little. “It’s going to take some rethinking. Like you alone in the house reconsidering whether you want to go to bed with me here. Or anywhere, anytime. Maybe I was pushing too fast.”
“No, no, Marsh, that’s really not it. I guess my mother’s call did have some kind of weird effect. I’m sorry, but I’ll get over—”
“I think you will,” he agreed. “And faster if I’m not here. So we’re going to do this another time. Some night when you’ve had the phone unplugged all day. Some night when your ex-husband’s out of your head and back behind bars where he belongs, and you’re all mine.”
Short of tackling him and dragging him into the bedroom, she didn’t know what to do. There was an instant’s hesitation, as if Marsh was hoping she would find some way to convince him he was wrong. And in that moment, she heard a car start.
Her eyes widened, and she drew a sharp breath. It was all Marsh needed.
“You call me,” he said. “Bay’s friend will invite him over again. You come to my house next time. Not so many distractions.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was a mess. All she could do was nod.
“Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to say no?” he asked. “Because, you know, all you ever have to do when you’re with me is say it, and I’ll be listening.”
“I wasn’t thinking about no. I was thinking about yes. I invited you.”
“So you did.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You lock up, in case somebody really was out there, but I don’t think you have to worry. I didn’t even see a palm frond rustling.”
He cleared out so fast, in a minute there was no sign he’d been there except for an excellent bottle of wine sitting on her counter and the tail end of a country love song.
Tracy turned off the iPod and listened intently. And when she heard Marsh’s pickup pull away, she headed straight for the door.
CJ Craimer had once held considerable real estate in her heart, but she had foreclosed more than a year ago. If she had to scour the island one grain of sand at a time to serve the final eviction notice, she would. But afterwards, she never wanted to think about CJ Craimer again.
chapter two
“You have not yet produced a child for your husband.”
Janya Kapur lowered herself to the chair beside her telephone. Then she pulled the receiver away from her ear and gazed at it in amazement for a moment before she slipped it back in place.
“Aai,” she said softly to her mother. “It is good to hear your voice.”
“You have heard it many times before, and you know very well what it sounds like.”
Janya controlled a sigh. Her mother was calling from India, where Janya herself had lived until last year, when she’d moved to Florida and the little group of beach cottages called Happiness Key.
Following a serious disagreement, she and her mother had not spoken in…Janya counted the months on her fingers…seven months. Janya had left the door open for her mother to call when she was ready, but she had never really expected this day to come. Inika Desai was opinionated from her toe rings to the silk dupatta that covered her head. In her eyes, her only daughter had disgraced her with a failed betrothal, even though the fault had not been Janya’s. Janya’s subsequent hastily arranged marriage to Rishi Kapur, a brilliant Indian-American software designer, had not lessened her mother’s humiliation.
“It is good to hear your voice anyway,” Janya said, “although your choice of subject surprises me. Rishi and I have only been married a little more than a year.”
“This is plenty of time to have a baby. Your father and I are not young. We expect to see grandchildren before we die.”
“And Yash is not cooperating?” Yash was Janya’s younger brother, who had resisted all attempts to be matched to a woman of his parents’ choosing.
“Your brother is, if such a thing can be possible, more stubborn, more difficult, than you. I know he telephones. Do not deny it. And I suppose he has told you he will soon come to your country to study history. I am aware you planted this idea in his head.”
At great cost, Janya had learned to stand up to her mother, but it was a lesson she had taken to heart. “No, I didn’t plant it, but I helped it grow. He has