Remarried In Haste

Maybe she didn’t care about him enough now to think him worth a good fight.

He didn’t like that conclusion at all. With an impatient sigh Brant spread out the list of bird species and opened the book at page one, forcing himself to concentrate. After all, he didn’t want to disgrace himself by not knowing one end of a bird from the other. Especially in front of his ex-wife.

Rowan could have done without the connecting flight from Antigua being four hours late. Rick Williams from Toronto was the last of her group to arrive: the only other Canadian besides herself on the trip. The delay seemed like a bad omen, because it was the second hitch of the day; she and the rest of the group had had an unexpected five hours of birding in Antigua already today when their Grenada flight had also been late.

Rick’s flight should have landed in Grenada at six-thirty, in time for dinner with everyone else at the hotel. Instead it was now nearly ten forty-five and Rick still hadn’t come through customs.

His luggage, she thought gloomily. They’ve lost his luggage.

She checked with the security guard and was allowed into the customs area. Four people were standing at the desk which dealt with lost bags. The elderly woman she discounted immediately, and ran her eyes over the three men. The gray-haired gentleman was out; Rick Williams was thirty-two years old. Which left...her heart sprang into her throat like a grouse leaping from the undergrowth. The man addressing the clerk was the image of Brant.

She swallowed hard and briefly closed her eyes. She was tired, yes, but not that tired.

But when she looked again, the man had straightened to his full height, his backpack pulling his blue cotton shirt taut across his shoulders. His narrow hips and long legs were clad in well-worn jeans. There was a dusting of gray in the thick dark hair over his ears. That was new, she thought numbly. He’d never had any gray in his hair when they’d been married.

It wasn’t Brant. It couldn’t be.

But then the man turned to say something to the younger man standing beside him, and she saw the imperious line of his jaw, shadowed with a day’s dark beard, and the jut of his nose. It was Brant. Brant Curtis had turned up in the Grenada airport just as she was supposed to meet a member of one of her tours. Bad joke, she thought sickly, lousy coincidence, and dragged her gaze to the younger man. He must be Rick Williams.

Her eyes darted around the room. These was nowhere she could hide in the hopes that Brant would leave before Rick, and therefore wouldn’t see her. She couldn’t very well scuttle back through customs; they’d think she was losing her mind. Anyway, Rick was one of her clients, and she owed him whatever help she could give him if his bags were lost.

At least she’d had a bit of warning. She was exceedingly grateful for that, because she’d hate Brant to have seen all the shock and disbelief that must have been written large on her face in the last few moments; the harsh fluorescent lighting would have hidden none of it. Taking a deep breath, schooling her features to impassivity, Rowan walked toward the desk.

As if he’d sensed her presence Brant turned around, and for the first time in months she saw the piercing blue of his eyes, the blue of a desert sky. As they fastened themselves on her, not even the slightest trace of emotion crossed his face. Of course not, she thought savagely. He’d always been a master at hiding his feelings. It was one of the many things that had driven them apart, although he would never have acknowledged the fact. Rowan forced a smile to her lips and was fiercely proud that she sounded as impassive as he looked, “Well...what a surprise. Hello, Brant.”

“What the devil have you done to your hair?”

Nearly three years since he’d seen her and all he could talk about was her hair? “I had it cut.”

“For Pete’s sake, what for?”

A small part of her was wickedly pleased that she’d managed to disrupt his composure; it had never been easy to knock Brant off balance, his self-control was too formidable for that. Rowan ran her fingers through her short, ruffled curls. “Because I wanted to. And now you must excuse me...I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”

She turned to the younger man and said pleasantly, “You must be Rick Williams?”

The man glanced up from the form he was filling in; he smelled rather strongly of rum. “Nope. Sorry.” Doing a double take, he looked her up and down. “Extremely sorry.”

Rowan gritted her teeth. She rarely bothered with makeup on her tours, and her jeans and sport shirt were quite unexceptional. Why did men think that she could possibly be complimented when they eyed her like a specimen laid out on a tray? And where the heck was Rick Williams? If he’d missed the plane, why hadn’t he phoned her?

Brant said, “Rick couldn’t come. So I came in his place.”

“What?”

“Rick has a form of pneumonia and the doctors wouldn’t let him come,” Brant repeated patiently. “It was all rather at the last minute, so I didn’t bother letting you know.”

She sputtered, “You knew if you let me know I wouldn’t have let you come!”

