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“Did I ask you to?” The question came out tart and he squinted at her in annoyance, then lowered his sunglasses. She took a breath. Their first fight. She couldn’t even make it through a twelve-day fling without one. She reached for his hand on the table, but he pulled it away to pick up his coffee before she touched him. Oh, is that how we’re playing it? “Look, Miguel. All I’m saying is, I get you’ve got big things going on. I don’t want you to feel obligated—”
“I don’t feel obligated, Tilda. I thought you’d be happy that I showed you last night that it doesn’t have to be all about the kinky sex for me. Is it so terrible that I wanted to give you a little romance? I want to take you to see our ruins. Can’t we do something like a normal couple?”
She took a bite of some really delicious seafood Eggs Benedict and savored it, trying to process what he’d just thrown at her. A spectacularly unfair list of her supposed demands. When one of her customers accused her of some preposterous expectation, it nearly always served to cover some inadequacy of theirs. Like asserting that she’d moved up the billing dates, when in fact they couldn’t afford to pay.
What was Miguel so worried about?
“You’re right,” she agreed in a pleasant tone. “I’d love to see the ruins. Let’s not give it another thought.”
That mollified him, but the day continued as it had begun. Miguel remained prickly, though he tried to smooth things with his charm, and she felt on edge, being careful to accommodate him, so as not to set him off.
Though the ruins were fascinating, the day played as it would have if she’d spent it with Greg. They’d planned to come to this exact place, because all the guide books said to and Greg had followed that sort of advice religiously. And Tilda would have gone along, to make him happy and because it wouldn’t make her unhappy. They’d planned this entire trip around his preferences, which she hadn’t minded at the time—compromise was the heart of any successful relationship, after all. Today, however, it all seemed so clear.
She’d been compromising. She’d never had a successful relationship.
Clearly something wasn’t working.
But this. This thing with Miguel, up until today had been working. She’d submitted freely to the sexual demands, yes. That hadn’t been compromise. It had been all the way to his side and it had worked. However, it had also been something she had totally wanted. No balancing of her wants against his.
Now she wasn’t getting what she wanted and, dammit, she missed it.
Maybe the heart of a good relationship lay somewhere else. Not in compromising, but in finding a place where you could both fit, where both people got what they wanted and needed. She turned over the thought as they flew back to the harbor near the resort, refining what her resolution for the new year could be.
“You’re quiet,” Miguel observed.
“Just thinking.” She smiled at him, to make sure it didn’t sound like a brush off.
“You’re not supposed to be thinking—you’re on vacation.”
The refrain was getting a bit old. “I like thinking. The point of a vacation is to give yourself the mental space to think about things in a considered way. I’m pondering what kinds of changes I want to make to my life in the next year. I’ve loved the sun and sea so much—maybe I’ll leave Philadelphia.”
“Aha.” He nodded sagely as he taxied the seaplane in, talking over the engine. “That’s vacation-brain, right there. You’ll get home and realize that you won’t move.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged with one shoulder. “People don’t change. Not fundamentally.”
She contemplated arguing, but that wasn’t their deal, was it? The driver picked them up and they rode back to the resort in silence, each absorbed in their thoughts. Walking into the gorgeous open-air lobby, with its splashing fountains, Tilda asked herself what she would demand for herself.
“What do you have planned for tonight?” she asked Miguel. “Do you need to deal with the problems with your work?”
She asked it deliberately, setting a little spark to the wick.
Irritation passed over his face like a cloud. He whisked it away and settled a hand on the small of her back. Possessive. Demanding. That was better. “Would you like to come up?”
“It’s nearly sunset—that sounds wonderful.”
They rode up in the glass elevator and, though he seethed beneath the surface, he didn’t play any of his games. He called down to have tapas and drinks served, but made no move to dress—or undress—her. The collar and cuffs he’d taken off her the night before when they slept, unused to attach her to anything, remained tucked away wherever he’d put them.
She shifted in her chair, as if she’d absorbed some of his restless energy. She’d had enough of whatever was eating at him.
“So why did you lose?”
His dark brows lowered. “I beg your pardon.”
So prickly. She shrugged. “The other day, you said Miramoto went home because you lost. I didn’t think you ever lost.”
He gazed out at the sunset, jaw clenched. “Every lawyer loses from time to time. There are many variables you don’t understand at play here.”
