The Castaway Bride

by Kandy Shepherd

  She lifted up her full skirts and sped down the stairs. Negotiating the gravel in satin heels wasn’t as easy as she’d thought and she stumbled.

  Someone caught her arm to support her. She whipped around. Howard!

  No. The man from the elevator.

  “So where are you going?” he asked in that slow, sexy Australian drawl.

  “To the marina. There are boats parked there. I—”

  “You don’t park a boat, you moor it.”

  “Moor it, park it. Who cares? There are boats there and I want to hire one to get me off this darn island.”

  “How do you intend to do that?”

  Cristy was beyond thinking straight. “I… uh… just ask people, I guess.”

  “Walk up and down the jetty shouting into the boats?”

  “If I have to…”

  “In your wedding dress.”

  A pained look crossed his face. A spare me the idiocies of women kind of look. The kind of look that would annoy her on a normal day. Drive her crazy on a PMS day. And right now, made her itch to shove him in the nearest clump of bougainvillea and enjoy watching him become impaled on the thorns.

  She gritted her teeth and flounced—she couldn’t do anything but flounce in a voluminous silk gown—away from him. A breeze picked up her veil and whipped it around her. Fighting with the wind to push it back from her face, she found herself turned right back around to face him.

  And was stunned by the struggle visible on his face.

  He didn’t want to help her. Was obviously regretting he’d found himself in the same elevator as a bride on the run. But she could see that he was losing the battle. The words were forced grudgingly from his mouth. “I’ve got a boat.”

  Hope bubbled through her. “A boat? Here? You mean—?”

  “I’ll take you off the island.” He spoke through gritted teeth.

  “You really mean that?”

  He nodded.

  She closed her eyes in sheer relief. “Thank you. Oh thank you.” Then looked up at him. “I… I can pay you.”

  But could she?

  She realized she had no wallet, no handbag, no pockets even. She was a bride for heaven’s sake. And a bride, like the Queen of England, didn’t carry cash or credit cards.

  “Actually I can’t pay you. Not, uh, yet anyway. I…”

  “Who said anything about payment? Do you want to get off this island or not? Come on, before I change my mind.”

  He strode away. Cristy stumbled again as she followed him across the gravel. Darn shoes. They were hardly the stuff of rapid escapes.

  But she didn’t want to waste time by stopping to take them off. And she didn’t want to admit she’d stumbled because she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him as he walked ahead of her.

  Broad shoulders tapered to the best butt she’d ever seen fill beaten-up Levi’s. Brides on their wedding day were not meant to notice details like that on other men. Or the muscled strength of his arms, tan against the black of his T-shirt. Or the athletic grace of his stride. And brides were not meant to experience, for even a second, a little shiver of sensual appreciation. But she did. She still wore the dress. She still wore the veil. But she was no longer Howard’s bride-to-be.

  She followed the handsome stranger past the lush plantings of frangipani and bougainvillea that lined the pathway leading to the marina where the wealthy visitors to the island moored their craft.

  He strode out on to the jetty. “My boat’s over here.”

  Cristy hadn’t thought about what type of boat he might have. It was just a means of escape. But she was surprised by the luxurious white yacht he indicated before he leaped on board.

  “C’mon,” he said, holding out a hand.

  She stood stock-still on the jetty, unable to move forward. Her feet seemed glued to the wooden planks beneath. Ahead were the aquamarine waters of the vast Pacific Ocean bounded only by the endless horizon.

  She was about to get on board a boat with a total stranger. She didn’t even know this man’s name. Who he was, where he came from. He didn’t seem axe murderer material but who could tell?

  Then she heard it. Her name carried on the humid tropical air from way back where the hotel gardens edged the pathway. “Criiistiee!”

  She spun around to see, still well in the distance but coming closer, a small dark-suited figure followed by several others like him and an indistinguishable blob of hot pink. This was not a wedding march but a wedding hunt—and she was the prey.

