Caribbean Crush (Under the Caribbean Sun) (7 page)

“Talk to me.” His clipped accent made the phrase seem like a command.

“I need to get home. I have to prep my lessons for tomorrow. And I’m sure you have to pack. This was nice though.” She caught his wince and wondered if he had any idea just how long they’d hidden away. They were out of condoms, so he should have done the math.

“I don’t have to be in St. Martin until five tomorrow.”

“And I’ll be working all day. So this is where we say goodbye.” Her throat constricted around the words, but she forced them out along with a smile.

“No.” He leaned in, but she turned away and managed to slide around him and into the hotel room.

Strange how she’d been here for two days and hadn’t really taken in the airy décor of the room. But then every time they left the bed it was only to find a more interesting location. There were so many possibilities in just a bedroom and a balcony. The walls, the floor, the chair, the dresser that had been just the right height. She’d die if anyone had happened to look up as she’d leaned against the balcony railing while he took her from behind. It had been dark, and she’d been quiet. And stupid. Stupid to think this would work.

She reached into the wedding-favor tote bag with a map of Anguilla printed on the front. The bags had been in the room when they’d arrived, not that she’d noticed then. They were stocked with island necessities—snacks, lip balm, champagne, even condoms. But they were latex and Antonnis was allergic. Good thing, because the lack of protection would keep her focused.

“Kristin, what are you doing?”

She found the pair of crocheted flip flops at the bottom of the bag and slipped them on. “These are Saskia’s latest idea. Swimwear and footwear. Holly put them in the bags so the guests can be her test market. She’s always thinking, that one.” She moved around the room, collecting everything, not wanting to leave a trace or give herself a reason to look back. She’d stepped into this knowing it would end. Just a dance, a way to get closure and tie a prettier bow on the end of her first love affair.

“I don’t want to talk about shoes right now.” He sat on the bed, the sheets shifted and bunched atop the well-used mattress. “Let’s have supper and figure out where we go from here.”

“I go home. You go to Holland.” She slung the tote bag over her shoulder and then lifted her saddle bag. The hotel had stowed her bike in the luggage room, so she should call down, but she’d rather wait in the lobby than spend another moment with her shifting priorities.

“Stay with me.” He leaned his forearms on his bare thighs, gloriously confident in his nakedness. As he should be—the man embodied the masculine ideal from his hard jaw to his defined abs.

She spun to face him and faked a smile. “You wanted a chance for a better goodbye. This is it. It’s better than the last time. I don’t have any delusions that you’re coming back.”

“But I will be back. Both my brothers are here.”

“They’ve been here for three years and you were nowhere to be found. Don’t make promises. You only know how to break them.”

“
Liefje
, listen to me.” He rose and stepped to her, eating up the ground she tried to hold firm. She needed to object, but before she made a sound he’d covered her mouth with his, drowning her beneath his kiss. Her bags tumbled to the ground, burying her resolve. He lifted her off her flip-flops without breaking the kiss and backed her into the jute-papered wall.

She wanted to be swept away in his tidal wave, for there to be some romantic happily ever after. But she’d learned better, had grown up from those fairy-tale notions. She turned her head to break the kiss, but instead of giving up, he slid the kiss down her neck and slipped a hand down the front of her shorts.

“No.” Her body tensed and she gripped his arm, squeezing her short fingernails into his flesh. “Stop. There are no more condoms. We’re done.”

“We’re not.”

She angled her elbow into his gut and jabbed her way free. “I said no, Antonnis. I’m not going to let you leave me pregnant and alone again. I’m not that girl. I grew up. You should try it.” She refused to feel bad about the way he rubbed his stomach where she’d nailed him. No, she needed to get her things and get the hell out before something happened she’d regret even more than this.

“Pregnant? What are you talking about?” He staggered into the wall and she wondered if she’d hit him harder than she intended. “Did you have our baby?”

She shouldered her bags and sighed. “There’s no secret baby, Antonnis. I was pregnant, you were gone, I freaked out, you wouldn’t return my calls, I freaked out some more—”

“You didn’t.” Cold fear blazed in his ice-blue eyes.

“Didn’t what? Think I was bleeding to death in the university infirmary when I miscarried? It was horrific and not something I like to remember. I paid for what we did, grieved the loss longer than anyone thought I should.”

“I didn’t know.” He pressed his lips in a thin line.

“Not from lack of trying to tell you on my part. I called, emailed, texted. I tried. I needed you and you let me know how much we meant to you. I got the message. You don’t get to rewrite history now.”

He opened his hands, naked and pleading before her. “I thought it would be easier for you with a clean break. You wanted things I didn’t, and I was tempted to give them to you just so I could keep you. I had to give you room to find what you wanted.”

She pushed a hand through her still damp curls. “I never wanted to be treated like we never happened. You can pretend you did it for me, but you were scared and you ran. You wanting me the second you saw me proved the break-up wasn’t anything I did.”

“I wasn’t scared. I know that women date one kind of man for the adventure but expect him to be different once they’re married. I’m not the yes-dear type. I don’t have it in me to hold your purse or push a stroller or fetch your coffee. I’m not that guy, and that is who you wanted, and so I let you be to let you have it.”

“I never asked you to do those things.”

His throat undulated as he swallowed and he stared up at the ceiling. “We could get a little cottage in West End. No need for anything too big until there are more than the two of us.”

Her gut clenched. She had said that. Lying on a blanket on a deserted strip of beach, staring at the sailboats bobbing in the distance. She’d meant it. She’d been so sure that he was her future, her forever.

She slid back into the flip-flops and cleared her throat. “You know, Antonnis, if you’d told me that then we could have planned a future together instead of you wholeheartedly rejecting my version. Compromise happens.”

