Remarried in Haste

by Sandra Field

  “I know it’s not logical,” she answered with a helpless shrug.

  “Is that what you want?” he rapped, hearing each word fall like a stone from his lips. “To be free of me?”

  She glanced around. The others had headed toward a jacaranda tree whose blooms were a mist of purple, and would be, she knew from past experience, alive with hummingbirds. She should be there with them; but they could wait for a few minutes. With passionate intensity she said, “Brant, I’ve been like a robot the last couple of years. Separated but not separated, free to date but not wanting to, alone in my bed and with no desire to put anyone else there in your place. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve got to move on—and the sooner the better. We’ve both got to. I’m beginning to think Gabrielle was right, you did need to see me. Just as I needed to see you.” She managed a smile. “Smart woman, that.”

  Brant was sweating in the ninety-degree heat, yet his hands felt like chunks of ice. He was the one who’d sworn to Gabrielle that he was through with Rowan. That they were divorced in all senses of the word. He was also the one who supposedly didn’t tell lies.

  So where did that leave him?

  In bad trouble, that’s where.

  “Rowan,” he stumbled, “Gabrielle being like a sister to me wasn’t the only reason I didn’t sleep with—”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to go, Natalie’s waving.”

  His feet felt like chunks of ice, too. Weighted to the spot, Brant watched her hurry around the corner of the cage toward the jacaranda tree. He hadn’t slept with Gabrielle because he loved Rowan. Loved her? Past tense? Or, despite all his protestations to the contrary, did he still love her?

  She wanted to move on. To another man and another life, one that didn’t include him.

  He’d kill the son of a bitch and ask questions afterward.

  Sure, Brant, he jeered. You know damn well you won’t do that. Because if Rowan really wants to be free, there’s not one solitary thing in the whole wide world you can do to stop her. Not one. You’d have to let her go.

  He realized he was gripping the cage so tightly that his knuckles were white as bone. Rage, sexual frustration, and a sense of utter powerlessness were part of that grip; and all these emotions were fueled by a stark and unrelenting fear.

  A lot of his assignments had made him feel afraid, although never to this crippling level. But powerlessness was a new sensation. He wasn’t used to that.

  He rubbed his hands down the sides of his jeans. He had to pull himself together; the others would be wondering what the devil was wrong with him, cowering behind a cageful of parrots. Basically he didn’t care if he ever saw another parrot. He had more important things on his mind. Like what his next strategy should be.

  He’d told Rowan the truth about Gabrielle. She’d believed him. But all he’d accomplished was to drive her further away. It was going to be hard to top that for sheer incompetence, he thought acerbically. Come on, buddy, you’re supposed to be the guy with brains, the expert at getting out of tight corners. Or so your boss thinks. So why don’t you put some of your expertise to use as far as your ex-wife’s concerned?

  He trailed across the gardens between royal palms and cannonball trees, between billows of bougainvillea and the scarlet spikes of heliconia. Steve was carrying the scope, but not even this could shift Brant’s brain into any gear other than reverse.

  He quite literally didn’t know what to do next. Was this why he was so frightened? Or was it the prospect of Rowan in another man’s arms that was making his armpits run with sweat and his blood thrum in his ears?

  He followed the rest of them back to the van; he had a shower in his room, then trailed to the dining room for dinner. Rowan had put on makeup along with a bright orange silk shirt; with a nasty tightening of his nerves he saw she was wearing earrings, ceramic earrings shaped like rowanberries that matched her shirt. Brant ordered smoked fish and tried to quell the anger roiling in his gut. How was he to interpret her gesture except as a supreme indifference toward him and his long-ago gift? Toward the love that had been behind that gift?

  To hell with fancy strategies. He was going to find out if she was indifferent to him and he was going to do it soon. And he wasn’t going to be fussy about his methods.

  He didn’t bother ordering coffee, left the table before her, and strode down the corridor toward her room, which was in the other wing from his. Tucking himself into an alcove along with a potted, spiky and extremely ugly cactus, he waited for her to arrive. He didn’t know what he was going to say. But he sure knew what he was going to do.

