Remarried In Haste. Sandra Field
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?”
Midafternoon had always been the low point of the day for Rowan; and the sight of Brant running across the sand toward her in the briefest of swim trunks wasn’t calculated to improve her mood. She said coldly, staring straight ahead, “There was a white-tailed tropic bird flying right over your head.”
“No kidding.”
She hated the mockery in his voice, hated his closeness even more. Then his elbow bumped her arm. “Sorry,” he said.
He wasn’t sorry; she knew darn well he’d done it on purpose. But Peg and May were right behind her and she couldn’t possibly let loose the flood of words that was crowding her tongue. She bit her lip, her eyes skidding sideways of their own accord. The sunlight was glinting on the water that trickled down Brant’s ribs and through the dark hair that curled on his chest. His belly was as flat as a board, corded with muscle; she didn’t dare look lower.
To her infinite relief a night heron flew over the trees. Grabbing her binoculars, Rowan blanked from her mind the image of Brant’s sleek shoulders and taut ribs. He meant nothing to her now. Nothing. She had to hold to that thought or she’d be sunk.
The yellow-crowned night heron was obliging enough to settle itself in the treetops, where it wobbled rather endearingly in the wind. Karen had never seen one before. Quickly Rowan set up the scope, immersing herself in her job again, and when next she looked Brant was standing by the van fully clothed.
Thank God for small mercies, she thought, and shepherded her little flock back into the van. On the drive home along the coast she gave herself a stern lecture about keeping her cool when she was anywhere in Brant’s vicinity, whether he was clothed or unclothed. She couldn’t bear for him to know that the sight of his big rangy body had set her heart thumping in her breast like a partridge drumming on a tree stump in mating season.
It was none of his business. He’d lost any right to know her true feelings; he’d trampled on them far too often.
He was a client of the company she worked for, one more client on one more trip.
Maybe if she repeated this often enough, she’d start to believe it. Maybe.
CHAPTER THREE
AT DINNER Brant ate curried chicken and mango ice cream as though they were so much cardboard, and tried to talk to Karen, whose sole topic of conversation was Sheldon, rather than to Natalie, whose every topic was laced with sexual innuendo. Rowan was sitting at the other end of the table laughing and chatting with Steve, May and Peg; she looked carefree and confident. He had the beginnings of a headache.
Would he be a coward to fly back to Toronto? Or was it called common sense instead?
People dispersed after dinner; it was nine-fifty and they had to be up before six to leave for the airport, to fly to the next island on the itinerary. Rowan had already gone to her room. Brant found himself standing outside her patio doors, where, once again, the curtains were drawn tight. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, let alone why, he raised his fist, tapped on the glass, and in a voice that emulated Steve’s gravelly bass he said, “Rowan? Steve here. Do you have any Tylenol? Natalie’s got a headache.”
“Just a second,” she called.
Then the door opened and at the same instant that her eyes widened in shock, Brant shoved, his foot in the gap and pushed it still wider, wide enough that he could step through. Rowan said in a furious whisper, “Brant, get out of here!”
He closed the door behind him. She had started undressing; her feet were bare and her shirt pulled out of her waistband, the top two buttons undone. In the soft lamplight her skin looked creamy and her hair glowed like a banked fire.
She spat, “Go away and leave me alone—you’re good at doing that, you’ve had lots of practice.”
“For God’s sake, leave the past out of this!”
“I despise you for pulling a trick like that, pretending you were Steve. Although it’s just what I should expect from someone so little in tune with his feelings, so removed from—”
Brant had had enough. With explosive energy he said, “I’m not leaving until you tell me how else I’m going to get five minutes alone with you.”
“I don’t want ten seconds alone with you!”
“We’re not going to spend the next two weeks pretending I’ve come all this way just to see a bunch of dumpy old pigeons.”
Rowan felt her body freeze to stillness; in the midst of that stillness she remembered the resolve she’d made in the van. To keep her cool, her feelings hidden. She wasn’t doing very well in that department so far; she’d better see what she could do to improve matters. Forcing herself to lower her voice, she said, “So why not tell me why you’ve come here, Brant?”
He gaped at her. Because Gabrielle told me to? That would go over like a lead balloon. “I just wanted to see you,” he said lamely.
“You’ve seen me,” she replied without a trace of emotion. “Now you can go back to Toronto. Or to whatever benighted part of the globe you’re writing about next. Either way, I want you to stay away from me.”
“Don’t I mean anything to you anymore?”
He hadn’t meant to say that. Her lips thinned. She answered tersely, “If you’re asking if I’ll ever forget you, the answer’s probably no—the damage went too deep for that. If you’re asking if I want to revive any kind of a relationship with you, the answer’s absolutely no. And for the very same reason.”
“You’ve changed.”
“I would hope so.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment! You never used to be so cold. So hard.”
“Then you can congratulate yourself on what you’ve accomplished.”
“You never used to be bitchy, either,” he retorted, his temper rising in direct proportion to his need to puncture her self-possession.
“I’d