The Sea of Aaron

by Kymberly Hunt

  Aaron studied his wine glass. “Couldn’t you have made the decision to stay without marrying?”

  She sighed. “I could have, but guilt made it difficult. You see, I figured if I had my own family and lived in Ohio, no one would expect me to make all those sacrifices.”

  “So why did your mother need so much care? Surely she didn’t have Alzheimer’s back then.”

  Valerie clenched her teeth upon hearing that he knew all about the Alzheimer’s, too. “No. She didn’t have it then. But my mother was…was…How do I even begin to explain her? She was the most helpless, weak, clingy person you’d ever want to meet. She couldn’t make even a simple decision without asking my father, and whenever my brother and I needed something, she always told us to ask him, too. If the house needed repair and my father couldn’t do it himself, he was the one who had to call the plumber, the roofer, whatever, and he always had to be at home if business people came in the house.” Valerie paused, annoyed by her own revelation and hoped Aaron wouldn’t want to hear more.

  “Why?” he asked, disappointing her.

  “Because…because she was nervous around strangers. She didn’t even want Greg and me to have friends over…not that we would have anyway, since she embarrassed us. The only friend my mother didn’t mind having around was Jasmine. She was just so weird. Even when we had problems at school, my father was the one who had to go speak to the teachers and whatnot.”

  “Go on,” Aaron said when she hesitated.

  “I really don’t want to bore you with this nonsense.” Valerie twined her fingers through her hair. “I’m not a teenager anymore, and I know that there are no perfect families.”

  “If I were bored, I would be asleep by now,” Aaron said.

  Valerie sighed. “My mother wasn’t a mother. I never understood her. She was always telling me not to do certain things, but she never explained why. Do you realize that it was my father who told me the facts of life…my father who explained to me the things a mother is supposed to tell a young girl. My God, Aaron, whenever I asked her something she always looked at me with this vapid expression. If a head of cabbage had an expression, that’s how she looked, and she’d say, ‘Ask your father.’ No. Not like that, she was from the South and she had this really obvious Southern accent. She’d say ‘Ask yuh fahthuh.’ ” Her voice rose. “ ‘Ask yuh fahhhthuh…ask yuh fahhh— ’ ”

  She stopped because he was laughing and she hadn’t even been aware of how melodramatically she’d been speaking. Her first reaction was embarrassment that he was making fun of her, but then she realized it was the first time she’d seen him laugh outright. His deep baritone chuckle along with his blazing smile, was so incredibly sexy it took her breath away and she had to laugh, too.

  “You’ve got a bit of the actress in you,” Aaron said.

  “I tend to get carried away when it comes to discussing family dysfunctions,” she replied, trying not to stare at him because her attention had suddenly focused on a silver dog tag dangling against his chest. She fought the urge to reach out and grasp it.

  Aaron sat up straighter and the tag slid mercifully from sight. He glanced out to sea at the boat rocking on the waves. “And so your marriage ended in a year. Who divorced whom?”

  “It was a mutual divorce, actually. No hard feelings. I know now that I didn’t love him, and he just married me to have children. After I had a miscarriage, it was over.”

  “The fact that you even got pregnant is amazing considering that the man was gay,” Aaron said.

  Oh, God, he knows that part, too. “More specifically, he was bisexual,” she said, embarrassed but trying not to convey her emotions. “And I didn’t know that when I married him.”

  “I never suggested you did,” Aaron said.

  Valerie fought to control a grimace as she remembered that a few years after the divorce, she’d learned that Harrison had moved in with his same-sex partner. “Look, it was humiliating, okay? And you seem to know the whole story anyway.”

  He shrugged. “So after the divorce you ended up returning to your mother’s house.”

  “Yes. I left Ohio University, gave up my dreams and went to a local community college and became a nurse.”

  “Was becoming a nurse such a bad thing?”

  “No. Just the fact that I let circumstances get in the way of my original goal.”

