If he hadn’t yelled... If he hadn’t grabbed her...
‘Hey, that was a surprise,’ he said at last, thickly into her hair, not letting her go an inch. ‘I didn’t realise we had company. I’m thinking there’s an osprey’s nest on top of our island. Should we call National Geographic?’
An osprey’s nest...
Her mind clicked from fear to logic. What Finn was saying made sense. She’d seen the giant ospreys during the cruise, their massive nests perched on the highest spots of the most inaccessible crags, where the birds could watch the world while they raised their young.
‘You don’t mess with those guys,’ Jason had said when he’d pointed out the first one she’d seen, and she knew he was right.
‘Would...’ She could barely get the words out. ‘Would it have attacked?’
‘We’re too big for them to do much damage,’ Finn said. ‘That guy was on a scare mission, not a breakfast mission.’
‘That makes me feel better,’ she managed unconvincingly.
‘Me, too,’ he said, just as unconvincingly, and he held her closer still while her heart regained its rhythm and she remembered again how to breathe.
And she felt his breathing.
And she felt how solid he was, and how smooth his bare back was and how strong were the ripples of the muscles across his shoulders.
This guy was seriously ripped.
Maybe he had a gym in that baggage of his, she decided. A gym was about the only luxury the Temptress didn’t provide—the daily activities more than made up for it.
Um... She was fighting for sanity here. What was she thinking? Whether or not the Temptress had a gym, when she was being held by a guy who felt...who felt...
‘Better?’ he asked gently and she managed to nod, but she didn’t let go.
‘We’ll stay under the shelter of the cliffs,’ he said. ‘We need to anyway, now the sun has some strength, and if we don’t climb higher she’ll stop seeing us as a threat.’
‘G...great.’
‘Rachel?’
‘M...mmm?’
He cupped her chin and he forced her to look out to sea. ‘See that island over there?’
The crag he was pointing to was high and wide, covered with straggly trees and surrounded by reefs. It was half a mile away.
For the rest...she could see maybe a hundred small rocky outcrops like this one. This was a vast ocean of islands, with the mainland far away in the distance.
‘That island was closest to us last night,’ Finn said gently. ‘If Esme wanted to search, she’d have gone there. Unlikely, but if she did...it’d take half a day to search it. But they’re on the cruise ship and they need to pretend they know nothing about what happened to us. The guys who did the drop won’t search. As for here... The osprey’s protecting her babies and nothing else. If we leave her alone, she’ll leave us alone. We’re clean, we have water, we have barley sugar, and somewhere out there we have your Maud, regimenting the troops. We are safe.’
And, for the first time, she believed him.
Safe. It was a weird way of describing where they were now, she thought. On a barren outcrop in the middle of nowhere, completely stranded. But the overriding fear of whoever it was coming back...he’d just taken it away. She sagged against him and he held.
He swore and kissed her gently on her hair.
‘You’re done, sweetheart,’ he said, and she hauled herself away at that. But not very far because if she hauled away more than three inches she saw all of him, and somehow it seemed safer to stay close. And...better.
He swore again and tugged her to his heart.
‘I’m not done,’ she managed, trying to sound indignant. ‘Or no more done than you are.’
‘Which is why I need to keep holding you.’ She could hear the smile in his voice, and it settled her still more. But it made her feel...it made her feel...
As if she were being cradled by a totally naked guy with laughter in his voice.
‘I don’t need to be held,’ she said but her heart wasn’t in it.
‘But you’d like to be held?’
‘I...yes.’ There was no denying such a truth.
There was a moment’s stillness. And then...
‘I’d like to kiss you,’ he said, and her heart seemed to falter.
‘Really?’ she said because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
And then, because she couldn’t think of any better response, she went for the obvious.
‘So what’s stopping you?’
CHAPTER FIVE
AS A response, it took Finn’s breath right away.
He was holding a naked woman in his arms, and she was encouraging him to kiss her.
To comfort her?
Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe he could keep comforting her by continuing to hold her.
But she’d agreed with the idea—in principle—of kissing.
So in practice...
Enough of the thoughts. Right there, right then, body took over brain. He had an unimaginably beautiful woman naked in his arms, and she was asking to be kissed. A man’d have to be inhuman...
He wasn’t inhuman.
They were a man and a woman and there was nothing in the world between them.
He gazed down at her in the shadowed light in the lee of the cliffs—and he kissed her.
* * *
Rachel Cotton hadn’t been kissed for a very long time.
Ramón didn’t count. Her ex-husband was a lying, cheating toe rag and she’d blocked out his kisses as something she never had to think of again.
Excluding Ramón, she hadn’t been kissed since she was at university. Which was a long time ago.
She was making up for it now, because Finn Kinnard’s mouth met hers and fire met fire.
She didn’t know she could burn until he kissed her. She didn’t know a body could.
His mouth claimed hers, she clung to his wet, naked body, she let herself be kissed, she kissed him right back—and it felt like her world was melting.
