Conquer the Memories

“No.” Her tone was swift and sure.

“Yes. I hurt you. No one else. Not some fool with stringy blond hair, not some gang of hoodlums. I did it. I broke my vow to protect you…”

She took up the oars, too shaken to sit still. The wooden paddles sliced neatly through the waters, and she ached inside, feeling the strain on the muscles in her shoulders, feeling the pain of the man across from her.

He was so very foolish, her lover. He was a man to the core, a capital M man. How on earth could he ever have doubted it? “That’s why,” she asked quietly, “you didn’t want to make love to me?”

“I kept seeing the bastard’s face…” Craig roughly shifted forward, grabbing the oars. “Whenever I touched you, I saw his face, and then yours, vulnerable and terrified. We were all but making love when it happened, in that park. The only thing on my mind at that time was getting you in bed. Maybe if I’d spent a minute less time selfishly obsessed with my own needs-”

“You think you were the only one too busy fooling around to see anything else?” Sonia whispered.

Craig said nothing.

“I was the one who insisted we shake off our bodyguard, as I remember. Not you.”

He still said nothing.

Her jaw firmed, and her voice was suddenly threaded with urgency. “There is nothing to blame yourself for, dammit. We both shook that idiotic shadow, and we both chose to neck in the park. Whatever went wrong, we share that responsibility. For that matter, I never expected or wanted you to be some kind of macho wrestler, you fool. There were five men in that gang of muggers, Craig! The worst part of the whole thing for me wasn’t those goons, but seeing you unconscious in the grass. I thought…” Her voice broke.

He couldn’t stand the aching threat of tears in her voice. “You can continue shouting at me,” he remarked gravely, “but if you don’t sit down, you’re going to tip over the boat.”

“I don’t care.” But she sank back down on the seat with a reluctant smile. The beast. If he’d done anything but tease her, she would undoubtedly have burst out crying.

“I don’t have the least idea where we are,” he continued mildly.

“Neither do I.”

“And I don’t see any point in continuing to argue when we’d both rather go back to the yacht and make love.” Craig shifted forward, planted a shaky kiss on her lips and then put both her hands on the oars. “You row, woman. I have every reason to want to save my strength. You’ve already exhausted me twice today.”

Sonia dragged one oar in an arc through the water until the dinghy was turned around and headed back for their cruiser. She leaned toward Craig with the forward motions and away from him as she brought the oars back. Amazing how such action echoed other, more sensual rhythms.

Her eyes rested on Craig’s face, studying him pensively. He was leaned back, studying her with equal intensity, a very stark, very male, very hungry sexual promise in his eyes. He was very clearly through talking. He was willing to communicate further about the past lonely weeks, but in other ways.

The ache in her lower body said she’d already been well loved that day. She didn’t need sex. She did, however, need to see that look in his eyes again. She needed that sweet, monumental relief of knowing they’d talked, that there had never been anything so terribly wrong that they couldn’t solve it together.

Dip and pull, dip and pull. Craig motioned his willingness to take the oars; she shook her head.

A kind of silence gripped her, deep inside, absorbing what he’d tried to tell her. Not the words, but the guilt behind them. That he’d blamed himself for wanting her too damn much on a very still, very seductive night in Chicago…that he’d linked that to his right to make love to her…that he’d suffered through a very masculine feeling of failure to protect her-how could she not have known?

Dip and pull, dip and pull. Always, the man had bolstered and encouraged and abetted every feminine instinct in her. She felt secure about herself as a woman because of him. It had never occurred to her that Craig could possibly doubt himself as a man, or that she could have been so totally oblivious to how important that male role was in their relationship. To him.

She was suddenly very definitely in the mood to make love again. She had a great deal to show Craig about how she thought of him as a man. A great many imaginative experiments to try that would reinforce that welling love she felt, that would make very clear that they were equal mates in bed, equally sensitive, equally giving, equally…

Leaning forward, she handed Craig the oars. She had no more time to risk getting all tuckered out. Not when there was a long night ahead, and their cruiser was finally within sight again.

***

Stepping off the plane with Craig just behind her, Sonia scanned the airport crowd for a cigar-smoking, wizened little man with a wrinkled face.

Charlie found the two of them first; Sonia’s cherry-red dress was impossible to miss. He whipped the cigar out of his mouth as he ambled forward. “Didn’t think the two of you were ever coming back. Well, how was it?”

Charlie bent a little forward. Not that he was expecting or even wanted a peck on the cheek from Sonia, but she usually insisted on these things. He received a resounding buss and hug besides. Beaming, he grabbed for her flight bag and reached around to hook an arm across Craig’s shoulder. “Looking good, you two. I can hardly wait to hear about the whole trip. You catch any good fish?”

“Not a one,” Craig admitted.

“Not one? How could you possibly be anywhere near-” someone bumped into him; he maneuvered aside “-that incredible fishing territory and not catch a single fish?”

“Nothing was biting, actually,” Sonia said, and added swiftly, “How’re the pups?”

Charlie gave her a disgusted look, as the three angled through the crowd to the baggage area. “Don’t ask.”

“Okay.”

“They tipped over the trash. One teethed on the patio furniture. Another decided he was going to whine outside the door the whole night. Thinks he’s going to be a lap dog, that one. John called from work,” Charlie mentioned to Craig.

“Hmm?”

“John. Work. Another problem with that guy from Radoil-”

Charlie watched, amused, as Craig leaned over his wife and kissed her. The kiss wasn’t long; it wasn’t short either. Sonia was wearing a hat, a wide-brimmed white thing with a red ribbon; she had to hold it on with one hand. And when Craig disappeared into the getting-luggage crowd, she was still staring after him, a faint flush on her cheeks, her fingers still holding the silly hat.

Charlie cleared his throat. “So you didn’t do much fishing,” he chortled.

Sonia twirled in his direction, a delightful smile on her lips, almost as red as her dress. “Pardon?”

“Did you at least see the Gulf? Port-to-port it between marinas?”

“Well…sort of.”

“Meet a lot of people?”

“Not really.”

“Get a lot of swimming in then?”

“We did swim. We swam a lot,” she assured him. “Every day.”

“Somehow I thought the two of you’d be browner than you are. Not that you weren’t plenty tanned when you left home, but after four days of nothing but sun-”

“It rained,” Sonia improvised swiftly.

Charlie’s eyebrows innocently vaulted up. “That’s strange. I watched the weather report every day. The whole area was supposed to be hot and dry.”

“The Gulf gets sudden rains.” Sonia’s eyes nervously sought Craig’s lean form in the crowd. “Lots of them. You’d be surprised.”

“That’s a shame,” Charlie commiserated.

“It was,” Sonia agreed.