Authors: Anne Stuart
"If he doesn't?"
He wanted to reassure her. To tell her he wouldn't let anyone touch her, hurt her. But he couldn't, even though he knew he was more than capable of protecting her. "Then we've got a gimpy schoolteacher and a broken bird against a bunch of very nasty bad guys," he said flatly. "What do you think will happen?"
She was still dazed and confused by the tumultuous events of the afternoon, by her too-long period of unconsciousness. Otherwise she never would have reached over and plucked the sunglasses from his face, looking into his eyes as if she knew him. "I think we'll be fine," she said in a small, sure voice. And then she lay back again, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. In her hand she held the sunglasses that were his shield against the world.
And his shield against innocent young woman who could see far too much.
He must have been the British equivalent of a Boy Scout, Francey decided later. His efficiency was almost frightening as he bundled her off into the overgrown island.
"One thing's for sure, we can't sit out on the beach and wait for them," he said. "Might as well send a telegram. Cecil tells me there's a fresh-water lagoon not too far inland. We'll camp there and trust Travers will have better luck finding us than the men who are after you."
Francey struggled to her feet, pushing her hair away from her face. She felt dazed, oddly sleepy, considering the extremity of their situation. "How far inland?"
"Why don't you sit here while I scout out on the situation?"
She didn't want to admit to the fact that she was frightened without him. There was no reason to put such faith in him, no reason at all. Except for the merciless chill she sometimes surprised in his blue eyes, which told her he was quite capable of anything. "I'd rather come with you, if you don't mind," she said.
"Suit yourself. I can't promise that they won't find us eventually, but it'll take them a while."
"How do you know that? Maybe they were watching us. Maybe they're on the other side of the island…"
"The other side of the island is protected by coral reefs. It would take an island man to get through them, and I don't think it's a St. Anne native who's after you. Is it?"
"I don't know."
"Don't know? Or won't tell me?"
She bit her lip, hoping the small amount of pain would help clear her fogged brain. "I'll tell you," she said. "I owe you that much."
"You do indeed. But it can keep until we get off the beach. We're going to be here a while—we'll have plenty of time for bedtime stories."
She looked at him sharply, wondering what he meant by that. But he'd already turned and headed toward a narrow path cut through the underbrush, a box of supplies on his shoulder. He was barefoot, wearing his rumpled white linen trousers and a pale blue shirt, and his gait was completely steady. Obviously his so-called wound was a fake.
Would she be following her executioner into the jungle, away from witnesses? Absurd. If he'd wanted to kill her, he'd had innumerable chances. She was being a hysterical, paranoid ninny.
"Are you coming?" He'd paused at the edge of the thicket, his expression patient.
"I'm coming," she said, reaching down to scoop up the blankets she'd been lying on.
It seemed to take him no time at all to set up a rudimentary camp. Even with the sun dipping low, the air was warm, torpid, the gentle trade winds that abounded around St. Anne cut off by the heavy greenery surrounding the lagoon. It was a small, translucent pool of water, warm from the midday sun, and Francey knelt beside it, sluicing some over her face to help wake her up.
"The weather's supposed to be good for the next few days," Michael said in a diffident voice. "I thought we might not bother with any sort of shelter for the time being. Unless you'd rather I rigged something up."
We
, she thought. Was she going to be sleeping with him? It was all part and parcel of this gathering sense of unreality. "I'd like to sleep under the stars," she said.
He nodded, moving back to the boxes of stores that had been left there. "The one thing Cecil didn't manage to provide is a change of clothes," he said, his back to her. "You might want to rinse out your dress in the lagoon. If it's like my clothes, it's probably all stiff and sticky from the salt spray. You needn't worry about the drinking water—Cecil brought plenty of that. We can use the lagoon for bathing."
"That's a good thing," she said. "I'm all stiff and sticky, never mind my clothing." But she made no move to unfasten her dress. She was wearing her French bathing suit underneath, a reminder of the innocent day they'd planned, but some idiotic remnant of modesty kept her from moving.
