Remarried In Haste

“No, you won’t. I’ve paid my money and I’m staying.”

She’d forgotten how much taller he was than her five feet nine. How big he was. “Brant, let’s not—”

He jerked his head at the door. “Outside. Not in here.”

He was right, of course. Her company would fire her on the spot if it could see how she was greeting a client. She pivoted, stalked through the glass doors into the open part of the terminal and then out into the dusky heat of a tropical night. The van was parked by the curb. She swung herself into the driver’s seat and took the key from the pocket of her jeans, shoving it into the ignition. Brant had climbed into the passenger seat. Turning to face him, Rowan said tautly, “So what’s going on here?”

Brant took his time to answer. He was still getting used to her haircut, to that moment of outrage by the baggage counter when he’d realized she’d changed something about herself that he’d loved, changed it without asking him—and if that wasn’t the height of irrationality he didn’t know what was. The new haircut, he decided reluctantly, suited her, emphasizing the slim line of her throat and the exquisite angles of her cheekbones. Her eyes, a rich brown in daylight, now matched the velvety darkness of the sky. Eyes to drown in...

He said equably, “I needed a vacation. Through the friend of a friend I heard about Rick’s pneumonia and thought I’d take his place. Don’t make such a big deal of it, Rowan.”

“If it’s no big deal, why don’t you just go home? Where you belong.”

You don’t belong with me, that’s what she was saying. A statement that truly riled him. “You used to say—fairly frequently, as I recall—that I never took time to smell the roses. Or, in this case, to watch the birds...you should be pleased I’m finally doing so.”

“Brant, let’s get something straight. What you do or don’t do is no longer my concern. Go watch the birds by all means. But don’t do it on my turf.”

“You’ve lost weight.”

Her exasperated hiss of breath sounded very loud in the confines of the van. Brant watched her fight for composure, her knuckles gripping the steering wheel as if she were throttling him, and discovered to his amazement that he was enjoying himself. Enjoying himself? Was that why he’d come to Grenada?

To Rowan’s nostrils drifted the faint tang of aftershave, the same one Brant had used during the four tempestuous years they’d been married. It brought with it a host of memories she didn’t dare bring to the surface; she’d be lost if she did. Nevertheless, she let her eyes wander with a lazy and reckless intimacy down his flat belly. “You’ve lost weight, as well,” she said and saw that, briefly, she’d stopped him in his tracks. “Am I right?” she added sweetly.

Brant glared at her in impotent fury. He knew exactly what was wrong. He wanted to kiss her. So badly that he could taste the soft yielding of her lips and the silken slide of her cheek, and feel the first stirring of his groin. But kissing Rowan wasn’t part of the plan.

Not that he’d had a plan. He’d acted on impulse in a way rare to him, and now he was faced—literally—with the consequences. Rowan. His ex-wife. His former wife. His divorced wife.

His wife.

He said levelly, knowing he was backing off from something he should have anticipated and hadn’t, “Look, it’s been a long day and I’m tired. Please, could we go to the hotel so I can catch up on some sleep?”

“Certainly,” she said. “But let me make something clear first. I’m doing my job in the next two weeks, Brant. A job I love and do well. You’re just another client to me. Because I’m not going to allow you to be anything else—do you understand?”

“I haven’t said I want to be anything else,” he remarked, and watched her lips tighten.

“Good,” she said viciously, and jammed the clutch into gear. The engine roared to life. She checked in the rearview mirror and pulled away from the curb.

Rowan was an excellent driver, and knew it; and she’d had the last twelve hours to get used to driving on the left. She whipped along the narrow streets, took the roundabout in fine style, and within fifteen minutes turned into the hotel, where she parked next to the rooms that were partway up the hill. “This is the only place we stay that isn’t in close vicinity of a beach,” she said, breaking a silence that to her, at least, had swarmed with things unsaid. “You’re in Room Nine—Rick had requested a single room.” She fished around in the little pack strapped to her waist “Here’s your key.”

She was holding it in her fingertips. To test his immunity, Brant deliberately closed his hand over hers; and as soon as he’d done so, knew he’d made a very bad mistake. Her skin was warm and smooth, her fingers with that supple strength he’d never forgotten. But they were as still in his grip as a trapped bird, and when his glance flew to her face he saw in it a reflection of his own dismay. Dismay? Who was he kidding? It wasn’t dismay. It was outright terror.

