“Spend the afternoon with me, Kell. You need to eat. I’ll order us food and we can go eat on the beach. Watch the sun go down. I had Jansen pack a bathing suit for you if you’d like to go in the water.”

She reached for the hand that rested against her cheek and curled her fingers around it, holding it there for a long moment.

“I’d like that,” she finally said.

* * *

She and Ryan strolled to the same umbrella she’d used for her nap earlier that morning and he spread out a blanket on the sand. After he was satisfied she would have a comfortable seat, he helped her down and then began unpacking the picnic basket prepared by the restaurant.

He settled beside her and they began to eat.

Kelly stared out over the water as she munched on one of the tasty little confections whose name escaped her. It had cheese and shrimp. She wasn’t sure of the other ingredients, but it was good and she was starving.

The sky had started to soften. Wispy pastel tendrils flirted across the horizon as the sun sank lower. She closed her eyes and allowed the breeze to soothe her fried nerves.

She’d expended more emotional energy over the past months than she had in a lifetime. She wanted to exist free of distress. Just for a little while. She wanted to forget the nights she’d been unable to sleep for crying or the nights she’d lain awake hurting so much that she’d wondered if it would ever stop.

Here she just wanted to be. Here she could at least pretend that the past six months hadn’t happened. This could very well have been her honeymoon. A romantic island getaway.

Ryan had certainly played the part of the solicitous husband.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Slowly she dropped her gaze from the vivid splash of blue and turned her head to Ryan.

“I was thinking that it’s easy to pretend here.”

The blue in his eyes deepened until it ran darker than the water rolling onto shore.

“We could pretend,” he acknowledged. “But we don’t have to.”

“So did you get things straightened out at the building site?” she asked, not wanting to delve into pretend versus real. They were supposed to forget the past. At least for this week. That didn’t leave a whole lot to talk about.

“Just a misunderstanding. I should have it cleared up by tomorrow. I have a joint meeting in the morning with the local contractors and the man we hired to oversee the project. If all goes well, I’ll be finished and we’ll have a few days to do what we want.”

“When do you have to be back in New York?” she asked carefully. Because she knew the whole fantasy would come to a screeching halt once that happened.