First Exposure iTunes

by Elisabeth Naughton

  He moved closer. So close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. “But I never stopped thinking about you. You have no idea how guilty I felt over that. My wife’s dying of cancer and you’re the one I’m dreaming about. You’re the one I still dream about. I wasn’t trying to keep Zach a secret from you. I was just trying to find the right time to tell you.”

  “The right time.” Avery’s eyes slid closed, and tears burned her eyelids. Part of her wanted to grab on to him and never let go. But a bigger part, the part she’d spent the last twelve years perfecting, wanted to run away and never look back. “We never can seem to find the right time, can we?”

  “Ava—”

  The walls were closing in. The air growing thick and constrictive. She needed to get out. “I…I can’t do this right now.”

  She let go of the picture and moved around him toward the sliding door. The photograph fluttered to the floor. She jerked the door open and stepped out onto the patio, drawing in deep gulps of air she hoped would ease the sting in her chest.

  “Ava, wait.”

  Warm white sand closed around her toes. She didn’t know where she was going, she just needed to move. To think. To try to get rid of this ache in the pit of her stomach. Cade’s hand at her arm jerked her around to face him. “Don’t walk away from me. Let’s talk about this.”

  All the hurt and pain bubbled up and over. “Talk about it? Fine, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about why you left me in the middle of the night. Why you ran off and joined the military like a coward. Why I never heard from you, even after all the letters I sent you. The only thing I ever got from you after that was the annulment papers. Do you have any idea how that felt? How humiliating it was?”

  “Ava—”

  “How my parents gloated and told me it was for the best?”

  “It was for the best.” His voice rose. At his hip, he held the towel tightly together. “I had nothing to give you then. No job, no education, no future. We were living in that hellhole on the edge of Spokane and barely making ends meet, and every one of your dreams of going to college died when your parents cut you off, all because you married me. That might not have seemed like a lot to you then, but I knew what it was like to live without money. I didn’t want that for you. I wanted you to go get an education. I wanted you to have a future. I didn’t want us to end up like my parents, poor and bitter and resenting each other for every bad choice we made. So when your dad came to me and offered to take you back if I agreed to the annulment, I said yes. I did it to save you, not to humiliate and hurt you. And I left because I couldn’t stand to be near you and not have you.”

  Avery stared at him. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to feel, for that matter. Yes, financially things had been tough for them. Yes, she remembered he’d been stressed then. But every time she’d asked him what was wrong, he’d said he was fine. He’d smiled, kissed her, and changed the subject. How could she have ever suspected this was the reason he’d left?

  He stepped closer, and in a low voice said, “But that doesn’t mean I stopped thinking about you, and it sure the hell doesn’t mean I didn’t love you anymore. I read the first few letters you sent, but I eventually stopped because I couldn’t stand it. They were pure agony. All I wanted to do was write to you and explain, but I couldn’t because the deal I’d made with your parents forbade me from contacting you. Then the letters stopped, and I heard you went off to USC. And by the time I got my shit together and didn’t care about your parents’ influence anymore, you were already on your way to becoming a big star. What the hell was I going to offer you then except bad memories?”

  Her heart pounded hard, and words were hard to form, but eventually she managed, “You didn’t even try.”

  He released a long breath. “I didn’t think there was a chance. Ava…” His voice softened, and he moved even closer, until she could feel the heat and life radiating from his skin. “If I had thought you still cared about me at all, I’d have been on your doorstep. You have to believe that.”

  Avery didn’t know what to believe. All she knew was that the hurt was still there. A hurt she thought an hour ago she could get past. Now she wasn’t so sure. She looked down at his bare feet in the sand, feeling stupid and foolish and, yeah, devastated all over again. “I…I’m not upset that you have a son, Cade. I’m not even upset that you were with other women. I’m just…” Her heart twisted. “You stayed with her because she was pregnant. And that hurts me. A lot. Because you have no idea how much I wish you would have stayed with me when I was pregnant.”

  She couldn’t process when he was close. She needed space. Needed to breathe and work through it all in her head. Everything with him had happened so fast, and now she wasn’t sure of anything. “I need to think.” She turned to go. “I’ll be back later.”

  “Hold on.” He caught her by the arm and turned her back to face him. Wide, horror-filled eyes met hers when she looked up. “What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t know. She’d always wondered if he’d never read the letters. It was easy to stay angry and think he’d blatantly ignored her, but she knew in her heart he wasn’t that kind of man…even then.

  Her heart pinched with a pain she felt everywhere. A pain as sharp as the day he’d left her. “I found out about a month after you’d gone. I wrote to you about it. You obviously didn’t read those letters.”

  “Holy shit.” He let go of her hand and took a giant step back.

  Were some hurts too big to put behind you? She was starting to think this one was.

  Damn her parents…

  She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed the sudden chill from her skin. She rarely talked about this, but since she’d just dropped a bombshell on him, she figured he deserved to know everything. “I…I was hoping you might come back, so I stayed in our apartment. Then when I found out I was pregnant and I knew my parents weren’t supportive of me keeping the baby, I let my spot at Stanford go and got a job waiting tables. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to save tips. I was closing one night about a month before I was due when I went into labor. It was a rough delivery. She got stuck. They called it a…a shoulder dystocia.” Words clogged in her throat, but she forced herself to go on. “The cord was wrapped around her neck. By the time they got her out, it was too late.”

