Must Be Magic (Spellbound) (24 page)

“Did you think I wouldn’t care?” He tried not to sound accusing.

“I don’t know. I was confused. Scared.” She watched him. “I was almost three months before I got the nerve to tell you, and by then you wouldn’t take my calls. I tried leaving messages with your friends and parents until I looked like a stalker.”

He remembered his friends joking about that, had even let that stop him from calling her back.

“When I learned you had dropped out of school, I tried to find out where you were living. I went to your parents’ house to see if maybe you’d moved back home for a while. You father wasn’t very impressed.”

Darby’s comments about him thinking the worst about her, like his father had, came roaring back.

“He knew.” The words nearly stuck in his throat. “He knew you were pregnant.” He had to force himself to breathe through the burning knot jammed between his lungs.

“I never knew he didn’t tell you. Not until the other day.”

“The argument outside the wedding reception?” He already knew the answer, but had to ask.

She nodded. “I thought he’d told you, and you just didn’t care.”

Frustration flared through him, and he wanted to insist that she’d known him better than that. Would he have tried so hard to see her after they’d left Florida if he hadn’t cared?

“A week later I woke up in the middle of the night having a miscarriage.”

“Who was with you?” He was pretty sure he knew.

“Dante hadn’t gone out that night. He’d been staying at my parents’ more than at his own apartment. I used to think it was because he wanted to make sure he was there if you came around, but then I realized he felt guilty.”

“Why?”

“Because I was miserable.” She pulled her feet out of the water. “I didn’t let Dante take me to the hospital until he promised not to tell our parents. They were away at the time.”

“You didn’t call me then, did you?”

“And say what? I thought I knew where you stood.”

“But you didn’t.” Disappointment, anger and regret gnawed at him. “And neither did Dante.”

Her brows drew together. “Dante?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I when he showed up out of the blue to kick my ass.” They’d nearly come to blows more than once when he’d refused to stop trying to get ahold of Darby, but weeks later, when he’d given up, Dante had come looking for him. Darby’s twin hadn’t said a word, just walked straight up to him on the street outside Bryce’s apartment, and nailed him in the jaw.

It hadn’t stopped there, and once Bryce recovered from the unexpected attack, he’d fought back. They’d both been bleeding all over the sidewalk by the time the fight had been broken up, and Dante had still been half-crazed.

At the time, Bryce had told himself that her brother was insane, but now it made sense. Dante had blamed him for what Darby had gone through. For the heartbreak, the baby, the miscarriage.

All without saying a damn word.

No one
had said a damn word to him. Not Darby. Not Dante, and not his own fucking father.

“If I could go back and do things differently, I would,” she said after a long minute.

“I’m not sure that’s enough.”

Hurt, followed by a flicker of anger, flared in her eyes. “That’s all I’ve got.”

Not wanting to say something he couldn’t take back, he pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the stab of pain that sliced across his leg.

He felt Darby watching him as he walked away, but she thankfully didn’t follow him.

It was easy for her to sit there and say she’d do things differently. She’d had ten years to sort through everything. He hadn’t even had ten minutes.

Halfway back to their campsite he stopped, cursing under his breath.

Jesus. How much of an ass was he?

It hadn’t been easy for her. None of it had. Not his lying about who he was, his father dismissing the pregnancy or her losing the baby. And he’d bet that as much as Dante had wanted to protect her, he hadn’t been easy on her either.

How long were he and Darby going to keep doing this? Blaming each other for something they couldn’t change?

He let out a frustrated breath. They’d both tried to reach out to the other, both felt the same bitter disappointment when it hadn’t worked. Then they’d spent the next decade holding it against one another, letting it strip away all the things they’d loved about each other until all they had left were cruel looks and scathing comments.

Hadn’t it gone on long enough?

Darby refused to let herself cry, staying where she was even though part of her ached to follow Bryce.

Knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d catch a fish, she made herself pick up the waste-of-time fishing pole anyway. It gave her something to do other than wonder what he was thinking.

The old Bryce, the one she’d met in Florida and glimpsed again in St. Lucia, had surfaced after the longest, scariest night of her life, and she hated the thought of losing him again.

This morning had been the first time she’d forgotten to worry about what would happen. They’d laughed and flirted and when he’d shown up with his fishing pole, seemingly intent on seducing her, she’d nearly melted in his arms.

He just needed some time—

Something jerked on the end of her line.

Holy shit.

Darby scrambled to her feet, hauling on the fishing pole as hard as she could. She backed up, slamming into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.

“Easy,” Bryce murmured when she would have spun around. His arms came around her, his hands closing over hers on the pole.

She didn’t need to turn around or say anything. In that moment she knew the only thing that counted—she hadn’t lost him. The rest they could talk about later, when she wasn’t trying to keep the emotional roller coaster she’d been riding firmly on its tracks.

Each breath she drew seemed to trickle into her lungs, and she tightened her fingers around the pole. If she had a grip on that, she wouldn’t fall apart. There had been plenty of time for that—after the wedding reception, after the crash, when he’d burned so hot with a fever she didn’t think would break on its own.

It was stupid to even think about falling apart when Bryce was right there.

He hadn’t walked away.

With a solid yank, Bryce brought both their arms back, and the fish sailed out of the water to land with a smacking sound on the sandbar. The impact knocked the hook loose, and it flopped around unhindered.

