by Susan Cliff
Instead of following her back to the shelter, he stayed at the tide pools. They both needed space. They were practically on top of each other every hour of the day, and not in a fun way. He was already wet, and he was hungry. He might as well keep trying. He left his snorkel behind and cruised the shoreline.
Hunting required patience and stillness. He couldn’t expect to spear a fish every five minutes. Crouching behind a boulder in the shallows, he waited.
He needed some rope to get that big clam. That would be tomorrow’s project. He’d retrieve the rope from the other side of the island. Harvesting the clam would give them meat for days, and some extra to use as bait. They’d have energy. He could make traps, build the signal fire, repair the raft...
While he was planning the next few days, he caught a glimpse of movement in the water. Something that looked like an algae-covered rock had flitted into his range. He jumped out of his crouched position and stabbed downward in one smooth thrust.
Got it.
He lifted the trident carefully. A creature flapped at the end, impaled by all three prongs. It was a mottled brown fish with ruffled fins and bug eyes, about the size of a softball. As he carried it toward the sand, its color changed to dark orange.
“Caught you, you ugly little bastard.”
The fish stopped twitching. Logan let out a victory whoop, holding his spear high overhead. He hadn’t felt this triumphant since he’d made fire.
Hell yeah.
He’d speared a fish, right out of the water. If he could do it once, he could do it again. This was a major turning point. He had a meal on a stick, and several more guaranteed by that giant crab. In the space of a single morning, they’d gone from struggling to surviving, maybe even thriving. Things were looking up.
He collected his other spear and strode away from the tide pools. When he reached the beach, Cady was sitting outside the shelter with a stack of palm fronds. She stood, letting the leaves fall off her lap.
“Check it out,” he said, proud of his kill.
She didn’t react the way he expected. Instead of celebrating, she clapped a hand over her mouth with a strangled scream.
“It’s a fish,” he said, because she didn’t seem to recognize his accomplishment. He reached up to take it off the stick.
“Don’t touch it!”
His hand froze.
“That’s a stonefish,” she said, flapping her hands. “It’s deadly.”
Her words raised a vague warning flag in his mind. He examined the unsightly orange lump, with its round belly and bumpy scales. Had he learned about stonefish in one of his survival classes? He couldn’t remember.
She held a palm to her stomach, as if she felt sick. “They have barbs that release poison if you disturb them. Serious poison.”
Logan arched a brow. “Can we eat it?”
“Yes, but you’re missing the point. It could’ve killed you.”
“Well, it didn’t, so let’s have it for lunch.”
She frowned at his cavalier attitude. “Do you remember our conversation about the sea krait?”
“This isn’t a sea krait.”
“It’s worse than a sea krait!”
“I didn’t even know it was poisonous, Cady.”
“Would you have left it alone if you had?”
He shrugged, feeling surly. “No.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I told you about my grandfather for a reason. I don’t want you to risk your life like he did.”
His gut clenched at the sight of her distress. He hadn’t meant to make her cry, but he also wasn’t sorry he’d caught the fish. He didn’t care how poisonous it was, as long as it was edible. His stomach rumbled with hunger.
“Give it to me,” she said. “I’ll cook it.”
He held it out of her range. “I’d rather handle it myself, if it’s deadly.”
“Oh, you want to handle it yourself? Because it bothers you when I do something dangerous?”
He paused, trapped by this bit of logic. She was right about his risk-taking nature, and his discomfort with turning the tables. Although he didn’t want to surrender control of the spear, he let her have it. She knew how to clean the fish safely. He had to trust her with the task. He watched her do it, his gut clenched.
Yeah, okay. Now he knew how she felt.
That didn’t mean he was going to apologize for working hard to provide a meal for them. He wasn’t going to be timid and cautious and wait for a rescue. He wanted to thrive here. It was what he did. It was who he was.
She wrapped the fish in banana leaves and placed it in the coals at the edge of the fire. “Heat kills the poison.”
While the fish cooked, he went to refill the water bucket and retrieve his clothes at the tide pools. In his excitement, he’d forgotten them. When he returned, she served steamed fish with mashed taro in a coconut shell bowl. They used sticks for utensils. He cleaned his bowl three times.
“Thank you,” he said. “That was delicious.”
She nodded an acknowledgment and went to wash the dishes in the surf. He stayed near the shelter for the rest of the afternoon. He’d been pushing her too hard. They could both use a break, and it was hot as hell.
His first project was making a sheath for his knife out of yucca leaves. They were narrow enough to weave, but durable and waterproof. When it was finished, he attached the sheath to a piece of cordage and tied it around his waist. The next time he saw a shark, he’d have a backup weapon.
When that was done, he started working on a couple of basket traps. Trapping was a reliable method of catching fish. That giant clam would give them plenty of bait to use. He bent about a dozen long, flexible branches into a basket shape.
Cady was busy with her own projects nearby. She watched his technique for weaving yucca leaves, and she was a quick hand. By early evening, she’d made two rectangle-shaped sandals with vine cordage foot straps.
