by Brynn Kelly
Damn, he kissed with military precision. She’d lost herself for several long, sweet minutes. That one wasn’t like their kiss last night, on the bed. Her body had responded then, sure, but her mind had been driven by a strategy that had little to do with desire—emotional, or physical.
The kiss in the water and the one on the cliff had been all strategy on his part. But that kiss just now, it was both of them stripped naked. No pretenses, no defenses. It’d seemed natural to open up to each other physically, after opening their souls and sharing their secrets.
Why the hell did she think she could trust this guy? She hadn’t known him forty-eight hours. The number one lesson of her last decade? She was better off alone than putting her faith in anyone else. Twenty miles from Nowheresville—that’s where she belonged, that was the dream that’d kept her sane in jail.
But now that she had a chance to make it real, its bleakness and emptiness made her stomach curl. Dammit. There is something you fear—nothingness, loneliness. She hurled a sneaker at her collected clothes. It plowed through them like a bowling pin and bounced off a wall. No. No way. Those were the things she craved.
But talking to Rafe, kissing him, being with him—it made her feel...alive. The buzz of bouncing flirty banter off a man with a quick mind, the rush of connecting with someone, the pull of physical attraction...
She kicked everything back into a heap. Dang, she needed to get out of this crazy place that screwed with her head, and away from the man who made her feel so raw and exposed, and...goddamned hopeful. Deception Island, huh? Looked like the person she was deceiving was herself.
* * *
The white light of the midday sun had given way to the gold of late afternoon by the time a splashing in the shallows heralded Rafe’s return.
“Ugh. I smelled you before I saw you,” Holly said, as he trudged up from the sand—shirtless again, of course, the low sun warming his skin to the color of burnt caramel. Pity the improvised body bag over his shoulder ruined the view.
He laid it on a patch of shaded grass, as gently as if the guy was merely injured. He’d wrapped the body in the parachute and secured it with the ropes and about a roll of duct tape so nothing was visible, though liquids she didn’t want to think about seeped through dark patches in the fabric. She shuddered, and yanked the last of the clothes from the washing line.
“It’ll be worse by tomorrow,” he said, strolling over, “but hopefully they won’t stop to distinguish between a one-day-old body and a two-day-old one. Can’t imagine they’re going to want to ID this guy before they dispose of him.”
“It looks pretty bulky—will they believe it’s me?”
“I’ve wrapped it in a couple of towels, to soak up some of the fluids.”
“Fluids. Oh, God.” She retched, shoving her palm over her mouth.
“Sorry, princess.” He dropped the parachute pack and pulled his forearm across his chest, stretching his shoulder. She didn’t even pretend she wasn’t checking out the straining muscles—it took her mind off the corpse, at least. He repeated it with the other arm, too lost in thought to notice her attention.
“Here,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket and laying it on the picnic table.
“An iPhone?”
“Counterfeit, and an older model, but it seems to work. Faint connection to a network, but no GPS. It was switched off, so it’s got a little battery left—enough for an email or phone call or two, if nothing else. Take it. We’ll be able to remain in contact once I’m off the island.”
Remain in contact. That thought really shouldn’t appeal like it did.
“You’re not leaving me the sat phone?”
“I have to risk taking it, in case my guy responds. Can I trust you not to murder me in the night if I return this?” He placed her pocketknife on the table.
She met his eyes. “You can trust me.”
He held her gaze for a few seconds, assessing her, then gave a swift nod. “You done packing?”
Before he could change his mind, she zipped the knife and phone into the pockets of her cargoes. “I’ve packed pretty much everything—which took all of about two minutes.” She waved a hand at her backpack, now stuffed with clothes and leaning on a pole on the veranda, next to a pile of bedding and towels and kitchen stuff, and the first-aid kit. “I figure we’ll only take as much food as we need for the night, and leave the rest refrigerated for now.”