The heat started in her mouth and in her hands where she held him and clung, but it spread outward, up, down, a slow, deep flame that grew and grew and consumed her to the point where she felt she was melting into this man.
Two becoming one? She’d heard the analogy—wasn’t it in the marriage vows?—but she’d never known it for truth before. But that was what this felt like.
She kissed and let herself be kissed. She clung and she forgot everything but this man, this body.
She let herself simply cling...
The kiss extended. They were using it to forget, to take and give comfort, to replace fear with a need as old as time itself.
It was working. All she could think of was his body.
All she could think of was this kiss.
Finn. Boat-builder. A man who knew how to wield tools. Irresistably, toe-curlingly sexy.
But also...an investigator?
Then, out of nowhere, something more.
He had kids.
Children.
The knowledge slammed into her consciousness, piercing the dream quality of what was happening as if a sledgehammer had sliced down, straight through the mist of emotion, fear and sheer raw need.
This was a guy she knew nothing about. He had kids who he’d presumably left with their mother. Or mothers. She was kissing him as if she’d sink into him. If he had condoms on his naked person, the way she was feeling, she’d melt.
Maybe it was that tiny thought—had he remembered to pack condoms?—the almost hysterical idiocy of the idea—that made her acknowledge reality. Reason.
Reason tasted sour and empty when all she wanted, all she needed, was to hold and keep on holding, but s
omehow she managed to stiffen, to tug away—and she was released in an instant.
‘We...can’t,’ she said, and there was no way on earth she could keep the regret and longing from her voice.
What was it with her? She’d fallen for Ramón in just such a heat. She’d wanted him and she’d put logic aside and she’d fallen.
She’d known Ramón had an ego. She’d known that he drank, but she’d figured he controlled the drinking enough to dance at the highest level; he could control it to love her.
Only she hadn’t been important enough.
Like she wasn’t important to this man. This man who’d already warned her of his past, his reputation.
His honour?
Yes, he was honourable, for he was putting her away from him, his gaze as rueful, as regretful as hers.
‘I guess...not the best idea,’ he managed. ‘If we’re stuck here for nine months, there’s nowhere to buy bootees.’
She managed a laugh that was almost a sob, and he raised his hands and cupped her face, his fingers strong and firm and tender all at once.
‘But it won’t be nine months,’ he said. ‘We depend on your Maud, and I’m sure you’re right. She’ll be here. So now...we put on our nice clean clothes, we make ourselves as respectable as we can and we wait for the cavalry.’
‘You’re sure it won’t be...?’
‘It won’t be anyone but Maud,’ he said, and she met his gaze and she believed him.
They were safe—or as safe as stuck on a deserted island hundreds of miles from anywhere with nothing but a limited amount of water and half a bag of barley sugar could make them.
‘Do you think Maud will know to pack condoms?’ Finn asked, and she choked and laughed and it was okay again. Sort of.
‘I wonder how lizards taste roasted,’ Finn continued, diving out of the shadows to retrieve their clothing. He was back before their friend from above could realise he was out there, handing her her nightdress and calmly hauling on his wet trousers. ‘We might have to find out.’
‘Roast lizard,’ she said, trying to sound thoughtful, trying to sound calm and sensible as she tugged her nightdress back on and wished fiercely that she was wearing flannelette pyjamas instead of the wisp of frivolity her sister had given her when she was in hospital. ‘Do you have a box of matches and a fry pan in your pocket?’ Then she glanced at his trousers—and looked away. Uh oh. Her face turned bright pink.
They really had been very close to...to...
To needing an airdrop of condoms.
‘I do have something that’ll help,’ he said gravely, and he tugged forward a small, waterproof pouch that had been attached to his belt. ‘I know I should have packed it with more barley sugar—remiss on my part—but it’s what I always carry in here.’
He flicked it open, revealing a phone-cum-camera—and a solid all purpose knife.
‘The advertisement for this knife says it’s all you need to survive the end of the world,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if it works.’
‘The phone...’ she said with longing, looking at what she most wanted in the world. Communication.
‘I haven’t had a signal for days,’ he told her. ‘Sadly, my satellite phone’s back on the ship. I’ve been using this little sucker for other things.’ He flicked the phone open and showed her, and she thought he was doing it to distract her. He was showing her the phone so she could stop thinking about what had just happened, about what so nearly had continued to happen, and that he was so male and so near and so...so...
‘Pictures,’ he said and she thought—almost hysterically—is he going to show me pictures of his kids?
But no.
He gestured to a ledge and they sat—like two acquaintances meeting over morning coffee—and he showed her what he had.
He had pictures of the aft deck of the boat, taken at night. The only light was one being held by one of the deckhands as Esme leaned down to retrieve parcels.
There were a dozen photographs, one after the other, culminating in the parcel tossed onto the deck, the powder spreading. In the last blurry shot she could see a fuzzy shape at the edge of the shot—which was her walking right in.