Then it was dark, and she roasted some chestnuts for a light dinner. Although they were both quiet, the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. He didn’t think she was angry with him anymore. She wasn’t the type of woman who pretended everything was fine and hid her feelings behind a fake smile. When she was upset, she said it, straight out.
He wasn’t used to that. The women he dated tended to be very accommodating. They gave him compliments, not criticisms. He didn’t argue with them, either. Playing the field kept him from getting emotionally attached, so there was nothing to argue about. If a minor quarrel came up, he smoothed things over in bed. Or he just moved on to the next conquest. He didn’t have time for relationship drama.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t take Cady to bed. She was his partner in survival. They were stuck together, for better or worse. It was like a marriage, without the perks. He had to listen to her concerns. He had to communicate and compromise.
This was unfamiliar territory for him.
Even so, he found himself kind of enjoying the challenge. He didn’t mind being disagreed with. She was passionate and sexy. The “drama” wasn’t killing his desire for her or driving them apart. If anything, it was bringing them closer together. He felt more connected to her every day, and less tied to the outside world.
A little voice in his head whispered that it didn’t matter if they hooked up. They were already sleeping together. Sex was a natural progression. It was the ultimate morale-booster. It was practically a survival strategy. And it was personal.
No one had to know.
He squashed that idea before it could take hold. They’d only been here a week. It was too early for her to abandon hope, and for him to abandon his professional ethics. He wanted to thrive on this island, but he also wanted to get rescued.
Because when she was safe, he could make her his.
Chapter 12
&nbs
p; The days passed in an endless blur of heat and sunshine and hard work.
Cady stopped worrying about the kidnappers.
She also stopped worrying about the rescuers. If anyone was coming for them, they’d have been here by now.
She didn’t know how they’d ever get off this island without help, but she tried to stay positive about their chances. She couldn’t wallow in despair. She wasn’t a risk taker, like Logan. She’d never laugh in the face of danger. Even so, her parents hadn’t raised a quitter. Her drill-sergeant grandpa had fought in two wars. Her grandmamma in Texas had lived through Jim Crow and segregation before she joined the civil rights movement. Giving up wasn’t part of Cadence Crenshaw’s DNA.
So she crawled out of the shelter every morning at the crack of dawn, determined to contribute. She collected eggs and fruit and chestnuts. She gathered wood for the fire. She wove baskets like a native. In addition to the yucca-leaf sandals, she’d made two hats and an umbrella. She had wooden utensils and a twig toothbrush. She’d been thinking about making a grass skirt and a coconut shell bikini top, just for fun.
Logan had been keeping track of the days by marking notches at the base of a palm tree by their shelter. Three lines represented their time at sea. Beneath that was the island count. Today there were two groups of five, plus another one.
They’d been here eleven days.
They’d been lost fourteen.
In that time, she hadn’t seen a single plane or ship. There was nothing in the sea, nothing in the sky. No bottle to put a message in. No convenient carrier pigeon.
Despite their overwhelming solitude, Logan had taken steps to attract the attention of a random passerby. He’d forged a path from the beach to the nearest peak and gathered all of the necessary materials for a signal fire. It was ready to light at the summit.
A few days ago she’d gone with him to retrieve the raft from the other side of the island. He’d managed to drag the inflatable portion to the cave, where he’d stashed it. They’d left the engine behind because it was too heavy to carry.
Today he was making a bamboo raft. He planned to paddle over to the cove, pick up the engine, and tow it back. He came out of the jungle with five pieces of bamboo that were about the length of his body.
“Are you making it big enough for both of us, plus the engine?” she asked.
He dropped the bamboo on the sand, giving her an impatient glance. His shirt was damp with sweat, his jaw scruffy. His clothes were getting ripped to shreds. So were hers. They looked like a couple of island bums.
They’d already argued about the trip to the cove. He wanted to go alone, but she’d insisted on accompanying him. He’d agreed, with reluctance, and he still seemed irritated by the concession. He liked being in charge and getting his own way.
“If it doesn’t hold us both, I’ll swim,” he said.
“What if a shark comes?”
“The only sharks I’ve seen around here are blacktips. They hang out by the reef, where the fish are.”
That was true enough. She’d seen them hunting in the same area where he set traps and speared fish. That type of shark was small, only three or four feet long. As far as she knew, they didn’t come close to him. He probably wouldn’t tell her if they did. He didn’t always communicate with her. They’d both been walking on eggshells around each other since that day at the waterfall.
The second week on the island had been easier than the first, however. He’d moved the storage box into the cave, where it was cool. Then he’d harvested that giant clam and stuck it inside. They’d had fresh meat for days. Now she had another boiling pot and a washbasin, made of clam shells. She’d been experimenting with cooking methods and spices. She’d collected salt deposits from the tide pools. Logan had found a passion fruit vine, which offered delicious fruit and plenty of leaves for tea.
Life on the island wasn’t perfect, but they were surviving. Sometimes he flinched at her touch, as if it pained him. Maybe it did; he overexerted himself at every opportunity. The division of labor fell heavily along gender lines, with her hanging out at camp and cooking while he did the more physical jobs. His daily schedule looked like an Ironman workout. He was on the go from sunup to sundown, hunting and fishing and lifting and building. She couldn’t convince him to take a break during the daylight hours unless there was a meal involved.