“Good plan.” He grabbed a towel from the pile. “Time to make the princess a castle. I found a spot that should work—sheltered enough to provide cover from the weather and human eyes, but with a good view of incoming traffic. I’ll shower, then we can go. I smell like a zombie.”
Hell, if the undead looked like that, bring on the zombie apocalypse. But no kidding, he stank. He disappeared into the cabin. The screen door to the bathroom squealed open and snapped shut, the gas hissed as the hot water fired up. She let her eyes close, picturing a less sensible version of herself following him, stripping off his shorts and her clothes, lathering him up and picking up where they’d left off. She opened her eyes. Fortunately, she was the sensible type. She picked up the parachute pack and stuffed the clean laundry into it.
A weird kind of domestic bliss settled over the afternoon. She imagined it was the equivalent of what real couples did—working in the yard, pottering around in the house. They strolled to their new hideaway on the arm of land that hugged the eastern side of the lagoon. Now they’d opened up to each other, conversation came easily, though they didn’t stray into the deep territory of earlier that day. He talked about his son, she talked about prison and the bliss of sailing across the Pacific.
Maybe she’d played things wrong earlier. Maybe the way to get to him hadn’t been through physical temptation but through honesty. Who would have thought? She’d fallen back on the mind games Jasper had taught her, rather than trusting her instincts and respecting her adversary. She was better than that now. At some point, her connection with Rafe had become genuine—and she’d wager Jasper’s sizeable fortune that the feeling wasn’t just at her end.
Together, she and Rafe slung the hammock between two palm trees. Straight out of a tropical postcard. Not that anyone had ever sent her one, so what would she know? They hung a mosquito net over it and he rigged a Windsurfer sail with rope so they could haul it up if it rained. Real cozy, though he’d stressed the hammock was hers and the ground was his.
He found wooden boxes in the shed and carried them to the hideaway for storage and seating, refusing to let her do anything physical. Her knee felt okay, if a little stiff and puffy, but he made it clear he wasn’t taking chances.
To stop herself from spending the entire afternoon goggling at his physique, she changed into her shorts and took the fishing rod to a rocky outcrop, having been banned from the jetty in case the bad guys came. She left his T-shirt on, though it was stiff with salt. After throwing back an aquarium of tropical fish, she finally landed two snapper. While she scaled, gutted and filleted, he figured out the number of the fake iPhone and went online to create a new email account for each of them, so they could keep in contact—she noted he wasn’t trusting her with access to whatever means he was using to communicate with his buddy. “Just until I’m sure you’re safe,” he said. Yes, just until then.
As the sky blazed pink and orange, with a blue-black cloud blanketing the horizon, they set up a campfire. Rafe stripped a leaf from a banana plant, wrapped the fish in little green packages tied up with a flax-like fiber, and placed them in the embers to steam.
Holly lay back against one of the boxes and bit into a wild banana, still warm from the sun. Its sweet tang danced in her mouth. Rafe leaned on the trunk of a palm tree, long legs crossed in front of him, laptop on his knees.
Weird to think this time tomorrow he’d be gone. Then what? She wasn’t fazed by the idea of being
left alone—it sure beat being surrounded by several hundred women slowly suffocating from incarceration. As long as she was alive and not locked up she wasn’t about to complain about anything. But her gut took a dive at the thought of not having Rafe around. How could she feel so goddamn comfortable with a guy she’d only met two days ago? Her skin fizzed with anticipation whenever he came near, her insides went gooey at his voice, her brain fired up as they discussed even the most banal logistical issue. Was she just deranged after being denied male attention for so long?
No. She was old enough to know this was real. Temporary, and disturbing, but real.
“Weather report says we’ll pick up the edge of that typhoon within a couple of days,” he said. “If it gets severe, shelter in the villa—they won’t navigate these waters in a storm.”
She tossed the banana skin into the undergrowth. “How bad is it?”
