‘I go check on the bus.’ Aurelio launched himself off the bed and vanished down the hallway to see if anyone had heard how close the bus was to Boca Negra.
When she had got back last week, she heard right away that it wouldn’t be through for several days. Three or four at least, Consuelo apologised. Courtney hadn’t minded. Not at first. She had thought that having to stay around for a few days she might discover that Aidan had changed his mind.
But as the days passed and he did everything he could to avoid her, she had to revise her thinking.
He wasn’t going to change. Nothing was going to change. And then she started thinking that the sooner the bus arrived, the better.
This morning Aurelio had come in and reported that word had come through that it was on its way. Word of mouth, even through the jungle, seemed to move faster than the bus. All day long she had waited. She had packed, then unpacked. Then packed again. She had walked the length of the hallway fifty times. She had walked to the marketplace twenty times at least. She had even, once, walked down towards the river. But when she got close enough to see that Aidan’s boat was still there, she had turned and walked quickly back to Consuelo’s. However much she might want to see him, it would hurt too much to have to say goodbye to him again.
So she was totally unprepared for the knock on her door that was immediately followed not by Aurelio’s entrance, but by Aidan’s.
She stared, her heart and mind hungry for him, drinking in the sight of him. He did look ‘not so good’, just as Aurelio had said. His features were gaunt and sleepless—hunted, she thought. Or, more accurately, trapped. His green eyes were dark, like the depths of the well she had once seen in Yucatan, and just as fathomless. His mouth was pressed into a firm line, but it looked more weary than hard now. And he looked more resigned than angry. She wanted to go to him, to touch him, to smooth the cares away from his brow, to soothe his hurts, and comfort his pains. But she was the cause of them all, so she stayed where she was.
‘You’re leaving now.’ It wasn’t a question.
She nodded, unable to speak yet, still not quite able to believe in his presence here, wondering what it meant. She looked from him to the duffel bag. ‘Aurelio says the bus is coming this afternoon.’
‘That’s what I heard.’
They looked at each other, their eyes probing, asking questions neither would voice. And the answers? They weren’t forthcoming either. Finally Aidan said, ‘I’ll carry your bag for you.’
‘Can you? Is your wound healing?’
‘It’s fine.’ He strode into the room and picked it up, then turned on his heel and went back out, leaving Courtney to stare after him. She remembered doing it before, watching him walk through the jungle, her eyes feasting on the easy grace of his loose-limbed walk, the confident set of his shoulders, the proud tilt of his head. If she closed her eyes she could imagine him in a courtroom, striding back and forth cross-examining a witness. But that fantasy just brought her face to face with reality—the reality of his first marriage, the reality of the life he had left, had sworn he wanted no part of again. The reality that the only thing he wanted out of any marriage was divorce.
She took one last look around the small, shabby but spotless room and knew she would never forget it. Then she followed Aidan out of the door.
Behind the desk, Consuelo looked up with interest when Aidan and Courtney came down the hall. She had been looking at them with interest ever since they had got back last week. But though she dropped enough veiled queries about what had happened between them on the trip, which Courtney could never bring herself to answer, at least she never asked outright. Now she just clicked her tongue and shook her head. Aidan scowled at her and walked out of the door without comment. But Courtney couldn’t leave like that.
She went over to say goodbye and was enveloped in a warm, sisterly embrace.
‘I’m sorry you go,’ Consuelo said, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘You so good for him.’ Her eyes flickered to Aidan who was standing on the porch, his back to them, his hands on his hips as he squinted up the road for signs of the bus.
Courtney’s gaze followed Consuelo’s. ‘I would like to have been, anyway.’
‘Maybe he see sense, run after you, marry you.’ Consuelo, too, seemed to want to look on the bright side. It was a good thing she didn’t know Courtney and Aidan were already married. It would have destroyed her outlook on life.
‘A happy ending?’ Courtney said ruefully.
‘Like a book,’ agreed Consuelo, smiling.
