Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 1 of 2
on a neighboring island that was reputed to offer excellent sunsets.“Kiara is home safe,” she murmured, phone in hand yet again as they ate a light snack in the stern. “I hope she and Val can work things out.”
“Scarlett.” He gently took her phone. “Worry about you, not other people.”
Kiara had told him that Scarlett always put herself last and he saw it clearly now. The facade of infinite dependability he’d seen her wear all these years was not infinite, yet it was something she clung to as a means of reassuring herself she had value.
If I don’t look after Locke, how will he know that I love him? she had sobbed while Javiero had held her in the doctor’s office.
And if he wanted to look after her, if she cut him to his very soul when she refused to rely on him, what did that say about his feelings for her?
That thought was a land mine he walked back from, not ready to contemplate it yet. He had arrived in a temper this morning. His entire world had been flipped on edge by his own failings with his half brother. By the fact Scarlett was drowning and he hadn’t noticed.
They both needed a breathing space to assimilate things.
They needed what they had never had—courtship. Time.
He called to a steward and handed over Scarlett’s phone, along with his own.
“Put these in a drawer until morning. If one of us tries to pry them from you before then, drop both of them overboard.”
“He’s joking,” Scarlett said with a panicked look.
“I’m not,” Javiero assured the young man. “The world will not end if we take a few hours off.” He was as guilty as she was of burying himself in work to avoid stickier problems.
She looked at her empty hands as though she didn’t know what to do with them.
He realized she wasn’t wearing his ring. Everything in him screeched to a stop.
He took her hands. Maybe he just wanted to touch her. Hell, yes, he did. He had been aching to lie with her as he’d left the bed they’d shared in London. His heart was racing, hackles up over her removing his ring, but her cheeks were hollow, her hands tense in his grip. He felt her brace herself against whatever he might say.
He ground his molars, defeated by her fragility.
“You’re going to relax if I have to force you.” He was joking, mostly.
Her mouth twitched, then quickly went down at the corners. “How can I?”
She pulled her hands from his and stood to move to the rail in the stern. The breeze dragged tendrils of hair from her ponytail, whipping them around her face.
When he moved to stand beside her, her profile remained pale and strained.
“There’s so much that needs to be sorted. Look, I’m sorry about what happened with your mother—”
“Scarlett. Stop.” He squeezed her shoulder, then set his forearms on the rail, hands linked, and watched the wake of the yacht trail in a widening V behind them. “I’ve talked to Mother. She admitted what you really proposed. I said it sounded like a damned good offer and advised her to take it.”
“But—” Her eyes became big pools of blue, wide and depthless as the Aegean surrounding them. “I can’t. Not now. I need that allowance for myself.”
The possessive beast in him roared, wanting to lunge and grab and drag her back into his lair. He suppressed it, clinging to what shreds of civility he still possessed.
“If that’s your way of telling me we’re not getting married, don’t. We’re going to spend the next week not talking about that. We’re just going to be.”
* * *
They took a dip in the sea before dinner, then ate while indigo and fuchsia bled across the horizon. They talked about inconsequential matters and took turns holding their son. When Javiero rose to put Locke down for the night, she protested, “I can do it. Please don’t treat me like an invalid.”
“Maybe I should,” he said with concern. “If you had broken your leg, you wouldn’t try so hard to do everything yourself. You would expect me to help. I don’t think less of you for needing me, Scarlett. I wish you would quit berating yourself for it.”
Fine to say when he didn’t need any help and she would be the last place he’d look if he did.
He offered the baby for her to kiss.
She did, and when he cradled Locke against his shoulder, she died at the picture he made, this brutish hulk of a man securing Locke’s tiny form so tenderly with his wide hands.
Nervous about what would happen when they went to bed, she searched out a romance novel from the small library of books in the saloon and fell asleep reading it.
She woke much later in their stateroom, still in her summer dress, spooned into his body with the weight of his arm across her waist. Through the baby monitor, she heard Locke stirring.
“I’ll get him,” Javiero said before her foot reached the edge of the mattress.
He brought Locke for feeding and took him back to bed after. She was asleep again before he rejoined her.
Perhaps it was the medication or the lull of the boat or maybe straight up boredom, but she seemed to sleep constantly for the next few days. In between, they swam and snorkeled and used the paddleboards. They read and ate the chef’s eclectic mixes of French pastries, Spanish tapas, Greek delicacies and freshly caught fish.
As for work, they allowed themselves one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, just enough to answer a few pressing emails.
As Scarlett handed off her phone to the steward one afternoon, she said to Javiero, “Can I ask your advice? I completely respect that you want nothing to do with managing Niko’s money. I want to do it. I want to do it well. However, I don’t want to burn out and obviously that was starting to happen. How could I manage myself