Page 111 of Her Reluctant Hero
Mallory pulled her hand free. “The dirty, unromantic kind.” But it hadn’t been. It had been like a fairy tale. Even though she and Adrian had made love a hundred times in the two years before they got married, spent night after night together, something about the ceremony they’d had performed in Greece made everything more magical. God, she’d loved him to distraction.
“How come you’ve been to all these places?” Jacob asked. “You didn’t have specialties?”
“Mine is languages and symbology,” Mallory said. “Adrian didn’t find his till later.”
“Underwater archaeology,” Linda supplied.
Mallory grit her teeth at the possessive tone, chided herself for the surge of jealousy. He wasn’t hers anymore.
“So you’ve been all these places, seen all these things,” Linda pressed as Mallory swung her legs to the floor and stared out the windshield. “How could you walk away?”
It seemed like everyone in the car quit breathing, waiting for her answer. She struggled to find the words that wouldn’t put too much on Adrian. She didn’t want to discredit him, especially when his faults had nothing to do with his job.
“It’s not all finding old ships.” Mallory tried to force a lightness in her tone. “It can be deadly dull at times.”
“And working for Global Alliance is nonstop action,” Adrian muttered, misnaming the corporation.
“No.” She turned to him, hating to hurt him but needing distance between them again. She’d allowed herself to get too close with the trip down memory lane, and it seemed to be having the same effect on him. “But planning for a family is.”
He sucked in his breath and tucked the empty bottle under his seat. Again, her heart twisted in pain for hurting him.
“We better get some sleep. There will be a lot to clean up tomorrow.” He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, not fooling her for an instant.
Sunlight shone through the window of the truck with a ferocity that matched the storm of the night before. Mallory turned her head from it, burrowing into her hard canvas pillow.
Hard? Canvas? Her duffel?
No. Oh, no.
She sat up so fast she cracked her head on the steering wheel and saw stars, then damn near dropped her head into Adrian’s lap. Her hand covering her abused skull, she scrambled across the car, keeping low so not to strike her head on anything else.
She’d fallen asleep on his lap. How would that look? What would he think? She didn’t even dare glance at his face in case he was awake and aware. Maybe the quantity of Scotch he’d had last night had him sleeping deeper than usual.
“Good morning,” he said in his rough burr, the voice that had greeted her every morning for ten years.
He knew. Mortified, she raised her face to his, blinking tears of pain away. “Good morning.”
“Sleep well?” He was taunting her, damn him.
“Yes, great, actually.” She rubbed her neck under her hair, surprised none of the muscles protested. “I’m surprised to see you still here.”
“I didn’t want to disturb your sleep.”
“Why—did I sleep there all night?”
He stretched, cracking his back. “Yep.”
“Why did you let me?”
Silence hung between them for a long moment. She swore he even stopped breathing before he said, “Mallory.”
She raised her hand to stop him, deciding she didn’t want to hear the answer after all. “At least the storm is past.”
“It did its worst.” Adrian shifted, hoping she wouldn’t notice the effect she’d had on him, sleeping on his lap, her hand resting by her cheek, high on his thigh. Of course, she’d have to look at him to notice his response to her.
He’d sat motionless for nearly an hour after he woke, barely daring to breathe lest he wake her. He’d watched the sun climb until it glowed on her hair. Resisting the urge to stroke her hair from her face, to toy with her manicured nails, to pretend she was still his, had been nearly impossible.
He knew the moment she awoke she’d run away.
