He breathed deep. Closed his eyes. Then opened them again. “I caught some crabs.”
“Great. Why don’t you get them, and I’ll light the fire.” As Max arranged dry kindling, she was telling herself she should walk away. While she gouged a notch in a piece of dry wood, and slid the perfect stick into it, she tried to recapture the feeling of excitement at being on the island, testing her survival skills alone. And when she flattened her palms both sides of the stick, and rubbed rapidly enough to send a spark into the dry leaves, she knew she was kidding herself.
“You got that going quickly.” He’d come up behind her as she blew on the spark, teasing a tiny flame into life.
“Lots of practice.” She piled more kindling on top, and added arid fiber ripped from a coconut husk.
He crouched next to her. Close enough to touch. The scent of the sea clung to his hair, to his wet clothes. “I don’t want to fight with you.” His voice was low and quiet.
Slanting her head to the side, she cast him a glance. Then she couldn’t look away. His intense regard, as though he was peering through the windows of her eyes down into the depths of her soul, stole her breath. His gaze flickered to her lips, then back to her eyes. He was going to kiss her, time stood still until he kissed her.
Heat.
“Your fingers—”
She jerked them away from the flickering flame at the same moment as he reached to do the same thing.
“They’re okay.” But he brought her hand to his mouth, and blew on her fingertips anyway. His tousled head bent over her captured hand. He examined her fingers, checking for the truth of her words.
Then he looked up. The corner of his mouth tilted upward. “How are we going to stop fighting? Because you’re always getting into trouble, and I’ve a hero complex.”
She wasn’t accident-prone. Had been looking after herself for years, and didn’t need anyone to save her from anything. Didn’t need—but quite liked—having a hero looking out for her, however misguided.
“I guess we’ll have to work on it.”
He brought her hand to his mouth. “I could start by kissing it better.” He kissed each fingertip, his gaze steady.
“That works.” Her voice was husky. The plan to put some distance between them was quickly dissolving. She should pull her hand away. They should talk. Instead, her hand lay in his, limp and unresponsive. His to use as he would.
Sholto traced the tip of her index finger with his lips, then sucked it into his mouth.
Her eyes closed on a prayer. Heat curled in her stomach, a heat that had to be denied.
“I can’t think while you’re touching me.” She eased her hand back. Placed it in her lap. And opened her eyes.
*****
She’s the most infuriating woman in the world.
Yet he was drawn to her like the waves to the shore. All the way back to the crabs he’d cast aside, Sholto ran through the reasons they should stop this thing before it got completely out of control.
As she bent over the fire, rubbing the flames into life, totally concentrated on her task, he’d been unable to think straight. Because he was imagining her paying his body such close, dedicated attention.
When he’d seen her floating, apparently lifeless, raw panic had raced through him. Up until then, he was in denial about how vital she was to him. How irreplaceable. Faced with the loss of her, he’d been frantic—desperately racing to close the distance between them, even though he feared he was too late. He’d been wracked with pain so intense he could barely breathe. In the grip of a frenzy to rewind time. To have her safe.
He’d been wrong, she hadn’t drowned. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was what the thought of losing her had done to him.
Now, she stared down at the hands clasped in her lap, about to tell him something. “This whole situation is artificial.” She didn’t look up. “You know the way people who’ve been kidnapped form intense feelings for their captors? Stockholm Syndrome? We’re sort of like that.”
Not like that. “So are you the kidnapper or the hostage? Because it seems to me that we’re in this together.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I guess we’re both hostages.” She crossed her arms. “You know what I mean. If we’d met in our real lives, and spent the night together, there’d be a cooling off period. You’d go back to your house, I’d go back to mine, and maybe you’d call me to set up another date in a couple of days. There’d be time to think—time to bring some perspective.”
“You spent a month in a survival situation with that Special Forces guy, but nothing like this happened, did it?”
“Abe Kingston?” Her eyes widened. “No.”
“So it’s not the situation, it’s us. This isn’t about the island. It’s you and me. Being with you is different than being with anyone else. I can’t stay away from you, even when I’m telling myself I should.”
Her mouth softened. “I feel the same way.”
“The way I see it, we can do one of two things. We can give in to it, and spend every single moment together. We can fuck all day, and curl around each other all night. Or we can try to cool things down a little and force some space between us.” He stroked a hand over her arm. “I’ve gotta tell you, I like the sound of the first option best, but I have to prepare for this audition. I have to get into the headspace—and I can’t do that if we’re together all the time.”
“I’m not ready for that either.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve been having problems over the past few months. Problems sleeping.” She breathed in deeply. “I had a bad experience with a guy, problems I haven’t dealt with. When I decided to come to the island with you, I’d planned on working on them. Healing myself.” She chewed her bottom lip, and smiled ruefully. “That sounds pretty new age. Healing myself.” She grimaced.
“Did he hurt you?” He didn’t even know her story, but a dark mist of anger stiffened Sholto’s spine. And when she nodded, he wanted to hunt the bastard down and kill him with his bare hands.
“It’s a long story. I was stupid. He was crazy.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “It doesn’t matter.”