He snatched the key from her, its cool metal digging into his flesh. “What time do we get going in the morning?”

“Breakfast at six on the patio,” she babbled, “but you can sleep in if you want, there’s a really nice beach about fifteen minutes from the hotel and you’d probably rather have a day to yourself to rest up.”

“I’ll see you at six,” he announced and got out of the van as fast as he could. Room Eight was in darkness. A small light shone from Room Ten. Then Rowan hurried past him, unlocked the patio door to Room Ten and shut it with rather more force than was necessary. He watched as she pulled the curtains tight over the glass.

Brant stood very still under the burgeoning yellow moon. Frogs chirped in the undergrowth; palm fronds were etched against the star-strewn night sky in a way that at any other time he might have found beautiful.

But palm trees weren’t a priority right now. How could they be when his whole body was a raw ache of hunger? Sexual hunger. He wanted Rowan now, in his bed, in his arms, where she belonged...and to hell with the divorce. How was he going to get a minute’s sleep, knowing she was on the other side of the wall from him?

He’d been a fool to come here, to let Gabrielle talk him into an escapade worthy of an adolescent. If he were smart he’d take Rowan’s advice and get on the first plane home. Tomorrow.

Soft-footed, Brant walked over to his own door and inserted the key. The door opened smoothly. He closed it behind him, and heard the smallest of creaks from the room next to his. Rowan. Getting into bed. Did she still sleep naked?

He sat down on the wicker chair, banging his fists rhythmically on his knees. What kind of an idiot was he that he’d neglected to take into account the effect Rowan had had on him from the first time he’d ever seen her, arguing with a customs officer in the Toronto airport seven years ago? He’d engineered a conversation with her that day, had touched her wrist and had seen the instant flare of awareness in her face, the primitive recognition of female to male, of mate to mate. Would he ever forget how her pulse had leaped beneath his fingertip? That all-revealing signal had engraved itself on his flesh within five minutes of meeting her, and would probably remain with him as long as he lived.

Two days later they’d fallen into bed in his condo; three weeks later they were married. A month after that he’d left for Rwanda, and the fights between them had started, fights every bit as passionate as their ardent and imperative couplings.

Another tiny creak came from the room next door. He wanted to kick the wall in, gather her in his arms, make love to her the whole night through.

But this wasn’t Myanmar or Afghanistan or Liberia. He couldn’t bash his way into the next room. Rowan wasn’t an arms smuggler or a drug dealer; she was his ex-wife.

How he hated that word! Almost as much as he hated the prospect, now almost a certainty, that he was in for one of his nights of insomnia, nights when too many of the nightmare images he usually kept at bay would crowd through his defenses, attacking him from every angle like an army of fanatic rebels.

Normally it took every bit of his strength and integrity to hold himself together during those nights; which were, fortunately, rare. Tonight he had the added, overwhelming torment of Rowan’s presence on the other side of the wall. Would he ever forget the first time they’d made love? Her entrancing mixture of shyness and boldness, her astonishing generosity, her heart-catching beauty...he could remember every detail of that afternoon, which had blended into a night equally and wondrously passionate.

Brant buried his face in his hands, his back curved like a bow, a host of memories stabbing him like arrows.

CHAPTER TWO

ROWAN lay ramrod still in her double bed. The numbers of the digital alarm clock on the night table announced that it was 2:06. If she moved at all, the springs creaked. If she tossed and turned, sooner or later her elbow or her head thumped the wall. The wall that lay between her and Brant.

Her eyes ached. Her body twitched. Her nerves were singing as loudly as the frogs. And all the while her brain seethed with the knowledge that Brant was lying less than a foot away from her, separated from her by a thin barrier of stucco and plaster.

Separated from her by too many fights, too many angry words, too many long months of worrying about him and waiting for him, all the while trying to keep her own life on track. That last departure for Colombia had been, classically, the straw to break the back of their marriage. That and the woman called Gabrielle Doucette.

She had no idea how she was going to get through the next two weeks. No idea whatsoever.

