margaret sat on the beach trying to hide her surprise as she watched him rebraid the girl’s hair. Perfectly.
But it was the hug Lydia gave Hank that almost did her in. Margaret had had to look away until she was certain her eyes had dried and her face didn’t give away what she felt.
He was incredibly good with Annabelle, too, carrying her on his shoulders, letting her touch the tree branches and lifting her high in his arms so she could pick flowers. He showed her birds. The hummingbirds that would flit from flower to flower. And he laughed when she screamed with childish e
xcitement at the gulls and auks and terns that dove through the sky, and the pelicans that waddled along the sand with the pipers and other scavengers.
And even more unsettling was the way he would look at Margaret, as if he knew something she didn’t. Instead of answers, she only found more questions.
Why did his walk fascinate her? She had never even noticed a man’s walk. Why did she stand on the ridge and watch him swim in the morning? Especially when she felt so uncomfortable afterward, as if she’d eaten bad food.
And now, why was she climbing the rocks and sneaking a peek at him shaving? She was thirty-two years old. She was an attorney. She was supposed to be rational and sane and logical. But her hands shook. There was this uneasiness about her—a restless feeling that nothing satisfied.
She stood on the rocks near the pool, thinking that she should leave but not moving. Listening for the sound of him diving in the water. But there was only silence.
Then it hit her. Hard. The embarrassment of what she was actually doing. She covered her mouth with one hand and shook her head. She needed to leave. This was . . . completely foolish.
She scampered down the rocks and paused at the bottom, her breath rapid. Her hand went to her forehead, rubbing the frown away. She asked herself what she had been thinking. Fool . . .
She turned around.
There he stood, leaning against a nearby rock as if he’d been there for a long time, his arms crossed and his smile cocky.
Chapter 24
He stepped forward.
Margaret moved back, suddenly wishing the earth would just open up and swallow her.
He moved again. So did she.
“Have you been taking lessons from that goat?” “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. You had to be there.” He took two more steps toward her. She backed up and hit the coconut palm. She shifted to the left.
So did he. “You game for a new partnership, sweetheart?”
She tried to sidestep him and bumped into a wall of rock.
Both of his hands flattened against the rock on either side of her head. She started to duck under one. He moved his arm down, still blocking her.
She gave him a narrowed glare. “Don’t get cute.” He smiled, a catbird seat smile if she’d ever seen one.
She looked away.
He moved so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. “We could build a chest together.” He paused. His expression mocked her the same way his words did. “We need a chest—uh—schedule.” He laughed. “How about your chest against mine, sweetheart?”
She felt her face flush hot and red. She just wanted to shrivel up right there. But what was worse than the embarrassment of her situation was the horrendous realization that she actually felt something for Hank—truly the last man on earth she should fall for.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, knowing her humiliation was complete. Even worse than the situation, even worse than admitting she’d fallen for Hank Wyatt, was the knowledge that he knew it, too.
He had her. Hank laughed to himself, looking down at her. She wouldn’t look at him. He waited. If there was one thing he’d learned with her, it was patience.
Suddenly, as if her legs had turned liquid, she slid down the rock and sat hard on the ground. She drew her knees up and buried her head in them.
He stared at her. What the hell?
“Smitty?”
She looked like she was crying.
Stunned, he just stood there, frowning. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be crying. She should be throwing his cocky words right back at him like she always did. He waited a minute, then scowled down at her.
Her shoulders were shaking.
“Are you crying?” He leaned closer, squinting at her. “You can’t be crying.” He heard a sob. “Shit! You are crying!”
She sobbed. He shifted uncomfortably, looked left, then right. No one was around.
“Smitty.” He stepped back a foot and waved a hand at her. “Stop crying, okay?”
She cried even louder. It sounded like hell. No—hell couldn’t be that bad.
“Hey, come on. I was just fooling around.” She still cried.
“Stop it, Smitty.”
He began to pace. “Look. I didn’t mean to—” He cut himself off. “Well, yeah, I guess I did mean to give you a hard time.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “But hell! I’ve been giving you a hard time for a couple of weeks now. You didn’t cry.”
She blubbered even harder. Her shoulders jerked as she tried to catch her breath.