“So does resentment. I didn’t want to be that for you.”

“Well, you fucked that one up. I resented the hell out of you that fall. Because while I was stressed and panicked and dealing with doctors and loss and trying to keep my grades up when I was so depressed I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear, you were off partying it up in Amsterdam. So, yeah. Mission failed.”

“I’m sorry.” The quiet words cut her to the quick.

“Apology accepted.” She hitched the bags higher on her shoulder and made her way for the door. “Have a nice life, Antonnis.”

Chapter Seven

“Mannus,” Antonnis called out for his brother as he gripped the forestay line and climbed aboard Johannes’s prized sailboat. “Does Hannes know you had your hands all over Lola? He’s a jealous skipper.”

“He’s a pain in my ass, that’s for sure. Did you come to steal the old girl, Tonnis? Because he will beat you senseless.” Harm opened a teak cabinet and removed a key on a silver ring with a tangle of string hanging down. “The brat left her keys here for some odd reason. I was dispatched to fetch them for her highness.”

Antonnis climbed the rigging, needing to work off some nervous energy. Everything about the last few hours since Kristin had left gnawed at him. Especially her mandate that they’d never be together again. “Think we’ll ever get used to the idea that he married Saskia?”

Harm shrugged his bare shoulders, aviators shading his eyes from the evening sun. “We’re supposed to think of her as a sister, and since we always did nothing really changes. Not for us.”

“True.” He swung from the line to the mast. “It just happened too fast for me to get used to it.”

“Yeah, about that.” Harm chuffed, a wide grin splitting his face.

He leaped down to the teak deck. “Mannus, you are scaring me with that smile. You don’t do happy.”

“Get used to it. I have lots to look forward to. Can you keep your mouth shut?”

He made an X across his chest. “Do tell.”

“Holly and I are having a baby.” The happiness in his brother’s words was palpable. “Not a word to Papa. We’ll tell him after the wedding and let him ignore the math.”

“Congratulations,” he said automatically. What was with this day and babies? Harm with a baby? How would that even work?

“Thanks. You’re the first person I’ve told. Besides Holly.”

He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “You declared Holly pregnant and she was? God complex much?”

Harm waved him off and sat in the white leather captain’s chair. “I just realized it before she did. Though I do suppose I made it happen.”

“Your chest puffed out like a rooster when you said that. You might want to have that checked.” He leaned against the railing and crossed his legs at the ankles. What was happening here, one brother married and the other with a baby on the way? How had he missed everything changing so completely? “I didn’t know you wanted kids.”

“Children aren’t something you want in abstract. I love the idea of sharing a child with Holly. Though if it’s a girl, I’m not fond of the idea of her being built the same way.” He scratched at his stubble. “Holly is softening my big-bad-wolf reputation. If we have a daughter, I’ll have to rough it back up to run off any trash that comes sniffing in her direction.”

“The deed is done, friend. You may get a dozen girls stacked just like her.”

He shrugged. “Maybe Hannes will have boys to keep the vermin in check.”

“Woah, now. They just got married. They might not even—”

“Oh, they will. We’re not getting any younger, you know. You might want to think about finding a woman yourself, trying on a relationship that lasts longer than a week.”

The teasing words stung like a slap. “Says the man who’s knocked up a woman he’s known for a few months.”

Harm stood, squaring his shoulders and reminding Antonnis that he hadn’t taken a punch since college.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I’m out of sorts.”

“Are you? What happened? Did you go on a bender after Kristin Taylor shot you down? No one has seen you since the wedding. We figured you and Falco were off chasing tourists.”

“What makes you think Kristin shot me down?” He needed some kind of direction on what to do about her, but he wasn’t sure Harm made the best sounding board. This was already the deepest conversation he’d had with his brother in ages.

“Because you’re a scoundrel and Miss Taylor is a nice woman, aside from always asking me for money.”

“She has money problems?” His pulse picked up, wondering what she needed and how he could get it for her.

“Not her, the primary school she teaches at. I’ve smuggled enough art supplies onto this island to get fined. The last time she caught me at Dutch’s shop I wound up agreeing to buy a few dozen bicycles to make it easier for some of the children to get to school. She’s crafty, that one.”

He couldn’t help the grin. “How long did it take for her to realize you were such a soft touch?”

Harm shrugged. “Her stepdad and brothers handle landscaping for our properties. I think she figured it out when their truck broke and I gave them mine.”

“You’re bleeding money over here. I don’t know how you do it.” He looked out from the harbor, watching as fishing boats made their way in. “Doesn’t it make you feel claustrophobic being stuck on an island?”

“I used to worry about that, but I like the people here. They’re honest and hardworking and they’re too proud to ask for anything. I think Miss Taylor only asks because she’s American. I like it here. It’s a great place to raise kids. They can run wild, not like the boarding-school rules we were subjected too.”

Antonnis clutched the rail, not wanting to talk about being sent to boarding school before he could tie his shoes. It would only lead to gripes about the mother whose voice he didn’t remember or animosity about how both his brothers fled home the same year he’d finally been about to join the business. They never went there. It served no purpose.

“What has you out of sorts, Tonnis? Itching to return home to your life as captain of industry? Is there some woman back home all of our matrimonial bliss has you thinking of?”

“There’s no one back home.” The words rang pathetic in his ears. His mind spun in so many directions he couldn’t even decide what to say. He wanted Kristin, but there was no place for her in his life. But he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her, touching her again. And the thought of that baby, long ago gone, tore at his heart. If he hadn’t forgotten how to cry, he just might give it a go.

“Is that what has you so melancholy? You’re the happy one, Tonnis. Not a care in the world. Always a good time. What is it?”