and changed. He’d spent a lot of time thinking up this strategy. He knew better than just to call and ask Alysse out. He’d hurt her and he knew it. The fact that he’d thought of nothing but her for the last four years had sent a strong message to him that he needed some kind of closure with her.
He took his time setting up the area, just as he would to get ready for a target. Planning and execution were the keys to success and he never forgot that. The staff had laid out a bamboo rug and then set the table up on that. Twinkle lights hung from the ceiling of the cabana. There were curtains which had been drawn back to let the breeze flow through the structure.
Jay was a little wary of having so much open space around him, but he was on leave and he tried not to let it bother him. He hated how on edge he always was when he came in from the field. And tonight he was doubly edgy because of Alysse.
He scanned the beach and the area where he was standing looking for the best strategic advantage. He sat at the table but felt stupid just sitting there, so he got up. He checked the wine chilling in the freestanding ice bucket and then walked to the edge of the cabana to lean against a palm tree.
Just as he decided he looked like someone in an all-inclusive resort commercial, Alysse appeared. He realized all at once he wasn’t as prepared as he’d hoped to be, because he’d forgotten how beautiful she was.
She arrived just as the sun was starting to set. She wore a casual skirt, and a blousy shirt. But it wasn’t the clothes—more the body underneath it. She was tall—almost five-foot-seven—and had an athletic build. She moved with grace and confidence and he couldn’t tear his eyes from her.
He had his sunglasses on. Her long ginger hair blew in the wind, a tendril brushing over her cheek and her lips. She moved with fluid grace and ease. She stopped on the path and glanced at the cabana. Was she wary of coming out here on her own?
“Hello? Marine?” Alysse called out.
Jay stayed where he was, watching her, feeling a little like a voyeur, but this was probably the only chance he’d have to observe her before she recognized him. He could turn around and walk away from this beach and this woman, just walk back to his Ducati and get the hell out of here.
“Hello?”
There was a catch in her voice and he knew he couldn’t just leave. He didn’t want to. There was a reason he was here and the reason had everything to do with this woman.
“Hello, Alysse,” he said, stepping from the shadows.
She shook her head and then pushed her sunglasses up, revealing her narrowed eyes. She took two angry steps toward him.
“Jay?” she asked. “Is that really you?”
He took a step closer to her. He was so close he could smell the homey scent of vanilla and see the freckles that dotted her cheekbones.
“Yes.”
She threw the cake box on the table and clenched her hands. “You ass.”
“I guess I deserve that,” he said.
She shook her head. “You deserve a lot more than that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, more to herself. She took a step back from him and then pivoted and he realized she was leaving.
“Wait.”
“Why should I?” she asked.
He took two steps toward her and reached out to touch her but she flinched away.
“I … I’m sorry for the way I left,” he said.
She nodded, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “I had to get back to base. The way we met and married I never had a chance to tell you I only had a week of leave.”
“You couldn’t wake me up to tell me or maybe leave me a note?” she asked.
Of course he could have, but Alysse had made him think about something other than getting laid, and no woman had done that before. “I didn’t mean to marry you.”
“I know that. It was Vegas that made us both act the way we did,” she said. “Here’s your dessert. I guess your technique with women hasn’t improved if you needed something special to win her back.”
“It’s for you,” he said.
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a cupcake to win me back.”
“I know. Stay for dinner tonight.”
She shook her head. “Give me one good reason. Why should I stay with the man who abandoned me?”
“We have unfinished business, Aly, you know it and I know it. That’s why I left the way I did.”
“I’ve moved on.”
He knew she meant it to hurt him and it did. But he’d already recognized that this was going to be one of the toughest missions he’d ever been on and he didn’t mind working to get Alysse back.
2
ALYSSE DIDN’T THINK as highly of Jay’s idea now that she realized she was the woman in question. There wasn’t any dessert in the world that would make a woman forgive being left on the last day of her honeymoon by her husband. Especially not if the woman in question was her. A cake couldn’t fix the way he’d abandoned her.
Last night she’d had a good time hanging out with her brother and his friends, who were all extreme athletes. Two of them were pro surfers, another two pro skateboarders and Toby was a semi-pro beach volleyball player. She understood that men could let something other than a woman dominate their lives—for Jay it was service to his country. But all of the men she knew had learned how to balance their careers with a relationship. Something that Jay seemed not to have done.
A part of her still wanted him, though. He was dressed in a skintight black T-shirt that showed off his muscles, he was cleanly shaven and she noticed a new scar along the left side of his jaw. How had he gotten that?
He was a Marine who had been in a combat zone; she knew that from trying to track him down to get their divorce finalized. He held himself tensely. His eyes were narrowed and, though he kept his attention on her, she knew he was aware of their surroundings.
“Why are you looking at me?” he asked as he held the chair out for her to sit down. “Do you want to curse at me again?”
She felt a little embarrassed at what she’d done but mostly she felt justified. It was better than her other impulse which had been to start screaming at him. Or worse, to start crying. She doubted that he’d believe how deeply he’d hurt her. After all, as her mom had pointed out, they’d only known each other for a week. But that week had changed her life.
“Maybe,” she said. But she knew she wouldn’t do it. She wanted answers from him. And if she got nothing else out of this dinner, she promised herself at least she’d leave with a better understanding of why she’d been attracted to him and why even a divorce didn’t seem final enough for her to forget him.
He set the bakery box on the table between them. She looked at the bottle of wine chilling in the ice bucket and realized he’d remembered what she drank—Santa Margherita pinot grigio. Good for him, she thought, trying not to let it matter.
“I really am sorry about the way I left,” he said. “It was a cowardly thing to do.”
“I’d have thought your Marine code would have a rule about that.”
“Not a rule exactly,” he said wryly.
She didn’t want to flirt with him and talk about the Corps. That easy charm was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place, but she knew now that there was nothing easy about Jay Michener.
“Why