Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Realizing that the world had gone blurry, Lilah swiped at the tears that had pooled in her eyes and forged determinedly ahead. Ben and—to a lesser extent—Gramps might have the rest of her life all mapped out, but Lilah wasn’t even remotely on the same page as them. She would do what she had to do to convince Gramps that this marriage was real for now but she refused to commit herself to longer than a year of this hell. Once she got her divorce, she would sever all ties with Ben. They could tell Gramps that they’d tried but they were just too incompatible, nobody had been at fault, it was just one of those things.
It was the only way to salvage her pride and repair her tattered heart.
FOURTEEN
His casual cruelty
“Tell me again how you can take care of yourself,” Ben’s mocking voice invited from behind Lilah, seconds before an inhaler was tossed in her lap. He sat down on the warm, white sand beside her and plonked her hat onto her head in the same motion.
She didn’t bother asking him how he’d found her. It was a small island, and he knew her well enough to recognize that she would have made a beeline for the closest, quietest beach.
Lilah wasn’t going to let him disturb the peace she’d found while sitting on this tranquil strip of white sand. There weren’t many people here—she’d seen a number of people hanging out at the activity center and the hotel pool—and Lilah had picked a spot a fair distance from the next closest, privacy-seeking couple.
“Thank you for bringing my hat,” she said, and the blustery wind seemed to leave his billowing sails at her words. “It was silly of me to leave it behind.”
“I’m less concerned about the hat than I am about the inhaler,” he replied, his voice no longer as challenging. Instead, she heard a tinge of exhausted resignation in that rasp.
“I always carry a back-up in my camera bag,” she said, nodding toward the canvas bag tucked beside her hip.
He sighed deeply and loosely folded his arms around his bent, spread knees. She kept her gaze directed toward the ethereally blue ocean, but was painfully aware of Ben’s intense stare boring into her profile
“I do know how to manage my disease, Ben.”
“I can think of several occasions when you didn’t manage it so very well.”
“Twice. That was it. The first time”—had been terrifying for both of them. She could still remember the look of panic and outright fear on Ben’s face as he fought a losing battle to keep her conscious——“wasn’t my fault. You know that.”
“At the wedding—”
“I told you why I wasn’t carrying one at the wedding,” she interrupted him sharply. “It was stupid. I should have known better. But I thought…” She wiped the sand from her hands and met his gaze head on. “Well, I told you what I thought. No need to go over that again.”
“I always—” He stopped talking abruptly, and shook his head dazedly, as if confused by whatever he’d been about to say.
“You always what?”
“It’s nothing.”
“I want to know.”
“Nothing to know.”
Frustrated, she glared at him mutely, before shaking her head and pushing to her feet. She tugged her dress up and over her head, dropped it—and the hat—onto the sand. Without another word to him she walked directly into the water. She knew that the white bikini bottom was designed to ride up ever so slightly on each side and was aware that he was getting a pert eyeful, but she no longer cared. While she’d felt too exposed earlier, she now felt a malicious swell of satisfaction in letting him see everything she would never allow him to touch.
She plunged into the cool waters, submerging her body entirely, before surfacing to face the beach, where Ben still sat with her stuff. He was too far away for Lilah to read his expression and he still wore his sunglasses, but she could see the tension in every line of his body.
She stared at him for a long moment, feeling his eyes on her, even though she could not see them.
What was he thinking? Did those glasses disguise a wealth of hatred, revulsion, and resentment toward her?
Did she care?
She considered the question for a moment, before deciding that yes, she did care. She cared a lot. She didn’t want anyone hating her… and God help her, she definitely didn’t want Ben hating her. No matter how ambivalent her feelings currently were toward him, she still didn’t want him to hate her. Or resent her.
She was so damned pathetic.
Lilah made an impatient sound in the back of her throat and dove into the cool waters, swimming parallel to the shore for a few strokes until she was no longer in his direct line of sight. She flipped over onto her back and floated on top of the tranquil, rippling surface, feeling instantly calmer as she stared up into the cloudless azure sky. The surrounding world was muffled by the water, and she could hear the distant thrum of an engine and the rhythmic whooshing of gently lapping waves.