green. Sitting with her heels on the seat of her chair and wearing denim shorts, a white tank and beaded bracelets, she looked exactly like what she was: a sexy backpacker seeing the world.
With that half smile on her face, the flirt of a dimple in her cheek, she would make anyone looking at her envious of her freedom, jealous of her next adventure.
She was young, gorgeous and adventurous and, no one, Beck was certain, would suspect that she was utterly miserable.
Not with him. They were, as far as he knew, perfectly fine for a couple who’d met and run off to South East Asia together within a month of meeting at an off-campus party in New York. Technically, since his trip was planned, she’d run off, choosing to spend the long summer holidays after freshman year traveling with him.
Her staid, conservative, churchy parents had freaked.
Beck glanced at the phone in her hand and he wondered how many emails and voice messages they’d left, begging her to come home. How many tears would she shed this time? How long would it take her to come out of the funk their recriminations tossed her into?
In Beckett’s mind it was psychological torture, and her parents just kept up the pressure. She was wasting her life; she was a disrespectful daughter; she was living in sin with him...
Her father had an ulcer; her mother was depressed. How could she be enjoying her trip when they were so miserable? They missed her and worried constantly about her—what if she was kidnapped and sold into the sex trade? They’d heard there was a bomb blast in Thailand—what if she was caught up in an explosion?
He’d told her to ignore them, to only check in once a week, but Cady couldn’t disconnect. Their mind games turned her into a conflicted mess. She wanted to be with him but her guilt over disappointing her parents was eating her from the inside out.
He knew that she felt stuck in the middle. He thought her parents were narrow-minded and they thought he was a spoiled rich kid, the spawn of Satan because he lured their innocent daughter overseas with the sole intention of corrupting her.
If one could call worshipping her body at every opportunity corruption...
Beck felt the action in his pants and tipped his head back to look at the ceiling, readily admitting that he couldn’t get enough of Cady. At twenty-three, he’d had other lovers, so he couldn’t understand why he was utterly addicted to making love with her, being with her.
If he believed in the emotion, he might think that he was in love. But since he didn’t, wouldn’t allow himself to, he did what he always did and pushed those uncomfortable thoughts away.
Her parents’ disapproval would’ve been easier for Cady to handle if she genuinely loved traveling, loved experiencing the hugely different cultures they stepped into. But having been protected and cocooned, she’d cried at the poverty and slums she saw in India, been shocked by the sex trade in Phuket. The crowds, the sounds and strange food threw her, and the lack of English disoriented her. He couldn’t fault her for trying, and she didn’t whine but she wasn’t enjoying the experience. It didn’t help that she’d had her wallet lifted, her butt touched and had to spend four days in a grungy bathroom, her arms wrapped around a cracked toilet bowl.
He’d thought she’d enjoy the clear sea and white-sand beaches of Phi Phi, the island they’d just returned from. But Cady was miserable. And because Cady was miserable, he was, too. He’d thought that their desperate need to be with each other could conquer anything.
He was so wrong.
With his ridiculously high IQ, being wrong was not a concept he was very familiar with.
God, these last two weeks together would be torture. Every time he thought of her leaving, his stomach knotted and his lungs seized. They had a plan, he reminded himself; they’d agreed to three months together and then she’d head back to college and he’d continue his travels.
But after two and a half months together, he knew that he could no longer take her, and his feelings for her, lightly. And that realization made him feel like his life was spinning out of control. While his little brain was already mourning her departure, his big brain was insisting they could do with some distance, some time apart. He needed a lot of space and quite a bit of time apart because he was starting to suspect that she might be the beat of his heart, the breath on his lips, the reason the sun rose in the morning.
He had to let her go because, if he wasn’t careful, he could love her with a fierce, crazy, forever type of love. Love like that meant taking a very real risk, a huge leap of faith. It made him feel lost, exposed and far too vulnerable—all the emotions he’d been trying to avoid since he was eight. Love meant pain, and he was too smart to put himself in harm’s way.
Love meant losing control.
Love was also, it was said, supposed to make you feel happy and complete. He didn’t deserve to feel happy and he’d never feel complete. How could he when he was the reason his parents’ remains, and those of his unborn sibling, were scattered on a mountain in Vermont?
Beck felt his cell phone vibrate in his back pocket and pulled it out. He smiled at the name on the display. He had two older brothers, Linc through adoption and Jaeger through birth, and he loved them equally.
They were also equally annoying in their belief that he needed looking after. The fact that he was taller and bigger than both of them didn’t stop them fussing over him and his younger sister, Sage.
This time it was Jaeger calling.
“Jay, what’s up?” he asked after answering the call.
“Just checking up on you. Any trouble?”
Beck rolled his eyes. He wasn’t that stupid; he wasn’t stupid at all. “Actually, I was just about to call you. We’re sitting in a Thai jail. They found some coke on us.”
There was long silence before Jaeger released a harsh curse. “That’s not funny, Beck.”
Beck grinned. “I thought it was.”
“You are such an ass.”
Beck tapped Cady on her knee and pointed to his backpack, silently telling her to keep an eye on his stuff. She nodded and Beck stood up to walk toward the window looking out onto the busy tarmac.
“Where are you? Bangkok?” Jaeger asked. “And are you still heading for Vietnam?”
“That’s the plan, why?”
“I’m heading there day after next. I’ve had a tip about a new rustic mine in Yen Bai producing some very high quality rubies. Want to come with me and see what we can buy?”
Beck felt a spurt of excitement, the kick of adrenaline at the thought of hunting gems with his brother to supply the demands of Ballantyne’s rich and demanding clients. “Hell, yes.”
Then he remembered that he wasn’t traveling alone. “Can I bring Cady?”
“I’m not sure of the area, Beck. I wouldn’t,” Jaeger replied. “Can’t she stay in Hanoi by herself for a couple of days?”
Beck ran his hand over the back of his neck. The backpackers they’d met on Phi Phi were heading to Hanoi, as well, and they were all staying at the same backpacker’s
