Rage, стр. 20
day, boys. I’m going to go lie down for a while before dinner.”
64
RAGE
The cool water did nothing to ease the burn Phillip felt in
every cell of his body. No matter how prepared he thought he
was for it, seeing her again knocked the wind out of him and
nearly brought him to his knees. He’d presented his heart to her, and she’d ripped it out through his throat.
He tried to ignore her as she left Dave and Scot at the table
and headed in his direction, but she was more stunning than ever and he couldn’t look away. She was no longer frighteningly
gaunt. A glimpse at her bare leg poking out from the slit in her long sarong showcased lean muscle definition she’d never had
before. Her scorching hair was the longest he’d ever seen it and curly in the heavy tropical heat. Her skin was a lovely pinkish
brown from being in the sun, so he figured she’d either been
prepping for the beach or spending a lot of time out-of-doors. He was so captivated by her appearance that she was ten feet from
him before he realized she was looking directly at him with those devastating aquamarine eyes that mirrored the sea behind him.
He gripped the side of the pool as if gripping onto his pride.
She wore a determined look and pivoted in his direction. Primal
urges warred within him. The first was to flee, even if it meant jumping off the nearest cliff-face into the rocky waters below.
The second was to pull her into the water and ravage her in full view of anyone in the pousada. It was a fairly well-matched tug
of war between the two.
Stephanie stopped a foot from the edge of the pool, and be-
fore he could stop himself, his eyes were entangled with hers.
“Hey.” Her voice had the same raspy timbre he had always
adored, like a prima donna who’d smoked a box of cigars and
drank a bottle of whisky the night before. Like every other aspect of Stephanie, her voice was a contradiction. You couldn’t have
the sweet without the savory.
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He opened his mouth to reply and paused. He couldn’t say
“how are you”, “lookin’ good”, “I fucking love you, you vicious
little bitch,” or any of the other things that jumped to mind. So he closed his mouth and just nodded at her in greeting. She
kicked off her shoes and stepped forward. Crouching down, she
took a seat on the side of the pool. Her shapely legs were in the water inches from him. He could have moved forward two feet
and been between them, his eyes level with her waist. It was hard not to think about how she’d respond to that. He also could have grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her in. It was equally appealing.
An awkward silence fell between them, and Phillip waited.
She’d approached him, so the ball was in her court.
She cleared her throat. “So how’ve you been, Phillip?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“W…Well…you know, how are things…with the band?”
She looked down at her lap.
He pushed back from the side of the pool. “You didn’t
come over here to ask me about Fury. What do you want, Steph-
anie?” He refused to make idle chit-chat when he couldn’t get
the image of Clive Richards pawing her out of his mind. Stepha-
nie heaved an exasperated sigh.
“You know, I thought we could do the mature thing. Try to
smooth things over privately so we aren’t remembered as the two
assholes that ruined the wedding.”
He laughed heartily and shook his head. Steph looked as if
he’d slapped her.
“Smooth things over? There’s nothing to smooth over, love.
It’s ancient history. I think we should just try to avoid each other this week.”
Steph paused and drew in a long breath. He anticipated an
argument, anger, or some other emotional outburst. Instead, she
simply nodded and climbed to her feet.
“You’re absolutely right, Phillip. It’s old news.”
66
RAGE
He watched her gorgeous backside as she bent to pick up
her shoes, and he wanted to call out to her to come back. Some-
how, he suppressed the urge and let her leave.
It seemed like only yesterday when she’d shut him down in
a similar fashion and he’d been too devastated to see straight.
When he stumbled out of her hospital room, he’d hopped in his
Aston Martin nearly plowing down several paparazzi as he sped
to the market. He’d bought a bottle of Tullamore Dew and a car-
ton of cigarettes and drove back to the cottage. He’d sat by the brook for hours, drinking from the bottle and chain smoking. His thoughts were a hazy blur of a future without her.
He stumbled inside, knowing from experience that he was
close to passing out. He steadied himself on the doorframe of the master bedroom, and his eyes fell on the silk nightgown he’d
peeled off of Stephanie the night before. It lay on the hard wood floor as a taunting reminder that he’d never again hold her.
Tears sprung to his eyes, and anger clouded his vision. He
be damned if he’d shed one more fucking tear over her. She
couldn’t even be bothered to have a discussion about marrying
him. He’d been dismissed like an unwelcome servant. His last
memories of that night were cradling bloody fists and passing
out on the couch so that he didn’t have to lie on the sheets that smelled like her peppermint shampoo.
Daylight had seared through his closed eyelids, ripping him
from his restless slumber. He had sat up, and the room spun.
When normal vision had finally returned, he’d realized just how
much damage he’d done the night before. Overturned furniture,
broken dishes, red-tinged holes in the white washed walls all
brought back flashes of the previous evening. He’d looked down
at his own hands and saw they were bloody and swollen.
“Bloody hell.” He’d murmured, when he discovered that he
couldn’t close his right hand. He’d completely lost control and
what was worse, he felt his feral rage threatening to surface
again. He couldn’t be around people in his current state of mind.
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If he stayed, his sisters would come looking for him. Worse, Ad-
am or Cedric might show up. He knew he