Darby dropped the pole. “Take off your shirt.”

“Now who’s the one talking about getting naked?” The sight of his devilish smile made her breath catch.

He hadn’t gotten it all the way off before she snatched it out of his hands and dove for the fish.

“Slippery little bastard,” she gritted out, working the shirt around the fish, fully aware what she must look like trying to pull that off with one arm.

Whatever guilt she might have felt over the fish’s suffering faded the second her stomach growled at the thought of eating.

She walked to where Bryce stood watching her carefully, and handed him the fish. “Guess I won.”

Half a second later she was in his arms. He shouldn’t have been able to move that fast, not after the last few days. He shouldn’t have even wanted to after the conversation he’d barely had time to digest.

But his hand was fisted in her hair, and the other was around her back, holding her tighter, more possessively than she could remember. She didn’t wait for him, but rocked up on her toes, sliding her arm around his neck and covering his mouth with hers.

For one slow, molten moment, the world stopped spinning. She could feel the heat of the sun, hear the water lapping at the sandbar, smell the salt water—but it all felt so much farther away.

But Bryce…he was there, the center of gravity holding her to the earth.

His tongue pushed between her lips, sinking slow and deep, and dragging her right along with him. She curled her fingers, catching the ends of his hair.

Kissing him on St. Lucia had felt familiar, a moment snatched from the past that she could cling to for just a moment longer.

But now every moment felt rooted in the present, rich, alive and more potent than anything she’d ever experienced.

The staggering longing she felt with every sweep of his mouth, the long pauses where they fought to catch their breath, only to fall back into tasting each other, made it impossible to think.

“I love you.” She murmured the words against his lips, right before the last brush of her mouth across his.

And then she broke away, taking a little step back. She was pretty sure her smile fell on the goofy side instead of the sexy one, but she couldn’t make herself care.

He’d just kissed her to a mind-blowing degree, one that was still working its way through her system, turning her upside down and inside out, and he looked like he was a heartbeat from doing it again.

She took another step backward, then two more. She wasn’t running from him, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook either.

“Don’t even think that gets you a pass.” She nodded to where their dinner lay, still wrapped in Bryce’s shirt at his feet, abandoned the moment he’d reached for her.

Laughing, he scooped it up and followed her back to their camp.

Bryce was still laughing at her a while later, after he’d cleaned the fish and had set it to cook on the flat rocks in the middle of the fire pit.

Relaxed and happy for the first time in days, Darby had used the opportunity to grab the soap he’d just finished using and head back down to the water’s edge.

What started out as a quick trip to rinse off after her unexpected fishing success changed the moment she felt Bryce’s eyes on her.

From the corner of her eye, she could see him watching her from where he lay back on his elbows at the edge of the beach, beneath the shade of a tree.

Not wanting to get the sling wet, she carefully removed it but continued to hold her arm against her body in the customary L shape. She wasn’t sure exactly what inspired her to undo the bathing suit top too. She hadn’t had the courage to wear it in St. Lucia, but she loosened the strings with her good arm and let it drop to the sand. Bryce sat up, his heavy gaze following her into the water where she soaped up her hands and ran them across her stomach.

The way Bryce watched her made her feel sexy and empowered, and she couldn’t resist sliding her hands higher.

For a moment she let herself imagine it was his hands cupping her breasts, his fingers that slowly circled her nipples, spreading the soap across her entire chest in one lathering rub after another.

Bryce hadn’t moved an inch, his rapt attention encouraging her to slip out of the bikini bottoms. She tossed them back on the shore.

Returning to her stomach, she worked the soap beneath her palm, drawing it lower. Between her legs ached, and the moment she stroked the inside of her thighs, she bit her lip to hold back a moan.

The memory of their kiss—one that still had butterflies tangoing through her midsection each time she caught Bryce staring at her—played through her head over and over, except in her mind they didn’t stop.

The cool water made her already tight nipples throb as she rinsed off, her highly sensitized body feeling every rivulet of water that ran off her body.

She’d started this to tease Bryce and somehow got herself more worked up than—

Where did he go?

She scanned the immediate area but couldn’t see Bryce. He’d left his spot close beneath the tree and…vanished?

Chapter Eleven

Apparently she put on a riveting show, Darby thought dryly.

Wondering where he’d gone, she tugged her bikini bottoms on, a challenge when she still hadn’t grown fully accustomed to using just one hand.

She lowered her bad arm, and although there were no longer any sharp pains, it was still tender. Not wanting to aggravate the healing muscles, she looped her bikini top around her neck but only gathered and held the ties behind her back with her good arm.

Bryce would have to tie them again for her.

She walked back up the beach. “Bryce?”

She heard him under the shelter before she saw him. His suitcase had been ransacked, judging by the clothes strewn about under the raft.

What was he looking—

“Condoms.” Gaze fixed on her, he crawled out from beneath the raft, dropping the packets on the ground.

The sight of her seemed to freeze him in his tracks, and his expression turned hungry.

How could he make her feel so desired, so absolutely coveted, with just a look?

On his knees, he gripped her hips, tugging her forward.

Emotions she could barely discern traced across his face—lust, happiness and something deeper, something that made her heart stumble in her chest.

“I’m insanely in love with you, Darby Calder. Have been most of my life.”