“The equivalent of a category three or four hurricane, but it should skirt to the north of us. Hopefully you won’t get anything worse than swaying palm trees and falling coconuts.”
“Beats swaying parachutes and falling pirates.”
He tapped on the keyboard some more. And then sat straighter. “Mon Dieu.”
“What is it?”
“Fl—my guy. He’s sent a message.” His pupils raced across the screen. “He’s on his way to Bali. Nightmare of a route—via Paris and Singapore, but it gives us a backup.”
“Will you wait here for him?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go with the militia, as planned, and tell him to lie low and wait for my say-so. I’ll contact my guy when I know the location.”
“What if they confiscate the sat phone?”
“I’ll make sure they don’t find it. They have no reason to suspect I have one.” He tapped out a reply. “Merde, princesse. This plan might actually work.”
He slid the computer and sat phone into its plastic bag and let his gaze fall lazily on her, the sunset lighting up amber tones in his eyes. She stared right back—it seemed the comfortable thing to do. At some point that afternoon the nature of the nervous tension in her belly had changed. The fear of being found out had given way to pure attraction—that delicious awareness that something could happen between them, heightened by the uncertainty of when or if it would. The idea she could have a future with him was laughable, of course. But they had tonight.
Chapter 16
“Where did you grow up?”
Holly blinked at the sudden question. Rafe really didn’t ease into small talk, did he? “Ah, a place called Carterville. On the outskirts of Los Angeles.”
“What’s that like?”
“No one lives there by choice, if that’s what you mean. It’s a rough neighborhood—a different kind of rough from what you knew, I guess. Why do you ask?”
He pulled a baguette from their food store, cut it open and began spreading butter on it. She liked how he assumed it was his job to feed them. Her father had only ever gone into their kitchenette to get beer. She and Jasper had lived on fast food and TV dinners—or flashy restaurants, when they’d pulled off a con.
“When I was in the refugee camps, America was the big hope. I used to get myself to sleep by imagining the UN coming to choose me and Gabriel, and give us to an American family, who lived in a house in Phoenix with a basement and real beds in the rooms.” He wrapped the bread in banana leaves and laid it in the embers. “I don’t think I knew what a basement was and I don’t know where I got Phoenix from. We thought everyone in America was rich and safe and happy.”
“That wasn’t far from the dream I had.”
“And all this time I’ve been calling you princess. Are your parents still there, in Carterville?” He perched on a box, and began ripping salad leaves.
“I don’t give a damn where my father is, as long as he’s nowhere near me. My mother went missing a few years after I left home.” Home. Huh. She couldn’t even say the word without it sounding ironic. “Rumor was that my father had killed her during one of their epic fights and dumped her body. Sounds like the cops investigated for all of about half an hour.”
He’d frozen and was contemplating her. She must sound like a psycho, talking about her mother’s likely homicide as if the woman had just moved to another town but she’d long ago stopped thinking of her parents with any emotion. Well, hey, if anyone could understand the urge to block out feelings and bury the past, Rafe could. She felt like she could talk to him all night, though her body hummed with other ideas. Would he make a move? Could she—without him thinking it was a ruse? Because, holy crap, she wanted to feel that body against hers again. Just the thought of it—
“Brothers or sisters?” he said.
“No, lucky for them,” she squeaked.
He leaned forward, legs bent and forearms on thighs, and studied her. “So we both bypassed the happy family. This is why we...understand each other.”
She swallowed. “Wait—you didn’t find your happy family, with your wife and son? Not even early on?”
He pulled a mango from the cooler. The aroma of the fish, the fire and the steaming bread swirled around her, better than any perfume she’d swiped from Macy’s as a teenager. Her mouth watered.
