Reading that email early this morning in London and seeing her years with Cayo for the sham they really were had landed the killing blow. It was the final straw. And part of her wanted simply to sink like a stone now, deep into the embrace of the Adriatic, and be done with all of this. Just let it all go. Hadn't Dominic done the same, at the end of the day? Why shouldn't she? What was she holding on to, anyway?
But Cayo would think it was all about him, wouldn't he? She knew he would. And she couldn't allow that. She simply couldn't.
She kicked, hard, and shot back up to the surface and the sun, pulling in a ragged breath as her gaze focused on Cayo. He still sat there, noticeably irritated, as if it was no matter to him whether she sank or swam, only that she was disrupting his afternoon.
Somehow, that was galvanizing.
She would not go under again, she understood then, as she stared up at him, at this man to whom she'd sacrificed herself, day in and day out, thanks to her own rich fantasy life. She would not break, not for Cayo, not for anything.
How could she? She was already broken.
And there was a strength in that, she thought, wiping the water from her face and pretending she didn't feel a heat beneath her eyes that indicated it was not entirely the sea she was scrubbing away.
I promise you, Dominic, she thought fiercely, her own little prayer, I will walk away from this man at long last and I will take you to Bora Bora the way you always wanted. I'll give you to the wind and the water the way I swore I would. And then we'll both be free.
So she swallowed back the bitter words she would have liked to throw out to make herself feel better about just how much of a fool she'd been and swam over to the side of the boat. She reached up to grip the edge of it. Cayo shifted, moving that taut, tense body of his even closer. He was more furious than she'd ever seen him. She could feel it as easily as she felt the sun far above, the sea all around.
"Fine," she said, tilting her head to look up at him as if none of that bothered her in the least. "I'll get in the boat."
"I know you will," he agreed silkily. Furiously, she thought. "But while I have you here, Miss Bennett, let's talk terms, shall we?"
Dru let go of the gunwale with one hand and used it to slick her hair back from her face. The twist she'd carefully created this morning in London was long gone now, and she imagined that the dark mass of her hair hung about her like seaweed. Happily, she was certain that Cayo would deeply disapprove of it. That little kick of pleasure allowed her to simply raise her brows at him and wait. As if none of this hurt her. As if he didn't hurt her at all.
"I imagine that this entire display was a calculated effort to get me to recognize that you are, in fact, a person," he said in that insufferable way of his, so very patronizing, that Dru would not have been at all surprised if it had left marks.
"How good of you to ignore almost everything I actually said," she murmured in a similar tone, even as she eyed him warily.
"I will double your salary," he told her as if he hadn't heard her.
Dru was forced to calculate how very much money it was that he was offering her, and wonder, for the briefest treacherous second, if it was truly necessary to escape him... But of course it was. She could stay with him, or she could have her self-respect, whatever was left of it. She couldn't have both. Today had certainly proved that.
There were so many things she wanted to say, but the way he looked at her made Dru suspect that if she said any of them, he would leave her in the water. She knew exactly how ruthless he could be. So she only held on to the side of the small motorboat, bobbing gently along with it in the rise and fall of the waves, and watched him.
"I'm cold," she said crisply, because there were minefields in every other thing she might have thought to say. "Are you going to help me into the boat?"
There was a brief, intense sort of moment, and then he leaned over, slid his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up and out of the water as if she weighed no more than a child. Water sluiced from her wet clothes as her feet came down against the slippery bottom of the small boat, and she was suddenly aware of too many things. The sodden fabric of her skirt, ten times heavier than it should have been, wrapped much too tightly around her hips and thighs. The slick wetness of her blouse as it flattened against her skin in the sea breeze. The heavy tangle of her wet hair, tumbling this way and that in a disastrous mess. All of which made her feel much too cold, and, oddly, something very much like vulnerable.
But then she looked up, and the air seemed to empty out of her lungs. And she did not have to see his eyes to know that he was staring at the way her soaking-wet clothes molded to her curves, and, a quick glance down confirmed, left nothing at all to the imagination. Her blouse had been a soft gray when dry, but wet it was nearly translucent, and showed off the bright magenta bra she'd worn beneath.
Dru couldn't process the kaleidoscope of emotion that shifted through her then: chagrin, embarrassment, that horrible vulnerability, those underwater sobs threatening to spill out once again. She looked longingly at the sea once more, and if she hadn't been so cold she might well have tossed herself right back into it.
"Don't even think about it," he gritted out, and then several things happened simultaneously.
The boat lurched forward, no doubt in response to some signal of Cayo's, and Dru would have toppled against him had he not grabbed her around the waist and deposited her on the pristine white cushions next to him. She had the impression of his strength and heat, and there was that wild, desperate surge of desire inside of her that made her hate herself anew, and then she was sitting beside him as the boat headed toward the boarding deck of the great yacht, wet skirt itchy and awful against her and her hair flying madly in the wind.
Cayo did not speak again until they were safely back on board, and one of his silent and expressionless crew members had draped a very warm, very large towel over her shoulders. She aimed a grateful smile at the head steward as she wrapped the soft towel tight around her, and then felt very much like the poster child for Les Misérables when she directed her attention back toward her former employer. Pathetic and bedraggled whilst Cayo, naturally, gazed down at her like some kind of untouchable Spanish god, all of his dangerous beauty gleaming in the last of the day's sun.
The crew members disappeared as if they could see the coming storm closing in on them. If she had had any sense at all, she would have done the same. Instead she stood there and waited, her back straight as a ruler and her expression, she hoped, as serene as possible when she was still so wet and wrecked. Cayo slid his sunglasses down his haughty blade of a nose and regarded her with a glint in those dark gold eyes that should have cowed her at fifty paces-and he was much closer than that.
"I'm sure you know precisely where there are extra clothes on this yacht," he said quietly. She didn't trust that tone. It suggested great horrors lurking beneath it. "I suggest you avail yourself of them. Then come find me. We will behave like civilized, professional people. We will discuss the terms of your continued employment in more detail. And we will pretend that the rest of this day never happened."
Dru forced a smile. She told herself she was entirely uncowed.
"I was cold and wanted to get out of the water," she said. "I'm still quitting." She shrugged at his incredulous expression. "I can either tell you what you want to hear and then disappear at the first available opportunity, or I can be honest about it and hope you'll let me leave with some dignity. Your choice."