  “Why did you go back home when your mother managed to survive a year without you?”

  “She didn’t survive on her own,” Valerie said ruefully. “Her sister Marilyn was going through a divorce and she came to live with her during that time. Aunt Marilyn is nothing like my mother.”

  When the conversation finally lulled, Aaron shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed out to sea. “It’s time to go,” he said. “There’s a boat coming, and I’m not interested in company.”

  Valerie didn’t see anything beyond the endless blue, but she helped him gather their things and they made their way back to Saniyah II.

  ***

  Once she was back on land and alone in her room, Valerie wondered why Aaron’s first question about her personal life had been about her sham of a marriage. There were so many other things he could have started with. Could it be possible that he was concerned over whether or not she had actually been in love with Harrison Porter? If that was the case, he definitely had nothing to worry about.

  But there was no point in trying to analyze him because caution and common sense had eluded her. He was the most unique person she’d ever met, and good or bad, right or wrong, she knew there was no way she was ever going to be able to simply return to her life without including him in it.

  Jasmine had left a message on her cell and Valerie felt guilty that she didn’t want to hear from her right now. The truth was she did not know exactly what to say. How was she going to logically explain the constant delays in her departure from Belize?

  “Get a grip,” she mumbled aloud. “You’re a grown woman who doesn’t have to give an explanation to anyone.”

  She knew Jasmine had good intentions and that her warnings about Aaron actually did have some validity, but her best friend simply refused to acknowledge that she could feel the same intense desire for Aaron that Jasmine felt for her own husband, Noah.

  Sometimes God allowed disparate people to come into each other’s lives for a reason, and no way was she going to just turn aside and let her window of opportunity slam shut, even if the person at the window had led an extraordinarily harrowing life and faced a precarious future. She was convinced that Aaron Weiss was redeemable, that he wasn’t some crude, calculating warmonger, but a human being with needs, wants, and vulnerabilities, a man who maybe could use a little joy in his life. She recalled his captivating smile and his laugh. He didn’t reveal that side often enough, but maybe she could encourage it.

  Yes, he could be her diamond in the rough. With a little refinement and polishing, the possibilities were delectably endless.

  She listened to Jasmine’s message.

  “Val, if you don’t get back to me tonight, this is the last time I’m calling because I’m headed for Dallas on business tomorrow. You’ll probably be back before I am. Your mother is all right and I had your car fixed. Oh, and your brother called me because he couldn’t reach you. I told him you were on vacation in Belize, but I didn’t give him any details. You might want to call him. Ciao.”

  Her brother called? This surprised her because, aside from a holiday greeting card, she hadn’t heard from Greg in nearly a year. She keyed Jasmine’s number and waited until she responded, sounding slightly out of breath.

  “Valerie?”

  “Yup, it’s me. What are you doing? You sound winded.”

  “I was playing with Diego, kind of chasing him around the house to get him to bed.”

  Valerie laughed, visualizing Jasmine’s overly energetic stepson. “You said Greg called you. Did he say or give any indication what he wanted?”

  “No. He didn’t sound upset or anyt
hing, if that’s what you’re worried about. Call him. Maybe he’s just realizing that he hasn’t heard from his sister in a while.”

  “I’ll call him when I get back home,” Valerie said nonchalantly.

  She thought about how she and her brother, despite his being much older, had been very close as children, but around his late teen years, when he was about to go away to college, he’d had a mysterious disagreement with their father and went on to alienate himself from the whole family, including her. The cold war lasted several years until Greg met and married ex-beauty queen Lisa Allen in Chicago. He’d felt no guilt whatsoever about leaving his sister with the total responsibility of their mother, so why should she be so quick to get back to him?

  “I guess you’re still not ready to come home,” Jasmine said, sounding a bit cautious. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any more unsolicited grief about Aaron.”

  “Thanks for that, and I’ll definitely be home by the end of this week.”

  “I’m holding you to that.”

