Daniel!
Her thoughts returned to the man whom she was meant to marry. The man who she’d so easily and totally forgotten about until that moment.
She gritted her teeth and began talking about some deeply private issues in her life to a man who’d been a complete stranger to her three days earlier. “His name was Daniel — and I was supposed to marry him less than two weeks ago; this trip was meant to be our honeymoon.”
“What happened?”
She sighed. “The night before our wedding day, when some stupid superstition suggests a woman shouldn’t see her betrothed I discovered the reason for such a fallacy.”
He looked at her attentively. “Why; what happened?”
Why am I telling this man my secret?
She took a deep breath and let go. After all, she could have been killed twice since that night. “I walked in to find my fiancé having sex with a stripper.”
Sam looked blankly at her with incomprehension, but remained silent.
“We all make mistakes,” Alexis said. “Perhaps it was only a onetime thing. Like on a Buck’s night after he’d gotten so drunk and carried away with his guy friends that he’d made a mistake. I probably could have forgiven him for that. Only it wasn’t his Buck’s night, and the stripper hadn’t stripped since she was a Freshman trying to pay for her college tuition fees — she was my best friend, Imogen.”
“Holy shit!” Sam swore. “What did you do when you caught them?”
“A lot less than you’d expect. I cancelled the wedding with a simple text message to the guests. I tried to keep it as short as possible. Something along the lines of, My apologies dear friends. Having discovered my betrothed in bed with a stripper tonight, I’m afraid I won’t be attending the wedding. Please enjoy the food and wine on my behalf. By the way, I thought men normally waited until they were married to start affairs?”
“And then what did you do?”
“I switched off my cell phone. I had no intention of reading the myriad of sympathetic responses, or worse still, angry and vengeful replies. Instead, I grabbed my travel bag and cruise ship tickets, and started my honeymoon a day early.”
“You must have been so angry.”
She recalled that night as though she were still there. She’d boarded the Antarctic Solace. Relaxed in the Jacuzzi inside her decadent honeymoon suite, and drank overly priced cocktails that had been delivered to her door. Afterwards she lay down on the oversized bed and closed her eyes. The first image to spring to her mind was that of Daniel and Imogen naked together, on her bed.
Thank you, Imogen.
She then fell into the deepest and most relaxed sleep she’d had in years.
“Sorry, what did you ask, Sam?”
“I said, you must have been so angry.”
“No.” She grinned sheepishly. “I know that’s what I was supposed to be, but I wasn’t. Not for an instant. Outwardly, I had taken it stoically and simply said that I would take the cruise without him and that he would be the one finding a new apartment, but inwardly I was jumping for joy with relief.”
“You didn’t like Daniel?”
“No. I liked him very much. Heck I even loved him, but I would have forever been far from in love with him.”
“You nearly married a man you liked very much, but weren’t in love with?”
“It sounds so childish, doesn’t it?” She put her hand on his, without even considering why she wanted to. “I should have been happy with what I had. Daniel was a nice guy. There was nothing wrong with him. But it wasn’t the fairytale you hear of when you’re a little girl.”
Sam squeezed her hand sympathetically. “I understand. If the person you’re with isn’t the type of person you dreamed about, why are you risking everything to spend the rest of your lives together?”
“Exactly!” Somehow the man next to her seemed to understand her more after three days than Daniel had in seven years. “Do you mind if I tell you how it happened?”
“Sure.”
“We met at a conference on quantum physics. Despite its cool name, our industry has few particularly interesting people. By all means, I worked with some of the most intelligent people on the planet, but that made them no more interesting or fun to be around.”
Sam laughed. It was warm and genuine; and she liked the sound of it. “You paint a great picture for which profession to enter if I want to meet a girl.”
She continued. “Of the small group of eligible men around my age, Daniel was by far the most logical choice. He was more than averagely attractive. He respected me as his scientific superior. Despite the fact that I was one of the leading professors in an industry consumed by male egos, Daniel appeared to be the one amongst them who simply accepted me as the prodigal genius I am.”
“Aren’t you confident?”
“Have you ever met someone under the age of sixty who’d managed to reach the pinnacle of CERN’s upper echelon of academics?”
“No, but then again, you’re the first Professor I’ve met who worked at CERN.”
“With the exception of Daniel’s one or more infidelities, he had treated me well. He had similar, albeit rather boring interests, worked in the same unique industry, and certainly appeared to love me. After six years of dating he proposed, and without finding any obvious reason to object, I simply agreed; because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But as the days lead towards our wedding day, all I kept thinking was — I’m going to be married to Daniel for the rest of my life! And I kept asking, is this as good as it gets?”
“So after that you ended up here?”
“As the Antarctic Solace sailed south I felt good. Instead of being somber I reveled in the freedom and strength of my decision. The one I knew I needed to make and Daniel helped me to make it, without any risk of that future emotion of torment — regret. So I drank freely; danced, sang, and simply enjoyed my new life.” She sighed. “And then we sailed past the fortieth latitude and felt sicker than I ever have before.”
“Which is how you ended up confined to your stateroom?”
“Yes. And how I survived being taken prisoner, if that’s what’s really happened.”
Sam looked at her seriously. “I just realized something.”
“What?”
“You said your husband was very good at particle physics. Was he as good as you?”
“No. He was my subordinate.”
“But he was intelligent enough to understand what you were researching?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It might sound far-fetched given everything that’s happened, but do you think he could have been trying to take your research?”
“You mean, is Daniel responsible for this?” She thought about it for a moment. “No way. It’s not his style. He can be Machiavellian and as deceitful as the next academic fighting to produce the next big thing in particle physics, but there’s no way he’d have the gumption to orchestrate anything like this. Why do you ask?”
Sam looked at her, reassuringly. “Because we’re looking for a criminal who’s capable of stealing your research, and you just said less than a handful of people on the planet could even understand what you’re doing let alone be capable of reproducing it.”
“We’re not looking for Daniel. That’s for sure.”