An Inconvenient Husband (22 page)

She sighed. "What
do you want?" She could smell the clean, familiar scent of him, felt her
body begin to tremble with the awareness of his closeness. She fought against
it, knowing it was futile.

"I want you to
tell me what I said to you when I put you on my horse."

"It was just a
stupid dream!" she said tightly.

"Maybe not so
stupid."

"Oh, for God's
sake!" she said irritably. "All right, I'll tell you. And then I want
to go inside. I want to go to sleep."

"Fine."

She braced her feet
against the wooden boards of the veranda, willing herself to be calm. "You
told me you were taking me home because that's where I belonged," she said
in a flat monotone. "And that you would find me wherever I went because
you loved me and wanted me with you."

A short silence.
"And then," Blake said, "you yelled at me saying you were a free
person and I had no right to make you do anything or force you to go anywhere,
not even home if that's not where you wanted to be."

She stared at his
chin, her throat suddenly dry. She was too afraid to meet his eyes. "No, I
didn't."

"Why not?"

She closed her eyes
for a moment. "I was so relieved you had come for me."

I
was so relieved that you wanted me enough to come and get me.

He frowned. "Were
you in danger? What was I rescuing you from?"

She shook her head.
"There wasn't any danger, not anything physical, anyway. I was
alone."

"I see. Then what
happened?" he asked. "We drove off into the sunset together?"

She swallowed.
"No."

"Then what?"

"We rode only for
a short distance and then you suddenly stopped the horse and put me back on the
ground again."

"Where were we
then?"

She shook her head.
"Nowhere. There was nothing anywhere, just emptiness. And you told me
that, after all, you could not rescue me." She bit her lip, hard.
"You said I had to rescue myself. And then you rode off and left me."
Her voice cracked. "I started screaming for you and every time I had the dream,
that's when I'd wake up. Always like that."

She shivered in the
silence. Finally she glanced up, seeing him gazing down at her, his face pale
in the moonlight. But it was his eyes that shocked her most- dull gray and full
of desolation.

The expression was
gone in a flash. His jaw hardened. "Well," he said flatly. "I
was a real hero, wasn't I?"

"It was only a
dream."

He searched her face
in the dark. "Right." He turned abruptly and picked up his glass from
the table. "Better drink your tea," he said evenly, "before it
gets cold."

Nicky knocked on the
office door, not wanting to disturb Blake, but having no choice. She sucked at
her finger, where a tiny thorn had lodged itself under her skin. After lunch
she'd been restless and gone out to pick a bunch of flowers to cheer up her
room and had found herself attacked by something thorny.

"Come in."
The staccato sound of typing did not stop.

She opened the door.
"Sorry to bother you, but I need tweezers and I can't find any. Do you
have some I could borrow?" She'd searched through the bathroom medicine
cabinet and come up with nothing.

He glanced up,
absently. "Tweezers? Yes. In the top drawer of the dresser in my room.
They're in a little white first-aid box."

"Thanks."

She went in his room
and opened the dresser drawer, scanning the contents. Plane tickets, his
wallet, a bunch of keys, a stack of expense receipts held together with a big
red paper clip. A passport. Another passport.

She picked both of
them up, her heart racing with trepidation as she opened the covers.

One was his. The other
was hers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nicky
stared at her own
picture, her body flooding with fury. He had taken her passport and told her it
had been stolen. Or at least had made her think it had.
Obviously,
someone took it,
he'd told her. Well, obviously someone had. He,
himself.

As long as he had her
passport, she'd be unable to leave the country. He was keeping her here against
her will because her father wanted her here. Her father wanted to protect his
little girl and Blake was his loyal ally.

Movement behind her.
She swung around, seeing Blake come into the bedroom, a wry look on his face.

"I see you found
it," he commented. "I was momentarily caught off guard." His
tone was dry. "I'm not in the habit of harboring secrets."

"I don't believe
you did this!" Her voice was low with rage. "You knew I wanted to
leave!"

He pushed his hands
into his shorts' pockets and observed her calmly. "But I didn't want you
to go."

"Why?" she
snapped. "So you'd have some easy sex handy?" She gave a mocking
laugh. "Surely you could have found it a lot easier somewhere else."

A look of distaste
crossed his features. "Don't be crude. It's not your style."

His high-handedness
fueled her rage. "What do you know about my style? You haven't seen me for
years! Why did you force me to stay here with you? Because of my father? His
wishes are more important than mine?" She anchored her feet to the floor
to keep her knees from shaking.

"Your father's
wishes were not my main concern."

"Oh, and what
was?"

"My own. I
thought it was high time we spent some time together."

"So you kept me
here against my will?" She could not believe this. He had never before
forced her to do anything. It was against everything he'd always believed
in—that it was important to leave each other free to make personal decisions,
not to interfere with each other's professional life.

"I'm sorry it was
against your will," he said calmly. "I thought you might enjoy being
here."

"I don't enjoy
being forced to do anything! Why did you steal my passport?"

His mouth quirked.
"You do have a flair for the dramatic, don't you? I didn't steal it. I
took it initially fully intending to give it to you," he said. "You
asked me to get it for you."

"But you didn't
give it to me!" she said hotly.

"I changed my
mind."

"Why? Why didn't
you help me leave the country and be done with this little rescue mission of
yours?"

