covered the stars, and she watched until they twinkled through it and the sky was clear again. The breeze brought the smell of wet ashes.
“Senseless violence robbed us both,” she said.
Liz tightened his arm around her and touched her chin. She settled her head against his shoulder again.
“I packed away all my feelings and dove into work,” she said. “The Yanks assumed I was a workaholic with no love life, making it possible never to speak of him. To think, I traded a year I could have been married to him on the chance of a bloody promotion.”
She described Burtie’s death, her transfer to London, Harald’s mental decline and death, and their financial ruin.
“I thought I could keep it all in, but in the months before I first came here, I began leaking emotion like a cracked bowl. I believed paralyzing grief was best shared only with a dog.”
“Beats drowning it in booze,” he said.
“Maybe you were smarter, going on a rampage and getting it out of your system.”
“Some things neither of us will ever get out of our systems.”
A couple wandered up from the beach and stood looking into the bar, then moved on.
“Jason sometimes has to remind me how hard I fought to survive on Feather,” Liz said. “He says I have to ‘embrace da choice a’ life, mon.’ When I slip, he’s tolerant of my moods and black spells.”
“I’ve never seen a black spell.”
“Yes, you have,” he said. “I get really quiet, go away. Around you, they’re short.”
She squeezed his hand, which was still wrapped around hers.
“Maybe you keep me from going all the way to the bottom,” he said. “If I do, I can be there a long time.”
“Liz,” someone called from the bar, “cash up?”
He glanced at his watch. “Right there, Junior,” he called. He helped Els stand up, and she leaned into him on the way to the bar.
She thought he might try to sweep her up and carry her across the court, but he folded her arm under his and guided her to the steps. Light from the kitchen window cast a golden grid onto the gravel. Her whole body was humming.
He pulled her into his arms, lifted her chin, and looked at her searchingly. He kissed her cheek so softly she barely felt it, despite yearning for it, and then he kissed her a little lower and again on the corner of her mouth. Whole minutes seemed to pass between kisses. When finally he kissed her full on the lips, she rose on her tiptoes to put her hands in his hair and held him there and returned the kiss again and again, deeper and deeper. His arms went around her back and she clung to him, her tiptoes barely touching the ground.
He loosened his grip, and she felt for her footing and laid her cheek against his chest. He kissed her hair. “I’ve felt protective of you from the minute I hauled you out of the water,” he said. “A scared little kid trying so hard to be tough.” His hand drifted to her neck, his fingers tracing the silver chain, the blue bead. “Even when you really piss me off, which is often enough, I can’t forget that terrified, brave little girl for long.”
The idea that he’d seen the very thing she’d struggled to conceal all her life, and that it was what bound him to her despite her moods, left her too unmasked, too confused, to form a reply.
He kissed her again, this time tenderly, lingeringly, as if her lips and mouth were a new country he wanted to explore and remember forever, then looked into her eyes. “Thanks for tonight.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and walked her up to the lounge. He switched on the Chinese lamp, and in its gentle light his eyes were the color of blueberries. She sought the refectory table for balance, wondering what would, should, come next, but her head was a pudding of revelations and emotions that needed sorting. She wanted him both to leave her alone and never to leave her.
When he turned to go, she reached for his arm, and he stopped and looked at her for a long beat.
“My fantasy goes like this,” he said. “We spend some unhurried time together on Iguana. Put that stateroom to proper use.”
The fantasy was so similar to her own she almost laughed. Finally, she found her voice. “Would that be a dare, Captain?”