  It was ten years since he’d had a cigarette and he’d give his eyeteeth for one right now. Brant jammed his hands in his pockets and waited. Five minutes passed, another five, and then he heard the soft pad of steps along the brick walk that connected the rooms. The steps stopped at Rowan’s door. Moving with calculated slowness, he risked peering around the edge of the alcove.

  Rowan’s back was half turned to him. She was searching her pockets for her key, finally locating it in her hip pocket. Then she dropped it. She said a very pithy word that brought an involuntary grin to his lips, and stooped to pick it up. Then she wearily rubbed the small of her back. If she’d been pale earlier, she looked like a ghost in the dusk.

  She also looked like a woman at the end of her tether. Brant’s heart constricted with compassion. He couldn’t confront her now. No matter how angry and afraid he was.

  As he eased back into the alcove, a cactus spike stabbed the back of his knee; although he managed to smother his instinctive yelp of pain, the heel of his hiking boot struck the side of the pot. Rowan called out sharply, “Who’s there?”

  Feeling utterly foolish, Brant stepped out into the open. “It’s me. But I wasn’t going to—”

  “I should have known it would be you!”

  “I’d changed my mind, I wasn’t—”

  She rolled right over him. “You never give up, do you? I suppose that’s why you’re such a good journalist—but it sure doesn’t impress me right now.”

  “Oh, quit it, Rowan! You don’t need to be so goddamned argumentative. What you need to do is stop talking, spend an hour in a Jacuzzi and then get three nights’ sleep.”

  She thrust the key into the lock. “I know I look awful, I don’t need you telling me.”

  He said rashly, “When we were married, this was the night I used to rub your back.”

  “On the rare occasions when you were home,” she flashed. “Which was probably one month out of six.”

  Stung, Brant said, “I had a job to do.”

  “Yes, you did. Job first, Rowan second. Too bad you didn’t explain that to me before we got married.”

  “You wouldn’t have listened,” he snarled. “You wanted to marry me just as much as I wanted to marry you.”

  “So here’s another cliché you can add to your collection—marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

  In the dim light her eyes were like pools of lava. Brant seized her by the elbows, yanked her against the length of his body and kissed her hard on the mouth. That, at least, had been part of his strategy.

  Her body was as rigid as a board and between one moment and the next all his anger collapsed. Rowan was in his arms again after an absence that felt like forever. The blood beating in his ears, Brant slid his hands up her arms to her shoulders, kneading them gently with his fingers, and softened his kiss, seeking to evoke the response that had always been there for him. With his tongue he stroked the soft curve of her lip. One hand drifted down her back to gather her closer, soothing the knotted muscles of her spine.

  For Rowan it was as though time had gone backward. She could have been in their condo in Toronto, and Brant come home to her after one of his trips: the hard curve of his rib cage, the taut throat, the scent and heat of his skin all achingly familiar and horribly missed. She wound her arms around his neck, digging her nails into the thickness of his hair, and opened to the thrust of his tongue. Heaven, she thought daz
edly. Sheer heaven.

  Brant felt her surrender surge through his body. Exultant, he found the rise of her breast beneath the orange silk of her shirt, cupping its softness, fiercely hungry to taste the ivory of her skin and the dusky, hard-tipped nipple. She gasped with pleasure, her body arching to his touch in the way that had always made him feel both conqueror and conquered. Then her hand fumbled for the buttons on his shirt, thrusting itself against his belly.

  Leaving a trail of kisses down her throat, Brant muttered, “It’s been so long...too long.”

  Rowan’s fingertips teased the tangle of his body hair and laved the tautness of muscle. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think. All she wanted to do was feel. Touch. Caress. Stroke. Luxuriate in everything she’d been deprived of. She rubbed her hips against his, and in an explosion of hunger as scarlet as a hibiscus blossom felt the hardness of Brant’s erection.

