The Spy's Wife by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

Author:Jane Elizabeth Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress

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The hotel was lovely, and I spent the next two days on its fabled pink sand beaches, sipping margaritas and plowing doggedly through one romance novel after another. Sometimes I thought I could spot my “protection team” when I saw a particularly well-muscled man with mirrored sunglasses, or a hard-bodied woman in a businesslike one-piece bathing suit and barely visible earpiece. Sometimes I had no idea where they were. I spoke to no one except the waiter.

On the third night David “joined” me. I had taken a sleeping pill and didn’t even hear his soundless entry into the room; I only jolted awake when he slipped into the bed next to me and I found myself mindlessly drawn into his warm, hard body. Instantly I jerked away again and heard him sigh into the darkness. There would be no more passionate, unthinking sex between us; the Hair interlude had been a one-off, I told myself. I would never trust him with my body again—let alone my heart.

The next morning David came to the beach with me, looking almost like a caricature of a husband on vacation with his giant bottle of sunscreen, baseball cap, sunglasses, and John Grisham novel. When we were settled in our beach chairs and my well-trained waiter had brought me my first margarita of the day, somewhat to David’s surprise (it was only ten o’clock), he said, “Look, Shells, I’m sorry about all of this.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does. You thought—”

“Please, David. Forget it.” I didn’t want him to air my pathetic, schoolgirlish flutterings in the open. It was humiliating.

“Well, anyway,” he said. “I wish—”

“Just shut up about it,” I snapped. “Enough.” I opened my book at random, but since I hadn’t taken in a single word that I had read in the past three days, it hardly mattered.

David opened his book too.

That afternoon an older man walked past our chairs, then stopped and did a double take. Was it a little too theatrical? A little too rehearsed? I wasn’t sure.

“Max Wilder!” the man exclaimed. “Imagine finding you here, of all places! How are you?”

David stood up and shook hands with the man, slapping him on the back. “Well, Andrei! I didn’t know you ever took vacations. Fancy a drink?” he said in a crisp British accent. And off they went to the poolside bar.

It was only after they left that I understood why David had not introduced me, had not turned to me and said, “I’ll be right back” or “Can I bring you something?” or even “See you later.” I realized I had been staring vacantly into space and looked over at the bar, but they were nowhere to be seen. It was as if they’d disappeared into thin air.

But I guess his mission was accomplished because the next morning we went home.

And this time I had no dreamy, sex-tinged illusions as I sat next to him in the cushiony first-class seats. The Bermuda getaway hadn’t been a second honeymoon or a chance to repair our marriage; it had been work—part of his “dark” side.

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