Flying footsteps resounded just then, and Courtney heard Aurelio shouting, ‘It’s coming! Raimundo says the bus is coming.’ He shot past Aidan and in through the screen door, letting it bang behind him. ‘It’s coming,’ he told Courtney again, as if she hadn’t heard the first time.
‘Thanks.’ She gave him a hug, too. Then she shouldered her bag and went out on to the porch. Aurelio started to follow her, but his mother held him back.
Aidan turned as she came up behind him, his expression dark and unreadable.
‘Raimundo says the bus is coming,’ Courtney told him.
‘Good old Raimundo.’
‘Yes.’ She wondered what would have happened if he had been the one to take her to find her parents. Would she be married to him now? A look at Aidan—at the quick glimmer of emotion in his eyes that vanished almost as abruptly as it did in hers—let her know his thoughts had gone along the same lines.
Then she heard a shout from the road, ‘Here it comes,’ and the cloud of dust that surrounded the bus came into view.
Their gazes met again.
Tell me you love me and I won’t go, she said to him with her eyes, with her heart.
Silent, Aidan looked at the ground.
The bus ground to a halt in the dirt road right alongside the hotel. The door opened and an Indian woman with a chicken, and two scruffy looking men, got out. The driver looked at Courtney and Aidan enquiringly.
‘Coming?’ he asked.
‘She is.’ Aidan climbed the steps and slung the duffel bag into the seat the Indian woman had just vacated, stood for a moment surveying the rest of the passengers, then dropped lightly to the ground and came to stand in front of her.
She looked up into his face, trying to memorise it. Unsure she wanted to, the way he looked. His expression was grim, taut, like steel. Hard and ungiving. But in her heart she could only see another Aidan, the tender one who loved her, who caressed and cherished her, who willingly married her because she had needed that. She wanted to tell him that she appreciated it, to tell him she would never forget him. But she knew that words of memories and tenderness were just what he didn’t want.
She twisted the ring on her finger, the ring he had almost died for. And she knew she couldn’t speak. Even if keeping silent nearly killed her.
She touched his face. One last fleeting caress of a sandpapery cheek. She swallowed hard. ‘Goodbye, Aidan.’
He held her gaze.
The bus driver tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel. ‘Are you coming or aren’t you?’
Courtney didn’t hear. Her mind belonged to Aidan. He bent his head swiftly and touched his lips to hers. ‘Get the divorce, Courtney.’
And before she got on the bus, he was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Leander Perkins’s face fell at the sight of her.
Good, Courtney thought, because outfoxing her uncle was about the only satisfaction she was going to know.
‘You didn’t go?’ Leander took one look at her pale, sad face and sounded hopeful as he stared up at her from behind his wide walnut desk. His plump fingers tapped on the blotter. They clenched a second later when she nodded and said,
‘Oh yes, I went.’ She pulled the letter her father had written out of her bag.
Leander scowled, then reached for it. She gave it up, unsurprised when he didn’t even unfold it before slipping out his lighter and burning it to ashes. Then he smiled at her, the benevolent
uncle. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, my dear.’
Courtney smiled back, knowing him all too well. ‘I did,’ she assured him. ‘That was only a copy. The original is in the hands of Mr. Thurston at the bank.’
The colour drained out of Leander’s face. ‘But you— you can’t! I need—I have——-! You have no right! No right at all!’ he blustered, coming to his feet like a walrus emerging from the sea. ‘I need that money, miss.’
‘My parents need it, too,’ she told him firmly.
‘Your father is a wasteful, foolish man.’
She didn’t deny it. A saint would be a wasteful, foolish man to Uncle Leander, and there was no doubt her father had little monetary sense. Which was all the more reason he needed his inheritance, but she couldn’t expect to convince Leander of that. ‘You have your fair share, uncle,’ she said calmly.