‘Thank God this pouch is waterproof. When Maud comes, these guys will pay,’ Finn said grimly. ‘I promise you. This is enough evidence to put them away for years. But meanwhile, let’s think about fire.’
‘Fire?’
‘Roast lizards.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘If we must.’
‘My grandmother said they taste okay,’ she said, and that caught him.
‘Your grandma?’
‘Her people come from the Alice. Near Uluru. She spent her childhood in the bush.’
‘She didn’t give you cooking lessons, I suppose?’
‘Not exactly lizards.’
‘Then we do it from scratch,’ he said. ‘And we start now. I suspect the old idea of rubbing two sticks together to make a fire could take a while. We need to get it done by tonight, though. And somehow I need to get up top to make a signal. That’ll be my T-shirt.’
‘You’re going to wave your T-shirt?’
‘Your nightie would be better,’ he said and he grinned. ‘But you’ve already donated your jacket and I suspect any more donations might be above and beyond the call of duty.’
‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘Um...the ospreys?’
‘We watch Mummy and Daddy Osprey and, the moment they’re both out hunting, up I go, with you as lookout. And if they even think about coming back, you yell and I’ll run away. I’m very good at running away. It’s one of my principal skills.’
She looked at him, seeing humour in his face, but also strength and resolution and courage.
He was planning out loud to reassure her, she thought, and it was working.
She didn’t think he was very good at running away at all.
Children or not, scoundrel or not, she could depend on this guy. She would depend on him.
She just...wouldn’t do anything else.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I’M AFRAID it’s obvious.’
Maud was staring down at Rachel’s slipper. The Captain was holding it out as if it explained all, and it explained nothing. She glared at the officer in front of her, her fear compressed into a ball of tightly contained fury.
‘If it’s obvious, why aren’t I seeing it? Explain?’
‘The crew found this on the top deck at dawn, plus empty champagne bottles. We believe your companion and Mr Kinnard have had some kind of late night assignation. Esme, our chief tour leader, saw them up there a few nights ago and warned them, but obviously they didn’t listen. The water was choppy last night and the ship hit a couple of large, sharp swells as the tide turned. If they were drunk...I’m very sorry, Dame Maud, but we’re looking at tragedy. Of course I’ll notify the authorities. They’ll run a sweep over the entire area...’
‘What manpower?’ Maud demanded and he blinked.
‘Excuse me?’
‘How many aircraft can we get here?’
‘I’m not sure...’
‘Well, get sure,’ she snapped. ‘And I need access to your radio straight away.’
‘Dame Maud, we’ll do all we can.’
‘You do that,’ she said almost cordially. ‘And I’ll add all I can on top of it. But let’s get one thing clear. My Rachel did not fall from this ship in a fit of drunken passion. And you can cut your search area down as well. Rachel went to bed when I did, and she always goes straight to sleep. It’s hours later that the nightmares start. I’m thinking she went overboard some time after two and before four.’
‘How can you...?’
‘Because that’s when she’s awake,’ she snapped. ‘So I need the coordinates of exactly w
here we were at two and exactly where we were at four.’
‘I’ll give you our exact route.’
‘I’m not interested in your exact route,’ she snapped, and for a moment she sounded the frightened old lady she was. ‘I want proof of where you were at two and proof of where you were at four and I’ll take it from there. Or my grandson will. They will be found.’
‘I hate to mention it, but ma’am, the crocs and sharks in this water...’
‘I know exactly what lives in these waters,’ she snapped. ‘But if you think I’m searching for what’s left of Rachel, you have another think coming. And if you think I’m swallowing that nonsense about a romantic tryst...I wish it could be true but this is Rachel we’re talking about and she has no time for anybody.’
* * *
Esme was fully occupied. She was intent on organising the next shore trip, pushing the events of the night before to one side. No matter what had happened, the rest of the passengers had to be catered for.
Things were going well. Settling down. It had been explained to the Temptress’s crew and passengers that there’d been a tragic incident in the night. The passengers had been warned yet again of the dangers of excess drinking on deck. Although some were visibly upset, most were thinking Young fools—and let’s get on; the authorities will deal with it.
‘Should we worry?’
Esme turned and frowned her displeasure. The engineer shouldn’t be up on this deck. They needed to make everything look normal; she let her annoyance show.
‘There’s no need,’ she said brusquely. ‘You took the tender around the only habitable island and saw nothing. We were miles off course. The crocs will have finished our business nicely.’
‘Should we get rid of the stuff?’
‘Will you shut up?’ she hissed. ‘I told you, there’s no need. I don’t intend to take all that risk for nothing.’
‘But if they’re found... They’ll have guessed exactly what we were doing.’
‘Who’s going to find them out here? They’re finished. We have nothing to worry about. Get back to where you belong. They’re nothing but a tragic accident that’s past and done with.’
A Bride For The Maverick Millionaire (Journey Through The Outback #2) Page 8
