He tensed. “What’s wrong?”
“I so didn’t need to think of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at the moment.”
His muscles melted back onto the concrete slab. “So your smarmy ex didn’t like your job choice.”
Ex-boyfriend or ex-husband?
“He put me through law school and expected we would lead a more comfortable life once I graduated. When he found out otherwise, we got one of those ‘irreconcilable differences’ divorces. No kids. Little money. It was quick and far from painless.”
“Sounds like he was a jackass.” What kind of dumb shit threw away a family?
“Jackass… jerk… cheating scumbag. But he knows what he wants. He’s happily married to one of my law-school classmates. Apparently he’d been sleeping with her for months before we split, something he felt compelled to confess—after he’d gotten his fifty-fifty, irreconcilable-differences divorce. From what I hear, they never see each other but they have a crap ton of money to spend on themselves and their two-point-two children. Not that I’m bitter or anything.”
“Regrets bite.”
“You said it.” She finger-doodled small circles in the dirt. “I should probably forgive him in case I don’t make it. But then that would be kinda hypocritical, since if I knew for sure I was going to make it, I would kick the rat bastard in the gonads.”
A laugh burst out of him. “Lady, if we could harness your spirit, we could lift this building right off you in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, he said I was emasculating.”
Hugh was thinking maybe he might like to look this guy up, use him for a refresher course on martial arts skills. After missions like this one, he needed to blow off steam.
She sighed. “The rat bastard was good in bed though. I do miss that.”
What the—?
Shock zipped through him, along with an adrenaline surge and a passel of distracting images of this take-no-prisoners woman putting her everything into all-night, sweaty sex.
Not professional thoughts.
He cleared his throat. “You know you’re going to live, right? And you’re going to be sorry you told me so much.”
She stayed quiet so long, he thought for a minute she wouldn’t answer. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll never see you again, so it doesn’t matter. Although I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
“Surprised, maybe.”
For a few seconds there, he’d even managed to stop thinking about Marissa stuck in the wreckage of a plane, stop wondering how long she’d lived, knowing that their child had died instantly. Had anyone else on the craft been alive in her final seconds to offer a distraction from the fear, to give her comfort?
Although one thing was damn certain. Marissa wouldn’t have been talking like this. She’d been shy and fragile, and it killed him five times over every single day that he couldn’t have been on that airplane instead of her and their daughter.
Amelia kept drawing circles in the sand with a ragged nail, her swirls growing like one of Tilly’s scribble-art pieces he still kept on his refrigerator even though the paper had long ago yellowed with age.
“Hugh, it’s tough not to think about regrets right now. Especially the huge one. Like thinking about never seeing Alaska or having sex again… Never becoming a mother.”
He looked from the ground to her face sharply. “You want kids?”
“Joshua just wriggled his fingers.” She smiled softly. “He’s really alive.”
He didn’t want her thinking about the child.
Hell, he didn’t want to think about the toddler a few feet away who was likely dead, and if the kid lived in some kind of coma state, not being able to do a damn thing for him… Yeah, that dropped Dante’s inferno to a new rock-bottom level.
Time to discuss something else. “I’ve lived in Alaska. It’s incredible. You should take a cruise up there when you get out of here, give yourself a chance to decompress.”
She laughed hoarsely. “Maybe you could join me, and we’ll have lots of great sex in our stateroom so I can erase both of my regrets at once.”
Again, he chuckled along with her and even wondered what it would be like to “decompress” with her. He hadn’t lived like a monk since his wife died. The thought of getting married again made him sick to his stomach. So he’d settled into a life of one-night hookups and casual relationships. Some called him a serial dater.