Chapter Twenty-Two

“I’ve done all I can without visiting the island to calibrate,” Ivy said as she stood from the workstation. She checked RON’s resting place, the narrow area where floor met ceiling in the dome-shaped space. Ninety percent charged, he’d be ready to fly by darkfall.

“We’ll go out an hour before dusk. Tourists kayaking through the channels will be heading back to port then, and we’ll be less likely to be spotted.”

She nodded. That gave them a few hours to kill. “May as well eat something. What can of food should we open tonight?”

“We could fish. There’s a decent beach on the lower inward curve of the island.”

“You aren’t worried we’ll be seen?”

“I’ll set out the inflatable kayak. You’ll put on your bikini. It’ll look like we’re day trippers.”

She crossed her arms and fixed him with a stern look. “If I’m going to wear the bikini, you’re going shirtless.”

He laughed. “Of course.”

It would be good to spend time out of the cave, to pretend, even if only for an hour, that she was just a simple tourist enjoying paradise.

It wasn’t until she dropped her towel on the beach and reached for the sunblock that she realized her miscalculation. They didn’t have any spray, so Dimitri would have to apply it. It was too early in the day and she burned too easily to forgo the lotion.

She held up the bottle. “When you’re done messing with the fishing pole, could you…?”

He dropped the rod and reached for the bottle. She lifted her hair and presented her back, bracing herself for his touch.

Which didn’t come.

“Dimitri?”

Featherlight touches came, high on her back, but there was no scent of lotion. No rubbing. The fleeting caress of fingers. Like the first night in the shower. He must be tracing the bruise she’d forgotten about.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Not since the day…after.” The day he’d abducted her, and the pain in her back had become the last thing on her mind.

It must’ve been too dark in the cave for him to notice it when he’d made love to her, or he’d simply been distracted.

As he had that first night, he kissed the mark on her back, the physical reminder of all the ways in which a man who’d promised to love, honor, and cherish her had betrayed her in the worst possible way.

“I’m so sorry, Ivy. I tell myself I’m better than your ex, but I’m not. I’m worse.”

She turned to face him, but then couldn’t meet his gaze. She rested her forehead on his chest. “You can’t possibly be worse than Patrick.” At least, she didn’t want to believe it. “If I tell you why I divorced him, will you tell me who is so important to you, you’re willing to abduct me?”

It was unfair, really, this trade. Her story was minor compared, she suspected, to his. But he wanted to know why she left Patrick. Telling what happened was always humiliating, but she’d do it if it meant understanding Dimitri’s actions.

He released her and picked up the fishing pole again. After a long silence in which he tied on a hook and baited it with grubs he’d collected from the jungle, he cast the line into the sea, then planted the pole in the sand.

He dropped down on the towel next to her, then plucked the forgotten bottle of sunscreen from the sand and applied the sun-warmed lotion to her back. He ran his hands over her shoulders—more caress than application at that point—and kissed the back of her neck above the bikini tie.

“I’ll tell you,” he said at last. He leaned his forehead on her back. “I’m no longer certain who is captive here and who is captee.”

“I’m no one’s prisoner,” she said. “From the moment I had the opportunity to shoot you and didn’t take it, I’ve stayed with you of my own free will. Don’t for a moment think it’s been otherwise, or I’ll prove you wrong and leave right now.”

He nodded and took her hand in his. “I don’t want you to leave. And not because of CAM.”

His low-voiced words were exactly what she needed to hear. Patrick had only wanted her for the institute. The Navy only wanted CAM. And the DIA hadn’t wanted her to leave Palau even after she’d been assaulted because of what they’d hoped CAM could find for them.

Even if it wasn’t true, it was nice to think Dimitri was interested in her for something other than what her high-tech little buddy could do.

“You first,” he said. “Tell me what happened with Patrick.”

“The simple version is he was banging one of the interns at the institute.”

“How very cliché of him.”

“I said the same thing when I caught them.”

“There’s more to it than that, or you wouldn’t have remained mum when accusations were flying hard and fast your way. Every reporter covering the story wanted to know why you left him a year before the world learned he was a traitor.”

And here was the hard, embarrassing part. She raked her fingers through the warm sand. She drew a triangle, then another, before wiping them away and looking out toward the gently lapping waves. “After we’d been married for three years, Patrick and I began trying to conceive. The timing was right—I was thirty-three and ready to be a mom.” She stroked her belly. “I didn’t even know how much until we started trying.

“He was in his early forties and had said he wanted to start a family almost from the moment we got married, but it took a little time for my biological clock to catch up with his. For about six months, we were actively trying to get pregnant. The day the test showed two lines, I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to tell him.”