2:09. She had to get some sleep. Tomorrow was a full day, although thank goodness she’d hired a driver and wouldn’t have to negotiate roads that could be hair-raising at the best of times. Why had Brant come here? What stupidity had impelled him to seek her out just when she was beginning to hope that one day soon she might heal, that hovering somewhere on the horizon there was the possibility, however faint, of putting the past behind her and looking for a new relationship? One that would give her everything Brant had refused her.

How dare he interfere with her life, he who had damaged it so badly? How dare he?

Somewhere between two-thirty and quarter to three Rowan fell asleep as suddenly as if she’d been hit on the head. She woke sharp at 5:20; during the years she’d spent guiding tours, she’d trained herself to beat the alarm by ten minutes to give herself that space to think over the day ahead. As so often happened, everything seemed crystal clear to her now that it was morning.

She’d overreacted last night. Big time. And why not? It had been late at night. Her ex-husband had appeared totally unexpectedly and had thrown her for a loop. And again, why not? In all her thirty-one years he was the only man she’d ever fallen in love with; so she’d fallen in a major way. No holding back. No keeping part of herself for herself. She’d thrown herself into their relationship with passion, enthusiasm and a deep joy; and when, all too soon, rifts had appeared, she’d worked with all her heart to mend them. In consequence, the final and utter failure of their marriage had devastated her.

But that was a long time ago.

The only thing she’d have to beware of was touching him. The physical bond between them had never ruptured, not even in the worst of times, and when he’d wrapped his fingers around hers last night as she’d passed him the key, all the old magic had instantly exploded to life, like fireworks glittering against the blackness of sky.

He’d seduced her—literally—from the beginning. She mustn’t, for her own sake, allow him to do it again.

There were six other people in the group; she’d have lots of protection. Plus the itinerary would keep everyone busy. On which note, Rowan thought lightly, you’d better get moving. She scrambled out of bed, headed for the shower and left her room at ten to six.

Breakfast started at six on a charming open patio twined with scarlet hibiscus and the yellow trumpet-shaped flowers called Allamanda. The six other members of the group were tucking into slices of juicy papaya; Brant was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d decided to heed her advice and take the day off, thought Rowan; or, even better, fly back to Toronto. She beamed at everyone, inquired how they’d all slept, and heard Brant’s deep voice say from behind her, “Good morning—sorry I missed seeing all of you last night.”

Rowan said evenly, “This is Brant Curtis, from Toronto. He’s taking Rick’s place, because Rick’s ill with pneumonia.” Quickly she introduced the others to Brant, then said, “I’m sure you won’t remember everyone’s name. But you’ll soon get to know each other. Coffee, Brant?”

“Shower first, coffee second,” he said easily, “that’s been my routine for a long time.”

He was smiling at her. Often they’d showered together; and they’d both loved Viennese coffee ground fresh and sweetened with maple syrup. Willing herself not to snarl at him, Rowan said, “Personally I prefer herbal tea—can’t take the caffeine anymore.”

Peg and May, the two elderly sisters from Dakota who looked fluttery and sweet and knew more about birds than most encyclopedias, passed Brant the plate of papaya and the cream for his coffee; Sheldon and Karen, the newlyweds from Maine, gave him the bemused smiles they gave everything and everyone; Steve and Natalie, unmarried and so argumentative that Rowan sincerely hoped they weren’t contemplating marriage, both eyed Brant speculatively. Steve no doubt saw Brant as a potential rival for Alpha male; whereas Natalie was probably wanting to haul him off to bed the minute Steve was looking the other way.

Brant was a big boy. Let Brant deal with Natalie.

Peg said, “You missed some wonderful shorebirds in Antigua yesterday, Brant. But you’ll have lots of time to catch up...I’m sure you saw the mangrove cuckoo in the breadfruit tree?”

“And the black form of the bananaquit in the bougainvillea?” May added.

Brant took a deep draft of coffee; he was going to need it. He said cautiously, dredging his memory for the pictures in the bird book, “I thought a bananaquit was yellow?” and realized he’d said exactly the right thing. Peg and May launched into an enthusiastic and mystifying discussion about isolation and Darwinian theory, to which he nodded and looked as though he understood every word, munching all the while on a deliciously crumbly croissant smothered with jam.

Natalie, who was wearing a cotton shirt with rather a lot of buttons undone, smoothed her sleek black hair back from her face and pouted her fuschia-colored lips at him. “On the way back to our rooms, Brant, I’ll have to show you where I saw the crested hummingbird.”