  His kiss deepened. Rhythmically his thumb abraded her breast, back and forth, back and forth, until she was drowning in a sea of scarlet petals.

  Then, like a knife clipping a blossom from the stem, a small voice pierced the red haze of desire that had enveloped her. You mustn’t make love with Brant. He’s not your husband anymore. You’re divorced. Remember?

  In a crazy counterpoint to her thoughts she heard him say, “Let me spend the night with you, sweetheart...I want to hold you in my arms and never let you go.”

  It was as though ice-cold water had been dashed in Rowan’s face: pleasure vanished and hunger was eclipsed by a panic as elemental as a hurricane. She shoved against Brant’s chest with all her strength. “Don’t call me sweetheart, I’m not your sweetheart anymore,” she cried; then watched as, with enormous effort, he brought himself back to the harsh reality of her words.

  He said forcibly, “I don’t tell lies.”

  “Neither do I!”

  “Rowan, don’t try and tell me we’re through with each other. That kiss proves otherwise.”

  She said in a clipped voice, “I haven’t been to bed with anyone since the night you left for Colombia. Which, as you may recall, was nearly three years ago. Of course I’m going to fall all over you, I’m only human and we always liked sex.”

  “Liked it? It was a lot more than liking.”

  “So what? You’re not spending the night with me. Not now or ever again.”

  “You make it sound as though there was nothing between us but sex!”

  “There were times when I wondered,” she said with the same glacial precision.

  He whispered, “You can’t mean that.”

  Did she mean it, Rowan wondered, or was she guilty of distorting the truth just so he’d leave her alone? So she wouldn’t have to remember the woman who a few moments ago had rediscovered the heaven that lay in Brant’s arms? “I mean it,” she said in a low voice, knowing if she didn’t get rid of him soon she’d lose it, pour out all the frustrations and deprivations of her marriage to the man who’d been their cause yet who’d remained oblivious to them.

  “For God’s sake,” Brant muttered, “how can you say something so untrue?”

  He looked stricken. She wanted to weep, she wanted to scream out her rage at the top of her lungs; she did neither one. She did know she’d had enough. More than enough. “I told you in Grenada to fly right back to Toronto,” she said tightly. “I don’t want you here stirring up the past, Brant. It’s an exercise in futility.”

  Like a robot repeating a learned phrase, he said, “Of course—you want to move on.” Then all his bitterness spilled out. “To a better man than me.”

  His words were like a trigger; Rowan abandoned all her good intentions. “That’s right,” she seethed. “To a man who’s there at night when my cramps are so bad I need a backrub to go to sleep. Someone I can depend on to be around when we’ve made vacation plans—”

  “It was only once—that time I had to go to Pakistan—that we had to cancel our plans.”

  Furiously she ticked off her fingers. “What about the trip we planned to Fiji? And to Antarctica? Were you available? No, you’d gone to South Africa the first time and to Indonesia the second, because your precious boss had phoned. Drop everything, scrap a silly little vacation with your wife, you’ve got more important things to do.” To her fury her voice cracked. “I want stability, Brant. I want someone safe, so I don’t have to lie awake at nights worrying where you are and whose feathers you’re ruffling and whether you’ve stepped on a land mine or got in the way of a submachine gun—and I don’t think that’s much to ask.”

  “I always came back to you!”

  “You spent eight months in the company of another woman and I don’t give a sweet damn how platonic it was!”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten it was my job that paid for the fancy condo on the shores of the lake—we sure couldn’t have afforded it on your salary.”

  Rowan’s breath hissed between her teeth. “I’ve always known you looked down on my job, you never made any secret of that And let me tell you something else—I live in the country now. In a cabin that’s only big enough for me. And I like it just fine.”

  Knowing he was behaving execrably, Brant grated, “Then go find yourself a farmer whose biggest excitement of the week is spreading cow manure on the back pasture.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Her eyes narrowed. “But first, why don’t you tell me something, Brant? Where have your assignments taken you the last couple of years?”

