Remarried In Haste

Maybe if she repeated this often enough, she’d start to believe it. Maybe.

CHAPTER THREE

AT DINNER Brant ate curried chicken and mango ice cream as though they were so much cardboard, and tried to talk to Karen, whose sole topic of conversation was Sheldon, rather than to Natalie, whose every topic was laced with sexual innuendo. Rowan was sitting at the other end of the table laughing and chatting with Steve, May and Peg; she looked carefree and confident. He had the beginnings of a headache.

Would he be a coward to fly back to Toronto? Or was it called common sense instead?

People dispersed after dinner; it was nine-fifty and they had to be up before six to leave for the airport, to fly to the next island on the itinerary. Rowan had already gone to her room. Brant found himself standing outside her patio doors, where, once again, the curtains were drawn tight. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, let alone why, he raised his fist, tapped on the glass, and in a voice that emulated Steve’s gravelly bass he said, “Rowan? Steve here. Do you have any Tylenol? Natalie’s got a headache.”

“Just a second,” she called.

Then the door opened and at the same instant that her eyes widened in shock, Brant shoved, his foot in the gap and pushed it still wider, wide enough that he could step through. Rowan said in a furious whisper, “Brant, get out of here!”

He closed the door behind him. She had started undressing; her feet were bare and her shirt pulled out of her waistband, the top two buttons undone. In the soft lamplight her skin looked creamy and her hair glowed like a banked fire.

She spat, “Go away and leave me alone—you’re good at doing that, you’ve had lots of practice.”

“For God’s sake, leave the past out of this!”

“I despise you for pulling a trick like that, pretending you were Steve. Although it’s just what I should expect from someone so little in tune with his feelings, so removed from—”

Brant had had enough. With explosive energy he said, “I’m not leaving until you tell me how else I’m going to get five minutes alone with you.”

“I don’t want ten seconds alone with you!”

“We’re not going to spend the next two weeks pretending I’ve come all this way just to see a bunch of dumpy old pigeons.”

Rowan felt her body freeze to stillness; in the midst of that stillness she remembered the resolve she’d made in the van. To keep her cool, her feelings hidden. She wasn’t doing very well in that department so far; she’d better see what she could do to improve matters. Forcing herself to lower her voice, she said, “So why not tell me why you’ve come here, Brant?”

He gaped at her. Because Gabrielle told me to? That would go over like a lead balloon. “I just wanted to see you,” he said lamely.

“You’ve seen me,” she replied without a trace of emotion. “Now you can go back to Toronto. Or to whatever benighted part of the globe you’re writing about next. Either way, I want you to stay away from me.”

“Don’t I mean anything to you anymore?”

He hadn’t meant to say that. Her lips thinned. She answered tersely, “If you’re asking if I’ll ever forget you, the answer’s probably no—the damage went too deep for that. If you’re asking if I want to revive any kind of a relationship with you, the answer’s absolutely no. And for the very same reason.”

“You’ve changed.”

“I would hope so.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment! You never used to be so cold. So hard.”

“Then you can congratulate yourself on what you’ve accomplished.”

“You never used to be bitchy, either,” he retorted, his temper rising in direct proportion to his need to puncture her self-possession.

“I’d call it a good dose of the truth rather than bitchiness. But there’s no reason we should agree on that, we never agreed on anything else.” Suddenly Rowan ran her fingers through her cropped hair, her pent-up breath escaping in a long sigh. “This is really stupid, standing here trading insults with each other. It’s been a long day and I’ve got to be up at five-thirty. So I’m just going to say one more thing, Brant, then I want you to leave. I made a mistake seven years ago when I married you. I’ve paid for that mistake—it cost me plenty. And now I’m moving on. For all kinds of obvious reasons I don’t need your help to do that. Get yourself on the first plane back to Toronto and kindly stay out of my hfe.”

Her fists were clenched at her sides and she was very pale. The woman Brant had been married to would have been yelling at him by now, passion exuding from every pore, her words pouring out as clamorously as a waterfall tumbles over a cliff. Had she really changed that much? Even worse, was he, as she’d said, responsible for that change?

