Rendezvous (3 page)

“Then why did I always get the feeling you resented it?” Reed dipped his head, trying to see her face and not merely her rigid profile. “That you resented the hours I worked, the other guys—”

“I missed you sometimes, that’s all,” she snapped. With a sharp flick of her wrist, Cassie brushed an unseen speck of sand from her tanned leg. “The other guys were fine, it was the sense that you were all in a secret boys club that I wasn’t fond of. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt that way if you’d talked to me about what was going on sometimes, and not just to them. You shut me out, Reed. That was the problem. If you’d told me about your day every once in a while I wouldn’t have cared if you cleaned toilets for a living.”

Cassie stood abruptly, like a jack leaping out of its box. She took several angry strides away before Reed managed to stand. He went to follow her but his knees were more unsteady than he’d anticipated. Before he could get too far, he stumbled and had to grab the trunk of a palm to avoid falling back on his ass. “Cassie, come on!”

“Enjoy your crackers, Dalton!” Cassie threw over her shoulder. “I’m going for a walk.”

Reed stood in mute frustration, watching her stride away from him.

Then he turned and threw up behind the base of the palm tree.

*****

If only Reed weren’t sick, Cassie would be having a much easier time of it. However, his vulnerable state of health led her to empathize with him, which led to all sorts of other tender feelings she was afraid to let take root. Reed was tough, a cop who put himself in danger every day in his line of work, and as such he’d always seemed invincible to her, almost untouchable. Like superman with a potty mouth and a gun.

But seeing him struggle with the urge to throw up over the course of that first afternoon, before having to give in time and again, quelled her earlier anger and activated her nurturing instincts. She insisted he rest in the double-berth cabin she’d set aside for him, and then found them a mooring for the night. She anchored off Hook Island and took Reed some dry vegemite on toast in lieu of the shellfish feast she’d planned for her guests.

When he’d eaten most of it and once again lay down on the bed, she turned to leave. Reed’s hand on her arm stopped her. She was kept motionless by the solemnity in his blue gaze.

“I’m sorry about this.”

“Not your fault. It happens to the best of them.”

His lips twisted. “Not to you.”

“I’ve lived most of my life on the water and even I get sea sick occasionally.” Cassie smiled, unable to resist one small taunt. “Although never in the serene waters of the Whitsunday Passage.”

Reed grunted but returned her smile with a rueful one of his own. “You try to take down a meth head with a grudge against the cops and we’ll see how you fare.”

Cassie’s smile faltered and she ducked her head so he wouldn’t see the fear that must surely have marred her expression. She knew Reed’s job was dangerous, but sometimes the way he so flippantly shrugged off those dangers made her blood run cold. “No, thanks, that’s your department.”

“And this is yours—the open air, the water beneath you.” Sadness came into his eyes. He cleared his throat, but his voice still rasped. “I’m sorry I took you away from it.”

I’m not,
Cassie wanted to say, but the lump that formed in her throat prevented speech. Did Reed really think that she regretted the years she’d spent with him? Nothing could be further from the truth. Although she’d missed Airlie Beach, missed the ocean and the warm sunshine that bathed the area in a special glow even in winter, she’d never longed for it with the kind of intensity as she’d longed for Reed every night for the past year.

Succumbing to the need to touch him, Cassie brushed a hank of his thick brown hair back from his forehead. He made a thankful sound, but his eyes were closed. In the rising starlight filtering in through the cabin’s porthole, she could see he’d fallen asleep.

Cassie couldn’t help yielding to another temptation. She stretched out beside him and watched him rest, listening to the rhythmic sound of his breathing until she too drifted off.

*****

A little over twenty-four hours later, Reed sat at a gently rocking table, making a serious dent in the plate of grilled barramundi and vegetables Cassie had prepared.

“I’d say you’ve definitely located your sea legs,” she remarked.

Reed glanced up from the plate of food, and the devilish sparkle in his blue eyes caused Cassie’s heart to jump. “Seems that way. Must have been all your tender loving care.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“You took care of me. And as humiliating as it is that I needed you to, I appreciate all you did for me, Cass.”

