want to hurt you.”
Foolish man. Couldn’t he see that’s exactly what he was doing? Did he really believe that causing pain now was better than later? His family was already in pain because they couldn’t reach him. And she knew just how they felt. But Rita knew he wouldn’t want to hear that.
“Good.” She nodded sharply. “I don’t want to hurt you, either.”
“Great. But my point is...”
“Oh, don’t worry so much, Jack.” She looked at him and the sunlight filtering through all the windows threw golden light across his face. “I get it. Nothing’s changed. You’re still locking yourself away from the world to save the rest of us.”
He didn’t want to hurt her, but he didn’t want to love her, either. She had to force a smile again and he would never know how much it cost her.
He frowned. “That’s—”
Rita kept her voice light, as she added, “Not important right now. I said I don’t want to hurt you, but I might if you don’t show me where the closest bathroom is. Honestly, this baby must be camped out on my bladder.”
“Oh. Right.” With the subject neatly changed, he led her down one side of the ship and waited as she went inside.
Rita hadn’t really needed the bathroom, for a change. What she’d needed was a minute or two to herself. To think. To search her heart and find the strength to keep pretending that he couldn’t rip a chunk out of her soul with a word.
She gripped the edge of the black marble countertop and stared into the mirror at her own reflection. Her eyes had so many things to say and she didn’t want to hear any of them. Maybe she was being foolish for loving a man who so clearly wasn’t interested in making the same kind of commitment.
But how could she simply stop?
Besides, the very fact that he was trying to warn her off, save her from him, told her that he did care. More than he wanted to.
“And, it’s not like you get a choice about who you love,” she told her reflection. And scowled a little when her mirror image mocked her. “Fine,” she admitted, “even if I had a choice, I’d still choose him.”
Did that make her a martyr? An idiot? “Neither,” she decided, staring into her own eyes. “It makes me Rita Marchetti Buchanan. I love him. It’s as simple as that, really.”
Nodding to herself, she shook her hair back, gave her baby belly a consoling rub, then lifted her chin and went back to face her husband with a smile.
* * *
The next few days weren’t easy. Jack had expected Rita to be a little more...depressed, he guessed, about the fact that he’d brushed off their night of sex as changing nothing.
Of course, it had, he just couldn’t admit that. Not to himself and certainly not to her. But the truth was, now that he’d been with her again, that was all he could think about.
Apparently, though, Rita was having a much easier time of it. She’d moved on as if she’d felt nothing and that he knew was a damn lie. He’d watched her, heard her, felt her response to their lovemaking. But she’d set it all aside and rather than being relieved, Jack was just a little ticked off. What the hell?
She wasn’t talking about it and he’d fully expected her to go all female on him. Women always wanted to talk. To share. The fact that Rita wasn’t bugged him. He couldn’t put his finger on what was happening and that bothered him, too. Jack felt off balance somehow and he wasn’t sure when that had happened.
His new reality was simply marching on as if nothing had changed at all. Every morning, since he refused to have her drive across town all by herself at four thirty in the morning, he was up and taking her to the bakery. Where she made him coffee and fresh pastries and they had breakfast together while she talked nonstop, telling him stories about her family, talking about her plans for the bakery, refusing to accept his silence.
She pushed him for his opinion and when she didn’t agree with him, she goaded him into an argument. Hell, he hadn’t talked this much in the four months since he’d been home.
Every night, she was right there, whether she was cooking in the penthouse kitchen or they were ordering takeout. Rita made him a part of it. She poked and prodded at him until she got him to talk about his work, about their tour of The Sea Queen, readying to set sail. She poked her nose into his relationship with his brother, sister and father. Nothing was sacred, Jack told himself. The woman was making herself such a presence in his life, he couldn’t ignore her in spite of how hard he tried.
And every night, when she was in the guest room and he was alone in his huge, empty bed, he really tried. But her face was uppermost in his mind all the damn time. He closed his eyes to sleep and she was there. The pillow she’d used still carried her scent.
How the hell was a man supposed to do the right thing when everything in him was demanding he do the wrong thing?
“Hey, Jack?”
He closed his eyes and sighed a little. Even shutting himself up in his home office the minute he got home didn’t work. Rita would not be stopped. “What is it?”
“Someone’s here to see you.”
What was she up to now? he wondered. Had she brought his whole family over? Hers? Were they all going to sit in a circle and hold hands? Frowning, he pushed up from the desk, crossed the room and stalked out into the living room, half-ready for battle.
Rita was sitting on the couch, smiling at the man opposite her. Jack stopped dead when he spotted the man’s wheelchair. Kevin. Had to be. His chest felt tight as if something was squeezing his lungs like a lemon trying for as much juice as possible. His gaze snapped to Rita. Had she done this? No. Of course not. He hadn’t even told her Kevin’s last name. There was no way she could have found him and arranged to get him to the penthouse.
So what the hell was going on?
“There he is!” Rita shot him a wide, bright smile of welcome. “Jack, look who’s here.”
The guy in the chair turned to face him and suddenly, time did a weird shift and it was nearly five months ago. The sun felt hot, oppressive. Screams tore at the air and Kevin’s curses were loud and inventive as Jack worked to stop the bleeding. He felt again the raw desperation and the sense of helplessness as he shouted for a medic.
He was standing in the penthouse and yet he had one foot firmly planted in the past and no idea how to escape it.
“Dude,” Kevin said on a laugh. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
In a way, he had, Jack told himself and shook his head, trying to clear the images rising up in his mind. For just a second, he’d seen Kevin as he’d been before that last mission. Tall, strong, laughing. Now reality was back and he didn’t know what to say. “Surprised to see you is all.”
“Yeah. It’s been a while.” Kevin rested his forearms on the arms of his chair and folded his hands together. His blond hair was just a little longer than it had been in the corps and his blue eyes were sharp, shrewd and locked on Jack. He’d lost some weight, but the real difference was the pinned-up legs of the slacks he wore.
Kevin
