He Brought His Assistant On Our Honeymoon And Gave Me A Separate Room novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Reef

On a snorkel trip Rhett pulls Rochelle out of a current, and Camille photographs the boat from the dock with a long lens; Rhett asks her to dinner and she says her husband would be delighted.

In the morning there was a note under my door, in Tripp's neat slanting hand.

Calls all day. Book the snorkel trip at ten, it's on me. Don't wait for lunch.

It was on a sheet of the resort's cream paper, and he had signed it with only a C.

I put it in the wastebasket and booked the trip on my own card.

The boat was a white launch with a striped awning and a captain who chewed on a toothpick.

Eleven of us climbed aboard, mostly couples, all of them holding hands.

I sat at the back with my mask on my knee and my braid over my shoulder.

"Is this seat taken?" Rhett said.

He was in swim trunks and the same washed-out shirt, with a towel around his neck.

"It's a boat. I don't think seats have owners."

"Everybody on this island has an owner." He sat. "Mine is a man who runs a care home in Savannah. He calls me twice a day to tell me the price of my own father's bed."

I turned to look at him.

He kept his eyes on the water.

"Sorry," he said. "That was more than you asked for."

"I like more than I asked for. It's a nice change."

He smiled then, a real one, with a crease on the left side that only showed when he meant it.

We anchored over a reef about a mile out.

The water was so clear that I could see my own shadow on the sand below.

I hadn't snorkeled since college, and I put the mask on wrong twice.

Rhett leaned over and fixed the strap at the back of my head, and his fingers didn't linger.

"Breathe through your mouth," he said. "Slowly. Nothing down there wants to hurt you."

"You can't promise that."

"Nothing that's worth worrying about."

I went in off the stern.

Yellow and blue fish moved over the coral in schools, and for twenty minutes I forgot I was married to anyone.

I forgot the room with the white bed.

I forgot my husband was at that moment eating breakfast with another woman.

Then a current took me sideways, and I lost my breath and my sense of up.

I came up choking, fifteen feet from the boat, with my mask full of water.

A hand closed around my wrist.

"I've got you," Rhett said. He had come off the other side. "Kick. Don't fight it."

He towed me to the ladder and pushed me up the first rungs with a hand flat on my lower back.

At the top I turned, and he was right below me, wet to the chin, with his hand still on the rail beside my hip.

For a moment neither of us moved.

His chest was going hard, and so was mine.

His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up fast.

He's just out of breath, I told myself, because we had both been swimming.

"You're all right," he said, and his voice came out rough.

"I'm all right."

"Good." He took his hand off the rail. "Sit down before you faint on me. I'd have to carry you, and I'd lose my reputation."

"You have a reputation?"

"Several. Most of them are false."

I sat, wrapped in the captain's spare towel, and laughed until the shaking stopped.

The captain handed me a paper cup of lukewarm tea, with honey in it.

On the way back I looked at the shore.

The resort rose out of the green, with the ocean suites on the water side and the garden rooms tucked behind.

On the end of the dock, a woman in white linen stood with a black case.

She lifted a long lens to her eye.

I waved, because it was Camille, and I thought she was photographing the boat for the investors.

She lowered the lens and waved back with her whole arm.

"Friend of yours?" Rhett asked.

"My husband's assistant. She's doing the newsletter."

"She takes a lot of photographs for a newsletter."

"It's a big company."

"What do they sell?"

"Camping gear. I drew the first backpack."

He turned his head.

"You drew it?"

"I'm an illustrator. I drew the pack, and the logo, and the first three catalogs, and the box the stove comes in."

"And your husband's name is on the building."

"And his name is on the building."

Rhett was quiet for a few seconds.

"That's a bad trade," he said.

"It wasn't a trade. It was a marriage."

"Those are not always different."

The launch bumped the dock, and Camille was there already, holding out a hand to help me off.

"Rochelle! How was it? You look glowing."

"I nearly drowned."

"Oh, no!" She hugged me, and her hair smelled of coconut. "Tripp will be sorry he missed it. He asked me to tell you he's in a meeting until three."

"It's fine."

"Is it?" she said softly. "You can tell me if it isn't."

She was so warm that I almost did.

Behind her, Rhett climbed onto the dock and rolled the towel over his shoulder.

He waited until Camille had gone up the steps, then walked beside me.

"I want to see you again tonight," he said, low. "Dinner. Just dinner. If you want."

I looked up the path toward the ocean suites, where my husband was in a meeting.

"My husband would be delighted," I said.

Rhett didn't smile.

"That," he said, "is the part I don't like."

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