by Sandra Field
Still, she looked a great deal better right now than Brant had looked last night. Staring at the white foam on the brush as though she’d never seen toothpaste before, Rowan felt her belly contract. She’d never seen him look so desolate. So heartsick.
All his emotions right there on the surface.
She gaped at herself in the mirror. That was it. That was what was new. Brant, as well she knew, was a man who only showed his feelings when he was in bed with her: that had always been the pattern of their marriage. She’d been content with that pattern until the last year they’d lived together, when things had really begun to fall apart. Two months before he’d left on that last assignment, she’d accused him of being the inventor of male detachment and the stiff upper lip, and he hadn’t bothered denying it. So what had changed him?
Not your concern, Rowan. Not anymore. You severed any lingering connections between you and Brant last night when you told him the marriage was over.
Tears brimmed in her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks, dripping into the sink along with the toothpaste. Oh, damn, she thought helplessly, oh, damn...
With vicious energy she finished cleaning her teeth and splashed her face with cold water. She was going to keep so busy today she wouldn’t have the time to think about him. And if that was a form of avoidance, too bad.
She didn’t know what else to do.
By ten that morning Rowan had gathered the luggage, checked out of the hotel, reconfirmed the next leg of their journey, exchanged American money for Caribbean dollars and paid the airport taxes, gotten all the boarding passes, and herded the group onto the plane to St. Lucia. Brant, she noticed, spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone at the airport. He was probably talking to his boss, she thought shrewishly, setting up his next trip into danger.
Well, it wouldn’t be her worry.
The plane was a Twin Otter and they were jammed in like sardines. In St. Lucia when they went through customs, she discovered the bulk of their luggage had been left behind in St. Vincent. She got everyone to fill in the appropriate forms, then picked up the driver of their van and drove to the hotel.
“Some off time,” she said pleasantly to the group. “Lunch at one, and we’ll head out to a scrub forest afterward, with the opportunity to see another captive breeding program, this time for the St. Lucia parrots. In the meantime, have a swim in the pool, or snorkel at the beach—it’s a five-minute walk from the hotel—and there are some craft shops down the road...enjoy.”
“Can I speak to you for a moment, Rowan?” Brant said brusquely.
“Of course,” she said with rather overdone politeness, and smiled at the rest of them as they dispersed to their rooms. Bracing herself, she turned to face him.
“When we leave here the day after tomorrow, I won’t be going with you to Martinique. I got a flight home via Antigua that day.”
His businesslike speech entered Rowan’s body like the stab of a dagger. Why hadn’t she anticipated this? And wasn’t he, after all, merely taking her advice that first night in Grenada? Struggling for composure, she said weakly, “I see.”
“I’m going to stay around the hotel this afternoon, too.”
“Fine,” she said with a mechanical smile.
He nodded, picked up his bag and headed down the path that led to his room; he’d been allotted one with a deck that was laced with vines and further shaded by a deliciously scented frangipani tree. She watched him go, the familiar rangy stride and wide shoulders of the only man she’d ever fallen in love with, and felt a glacial coldness settle on her heart.
This really was the end. When he got on the plane two days from now, she’d never see him again. He’d make sure of that.
She was getting what she wanted and she felt like she was being slowly and agonizingly torn apart.
When Brant went to the bar before dinner, he found Peg and May there before him. “A male Adelaide’s warbler,” May announced, raising her tankard of local beer.
“And a Lesser Antillean saltator,” Peg added, flourishing the little paper umbrella with which her rum punch had been decorated.
“Great,” said Brant, who’d hoped for privacy.
“We missed you this afternoon,” Peg said.
“You don’t look too chipper,” May observed. “I hope you’re not catching anything, you can’t be too careful in the tropics, you know.”
Brant, an expert on the tropics, said, “I’m fine.”
“Rowan doesn’t look her best, either,” Peg added.
It was three-quarters of an hour until dinner, there was no one else in the vicinity, and Brant liked both women very much. He said flatly, “I’m Rowan’s ex-husband.”
Although Peg sucked in her breath, May said, “I’d wondered.”
“You had?” Peg said. “You didn’t say anything.”
“It would have been pure conjecture.”
“Gossip,” said Peg.
“A pernicious habit,” May said loftily. “So why did you come on this trip, Brant?”
She was as bright-eyed as any bird. He said gloomily, “Because I didn’t stop to think. Because I’m a prize jerk. Will that do for starters?”
“Were you hoping for a reconciliation?” Peg asked.
“If so, I was what you might call deluded.”
“She doesn’t want you back?” May asked delicately, sipping her beer.
“She wants me on the first plane back to Toronto. Which I’m taking the day after tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving us?” Peg said, shocked. “But you won’t see the Martinique oriole.”
“He won’t get back together with Rowan, either,” May said sternly. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Her eyes were kind and he was quite sure she could be discreet. Although he was, from long habit, careful to protect his double identity, he found himself pouring out the story of his marriage, describing his job, their fights, the abduction and Gabrielle, and Rowan’s putative visit to the hospital. “I must be a jerk,” he finished, waving to the bartender for a refill. “I figured once she knew I’d never been unfaithful, everything would be okay. Well, it’s not. I’ve got as much chance of a reconciliation as you have of—of finding a Martinique oriole on St. Lucia.”
