“I guess not. You’re definitely shorter.” Meg barely came up to his chin. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously but she didn’t say anything and he fathomed the reason for her skepticism. The last woman he’d dated was Melinda, an ex-model, willowy and glamorous. Who wouldn’t in a million years have even contemplated a six-month stint of voluntary work in third world conditions. That was, in essence, the biggest difference.

“I met your last girlfriend.”

“You did?” He couldn’t imagine the two of them having anything in common. He started for the path and she walked at his side.

“She called around one day and Jason arrived just a few minutes after. He told her I was your wife, although I suspect she’d heard something to that effect already. And then he told me she was your ex-girlfriend.”

And wouldn’t Jason have enjoyed that spot of stirring. “How did she take it?”

“She smiled.”

“That’s good,” he said hopefully. Melinda had broken it off with him several months before he’d gone to Indonesia. She had no cause to be upset.

“It wasn’t a happy smile.”

“Oh.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but why did you and her break up?”

Maybe she had a little cause. He cleared his throat. “Because I didn’t want to get married.”

“Which kind of explains the not-so-happy smile.”

“I guess.”

“She was very beautiful.” She said it with a kind of awe. But as beautiful as Melinda had looked, she had nothing on Meg, whose source of beauty had nothing to do with the clothes she wore and everything to do with what shone from within.

“Perhaps you should explain to her why you married me,” she said quietly.

“I’ll think about it.” He couldn’t see that it would achieve anything, but Meg seemed to want it. Maybe to ease her own conscience. She seemed so earnest. So innocent. “How old are you?”

A grin tilted her lips and coaxed one from him in return. Admittedly, it was an odd question to ask his wife. “Twenty-eight,” she said. Nearly ten years younger than him. A world of difference in age and cynicism. Maybe it was that openness to her that made her look so young, so appealing.

Meg broke their tenuous connection as she turned away and continued walking toward the lake. “I learned your age from our marriage certificate.”

That piece of paper legally binding them. He’d need to set about unbinding them as soon as possible, because despite their verbal agreement that she’d leave when he got back, she was legally his wife. She’d have rights if she chose to exercise them.

She’d helped him, he owed her something. Certainly more than mere gratitude. How much more would be the pivotal question. And Mark would no doubt have an opinion on that as well as the most efficient and effective way to undo what he’d done. Set them both free. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

He’d call Mark on his personal line later, set up a meeting for first thing Monday morning. The sooner that was sorted, the better. Regardless of how much she was likely to cost him. In the meantime, he’d be friendly but distant. He didn’t want to alienate her. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to encourage her to think there was anything more to their marriage than her having the use of his house until his return. He also needed to talk to Mark about Jason.

At the water’s edge, they negotiated age-old granite boulders. As she clambered between two rocks, he offered his hand. Her glance flicked to his face, she took his hand-hers cool and fragile in his-and then eased it free as soon as the need passed, sliding it into her jacket pocket. He could almost want it back. He shoved his own hands into his pockets. “You were telling me about Jason. That at first he was suspicious…” Jason was an unscrupulous slimeball with a talent for ferreting out people’s weaknesses. But he hid that side of his nature well and knew how to ingratiate himself with people.

“Then something changed. Once he accepted our…marriage,” she glanced away as she said the word, “…he got a whole lot nicer, started offering to help me with things. But he had a lot of questions about where you were, why you weren’t home with me. I’d told him, like you suggested, that you’d stayed on to straighten out things with the charity on the island and that you’d be home in a couple of months.”

The track along the shore narrowed, forcing them to walk close, down-padded shoulders occasionally brushing. “Did you accept his help?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“A simple question.”

“But there was something weird in the way you asked it, like you were accusing me of something.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything. Jason’s offers of help have been known to take many forms.”

“I don’t really understand why you hate him so much. He can be a bit creepy, but he’s had a tough life.”

Not like you. The implication was clear. That was how Jason had got to Luke, too, playing the sympathy card, explaining how hard done by he’d been because of Luke’s dead father, their father, a man who’d never acknowledged him, playing on Luke’s feelings of guilt. So he’d given him a house, a job, money. And then Jason had betrayed him by blackmailing his mother. A fact he hadn’t discovered till he was in Indonesia going through some of her possessions. He’d threatened to very publicly expose her dead husband’s indiscretions, which according to Jason, were many and damning. In doing so, he’d not only stain the memory and reputation of their father, but more importantly, would harm the image of the charity he’d founded. A charity that meant the world to Luke’s mother.

Luke had told Meg none of the details. Maybe he should have because it sounded as though Jason had been playing on Meg’s sympathies, too. All Luke had shared with her, when his death was looking like a distinct possibility, was that he didn’t want to die knowing Jason, as his closest living relative, might benefit in any way. “So how much help did you accept from him, and what did you mean by creepy?” The very thought of Jason anywhere near Meg was creepy. The man had the moral code of a hyena.

She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. “He has an…unusual way about him. But he tried to be helpful. He gave me names of people and professionals for if I needed any work done, told me which restaurants were good. Things like that. But it was Mark who suggested the private investigator I used to try to track you down.”

