It had been hell—no other word fit for the black hole he'd fallen into. Taking care of Tomas had pulled him back out. He didn't ever want to step near that edge again.
"I am so sorry."
"It's not your fault."
"Then why are you being so distant?" She held up a hand. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"No. You have a right to ask." They were married, for God's sake. "I've never been good with showing—"
"Feelings? I remember." Sweat trickled into her T-shirt, likely trekking right between her breasts. "I guess I fell into an old pattern there that led us to too many arguments in the past."
"I am sorry." He pulled his eyes off the path of perspiration beads chasing each other into her clothes. "But I can't afford to think about anything except getting us out of here alive."
"Of course."
"I wish I could say I'll be more what you're looking for afterward. You were wise not to marry me."
"But I did."
Eyes forward. Watch the landscape ahead and keep marching, dude, because he wanted a taste of Sara's skin more than he wanted a shower and a real meal. "Let me rephrase. You were right to turn me down when I asked, because I definitely wasn't the right sort of man for you."
Chapter 6
Sara held her spine as straight as the towering trees lining their path—in spite of the thousand-pound backpack and weighty pain of hearing Lucas say he regretted marrying her.
It shouldn't hurt. She'd turned him down three times, after all. But it did, because she'd only told him no in hopes that he would listen and change. Then they could have everything.
She could still recite every word of each proposal. The first, he'd worked into an offhand discussion after they had sex for the first time. The second panted into her ear during sex.
The final proposal came in an ultimatum during their fight on the embassy lawn the day she'd been shot.
She hadn't even realized how foolish she'd been until it was too late. Regret stole her breath faster than the exertion.
She slowed to a stop, slumping against a trunk as big around as the pillars she'd once lured Lucas behind to steal a kiss. "You feel used, of course."
"We did the practical thing at the time." He stopped, as well, without comment, confirming she must really look tired for him not to press on when their lives depended on speed. "I understood that then and now."
At least Lucia was still napping peacefully on his back.
"I was never much of a practical woman, with my silly bubbles and supply-closet ambushes for a quick make-out session."
"You used to drive me crazy." He swayed from foot to foot in a rocking motion guaranteed to soothe Lucia into sleeping longer.
Did he even notice? His instincts for children were better than he thought.
"I liked driving you crazy." Yet she found his paternal sway tugged at another corner of her heart with an equal, if different, strength.
"Oh, did you?"
"Did you really think I forgot my underwear beneath your pillow? Or that my perfume spilled inside your top desk drawer by accident?"
"I couldn't open the thing without getting turned on."
"I know." They had shared some wonderful times together. She'd lost sight of that joy buried so deeply under her guilt and grief.
His silvery-blue eyes glinted with more than a hint of arrogant surety. "Actually I was thinking more of the time at the ambassador's dinner when you—"
"Shhhh! What if Lucia wakes?" Their daughter didn't need to hear the details of gropings under a banquet table. "You didn't seem to mind one bit by dessert."