Forced to stay put because Devlin wasn’t releasing her wrist no matter how hard she tugged to get free, she lifted her chin, her eyes shooting tiny, flaming arrows at him.
“Nothing changes with you, does it?” she retorted. “I take five minutes to join you and you’re already flirting with some island girl.” Her eyes narrowed into accusing slits. “You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re delusional,” he shot back. “That ‘island girl’ you thought I was ‘flirting’ with was the waitress, taking our order. I ordered for you,” he added abruptly. “I didn’t think you’d want seafood on a weak stomach, so I went with something safe—the baked pineapple and ham platter. Comfort food.”
Surprise corkscrewed through her anger before Amy could think better of it and cover her reaction. “You ordered for me? Comfort food?”
“Of course I did,” he answered, still trying to get a grip on his temper. “Now stop reading hidden meaning into everything and come back before everyone starts asking questions.” He was smiling now, broadly in case any of the wedding guests could see him.
Since he still hadn’t let go of her wrist, Amy had little choice but to return with him to the restaurant.
Walking in, she flashed a dutiful smile at the others seated along the long table and then slipped into the spot Devlin had saved her.
“Pretend you’re having a good time,” Devlin whispered into her ear as he sat beside her.
His thigh brushed against hers and she did her best not to notice. But her best was not nearly good enough. The brief contact was like touching a live wire.
Electricity zigzagged through her, leaving none of her untouched—or unaffected.
She damned him for it.
Devlin could still make her light up like a Christmas tree, the way no one else ever could, she thought grudgingly.
She was going to have to do something about that, Amy promised herself.
* * *
WHEN THE WAITRESS she’d accused Devlin of flirting with returned bearing a tray loaded down with their dinners, Amy was too busy trying to psyche herself up to face her meal to even look at the young woman.
She tried her best.
Subtly holding her breath, she carefully cut up the thick slice of baked ham into bite-size pieces. However, they were bite-size pieces she just couldn’t induce herself to bite. The very smell threatened to send her bolting to the ladies’ room again.
So, covertly watching everyone else around the table, she carefully palmed, then deposited, each piece of ham into the napkin she had spread out on her lap.
As soon as she could, she was going to donate the booty in her napkin to the first hungry-looking dog or cat she came across. No sense in wasting the meal. And Devlin had been right. It was her favorite kind of comfort food.
Just not right now.
The conversation around the table lasted a long time. The wedding guests caught up on one another’s lives and made tentative plans for the next couple of days, right up to the actual wedding ceremony and reception.
“After that,” Nick announced, addressing them all, “you’re on your own. I don’t want to see or hear from any of you.” He grinned broadly. “I’ve got a honeymoon to keep me busy,” he told them, punctuating his statement with what amounted to a sexy wink.
While the evening was still young by local standards, considering that the wedding guests had all flown in from Chicago, exhaustion was catching up with the best of them. Some of the guests were going to stay up for limbo dancing, but Devlin was ready to call it a night.
“Well, I’m going to turn in early and rest up,” Devlin said. He was the best man and it was up to him to keep everything running smoothly for the bride and groom. “We’ve got a big two days ahead of us.”
Taking care to fold her napkin tightly, Amy slipped it into her purse, closing the clutch before she stood.
“Turning in sounds good to me,” she agreed.
“Hey, if I were turning in with the likes of your husband, it wouldn’t just sound ‘good’ to me, it would sound downright magnificent,” one of the wedding guests—Jennifer something—cracked with an appreciative laugh as her deep brown eyes skimmed over Devlin.
“Yeah, well, better luck next time,” Amy said coolly, dismissing the blonde. With that, she left the table and began to walk back to the cabana.
“Amy, wait up,” Devlin called after her. He detached himself from Nick and all but sprinted after Amy, hurrying to catch up.
She barely slowed. “Don’t leave on my account. Maybe that waitress is waiting to take an extra order or two from you.”
“Give it a rest, Amy,” he said flatly. “Waitresses are supposed to be friendly. They get bigger tips that way.” He matched his gait to hers as he came up beside her. “I’ve got a question for you.”
“What?” she bit off impatiently. She deliberately avoided looking at him as she continued walking back to their quarters.
“Why did you put your dinner in your purse?”
Devlin could see he caught her off guard with that one. She probably thought no one had noticed what she was doing. But he had taken in every detail, thinking it rather odd that she cut up all of her meat in one go-round, rather than as she consumed it.
“You feeding some little animal you smuggled into our room?” It wasn’t meant to be a serious guess, but with Amy, he never knew.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She lengthened her stride.
“Sure you do.” He hardly had to increase his pace to keep up.
Then, because Amy was obviously not expecting it, he succeeded in grabbing her purse out of her hands.
“Exhibit A,” he announced, pulling back the napkin and displaying the pieces of ham that were now scattered inside her clutch purse.