She closed her eyes. The shock of going from ultimate joy to ultimate pain hit her, even now.

“I went to the office to surprise him, and like every bad cliché you’ve ever heard, I stepped into his outer office—it was after hours, and Perry, his right-hand man who was indicted along with him, had left for the day. I heard voices in his office. One shrill, young. I recognized the voice. The intern. Twenty-two. She’d been with us for three months, and I’d thought she had a thing for Perry—who, like Patrick, was too old for her. But she was an adult, and it was none of my business as long as it didn’t interfere with her work.”

She dug her fingers in the sand again. It was grounding, the warmth and texture. She was here. With Dimitri. She just had to accept the pain that accompanied the memory would never fade. “I don’t blame her. She was young. Foolish. Starstruck. Don’t misunderstand—I was and remain pissed as hell at her—but I can cut a small amount of slack for her immaturity. Patrick did have that charisma. He was hard to resist.”

Dimitri’s knuckles turned white. Was it wrong that she liked the outward sign of jealousy?

Probably.

“The news articles always made it sound like yours was a marriage of convenience. The logical choice—a merger of MacLeod and Hill.”

“If only it were that simple.” She closed her eyes. It would have hurt so much less if that were the case. She opened her eyes again and stared out at the turquoise water. “And that right there is one of the reasons I never bothered to set the record straight. They had their own narrative. The truth was irrelevant. The media wanted to paint me as a villain right along with Patrick. They implied repeatedly that anyone cold enough to marry him for his money must be in league with him. If I denied their accusations, they would have said, ‘the lady doth protest too much.’ I couldn’t win. So I said nothing.” She raised her chin defiantly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I married Patrick for love.”

She traced another triangle in the sand, swallowing to fight the heartburn that came with admitting her shameful secret aloud. She’d loved Patrick and he’d…he’d sold CAM to terrorists while she was still in the research and development stage.

“Perhaps the only thing more insulting than the press’s treatment of me was being called a whore by the man I’d just had sex with.”

“I’m sorry. I was so far out of line.”

“Yes. You were.” She wiped away the shape. “No one in the press seemed to care there was no reason to marry Patrick for a business alliance,” she continued. “MacLeod-Hill had already merged. Jessica—the girl. And yeah, I’m going to call her girl, not woman, because she might have been twenty-two, but she was still such a child.” She shrugged. “The feminist in me has to justify my word choice, even in private.”

“No objections.”

“Jessica was upset. Crying. I’m human, so I eavesdropped. After all, a girl was crying to my husband after hours in a closed office.” She glanced out toward the sea. Her hand curled into a fist. “Patrick told her she needed to be patient because he couldn’t leave me until after I was pregnant. He needed the baby to hold on to the institute, because of the contract he’d signed when we added him to the name. A MacLeod or MacLeod descendant would always be on the board and would have an equal part in all financial decisions regarding the institute. If no MacLeod wanted the task, they could appoint a representative. Patrick was trying to lock up the institute. He intended to steal it from me and use our child to retain control.”

She cleared her throat again. “It’s humiliating to discover your entire marriage was a lie from the start. I mean, I know I’m awkward. Geeky. As a woman, everything I do will be based on my looks and not my accomplishments. I know I need to lose fifteen pounds and my laugh is too nasal. And I utterly hate it that in that moment, I went into that awkward, insecure place where I felt ugly and undesirable. I have a fricking genius IQ, and I still went to the same low common denominator where I judged myself on my looks and desirability.

“Jessica was young, beautiful, skinny. Probably better in bed. I mean, he actually wanted to be with Jessica, otherwise he’d just have sent her on her whiney way. But he laid out his timeline so he could keep fucking her, me, and keep the institute.”

She wanted to jump up and pace, but if she did, she might make a break for the jungle, to escape before hearing Dimitri’s story. This was the price she’d agreed to, and she would pay it.

“When I confronted Patrick, he went there too. Blamed me for his affair. Don’t forget, I still didn’t know what he was. I didn’t know he was an arms dealer. A traitor. At the time, he was the center of my collapsing world. And he said I was too cold. Too obsessed with my work. It was my fault he turned to a twenty-two-year-old twit for entertainment. And yeah, I knew he was full of shit, but at the same time, it’s hard not to hear it, when the man you’re in love with says that to you. Hard not to believe it.”

Dimitri ran a hand over his face. “And when I said…what you thought I meant, you went right there again.”

“Well, yeah. You’re the first man I’ve had sex with since Patrick.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “So in the end, I blamed myself for my sham of a marriage and not the asshole who was a lowlife con man. I felt so utterly stupid. Inadequate. And less than a woman.”

“And you were pregnant.”

