Free Riptide by Margaret Carroll Page A

switched on a light. “You hungry?”
    Christina shook her head and blinked.
    He squinted at her, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, his eyes narrowed through the smoke. “Did you eat today?”
    She thought back to the bran muffin she’d shared with Sylphan in the break room this morning, a million years ago. The thought of food made her want to throw up. She shrugged.
    “Just like I thought.” He nodded. “Cause you look—” He caught himself.
    Theirs was a relationship based on mutual pleasure and convenience, mostly Christina’s. At least until now.
    Christina sensed things shifting slightly, away from her and toward him, and chose to ignore it. “I’m okay.” Feeling self-conscious despite the fact he’d seen her naked on more than a dozen occasions, she busied herself with the zipper on her jeans, mumbling something about lunch on the plane.
    He stood up, zipped his fly. “You need a drink or what?”
    “No.” Her voice was too loud. It came out sounding like the lie it was, and she knew it.
    He watched her. “So this place you stayed at, they fixed you up that way?” His lips moved into a smirk.
    But Dan always smirked. It had never bothered her before. “Yeah,” she lied, looking down at the cottonrug and its pattern of dark green leaves and bright crimson berries.
    “Shining sumac,” the decorator had told her. “Very aggressive. If you’re not careful, it will take over the whole garden.”
    Dan scratched his chest with one hand. “I’ll check out what’s in the fridge while you…” Jutting his chin in the direction of the powder room, he frowned. “You’ll be okay. Tough day, that’s all.”
    Mortified, Christina ran a hand through her hair and nodded.
    He headed off to the kitchen, flipping on lights as he went, and she was struck by the incongruity of this, the final act of weirdness in a day that had been the strangest of her life.
    Daniel Cunningham, whose activities in her house until now had been limited to applying plaster and paint to the walls, or humping her on the daybed in their pool house, was now methodically rummaging through the Cardiffs’ kitchen cabinets.
    And he was taking his time about it.
    Rising to her feet was a struggle, as the combination of exhaustion, jet lag, and nerves finally got to Christina.
    She leaned over, pressing her hands to her knees until the dizzy spell passed.
    There was a whoop of triumph from the kitchen. “Eggs, we got eggs,” Dan called. “And chives and Fontina cheese and Veuve Clicquot.”
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CHAPTER 6
    R ain pelted the windows from every direction. The morning sky was the color of bruised fruit. They’d spent a sleepless night on the too-small double bed in the guest room. Dan had hesitated in the hallway at the top of the stairs after the supper of scrambled eggs that he had eaten and Christina had picked at. She left her champagne untouched, dumping it in the toilet finally when the smell got to her. Small victory, she knew, in a long war.
    Dan had made no comment when Christina led the way to the guest room on the landside of the house, but she could tell by the way he tossed around trying to get comfortable that it wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
    The look on his face hadn’t improved with lack of sleep. She wondered if he always woke up with dark circles under his eyes. “Hey.” He flashed a quick smile and rolled away, reaching for the glass he’d left by the side of the bed. He took a swig, swished it around hard before swallowing, and took another before handing the glass to her.
    “Hey.” Christina forced herself to sit up and take a sip. As her lips closed over the rim of the glass, vapors rose from the liquid and stung her nostrils.
    Wrinkling her nose, Christina lowered the glass and frowned. “Is this water?”
    She knew the answer even before Danny smiled. “Go ahead. You need to relax, you know that?”
    Christina set the glass down like it might explode, her nerve endings on