“Why?”
He grinned. Crinkly eyes. “Because you’re on Carmen’s beach.”
Impatient with his willful obtuseness, she huffed. “No. Why are you following me?”
“Because I’m a decent guy? Look, I don’t want to read the Quiet Cove Clarion in a couple of days and see that your body washed up down the coast. It’s dark. You won’t let me drive you. So I’m taking a walk at the same time you are, in the same general direction.” He held his hands out as if to show he was unarmed, harmless.
“You understand who my husband is?” She knew that he did, but her point was made in the question.
“Just walking you home. Mrs. Auberon.”
“And then you’ll walk back? Alone? In the dark? Because the dark is safer for you? Do you have the night vision or something? Are you the Batman?”
He laughed at that—a bark of surprise and then a full, rich laugh that made his baritone voice deepen to bass. She had no idea why what she’d said seemed to him so funny, but she waited, her fingers drumming her hips, until he’d collected himself.
“No. Not Batman. Just Carlo.” He pushed his hand into the pocket of his shorts and pulled something out. “With a phone. I’ll call my brother for a ride back.”
“Sisters, brother—how many is your family?”
“Our little branch? There are six of us. Four boys, two girls. Do you have siblings?”
It wasn’t a question she wanted to think about, let alone attempt to answer. “You may walk. Only that.” She turned and continued on. He trotted a few more steps until he was abreast of her, and they walked along the beach in silence.
~ 5 ~
The woman walking alongside Carlo had surprised him. He’d made some judgments about her last night. She hadn’t focused his thoughts enough then for him to have realized it; he was much more focused on her husband. Those judgments he’d made about James Auberon he’d recognized right away and had allowed to form fully. Auberon was an abusive asshole who felt entitled to it. But as Carlo had made that determination, he’d also decided that Auberon’s wife was weak in will and in body. Despite walking up to them last night on some kind of hero’s mission, and despite her arresting beauty, he’d barely given her another thought. He’d spent his attention on his contempt for Auberon and his distaste for the reality that in order to find success as an independent architect in Providence, he’d have to make nice with a man like that.
He hadn’t spent more than a few seconds wondering what Sabina Alonzo-Auberon might have gone home to, or what her life was like in general. He’d thought ‘beautiful,’ and he’d thought ‘weak,’ and he’d set her aside.
Well, ‘beautiful’ was certainly accurate. Carlo thought she was more beautiful the way she was tonight, in jeans and a sweater, her hair loose and losing its battle with the night breeze off the water. But in just the limited exchanges they’d shared this evening, he could tell that ‘weak’ did not apply. There was fire and strong will in her. When she’d wheeled on him just now and asked him what he was doing, her eyes had flashed hot beams of anger at him, and it had pulled him up. It hadn’t been the desperate kind of fretful anger he might have expected from a woman who lived with an abuser. It had been fight. She’d turned on him and shoved her hands down onto her hips, and she’d been all confidence and attitude. She might as well have said out loud, ‘you think you can take me?’ She’d followed it up with sass, and she’d been comfortable in it.
So she wasn’t weak. How a woman like this ended up letting a man like Auberon hurt her was beyond him. And hurt her he clearly did. When she’d reached up to take the water bottle from him, the sleeve of her sweater had pulled back from her wrist. The firelight had illuminated dark bands of bruising at the join of her hand to her arm and up for about three inches.
But it wasn’t his concern. His only concern was getting her safely to her door.
They walked in silence for at least half a mile. Once, when she’d put her foot down into deeper sand than she’d realized, she’d wobbled a little, and he’d reached out without thinking about it and taken her hand to steady her. She yanked it back immediately. Very clearly, she did not want him to touch her; she shrank and jerked away from even helpful touches. So he put his hands in his pockets, determined to let her go ahead and fall next time.
The silence, though, was becoming oppressive and awkward. Usually, Carlo was perfectly comfortable in silence. Having grown up in the house he had, loud was a constant state, everybody talking at the same time, nobody having what might be called a civilized conversation, but everybody managing to get their point across nonetheless. So Carlo had grown to like quiet and to appreciate people who could be together in silence. Now, though, the silence between him and Sabina was like an actual presence, and it felt strange.