voice was wobbling terribly.
“No, it’s not you,” he rushed to tell her. “It’s not. It’s me, I—”
“I’ve given you the impression I’m—what did you call it earlier—wanton!”
“I told you at the time I was overstating it. I told you that was the wrong word.”
She held up her hand, stopping him. “No, I take responsibility. You don’t know how sorry I am.”
And then she rushed by him, found the path through the darkened jungle and disappeared.
Perfect, he thought. He’d gotten rid of her before things got dangerously out of control. But it didn’t feel perfect. He felt like a bigger jerk than the chicken they had eaten for supper.
She had fled up that path—away from him—with extreme haste, probably hoping to keep the truth from him. That she was crying.
But that’s what I am, Drew told himself. He was a jerk. Just ask his brother, who not only wasn’t arriving on the island, but who also was not taking his phone calls.
The truth was, Drew Jordan sucked at relationships. It was good Becky had run off like that, for her own protection, and his. It would have been better if he could have thought of a way to make her believe it was his fault instead of hers, though.
Sitting there, alone, in the sand, nearly choking on his own self-loathing, Drew thought of his mother. He could picture her: the smile, the way she had made him feel, that way she had of cocking her head and listening so intently when he was telling her something. He realized the scent he had detected earlier had reminded him of her perfume.
The truth was, he was shocked to be thinking of her. Since that day he had become both parents to his younger brother, he had tried not to think of his mom and dad. It was just too painful. Losing them—everything, really, his whole world—was what life had given him that was too much to bear.
But the tears in Becky’s eyes that she had been holding back so valiantly, and the scent in the air, made him think of his mother. Only in his mind, his mother wasn’t cocking her head, listening intently to him with that soft look of wonder that only a mother can have for her offspring.
No, it felt as if his mother was somehow near him, but that her hands were on her hips and she was looking at him with total exasperation.
His mother, he knew, would never have approved of the fact he had made that decent, wholesome young woman from Moose Run, Michigan, cry. She would be really angry with him if he excused his behavior by saying, But it was for her own good. His mother, if she was here, would remind him of all the hurt that Becky had already suffered at the hands of men.
She would show him Becky, trying to keep her head up as her father pushed a stroller down the main street of Moose Run, as news got out that the wedding planner’s own wedding was a bust.
Sitting there in the sand with the stars coming out over him, Drew felt he was facing some hard truths about himself. Would his mother even approve of the man he had become? Work-obsessed, so emotionally unavailable he had driven his brother right out of his life and into the first pair of soft arms that offered comfort. His mother wouldn’t like it one bit that not only was he failing to protect his brother from certain disaster, his brother would not even talk to him.
“So,” he asked out loud, “what would you have me do?”
Be a better man.
It wasn’t her voice. It was just the gentle breeze stirring the palm fronds. It was just the waves lapping onshore. It was just the call of the night birds.
But is that what her voice had become? Everything? Was his mother’s grace and goodness now in everything? Including him?
Drew scrambled out of the sand. He picked up the picnic basket and the blanket and began to run.
“Becky! Becky!”
When he caught up with her, he was breathless. She was walking fast, her head down.
“Becky,” he said, and then softly, “Please.”
She spun around. She stuck her chin up in the air. But she could not hide the fact that he was right. She had been crying.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said. “I’m the one in the wrong here, not you.”
“Thank you,” she said icily. “That is very chivalrous of you. However the facts speak for themselves.”
Chivalrous. Who used that in a sentence? And why did it make him feel as if he wanted to set down the picnic basket, gather her in his arms and hold her hard?
“Facts?”
“Yes, facts,” she said in that clipped tone of voice. “They speak for themselves.”
“They do?”
She nodded earnestly. “It seems to me I’ve just dragged you along with my wanton behavior, kissing you, tearing off my clothes. You were correct. It is not professional. And it won’t be happening again.”
He knew that it not happening again was a good thing, so why did he feel such a sense of loss?
“Becky, I handled that badly.”
“There’s a good way to handle ‘keep your lips off me’?”
He had made her feel rejected. He had done to her what every other man in her life had done to her: given her the message that somehow she didn’t measure up, she wasn’t good enough.
He rushed to try to repair the damage.
“It’s not that I don’t want your lips on me,” he said. “I do. I mean I don’t. I mean we can’t. I mean I won’t.”
She cocked her head, and looked askance at him.
“Do I sound like an idiot?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, unforgivingly.
“What I’m trying to say, Becky, is I’m not used to women like you.”
“What kind of women are you used to?”
“Guess,” he said in a low voice.
She did not appear to want to guess.
He raked his hand through his hair, trying desperately to think of a way to make her get it that would somehow erase those tearstains from her cheeks.
“I’m scared I’ll hurt you,” he said, his voice gravelly in his own ears. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to move this fast. Let’s back up a step or two. Let’s just be friends. First.”
He had no idea where that first had come from. It implied there would be something following the friendship. But really, that was impossible. And he just had to get through what remained of two weeks without hurting her any more than he already had. He could play at being the better man for eleven damn days. He was almost sure of it.
“Do