  Tears blurred her eyes, but she blinked them back, fought from curling in on herself like she’d done so many times before. “I…I got to hold her after. She had your nose and chin. She was beautiful. I…I named her Bree, after your mom.”

  His eyes closed, and he dropped onto his knees in the sand, a man half-defeated. If someone had told her they’d be having this conversation now, after twelve years, she never would have believed them. She’d spent so many years being angry at him for leaving her, she hadn’t wanted to consider what his reaction to the loss of their child would be.

  “I…I waited for you,” she went on. “I thought there was still a chance you might come back. But when months passed and I finally realized it was over, I used the money I’d saved for Bree and moved to LA. I got into USC and started taking classes. A talent scout found me, and I did a few commercials. And then things kind of grew from there. I didn’t set out to be an actress. I just wanted to get as far from my parents as I could. And acting gave me a way to focus on something besides you.”

  He didn’t say anything. Just sat with his weight on his heels and his hands on his thighs with his eyes tightly closed. And in the silence, as the breeze blew the silky locks of hair off his forehead, she had an uncontrollable urge to wrap her arms around him, to comfort him in his grief. But hers was still too raw, her emotions way too close to the surface. And as much as she still wanted him, she realized there was more than just an ocean of time between them. There was a chasm between who they used to be and who they were now. Between who they’d become and how they lived. He had a child, and that came first—before his wants and needs and way before hers. And before this went any fu
rther, she needed to think about that. And decide whether that was something she could not only accept but embrace.

  “I…I need a few minutes, Cade. From the looks of things, you do too.”

  She turned and took three steps in the sand. His strained “Avery” stopped her.

  Not Ava, the nickname he used when he was feeling sexy. Not princess, the term of endearment he tossed her way when he was being cute. Avery. Her given name. The one he’d rarely ever used, and which now left a hole the size of her heart in her chest because she read clearly beyond the meaning.

  Some hurts could not be healed. This one—the one she’d just given him—was one of those.

  “We’ll finish this later,” she said, blinking back the burn behind her eyes. “Right now I just need a few minutes alone.”

  Cade couldn’t seem to speak. His lungs weren’t working.

  Blinking into the warm midday sun, he stared after Avery as she made her way across the sand. He needed to stop her. Needed to call her back, but his muscles weren’t working either, and the pain gathering beneath his breastbone was so strong he could barely draw a breath.

  She’d been pregnant. And he’d done nothing. No wonder she’d been so cold to him when he’d first seen her at Aegis. She had every right to hate him. And instead of trying to make things up to her, he’d pushed his way into this undercover mission. All but bullied her into pretending to be his wife.

  The small, cracked-heart tattoo he’d found at the hairline along her nape this morning in the shower suddenly made gut-wrenching sense. His mind skipped back to Natalie and how tired and miserable she’d been during the end of her pregnancy. His eyes slammed shut against a wave of pain. Avery had done it all alone. Not only had she waited tables to make ends meet, she’d had no one to rub her feet or sore back after a long day. No one to pick up the slack at home. No one to reassure her that everything was going to be okay. And in the end, it hadn’t even been that.

  Go after her…

  The words echoed in his head, and he dragged his eyes open to look down the white sand beach. She’d disappeared into the resort. A burst of energy rushed through him—a determination to find her, to tell her…

  He pushed to his feet. He needed to tell her he still loved her. That he was sorry. That somehow—even if it took the rest of his life—he was going to make it up to her. He took a step forward in the sand. The sound of a cell phone ringing from the open patio doors drew him up short. Dazed, he glanced around and realized he was wearing nothing but a towel.

  “Dammit.” He rushed back into the suite, grabbed his phone from the bar, and tucked it between his ear and shoulder as he ripped off the towel and found clean shorts.

  “Blackwell.”

  “Cade, it’s Ryder. I’ve got more intel on Luis.”

  “Yeah?” He wasn’t the least bit interested. He yanked on boxers and cargo shorts, found a shirt in the closet and tugged it over his head. He needed to get to Avery before she spent too much time in her head. Before she decided there was too much history between them to make this work.

  “The DEA dropped their undercover investigation on Luis last week. He agreed to testify against the Mexican cartel he’s been working for.”

  Cade stilled, and he gripped the phone in his hand. “He’s a snitch?”

  “He’s got money and he doesn’t want to go to jail. Does he have security with him?”

  Cade thought back to last night in the restaurant. A man and a woman dressed way too conservatively for the resort had been dining behind Luis. And Cade had seen their faces in the club later that evening as well. “Yeah.”

  “They’re federal agents. He’s got a contact at the resort. They’re planning to move on his word this weekend. You and your actress are in the middle of a sting.”

  Shit. He was so compromised, he’d missed the clues around him.

  Avery.