‘I need it all!’ Leander stamped in a small circle behind his desk, then halted and fixed her with his beady little eyes. Punching a buzzer, he summoned his secretary. ‘See Miss Perkins out,’ he commanded. ‘You’ll regret this, missy. You’ll regret you ever went down there. Just wait and see if you don’t.’
Courtney didn’t have to wait, she already knew. It had been nearly a month since she had come back, and every day felt like a hundred years. Every night she spent dreaming of Aidan, torturing herself with ‘if onlys’ and ‘might have beens’. And none of it did any good. She was as miserable now as she had been when the bus rattled down the road and Boca Negra vanished round the bend.
That was why she had bothered to come and deliver the bad news to Uncle Leander in person. It was the one sweet success she was going to have in the mess that had become her life. It might be gloating—it was gloating— but heaven knew, she needed something to feel good about. There wasn’t anything else.
She let Uncle Leander’s secretary see her to the door without protest. His threat was idle and she knew it. They both knew it. For the time being at least, Uncle Leander was stymied. Next year, of course, her father would have to indicate that he was alive and well again. But next year was his problem. There was no way she was going back to the jungle after him again.
Ordinarily a trip to Wilshire Boulevard would have occasioned some window-shopping and perhaps a nice meal. But Courtney didn’t feel like it today. She had no enthusiasm for anything. So she drove back to Manhattan Beach, put her car away, then dragged herself up the steps to her apartment in the frozen state of mind she had been in since she had got home.
She had a deadline on a book. But she looked at the thin manuscript with a total lack of interest. She had bills to pay, but she couldn’t make herself sit down and get to them. She had letters to answer. But no letter had come from the man who mattered most in all the world.
Not, of course, that she had been expecting one. If Aidan had written, she would have died of surprise. Just as well, then, she thought wryly as she took out a can of soup for supper, that he hadn’t.
She dumped the soup into a pot, then stood by the stove and waited for it to heat. Her mangy tomcat, Fred, wove between her feet, meowing, demanding attention. She fed him, then carried her soup to the table, poured it into a bowl and sat down to eat.
She wasn’t hungry, hadn’t been since she had come home. She had lost weight, hadn’t slept, and in general wasn’t the woman she used to be. It was what came, she thought, of expecting happy endings. When you didn’t get them, you went to pieces.
‘Like Humpty Dumpty, I am,’ she muttered into her soup bowl. The realisation wasn’t cheering.
One thing she knew for certain, she wasn’t going to be able to give Aidan the divorce he wanted. Not right away at least.
The day after she had got home, she had dutifully opened the Yellow Pages to look for a lawyer, but the tears swam in front of her eyes, and she hadn’t been able to think, much less write down any names and addresses. So she had put it off.
The next week she had tried again. That time she had got as far as writing down a name and had even driven by his office. But she couldn’t make herself go in.
She didn’t want a divorce. She wanted Aidan. And if she couldn’t have him, he couldn’t have his divorce right this minute either. She wasn’t ready yet to give up her fantasies. Besides, what difference would it make? He wouldn’t even know. Who was going to tell him, out there in the middle of the Amazon jungle, for heaven’s sake?
So she had shut the phone book again, telling herself that she would take care of it when she felt more at peace with herself. Some day, she told herself, she would be over him. She would be ready to date again, to meet men again, to get involved. Some day she would meet a man who would make her forget.
But it was going to be a long time, she knew that.
She confirmed that half an hour later when, while she was washing up, the doorbell rang. It was Clarke.
‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he accused her, brushing past her into the living-room and flopping on to the sofa.
That wasn’t precisely true, but she certainly hadn’t rung him up when she returned either. She couldn’t see any point. Now she merely shrugged and offered him a cup of coffee.
‘Why didn’t you call me when you got back?’
He obviously wasn’t going to leave it alone. ‘I didn’t have anything to say.’
Clarke scowled. He surveyed her critically while she put water in the pot and set it on to heat. ‘You’re too thin,’ he told her. ‘Starving yourself?’
‘No. Just not especially hungry.’
