Lisa peeked through the small window to the darkness beyond. “I already know what an ass you are, Slick.” A smile curled her sensuous lips. “Actually, if you want to know the truth, she made you sound like the perfect guy.”
He laughed and crossed his arms over his chest, knowing better than to believe that one.
She glanced around the galley before moving across the space, looked up at the skylights and the moonlight slanting through the cabin. “So, you never asked me how I ended up with Doug’s research.”
Surprise shot through him.
“Not curious at all?”
Hell, yeah, he was curious. He had a thousand questions he was too afraid to ask.
And he sensed she was on the verge of telling him. Without his prodding. If he started hounding her for answers, she might just clam up.
Trying not to let his eagerness show, he propped one foot on the shelf under the chart table. “I figured you’d tell me if it was important.”
“Hmm.” She turned away and ran her hand over the
white upholstered settee along the wall in front of him. “Did you ever do anything stupid you wished you could go back and undo?”
“Are you talking about regret?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he shrugged. “Sure. Everyone has things they wish they’d done differently.” He wished he’d had a stronger relationship with his father, had been a better role model for Billy, had caught his mother’s symptoms sooner. He had a lifetime of things he wished he could change.
“Regret’s a pretty mild word,” she said, looking out the window. “I regret not going after the Furies sooner, not that it would have made a difference. But I’m talking about the really big stuff. The things that change your life.”
He didn’t know how to answer, and he couldn’t quite read her mood, so he waited and hoped she’d go on.
She picked up a pen on the small side table. “Doug was fixated on the Furies long before I met him. He had a theory. Being an art-history major, I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”
“Is this the one about the Spartan queen commissioning Kalamis in the fifth century
B.C.
to create the Furies, thinking they would protect the Spartans in battle and ensure their victory over the Athenians? Yeah, I’ve heard it. Pretty farfetched.”
One side of Lisa’s mouth curved. “Doug didn’t think so. He was convinced the Athenians stole the reliefs from Sparta, and that their disappearance was a major, albeit overlooked, contributor to the Peloponnesian War.”
Rafe lifted his brows.
She smiled a little more at his expression. “Yeah. That’s the same thing most scholars thought of his ideas. Mostly because no one believed the Furies actually existed. But there are some historical annals that support his theory. Doug thought finding the Furies would ultimately prove him right and would thereby solidify his status in the world of academia once and for all.”
Rafe thought back to Maria’s warning. He didn’t care all that much about the academic repercussions finding the Furies would have in the world, but Lisa obviously did. He looked down at the table top. “How did you meet him?”
She sighed and glanced at the pen in her hand. “He taught a class I took one spring semester when I was in grad school. At the time, I thought his theory had some validity. I wanted to know more. But he never noticed me.”
She shifted away, set the pen down and touched the smooth walls as she wandered around the room. “I applied for a dig he was heading up in Ecuador over the summer, and once I was there, made sure he took notice of me. It was a good summer.”
Jealousy twisted like a knife in his chest at the softness he heard in her voice.
“Didn’t last though,” she said, turning back and glancing his way. Something unsettling passed over her eyes, but it disappeared as she continued to move around the room. “When we got back to Chicago, he didn’t want anyone to know about us. Even though I wasn’t taking any of his classes, he thought it wouldn’t look good. I was twenty-three, he was thirty-six. The university frowned big-time on student-teacher relationships.”
“I bet.” What else was he going to say? That knife was scraping away at his insides at just the thought of her with someone else. A childish reaction, considering his ex-wife was yards away in the house.
“Anyway,” she went on, fiddling with the port blinds over the settee as if it hurt to stand still, “I was pretty stupid. Went along with what he wanted, even though I didn’t like it. In public I acted like nothing was happening, but in private it was a completely different story. Until I wound up pregnant.”
She finally looked his direction with big, green, unreadable eyes.
And he didn’t know what to say.
“I’m guessing by your reaction, that’s not a surprise.”
He pulled open the top drawer of the chart table and handed her the photo he’d swiped.