“You can show me first,” Steve said aggressively; he had the build of a wrestler and the buzzed haircut of a marine.

“Oh,” piped Karen, who had fluffy blond curls and artless blue eyes, “what’s that black bird with the long tail on the ledge of the patio?”

“A male Carib grackle,” Rowan replied. “The equivalent of our starling, we’ll be seeing a lot of them.”

Sheldon, Karen’s husband, said nothing; he was too busy gazing at Karen in adoration.

Everyone else, Brant saw, had brought binoculars to the table; he’d forgotten his. Rowan looked as though she hadn’t had much more sleep than he’d had. Good, he thought meanly, and took another croissant. He was already beginning to realize that keeping up with this lot was going to take a fair bit of energy and that he probably should have read more of the bird book and thought less about Rowan on the long flight from Toronto.

Not that he was here to see birds.

He was here to see Rowan—right?

By the time they left the hotel, the sky had clouded over and rain was spattering the windshield. Their first stop was an unprepossessing stretch of scrubby forest on the side of a hillside, the residence of an endangered species called the Grenada dove. Brant trooped with the rest up the slope, thorns snatching at his shirt and bare wrists, rain dripping down his neck. Wasn’t April supposed to be the dry season? Where was the famous sunshine of the Caribbean? Where were the white sand beaches? And why was Rowan way ahead of him and he last in line? Natalie, not to his surprise, was directly in front of him, an expensive camera looped over her shoulder, her hips undulating like a model’s on a catwalk. He’d met plenty of Natalies over the years, and avoided them like the plague; especially when they were teamed with bruisers like Steve.

When they were all thoroughly enmeshed in the forest, Rowan took out a tape deck and played a recording of the dove, its mournful cooing not improving Brant’s mood. She was intent on what she was doing, her eyes searching the forest floor, all her senses alert. Maybe if he blatted like a dove she’d notice he was here, he thought sourly.

They all trudged further up the hillside and she played the tape again; then moved to another spot, where there was a small clearing. Rowan replayed the tape. From higher up the slope a soft, plangent cooing came in reply. She whispered, “Hear that? Check out that patch of undergrowth by the gumbo-limbo tree.”

Brant didn’t know a gumbo-limbo tree from a coconut palm. Peg said, “Oh, there’s the dove! Do you see it, May? Working its way between the thorn bushes.”

“I can see it,” Natalie remarked. “Not sure I can get a photo, though.”

“Then why can’t I find it?” Steve fumed.

“Come over here, Steve,” Rowan said, “I’ve got it in the scope.”

She’d been carrying a large telescope on a tripod; Brant watched Steve stoop to look in the eyepiece. Then Karen and Sheldon peered in. Rowan said, “Look for the white shoulders and the white patch on the head. Brant, have you seen it?”

He hadn’t. Obediently he walked over and looked through the lens, seeing a dull brown pigeon with a crescent of white on its side. Natalie rubbed against him with her hip. “My turn, Brant,” she murmured.

May—who had mauve-rinsed hair while Peg had blue—said to him, “Isn’t that a wonderful bird?”

She was grinning from ear to ear; Brant couldn’t possibly have spoiled her pleasure. “A terrific bird,” he said solemnly.

Ten minutes later they emerged back into the cleared land at the base of the scrub forest, and Rowan swept the area with her binoculars. Then she gasped in amazement. “Look—near the papaya tree. A pair of them!”

Brant raised his binoculars. Two more doves were pecking at the earth, their white markings clearly visible. Peg and May sighed with deep satisfaction, Natalie adjusted her zoom lens for a picture and Rowan said exultantly, “This is one of the rarest birds of the whole trip and we’ve seen three of them! I can’t believe it.”

Instead of staring at the doves, Brant stared at Rowan. Her cheeks were flushed, her face alight with pleasure; she used to look that way when he’d walked in the door after a three-week absence, he thought painfully. Or after they’d made love.

She glanced up, caught his fixed gaze on her and narrowed her eyes, closing him out; her chin was raised, her damp curls like tiny flames. Steve snapped, “Hurry up and put the scope on them, Rowan.”

Rowan gave a tiny start. “Sorry,” she said, and lowered the tripod.

Don’t you talk to my wife like that.

