see coming here as a sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice is in the reasons not the setting,” he said.
She considered what he said. “That’s rather profound.”
He only shrugged. For a moment the only sound was the rustle of the palm fronds and the more distant sound of the surf from below. It was time, she told herself. Time to get it done. She opened her mouth to speak, to at last say she was sorry.
“Okay, let’s get it over with,” he said, before she’d gotten a word out. “I’m sorry. It should never have happened.”
She gaped at him as he spoke the words she’d opened her own mouth to say.
“What?” she finally managed.
“I’m apologizing, all right?” He nearly snapped it out. “It’s been eating at me for five years, so I’m apologizing. I took advantage. I’m a jerk and a slime and an idiot, and all the rotten things you’ve probably been calling me all this time.”
She stared at him. “That,” she barely managed to squeak out, “is what I’ve been calling myself for the past five years.”
Chapter 3
Paige felt utterly bewildered. But there could be no doubt—he’d said it so adamantly. The man she’d wanted to apologize to for so long was instead apologizing to her.
She heard an odd little chiming sound.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “Excuse me,” he said to her; she wasn’t sure if it was for the curse or the interruption. He reached into a shirt pocket that had looked empty and pulled out the smallest cell phone she’d ever seen. He pushed a button and said sharply, “Rider.”
He listened for a moment, his mouth tightening. Finally he advised the caller he would be down in a few minutes, and disconnected. He slipped the tiny phone back into the upper pocket.
“Bad news?” she asked.
“Minor problem. I’ll deal with it after…we’re finished here.”
That brought her back sharply to the realization that had so startled her. “Noah, I can’t believe you’re apologizing to me after what I did! I’m the one who jumped all over you, when all you were trying to do was be helpful.”
“Helpful?” Both dark brows shot up. “Is that what you thought?”
“I know you were just trying to comfort me, and then I—”
“I knew you were vulnerable, I knew you were confused, and I let it happen, anyway.” He grimaced but went on flatly. “It was my fault. I was supposed to take care of you, not…” His voice trailed off as he shook his head in obvious disgust.
“But I started it,” she protested.
“You weren’t thinking straight. Under the circumstances you can hardly be blamed.”
“But you can?” she asked, steadier now.
“I hadn’t just been through an emotional meat grinder. Yes, I can be blamed all right.”
Paige felt as if her world had tilted slightly on its axis. She’d worked up to this, had planned it for the day she might see him again, had even considered making it happen, even if she had to call Redstone and make an appointment. Only to find now that he had felt the same way. And suddenly she realized the reason he’d looked so odd when he’d suggested dinner and she’d reacted negatively—when he’d said he should have known she wouldn’t want to do that, he’d been thinking she wouldn’t want to have dinner with a man who had, in his view, treated her so badly.
If you only knew, she thought. On her scale of being treated badly, that kiss didn’t even make the top million.
“You’re right about one thing, though,” he said after a moment. “This should have been done long ago. I owed you that much.”
“I owed you a lot more. I don’t think I’d have gotten through that time if you hadn’t been there.”
His mouth twisted. “Nice to know I didn’t completely fall down on the job.”
That reminded her. “Tell me something, will you? Why did they send you back then? Why not somebody from, I don’t know, personnel, maybe?”
He shrugged. “I’d just been in Portugal a few weeks before. I knew some people, people I could call if there were any problems with…arrangements. But there weren’t, really. They were as horrified as the rest of the world, more so since the plane had gone down in their country. They went out of their way to help.”
As simple as that. As simply as that a practical choice was made, and her life was changed forever.
Paige drew in a deep breath of the night air, savored the scent of the night-blooming flowers that had been carefully planted around the grounds. Some sweet, some spicy, it was the kind of perfume that would never be matched by the hand of man in a laboratory.
Somehow the knowledge that he had felt nearly as bad as she enabled her to finish what she’d come here to do.
“If we’re going to work together while you’re here, we have to put this behind us,” she began. “We can’t both go on feeling guilty about it.”
“Wanna bet?”
The words were negative, but his tone was much lighter, and Paige nearly smiled. “Can we forget about it and go on?”
“Forget that I took advantage of you?”
“You didn’t, but I’ll allow you that if you accept I was the initiator and a willing participant.”
He closed his eyes, as if her words had caused him pain. After a moment he opened them again. “I suppose it’s going to be impossible to do what we have to do here if we can’t get past it.”
“It will be for me,” she admitted.
“So we both made mistakes, now we go on?”
“Right.”
He turned to look back out over the calm, warm sea. She heard him take a couple of deep breaths.
“All right. We start over,” he said finally.
“Hello, Noah Rider. I’m Paige Cooper,” she answered.
He turned back to her then. An odd expression was on his face, and an odder half smile curved his mouth. That mouth she’d spent five years trying to forget.
“Hello, Paige Cooper,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Rider walked down the long hallway to the administrative offices of the hotel. He’d kept Barry waiting longer than he’d wanted to, but he’d had to finish with Paige.
Finish with Paige.
That was something he’d been hoping for for