She glanced from the picture to his face. “Where’d you get this?”
“Your parents’ attic.”
He waited for her to lay into him for taking it, but she only bit her lip and looked down at the picture, her expression guarded. “Look at that long hair. Used to drive me nuts. It was always getting in my way.”
“I like it.”
There was disbelief in those shimmering emeralds when she looked up. She handed him the photo. “Doug didn’t.”
Doug was a prick. But he wasn’t about to say that. Not yet.
“He never said, but he thought I got pregnant on purpose to trap him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.” She let out a short laugh that held no humor. “Biggest shock of my life.”
Then it started to make sense.
“He didn’t want the baby,” Rafe said quietly, fingering the edge of the photo.
Lisa moved across the room to the settee where she lifted a throw pillow. “Nope. And things changed between us, then. He dove into his work, got really obsessed with the Furies. Said he couldn’t settle down with me—with us,” she corrected, “until he’d gone after the one thing that mattered.”
“Marble,” Rafe muttered. The man had tossed Lisa away for a goddamn piece of rock.
“Yep.” She said the word with no hint of feeling. “No one knew I’d been seeing him, and I never told anyone but Shane who the father was. And even though it was really stupid and unlikely, I held onto the belief that after he got back from his little treasure hunt, we’d settle down and have the perfect life. Do it all,” she said, turning toward him. “Have the career and the family and the house in the suburbs. Everything. I was six months’ pregnant when he left.”
When he died. She didn’t say it, but the reality hung between them like thick smoke.
“What happened to the baby?” he asked softly.
The first hint of pain reflected in her eyes. She tossed the pillow on the settee. “I heard from him once, a brief phone call after he’d been gone a few weeks, then nothing. I didn’t find out about the plane crash until a week after it happened, when it was announced by the university. And I didn’t handle the news so well, especially when no one would give me details. Three days later I lost the baby. The doctor said it wasn’t related to the stress, but”—she shrugged—“I’m not so sure. Until then, things had been fine.”
Jesus.
He closed his eyes, knowing then why she didn’t believe in love. “I’m sorry.” He opened his eyes and stepped toward her. “Lisa—”
“Do you want to hear the rest?”
Her sharp voice stopped his feet.
She didn’t wait for an answer, and there wasn’t pain in her eyes anymore, but anger. “I hemorrhaged on the table. The only way to stop the bleeding was a hysterectomy. I was twenty-three, and I’d just lost everything I didn’t even know I’d wanted.”
His stomach rolled.
“The way I saw it,” she went on, “he owed me. My life changed in a heartbeat because of those damn Furies. His parents had no clue who I was. His sister turned up her nose at me when I went to the memorial service. So I waited until I knew his house was empty, used the key he’d given me, and I took his research before they could box it up and take it away.”
Surprise swept over him. “You stole it?”
“No,” she said in a hard voice he almost didn’t recognize. “I
earned
it.”
He wanted to reach out to her and pull her into his arms, but there was a clear don’t-touch-me look in her eyes that stopped him cold.
“I’m a damn good archaeologist,” she said. “I’ve proven myself again and again. I didn’t sleep my way to the top or cash in on my looks. After everything that happened with Doug, I made a pact with myself not to get involved with anyone I worked with ever again. And I did pretty well for about five years.”
Some of the anger faded from her eyes. “Until I was on a dig in Mexico, where I met a guy who made me believe in ‘happily ever after’ again. Even though it was stupid, I took a chance. He was everything Doug hadn’t been—younger than me, still in school, fair haired and quiet. I was crazy about him. Crazy, period.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “He was killed in a diving accident on that dig. And that was the last time I let myself feel anything for anyone.”
His heart ached for her. How much bad luck could one woman have? “Lisa—”
She held up a hand to stop him from stepping forward. “I didn’t tell you any of this so you’d feel sorry for me. No one feels sorry for me, okay? I was stupid. Everything that happened to me happened because I didn’t make the right choices. I only told you because…”
She swallowed and focused on his T-shirt. “Because, for the first time in ten years, I’ve got this little voice in the back of my head telling me to take another chance.”
Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. He had trouble forming words. “You’re hearing voices?”
“Yes.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “Really irritating ones.”
He shifted his weight, careful about the words he chose. “Let me get this straight. You’re hearing voices telling you to take a chance on a thief? Did I hear that right?”
Her cheeks turned the slightest shade of pink, but she still didn’t look up. “When you say it like that, it sounds insane. I’m not totally nuts. I…crap, I obviously have bad judgment.”
The quiver in her voice kick-started his heart. “Bad judgment, huh? The voice in my head’s been trying to talk me
into risking everything on a smart-mouthed archaeologist I hustled in Milan. Can’t get any worse than that.”
Surprised green eyes lifted to his. He didn’t wait for a response, simply stepped forward and finally touched her, as he’d wanted to do since she’d slinked down the stairs. He ran his hands over the smooth, bare skin of her arms and looked into the face of a woman he’d never planned on, never expected, but was thanking God above for bringing into his life. “The way I see it, you’ve got a lot more experience with this than I do.”
“No, I don’t,” she said quietly. “This is different.”
“How?”
Her eyes went all dreamy. “Because it’s with you.”
That did it. Quicksand. Over his head.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, his lips gliding over hers, soft and gentle and full of all the emotions he hoped she could feel. The ones he was too afraid to speak.
When he eased back to look down at her, she dropped her gaze to his chest and ran her fingertips over his shirt. “So, um, you got a bedroom on this boat?”
Her fingers set off a tingling in his skin, her words a tingling in his chest. One side of his mouth curled, and the relief warming his gut went white-hot. “Yeah. Through there.” He pointed toward the aft cabin door to the left of the companionway.
She pushed out of his arms, stepped into the doorway and shot him a come-hither look. “As much as I like your ex, I don’t think I want to take this back into the house where she’s sleeping. So tell me, Slick,” she said with a playful smile. “You ever made love on a boat?”
If he’d thought he was in deep before, he’d been utterly clueless. His chest constricted until it was almost too hard to breathe. “No. I’ve never made love to anyone. You’re gonna have to teach me how.”
“Oh…”
Speechless. Again. He’d never get tired of that, or the way it made him weak in the knees.
Her expression went all soft, and she held out a hand, lacing her fingers with his and tugging him gently toward her. “Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. How about we teach each other?”
Her heart was racing. To the point he had to hear it.
Lisa eased back a few steps through the small hallway and into the bedroom. Moonlight spilled from the windows above, highlighting Rafe’s handsome face, eyes dark and intense, features strong and determined.
This was different. Not that frenzied need to explore, but deeper. Like it mattered. She could read it in his eyes, feel it in the sultry air around them.
“Your hands are sweating,” she said when she found her voice.
“I’m nervous.”
She didn’t think it was possible for her pulse to pump faster, but it did. “You never get nervous.”
He moved closer, placing the palm of her hand over his chest. “I am now. Feel what you do to me.”
His heart was beating just as quickly and erratically as hers, and when she looked up, he smiled that sexy half grin that melted her insides. “It’s been doing that ever since you showed up in the Keys.”
Oh, man. She wasn’t just going to take a chance. She was going to fall for this guy. With a man who was changing every one of her long-held beliefs. With one who had the power to hurt her more than anyone else ever had. And even realizing that didn’t stop her, because her need for him was stronger than common sense.
She ran her fingers over his T-shirt, down to the hem, to push the soft cotton up and over his head. His chest was tan and covered with a smattering of dark, silky hair that tickled her fingers. She leaned close, smelling his musky cologne and unique scent as she pressed her lips against rough, warm skin.
His hands brushed her hair, ran down her shoulders to grip her tank top and tug it off. Her bra hit the floor. Her nipples pebbled at the rush of cool air, and she eased closer, skimming her breasts against his bare chest, skin to skin, warmth to warmth, the way she wanted to be.