Rowan picked up the receiver of the phone by her bed, knowing she had to end this. “I’ll give you ten seconds. Then I’m calling the front desk.”

“Go right ahead,” he drawled. “I’ll make sure I tell them I’m your ex-husband. I’ll tell Natalie, too—she’ll spread the word to the group, I’m sure.”

“You wouldn’t!”

He bared his teeth in a smile. “I’ve never been known for fighting fair. Had you forgotten?”

She hadn’t. One of his weapons had always been his body, of course; his body and the searing sexual bond between the two of them. Suddenly frightened, Rowan said, “Brant, don’t do this. You’re only making things worse between us.”

“According to you, that’s impossible.”

She took another deep breath and said steadily, “I can only speak for myself here. I still have some good memories—some wonderful memories—of the time we spent together. But when you force your way into my room like this, and threaten to expose my private life to a group of strangers who happen to be my business clients, then I start to wonder if I’m kidding myself about those memories—I was deluded, I wasn’t seeing the real man, he never existed. Don’t do that to me, Brant. Please.”

Some of the old intensity was back in her voice, and there was no doubting her sincerity. Shaken, in spite of himself, Brant blurted, “Is there someone else in your life, Rowan?”

“No,” she said flatly. “But I want there to be.”

Relief, rage and chagrin battled in his chest: he’d never meant to ask that question. Where the devil was his famous discretion, his ability to control a conversation and learn exactly what he wanted to know from someone who’d had no intention of revealing it? His boss would fire him if he could see him in action right now. Defeated by a woman? Brant Curtis?

He said thickly, “One kiss. For old time’s sake.”

Panic flared in her face. She grabbed the phone and cried, “You come one step nearer and I’ll tell everyone in Grenada that you’re the world-famous journalist, Michael Barton. So help me, I will.”

Michael Barton was Brant’s pseudonym, and only a very small handful of people knew that Brant Curtis and Michael Barton were one and the same man; it was this closely guarded secret that enabled him as Brant Curtis, civil engineer and skilled negotiator, to enter with impunity whichever country he was investigating. He felt an ill-timed flare of admiration for Rowan; it was quite clear that she’d do it, she whom he’d trusted for years with his double identity. “You sure don’t want me to kiss you, do you?” he jeered. “Why not, Rowan? Afraid we’ll end up in bed?”

“Look up divorce in the dictionary, why don’t you? We’re through, finished, kaput. I wouldn’t go to bed with you if you were the last man on earth.”

“Bad cliché, my darling.”

With a huge effort Rowan prevented herself from throwing the telephone at him, cord and all. Keep your cool, Rowan. Keep your cool. She said evenly, “It happens to be true.”

“But why so adamant? Who are you trying to convince?”

She said with a sudden, corrosive bitterness, “The one man in the world who never allowed himself to be convinced of anything I said.”

She meant it. Brant thought blankly. Her bitterness was real, laden with a pain whose depths horrified him. He stood very still, at a total loss for words. He earned his living—an extraordinarily good living—by words. Yet right now he couldn’t find anything to say to the woman who had been his lover and his wife. She looked exhausted, he realized with a pang of what could only be compassion, her shoulders slumped, her cheeks pale as the stuccoed walls.

As if she had read his mind, she said in a low voice, “Brant, I work fifteen-hour days for two weeks on this trip and I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Yeah...I’m sorry,” he muttered, and headed for the door. Sorry for what? For bursting into her room? Or for killing the fieriness in her spirit all those months ago?

Was her accusation true? Had he never allowed her to change his mind about anything? If so, no wonder she wouldn’t give him the time of day.

The door slid smoothly open and shut just as smoothly. He didn’t once look back. Instead of going to his own room, he tramped down the driveway and left the hotel grounds. He’d noticed a bar not that far down the road. He’d order a double rum and hope it would make him sleep. Or six of them in a row. And he wouldn’t allow his own good memories—of which there were many—to come to the surface.

He’d be done in if he did.