Free Love Me Knots by Dee Tenorio

else, he’d lie across the damn gate and be happy about it.
    She pulled her card key from her back pocket and sliced it through the gold lock on the French doors. The doors opened inward, revealing the blue glow of the ocean water lighting up the living room from the floor. So much for sleeping. That would keep him up like an interrogation light.
    He followed her in, closing the doors firmly as she walked on toward the kitchen and the hallway leading deeper into the bungalow. He glanced around, calculating how much a place like this would go for. Fancy glass floor in the living room and dining room, hardwood everywhere else. Woven linen wallpaper. Fresh flowers in gleaming glass vases on nearly every surface. Genuine rattan furniture outside, along with heavy dark wood pieces for the living areas. Marble countertops in the kitchen, which was easily twice the size of his own at home. The bedrooms would no doubt reflect the casual opulence surrounding him already.
    His income had more than tripled in the last two years, but he’d been grossly overestimating his input when he said he’d paid for half this vacation. He’d maybe paid for the rental of the chaise on the deck, he thought with a regretful shake of his head.
    He’d seen that other man lean down close to her, about to put his mouth on her, and all reason had fled, leaving him with a need to separate them if he had to knock the guy to the ground to do it. When she’d rejected him, he’d let his temper do the talking and now she was even angrier with him. One step forward, two steps back.
    Maybe three, given her own temper.
    Four, if he counted how much she’d spent to be away from him.
    Despite what he’d told her, the truth was that Taylor had checked Krista’s answering machine and found a message from Betty. A few glib lines from the secretary he had no idea was so sneaky, and the travel agent had spilled all kinds of information for him, but only after making Taylor promise not to tell Krista. Perhaps it was a promise he shouldn’t have kept, but he hadn’t expected a place like this .
    He knew every aspect of her finances. He’d taught her how to handle them herself, and she’d taken to it well, determined to have control over her own future, something he’d been proud to help her do. She hardly needed him anymore in that respect. She worked hard, lived on what she earned, and he knew to the penny what was in her savings. She didn’t have enough to cover this trip on her own. Which meant he’d done more than push her into running. He’d pushed her into doing the thing she’d vowed never to do—dip into the trust fund her father had offered her. The one she believed was simply another of Elmore James’s machinations to lure her back into submission. And she’d done it to get away from him .
    David scrubbed his face with his hand. She valued her independence. After the way her father had cut her off, showing her in no small way that he controlled her at his whim, she refused to be indebted to anyone. The trust she’d been granted on her twenty-seventh birthday had been Elmore’s bribe, she’d said, because her actual fund shouldn’t have come into maturity until she turned thirty-five. Returning her access to his money was her father’s way of trying to get her back. She’d left every penny in there as her answer.
    Until now.
    Guilt a stone in his belly, he followed her down the hall. He reached the doorway of her bedroom in time to hear the water from a shower turning on. Any other day, he wouldn’t have thought twice about going in, or even joining her, but this didn’t seem the right time. For whatever reason, she didn’t feel connected to him anymore. It would be an even worse violation than demanding he had a right to her room.
    He waited, if not patiently then quietly, while the water made pattering ripples on his imagination. He’d memorized her form almost from the first moment they met. As she bathed, he pictured her standing