CHAPTER FIVE
“GIVE ME THAT,” Amy cried, snatching her purse back from Devlin. She snapped it shut and tucked it under her arm. “I wasn’t hungry. Didn’t feel like eating and didn’t feel like having you badger me with all kinds of questions as to why I wasn’t eating,” she told him, grinding out each word. “Satisfied?”
His eyes on hers, Devlin moved his head deliberately from side to side. “Not even close.”
She should have expected as much. “Well, too bad, because that’s all you’re getting,” she informed him as she turned away.
Devlin caught her by the shoulders, forcing her to turn around and look at him again. “Amy, you’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
This time it was her heart that rose up to her throat instead of her stomach.
Did he suspect?
She couldn’t tell.
“Like what?” she asked, doing her best to sound disinterested instead of nervous.
“Like if you were sick, if you had some sort of a condition—a disease,” he said, frustrated that he was tripping over his own tongue like this. But the kind of illness he was thinking about wasn’t easy to discuss, or even broach. “You’d tell me, right? Right?” he demanded when she didn’t answer.
For a second, she began to pull free, but the concerned—really concerned—look in his eyes froze her in place.
He was worried, she realized. Seriously worried. As annoyed with him for putting her through this as she was, with her hormones splattered all over the map the way they were, Amy couldn’t let him labor under that false impression.
Not when it made him look so haunted.
She blew out a long breath. “Yes, I’d tell you, and no, I don’t have any kind of disease, if that’s what you’re asking me. What I have is jet lag and a bad bout of nerves.”
That part was true, as far as it went. What she didn’t say was that she was nervous because of him. Because she was afraid he would see right through her. That she was pregnant.
“I don’t like lying to people we consider friends,” she said, then winced, realizing that she was lying to him.
Was that it—she didn’t like lying? Somehow, he wasn’t entirely convinced. With Amy, things were never straightforward or simple. There were layers to peel away. But for now, for simplicity’s sake, he just went with what she was telling him.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not lying,” he said as they continued to walk back to the cabana. “You’re just not expounding on the truth.”
Amy rolled her eyes. Now he was just bending the truth to suit his purposes. “That’s just a matter of semantics,” she pointed out.
“Not really,” Devlin maintained. “Nobody asked you if we were still married, or getting a divorce, did they? You weren’t forced to tell someone that we were deliriously happy, right?”
“Right, but—”
“No, no ‘but,’” he cautioned her. “That’s where it stops.”
That was okay for now, she allowed. “But what about later?” she asked. “What about after we get the divorce? You don’t think our friends are going to be angry at us for deceiving them?”
“Honestly?” he asked her.
She lifted her shoulders and then let them fall. “If you’re capable of that.”
He ignored the sting of her comment. “I think that’ll be one of the last things on their minds when they hear we’ve split up. Mostly, they’ll wonder how they didn’t see it coming, and since they didn’t see it coming, will it happen to them, too, without any warning?”
They’d reached the cabana and Amy slipped in her keycard. The door gave. Amy shrugged in response to his involved answer. “Maybe you’re right,” she murmured, giving up.
Then, walking inside, Amy moved to close the door behind her. “Well, good night.”
Staying one jump ahead of her, Devlin had put his hand in the way, stopping the door from closing.
“This is my cabana, too, remember?” he said mildly.
Yes, she remembered. Remembered all too well. Remembered, too, what had happened the last time they had been in a bedroom together.
Morning sickness.
“Are you really going to make an issue of this?” She instantly went on the offensive. She was beyond exhausted—and that was the way it had been for the past month, as she’d vacillated between complete fatigue and minor surges of energy that came out of nowhere. And she just didn’t have any reserve energy on tap for arguing.
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” he asked her. “Not unless you want everyone talking about our situation and how you let your rampaging, baseless jealousy ruin a good thing.”
“My rampaging, baseless jealousy?” she repeated in complete disbelief. Did he think of himself as the innocent victim here? She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Is that how you see it?”
His face was the picture of innocence. “There’s no other way to see it.” She wouldn’t be jealous if he didn’t give her anything to be jealous about. If he had been just oblivious to these women who devoured him with their eyes and who, given half a chance, would run off with him to some secluded spot and give in to all their secret fantasies.
“You’re impossible,” she told him.
“No, I’m very, very possible,” Devlin replied, looking at her significantly.
He was standing way too close, Amy thought. She could even feel his breath on her skin as he talked—and that was completely unacceptable.
Because she could feel barriers turning from steel to tin foil.
Her bravado was all she had left and she wrapped herself up in it.
“Have it your way,” she declared. She pulled a blanket off the bed and held it out to him. “Go sleep in the tub.”
Devlin made no effort to take the blanket from her. “Only if I’m a masochist,” he said. “I sleep in that tub, my neck’s going to be stiff for the next two days.”