He sat up straighter. ‘Some jungle bug. I told you so.’
‘It isn’t a bug.’
‘What is it, then?’
Aidan, she thought. ‘Just off my food, I guess.’
‘I knew that trip wouldn’t do you any good. Said so, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ she replied quietly, setting out the cups and saucers. She remembered that Clarke took milk and wondered if Aidan did. They had never drunk coffee together.
‘And I was right,’ he informed her importantly.
She didn’t agree or disagree. From her parents’ standpoint, of course, he couldn’t have been more wrong. From her own? Well, she was miserable. He had certainly been right about that.
‘So come sit down and tell me what’s new.’ He patted the couch beside him. But she didn’t take him up on it. She waited until the coffee had perked, then she poured out the cups and added milk to his. Then she carried him one and took her own half-way across the room where she sat on a wing-back chair all by herself. Clarke looked annoyed, but didn’t comment other than to repeat, ‘What’s new?’
She was tempted to tell him she was married. That was news. And it would have got rid of him post-haste, and that would have been nice. But she couldn’t hide behind Aidan. She had done that enough in the jungle. Here at least she had to learn to stand on her own two feet.
So she simply told him about her trip, maximising the travelogue aspects, and minimising any references to the travel guide.
Clarke listened with not very much interest. The moment she stopped, he said, ‘Well, I hope you’ve got it out of your system.’
‘Yes.’
In fact nothing was further from the truth. Sometimes she thought she would die for wanting Aidan. Fred leaped on to her lap and curled up, kneading her thighs with his sharp claws.
‘Good.’ Clarke nodded as if she had come to her senses at last. ‘So how about going with me to the music centre tomorrow night?’
‘No, thank you.’
He looked at her surprised. ‘You have another date?’ She hadn’t been dating anyone else when she had left, and she wasn’t a fast enough worker that he could imagine she could have met someone new since she had come back. He would die if he knew she had married a man she had known scarcely two weeks. ‘I’m busy,’ she said, volunteering nothing else.
He scowled. ‘Playing hard to get. I won’t wait around forever, you know, Courtney.’
‘You shouldn’t,�
� she agreed wholeheartedly. ‘You can do much better than me.’
That did take him aback. He had expected her to be contrite and to welcome him with open arms. ‘Are you brushing me off?’
‘Letting you down gently.’
‘Don’t bother!’ Clarke sprang to his feet and carried the coffee-cup over to the counter. Banging it down, he turned to glare at her. ‘I’m not a charity case, no matter what you think.’
Before she could reply, he stalked out of the apartment.
She watched him vanish down the stairs, feeling guilty, tempted to go after him. She knew she should have handled it better, but she didn’t know how. She was at a loss as to how to do anything these days. Her ability at interpersonal relations seemed virtually nonexistent. She really hadn’t wanted to alienate Clarke. Heaven knew some day she might be ready for his attentions.
No, that wasn’t true. She wasn’t ever going to be ready for him. She was, she was beginning to fear, a one-man woman, just the way her mother was. And the man was Aidan Sawyer.
She couldn’t even deny that, for a split second when the doorbell had rung, she had felt a searing hope that when she opened the door Aidan would be standing there.
He hadn’t been, of course. Never would be. And her heart and her mind and her soul would just have to start getting used to it.
She told herself that again the next day when she was in the library doing some research and found herself consulting Who’s Who in America to see if Ethan Sawyer was listed. But she couldn’t put the book down when she discovered that he was.
She carried it over to a table, where she had research books on Indian folk tales spread out, and sat down, entranced with this thumbnail sketch of one aspect of Aidan’s life.
His parents lived in Brookline. His father still practised law, and his brother, Eamon, was a partner. There was a younger one, Dillon, and a sister, Mary Margaret. She found herself wondering about his siblings—if they were like him. She would have liked to meet them. But there was no chance of that. Nor would she ever meet their children. Aidan was an uncle, too, she discovered. His father had four grandchildren.
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