He makes a chuffing noise when I say locals. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a chuckle.
I haven’t spent enough time with him to call myself a Jonah expert—not by any stretch of the imagination—but I have a working knowledge of him. He’s a lot of things. Rugged. Handsome. Competent. Monosyllabic. Smart. One thing he is not? A chuckler.
Besides, he’s not a sociopath, so there’s no reason he’d laugh at the idea of the locals who can’t evacuate their homes.
I mean, clearly, he hates me, he seems to get along with some of the staff just fine.
“Look, I know you don’t want to bunker down with me in a hotel room somewhere in Belize City for a couple of days. I get that. But I can’t, in good conscience, leave you here with the storm coming. So will you please just get in the boat with me?”
One corner of his lips twitches as he messes with whatever’s in the crate. “You can’t make me leave.”
“Obviously, I can’t make you leave any more than I can pick up this entire building and swim to the shore with it on my back. I’m asking you to come with me because if the storm gets bad, everything on this island is replaceable except you.”
He shoots me a squinty-eyed look and I get the feeling he’s carefully parsing my words, uncovering meanings I hinted at without saying aloud.
Like he knows how tormented I feel by the thought of him. How I think about him all alone over here. I wonder if he’s as lonely as I am. If he ever wishes we could be friends, even if he doesn’t want to be married to me.
Those are the thoughts that taunt me when he’s not in danger. So, yeah. You can imagine how I’m feeling today. How distraught I was on the ride out, imagining him waiting out the storm alone, stranded here if things got bad.
Not only that, but like he can almost read my thoughts and knows how many times I’ve wondered what he was doing over here on this tiny island over the past year. How I hated knowing he was so close but so distant. How much I wanted some sign from him—any sign at all—that this ridiculous arrangement we were in might mean more to him than the legal bargain it is.
If he can see any of that in my expression… Oh, I couldn’t bear it if he could.
It’s bad enough that I got drunk on our anniversary a few months ago and sent him that ridiculous email that I hope he didn’t read.
I mean, he probably did read it, because he responded about how he’ll always answer if I call, but I’ve been telling myself that maybe he read just the first couple of lines. It was a long email, so maybe he got bored and stopped reading before he got to the bit where I admitted getting myself off to that picture of him shirtless on the beach.
I mean…that’s at least a little believable, right? Let me have this one, okay?
My point is, the drunk ramblings of a pathetic lonely woman are bad enough. The idea that he might actually be able to look at me and see in my expression how ridiculously attractive I find him…that is unbearable.
“We’re married,” I say weakly, trying to excuse my concern for his well-being.
His gaze darkens into a broody scowl.
I slash my hand through the air, cutting him off before he snaps at me not to remind him of that. “And that means we have a legal and moral obligation to keep each other safe, even if we don’t like each other. Moreover, in the unlikely event that your stubborn ass dies out here during the storm, Uncle Red might decide I can’t run the resort by myself. Which means I might lose the Blue Crown and all of this will have been for nothing.”
He straightens and, propping one hand on his hip, he runs the other up to push his cap back and scrub his fingers through his hair. “Try not to be too sentimental there, Peanut.”
Peanut?
I glare at him. I haven’t seen him in over a year and he’s going to pull out a nickname? One that he’s apparently pulled out of thin air. It’s better than sweetheart or sugar, I guess.
“Sentimental or not, I am worried about you. And your mother practically begged me to make sure you’re safe during the storm. And I don’t understand why you’re determined to stay here on this damn island out of anything other than sheer stubborn pride or a death wish or… I don’t know. Just tell me.”
He gives another grunt and another lip twitch before picking up the crate and carrying it over to tank and dumping it in.
Only then do I realize the crate was full of lettuce.
As the bright green leaves tumble into the tank, I slowly walk closer to peer over the edge.
The tank is only a few feet deep, with a hose pumping recirculating water into it on one side. Swimming in circles are two turtles: one swims awkwardly, its butt higher in the water than her head. The other has only two fins, and one of those is shorter than the other.
He rests the crate on the edge of the tank and props his elbow on the crate.
“That’s Jenny. The other is Noah. Those are the locals I can’t leave behind.”
chapterfourteen