  Cade’s adrenaline surged. “I gotta go.”

  “I figured. Stay safe. And Blackwell, don’t get dea—”

  He didn’t wait for Jake to finish his sentence. He hit end on his phone and shoved it in his pocket. Then he grabbed his gun from the safe and tucked it in the waistband of his shorts at his spine beneath his shirt.

  No more space. After this, he wasn’t letting Avery out of his sight.

  Avery stopped near the beach bar and glanced toward the pool where two couples were engaged in a chicken fight in the middle of the water, one half-naked woman on each man’s shoulders, all four laughing and flirting in the midday sun.

  She didn’t want to be around anyone who was in a good mood. Didn’t want to be around anyone, period.

  Feeling sick over Cade’s reaction to her revelation and even worse over the fact she hated he’d married someone else when she had no right to be jealous, she shuffled toward the dance club she’d been in last night.

  Maybe alcohol would help. If not that, then perhaps a few minutes of silence where she could clear her head.

  She pushed the door open with both hands and stepped into the dark room. The place was empty, chairs upside down on tables, no music, no lights flashing as they’d been hours ago. The only illumination was a series of lamps over the bar.

  God, this club was more depressing than she’d thought. In the light of day, all the seedy, dirty things that had gone on here last night looked exactly like what they were: unhappy, unfulfilled people hoping someone else would fill the void.

  Was that what she was? Unhappy? Unfulfilled? Yes. She’d felt that way for a long time. Had she agreed to come to this place with Cade because she’d been secretly hoping he’d fill that void for her? She didn’t want to admit to as much, but the ache in the pit of her stomach told her that was exactly what she’d been hoping for. Even if she now knew that was childish and unrealistic.

  Glass clinking echoed from the open door into the kitchen behind the bar, and she remembered why she’d come here in the first place. Heading that way, she climbed onto one of the stools and waited until Ramon came around the corner.

  His dark eyes lit when he saw her, and a wide smile crossed his face, showing off straight, white teeth. “You’re back. Heat too much out dere already?”

  “Not exactly.” A familiar face eased the tension inside a touch. “I’ve just had it with people right now.”

  Ramon chuckled. “Aye, I know what you’re saying. How about a rum runner? I make da best on da island.”

  Any kind of runner sounded great to her right now. “Sure.”

  He shot her a speculative look as he mixed her drink. “You feeling okay today? You looked a little tipsy when ya walked outta here last night.”

  Tipsy wasn’t even the half of it. Her cheeks heated at the memory of that back room, what she’d seen and nearly done if Cade hadn’t had the sense to get her out of there. She lifted the drink Ramon set on the black napkin and took a long sip. Fruity flavors mixed with the punch of good strong rum slid down her throat to warm her belly. “Mm. That’s delicious.”

  “House specialty.”

  “How do you handle it? Working in a place like this? Doesn’t it get to you?”

  He chuckled and dried a glass with the towel in his hand. “It’s not dat bad. Most of da people here are harmless. Just looking for a good time.”

  “They’re fake.”

  He put the glass away behind the bar and laughed. “What’s da matter? You have a fight with your man?”

  Avery sighed, took another long drink, then rubbed her aching forehead. The alcohol was helping, but only slightly. “It wasn’t really a fight. And he’s not my man. At least not anymore. I guess we’re as fake as everyone else here.”

  “Aye.” Ramon dried another glass. “Temptation has da power to rip apart some relationships. This place is not for everyone.”

  Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of the pocket of her dress. If it was Cade, she didn’t want to talk to him.

  She glanced down and felt a burst of relief at the name on the screen: Lauren Kauffman.r />
  She held up her finger to Ramon. “Sorry. I need to take this.”

  He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Alone, Avery lifted the phone to her ear and said, “You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice.”

  “Things not going so well?” Lauren asked.

  Avery and Lauren had become friends when Avery had bought the house next door to Lauren’s on Biscayne Bay. Avery didn’t get to spend as much time in Florida as she liked, but when she was there, she loved hanging out with her friend. “You could say that. Cade is here.”

  “I take it that means the two of you aren’t getting along.”

  The lack of surprise in Lauren’s voice put Avery on instant alert. “Wait. You knew Cade Blackwell worked for Aegis Security?”

  “Of course I knew. Why do you think I sent you there? Avery, everyone who knows the real you knows the reason you’re not happy is because you’ve never dealt with your feelings for him. So, yeah. I sent you to Aegis so you’d be forced to deal with them. What happened?”

  It was hard to be mad at a friend who had your best interests at heart. Though right now, Avery wasn’t wild about Lauren’s sneaky methods. She dropped her head in her hand again and rubbed her throbbing temple. “I hate you right now, you know.”

  “I know. Tell me what happened.”

  Spotting her drink, Avery lifted it to her lips and sipped again. She was drinking way too fast, but part of her didn’t care. A good buzz might help. At the very least it would take a bite out of everything that had just happened. She drained the rum runner then set the empty glass on the bar. “What happened is…everything. He’s amazing and frustrating as hell, and I totally messed everything up by giving in to temptation in this stupid place.”