  ***

  Aaron had opted to spend the rest of the night on the boat. He sat on the deck watching the swells in the black water. He welcomed and embraced the solitude and distance, even though the alien being who’d possessed his heart wanted to be as physically close to Valerie as possible. He definitely needed this night out on the water to think.

  From the first day he’d met her, Aaron had known that Valerie spelled trouble. For over two years his clandestine line of work and deliberate avoidance of her had made his heart accept the reality that he should remain single, but the week and a half spent in close contact with her had given him more than a glimmer of what he had been missing, especially now that he was ready to enter a different phase of his life, a more sedate and less harrowing phase that did not directly include a group called Global Defense Force.

  Valerie had nearly torn down his wall of resistance and made him desire what he’d never desired before, namely warmth and companionship from another human being. He thought about the way she had mesmerized him on the private island with her understated, earthy beauty—beauty made even more apparent because she seemed so casual about it. He’d wanted to reach out and pull her body close to his—to possess her heart and soul and to lie there devoid of all physical and mental restrictions, the two of them sated, at peace, and breathing as one.

  However, even though he considered his desires a weakness, he was becoming convinced that as long as she held no romanticized illusions about married life, and she agreed to a few rules, they might actually work as a couple. If she said yes, the steel doors that had slammed shut around his heart just might swing wide open, leading him into emotionally stormy skies, uncharted waters, and a set of challenges perhaps even more daunting than his current lifestyle.

  Chapter 12

  Valerie and Aaron had breakfast together at La Isla Café and afterward took a leisurely stroll through the town and ended up in an isolated, serene area overlooking the ocean. The sun had barely risen and was still in a vivid orange phase.

  “Gorgeous,” Valerie said.

  Aaron sat near her, perched on a rock. She marveled at his handsome, chiseled profile. The early sun cast an interesting glow on his surprisingly long eyelashes, making them appear gold-dusted. Unable to resist, she reached up and lightly brushed her fingertips against his closely cut dark hair, tracing the precise line of his sideburn; the hair felt as smooth as velour. His hand closed around hers, gently urging it back down to her side where it belonged, but he did not release it. She felt the spreading warmth of his touch and wished they could just remain the way they were indefinitely.

  “Valerie, this is the last time I’m going to ask you,” he said.

  She bit her lip apprehensively. “Ask?” she repeated, although she knew full well what he was going to say. She wanted to hear it, yet feared the moment all the same.

  “If you’ll have me, I want to marry you this week in Belize.”

  Have you? I’d have you in a heartbeat, Valerie thought, but the words stuck in her throat.

  She had researched Belizean laws and knew that it was possible for them to get married without much hassle at all. They could be husband and wife by the end of the week.

  “There are rules,” Aaron continued, while she stared straight ahead as though distracted by the sea. “Not too many, but nevertheless we can’t function as a team without them.”

  Here come the prenuptials, she thought. “Go on,” she said, finding her voice.

  “Do not think that once we’re married you’ll be able to change my personality. If you can’t accept me as I am right now, we don’t belong together.”

  Guilty, Valerie thought. She did like and accept who he was, but surely some refinements and adjustments in personality would be acceptable. Everyone made compromises whether they chose to admit it or not.

  “And there will be no children,” he said adamantly. “And no unrealistic expectations about—”

  “You don’t have to worry about me having children, since I can’t,” she interrupted, trying to temper the hollow sarcasm in her voice. “But maybe…and I certainly don’t mean anytime soon…would you consider adoption?”

  “No.”

  And that was all he had to say. No elaboration as to why not. She squeezed her eyes shut. At some point in her single life, she had toyed with the idea of adopting a child, but it had been just that, toying. His ultimatum wasn’t impossible to live with. If she ever felt the need to hear youthful laughter, there were other people’s children that she could borrow from time to time. And Jasmine was going to have a new baby.

  “You told me that you had a miscarriage when you were married to Porter,” Aaron said. “But why did that permanently determine your inability to conceive?”

