Kiss and Tell (11 page)

Marsh scratched his chin. “Funny, I thought I’d locked my bedroom door. Don’t tell me you’ve taken up picking locks in your spare time.”

“Our rooms are attached by a balcony,” she reminded him. “And you didn’t lock that door. It was wide open. So of course I went in.”

“Of course,” Marsh murmured.

“Your records are a mess. I’m not sure which is worse—your handwriting or your organizational skills.”

“Rumor has it I’m a very good doctor.” Marsh pushed himself up so that he was sitting on the hood of the jeep.

The heat in his eyes hadn’t let up despite her attempt to discuss his least favorite subject—money. He’d purposely left space for her to sit next to him. He didn’t pat the spot or gesture in any way, but his invitation couldn’t have been more clear.

“That’s one rumor I’d believe,” she replied, moving several steps away from him. “I didn’t realize that you’d specialized as a surgeon during your internship and residency. You gave up more than a high salary when you turned down that job in Boston, didn’t you? You gave up an entire career.”

Marsh finally looked away from her, lifting his chin to gaze up at the moon. The whitish blue light bathed his face, playing delicately over his high cheekbones and lean jawline, making his upturned eyes look oddly crystal clear and strikingly beautiful.

Leila stood, almost spellbound, just watching him. She would have given just about anything to know what he was thinking.

And then, he spoke.

“Every choice you make in life, every decision you come to, means you’re giving something up.” He turned his head to look directly at her. “I gave up a chance of probably ever owning a Porsche. I gave up a career that probably would have made my name familiar to physicians all over the world. But what I gained is far more valuable. I gained a life that I’m happy with. I do a job that I’m proud of. Boston is just another city, another impersonal place where I have no ties, no roots.” He shook his head. “I know you probably can’t understand that. I don’t know what I can tell you to make it any clearer. I know you don’t feel the way I do about Sunrise Key. If you did, you wouldn’t have left. But this island is my
home
now. I love it here.”

Leila was astonished at Marsh’s openness and the eloquence of his words.

“This island could be
your
home again, too,” Marsh said softly. “You don’t know what I’d give, Leila, to have you down here year-round.”

Leila was staring at him as if he were speaking in a foreign language. God, she was beautiful in the moonlight. Her hair looked almost silvery instead of gold, and her skin seemed to glow.

A strong breeze occasionally gusted in from the Gulf, pressing her oversized T-shirt tightly against her slender curves, outlining her breasts in exquisite detail. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She’d probably thrown her clothes on, assuming that he’d never know the difference.

She was wrong. Marsh always knew.

Her cutoff jeans were the same kind of shorts that had driven him nearly crazy back when she was a teenager. Had she worn them on purpose? No, from the way she kept backing off, it was clear that she hadn’t come to seduce him.

But she
had
come.

What had Frankie told her? It had to be Frankie who called Leila. Did Frankie tell Leila that Marsh was at the Rustler’s Hideout, sitting at the bar, drinking? And did Leila come because she thought that Marsh was half-seas over and unable to get home on his own?

The truth was, he’d had three gin and tonics all night. Six hours plus six ounces of gin did not add up to intoxication, despite the fact that he’d had his third drink right before the bar’s last call. It was true that he wasn’t a drinker. And it was also true that he nearly fell off his bar stool on the way to the men’s room, but that was from light-headedness due to lack of dinner, not from the drinks. He was, quite honestly, only very slightly anesthetized.
Very
slightly.

Still, it was likely that Leila thought he was sozzled.

He opened his mouth to inform her otherwise, but then shut it again. Why tell her? This way he had the edge. This way he could say things he might not normally say. This way he could play the role, if need be.

“Look at this place,” Marsh commanded her.

Leila turned and gazed at the ruins. “The house looks awful. God, Marsh, you’re lucky you weren’t inside—asleep. Can you imagine if—”

Shaking his head, he cut her off. “No, I didn’t mean the house. I meant the island—the ocean, the beach, the moonlight, the trees.” He took in a deep breath through his nose. “Something’s blooming. This is the time of year when the island is covered with flowers. It’s gorgeous. It’s
paradise.
How could you possibly have traded this for Manhattan?”