Instead of continuing the debate over the bamboo raft, she returned to her own project. She’d grated some coconut against a sharp volcanic rock and strained it into an empty shell. Then she boiled the liquid, let it cool and strained it again. By late afternoon, she had a half-filled shell of coconut oil.
Pleased, she crouched beside him to present the result. “Check it out.”
“What is it?”
“Coconut oil.”
He grunted his approval. “I’ll catch you a fish to fry.”
She dipped a finger in the fragrant oil and brought it to her lips. “It helps heal and moisturize, too. Want some?”
He shook his head, probably because his hands were busy. He’d been applying a coat of tree sap to the lashing on his raft. It was a sticky substance, like tar, that would prevent the vine cordage from coming apart in seawater.
Undeterred, she applied a drop of oil to his chapped lips. He didn’t stop her, but his jaw clenched with unease. His skin was darkly tanned now, only a shade or two lighter than hers. His eyes met hers as she pulled her hand away. Although brief, the contact was intimate, and arousing. Her mind supplied more explicit uses for coconut oil. His expression told her he knew them all.
She imagined him rubbing oil over her sensitive parts with callused fingers. The fantasy was so sharp, she had to smother a moan. Flustered, she left his side abruptly. She almost dropped the coconut shell and wasted a half day’s work.
He put his head down and finished the lashing, his face like a stone mask. When he was finished, he rose from the crouched position he’d been working in. She didn’t miss his wince of pain as he straightened.
“Is your knee bothering you?” she asked.
“It’s fine.”
“Maybe you need to rest.”
“That’s the last thing I need,” he said in a curt tone. He drank a cup of water and studied his hands, cursing. They were covered in tree sap. She’d used the substance to reinforce her sandals, so she knew it would wear off in a day or two. He seemed agitated about the inconvenience, as if it wrecked his plans somehow.
The coconut oil might have helped remove the sap, but she didn’t offer.
He muttered something about checking the traps and left with his spear. He was having more success with the trident. He’d found a lobster in one of the traps yesterday. When he didn’t bring back a fresh catch, she made do with chestnuts and side dishes. She had a stash of fruits and vegetables in the storage chest, along with a stack of wood. He’d brought the trunk over to their beach after the clam meat was gone. It kept the wood dry and the food protected from seabirds. Crabs were terrible scavengers, too.
She boiled some taro root while she waited for him to return. The water bucket was getting low, so she decided to refill it. She was restless, and he’d been acting strange. She hoped he wasn’t out there hunting sharks.
That sounded like something he would do.
She didn’t find him at the tide pools. She waded into the shallows, shielding the sun from her eyes with one hand. He wasn’t in the deeper water beyond the reef, as far as she could tell. She continued down the beach, frowning.
When she reached the group of boulders just before the waterfall, she spotted him. He wasn’t fishing at all. He was standing buck naked underneath the falls with his back to her. She stopped and stared.
Oh my.
He’d lost a few pounds in the past two weeks, but his body was still tight and right. He was bulky where it counted.
His shoulders were wide, his hips narrow. Below the waist, his skin was several shades paler than his sun-bronzed back. Water streamed over his taut buttocks.
Lord have mercy.
She could have made her presence known at that moment. She could’ve quietly walked away without disturbing him. At the very least, she could’ve looked the other direction while he finished showering.
She didn’t do any of those things. She sank to her knees behind the boulder and ogled him with thirsty eyes. Then he turned around, and her throat went dry. The front view was even better than the back. She’d seen his rock-hard chest before, and the dark tufts of hair beneath his arms. She’d seen him in wet boxer shorts. She hadn’t seen him in his full naked glory, and it was a sight to behold. Even in a relaxed state, his size was impressive. He was naturally thick. Her breath hitched with excitement.
A gentle wave struck the boulder, wetting her knees.
It didn’t cool her down. She’d been mildly turned on ever since she’d rubbed coconut oil on his lips. Now she was aching for release. She wanted him to touch her, but he wouldn’t. So she slid her hand into her bikini bottoms to do it herself. In the next instant, her forgotten bucket got carried away in the surf.
She tried to reach for it, but she wasn’t fast enough. Making a sound of panic, she scrambled after it on all fours. She grabbed the bucket and ducked behind the boulder, her heart pounding with trepidation.
Had he seen her?
Logan appeared beside the boulder a moment later, answering that question. He had his pants on, but no shirt. His expression was curious. She tried to think of a plausible lie, even though it was clear she’d been spying on him. He glanced toward the waterfall, where he’d been showering. Then his gaze moved to her bikini bottoms, which were slightly askew. His nostrils flared, as if he could smell her arousal.
She closed her eyes, mortified.
He didn’t say anything. Not one word. After a short pause, he picked up the bucket and walked toward the falls. She rose to her feet, following him.
“I can do that.”
He let her have the bucket. While she filled it, he retrieved his shirt and boxer shorts, which were wet. He wrung out the fabric and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he placed the full bucket on top.