He reached for her hand. “It does fucking matter.”
“We both have stuff to do. We should choose option two.” She pressed her lips together. “I need space.”
He wanted to know all of it. Had to know everything. But the vulnerability in her eyes stopped him from pressing further. “There’s a third option.”
“Which is?”
“We spend the next few days apart. You concentrate on the things you wanted to do when we set out for the island. I’ll work on the script—get to grips with nature, and work on slipping into character. You stay in your camp, and I stay here in mine. We meet in a few days and spend time together.”
She tilted her head to the side, considering his words. “So we eat together now, and then split up. Sounds good to me.”
“In four night’s time, I’ll come to your camp and bring dinner with me.” How the hell he’d resist for three full nights was beyond him, but he had to.
“No need. I’ll catch something and cook it.” Her mouth curved into a smile. “It’s sort of crazy, avoiding each other when we’re the only two people here.”
Crazy, but necessary. Because if he didn’t put some distance between them, he was going to spend the entire time in bed with her.
She hacked the tops off the coconuts with the parang. Then she handed one over. “Cheers.” She knocked her coconut against his.
Chapter Eleven
Max lived alone. So it was easy to pretend she was comfortable with her own company, that she was never lonely. But here, with no worldly distractions, Max had to face the truth. In her apartment, she always had music playing, either the radio or a CD. She was plugged in to technology twenty-four seven. If she wasn’t reviewing emails or surfing the web, she was updating the company website or checking out Facebook. During the week, work consumed every spare hour, and when she wanted c
ompany at the weekends she called on Cam or went out to the coffee shop. Watching people living lives.
Here, there was no escaping herself, no denying that her life was empty. I made my choice.
Her sisters’ lives were the complete antithesis of hers. They’d chosen to be wives. To be mothers. She remembered once saying to Caroline, “Can’t women have it all?” She’d been only half joking, and her sister’s response had chilled her to her core.
“No. I don’t believe they can.” Caroline had slid a tray of freshly baked cookies from the oven. “Someone needs to be home with the kids. Looking after the family.”
“But Mum worked.”
Caroline’s smile was indulgent. “She always put us first. You know that. It’s different to what you do.” She put the cookies onto a wire tray to cool. “I’m proud you manage to support yourself and have been able to buy your own home. And I know you’re happy the way you are.” Her nose wrinkled. “Being footloose and fancy free suits you. But it wouldn’t be enough for me. I want to be Mike’s wife. Declan and Felicity’s mother. And I love being a grandmother.”
The unspoken inference was plain. Max would never be anyone’s wife. Anyone’s mother. “I could marry one day...”
Caroline sat at the kitchen table. “Sure you could.” But her smile was insincere. “A lot of women in your position do.”
She should have just let it go. Should have known she couldn’t change her sister’s ingrained beliefs. “What do you mean, in my position?”
“Well, your friend Kathryn has managed to find love. And she was pretty wild before she settled down.”
Pretty wild.
“But, you know, you’re not getting any younger. And the way you…” Caroline swallowed. “The way you’ve known a lot of men...well a lot of men don’t like that. A nice man might feel threatened by your history.”
The arrival of Caroline’s grown daughter and her kids had effectively ended that conversation. Her niece Felicity had known there was something up, but she hadn’t probed, and after playing with the kids for a while, Max made an excuse and bolted back to her house.
Her hands shook as she ripped leaves for a salad and prepared ingredients for an omelet. She hated to think her sister was right. But the evidence of her adult life bore that out. She’d been attracted to people who wanted the same things she did. Who valued experience, and were sexually adventurous. The men who turned her on weren’t looking for happy-ever-afters and long-term relationships, and she’d put up a force field to make sure any men wanting that didn’t approach her.
She lay in her tent and stared out of the opening at the sky.
Even now, she was involved in a relationship that was basically a sexual one. With someone who didn’t want more. They would get together in a few days, and make inroads into their double stack of condoms. He’d satisfy her carnal desires, but the internal one, the deep, emotional desire to have a life partner, to have someone in her life to share the morning paper with, to eat breakfast with, went unsatisfied.
She’d never admitted to herself that she wanted more. How secretly, she was jealous of the all-consuming love Kathryn and Daniel shared.
Her aim in coming to the island had been to recover her equilibrium so she could banish the nightmares, and be more effective in her job. So she could continue with her life, go back to clubs, and sleep with strangers again. But deep down, she didn’t want to return to that life. She wanted more than empty sexual gratification. When Sholto had thrust inside her, staring into her eyes, she’d felt more. Had opened more than her legs, had opened her mind and her heart and let him see the real her. For the first time, fucking had transcended the physical, and going back to her old life, her old relationships, felt sad and unfulfilling.
She closed her eyes. Joel had been a bad choice. He was everything she wanted in a lover, or everything she once thought she wanted. Good looking, fantastic in bed. Fun and adventurous. She thought he wanted the same things, that they could experience all the carnal world had to offer without getting involved. They’d had threesomes. Had explored all their most outlandish fantasies with each other. Her stomach churned. But when they attended the sex party at Hazzard Hall she saw just how wrong she’d been. When Joel found her making love to a woman bound to a cleverly fashioned spider web, he enthusiastically joined in. She hadn’t seen the turmoil in his eyes as he entered her from behind. Hadn’t realized his hands were around Susan’s throat trying to squeeze the life out of her until too late.
