Page 100 of Her Reluctant Hero
“No!” Toney shoved the table aside and pushed to his feet. “She comes here like nothing ever happened. She’s all high and mighty, waving her ring in your face like you were nothing to her and you just smile and take it. Where she’s concerned, you have no balls.”
Adrian cut a glance to Jacob, who was concentrating really hard on his cards. Scowling, Adrian blew out a breath and took a step back to look outside the tent and see if anyone had heard. No one was around.
“She was my wife for eight years.”
“And she walked away.” Toney swung on Jacob. “Do you know what she did?”
Jacob shook his head, curls bouncing.
“First of all, she wasn’t on the dive that day, okay, she said she had food poisoning. Still seems weird to me. So she wasn’t on the ship when we surfaced with the box. When he told her about the box, about the symbols on it, symbols she should have known and understood, she didn’t believe him. When Adrian was accused of stealing it and put in prison by his so-called partner, she was hanging out with the enemy. You tell me that’s what a wife does.”
“You’re blowing it out of proportion.” Adrian struggled to keep his voice calm as those memories, the ones he’d worked so hard to bury, stabbed through him again. Truthfully, Toney wasn’t exaggerating much, not from his own perspective. He hadn’t been privy to the more personal, painful episodes.
Mallory had claimed she and Valentine had been working together to get him out of the Tunisian jail. But the pitying look in Mal’s eyes, the smug look in Smoller’s, on top of the fact that Mallory didn’t believe he’d found a casket that was now missing, had been the worst betrayal, the straw collapsing their already strained marriage.
“You know I’m not. Why are you bending over so she can screw you again?”
Adrian squared his shoulders, dragging in every ounce of self-control, which was in short supply these days. “She’ll be leaving tomorrow. You’ll take her and you won’t give her a bad time, right?”
Toney dragged a hand through his too-long hair and eased away. “Yeah, all right. I won’t give her a bad time. As long as she’s getting out of here. But I won’t go out of my way to be nice.”
Mallory rolled onto her side in the empty tent, unable to sleep, despite the sound of the rolling ocean, the scent of it. The light from the dying campfire flickered through the nylon wall, at once familiar and spooky.
She looked toward the duffel bag with the divorce papers. Now Adrian had what he wanted, and so did she. She hoped they both lived happily ever after.
Still, how could she leave without seeing the ship? It was only dozens of feet away—okay, straight down, but not out of reach. Beneath the surface, she could touch the past, could touch history.
After she married Jonathan, she’d probably never dive again.
She had to see this ship. It would be asking a lot of Adrian, but he knew her better than anyone. He’d know why she was asking.
She reached for her watch, peered at it before realizing she hadn’t changed the time. Nearly half an hour had passed since Linda had left the tent they shared. In Mallory’s camping experiences, it meant it must be nearly dawn. Adrian liked his camp up and running early.
Working up the nerve to ask him to take her out on the boat, she pushed out of the tent to see the sun breaking against the purpled Maya Mountains above the camp, though the camp itself was still in dawn grayness. She savored the sight, the newness of the day, the peace of being alone.
Until Adrian emerged from a tent across the camp, shirtless. Mallory wanted to whimper at the perfection of his shoulders and arms, the strength of his chest, that scattering of dark auburn hair there that she’d rubbed her cheek against so many nights.
Since he was looking toward the mountain, he didn’t see her. He dragged a hand over his head and tugged on a dark sweatshirt against the cool air.
Movement from inside the tent drew her attention. A tent mate? His brother, maybe. The only person he’d ever shared a tent with before was her.
The question died before it could be completely formed as Linda straightened, tossing her dark hair back. She smiled at Adrian, brushed her hands over his shoulders and walked away in the direction of the mess tent.
Mallory staggered under the unexpected pain of jealousy, willing herself to breathe, falling back into the shadows before Adrian saw her, saw the devastation he’d caused.
A calming breath focused her. She was marrying someone else in a little more than a month. Her jealousy toward Linda, or anyone else who wanted Adrian, was unreasonable. He was a free man now. She had no hold over him.
But she couldn’t say he no longer had a hold over her.
“Still want to leave today?” Adrian walked up behind Mallory as she ate her oatmeal on the same bench where she’d had her chili last night. “Toney will take you when you’re ready, and he’s in a particularly cheerful mood.” He rolled his eyes and she laughed. “Unless you want to look at the ship.”
Startled, she nearly launched her bowl through the air. When her heart returned to her chest, she set the bowl aside. He was offering her what she’d wanted—at least what she’d wanted until she’d seen Linda come out of his tent. That should have brought up the barrier she needed to be around him. Why it didn’t worried her.
“Why would I?”
He dropped to the bench beside her. Too close, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of moving away. “You’ll never get another chance like this.”
He spoke the words that had played through her mind all night. Scary how well he knew her. “I’m not an archaeologist anymore.” Maybe if she said it often enough, she could squash the desire to stay.