Leila sighed. “Marsh, I lived here for ten years.”

“And you don’t miss it? Not even a bit?”

She faced him. “Of course I miss it. But..”

“But what?”

The breeze blew again, and she hugged herself as if she were chilled. Marsh watched her stare sadly at the ruins of his house. “I was going to say that I love living in New York. But…”

Marsh waited, willing her to go on.

“But I don’t know anymore,” she said. “I see this road ahead of me, this future, and all I can feel is detached curiosity, as if it’s someone else’s life, not mine. I try to imagine myself spending the rest of my life with Elliot, living in the city, making all the right career moves, going through the motions. It should be so perfectly right, but to me it feels wrong. At the same time, giving it all up seems wrong, too.”

“Maybe it’s time to come home,” Marsh murmured.

She turned to look at him and her eyes were so sad. “I spent every waking moment for nearly four years planning and scheming to get off Sunrise Key. Coming back here would feel like quitting.”

“It’s not—”

“I wish that I loved him.” She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “But I don’t.”

She was talking about Elliot.

“Coming back to Sunrise Key
wouldn’t
be quitting,” Marsh said.

Leila shook her head. “Living here drove me nuts, Marsh. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing
all
the time. There’s no privacy, no secrets, no surprises. I remember when my parents decided to start a vegetable garden. Doesn’t seem like much of a topic for gossip, does it?” She laughed, and there were traces of despair in her voice. “But it was. I rode my bike down to the hardware store to pick up some chicken wire for fencing, and Mr. Lanigan had already set a roll aside for us…along with a tray of tomato seedlings, some wood stakes, and a garden trowel that had gone on sale.”

Marsh leaned forward slightly. “But that’s
nice.
If Mr. Lanigan hadn’t set those things aside for you, they might’ve been sold to someone else.”

“But I didn’t tell him I was coming. My parents didn’t tell him. He
assumed,
because someone had told him about our garden.”

“Leila—”

“It was worse when I turned sixteen,” she continued hotly. “I couldn’t make a move without everyone in town knowing where I was and what I was doing there. Frankie and I tried to hitchhike off the island. Who picks us up? Sam Zimmer, the manager of my father’s store.” She rolled her eyes. “He drove us home and told us if he ever heard even the tiniest whisper of a rumor about us hitching again, he’d tell my father and I’d be grounded for the rest of my life.” She snorted. “The big joke was, I was already grounded—I was stuck here on Sunrise Key.”

Marsh realized he’d been holding his breath, and he exhaled swiftly. “Thank God for Sam Zimmer.” He slid down off the jeep. “Can you imagine what might have happened if some off-islander had picked you up?”

“Of course,” Leila said. “Now I know better, but—”

“I remember what you looked like when you were sixteen.” Marsh ran his hand down his face. She’d looked like an angel, half child, half woman, pure temptation. “Christ, Leila, you could have wound up in a ditch. You might have disappeared, for good.”

“I was a kid, Marsh. I needed freedom. I felt so suffocated and overprotected here.” Another blast of chilly air came in from the water, and Leila shivered. “That’s why I went to New York.”

“So you could be raped and murdered whenever the mood struck?” Marsh asked, reaching into the back of the jeep for the sports jacket he’d left there earlier in the evening.

“Of course not.”

“I can’t
believe
you tried to hitchhike off the island. If I had known, I would have wrung your little neck!”

“Simon would have beat you to it.” Leila sighed. “I can’t come back here, Marsh.”

“Yes, you can.” Marsh opened his jacket. He’d intended to wrap it around Leila’s shoulders, but she backed away, wary of his next move. Instead, he held it out to her. “You aren’t sixteen anymore, Leila.”

“Rub it in,” she muttered, taking the jacket, careful not to touch him. She slipped her arms into his jacket and closed the front.

“I’m serious.” Marsh pushed himself back onto the jeep. “You have different needs now. What you saw as nosiness or lack of privacy when you were younger will turn into neighborliness, friendliness, concern, and caring…if you let it.”

His jacket hid the bottom edge of her shorts, casting the illusion that she wore nothing underneath. It was a very nice illusion.

“You went to New York,” Marsh continued, forcing his gaze away from her long, bare legs. “You tried it out. But I don’t think the experiment worked. It sounds to me as if you don’t like it there.”