“That’s true enough,” he said.

So that was why he hadn’t looked surprised to see her, he’d known all along she’d be there to meet him. Once again, he’d had the advantage of her. “Were you bored and thought you’d stir up a little trouble?” she spat. “From reading the newspapers, I’d have thought there were more than enough wars and famines in the world to get your attention without having to turn yourself into an ordinary tourist in the Caribbean.”

So she did care enough to fight, thought Brant. Interesting. Very interesting. He said blandly, “If we’re going to have a—er, disagreement, don’t you think we should at least go outside where there’s a semblance of privacy?”

Rowan looked around her. The young man who wasn’t Rick Williams was leering at her heaving chest; the customs officer was grinning at her. Trying to smother another uprush of pure rage, she managed, with a huge effort, to modulate her voice. “Is your baggage missing?”

Brant nodded. “They figure it’s gone on to Trinidad—should be here tomorrow. No big deal.”

“Have you finished filling in the forms?”

Another nod. “I’m ready to go anytime you are.”

“I’ll phone the airlines on the way out,” she said crisply, “and get you on the first flight back to Toronto. A birding trip is definitely not your thing.”

“No, you won’t. I’ve paid my money and I’m staying.”

She’d forgotten how much taller he was than her five feet nine. How big he was. “Brant, let’s not—”

He jerked his head at the door. “Outside. Not in here.”

He was right, of course. Her company would fire her on the spot if it could see how she was greeting a client. She pivoted, stalked through the glass doors into the open part of the terminal and then out into the dusky heat of a tropical night. The van was parked by the curb. She swung herself into the driver’s seat and took the key from the pocket of her jeans, shoving it into the ignition. Brant had climbed into the passenger seat. Turning to face him, Rowan said tautly, “So what’s going on here?”

Brant took his time to answer. He was still getting used to her haircut, to that moment of outrage by the baggage counter when he’d realized she’d changed something about herself that he’d loved, changed it without asking him—and if that wasn’t the height of irrationality he didn’t know what was. The new haircut, he decided reluctantly, suited her, emphasizing the slim line of her throat and the exquisite angles of her cheekbones. Her eyes, a rich brown in daylight, now matched the velvety darkness of the sky. Eyes to drown in...

He said equably, “I needed a vacation. Through the friend of a friend I heard about Rick’s pneumonia and thought I’d take his place. Don’t make such a big deal of it, Rowan.”

“If it’s no big deal, why don’t you just go home? Where you belong.”

You don’t belong with me, that’s what she was saying. A statement that truly riled him. “You used to say—fairly frequently, as I recall—that I never took time to smell the roses. Or, in this case, to watch the birds...you should be pleased I’m finally doing so.”

“Brant, let’s get something straight. What you do or don’t do is no longer my concern. Go watch the birds by all means. But don’t do it on my turf.”

“You’ve lost weight.”

Her exasperated hiss of breath sounded very loud in the confines of the van. Brant watched her fight for composure, her knuckles gripping the steering wheel as if she were throttling him, and discovered to his amazement that he was enjoying himself. Enjoying himself? Was that why he’d come to Grenada?

To Rowan’s nostrils drifted the faint tang of aftershave, the same one Brant had used during the four tempestuous years they’d been married. It brought with it a host of memories she didn’t dare bring to the surface; she’d be lost if she did. Nevertheless, she let her eyes wander with a lazy and reckless intimacy down his flat belly. “You’ve lost weight, as well,” she said and saw that, briefly, she’d stopped him in his tracks. “Am I right?” she added sweetly.

Brant glared at her in impotent fury. He knew exactly what was wrong. He wanted to kiss her. So badly that he could taste the soft yielding of her lips and the silken slide of her cheek, and feel the first stirring of his groin. But kissing Rowan wasn’t part of the plan.

Not that he’d had a plan. He’d acted on impulse in a way rare to him, and now he was faced—literally—with the consequences. Rowan. His ex-wife. His former wife. His divorced wife.

His wife.

He said levelly, knowing he was backing off from something he should have anticipated and hadn’t, “Look, it’s been a long day and I’m tired. Please, could we go to the hotel so I can catch up on some sleep?”

“Certainly,” she said. “But let me make something clear first. I’m doing my job in the next two weeks, Brant. A job I love and do well. You’re just another client to me. Because I’m not going to allow you to be anything else—do you understand?”

“I haven’t said I want to be anything else,” he remarked, and watched her lips tighten.