Okay, she wasn’t completely unreasonable. “Fine. Sleep on the floor,” she told him. When he began to spread out the blanket next to her bed, she made the instructions more specific. “No, the bathroom floor.”
“What if you want to use it during the night?” he asked, a wicked look coming into his eyes. “If you don’t mind crawling over me to get to the toilet and then having me possibly witness—”
She held up her hands as if to physically push his words back. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. You can sleep on the floor in here,” she said in exasperation. “Just as long as you remember to stay on the floor,” she warned.
“Hey, no problem,” he conceded. “You’re not as irresistible as you might think.”
All right, it was a petty thing to say and he knew it, but the things she was saying were getting to him and he was willing to bet she didn’t even know she was inflicting wounds.
Declaring dibs on the bathroom, Amy went in first. For once, she wasn’t fighting the urge to throw up. She quickly pulled on a nightgown and deliberately put a robe on over it before she made her way out.
“Bathroom’s yours if you— What are you doing?” she demanded, stopping dead.
While she’d been in the bathroom changing, he’d been doing the same. Except that Devlin’s “changing” involved stripping his clothes off—and putting nothing on in their place.
“Just getting ready for bed,” Devlin answered her innocently.
He couldn’t be serious. “Put something on,” she ordered, immediately turning her head away and focusing on a spider that was making its way across the opposite wall.
“Why?” Devlin made no move to cover himself. “Did you forget that I sleep in the raw?”
Yes, she had. How she could have forgotten, now that she thought about it, was completely beyond her. But with all the other logistics involved in pulling this off so that no one suspected the truth for now, which in turn meant Devlin would sign the divorce papers, she’d forgotten this one very salient point.
Forgotten, too, just how magnificent a build Devlin had—and obviously still had. If anything, the quick glimpse she’d just caught told her that not only had he kept in shape, he actually looked to be in even better shape than he had been before.
“Your new girlfriend making you keep in top condition?” she asked, sliding into bed, still careful to keep her eyes on anything but him.
“There is no new girlfriend—and before you say it, there is no old girlfriend, either,” he informed her wearily. There’d never been anyone but Amy since the first day he saw her. For a while, he’d thought he’d actually convinced her of that—but he’d obviously been mistaken.
“Having too much fun playing the field?” she prodded.
“You are impossible to talk to, you know that?” he accused.
She said nothing, turning her head toward the window so that she didn’t have to look at him.
And so he couldn’t see she was crying. Crying because his accusation reminded her that there had been a time when they’d stay up all night, doing nothing but talking. Talking about their hopes, their dreams and, eventually, talking about just how much they loved each other—and always would.
Reflecting back now, it seemed to her as if that had all happened in another lifetime. To someone else. There was nothing left of those two people, she thought—except for maybe an incredibly sculpted, washboard-hard stomach.
CHAPTER SIX
DEVLIN DIDN’T REMEMBER falling asleep. He’d thought that his frustration with the situation was more than enough to keep him up all night.
But it didn’t.
Somewhere along the line, his eyes shut and sleep overcame him for at least a little while. What finally woke him was a very strange, muffled sound coming from somewhere outside his cabana window.
No, it wasn’t coming from outside, he r
ealized as consciousness got a better hold on him. The noise was coming from the bathroom.
What was that?
Propping himself up on his elbow, Devlin was about to ask Amy if she was hearing the same thing when he saw that the bed was empty. He got to his knees and saw a single, thin line of light coming from beneath the bathroom door.
There it was again. That strange sound.
He listened more closely. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that it sounded like—
Retching.
Someone was throwing up.
Amy?
Devlin was about to scramble to his feet and go toward the bathroom when the door to the latter opened. In the predawn light that was wiggling its way into the room through the window, he could just about make out Amy’s face.
She looked utterly miserable.
“Amy, are you all right?”
Devlin’s voice caught her completely off guard. She’d thought he was still asleep. She gasped, her hand spread out on her chest. She’d been so focused on trying not to make any noise that might wake Devlin, she hadn’t realized that he was awake.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
“Damn it, Dev―” she glared at him “―you almost gave me a heart attack.”
For once, there were no quips. “I heard you throwing up. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
She waved an impatient hand at his question. “Just something bad I ate,” she told him. “Probably the seafood.”
“When?” Devlin challenged, bewildered. “I didn’t see you eat a single thing and we’ve been together since the flight.”
“So now I have to check with you before I put anything into my mouth?” she demanded, deliberately turning the focus away from herself by baiting him into another argument.
How did she do that? he wondered in pure awe. How did Amy manage to twist things around so that the two of them would wind up in some half-baked argument about things that had nothing to do with the initial conversation?
“I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “All I said to you was—”
Island Promises: Hawaiian HolidayHawaiian ReunionHawaiian Retreat Page 11
