But he was laughing, shooting his brother a look that said he was enjoying their exchange, and she was so relieved and enchanted by his carefree enjoyment that she set aside her worries about becoming attached. Right now, she wanted to be attached. She was already.
And wasn’t that why she was sitting here, on his sister’s beach, surrounded by his family? Because she’d missed him?
The Escalade had followed her back to the house after her trip to Quinn’s the previous evening. She’d noticed that it had tailed her more closely than before, and she decided it meant that James was becoming impatient that she had not yet, as far as he knew, noticed her stalker. It had made her smile. Moreover, still feeling the heady pleasure of Carlo’s lips on hers, and the warm way his large body had enveloped her, she felt a kind of vituperative aggravation at her husband and his petty, vicious games. For all his vast wealth, his power and influence, for all the ways he had her under his thumb, he was at his core nothing more than a cruel little boy.
So she continued to ignore the Escalade and its wide-bodied operator. James’s latest innocuous text, that evening, had read: Checking in, Bina. All well? Miss you. He had never expressed those last two words in any way in fifteen years of marriage. She’d responded, All is well. Getting the house ready.
Since their marriage, excepting public expressions made for the benefit of an audience, he’d never told her that he loved her or that he missed her, and he’d never demanded those words of her, either. It was not love he required, but submission. She had no idea how he’d now take the fact that she had not reciprocated his faux sentiment. She assumed it would provoke him, somehow, and that thought gave her a perverse and reckless sense of pleasure.
Sitting on the veranda late that night, eating leftover Chinese and watching night waves bringing the tide in, Sabina had realized that she had lost her fatalistic acceptance of James’s plan for her. She was not willing to die, not even for freedom. She wanted freedom, and she felt a seedling of hope, as yet a frail tendril only, that she might have it and live.
Whether that hope would whither and die remained to be seen. But if James succeeded in killing her, it would only be after a fight.
She’d woken this morning still suffused with the same strength of purpose. She would fight James. She would not simply let him kill her; neither would she go back, not willingly, and not cowed. One way or another, she would make her stand here.
Perhaps it was Carlo’s concern for her, his desire to help her, which had planted the seed, but she would not sit back and wait to be saved. Without yet knowing how she would accomplish it, Sabina knew that she had to save herself—not alone, she was no idiot and knew that she would need help, and she was happy that Carlo had offered his, but she would be active and present in her freedom.
It was with those thoughts making her muscles thrum that she’d decided to drive to Quiet Cove’s public beach. She’d known that the man in the Escalade would follow her, and she’d known that she might very well, therefore, be declaring herself by action. But Carlo had told her he was going to seek help for her. She was not alone. Even if he came away without the help of his family, he was with her. She had tried to dissuade him, and he had knocked her discouragement away. He was with her. For the first time since she was eighteen years old, there was someone in her corner.
She felt strong. She even felt as if she had a little bit of power. Not much, but enough to make her stand. Let Mr. Escalade see her with the Paganos—let him even see her with Carlo. Let him report back to his master. Let James come.
Let him come.
When she’d gotten to the beach, packed with people on this Memorial Day afternoon, she’d wavered a little. Her fight was no longer her own. Because she could not fight alone, she had, albeit inadvertently, brought others into the line of fire. Carlo, yes. But also his family. Perhaps even his young son. James loathed children and would not hesitate to hurt a child if he thought to do so would be the most expedient path to his victory.
That thought of Trey had stilled her progress toward Carmen’s cottage, where she could see several of the Pagano family—the brothers she’d met, Carmen, their father, and another man Sabina assumed was the other brother—milling about, doing various beach-y things. Neither Carlo nor Trey was there—nor the younger sister, Rosa. Sabina had been standing there, losing her fight, deciding to turn back but unable to make her feet move her away from that pleasant family scene, when Carmen had spotted her and recognized her. She’d stood for a moment, facing Sabina, her hands on her hips, looking both elegant and wild in a red two-piece with gold rings at the hips and cleavage, and her long, black hair wet and madly tousled, and then she’d strode over, moving smoothly even through the thick sand.