by Sandra Field
“Oh, I cared. More fool me.”
“I remember that day now,” he said slowly. “Gabrielle was on the same floor as me, she’d had dengue fever, as well. And they kept trying to foist psychiatrists on both of us, I remember that, too. She’d—”
“Brant, I don’t even want to talk about it,” Rowan snapped. “I know what I saw. No explanation that you can conjure up two years later is going to convince me otherwise.”
He fought down an anger that if he gave it rein would ruin everything. “Tell me something,” he said levelly. “Up until I went away that last time, had I ever lied to you?”
“No,” she said unwillingly. “I know there was stuff you didn’t tell me about your trips, even though I begged you to. A whole lot of stuff. To protect me. Or yourself. But I don’t think you ever lied.” Again she swiped at her wet cheeks. “Why should you? You hadn’t met Gabrielle.”
Brant said forcefully, “In the three years I’ve known Gabrielle, I’ve never once made love to her. Or wanted to.”
Rowan flinched. “Don’t! Don’t do this to me, Brant. You wouldn’t be the first man to be unfaithful to his wife and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Just don’t lie about it.”
There was a band around his chest squeezing the air from his lungs and he had no idea what to say next. “Dammit, I’m not lying!”
“Let me tell you something else. I was in Greenland sledding across the sea ice when you were released. So I didn’t know anything about it until I landed in Resolute Bay. There were newspapers there, full of how you and Gabrielle had been imprisoned together. Full of innuendos. The photos showed the two of you holding on to each other at the Miami airport, then arriving in Toronto together—you were holding her hand by the ambulance.” She dragged air into her throat. “I saw all that. And, of course, I’d lived through eight months of knowing you and she were together. But I still trusted you. So as soon as I got back to Toronto, I went to the hospital to see you.”
She ran her fingers through her cropped curls. “I saw you, all right. That’s when I realized you loved her, not me. That I’d been a fool to trust you.” She gulped in more air. “What would you have believed, Brant? If it had been you standing in the doorway of that hospital room, watching me and another man in each other’s arms? A man I’d spent the last eight months with.”
His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “I’d probably have believed the worst. Like you did.”
Her shoulders sagged; somehow she’d needed to hear him say that. “Well. You know the rest I got a lawyer and a year later we were divorced.” It hadn’t been quite as simple as that. There was one particular secret from the last three years that she’d never shared with anyone, a secret laced with pain and guilt; nor was she about to share it now. Not with Brant.
Natalie’s loud sobs had left Brant unmoved. Rowan’s silent weeping rended his heart. He said quietly, risking a step closer to her so he could wipe her wet cheek, “Rowan, you’re cold and it’s late. But I really need you to hear me out. To try and listen with an open mind.”
“My towel’s around here somewhere,” she said vaguely.
He looked around, saw the dark shape lying on the sand a few feet away and picked it up. Taking another risk, he draped it over her shoulders and watched her tug it around her body. In a small voice she said, “Okay—I’ll listen.”
He’d been afraid she’d say no. His own throat was clogged with emotion. But of course he never cried; hadn’t shed a tear since the year his mother had died when he’d been five and his father had come home to take over his upbringing. Which was, he thought grimly, nothing whatsoever to do with Rowan.
He cudgeled his brain, desperate to convince her of the truth. “Three things,” he said. “First of all, that day in the hospital was the day Gabrielle broke. She’d been incredibly brave through the whole eight months, but that morning her doctor had ordered some resident in psychiatry to see her, a young pup who insisted she had to process and integrate, you know the kind of jargon they use. She fled to my room and started to cry...she’s like you, she hardly ever cries. And yes, I was holding her, and yes, there’d have been tenderness, even love, in my face because she and I had been through a lot together...”
Rowan stood very still. She was shivering, although not altogether from cold, the scene in the hospital room etched as clearly in her mind as if it were yesterday. “Go on,” she muttered.
