Page 144 of Her Reluctant Hero
Definitely sexy. She tried to hide the hitch in her breathing.
“Your nose,” he drawled.
“Are you getting old, Adrian?”
He took off the glasses and set them on the table. “Too many term papers.”
“You never did like teaching.”
“Despised it.” He dragged out the words, in case she had any doubt. He set the pad aside and folded his arms on the table, nodding toward the pad she held. “So what do you think?”
She tossed the pages toward him. “It’s too dry.”
A corner of his mouth quirked. “Ironic for a book about underwater excavating.”
She would not react to that sardonic grin. She was a grown woman who could resist his arrogance. Even that was a turn-on, always had been. “Exactly. It reads like a textbook. It’s not going to be a textbook, is it?”
“No, but—”
“You need more emotion in it. You love diving, you love excavating. Let it show.” Nothing of Adrian was in the words she’d read, none of the passion she knew so well. “This can be a breakthrough book that not only students of archaeology will read. Spice it up.”
His brow furrowed as he picked up the legal pad and studied it. She wondered if even he could read that chicken scratch. “How can I do that?”
“Write the way you talk. You, Adrian, not Dr. Reeves, professor of underwater archaeology. If you can do that, I think it will come easier.” She stretched her arms over her head, cracked her spine. “I’ll read it again when you’re done if you want.”
He tossed the pad onto the table and folded his hands over his stomach. “Why are you helping me?”
“What?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, surprised.
“After what happened between us, why are you helping me?”
That was not an easy question. She drew one leg up on the chair in front of her, as if that would give her another layer of protection against him. “Just because I can’t be married to you anymore doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you succeed.”
“That’s kind, I suppose. I just never thought of us as, you know, being able to stay friends.”
“Why not?” She looked at him sharply, heart squeezing.
“Well, we used to be able to talk, kind of like we have the past few days. But I always thought if we’d still been friends when we were married, we would have been able to work through a lot of the stuff.”
Her throat burned with tears for missed opportunities. Where would they be now if they could have worked things out then? Would they be in Belize or in Pensacola or someplace else? Would they have a child? She’d always wanted to see Adrian with their child.
“Friends don’t hurt each other the way we did,” she said instead, standing and walking to the connecting door. “Good night, Adrian.”
Friends don’t hurt each other the way we did.
The words played themselves over and over in Adrian’s head as he lay sleepless in his big bed, sensing her on the other side of the wall. He knew what she was talking about, even though he’d hoped she’d forgotten.
But she couldn’t have. He’d left bruises on her body and tears in her eyes.
They’d been fighting in their little house in Pensacola. Nothing unusual, they fought all the time in those days. He didn’t even recall what this particular fight was about, and that dragged at him, too. His mouth had been punishing when he’d pressed her up against the counter and kissed her. He still felt the way her soft lips had been crushed beneath his, and he rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand to erase the sensation.
They’d ended nearly every fight with lovemaking, so he could only hope that the reason he’d kissed her was to advance the peace. He could only hope.
She’d kissed him back but had been just as rough as she used her teeth. She had been the one to start tearing at his clothes. He was sure he remembered that right. Then they’d been naked and ravaging each other, first on the countertop, her head banging on the cabinet, then on the floor. Her nails scored his biceps as he drove into her with a violence he hated to claim.
Rough sex wasn’t unusual for them. Hell, most times they ruined at least one piece of clothing in their eagerness to get at one another. But this time was different. When he climaxed, he felt nothing. Not relief, not joy, nothing. He’d backed away from her, saw the tears in her eyes, saw the marks on her arms and hips that would become bruises from his touch.
This wasn’t the marriage he wanted. This was his parents’ marriage, and he’d lain awake too many nights listening to his mother cry. He wouldn’t do that to Mallory.