  Valerie found his question jarring and invasive. But she realized that he had a right to know, and so she forced herself to get over it. “At the time of the miscarriage, I discovered that I had a bleeding disorder called Von Willebrand’s.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Similar to hemophilia?”

  “Sort of, but nowhere near as serious. I’m not in danger of bleeding to death from a paper cut or a needle puncture. It’s a problem only if something traumatic happens or if I need surgery.”

  Aaron was silent for a second. “You had a potentially life-threatening bleeding episode during the miscarriage?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “And the doctor told me I shouldn’t have any children. The surgical procedure they performed resulted in scar tissue and made me unable to conceive.”

  “How many doctors have confirmed this?”

  “Confirmed what? My inability to conceive or my having Von Willebrand’s?”

  “Both.” Aaron’s expression had a concentrated, disturbing intensity that Valerie couldn’t quite read.

  She clenched her hands together. “At least three. Aaron, don’t look so serious, I’m a nurse, and I know the ramifications of this disorder. I told you…I’m perfectly healthy. I just can’t bear children and I shouldn’t chop off any fingers, toes or whatever.”

  His brow furrowed. “Unusual that you discovered the illness as an adult. How did you manage to survive childhood without any physical trauma? What about needing stitches from maybe falling off a bicycle, or what about having tonsils removed or dental surgery?”

  “I had plenty of such incidents, and I did bleed a lot, but those episodes never turned into emergency situations, so my parents thought nothing of it. I mean, let’s face it, some people do bleed more than others.”

  “I suppose that is true,” he said.

  Their discussion of rules and health issues had definitely taken a disconcerting and unromantic turn. “Can we get back to what you were originally talking about…unless…” She hesitated. “Unless my so-called disease has changed everything.”

  “It hasn’t changed a thing,” he said. “My other request is that you never betray my trust or enter into this alliance with any illusions that
you are somehow going to be able to convert me from agnosticism to Christianity.”

  She flinched. Enter into this alliance? Was marriage a business agreement to him? But she remained silent, focusing on the latter part of his request. Somehow she could not believe that an intelligent man could refuse to acknowledge a divine being, but still she saw some hope in that at least he had not declared himself an atheist.

  Aaron released her hand and stood up straight. “I’m no knight in shining armor. I’m set in my ways, and my lifestyle would not work for a clingy, needy woman, which you fortunately are not. Even if I do resign from espionage, my job with Avian will take me away from home a lot.”

  Valerie nodded numbly. She was well aware of all the things he’d just said, and thus far he hadn’t mentioned anything that completely turned her off; also, to his credit, he hadn’t even mentioned prenuptials, which she’d anticipated to be one of the major issues, since he was a wealthy man.

  “Are you finished?” She rose now and stood beside him, nudging him with her elbow. When he said nothing, she breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to have to go into a coldly rehearsed speech about how in the event of a separation, she had no intention of demanding anything that didn’t initially belong to her.

  “Are you finished?” she repeated.

  Aaron nodded.

  “Good.” She inhaled sharply and moved around so she faced him, making direct eye contact. “I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say because I have some rules, too.”

  There it was—that sly glimmer of a smile creasing his face. “What are your rules?” he asked.

  “The first one is that you quit smoking, and I don’t mean just limiting it. I mean completely.”

  The sly smile remained. “Not a problem. I smoke only when I’m bored.”

  “Then I’ll have to make sure you’re never bored. Secondly, I’m aware that you’re not a believer, but you must never ridicule or belittle my faith.” She took another deep breath. “While it wouldn’t be fair for me to demand that you leave the espionage business immediately, I will highly encourage you to not just think about it, but seriously, seriously consider retirement.” She reached for his hand and he offered her both of his. “Aaron, I’d like to be your friend, your love, your confidante, but don’t expect me to be your doormat, the little woman, or the silent mouse who never questions her husband’s decisions or…”