Operation Willow Quest (18 page)

He must have felt her stiffen in his arms
because she saw him pull back with a small frown on his rugged face. Taking the
opportunity to step away from him, she dodged his brooding gaze, groaning
inside as she caught Summer watching them with a curious expression.

Great.

She could almost see the questions churning in
her sister’s brain as she quickly masked her surprise.

What was he
thinking
?
This wasn’t something that she wanted to deal with in front of an audience.
This new twist in their relationship was something she wasn’t ready to think
about yet—it was certainly nothing she wanted as public knowledge.

She felt a headache building and knew at some
point she’d have to deal with it—at the very least, talk about it with Del, but
with everything else she had to think about at the moment, a relationship was
not
up there with her “top ten most fun
subjects to think about.”

Going back to making the salad Del’s arrival had interrupted, Willow let out a relieved sigh when the men
moved outside to congregate around the barbeque, as men usually did at a
gathering. Willow
had long put it down to some caveman throwback instinct men had.

While Summer fed the baby, Del
managed to slip inside to catch Willow
alone as she prepared the salad with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

“Okay, what wrong?” he demanded.

She glanced up at him and her gaze skittered
about nervously. “Nothing. I just...I don’t want them in on this,” she hissed,
keeping her voice low.

“On what? Us?” he asked skeptically. “Come on Willow, they’re not going
to care.”

“Are you
serious
?”
Willow scoffed,
ripping viciously at the lettuce. “My sister will have us practically married
when she finds out.”

“And that’s such a terrible fate is it?” he
asked, surprising her with his angry retort.

“What are you talking about? You’re hardly what
I’d call marriage material. Can you honestly see yourself giving up your car
for a
bus
?” she asked bluntly.

“That’s got nothing to do with marriage—that’s
kids,” he retorted. “Who knows? I could go down that path one day too, I
guess.”

Willow
stopped shredding the
lettuce to stare at him, horrified. “We slept together once…okay, maybe twice,
but you more so than anyone should
realise
that does
not
automatically imply anything is
going to happen between us. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow,” she said and
she heard the panicky tone in her voice.
What
kind of game is he playing? Where’s this sudden lean towards
commitment
, for goodness sake, coming from?

“You two slept together?”

Willow
’s head snapped around
in alarm and she saw her sister standing in the doorway, her mouth open, and
worse yet—the two less-shocked, but equally surprised faces of Maloney and
Tupper standing behind her, having arrived for dinner.

“Hey, way to go, man!” Tupper grinned and congratulated
Del cheerfully,
earning himself a jab in the ribs from Maloney beside him.

“Twice?” Summer muttered, as though in a
trance.

Willow
groaned—completely
mortified. So
much for keeping it quiet.

She looked up at Del, to see him wearing a wide grin—which
soon vanished when he caught sight of her dangerous glare.

“I can’t believe it,” Summer said, coming out
of her initial shock.

“Don’t get carried away, Sum,” Willow warned,
but it fell on deaf ears as her sister broke into a huge grin, coming over to
hug her and Del as though they’d just announced their engagement.

“See what you’ve done?” Willow said, pulling from her sister’s
embrace. “It’s not like that, Summer.”

“Like what?” Summer asked, looking back and forth
between them, a frown creeping across her face as she turned to Del. “What have
you done?” she accused.

Del
began to plead his
innocence as Tupper and Maloney threw rowdy insults from across the room and enjoyed
the sideshow.

“Oh for goodness sake,” Willow yelled.

Tate slid open the door to find out what all
the excitement was about and got a three-way explanation ranging from Summer’s
romantic version to Tupper’s down right vulgar one. Del
and Willow
stood in the middle of the circus, their eyes locked in a silent battle of
their own.

“I told you this would happen,” she said,
verging on unexpected tears which she blinked away, praying she wouldn’t make a
fool of herself in front of everyone, before giving up and heading for the
front door.

Panic and a volatile cocktail of strange
emotions swirled inside her—the sudden urge to escape made her pick up her pace
until she was running for the path leading to the beach. She kept on running
until she was too exhausted to take another step. Sinking down onto the cold
sand, Willow
waited for the burning in her lungs to ease, sucking in air, and enjoying the
pain that distracted her from the emotional chaos inside. She didn’t know why
she was crying—she could normally handle the harmless insults that had been
flying back there, but for some strange reason tonight they struck a very
touchy chord.

“Why is it I’m always running after you,
woman?” Del
called as he walked toward her along the soft sand.

Willow
brushed at her
cheeks—annoyed. “I have no idea, but it certainly isn’t because I’ve ever asked
you to.” She sniffed miserably.

“It can get ruthless when they get hold of some
juicy gossip, but they didn’t mean any harm,” he said, defending his friends.

“I don’t care about that,” she muttered as she
stood and crossed to the water’s edge.

“You’re not thinking of throwing yourself into
the ocean, are you? I mean you’ve put my ego through a hell of a lot lately,
but trying to drown yourself might be going a little overboard,” he said,
coming to stand behind her.

Willow
gave a grunt, but felt
the dismal onslaught of her tears begin to fade a little.

“I’m sorry I said all that stuff back
there…you’re right—it’s not me…or at least it never has been before,” he said,
his voice vulnerable. “I don’t know where the hell that came from.”

Looking sideways, she saw his profile
silhouetted by the bright moonlight glowing across the white sand and dark water.
“I don’t know why I got so defensive,” she admitted. “I think you scared me a
bit.”

“Are you still in love with him?” he asked
roughly, and there was no doubt that he was referring to Michael.