“Now that would be a coup,” said Peg.
“Peg, this isn’t the time for birds,” May scolded. “We’ve got to think.” Thoughtfully she twirled a strand of her mauve hair. “Sex,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Brant.
“When a marriage goes wrong, sex is often the reason.”
“We always had incendiary sex. Still would, given half a chance. Guess again.”
“Money,” Peg offered.
“Lots of it between our two salaries. Plus an inheritance from my father.” Which he hadn’t touched and never would. But he didn’t have to tell them that.
“Children?” May asked.
“We never wanted them,” Brant said confidently. “We both travel, it would be totally impossible to try and raise a family.”
There was an awkward silence, during which May looked at Peg, who looked back at May. Then May said carefully, “I do hope we’re not betraying a confidence here. But if we are, then I believe the situation calls for it—desperate times call for desperate measures. Would it have been four years ago, Peg?”
“It was the trip to Brazil, the day we saw the red-billed curassow,” Peg said promptly.
“A little less than four years then. I don’t remember how the conversation got around to the subject of pregnancies, but I do remember very clearly Rowan saying how much she wanted to have children, and that she didn’t want to wait until her mid-thirties as so many women seem to be doing. That was the gist of it, wasn’t it, Peg?”
Peg nodded. May fastened Brant with a gimlet gaze. “Perhaps Rowan never told you.”
“Well,” Brant said uncomfortably, feeling like a secretive bird suddenly exposed to a set of high-powered binoculars, “I guess we did talk abo
ut it. But neither of us wanted to give up our jobs.”
“Yuppies,” Peg said disapprovingly.
“Shush, Peg,” said May.
Brant was an innately honest man. “We fought about it, actually,” he muttered and took a long gulp of the smooth, dark rum he’d ordered. “Well, I suppose it wasn’t really a fight, because I wouldn’t even consider the prospect of having kids.” He ran his fingers through his hair, thinking absently that he needed a haircut. “I told her she was being ridiculous...I even laughed at her,” he finished with painful accuracy.
“There you go,” said Peg, tossing back the last of her drink and plunking the glass on the counter.
May eyed him speculatively. “How old is Rowan?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Time’s running out.”
“She wants to find someone else.”
Peg said with a touch of malice, “That won’t be a problem. The men will flock to her like eider ducks in springtime.”
May ignored her sister. “You were away a lot during your marriage, Brant, and now you’re planning to leave Rowan alone again. Tomorrow. Do you always run away from your problems?”
He felt as though she’d slapped him. “May, she told me last night the marriage is over. Over and done with. It takes two to keep a relationship going. Two, not one.”
“Peg and I have known Rowan for nearly six years. She’s not the kind of woman to give up so easily.”
“She’s had three years to do it,” he growled, wishing he’d never come near the bar. Let alone the Eastern Caribbean.
“She loved you four years ago, that was very obvious to both of us. I’d be willing to bet you a trip to Borneo—which doesn’t come cheap—that she still loves you.”
“No takers,” said Brant.
“She’s like the parrots,” Peg interjected. “She mates for life.”
He was sick to death of all things feathered. “You’re suggesting I should cancel my reservation to Toronto?”
“You’ve got four more islands and nine more days to win your wife back,” May said vigorously.
“May,” Peg remarked, “you should have been a columnist for Advice to the Lovelorn.”
“Yeah,” Brant said snidely, “you could set yourself up as a marriage counsellor if you ever get tired of parrots and pigeons.”
“Rowan’s worth any amount of advice,” May retorted. “Even when it’s not being asked for.” And she shot Brant a sly grin.
He didn’t smile back. “I’ve already told her I’m leaving!”
“Then tell her you’re not.”
“I’ll see,” he said tersely. Change his mind? He’d be a darned fool. Because fight or flight wasn’t the real choice that was confronting him; it would more accurately be phrased as masochism versus a graceful acceptance of defeat. How could he possibly believe May’s claim that Rowan still loved him? Rowan hadn’t given the slightest hint of that. Instead she’d told him in no uncertain terms the marriage was over.
Could it be true he’d spent the last seven years, ever since he’d met Rowan, running away from all his problems?
If so, he wasn’t much of a man. Or a husband.
May couldn’t be right, not on either count. He’d been a good husband, to the very best of his ability, to a woman who had, he knew, loved him with all her heart.
So why were they divorced?
He scowled into his drink, feeling as though he were being pulled in two, and heard Peg say, “Brant Curtis, if you go back to Toronto, you’re a wimp.”
Her sister glared at Peg. “This is no time for insults. We have to—oh, bother, here come the rest of them. It goes without saying that we’ll never breathe a word of this conversation to Rowan, Brant...I do hope they have roti on the menu. And those delicious pineapple spareribs.” She added in a carrying voice, “Good evening, Karen, what a pretty dress.”