"I wanted you
with me." A stormy tension hovered deep in his eyes. "I always wanted
you with me. I don't like empty houses and empty hotel rooms."

"Oh,
really?" she snapped. "For not liking that, you sure love those trips
all over the world!" She tossed Blake's passport back into the drawer and
shoved it close. She put her own in her shorts' pocket.

"Traveling is
part of the job." He paused, his eyes turning darker. "You know what
I used to like most about traveling when we were still married?" he asked
then, his voice low.

"Being
alone?"

He shook his head.
"No."

"Well, you could
have fooled me!" she said bitterly.

He looked at her
bleakly. "What I liked most, Nicky, was coming home to you."

Her heart lurched
painfully. She stared at him, the anger ebbing away.

His eyes were a misty
gray as he held her gaze. "I loved coming home and finding you cooking up
a storm," he said softly, "the house full of lilacs or roses or
whatever smelled nice. I loved taking you in my arms and knowing you were all
mine, that you had been waiting for me and made everything special and
beautiful for me—because you loved me, because you were happy to have me home
again. I felt so... rich."

A grieving pain
swirled through her, filling the bitter spaces, giving no better comfort. Hot
tears stung her eyes. "I didn't know you felt that way," she said
tremulously. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

He stared at her, a
stunned expression in his eyes. "Nicky, surely you
knew?'

She swallowed. "I
thought I did. In the beginning it was so good, and then..." She stopped,
took in a shaky breath and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Then what?"

She covered her face
with her hands. "I started to think you were just taking me for granted.
That time I went to visit my parents in Morocco and I wasn't home when you came
home... we talked on the phone and something happened. I don't know."

He took a few steps
toward her, stood in front of her.
“What
happened,
Nicky?" His voice was urgent. "I don't understand. I never
understood."

She gulped in air.
"I thought you didn't care whether I would be home or not. You said
nothing about missing me. You said nothing about wanting me to be home."

"Your mother was
sick. You needed to be with her. How could I possibly worry about what I wanted
for myself? Besides, we had an agreement, we made a promise to let each other
be free."

She closed her eyes.
"I wanted to know that you needed me. I never felt you needed me."

"Nicky, how could
you not
know?"

"You never told
me!"

His eyes flared with
amazement. "I didn't tell you? No, maybe not in words, but surely I showed
you?"

She clenched her hands
in her lap. "I don't know! I needed to
hear
it. I needed you to
tell
me! You never told me anything! You never told me what you thought or how you
felt!"

He didn't move. He
stared at her like a statue. "My, God, Nicky," he said unsteadily.
"I—"

Noises interrupted his
words. Ramyah stood in the open bedroom door, her eyes huge, trembling, rattling
off a stream of Malay.

Blake was gone in an
instant, Ramyah rushing after him. Nicky followed them on instinct. She had no
idea what Ramyah had said and what was going on, but it was clearly serious.
She found them outside, bending over Ali, the gardener, whose leg was bleeding
profusely from a gaping wound. His gardening machete lay next to him in the
grass.

Nicky felt the blood
drain from her face at the sight of it. She took in a steadying breath. What
they really didn't need now was for her to faint to the ground. She forced air
into her lungs.

"What can I
do?" she asked.

"Get some towels
and something to make a bandage with." Blake's voice was short and
clipped.

She raced inside,
found what he'd asked for and brought it back outside. "Did he cut an artery?"

"No, thank God,
but it's not pretty. He'll need some serious stitching up." Blake tended
to the moaning Ali quickly and efficiently.

"How did this
happen?" Nicky asked.

"He tripped and
fell with the machete in his hand. Help me get him into the car, will
you?"

They settled Ali onto
the back seat of the Land Cruiser to take him to the nearest hospital. Ramyah
sat down in the front next to Blake, who motioned for Nicky to get in, too.

"I don't want you
staying here all by yourself without even a phone," he said.

She couldn't find a
rational argument against it, certainly not while being confronted with what
could happen accidentally, in a flash of time. So she squeezed in next to
Ramyah and they took off down the rutted track.

They drove to the
Patels' house where Blake used the phone and told Nicky to stay right there
until he came back for her later that day. Mrs. Patel smiled at her, saying it
was no problem at all.

She felt like a child
being left with a baby-sitter, but she had little choice. Getting Ali to the
hospital was the main issue. She became aware of the small thorn still in her
hand, the spot feeling hot to the touch. Well, it would keep until they got
back home later today. She'd forgotten about it in the midst of all the
commotion.

Ghita was out playing
tennis, Mrs. Patel told her, and was expected back anytime. She appeared twenty
minutes later, looking gorgeous in tennis whites, and the three of them had
afternoon tea. After which Mrs. Patel disappeared into the kitchen and Nicky
was left to the mercies of Ghita, who was cool but polite. Nicky decided to
pretend not to notice and kept up a cheery conversation, which was a bit
one-sided. Until at one point Ghita took a deep breath, looked straight at her
and apparently was gearing up to make an announcement. Nicky watched her,
wondering what was coming.

"There's
something I think you should know," Ghita began. "I... I know you're
in love with Blake."

Nicky felt a jolt of
surprise at the rather blunt comment. "You do?" she asked, putting a
good dose of derision in her voice.

"Yes. I know you
told me it's just a temporary. .. situation, but I'm not blind. When you were
here for dinner Saturday night it was very obvious how you feel about
him."