Willow
looked away back out
to sea and sighed sadly. “No, I’m not in love with him anymore—he’s gone,” she
said,
realising
the truth of her statement. “I guess
it’s just strange to be thinking about it again.” She stopped, hearing the admission
in her words and startled herself by saying them aloud.

Del
heard them too and was
standing still beside her.

“I guess we’d better get back—they’ll be
worrying,” she said, moving away.

Del
’s hand shot out and
grabbed her arm lightly. “So you’ve been thinking about it?” he asked in a low,
urgent tone.

She shook her head quickly. “I didn’t…look, it
doesn’t matter—it’s not going to happen. I’m going home,” she said, removing
her arm from his clasp and taking a few steps back. “Let’s just rack it up as
a—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘mistake,’” he growled in a
low, yet dangerous voice, “It may have been a lot of things, but it
wasn’t
a mistake.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she agreed quietly, “but it
can’t come to anything more. I don’t have any room in my life for…that.”

“You could if you wanted to,” he argued
gravely.

“That’s the point, Del,
I
don’t want to;
I don’t want to change my life. I am what I am.”

“Stay for a few more days—I’m still on leave,”
he said quietly, looking down at her with heart-breaking sincerity.

Willow
gave a slight shake of
her head and bit her lip against a fresh wave of tears. “I can’t,” she said,
turning and walking away quickly before she gave in to him. If she stayed for a
few more days—if she let him get even further under her skin, she’d never be
able to walk away…and she had to. This life wasn’t for her…or for Del either. Why couldn’t
he see they’d never be Summer and Tate and they’d only end up hurting each
other if they tried?

She’d already learnt she wasn’t cut out to be
wife material.

Back at the house, everything seemed quiet.
Tupper and Maloney had left once the entertainment had died down but Tate and
Summer were sitting on the deck talking quietly when she stepped out in the
candle-light.

“Willow, are you all right?” Summer asked
anxiously.

“I’m fine,” she said, brushing away her
sister’s concern. “And I don’t want to talk about this any more so I’m telling
you now, there’s nothing going on—end of story.”

“What did he do?” Summer asked once more, although
now sounding more curious than indignant.

“Nothing, no one did anything wrong. Del did nothing.”

“I’m a big boy, I don’t need you to defend my
virtue, and we all know that Peter Delaware couldn’t possibly be serious about
any woman,” Del
drawled from the doorway, having arrived in time to hear the last of the conversation.

A tense silence stretched on the deck as Willow and Del
looked at one another, almost forgetting that Summer and Tate were even there.

“Let’s eat,” Tate said heartily, making Willow jump.

“I’m not hungry,” she said quietly, still staring
at Del. “I
think I’ll just go...” She let the sentence trail off and sighed miserably.
Walking past Del,
she looked at him quietly. “I need to do some work.”

“Of course you do. Can’t let anything get in
the way of the next big story can we?” he snarled.

Willow
dropped her gaze to
the ground and squeezed her eyes closed. “It’s my job. It’s what I do. You of
all people should be able to accept that.”

“What a pity you don’t put the same effort into
your personal life that you do for your work life,” he snarled, before he
turned on his heel and walked away, and she heard the front door slam with a
wall-shaking bang.

Taking an unsteady breath, Willow didn’t spare her sister a glance, but
headed off and closed herself inside her bedroom, leaning against it—feeling
miserable and more alone than she’d ever felt before.

* * * *

Willow
’s plan to leave the
next day changed when she received a text from her editor asking her to meet.
Carefully she parked Summer’s car in the basement car park of the shopping
centre across the road from the coffee shop where she was supposed to be
meeting Irene, her editor. With Tate at work, the coast was finally clear for
her to be able to take up her sister’s generous offer of using the car whenever
she needed it, to save the hassle of renting one as she usually did whenever
she came to visit. Summer, unlike her overbearing brother-in-law, understood
her independence. Promising she’d be no more than an hour, Willow soon relaxed as she left the house and
headed for the unexpected meeting she’d been summoned to.

The exposé and the
related article she’d been writing on Terry and his crusade to help the
Colombian people was a hot topic. The documents she copied were valuable. They
would blow the story wide open and had the potential to draw a lot of attention
she hoped would help the cause. She knew sooner, rather than later, her editor
would want to meet face to face—something not easily done under the present
circumstances with someone always hovering nearby. It was hardly something she
could explain to Tate or Del
without revealing she had the documents. They wouldn’t think twice about
confiscating her standby laptop and destroying them.

There
was nowhere on the street to park, so she drove into the shopping centre nearby
and found a space quite a few spooky floors below the centre. The sun was warm
and felt wonderful on her bare shoulders once she’d made her way back up to
street level as she crossed the street and walked along the footpath toward the
coffee shop.

She couldn’t say what
it was that alerted her to the car, but she’d travelled alone enough to have
developed a strong sense of self-preservation, and right now, it was sending
her an almighty loud warning that something wasn’t right.

She glanced up and as
she swung her head around, she caught sight of a dark car keeping pace with
her. Her eyes widened the moment the door opened, and she was already backing
away as a man burst from within, running toward her, a streak of darkness
blurring her vision momentarily.

Pivoting, Willow turned and ran
back the way she’d just came, dodging traffic as she raced inside the shopping
centre, the blast of cool air barely registering even as it seemed to freeze
the sweat on her skin. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears, blocking the
music pumping through the discretely positioned speakers as she raced toward
the bank of lifts that would take her back to her car. The doors of the closest
lift glided shut and Willow’s
feet skidded to a halt moments before she collided with the stainless steel
doors. Without missing a beat she reached for the door leading to the
stairwell, fear propelling her onwards.