Michael didn't have any such inhibitions. With one last glance at the makeshift kitchen he'd set up, complete with propane cookstove, he turned and walked to the edge of the lagoon, stripping off his shirt as he went and sending it sailing. She almost looked away as he reached for his belt, wondering for a moment just how immodest he was, and then she realized he must be wearing his bathing suit, too. She couldn't keep from watching as he stripped off the water-stained trousers and dumped them beside the lagoon.
She laughed then, in a kind of nervous relief, and he turned to look at her. "I warned you I was pale and skinny," he said. "I didn't think I was that amusing, however."
"I was afraid you weren't wearing a bathing suit," she confessed. "And I wouldn't have expected you to wear something quite so baggy," The bathing suit was a huge pair of trunks that ballooned around his body. But he was wrong; he wasn't pale and skinny at all. He couldn't match her own darker tan, acquired after several weeks beneath the Caribbean sun, but he was a lovely sort of golden shade. And he wasn't skinny. Lean, possibly leaner than he usually was. But there was no disguising the corded musculature of his chest, his shoulders and arms, even his legs. And, oh, my God, his legs.
The limp hadn't been faked. None of his injuries had been. As she looked more closely, past the momentary distraction of sheer masculine beauty, she saw the vicious red scar on his thigh, the jagged tear in his side, and older, paler scars scattered across his golden skin.
All amusement fled in shocked horror at the pain he must have been through. "Michael," she said in an anguished voice. "What did they do to you?"
A shadow crossed his face, a hint of such strong emotion that she couldn't even begin to decipher it. And then it was gone again, and he'd crossed the clearing to her, his hands warm and hard on her shoulders. "Doctors can be butchers," he said easily. "But they put me back together after the accident, and I have to be grateful to them."
She wanted to say something about the other scars, the older ones. The kind of scars she'd never seen before, not ones that had come from a surgeon's knife, but something rougher, cruder. "Yes," she said vaguely.
"Now take off your dress so I can laugh at your bathing suit," he said gently.
It was an unfortunate fact that when he was so close, touching her, looking at her with unexpected tenderness, she could deny him nothing. She reached for the tiny row of buttons between her breasts, and then jerked back in sudden pain.
His face darkened. "What's wrong?"
"I must have hurt my wrist. Sprained it, perhaps…" And suddenly she remembered those brief, paralyzing moments in the sports car, when he'd taken her wrist.
His face showed no expression at all. The very blankness of it told her more than obvious guilt or regret would have. "You must have hurt it when you fell," he said flatly, his hands leaving her shoulders. Moving to the buttons between her breasts, unfastening them, his strong, clever hands brushing against her.
She held herself very still, afraid to breathe. Not afraid of the pain he'd inflicted on her in a moment of desperation, but afraid of her reaction to the feel of his hands on her breasts, the warmth of his body so close to her.
He had freckles on his shoulders, she saw. A faint tracery of golden hair on his chest. And for a man as deft as he was, it was taking him too long to undo the buttons.
She stepped back, away from him, tearing at the dress with sudden anger. He let her go, watching with faintly hooded eyes as she stripped off the dress and dived into the lagoon, slicing beneath its cool depths in one graceful arc.
By the time she surfaced he was in the water at the opposite end of the pool, and that odd, breathless moment might never have existed. "Well, I'll say one thing," he drawled in the gathering twilight. "You couldn't call your bathing suit baggy."
She wasn't going to blush. The two scraps of black cloth had been the best she could manage in the small, trendy boutiques on St. Anne. She'd tried to get a larger size to cover more of her, but it simply fell off her body. In the end she'd settled for this, knowing that no one else would see it.
But it hadn't worked out that way. Still, she had every intention of staying in the water until it was fully dark, rather than let Michael see her with those unsettling eyes of his.
"There're some soap and shampoo in one of those boxes," Michael added, treading water. "You want me to get them for you?"
It was the one thing he could say that would make her lower her guard. At that point she would have accepted soap from the ghost of Caitlin Dugan herself. "Yes, please," she said.
He levered himself out of the pool, and she watched him, watched with interest as she saw a strip of dark material beneath the flamboyant swim trunks. If he could embarrass her, she could return the favor. "Are you wearing underwear beneath those trunks?" she called out.
