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“Why are you here?” He readied himself for anything from a woman who had an uncanny knack for leveling him.
“I want to apologize.”
Well, that knocked the wind right out of him. A knockout before the first round. And what a knockout she was without even trying. “Apologize for what?”
“For making things awkward.” She drew her knees in tighter, the wind whipping her cinnamon-brown hair around her face as she rested her chin on her folded hands. The storm brewing in the skies echoed the one in her eyes.
“There’s nothing to apol—”
“Please, stop. This is embarrassing enough, but I need to say it.” The red burning her cheeks had nothing to do with the sun. “I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’m even worse at talking about it.”
Max prayed she’d abandon the subject of kissing, fast, which led too easily to thoughts of laying Darcy back on that sandbar and investigating her tan lines.
She straightened, her arms falling away from her knees as she braced her shoulders for battle. “Okay, here goes. I made a real pest out of myself back on the beach the other day and you were nice to let me off the hook with all those bicoastal excuses. You’re a fascinating guy, but I realize you’re not interested. And that’s okay.” She paused, laughing lightly as she scrunched her toes in the sand. “Well, sort of okay.”
Her honesty was killing him faster than bullets.
Waves rolled up the sandbar, lapping around them before receding. She tipped her head toward him. “I’m not any good at games, Max, and I just misread the signs. Sorry. Most of all, I’m sorry I’ve made things uncomfortable this past week.”
He felt slimier than pond scum. How did he combat such total, open honesty? Especially when she had every reason to be mad at him. He’d sent mixed signals from the start. Here was his chance to fix that by sending her safely packing. Cut her off.
But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had to offer her some kind of a face-saving out while still keeping the boundaries in place. “You didn’t misread anything.”
Confusion creased her brow—with an unmistakable hope glinting in her eyes.
Rule number two for undercover work, keep the story as close to the truth as possible. He forced the words out. “There’s someone else.”
Her brow smoothed - and the wary hope faded also. “Oh, well, that explains it then. I should have thought to ask at the start.”
“Or rather therewas.” Where had that come from? Her honesty must be an infectious disease.
Darcy rested her cheek on her knees and watched him, waiting without pushing. This woman made talking easy.
Too easy.
“She, uh…” Max looked away from those amber-rich eyes luring him to spill secrets. He scooped up a shell, pitching it from hand to hand. “She died two and a half years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
The soft comfort of her words washed over him like the incoming tide. Not effusive or gushing. But genuine.
He regulated his breathing with the steady rhythm of toss, catch, toss, catch. “We’d been living together for about six months, had even started to talk about getting married.”
Max shoved thoughts of the baby aside. He didn’t want to open himself up to that much honesty today. Or ever. He pitched the shell into the ocean that had taken Eva as well as their kid away from him.
“How horribly unfair.”
“Yeah, it was.” He should have been the one to die. Survivor’s guilt was a heavy burden to live with.
The normal constraints he kept on his emotions slipped. He’d channeled it all into revenge for so long, he didn’t know what to do with the churn threatening to kick over him.
Why couldn’t he just sleep with Darcy since they both wanted it? He could lose himself inside her for a few hours. He’d done so more than a few times over the past two and a half years. Except the women he’d chosen had been using him as much as he’d been using them. That wouldn’t be the case with Darcy, and then he would have even more guilt heaped on top of an already weighty load.
Yeah, he wanted her all the way down to his waterlogged toes, but he wouldn’t do anything about it.
“You’re an…” He paused, brushing a thumb over a raindrop on her cheek and thanked heaven it wasn’t a tear. He searched for the words to do her justice, but had to settle for, “an incredibly hot lady. But I’m not in a good place right now and the last thing I need is to drag someone down there with me.”
Understatement of the year.
