“But your expertise is weapons?”
She frowned slightly, as if surprised that he knew that. “Bronze Age weapons. Aegean Bronze Age, although I dabbled in Celtic for a while.” She settled her wrist carefully on her lap. “Most of the weapons that dominated Europe until the Middle Ages—swords, battle-axes, shields—originated in Crete. The place is an archaeologist’s paradise.”
“Which explains why you were there, but not how you managed to hitch a ride in a billionaire’s jet.”
“He’s a friend.”
He wanted to ask how much of a friend, and then reminded himself that he’d given up the right to care when he’d walked out on her. “You’re planning on going back?”
“No. The project is wrapping up. They’ve run out of funding and my research post has ended so I need to plan what to do next.”
That had always been one of the fundamental differences between them. She’d been planning for the future while he’d been trying to survive the moment.
“So you’re staying for the rest of the summer?” He kept his eyes forward and his tone casual.
“As long I’m not going to be grilled by the islanders every time I take a trip into town. What is wrong with them? It was years ago. Why would something that happened years ago be a problem?”
Because I behaved like a total bastard and you should be punching me.
It puzzled him that she didn’t have more to say about the past. Clearly the islanders were puzzled, too.
“They’re protective. They’re probably thinking it’s awkward for you. We were married.”
She laughed. “Seriously? You call that married?”
He kept his speed steady. “It was legal.”
“So was the divorce. Ten days barely counts. If our marriage was a consumer purchase, we would have been entitled to a refund, no questions asked. And anyway, I was the one who proposed to you, remember?”
He remembered all of it.
He gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. “Didn’t make it less legal.”
“But you weren’t engaged, in any sense of the word. Tell me, Zach—” she turned to look at him “—did you feel married?”
Yeah, he’d felt married. That was the problem. He’d felt horribly, irrevocably married and the panic had almost choked him. He, who had rarely spent an entire night with a woman, had found himself facing a lifetime of nights.
He’d lain awake in the dark, suffocating under the smothering weight of her expectations, wondering how the hell to undo what he’d done. Of all the bad situations in which he’d found himself, that had been one of the most terrifying.
“I knew I was married.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged. “Well, either way, it’s water under the bridge.”
“I guess so.” He tried not to think about the previous winter when the river up near Heron Pond had swollen and burst its banks, taking the bridge with it. The damage had been serious. If the same thing happened in their relationship, they’d be in trouble.
“Why would we be bothered by something that happened so long ago? I don’t get it. It’s like asking if I still think about a meal that poisoned me at college. Move on, people. I have and I know you have.”
So he’d been no worse than an episode of food poisoning?
He looked at her hands, bare of rings and jewelry. “You didn’t marry again?”
“No. You?”
“No. Once was enough.” He realized how that sounded and cursed under his breath. “I meant because I wasn’t good at it. I hurt you.”
“Briefly. Didn’t hurt much more than my wrist and at least I didn’t have to put my heart in a plaster cast.” She suppressed a yawn. “So you’re staying up at Camp Puffin?”
She was behaving as if he was a casual school friend she hadn’t seen in a while. As if he hadn’t been her first lover. As if they’d never lain naked in her bed, exploring every inch of each other’s bodies while thunder crashed above the cottage. The one thing there had never been a shortage of in his life was sex, but he still remembered every single thing he’d done with Brittany.