  He didn’t even have to think. “Sudan, Turkey, Cambodia, Peru. Why?”

  As Rowan’s temper fizzled out like a spent firecracker, tiredness settled on her shoulders. What had she hoped for? That he might say England? Switzerland? The Bahamas? Safe, ordinary places? This was Brant, for goodness’ sake. “You’ve got to have danger, haven’t you?” she said. “You’ve got to have your fix. That’s what really destroyed our marriage, Brant. Because it truly is over. Finished. I won’t go through another eight months like that ever again. Not for any man.”

  She could hear the finality in her voice. Brant went very still, a stillness like paralysis, and suddenly Rowan knew she couldn’t bear prolonging this confrontation any longer. She reached up on tiptoes, kissed him lightly on the lips and whispered, “Good night, Brant. And goodbye.” Then she turned away so he couldn’t see her face.

  Her key turned smoothly in the lock and the door swung open. Rowan hurried into her room, closed the door behind her and snagged the lock on the inside, sliding the chain into its metal groove.

  Not that there was any real need to rush. Or to lock the door so securely. Brant was still standing on the brick walkway, his eyes stunned, his face a mask of disbelief and pain. It was the wrong moment to be torn by an intuition that she was betraying something infinitely precious. That she should stay and fight for it, not run away.

  She was tired of fighting. She’d done too much of it over the four years of their marriage.

  Not even bothering to take off her clothes, Rowan threw herself across the bed and started to cry, bunching her pillow over her head so Brant wouldn’t hear her. And if she’d been asked she couldn’t have said whether she was crying for Brant, for herself, or for the frailty of all that had bound them together.

  Or for the utter finality of that one small word, goodbye.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OUTSIDE, Brant tried to pull himself together. Another cliché, he thought distantly. But true. All too true. The reason he had to pull himself together was because he felt like he was falling apart. Walking slowly, like a much older man, he headed for the bar, taking the table that was nearest to the beach and the ripple of the sea.

  The rum punch he ordered was altogether too sweet, while the fruit floating in it turned his stomach. For the better part of an hour he stared out at the yachts anchored offshore, something in his demeanor keeping the other vacationers and the waiter a safe distance away. What had Gabrielle said? All your feelings are buried, gone underground; or something to that effect. She should see him now. He w
as nothing but feeling, a mass of raw and extraordinarily unpleasant feeling.

  Maybe this was why people kept their emotions buried. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Why would anyone want to submit themselves to this kind of pain if they had a choice?

  The moon glistened on the sea. A perfect recipe for romance, he thought, especially when you added palm trees, hibiscus and pale sand. All he needed was a woman. But for him there was only one woman who could bring all those other ingredients to life. A red-haired woman with a turbulent temper and a body that ignited his own. Rowan.

  He’d been royally kidding himself for the last two years; he was no more through with her than he was with breathing.

  But she was through with him. She’d made that all too clear this evening. The marriage is over, she’d said. Finished. According to her, he’d destroyed it: partly by his unspoken but very real belittlement of her job; but much more so by his need to live with danger, to push to the limits his courage and his powers of endurance. Regardless of the cost to her.

  He couldn’t bear it.

  The ice had melted in his rum punch. He left it sitting on the table and walked away from the bar, stumbling along the beach to the rocks where he’d swum last night. It felt like a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime ago. Because last night he’d still had the hope that somehow he’d win Rowan back. And now he had none.

  Sitting down on a boulder, Brant buried his head in his hands.

  Rowan managed to wake five minutes before the alarm the next morning. The cramps were gone until next month, she knew that from experience. If only Brant would disappear as easily.

  Brant, and all her tangled feelings for him.

  She got out of bed and went to the bathroom, where she started to brush her teeth. She looked exactly like a woman who’d cried herself to sleep and who’d had the worst fight of her whole life with a man who had only to kiss her and she’d melt in his arms.

  Sex. she thought fiercely. It was only sex.