He turned back to her, his clothes in his hands, and leaned over to pick up her discarded dress. "I don't wear underwear," he said. "That's my real bathing suit."
Before she could realize his intent he'd tossed all the salt-stiffened clothes into the water, including her only decent piece of clothing. She dived for it, hoping to save it from a watery fate, but it sank beneath the surface before she could make it. then he was in the water with her, swimming towards her with clean, long strokes, unhampered by the soap and shampoo he was carrying.
And suddenly he was close, too close, in the water. "Need some help?" he asked.
Her wrist was feeling better with the cool water surrounding it, and she wondered again whether she'd imagined the pain. It didn't matter. Even if it was broken, she wouldn't ask him for any kind of help that would require him to put his hands on her again. His touch was too overwhelming in her current fragile state. "I can manage," she said, backing away from him.
He let her go, a fact that surprised her, moving away through the water to gather the scattered wet clothing. She turned her back to him, using the shampoo and soap he'd given her to manage a fitful bath, then dived beneath the water to rinse the bubbles from her hair. When she surfaced she saw she was alone in the pool. Michael was standing by the cookstove, and the damp, oversize trunks were low on his hips, clinging to the black strip of material.
She grimaced. At least he had something baggy to cover his modesty. Except that she didn't think he was in the slightest bit modest. If she said anything at all about it, he'd probably strip off the baggy trunks. And she didn't think that would be a good idea at all.
"It's getting dark," he said, his back to her. He had a beautiful back, she noticed now, even through the gathering shadows. She'd never really noticed a man's back before, but his was quite extraordinary. Strong shoulders, narrow hips, golden smooth skin. She sighed, treading water, and a stray chill rippled through her skin.
"I'm not finished," she said, taking a few strokes to warm herself.
"You can't spend the night in the pool, Francey," he said with a great deal of patience. "You'll have to come out sooner or later."
"Later will do me fine," she said, swimming backward, then diving under the water again. Later might not be such a good idea. He was busy right now, managing some sort of dinner with his Boy Scout training. She could probably manage to slip out unnoticed and wrap herself in one of the scratchy wool blankets Cecil had thoughtfully provided in lieu of clothing.
She surfaced by the far edge of the pool, shaking the water from her face, and she realized with sudden horror that he was gone. The camp stove was untended, the clearing vacant, and she was alone…
Strong hands caught her, hauling her out of the lagoon with seeming effortlessness. She struggled for a moment, but he stilled her with the simple expediency of wrapping his body around her chilled, almost nude one. "If you make us both fall back into that lagoon, Francey," he growled in her ear, "I'm going to be very irritated."
She stopped her struggles. Not so much because of his threat, but because her skimpy bikini wasn't made for wrestling matches. And the more she struggled, the more her chilled, damp body rubbed against his warm, dry one. The effect it had on her was disturbing and undeniable. And she didn't even want to consider whether or not it was having an effect on him.
He released her then, abruptly, only his hand steadying her from tumbling back into the lagoon. If he'd made a smutty remark, tried to touch her in any way, she would never have forgiven him. But he kept his gaze on her face. "Dinner's almost ready," he said. "And I found a T-shirt in the bottom of one of the boxes. Now, I'd much rather wear it. For one thing, it's getting cooler, and I'd just as soon keep you wearing as little as possible. But as we've already ascertained, I'm a perfect gentleman. So the T-shirt's yours."
She didn't know what to say. Except that his blue eyes were looking steadily into hers, and his manner was back to what she was accustomed to. Calm, sexless, friendly. She was the one suffering from an excess of awareness, an excess of imagination. Not Michael.
"That would be very nice," she said politely. "What's for dinner?"
His mouth curved up in a smile. "Now, that's the bad news. Cecil might have left us plenty to eat, but it's all godawful. Tonight we have freeze-dried shepherd's pie. Fresh shepherd's pie is bad enough, but freeze-drying it is a crime against humanity. After that, I suggest we try to get some sleep. It's almost full dark, and there's not much we can do once the sun sets completely. I don't think it would be wise to keep a fire going after dark."