He’d sworn he’d never tell anyone what he was about to tell Rowan. But if ever there was a time to break one of his own rules, this was it. “The second thing is this, and don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. Somehow Gabrielle in that eight months became the mother I missed so badly when I was a little boy...the sister I never had. I couldn’t have gone to bed with her. It would have been like incest. If I love Gabrielle, Rowan, I love her like a sister.” His laugh was humorless. “That sounds so damned corny.”
It did. It also sounded peculiarly convincing. Rowan buried her chin in her towel. “Number three?” she said neutrally.
“That’s easy. I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for Gabrielle. You see, her best friend Sonia Williams is the wife of Rick Williams, the fellow with pneumonia.” Quickly he described the scene in Gabrielle’s apartment last Sunday, marveling that it was less than a week ago when it felt like a lifetime. “Gabrielle’s the one who told me—in no uncertain terms—that I needed to see you.”
She also thinks I still love you. But that was number four and he’d only promised three. He clamped his mouth shut, waiting for Rowan’s response.
For what seemed like forever she was silent, the waves splashing gently on the shore, the moon rocking on the water behind her. Brant said in a cracked voice, “Don’t you believe a word I’ve said?”
Finally Rowan looked up. It was odd, she thought, that after everything he’d told her, all she could feel was a dull ache somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. “I don’t know what to think,” she mumbled. “I—I guess I believe you.”
She didn’t sound convinced and she looked unutterably sad. Brant wanted more from her than that halfhearted avowal, a great deal more. Trying to smother his disappointment, searching for a kind of wisdom and restraint he’d never felt the need for before, he said with a twisted smile, “I think it’s past time you went to bed, Rowan. Sleep on it, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
She nodded like a marionette on a string. “Okay,” she said again.
Brant put an arm lightly around her shoulders and steered her toward the path to the hotel, remembering to pick up his own towel on the way. Five people were left in the bar, one of them Steve, now minus both Natalie and the blonde. Steve got to his feet, staggered over to them and said truculently, “He bothering you, Rowan?”
“No,” Rowan said coldly.
“You sure?”
“Back off,” Brant said in a tone of voice he used rarely but always to good effect.
Steve blinked. “If she wants to be left alone, then that’s what you oughta do,” he pronounced with an air of profundity.
Brant might have laughed had Steve’s words not been so unpleasantly near the truth. “I’ll remember that,” he said, and continued along the concrete pathway between the mounds of bougainvillea. When he came to the door of Rowan’s room, he kissed her lips, which were cold, and said, “Thanks for listening.”
His big body was so close Rowan could have tangled her fingers in the dark pelt on his chest. She’d never forgotten a single detail of Brant’s body, not how he looked or felt, nor how he used to move against her own body with a sensuality she’d adored. Even the scent of his skin, salty now from the sea, was utterly familiar to her.
A great wave of terror washed over her. Clumsily she tugged the room key from around her neck and unlocked the door. “Good night,” she said, scurried through the opening and shut the door in his face. Her knees were trembling and every muscle she owned ached. She stumbled to the bathroom, put the plug in the tub and turned on the hot tap.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROWAN was dreaming.
She was playing basketball, an all-important championship game that would determine whether her team got into the finals. The crowd was screaming in the background. Then she saw that the member of the opposing team whom she’d been assigned to guard was Brant: angry, sweaty, and altogether too large. She dodged, she ducked, she darted back and forth on the floor, her legs aching, her stomach tied in knots, and knew in her heart it was hopeless. She couldn’t possibly outwit him.
A piercing beep signaled time-out.
Rowan found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, and jammed down the button on her alarm clock to stop its insistent summons. Her ears were ringing with the feral roar of the crowd and her belly was clenched with remembered fear.
Except it wasn’t fear that was clenching her belly. It was a cramp. Oh, no, she groaned inwardly, leaning forward to ease the pain. Not today.
Rapidly she ran her mind back over the calendar. She was two days early. Stress, so they said, could do that to you.