Watching her, knowing he’d brought her to that point was the most belittling feeling he’d had in years. He stood there, wondering what the hell he had become, asking himself if this was what happened when you’d spent so many years throwing your life away. Did you start looking for others to take down with you? He wiped his palms on his pants. He just stood there, his chest tight with some obscure emotion.
She really sobbed.
Christ! She was noisy. “Smitty . . .” He tried to think. He tried to say the word he thought he needed to say. It wouldn’t come.
Her hair hung around her face, and she clutched her knees. She clung to them as if there was nothing else in the world for her to hold. For an instant he had the stupid thought that she looked as if she were growing smaller.
“Stop crying, okay?” He rubbed his clammy hands on his pants again and took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Please.”
He squatted down in front of her. “Look at me, Smitty.” He paused, then added, “Please.”
She didn’t move.
“Please.” There, he thought. Third time. It was getting easier. Then he looked at her still hunched in that position, still sobbing.
“Oh, shit!” He slid his arms under her and picked her up, then stood. She curled into him, her head on his shoulder, her whole body limp.
“I—I—I didn’t w—want to . . . to fe-he-he-el this way.” Her voice was weak and her words stuttered between her breaths.
“I know.” He started walking her toward the hut.
“It . . . it . . . just happened. But it’s so . . . so stupid, you know? Really stupid. It . . . it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
Her damp face was in his neck. “How could this happen?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I’m trying not to care.”
“I can tell that.” He rubbed his chin against the top of her head.
“I didn’t want to care. You—you’re not the kind of man I should care about, you know?”
“I know.”
She sobbed again.
He rubbed her back lightly with his hand.
“Oh, Hank . . . ,” she wailed.
“What, sweetheart?”
“I don’t even like you!”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t like me either.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Nah. I can be a stubborn bastard.”
“Yes, you can.”
She was quiet for a minute. He looked down at her. She was thinking again. But hell, it was better than her crying.
She took a deep breath and muttered into his neck, “Why? It isn’t logical.” She looked up at him finally. Her face was pink and blotchy and a god-awful mess. “Why us?”
“Because, sweetheart.” He looked down at her but kept walking. “Life deals you deuces.”
By the time he carried Margaret through the door of the hut, she had regained control. Her face was still buried in his neck, but she didn’t move it. She wanted him to keep holding her. There was something relaxing about not having to try so hard, accepting that she wasn’t perfect and that just this once she didn’t have to be. To let her emotions—illogical or not—rule her for just a little while.
He stood in the dark hut, then slowly let her slide down the length of his long body until she felt her toes touch the ground. Her arms were still linked around his neck and his warm hands rested flat against h
er bottom. He was breathing rapidly, the sound husky and abrupt. But he didn’t move. He only stood there, still and silent.
She couldn’t fight him any longer. She couldn’t fight what was between them. And she didn’t want to. She was tired of fighting something that felt so right inside of her heart even if it seemed wrong inside of her head. She looked up at him, wondering what he would do.
There was no answer in his expression. Nothing but a hard and blank look. She sensed he was battling with something inside him, something that wasn’t easy for him. His hands shook with it.
She whispered his name, and he closed his eyes briefly, then he reached up and took her hands from around his neck. He just held them at their sides for a moment. He was staring somewhere over her head, his eyes showing no sign of what he was thinking.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “What are we going to do?”
He released her, then took a step back. “I’m going to leave.”
“You’re what?”
He stepped back again, then turned away.
She stared at his back.
Two long strides and he was in the doorway. “I’m leaving.” He stood very still, the late afternoon light behind him. It was intimidating, the way he almost filled the doorway, like a portrait that takes up the whole frame.
She could see the tension in his stance and that his breathing was still not even. “Why are you leaving?”
After an awkward stretch of silence, he turned, his hand resting on the door.
“Because this time—for once—I’m not going to try to take something I want.”
Her voice was a ragged whisper. “Why not?”
“Because it’s just too damn important.” A second later the doorway was empty.
Margaret sat inside the dark hut, her head buried in her hands. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t true. She didn’t have those kinds of feelings for Hank.
But she couldn’t lie to herself anymore than she could lie to him. She felt open and bleeding and miserable. She thought she heard something and looked back at the doorway, part of her hoping he would be standing there. But he wasn’t. No one was there.
