Given all the activity around the marina and Leon’s travel schedule, they’d had a marriage commissioner come out on his yacht for an afternoon with just her father and brother in attendance. Leon hadn’t wanted his parents to find out through online gossip so they’d kept the whole thing on the down low, tentatively planning a honeymoon in Greece to introduce her to them.
The honeymoon hadn’t happened. Leon’s father had died suddenly. Leon left and his promised investment money had never manifested. The marina her father had built had spiraled into bankruptcy. They had all felt duped.
Tanja hadn’t wanted to admit she was married to the man who had ruined them. She’d gone back to school because she was enrolled, but she’d spent weeks hoping Leon would turn up and explain himself.
As the hurt of his abandonment solidified into anger, however, she had convinced herself that whatever she had felt for Leon had been for a man who didn’t really exist. Had the sex even been as good as she remembered? Or was her memory of that as skewed as her vision of him had been?
Based on their kiss last night, he still had the same physical effect on her. She cringed inwardly at suffering that soaring euphoria and wanton hunger again. It was so superficial! Great sex did not equal “great guy,” as he had brutally demonstrated.
Yet here he was, upending her view of him again, sailing into genuinely treacherous waters to extricate her and her daughter from a dangerous situation.
That didn’t exactly put her in a position to disdain him when she, a woman who prided herself on doing things by the book, had pulled a fast one to get what she wanted. Which was her baby. She would make no apologies for fighting dirty to keep Illi fed and safe and with her, but still.
Perhaps he sensed the waves of conflict and culpability rolling off her. Tanja heard him awaken with a long, indrawn breath. His legs disappeared from her periphery. It had been more like an hour than the twenty minutes he’d asked for. She heard him clatter around the galley, setting the kettle to boil before he appeared beside her.
“Stay there,” he said when she started to shift off the captain’s chair. “I’m going to adjust the sails. I’ll clip on,” he added in reassurance.
He clicked through the screens first, pausing to listen to a weather report in Italian, then went out on deck.
When he returned a few minutes later, the kettle was whistling. Tanja moved to make him porridge and coffee, then washed her bowl and sterilized Illi’s bottle so it would be ready when she needed her next one.
She glanced in on Illi, who was fast asleep, then made herself a fresh cup of coffee and took it up to sit in the nook across from Leon where the sparkle off the water didn’t blind her. No matter what happened from here on in, she had to say one thing.
“Thank you.”
Tanja’s voice was thick with such heartfelt gratitude it caused an itch in Leon’s chest, one that made him think he should have known all along where his wife was, that she was in trouble. She shouldn’t be sounding like he’d done her a huge favor when he’d only done what any decent man would do for his spouse.
Was he a decent man, though? The jury was definitely hung on that one.
He’d spent the night thinking about her, intensely aware of her in the berth below. His wife. A woman he’d married on impulse, mostly because her brother had learned they’d slept together. The expectation of Zach that Leon would propose had loomed like an aircraft carrier.
Which didn’t explain why he had. Leon had never been one to buckle to peer pressure, but he’d liked Zach. They’d been embarking on a business venture together. And Leon had been a different man then. He’d been blinded by lust and living in the moment. Carefree, some would have called him. Oblivious to consequences was another way to put it. He hadn’t expected their marriage would last, but that hadn’t phased him. At the time, he’d seen marriage as something that served many purposes so he’d leaped in without regard.
Tanja had been different then, too. Inexperienced more than immature, but brimming with vibrant youth and promise. She’d had plans for her life, not big ones, but solid, sensible ones. She was always in steady pursuit of them, too. Always in motion, talking and laughing and bustling, not given to sitting still as a wraith, wearing dark shadows beneath her eyes, her profile difficult to read.
Motherhood had changed her, he supposed.
“Zach didn’t tell me you had a baby. Where’s the father?” He flicked his gaze to the horizon, ensuring they still had a clear course.
“Dead.”
Before he could mutter I’m sorry, she continued.
“I didn’t have Illi. Not in the pregnancy and delivery sense.”
“But you told the soldiers your milk hadn’t come in.”
“It didn’t,” she said wryly. “Because I was never pregnant.”
“You adopted her?” The unexpectedness of that news caused a bizarre shift inside him, like a seesaw that moved weight across his shoulders, lighter in some ways, heavier in others. It was disconcerting and left his ears ringing.
“Illi is the reason I didn’t get on the flight when the other teachers were evacuated.” She flicked him a glance. “I was fostering her. Zach put me in touch with officials in Canada to help with the adoption process, but internet was sketchy. Then I had to trade my phone for groceries and couldn’t contact him at all. I warned him I would be off-grid, but I guess he panicked when he didn’t hear from me and called in the reserves.” She nodded to indicate Leon. “I should let him know you got me out.”
“I only brought a burner phone and they took it. We’ll have to wait until Malta. How did all of this come about? You being on Istuval?” Istuval was a popular destination for tourists, but usually travelers from Europe and Africa, not North America. Definitely not for anyone since the takeover.
“When I finished my degree and started—”
“You’re an accountant?” He wasn’t sure why that surprised him as much as the adoption. It was the career Tanja had been pursuing when she’d been at university. Once they married she had talked of putting off school to travel with him, though, leaving him with the impression she might have been after an MRS. degree instead of a real one.
“I’m unemployed at the moment, but yes. I’m a CPA. While I was articling, one of the firm’s accountants returned from a stint on Istuval as part of a voluntourism program. It sounded interesting so I applied. I had to pay for my flight, but Kahina’s school offered room and board for a nominal rate in exchange for tutoring women and girls in English. I also taught entrepreneurial skills. Basic accounting for small business, things like that. I signed up for twelve weeks, but it turned into six months.”
“Is that how you met Illi’s mother? She was a student?”