Today they had the longest hike of the whole trip, and she had a picnic lunch to arganize. She had to keep Steve and Natalie from each other’s throats, she had to find a perched parrot for May and Peg, and she had to deal with Brant.
Just a regular day, she thought wryly. Right off the bat she’d take one of the pills her doctor had prescribed for the first day of her period. She didn’t like taking pills. But this was one time her principles could fly out the window.
Brant. He’d been telling the truth about Gabrielle last night on the beach, she was almost sure of it. So where did that leave her? Aside from late for breakfast.
Totally confused, that’s where.
Rowan scrambled out of bed, showered in the hottest water she could bear, letting it beat on her lower back, and got dressed, picking out her favorite tangerine shirt. The hot water had given her face a tinge of color; she brushed her hair, put on some lipstick and gave herself an encouraging grin in the steamy mirror. She’d go out there and she’d do her job. No arguments with Brant, and if Steve and Natalie stepped out of line, she’d cream them. Diplomatically, of course.
She laced up her boots and left the room, and it seemed a good omen that in the dining room Peg was seated on one side of Brant and May on the other, and that all three were embroiled in a discussion about agronomics.
What Rowan knew about agronomics could have been put on the blade of a hoe. She smiled brightly at Steve, who looked rather the worse for wear, and started asking him about the scuba diving business he owned in Boston.
So what if she’d had a ridiculous dream about basketball? Everything was going to be fine today.
Rowan’s optimism lasted through breakfast and most of the drive to the rain forest. But as the van jounced and bounced over the potholes in the road, the effects of the pill she’d taken began to wear off. While it wasn’t an overly strenuous hike to the parrot look-off, it was considerably further than they’d gone yesterday; and there were lots of stops along the way, all of which involved either standing as she searched the dense greenery with her binoculars, or else bending over the scope. Her backache got worse; she tried her best to breathe her way through the cramps without being too obvious about it.
When they finally reached the look-off, the whole group got to see the graceful soaring of a black hawk over the canopy of trees; this island was their only chance to see the hawk’s elegant black and white plumage and hooked yellow bill, so Rowan was delighted that it had appeared so readily.
Brant saw her pleasure. He also noticed, because he knew her well, that some kind of strain underlay this pleasure and that she was avoiding eye contact with him.
Several parrots—always in pairs, Brant couldn’t help noticing-flapped across the gap in the trees, the gold on their wings in striking contrast to the green slopes of the mountains, their raucous calls echoing in the deep valley. They left Brant feeling edgy and uncertain; nor had the rain forest brought him the transitory peace of yesterday.
Rowan looked terrible.
She might be deceiving the others; but because all his senses were attuned to her, he was acutely aware of the pallor in her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes. She didn’t look like a woman who’d discovered the night before that her ex-husband hadn’t been unfaithful to her. Or else the discovery had brought her no joy.
She looked so weighed down and exhausted that he longed to comfort her. He could cheerfully have throttled sweet-natured Karen who wanted help in seeing vireos, hummingbirds, and then the two parrots that were obliging enough to perch in a tree on the far side of the valley.
There was no faulting Rowan’s patience, nor her genuine pleasure when Karen suddenly gasped, “Oh, that tree! Now I see them—oh, aren’t they beautiful!”
The rest of the group was focusing on the parrots. Brant watched Rowan lean back against one of the vertical posts that supported the roof of the look-off, and shut her eyes. The slender line of her legs in their bush pants, the curve of her hips and jut of her breasts all filled him with a frantic longing. But overriding his rampant sexual needs was something new. The desire to protect her. To cherish her and look after her.
Was this really a new feeling? Surely not. He and Rowan had lived as husband and wife for four years, it couldn’t be new. He’d been a good husband...hadn’t he?
His hiking boots soundless on the grass, Brant stepped closer. “Rowan...” he said softly.
Her eyes flew open to meet his, and she pushed away from the post. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. He got the message anyway.