He’d been in the throes of a dangerous obsession, and other people had paid the price.
The sun was setting. Max pulled the blanket around herself and exhaled. Her therapist was right. She had to face this before she could move on. She had to think about what she wanted from life—what she really wanted, and alter her course to try to achieve it. Sholto was for now, her last goodbye to the life she’d led.
*****
After a restless night, with the tasks of the day done early, Sholto spent the day reading through the script in an attempt to prepare a section to act in his audition, which was more or less impossible, given the lack of dialogue. Preparing a section from the beginning of the script wouldn’t cut it. Anyone could run the lines John shared with his mother—the boring, predictable dialogue of a mother and son on a cruise at sea, he needed to convince Jasper Watson he could convey the intensity of a man marooned, and that would be considerably more difficult without props.
He scratched the inches of stubble, fast becoming a beard. For the first couple of days on the island, John expected to find help or to be rescued. He’d walked around the island, looking for someone, anyone, to help. There was a scene when he realized that wasn’t going to happen, and that was the moment he broke, and fear took over.
He had no clue how to survive. His body, unused to such conditions, had let him down repeatedly suffering bouts of sickness and diarrhea. The weather hadn’t been kind to him either. In denial, he hadn’t made a shelter before a storm had lashed the island, causing him further hardship. And during it, he hadn’t even had enough wisdom to collect rainwater.
It was a wonder the guy survived at all.
Sholto scratched his scalp. Seeing the script made him understand why Jasper was unwilling to cast him for the role. He lay on his back and covered his eyes with his arm. Could he do it? The task seemed too hard, too impossible. But that must be how John had felt. Lost. Overwhelmed by the difficulties facing him. Full of complete, abject despair. He sat back up again, and grabbed the script.
First, he’d let emotion take over. He’d cried huddled underneath the swaying palms. Had hugged his knees and shivered in his cold, wet clothing. He hadn’t been brave, hadn’t been trying to see a way out.
And when he’d finally been all cried out, he tried to make a shelter without the help and knowledge of a mentor like Max. Instinct had taken over. An instinct he never used, one he probably didn’t even know he had. The instinct to survive.
Sholto finished the script and turned back to the beginning to read it again.
John hadn’t been able to sleep. His belly was empty. His stomach sore from the bouts of illness. Before he made the decision to fight, he’d been lost, alone and fearful.
Emotions Sholto hadn’t allowed himself to feel for years.
He breathed in a deep, shuddering breath and opened his mind to a day he’d long tried to forget. The day two doctors, a psychiatrist, a policeman, and a social worker arrived at his house to assess his mother.
Years of hiding the truth of his home life hadn’t prepared him for what was to come. He’d been like John. Unable to believe things wouldn’t work out for the best. When they asked him to pack some clothes for his mother, and insisted on taking her from the house, he’d still felt the situation might be salvageable. He’d been delusional. Just as John had been.
Sholto’s stomach twisted. He’d never cried. Not when they took her away. Not when they told him he’d never return to his house, and that it would be
cleared and all his mother’s hoarded possessions would be destroyed, as they constituted a health hazard. He hadn’t even cracked when they brought him to his uncle’s house and he had to face his uncle and aunt’s tears.
Away from the safety of her home, panicked by the attentions of strangers, his mother suffered a massive heart attack and died weeks later. He hadn’t even cried at her funeral. He didn’t deserve the luxury of tears. The release of saying goodbye. He hadn’t played his role well enough, had been responsible for them taking her away. He stared out at the sea. Pictured her in his mind, crying and desperately gripping the doorframe as all three doctors tugged her away. He fought them, but the cop had held him back. “Ma.” Something inside him cracked open, spilling out raw, acid pain. I couldn’t do anything, Ma. He dashed a hand over his eyes, feeling them wet. There was no-one to see, no-one for whom to keep up pretense. For the first time in his entire life he faced the horror of losing her. Of not being enough.
Once the tears started, remembered images slammed into him. That same social worker arriving at his uncle’s house, taking him into the kitchen and breaking the news of her death. Standing in a borrowed black suit at the side of her grave, showing no emotion as the only other two family members there sobbed and threw flowers into the grave.
Sholto cried as he should have back then. Gave in completely to the pain clutching his heart, curled onto his side and covered his face with his hands. When the emotional storm waned, he didn’t even try to put himself back together. Just crawled into his makeshift shelter and closed his eyes.
Chapter Twelve
She was as nervous as a virgin on a first date. Next to the glowing red fire were two large gutted fish, which she’d mounted on a homemade spit. She’d hollowed out four coconut half shells, one each for water, and one each for food.
A hand of bananas, the surprise she’d found the day before on her explorations, sat on a bed of palm leaves. She wore the sundress, with a shirt open over it, to keep the cool evening breeze from chilling her shoulders. The sun was low in the sky. If she had music, it would be playing. If there were candles, they’d be lit.
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