She didn’t deny it. She just stood there staring at him with her luminous, beautiful violet-blue eyes.

“Don’t go back,” Marsh whispered. “You don’t have to go back.”

Leila turned away from the hypnotic warmth of Marsh’s eyes. Her heart was pounding, and she was suddenly aware of her lack of oxygen. She laughed, because it covered her sense of unease. Was it possible that she was actually considering everything he’d said?

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “Fax all my clients, let ’em know my new address and phone number?” She met Marsh’s gaze in the moonlight. “Send for all my things?”

“You could.” His gaze was hot and piercingly relentless. “You could do it tomorrow. I’d help you, Leila. You can count on me for anything.”

“Anything?” she repeated with a laugh. This whole discussion was getting out of hand. “Watch out. You may not realize what you’re offering.”

“I’m offering everything,” he said simply. He held out his hands, palms up. “Unconditionally.”

Leila crossed her arms. “Oh, really?” She hoped he didn’t hear the way his words made her heart beat faster and louder. He’d been drinking, she reminded herself. In the morning he probably wouldn’t even remember what he’d said. “Then after I move down here and tell Elliot I’m not going to marry him, you’ll volunteer to father my children?”

Marsh’s eyes turned molten. “Father your children? Help with the fun part and leave you to do the rest?” He shook his head. “But don’t misunderstand, love. It’s not because I’m averse to the fun. On the contrary. That particular activity is one that I’ve longed—rather desperately, I might add—to do with you for years and years now.”

Leila felt her face flush. He was talking about making love. He’d just admitted that he wanted desperately to make love to her. Any second now, he was going to slide off the jeep and walk over to her, and take her into his arms and…

And there was no one around to interrupt them. This time, he’d succeed. He’d kiss her and…

“It’s not the idea of having children that doesn’t appeal to me,” Marsh continued. “I would like to have a few of my own. I just don’t want them growing up without me.”

He’d kiss her, and then, God help her, they’d probably end up making love right there on the lawn above the beach, out in the moonlight, under the stars.

Because that’s what she wanted. She
wanted
to make love to Marsh Devlin.

And knowing that scared her to death.

Leila forced herself to turn away from the warmth in Marsh’s eyes. “Your children wouldn’t grow up without you.” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the night’s silence. “Considering that we’d all be living in the same place. If I moved back to Sunrise Key, we’d
all
be sponging off Simon, wouldn’t we?”

She had, undoubtedly, succeeded in destroying the mood, in deflating the bubble of desire that had surrounded them both and drawn them closer and closer together.

Marsh slid off the jeep. “My word, I thought I was properly anesthetized and quite comfortably numb. Apparently I was wrong. It seems to have worn off. Or perhaps that barb had a particularly sharp point.” He pushed his hair back from his face and stood for a moment, staring at the ruins of his house. “I don’t suppose you brought along anything potent to drink?”

“No.”

“No, of course you didn’t. Pity. God, this place is a mess, isn’t it?”

Leila felt awful. She hadn’t meant for her comment to be quite that cruel. “Marsh, I’m sorry, I—”

“I changed the subject, Leila,” he said quietly, not meeting her eyes. “That conversation was apparently going nowhere. Let’s move on, shall we? I came out here to have a look at the house, try to decide what to do.” His face was shadowy in the moonlight. “See, I gave the building inspector a call tonight. I told him to tear the place down, get the mess cleaned up. Now what I need to decide is whether or not to leave the foundation intact. Whether to rebuild or sell.”

“Sell?”

“Believe it or not, there’s actually something you
don’t
know.” He turned to look at her. “I received an offer for this land…an offer well above market value.”

“From Preston Seaholm.” Leila pulled Marsh’s jacket tighter around her shoulders as another cool breeze blew in from the Gulf. “I
do
know about it. There was a letter from him in your room.”

“So much for privacy,” Marsh muttered. “For someone who cares so much about it, you certainly don’t honor it, do you? I suppose you went through my underwear drawer while you were at it.”

“The letter was stuffed into a file marked Received,” Leila said indignantly. “It was among a pile of insurance checks…that you haven’t cashed, I might add.”