She swiped away a tear. Dammit, she’d thought she was done crying over Patrick’s betrayal. “Yes.”

He sucked in a breath and held it there. Finally, he let it out in a rush and said, “Did you…?”

“No.” She let out a deep sigh. “No matter who the father was and no matter how mercenary his reasons for providing sperm, I wanted my baby.”

“So what happened?”

“It was what’s known as a chemical pregnancy. I took the test early—more than a week before my period was due—and there was just enough hCG in my urine for a positive, meaning the egg was fertilized and implanted, but for whatever reason, it didn’t take. Research indicates up to seventy percent of all conceptions end in miscarriages, which sounds really high, but most women never knew they were ever pregnant. With a chemical pregnancy, usually the period arrives on schedule, as mine did. If we hadn’t been trying to conceive, I’d never have taken that early test, never would have known about the chemical pregnancy.”

“And you wouldn’t have surprised Patrick at the office.”

She stroked her belly. Sometimes she felt as if that phantom pregnancy was still a part of her. But then, it had shaped everything that had come later, so maybe it was.

“At first when I confronted him and Jessica, Patrick pulled the classic ‘she means nothing to me’ right in front of her. My stupid ego… For half a second, there was that gratifying surge, that feeling of being desirable. Being wanted. But I didn’t believe the lie for more than a moment, and then he launched into how it was my fault. I didn’t tell him I believed I was pregnant. I went to a hotel and tried to figure out how I could get him out of my house, life, and the institute all while carrying his child.

“A week later, he was hosting a big political party for my cousin Alec. I’d been crying nonstop. Was utterly humiliated. Later, I wondered if the crying, if the heartbreak made my uterus inhospitable. You know, so the chemical pregnancy was also my fault.” She swiped at another annoying tear.

“I told Alec I had the flu and skipped the party. Late that afternoon, I got my period. That was a shock. I spent the night laughing and crying. Grieving and feeling relieved and then feeling guilty. Basically I was an utter wreck and completely alone. My sister Hazel and I are really close, but she never liked Patrick, and I…I just didn’t need that kind of support. I was too raw. Humiliated at work. Homeless. Babyless.” She glanced around the beach. “I could’ve used an island escape like this one.”

She pushed to her feet. She was through the worst of it and could pace without fleeing now. “The divorce was ugly. I wanted him out of the institute, but there’d been a prenup separating the business from the marriage, so that wasn’t going to happen. He fired Jessica, then she sued for sexual harassment and named me as one of the defendants. Possibly because I’m so unappealing, my husband had to go hunting among the interns. He paid her to make the suit go away—there was a nondisclosure, so I don’t know the details. All I know is he didn’t use a dime of MacLeod-Hill money to pay off his mistress. I think he must’ve used blood money from Syria.” Her breath caught. “I suppose it’s possible he got the money for selling CAM.”

“You could have told the press all this when they hounded you.”

“They already hated me. Why would I want to share my humiliation with them?”

“They might’ve had sympathy for you.”

“Right. Have you noticed how kind the media has been to Hillary Clinton for her husband’s affair? They attacked her sexuality, her brains, her decision to stay with him. If she’d left him, they’d have attacked her for that. I had left my husband. The reason was no one’s business but my own.”

“You still blame yourself,” Dimitri said. “Even knowing your ex is a sociopath, or has Borderline Personality Disorder, you still internalize it.”

She grunted an acknowledgment. “I’m a human and insecure in some areas. What he did tapped into it.”

“For the record, I think you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known. And being with you has been by far the best sex I’ve ever had.”

He said it with such sincerity, she couldn’t help but smile. Her ego was easily fed. “I’m supposed to be above these things. To want to be judged by something other than my value as sexual plaything.”

“It’s not wrong to want to be desirable. That’s basic evolution right there.”

“My libido died that day, in Patrick’s office. I didn’t want or even think about sex until you started flaunting your body at the marina.”

He grimaced. “I suppose I should admit they taught us to use all our assets in spy school.”

She winced. To be taught to use sex as a tool from a young age—if she remembered correctly, he’d been barely more than a child when he started spy school—horrified her. “All?”

“If I’d wanted sex training, it would have been provided. But the idea of that left me cold.”

“How old were you? When you started?”

“Sex or spy school?”

“Well, I meant spy school, but now I’m curious about sex too.”

He stood and crossed the small stretch of beach between them. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her. Deep, but not a precursor to anything more. Just a kiss. Sweet and soft. “I was seventeen the first time I had sex—on my own terms, consensual on both sides.” He released her and stepped back. “And I was fourteen when I was selected for the embed program. My sister was eleven.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes. She’s the reason I need to find the AUUV. If I don’t, she and her son will both be killed.”