  She gathered up her skirts with one hand, took the lean brown hand being offered to her by the handsome stranger, and jumped on board his boat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cristy hadn’t allowed for her long, full skirts being caught up by the wind and slowing her down as they billowed around her legs.

  She was suddenly, frighteningly, aware of a gap of blue water way beneath her, then as she cleared it, felt her high heel catch on the railing of the boat.

  Fuelled by a spurt of panic, she jerked back her foot and wrenched her shoe away. The heel snapped off, freeing her, but the force of it propelled her helplessly forward. She stumbled awkwardly onto the deck, teetered, managed to right herself, then tripped on the hem of her gown, lurched forward, and fell.

  “Damn, shoot, hell!” She didn’t usually curse, but she couldn’t help the words from streaming out as she struggled to pick herself up.

  Suddenly strong arms were around her, lifting her to her feet as though she were a featherweight. “Whoa! Thought for a minute there I had a bride overboard.”

  Cristy was too stunned to say anything. Her heart was pounding and her breath came in gasps. “Me too,” she finally managed to pant. She remembered with dread that gap of water teeming, she imagined, with vicious, bride-eating sharks. “This darn dress.”

  She looked down at her wedding gown as she spoke and found reason again to curse it. This double-darn dress. It was cut so low she was practically falling out of the front, thanks to the tightly-fitted corselet beneath that gave a gravity-defying boost to her cleavage. She’d joked with the designer that it was lucky she wasn’t being married in church in something so revealing.

  And now look where she was—in the arms of a stranger on his boat and terrified that at any time soon her breasts might hove into his sight.

  She flushed and pulled away from his grasp, intent on a modesty check and a discreet hauling-up of her bodice. But before she could do more than reassure herself she was covered, her rescuer stooped down, pushed her skirts up and aside, slid off her heel-less shoe, and had her foot cradled in his strong, brown hand.

  “Now for your ankle,” he said.

  Ohmigod. What the heck did he think he was doing? He should be getting this boat moving. Howard wouldn’t know which boat she was on, but it wouldn’t take him long to search the marina and find her.

  “My ankle is fine,” she protested.

  He tightened his grip so she was powerless to move, no matter how hard she tried to pull away. “That was a heavy fall you took there. You could have hurt yourself.”

  With powerful but gentle fingers he stroked her instep and around her ankle, probing for any injury. “It’s not swollen? Feel okay?”

  He glanced up at her as he spoke and she caught her breath as it struck her again just how handsome he was. Handsome in a bold, take-me-as-you-find-me kind of way with high cheekbones, a strong jaw, a firm, sensuous mouth and marvelous white teeth. He just needed an earring and a bandanna around his dark head to pass for a modern-day buccaneer.

  But he wasn’t about to make her walk the plank. He squeezed her ankle again and ran his fingers firmly under her instep. “Need ice on the ankle?”

  All Cristy could do was shake her head, incapable of speech. Not because of the pain. It was only her shoe that had sustained injury, not her ankle. No. She couldn’t speak because of the incredible sensation of his rough, callused hands on her silky, stocking-clad foot.

  How could something as ordinary and everyd
ay as a foot become the channel for such tingling pleasure? New and surprising sensations shot up from a super sensitive instep and traveled in shivery delight up every nerve pathway in her leg. Her nipples tingled and tensed.

  She didn’t want ice. She wanted the warmth of his hands stroking her. And never stopping. She yearned to close her eyes and savor with a sigh this extraordinary feeling. If she were a cat she’d be purring.

  This bliss was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Certainly not with Howard. Six weeks had not been long enough to progress from pal to lover. They’d decided to wait until their wedding night for anything more than a kiss or a cuddle. And his pleasant kisses and tentative caresses had done nothing to thrill her.

  Not like this thrilled her.

  Just as her toes started to curl over with delight, her rescuer abruptly took his hands away and stood up, uncoiling his broad-shouldered, muscular body like a lithe jungle animal.