Reed hadn’t actually come out and said so, but Cassie suspected he knew she’d spent most of last night curled up beside him in the aft cabin simply because she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

Cassie lifted a shoulder and hid her blush in her own meal. “I’m just glad you’ve got your appetite back.”

Reed had insisted it would be ridiculous if she didn’t eat with him, that it would be a crime to waste all the gourmet food she’d stocked up on to feed what she’d thought would be two guests, not one. Cassie saw the logic in his argument, which is how they’d come to be sharing a meal of fresh fish, oysters and champagne on the deck of
The Rendezvous
while the sunset painted a vibrant tableau upon the endless acres of sky and sea around them.

Only in hindsight did she realise it might not have been the best idea to share a meal with her husband in such a romantic setting. It made her wonder what other things she might enjoy sharing with him again.

What other appetites Reed might have regained.

The memory of his body pressed against hers yesterday morning came back to her like a sudden, enveloping heatwave. Cassie took a sip of champagne in the hopes the chilled liquid would cool her flushed skin. Yesterday, while she’d been busy alternating between fuming at Reed’s Robin Sherwood deception and taking care of him, Cassie had managed to keep at bay the emotions that had churned to life when she’d seen him again. Today, he’d woken partially recovered, and as the day wore on he became more and more like the playful rogue she’d married. It was growing increasingly difficult for Cassie to deny the fact she was still extremely susceptible to Reed Dalton’s charms.

Coming to the end of his meal, Reed pushed his plate to the side and smiled across the portable table at Cassie. “You are one terrific cook. But then I already knew that. I always loved your home-cooked meals—maybe too much.”

Cassie tilted her head. “Too much?”

“With you at home, I never wanted to leave the house to eat at some fancy restaurant,” Reed replied soberly. “I didn’t take you out enough, Cass. I didn’t send flowers or do any of those romantic things women like men to do. I guess I was a shitty husband.”

“I didn’t need any of those things.” Cassie gestured to her plain white polo shirt and khaki shorts. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a girly girl.”

“Then what was it? What did I not do—besides the not-talking-about-my-day thing?”

“That’s not enough?”

“No. Christ, no,” Reed responded hotly. “My job is just that—a fucking job. So I didn’t want to rehash everything I’d done during the day the second I got home. That wasn’t enough reason for you to give up on our marriage.”

Cassie shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me.”

Fury lay banked in his eyes, turning them a glittering dark onyx in the waning light. He sat back and laced his hands on top of his head, the pose a challenge, an expectation. It said, “Impress me. Give me the best story you’ve got.”

Cassie wondered if that was a body-language tactic Reed used on suspects he was interrogating.

Cassie refused to be cowed. If Reed wanted the truth, he was going to get it at long last. “Reed, I gave up my life for you. I’d never lived anywhere other than this stretch of Queensland coast. I’d never wanted to do anything with my life other than sail. Look around you.” She moved her arm in an arc, encompassing the lapping water and the glittering first stars around them. “This was my world for twenty-five years. Then I met you, and all that changed. You became my world, and all I wanted was to be a part of your life. But I wasn’t. I was on the edges. I changed everything for you and you sat me on the sidelines. It wasn’t fair.”

“I never meant to do that. Jesus, Cass.” He leaned forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. “My life—my job—isn’t always pretty. In fact, most of the time it really sucks. Don’t you get that I didn’t want that shit to touch you? Tales of underage prostitutes and druggies who rob little old ladies don’t exactly make entertaining dinner conversation.”

“Don’t
you
get that whatever you had to deal with, I had to deal with too, whether you wanted me to or not. Since you didn’t tell me what was happening, I was flying blind all the time, left to guess what was on your mind. I felt useless because you wouldn’t let me help you.”

“The sex helped, Cass,” Reed said, his blunt statement causing heat to flush through Cassie. “Losing myself in you washed everything away, every time.”

Anger spiked inside her, sharp and painful. Her fury was intensified by the fact his crass words actually made her body respond, like Pavlov’s dog at the ring of the dinner bell. Heart thumping hard against her ribs, Cassie shot to her feet. “I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to know that my pussy was of some use to you.”