“You looked?”

“Of course I looked. But the investigator didn’t turn up anything. So I went back there as soon as I got my visa renewed.”

“To the island?”

“Yes.” Sorrow clouded her eyes. “Where did you go? Where did everyone go?”

He hated the thought of her going back there. That it was for him made it even worse.

She’d left because the situation on the island had deteriorated rapidly into one of chaos and violence. She’d actually argued that she should stay with him, but the local staff had convinced her that they could care for him until the plane arrived to airlift him and a wounded islander to the nearest hospital for treatment.

“I don’t know what happened to it, but the plane never arrived. We gave it a day, but after fresh fighting broke out, we fled the village and then the island.”

She nodded. “No one I spoke to had heard of you or any of the villagers we knew. At least they said they didn’t. There was nothing left of the village itself. Or the school.”

He heard the bleakness in her voice. It had made her sad, and it had made him angry. But there was nothing either of them could do about it now. The village had been caught in the middle of an escalating dispute linked to a decades-old conflict. “I know some of them got away. Were able to start afresh.” That small truth was the best he could offer her.

She walked on, visibly subdued. Despite his earlier resolve to keep his distance, Luke slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. The future would separate them, but they shared a past that no one else would understand. And he would offer her what comfort he could-the comfort of a friend-inadequate as it might be.

He still had questions, but now no longer seemed the time to ask them. They walked the rest of the loop in silence. His arm still about her shoulders. Her leaning subtly into him. He should let her go, but something about walking like this, with her, was deeply peaceful. He remembered that about her, a feeling of stillness and calm when she’d been the one nursing him.

The house, festooned with Christmassy boughs of greenery, came into view. In the eight years he’d lived here he’d never once decorated for Christmas.

He’d thought about putting up a tree one year, but if he put a tree up, then he’d have to buy ornaments. And, well, it just never happened. There was no point for a man living on his own. But this morning he’d noticed festive touches everywhere. Red bows on the uprights of the stairs, Christmas towels in the guest bathroom, a Christmas tree decorated in only white bows and white lights, simple but effective. “Where will you go?”

She stiffened. “That’s not your problem or your concern. But,” she drew in a deep breath that lifted her shoulders, “can I stay till Monday? Till my car’s ready. It’s at the mechanic’s. That’s why the committee meeting was here last night.”

He stopped, forcing her to stop with him and looked at her. “Of course you can stay.” He should be grateful. He’d been thinking two or three weeks, maybe a month, would be reasonable. But the thought of her leaving Monday was like having the rug pulled out from under his feet. Now that she wanted to go, he wanted to keep her near. Surely he ought to at least know his wife a little, if only so that he knew how she was likely to play it during their divorce.

Plus it would look strange to both his friends and hers if his wife left so soon. Ultimately, of course, they’d have to deal with it. But there was no hurry. “Stay as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “But Monday will be good.” She gently turned down his offer. He’d wanted her gone, so he had no call to feel rebuffed. It had been like that back on the island. The conflicting feelings she evoked. The desire to have her near, the resenting of that desire and then the desire to have her back when she left. Turns out it wasn’t contrariness caused by being bedridden.

She smiled at some hidden thought. She had the sweetest-looking lips. Eminently kissable. For all the admonishments he’d delivered to himself, he couldn’t help wondering what she’d do if he kissed her again. No mistletoe, no audience.

She’d kissed him once. Back at the camp. The minister had left his bedside after marrying them. Darkness had fallen and Meg sat quietly by his side. She used to sometimes sit there and talk to him as he dozed, telling him stories from her childhood, as outside, unseen night insects sang.

The evening after their marriage she’d kept his hand in hers and Luke had lain there, eyes closed, trying to listen to what she said, but mainly just listening to the sound of her voice, the sound of home.

When he’d asked, after realizing it was something he should have asked first, she had talked about the boyfriend whose desertion had precipitated her trip to work with the foundation. About how she specialized in finding men who needed her for a time, emotionally, financially or physically, but then dumped her when the need had passed. Initially, she laughed at her own stories, but then, as she talked about her dreams of a family of her own, her voice changed, there was a catch to it, and then she stopped talking altogether. He opened his eyes to see a tear rolling down her cheek.

She tried for a smile. “Some wedding night, huh.”

“Come here.”

And she did. She moved from her chair to sit on the side of his bed.

“Closer.”

She leaned down.

He brushed the tear away with his thumb and then slid his hand round to the back of her head, pulled her closer still and kissed her, slow and sweet, and he forgot about the pain and thought maybe he’d died and already gone to heaven.

She sat back up looking as shaken as he knew he’d feel if he wasn’t so damn sick. Instead, he felt…a little better.

“Not bad for someone on death’s doorstep.” She tried to make light of what had just passed between them.

“Wait till I’m better.” He winked. “I could make you forget all your sorrows.”

“Is that a promise?”

“If you want it to be.”

“Then get better. And I’ll hold you to it.”

“Now that’s what I call an incentive.”

It was the last time he’d been alone with her. The next day, she’d left on the boat that was to bring back supplies to replenish those raided from the island’s medical facility.