  His action jerked Cristy awake from a trance. A warm, sensual trance where the world had shrunk to him, her, and the magical feel of his hands on her body.

  Her voice returned with a rush. “No ice. Th… thanks. My foot’s fine.”

  “Good.” He stood back a step from her at the same moment she stepped back from him. She was tall but he was taller and he towered above her.

  She had never felt more mortified. This stranger had delivered first aid; she’d accepted it as a caress. Dear heaven, she hoped he hadn’t guessed how she’d reacted to his touch. Surely he couldn’t see her aroused nipples through the fabric of her gown?

  She couldn’t look him in the eye for fear her turbulent feelings showed in her own eyes. Rather, she concentrated on the hem of her dress—now looking less than pristine bridal after being trailed over gravel, dirt and deck.

  She picked up her skirts. In an effort to regain her dignity, she started to hobble away from him on her remaining three-inch heeled white satin pump. She glanced back to the resort. Howard and the others had taken the path that headed toward the other end of the marina. But they’d be back.

  “Wait a minute.”

  She stopped and turned at the sound of her rescuer’s voice.

  “Show me your other foot,” he commanded.

  Too startled to do anything but obey, Cristy pushed it forward from under her long skirt. “It’s okay I—” she started to say but stopped, speechless, as in one swift action he reached down for her shoe, slid it off and ripped off the heel.

  She snatched back both shoe and dislocated spike heel. “Hey! That was a perfectly good shoe!”

  She was too shocked to say anything more sensible. Did he have any idea of what she’d paid for these delicate scraps of leather and satin? With so little time to plan the wedding, she hadn’t been able to shop for a sale bargain.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders with total male disregard. “The other one was broken.” He didn’t need to add, so what’s the fuss? His expression said it for him.

  “Yes but—” Outrage choked her voice. Those shoes were works of art.

  “You don’t want to trip again. And you can’t walk on this deck in sharp heels like that— you’d ruin it in seconds.” His voice was gruff and his jaw tense.

  She stared from the broken heel to him, to the polished deck, and back to him again. “I can’t believe you did—” she started, but he gave her no chance to continue.

  “In fact that’s not good enough. The shoes are still too rough on the deck. They’ll have to go altogether.”

  He moved toward her again but Cristy stepped back, so that the railing pressed hard into the small of her back. “No!” she gasped in sudden panic that had nothing to do with shoes and everything to do with his proximity. “I… I can take them off myself.”

  Without taking her eyes off him, she leaned down and slid off her shoes. “Happy now?” she asked, as she stood up again. She took a step away from the railing—and had to grab onto it as her silk-stocking clad feet slid from beneath her on the polished deck.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” she wailed. “My stockings are so slippery I…” She faltered to a halt. A glint in his eyes and the hint of a wicked grin made it only too obvious what he was thinking.

  “I don’t need any help to take off my stockings,” she hissed. Again on the type of impulse she never gave in to, she pulled up her skirts to above her right knee and unsnapped her garters. Slowly, provocatively, she rolled her silky stocking down the length of her slender leg, not breaking eye contact with him for a moment. Then dangled the flimsy wisp of silk in front of her. “See?”

  “I can see.”

  Through dangerously narrowed eyes he appraised her bare leg, his gaze travelling from the tip of her pink-painted toes to where her thigh disappeared into a froth of lace. Then his eyes moved upward and lingered where her breasts swelled lushly over her tight, boned bodice—that darn too-tight, too-low, way-too-sexy bodice.

  Cristy grew alarmed at the intensity of his expression. She felt the flush on her cheeks deepen painfully as she realized how foolish she’d been. He would read her defiance as a come on. And who could blame him? Her heart started hammering hard against her chest.

  With suddenly trembling fingers she let her skirt fall down to cover her legs again, tightening her thighs together under its protective cover.

  “I’ll… uh… I’ll take the other one off in the bathroom,” she muttered.

