Conquer the Memories

“I’m hardly going to wait until I’m waddling and you’re driven into the arms of some skinny yacht owner.”

Craig set aside the paper plate and sank down next to her. “I thought we’d established that she was pockmarked and wore braces.”

“We haven’t established anything.” She rearranged the blanket so there was pillow potential for both heads. Two pairs of cut-off-denim-clad legs stretched out, all four sets of toes digging in the sand. “The only thing the prosecution is really aware of,” Sonia said sleepily, “is that the man knows too much about boats. The rest has been simply brilliant deduction on my part. How long did you date her, anyway?”

Craig lifted his foot and sprinkled her ankle with a layer of sand. “How long have you had this violently jealous streak?” he remarked conversationally.

“Ages.”

“You’ve kept it very well hidden.”

“Thank you.”

“I like it. That you’re jealous.”

“I’m glad that you’re glad that I’m jealous,” Sonia said patiently. “How long did you date her?”

He chuckled, rolling over on his stomach. His rear end, Sonia noted with amusement, was covered with sand. So was she, almost everywhere. The blanket made, at best, a crumpled pillow, and the grainy sand had crept inside her cutoffs…and she was amazingly, thoroughly comfortable.

But then, her husband was relaxed, as he hadn’t been in weeks. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes were full of humor, and every limb and muscle reflected lazy, sated easiness. She reached over to push back a shock of hair from his forehead. “Answer me,” she demanded, but her tone was loving.

“About what?”

She sighed. It was useless to pursue. “You’re very good at keeping secrets, you know,” she scolded.

“Only at keeping secrets you really don’t want to know.”

“True.” Sonia added softly, “Sometimes, Craig. Not always.” She stroked back that shock of hair again. This time, her fingertips lingered on his temples. “I don’t need to know about your past love affairs,” she said softly. “That’s not part of our lives.”

His lips pressed a kiss into the center of her palm. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the tender gesture, reminded of the loving they had shared all day. When her lashes fluttered open again, Craig was shifting to lean closer to her. Her palm stroked the wall of his chest.

“Craig?”

His eyes lifted to hers.

“Certain secrets you don’t have the right to keep,” she said gently. “And I think it’s way past time you told me what’s been bothering you.”

Chapter 13

Sonia slowly shifted to a sitting position, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. For a moment, she stared into the dying driftwood fire, wondering why on earth it was so hard to ask one very simple question of a man she knew so well and loved and trusted so very much. Pride? Her eyes raised to Craig’s, to his still features and dark, brooding eyes. Pride mattered, yet one of them had to let loose of it or they’d never get past that silence. “You haven’t wanted to make love with me for some weeks,” she said quietly.

He expelled a suddenly restless breath. “There hasn’t been a time from the first moment I met you that I haven’t wanted to make love with you,” he denied roughly. “Sonia…”

“You satisfied my needs. Not your own.” Sonia brushed a trembling strand of hair from her cheek, looking down. “Someone very close to me taught me that satisfaction and intimacy aren’t at all the same thing. Intimacy,” she said quietly, “takes two. You’ve taught me that over four years of marriage, Craig.” She was not surprised when her husband suddenly lurched to a standing position and started kicking sand on the fire. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“I’ve thought it had something to do with Chicago,” Sonia probed gently. “I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure of that, except that you’ve obviously changed since then. Doing very silly things like assuming I needed George to help me pick out my lingerie. Like paying someone to find some stupid kid a zillion miles away who can’t possibly touch us again.” She added softly, “Hear me?”

“Let’s go back to the boat,” he said swiftly.

Reluctantly, she rose, dusting the sand from the seat of her jeans. Her eyes never left Craig, as he finished packing up their dinner debris and carting it over to the dinghy. In very few minutes, Craig was dragging the little boat into the water.

She didn’t have much choice but to hustle over to it. Her toes splashed in the cool, frothing surf as she helped him tug the boat farther out. In knee-deep water, the little boat was finally free floating, and Craig held it steady while she climbed in.

She studied his profile as he got in after her. His features were all stark silver and dark hollows by moonlight, his eyes unreadable, the emotions on his face stubbornly hidden in shadows.

“Let me row,” she suggested.

“I don’t mind.”

“Really, I’d like to.”

He handed her the oars, a terrible mistake on his part. Sonia swiftly rowed away from the shore and into deeper waters. Secured in their oarlocks, the wooden paddles were easy enough to maneuver. When their dinghy was far out in the cove, she abruptly raised the dripping oars and swung them into the boat.

“Sonia.”

“There happen to be two of us in this marriage,” she reminded him. She said it gently, but she was tempted to unlock the oars and toss them overboard. In time, he’d talk. Or they’d starve somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

The moon shone down on the cove; the water reflected a sudden slash of a smile on his face brought on by the fire in her eyes. “I love you,” he said softly.

The tone was warm enough to melt steel. She could have killed him. He knew damn well she wasn’t steel.

“I love you, too,” she said with equal fervor, and reached for the starboard oarlock.

Startled, his hand snatched at hers just before she’d freed the oar to go drifting to Timbuktu. “Dammit.” He took a breath, staring at her. One by one, he pried her fingers from the oar. “God, you’re stubborn,” he remarked.

She was silent. They stared at each other, and Sonia felt a certain sadness. She couldn’t think of a time they’d pitted their equally strong wills against each other. They’d never had to before. That Craig’s was often the stronger she already knew. Unfortunately, he knew her very little if he didn’t recognize she was fully capable of digging in her heels when life called for it.

The oars flopped noisily inside the boat as he set them down. He leaned back, his arms stretched out along the wooden gunwales of the boat. His eyes never once left hers. “When you break a vow,” he finally said quietly, “it isn’t an easy thing to mend again.”

“You have never broken a promise to me,” she said fiercely.

He shook his head. “Dammit, don’t defend me.”

The boat was adrift; neither one of them seemed to notice or care. A dark night greeted them, waters that stretched in endless darkness, and Sonia waited, so very angry with him that she was hurting with it. Talk to me, she wanted to cry, and instead she waited longer.

“That love, honor and cherish vow. The part about the cherish,” Craig clipped out. “Corny stuff, Sonia. Only I was raised on just that corny stuff. I was raised to believe that a man keeps what he has by protecting it, by guarding it. You fight to get what you want, and then you fight to keep it.” His voice abruptly softened. “You happen to be a most precious part of me, Sonia. And the problem was never what you expected of me but what I expected of myself.”

Confused, she stared at his stark features.

“I exposed you to danger. You could have been-”