Ignoring the dinner dishes that needed clearing, Cassie shot for the open hatch and headed below deck. She heard the thud of Reed’s bare feet on the steps behind her.

“You’ll have to stop running away from me eventually.”

Cassie threw a narrow-eyed glare over her shoulder as she headed for the forward cabin, the one at the opposite end of the boat from Reed’s. “I’m a pretty good swimmer too. I have options.”

She slipped into her cabin and slammed the door shut behind her. It landed so firmly against the jamb she thought she heard wood splintering.
To hell with you, Reed Dalton!
She couldn’t believe she’d softened toward him, that she’d felt sorry for him yesterday. He deserved to be sick, the pig. To think he’d reduced their connection, their entire relationship, to its base sexual components like that. He’d reduced
her
place in his life to that of an occasionally useful bed partner. She’d given him her heart, she’d given him everything and all he’d—

There was a loud crack as the cabin door swung open and slammed back against the adjacent wall.
Now that’s the sound of wood splintering.
Cassie stared in mute shock as Reed stood in the empty space created, his eyes ablaze. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched at his sides. Cassie experienced a leap of fear such as she’d never known around her husband. Other people were afraid of him sometimes, but she’d never been.

As she stared at his tense posture and thunderous expression, Cassie wondered if she’d made a mistake trusting that instinct so implicitly.

“You’re wrong, Cassie.” He spoke with such deathly quiet that Cassie shivered. “I think we’ve run out of options—all except one.”

When Reed moved forward, Cassie retreated instinctively. The cabin was small, so her calves very quickly bumped the timber bed frame. Unbalanced, she fell onto the mattress. She froze there, her weight propped on her elbows, her heart thundering in her chest, as Reed continued to advance. Before she could escape, or even consider if she wanted to, he was there above her, his body angled over hers, his lips mere inches from her own.

His closeness made Cassie’s stomach twist, and regions farther south quiver. His penetrating gaze, his intense focus on her, only her, called to her libido until she throbbed with awareness, with a need for something she’d long missed.

Reed. Always Reed.

“I think you fixate on what our relationship lacks so you can ignore what we have,” Reed said, his voice a low thrum that vibrated in the scant space between them. “That way you can justify walking away from our marriage.”

“We don’t have anything, Reed.” Her gaze drifted downward, over the spot at the base of his throat where his pulse beat visibly, over the broad expanse of his chest that heaved as violently as her own. “Nothing except sex.”

“It was never just sex between us, Cass.” Bracing his weight on one hand, he buried the other in her hair, his broad fingers cradling the back of her head. His gaze bored into hers, the unmitigated anguish in his eyes stealing Cassie’s breath. “Don’t you remember?”

He captured her mouth with his, and the first brush of his lips over hers sent Cassie spiralling back four years to the first time they’d made love, and then back a year to the last time. Each experience had been hungry, needful, overpowering. Every memory of their time together seemed to assail her at once, all of them encapsulated in the demand, the gift, of Reed’s kiss.

Acting on an instinct she couldn’t control, Cassie reached up and touched Reed’s chest. His heart knocked forcefully against her palm. His nipple hardened beneath his shirt when she brushed over it with her fingers. He groaned into her mouth, deepening the kiss. Instantly, it grew out of control, like a grass fire in summer. Reed devoured her mouth, conquered it. And Cassie let him. She gave herself so readily it was as though a chasm hadn’t yawned between them, geographically and emotionally, for an entire year.

She needed him the way a flower needed the sun, and right now that was all that mattered.

The heat and weight of his body covered her, pushing her down into the mattress. She wound her arms and legs around him, keeping him close. Reed swept his tongue inside her mouth as he swept his hand up her side, under her shirt, to cup her breast. Cassie whimpered at the rapture of it, of having his warm hand there, his callused thumb scraping over the flinty point of her nipple through the cotton of her bra. Her body jolted, her spine snapping off the bed as she sought to push more of her flesh into his hand.

Reed wrenched his mouth from hers and dragged in a shuddering breath. “Jesus, Cass,” he growled, before taking her nipple between his fingers and giving it a deft tug.