Get lost. Now.
Then her face constricted with pain and, as if she couldn’t help herself, she hunched forward over her belly.
Brant, you idiot, he thought in a great surge of relief. This is physiological, not emotional. First day of the month. Rowan always had cramps that day. He said in a fierce whisper, “I’m carrying the scope on the way back, as well as that bloody great camera in your haversack, and don’t you dare argue.”
Slowly she straightened, trying to breathe deep to relieve the pain. “I sure wish you’d mind your own business.”
“I can’t,” he said with raw truth.
“Then try harder.”
“Rowan, I—”
Through gritted teeth she said, “Brant, go take a hike.”
Sheldon called, “The first one’s just flown. There goes the other one—can you find them in the scope again, Rowan?”
“I’ll give it a try,” she said with a cheerfulness that irked the hell out of Brant. But that was her job, of course. To find birds and be nice to her clients.
She wasn’t wasting many of her niceties on him.
He undid her haversack for the second time and put her camera in his own bag. When they were leaving the look-off half an hour later, he pushed past Steve and put his hand on the tripod just as Rowan did. “I’ll carry it,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear, and felt her fingers dig into his in impotent fury.
He grinned at her, daring her to make an issue of it. “Don’t worry, I’ll stick close to you,” he added, “so you can use it whenever you need to.”
“Thank you, Brant,” Rowan said in a honeyed voice, “you’re so thoughtful.”
You’re an arrogant bastard, was what she really meant. “You’re welcome,” he said with his very best smile.
He kept to her heels all the way back to the picnic site, ignoring the waves of antagonism coming from both Steve and Natalie. Not to mention Rowan. It started to rain, drops pattering on the leaves; when they emerged at the picnic site, the mountain crests were hidden in thick gray cloud and the grass was drenched.
Bent over under the small corrugated tin overhang of the park headquarters, which was tightly locked, Rowan mixed tortellini with artichoke halves, sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan and an olive oil dressing, and cut up green onions and cucumber for the tabbouleh. The others were huddled against the wall. Her back was killing her.
>
The sun came out again as they were finishing eating. Rowan cleaned up the leftovers and reloaded the van, and they drove to the Botanic Gardens in Kingstown, making a couple of stops on the way for shorebirds. While the cramps didn’t seem to be abating very much, she was reluctant to take a second pill because they made her drowsy and heavy-headed.
There was a captive breeding program for the parrots at the gardens; as the rest of the group milled around the big cages and took pictures of the birds and of the dramatic scarlet and yellow heliconia flowers, Brant saw that Rowan was standing by herself, staring into the farthest cage. He stationed himself beside her, watching the parrots cling to the metal wire. “Neither of us ever liked zoos,” he ventured.
“No,” she said, her gaze fixed on the birds. “I just have to hope this is doing some good, increasing their population so they won’t get extinct.”
He didn’t want to talk about the population dynamics of parrots. “I’m sorry you’re feeling lousy. That first day always was bad for you, wasn’t it?”
She turned to face him, her brown eyes openly unfriendly. “I’m not asking you for sympathy. I’m not asking you for anything.”
His lashes flickered. “So you didn’t believe me last night.”
“Yes, I did. But it doesn’t make any difference, don’t you see?”
“Can’t say that I do,” he retorted.
Her brow crinkled. “Well, actually that’s not strictly true, it did sort of make a difference. I feel better knowing you didn’t lie to me, that you weren’t unfaithful with Gabrielle. It’s very strange.” Absorbedly, she ran her fingers down the small metal squares of the cage. “I haven’t given it a lot of thought because I’ve been feeling so awful all day. But I’d have to say I feel looser. Freer. As though I can let you go more easily now, because I know you didn’t cheat on me with another woman.”
Brant suddenly felt like the one in the cage, a cage that was shrinking fast, pressing in on him on every side. He said hoarsely, “Freer? That’s how you feel?”