His own words, which had been entirely instinctive, played themselves in Brant’s head like one of Rowan’s tapes. She wasn’t his wife. Not anymore. And why should it matter to him how a jerk like Steve behaved? Furious with himself, he raised his glasses and watched the two doves work their way along a clump of bushes.

Then Peg said, “A pair of blue-black grassquits at the edge of the sugarcane,” and everyone’s binoculars, with the exception of Brant’s, swiveled to the left.

“How beautiful,” May sighed.

“This is the only island we’ll see them,” Peg added.

“Take a look in the scope, Karen,” Rowan offered.

They all lined up for a turn. Brant was last “All I can see is sugarcane,” he said.

Quickly Rowan edged him aside, adjusting the black levers. Her left hand was bare of rings, he saw with a nasty flick of pain, as if a knife had scored his bare skin. “There they are, they’d moved,” she said, and backed away.

Into his vision leaped a small glossy bird and its much duller mate. A pair, he thought numbly, and suddenly wished with all his heart that he was back in his condo in Toronto, or striding along the bustling streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s capital city. Anything would be better than having Rowan so close and yet so unutterably far away.

They tramped back to the van, adding several other birds to the list on the way, all of whose names Brant forgot as soon as they were mentioned. He couldn’t sit beside Rowan; she was in the front with the driver. He took the jump seat next to Peg and tried to listen to the tale of habitat destruction that had made the dove such a rarity.

They drove north next, to the rain forests in the center of the island, where dutifully Brant took note of hummingbirds, tanagers, swifts, flycatchers and more bananaquits. Not even the sight of a troop of Mona monkeys cavorting in a bamboo grove could raise his spirits. His mood was more allied to the thunderclouds hovering on the horizon, a mood as black-hearted as the black-feathered and omnipresent grackles.

When they reached some picnic tables by a murky lake, Rowan busied herself laying out paper plates and cutlery, producing drinks and a delicious pasta salad from a cooler, as well as crusty rolls, fruit and cookies out of various bags. She did all this with a cheerful efficiency that grated on Brant’s nerves. How could she be so happy when he felt like the pits? How could she joke with a macho idiot like Steve?

He sat a little apart from the rest of the group, feeding a fair bit of his lunch to a stray dog that hovered nearby. He had considerable fellow feeling for it; however, Rowan wasn’t into throwing him anything, not even the smallest of scraps. To her he was just one more member of the group; she’d make sure he saw the birds and got fed and that was where her responsibility ended.

He felt like a little kid exiled from the playground. He felt like a grown man with a lump in his gut bigger than a crusty roll and ten times less digestible. He fed the last of his roll to the dog and buried his nose in the bird book, trying to sort out bananaquits from grassquits.

Their next destination was a mangrove swamp at the northern tip of the island. Although it had stopped raining, the sweep of beach and the crash of waves seemed to increase Brant’s sense of alienation.

Rowan glanced around. “The trail circling the swamp is at the far end of those palm trees.”

“I’m going to wait here,” Brant said. “I can see the van, so I’ll know when you get back.”

“Suit yourself,” she said with an indifferent shrug.

May protested, “But you might miss the egrets.”

“Or the stilts,” Peg said.

“I’m going for a swim,” Brant said firmly.

May brightened. “Maybe you’ll see a tropic bird.”

He didn’t know a tropic bird from a gull; but he didn’t tell her that. “Maybe I will.”

“I wish you’d told us this morning we’d be at a beach, Rowan,” Natalie said crossly. “I’d love a swim.”

“You came here to photograph birds,” Steve announced, and grabbed her by the wrist. She glared at him and he glared right back.

“We’d better go,” Rowan said quickly. “Once we’ve trekked around the swamp we have a long drive home.”

Brant had put on his trunks under his jeans that morning; he left his gear with the driver of the van, shucked off his clothes and ran into the water, feeling the waves seize him in their rough embrace. He swam back and forth in the surf as fast as he could, blanking from his mind everything but the salt sting of the sea and the pull of his muscles. When he finally looked up, the group was trailing along the beach toward him.

He hauled himself out of the waves, picked up his clothes from the sand and swiped at his face with his towel. Rowan was first in line. He jogged over to her, draping his towel over his shoulder. “Did I miss the rarest egret in the world?”