“I stumbled into one,” he said, as he sliced mango onto the lettuce. “Not just my wife and son but her big Corsican family. They welcomed me—they are good people—but I never felt a part of it. It wasn’t something I sought, not after my history. Simone and I, and Theo—we had this pretense of a happy family, but I never felt it, not inside. All I got was this overwhelming urge to protect my wife and son from evil. There was no room in me for anything else. I could never enjoy the things you were supposed to enjoy—the football games, as you said—because I was always waiting for the soldiers to come and take it away. And they did, eventually. I should have known my past would catch up, that my family would suffer because of it.” He threw the mango skin into the trees, with more force than it warranted.
“But you love Theo.”
“I believe so, yes. It’s hard for me to understand this emotion, but I feel it here.” He planted his fist on his chest. “It’s like a dagger that sits in my heart and twists whenever I think about him, especially now that he’s...” He shook his head. “I’d want to die if he died—and I’d die for him. I call that love—I don’t know if it really is. Those feelings—they’re the only way I know I’m alive.”
Her throat gummed up. She never cried but that...that. She blinked hurriedly.
“The thing you must know about me, princess—the thing I must warn you about—in some ways I’m more machine than man. After I was rescued from the militia, a platoon of psychologists did their best to reprogram me. They called me a ‘fascinating’ case, a curiosity. They wrote papers about me, like I was some rare zoo specimen. The rehab took almost as many years as I’d spent as a soldier. Sometimes it felt like another ceaseless round of torture, but eventually they restored the basic functionality of a human being—confidence, self-control, the understanding of right and wrong. But some emotions and instincts are too complicated to replicate. Fear, happiness, empathy.” He shrugged.
“Seriously? You never feel any of those things?”
“I know that if I threaten someone they feel fear, because that’s what the psychologists told me—not because I feel it. It comes from my brain, not my soul. I don’t even yawn when other people yawn—that would require true empathy. My wife...she cried a lot after Theo was born. I would hold her, because I figured that’s what a husband did, but inside I felt empty. I didn’t care—not because I didn’t want to, but because I physically couldn’t. I didn’t understand how she could be sad and complain that she felt alone, when she had a home and a family, and she was safe. My son healed me, in some ways. It was a relief to feel something for someone. But that doesn’t seem to transfer to anyone else. T
his is why I can never be with anyone.”
She exhaled raggedly. He would only be telling her this if he felt what she felt. Her heart ached—for what would never be, for Rafe and Theo. That poor fucking kid. “I understand,” she managed to say.
“I believe you do. I don’t usually talk this freely.” With bare fingers he plucked one of the fish packets from the embers and untied it. Steam puffed out. “We should eat.”
“You’ll get Theo back.”
He grunted, tipping the fish onto a bed of mango and lettuce. He drew out the baguette and unwrapped it, broke off a section and added it to the plate. “Voilà,” he said, handing it to her. “It seems wrong to be taking pleasure from this...” He swept a hand. This? Meaning the food, the setting...her? “When he is in hell right now.”
“But you see, your guilt shows you are a good father, and you care deeply for your son.”
“If guilt was the only test of being a good parent, I would pass.” He stared at the empty plate in front of him, as if wondering how it came to be there. “Do you think you’ll have children, one day?”
“Hell, no. Not that I have anything against them—I just wouldn’t wish my life on them. Kids deserve parents who’ve got their shit together.” She popped a cube of mango in her mouth. Its silky sweetness exploded on her tongue. She nearly choked as her words caught up with her. “I didn’t mean... Your son’s very lucky to have a father like you. Any kid would be.”
“I agree—parents should have their shit together.”
“I bet he idolizes you.”
“He does.” His voice was flecked with surprise, as if he wondered how she could know that. Like it wasn’t obvious. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m never there.”
“You’re away a lot—soldiering?”
He plated up his dinner. “For most of the year.”
“And your home is in Corsica.”
“My son lives on Corsica, with his grandmother. It’s where I lived with Simone, and it’s where I’m headquartered. I suppose that makes it a home. The regiment I’m in—we’re not your normal military. Most of us are the only family we have. We’re sent on long, remote missions.”