  He looked down at her and then past her to the shore. “Do you want to stand around arguing about it or do you want me to get you out of here?”

  Cristy swung around to follow his line of vision. She’d been so mesmerized by the touch of this stranger’s hands she’d nearly forgotten her predicament. The black dots and the pink blob had grown alarmingly. Howard, his posse of groomsmen, and Miriam had made an about turn and were heading for the jetty. Now she would be clearly in their sights.

  Forget the shoes. Forget the stockings. Forget everything else but escape. “Get me out of here! Pronto!”

  Her rescuer—she still didn’t know his name—cast off the mooring rope. Within seconds she felt the yacht’s auxiliary engine purr into life and the deck started to vibrate beneath her feet. She clutched the railing for support.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she urged under her breath. Why had she wasted valuable time letting her rescuer fool around with her foot? She had to get away from Starlight Island. She could not face Howard. Could not face Miriam. How could anything they say make any difference? But they were closing in on her. So close she could clearly hear them shouting at her to get off the boat, see the furious expression on Howard’s face. Oh hurry!

  As the boat gathered speed, that gap of choppy, turquoise water between the boat and the jetty grew to a few feet, then a few yards and then a distance that Howard wouldn’t dare to swim.

  The wedding party shrank smaller and smaller until they seemed like so many black ants—and one pink one—scurrying around on the shore.

  She realized she had been holding her breath and she let it out with a sigh. No way could they catch her now. Her wedding was behind her. She had escaped.

  In the cockpit, Matt’s hands clenched tight around the wheel. Usually he loved the sensation of facing endless blue horizons with the powerful boat at his command. It was the kind of freedom he’d dreamed about for much of his thirty-four years.

  But that was when he had the boat to himself and no one but himself to please. Sharing Wayfarer with a runaway bride wasn’t part of the picture. He must have been insane to invite her on board.

  What was it about this woman he’d known only for a heartbeat that made him behave so irrationally? That made him throw away those rules for his solitary new life he’d forged so painfully out of treachery and hurt? That had lured that pesky white charger out of retirement?

  He’d come up here to these islands off the Queensland north coast to take time out. Executive burnout, he’d joked to his friends in explanation of his shock decision to take a long, open-ended vacation.
>
  To his board of directors in Sydney, panicked at the thought of his absence for even a few days, he’d given a more mundane excuse.

  But he hadn’t given anyone a hint of the real, gut-wrenching reason for his escape. He could never talk to another person about the horror of discovering his girlfriend Julia and his brother Danny together in bed, and embroiled in a treacherous plot to embezzle him of his fortune. Or the actions he’d been forced to take to thwart them.

  A muscle tensed painfully in his jaw. He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted long, solitary hours on his boat. Only him, the ocean and his plans for the future. Plans that did not include a woman.

  Especially not this woman, who embodied everything he distrusted.

  His hands clenched even tighter on the wheel as he remembered how he’d felt as he’d pulled the runaway bride to her feet from where she’d fallen on the deck. The feel of her warm, soft body in his arms, the heady scent of roses that had invaded his senses.

  Her creamy breasts had swelled voluptuously over the top of her dress and when he’d leaned over her he’d seen a tantalizing glimpse of one delicate pink nipple. He’d had to fight himself not to stare or, worse, reach out and caress her.

  But that was nothing compared to the battle he’d fought with himself when he’d probed her ankle for injury.

  During his years on construction sites he’d checked hundreds of suspected breaks and sprains. But nothing had prepared him for the feelings that had threatened to overtake him as he held in his hands that slender, fine-boned foot in its soft, silky stocking.

  Suddenly a routine first-aid examination had become something incredibly, surprisingly sexy.

  As he’d stroked her warm flesh, his para-medical training had fled his mind. He could only think about how he’d like to push her skirts up and caress first her shapely calves, then her thighs, as she sighed and moaned her pleasure. His jeans had become uncomfortably tight.