Today would be as good a time as any to start confronting those critter memories with a hike to stretch out her tension kinks. She limped over to her dresser. The scraggly, puffy-eyed image in the mirror mocked her. No wonder Max kept his distance. She grabbed a brush and started yanking it through her tangled rat's nest of hair.
Darcy paused midstroke. One of her flowered sticky notes waited on the mirror. She dropped her brush beside her day-planner and peeled the paper from the mirror.
"Meet us at the bay—6:00 p.m. Lucy and Ethel."
Anticipation, too much, stung her stomach as she remembered his insistence from the night before that he accompany her on her jungle walks. She crumpled the pink Post-It note in her fist. Damn Max Keagan and his mixed signals. Sit with me on the deck, but don't touch me. Stay away. Come see me. What did he want from her? And what did she want from this man? She had friends. She wanted him to be something more, no question, but not while he carted around baggage from a dead lover.
Opening her fist, Darcy stared down at the mangled scrap of paper from a man who'd known she wouldn't want to be alone but had let her keep her pride. A man who called few people friends, but had been there for her. Somehow, just talking to him had hauled her through a hellish night. Maybe he could pull her through the next weeks confronting her past as well.
Darcy placed the paper on her dresser and slowly smoothed out the wrinkles until it lay flat again.
No, she wasn't sure what she wanted from Max anymore. But she knew she would be sorry if she left the island before finding out.
Max eased his boat into the bay. The sight of Darcy waiting for him had become familiar over the past two weeks, since he'd issued the initial invitation to join him. An invitation to keep her safe had somehow turned into something else.
Today she'd chosen the dock rather than a sandbar, sitting on the edge with her feet dangling in the surf. Her black suit clung to her honey-tanned body, dog tags dangling from her neck. Between her breasts.
He forced his hungry eyes up. Her welcoming smile blazed brighter than the tropical sun toasting his back.
A rare thing for him, a welcome-home scenario, and yet he'd become too accustomed to it in a few short weeks. Darcy waited while he moored the boat. Sometimes she met Perry and him at the dolphin pen. Other times she waited at the boat launch. Just for him.
He'd always been a loner. His animals made more loyal companions than people, anyway. They also had fewer expectations, a corner of his brain taunted.
Yet Darcy never asked anything of him. Just that he hang with her. No great hardship, hanging with Darcy Renshaw in her bathing suit.
Sometime during the past days things had gone from professional to personal. He and Darcy had scoured nearly every inch of the island together. Whatever ghosts waited for her there, she faced them, shadows lurking in her eyes.
He knew the basics about her kidnapping from her file, not that she'd ever confided in him. At least the "critter coincidences" had stopped, but he couldn't convince himself to back away. He was just being cautious.
Yeah, right, chump.
And in another few days she would be returning home. His stint as her unknown guardian would be over and he could forge ahead with finishing his mission.
Damn, but that sandbar and dock would be empty. More so than before. He would miss talking to her. Miss that he'd never had the chance to peel her suit off.
Miss her.
"Hey there, Keagan," his personal siren called, waving as she pulled her feet from the water. "About time you showed up."
How long did it take to draw a pair of never-ending legs from the water?
Finally she stood and swiped beads of water from her tanned skin.
Max swallowed and concentrated on docking the boat rather than parking himself in Darcy. "Busy day."
One that left him itching. He was so damned close to locating that tap. He could feel the logic pattern of which cable contained it gel in his mind. He knew. But until he had solid proof, the knowledge was useless to his superiors. He'd run Lucy and Ethel up and down the cable four times with no luck. What was he missing?
He couldn't afford wasted time with operatives in the field and crews flying missions over Cantou. Darcy's words on the VOQ roof after the snake attack came back to haunt him. How she wanted to be in the action in Cantou. The edge of urgency to plug that damned leak upped tenfold.
Soon, he reassured himself. Soon. Then the real maneuvering would begin in the dance of filtered misinformation to flush out the traitor. He counted the hours until Darcy's departure took her away and safe. Took her away. Period.
Damn it. He couldn't afford to regret her leaving.
The tide drew the boat closer, engine in idle gurgling water behind. With a familiarity two weeks in the making, he pitched her the line to tie off the boat.>"I hope so. Trust in the air is everything, and I need to know they trust me to hold up my end flying. That I'm a wingman to be counted on."
Pausing mid-ramble, Darcy glanced over at Max. This man had a way of making her babble on about herself and things she didn't really want to talk about anyway. She could almost see Alicia shooting her a mocking yawn symbol. "What about you? Brothers? Sisters? Red-brick, middle-class America upbringing?"
He sat silently for so long she thought he might not answer. Had she bored him to sleep after all? And if she climbed right over to him, would that stir him?