Rowan was wearing shorts, Brant saw. Her legs were lightly tanned and smoothly muscled, and every bone in his body ached for her. Somehow he got through the meal by seating himself at the far end of the table from her, and through the rest of the evening by going to his room to read. The espionage novel he’d bought in Toronto didn’t improve upon acquaintance. More to avoid his own thoughts than from any literary pretensions, he found himself criticizing it savagely, his pen jabbing the page of the notebook he carried with him everywhere as he annotated how he’d change plot, dialogue and character to make it a better book. Tighter. More suspense. And a lot closer to political reality.
In a sudden intuitive leap he found himself thinking about his months in Afghanistan some years ago; it’d be the perfect setting for a novel. His pen began to fly over the page as scene after scene ignited itself in his imagination, and characters leaped, seemingly fully formed, into his mind. When he finally glanced at his watch, it was onethirty in the morning.
The opening scene of the book was so clear to him that he could hear the character’s voices, smell the camel dung and feel the slide of sand under his feet. Not a bad evening’s work, he thought. Not that he’d ever do anything with it. But at least it had kept him from thinking about Rowan for the better part of four hours.
As if May had indeed slapped him in the face, Brant sat straight up in his chair. Earlier this evening May had painted, in a few well-chosen words, a harsh and unflattering picture of him. All through his marriage, she’d said, he’d used his job as a way out. He’d run away from real issues. He’d laughed at them. He’d even laughed at Rowan.
He could remember the evening—only a few days after her return from Brazil, he thought sickly—when she’d raised, not for the first time, the subject of children. With a logical precision as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel he’d detailed how many times over the last year they’d both been away at the same time and how little they’d actually seen each other; he’d finished by chuckling at the absurdity of the two of them bringing a child into the world with their particular lifestyles; and then he’d taken her to bed and wooed her to compliance.
A week later he’d been assigned to check out tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea. Rowan, he realized now, had been very quiet all that week, which for her was new behavior. But he hadn’t addressed her unusual constraint. Oh, no. At one level he’d been glad of it. At another he’d been too busy making meticulous preparations for his all-important job as the hot-shot, world-renowned investigative reporter, Michael Barton.
He stared at the opposite wall, where a bright band of moonlight lay, sharp-edged and cold as any scalpel. He’d been like that light. All hard edges. No give. No negotiating, he who was so skilled at negotiation in the business world. Not even any real communication, other than in bed.
His thoughts marched on. And what about this evening? He’d just spent well over four hours playing with plot, characters and dialogue, and congratulating himself because it had kept him from thinking about Rowan. Once again, he’d been running from his feelings. Different means, same end.
He realized he was cold, and got up to turn the air conditioner off. The image he’d always carried of himself as a good husband and provider was beginning to seem as shoddy and meretricious as the espionage book he’d just finished reading. He used to congratulate himself on his unswerving fidelity to Rowan, especially when he was overseas and exposed to the flagrant affairs of many of the other journalists. Despite any number of opportunities, he’d never been unfaithful to her. Never wanted to. But hadn’t he cheated her in other ways?
He’d run away from conflict, and from treating her as a true equal. He’d run away from the very real commitment that a marriage requires. The only thing he hadn’t run from had been sex.
Because sex had been easy.
Hastily Brant dragged the curtains shut, no longer able to tolerate that sheath of blinding light against the wall. But the darkness wasn’t any better, for in it there was nowhere to hide. Tonight he’d been brought, by a series of circumstances, face to face with a man he didn’t like at all, whom only a few hours a
go he would vehemently have denied had anything to do with him.
A man he was starting to recognize as himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRANT woke from something less than four hours sleep in a belligerent mood. He couldn’t have been as oblivious to his wife’s needs as May had suggested. He’d been a more than satisfactory lover to Rowan and an excellent provider. And after all, she’d known about his job before she married him.
Why did women always want to change men? Domesticate them. Turn them into tabby cats purring by the hearth instead of mountain lions prowling the high forests.
He was no tabby cat; and he was damned if he was going to cancel his flight to Toronto.
Instead he hauled on his clothes for the planned trip to the ram forest in the center of St. Lucia, and joined the others for breakfast on the patio by the limpid turquoise pool. Rowan had her back to him. He said loudly, “Good morning, Rowan. How did you sleep?”
Rowan had woken with her nerves pulled tight, like a suspension bridge over a very deep gorge. Taking her time, she looked around. “Fine, thank you, Brant,” she said and let her eyes wander over his face, which showed the marks of a sleepless night. “And you?”
“Fine,” he said heartily. “Going to find us a whole raft of parrots today?”
“That’s my job. To find birds and keep everybody happy. Including you.”
The sun gleamed in her hair like electricity and her chin was stubbornly lifted. He fought down the temptation to kiss her full on the lips in front of all of them and said with lazy arrogance, “Oh, I don’t think keeping me happy is part of your job description. Or ever was.”
“Maybe that’s just as well,” she said softly. “Impossible tasks have never appealed to me.”
Direct hit, he thought, and raised his glass of mango juice to her in a mocking toast. Steve said rudely, “Rowan, can you find out if there’s any more papaya? Seems like they’re rationing it.”
“Sure,” said Rowan. Brant scowled at Steve, who scowled back.
“Good morning, Brant,” Peg said severely. “We should see a lot more than parrots today, as I’m sure you’re aware.”