Dangerous Passions

by Brenda Harlen

  His eyes narrowed. As if her sarcasm wasn’t enough, now she was insulting him. “Gilligan?”

  She shrugged. “You were the one who brought up the show.”

  “But—Gilligan?”

  “Believe me, I’d be much happier if you were a professor who could miraculously fabricate some kind of communication device out of coconut shells and vines.”

  Right now that would make him happy, too, but it wasn’t going to happen. And although he had certain survival skills that no doubt would be useful in this situation, that wasn’t one of them.

  “You’re the scientist,” he reminded her. “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  She looked around. “Well, I’m a little out of my element here.”

  “Then we’ll have to give you another role.” He decided turnabout was fair play. “Ginger or Mary-Ann?”

  “Neither,” she snapped.

  But the idea was too intriguing to let go.

  He let his gaze skim over her long, shapely legs, the softly curved hips, trim waist. He lingered for a moment on her full breasts, remembering the weight of them in his palms, the taste of her rosy nipples. His body responded predictably to the mental image as he continued his survey.

  He took in the graceful line of her neck, the stubborn tilt of her chin, the tempting lushness of her lips. And the dark-green eyes that were currently spitting fire. Then there was the hair. He grinned. “Definitely Ginger.”

  She glared at him.

  “She was so hot.”

  Shannon didn’t say anything.

  “Of course, there’s something to be said for Mary-Ann’s sweet innocence. And the way her curves filled out those little shirts and short shorts.”

  “You’re a pervert.”

  “Just a healthy red-blooded man.”

  “Same thing,” she muttered, pushing past him to lead the way.

  Mike fell into step behind her, grinning as he watched her slim hips sway with every step.

  Definitely Ginger.

  Definitely hot.

  Ginger.

  Shannon huffed out an exasperated breath and pushed ahead through the trees. The man infuriated her. He was bold and arrogant and—dammit all—charming. He’d labeled her a sitcom-movie-star bimbo, but he’d done so with a slow, sexy smile, and she’d been ready to tumble into his arms.

  Instead she’d done the smart thing: walked away.

  Shannon had no idea where she was or where she was going, and she didn’t care. She just needed to get away from Michael—to keep a safe, respectable distance and pretend her body wasn’t still yearning to finish what they’d started in her hotel room last night.

  Huffing out another breath she recognized that she wasn’t mad at Michael; she was mad at herself.

  She was a practical, rational woman with plans for her life that didn’t include being kidnapped in Miami, shot at by killers or stranded on a deserted island.

  Of course, nowhere in her carefully laid plans had she anticipated meeting Michael Courtland, either. And it was that first meeting—a seemingly chance encounter—which had fundamentally altered the path of her life. A path mapped out through careful consideration and meticulous planning—a path leading to career success and financial independence with no side trips for personal pleasures and no detours for emotional entanglements.

  She pushed her way through the knee-high grasses, swatted at the bugs buzzing around.

  Now she was in the midst of one hell of a detour, and all because she’d allowed herself to be seduced by a few kisses on a moonlit beach.

  She was the only one to blame for what had happened between them. She could have—and should have—turned away from the attraction blazing between them. But he’d made her skin burn and her mind spin and her heart yearn, and she’d never felt any of those things before.

  Her ex-husband had said she was a control freak. From her work in the lab to her responses in the bedroom, he’d accused her of rigid management of every aspect of her life.

  Why can’t you ever be spontaneous? Why can’t you just let go and enjoy it? he’d said.

  “It” being sex, of course.

  Not that she didn’t enjoy sex—she did. She just didn’t understand why men were obsessed with it and women were supposed to get swept away by it. It was pleasant and pleasurable, but it had never been all-encompassing for her.

  She’d never wanted it to be all-encompassing. She didn’t want to chase after the elusive passion-of-a-lifetime as her mother had been doing for so many years.

  Then she’d met Michael.

  In six minutes he’d shown her more about passion than she’d experienced during the entire six months of her marriage to Doug. He’d made her feel both desire and desirable. He’d made her want things she’d never wanted: personal complications and emotional entanglements and uninhibited sex.

  But she couldn’t trust any of those feelings now. Their meeting hadn’t been spontaneous or coincidental—it had been planned, a staged attempt to get close to her. And it was a blow to her pride to think his seduction routine had all been part of a design to keep her under his surveillance.

  She thought of the heat in his eyes when he’d touched her, the passion in his lips when he’d kissed her. Had it all been fake?

  She remembered the press of his body against her, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal, and managed a smile. Okay, at least she could be certain that something had been real.

  She pushed the memories, the questions, aside.

  What had happened with Michael in her hotel room last night was in the past; whatever his reasons for being with her then had absolutely no bearing on the predicament they were in now. And they were definitely in a predicament.

  Stranded.

  On a deserted island.

  Together.

  Her primary concern should have been the “stranded” part. Instead, all she could think about was that they were “together.”

  She needed to concentrate on Peart’s threat and figure out some way to get off the island before he returned. That was certainly enough cause for concern without letting herself be distracted by this intense attraction that refused to go away.

  She sent up a quick and silent prayer that the coast guard would show up to rescue them—soon.

  Mike followed behind Shannon, preoccupied with his own thoughts. He didn’t worry about where she was leading—the island wasn’t big enough that he needed to be concerned they might get lost. He was more concerned with the possibility they might not find a source of fresh water.

  In this heat, dehydration was a very real concern. Shannon was already showing the effects of fatigue. Her steps were lagging, but she continued along without protest. She couldn’t have slept at all during the night, and he knew she had to be exhausted.

  But she didn’t complain, even though he knew her muscles had to be burning, the agony from the physical marathon she’d endured enough to make anyone scream.

  And then she did scream.

  Chapter 5

  The reason for Shannon’s cry was immediately apparent to Mike.

  It was a brown-and-yellow boa, about six feet in length, and it was hanging from a branch immediately in front of her face. An unwelcome surprise, but also a harmless one.

  Unfortunately, this snake didn’t seem to know it should be harmless. As Mike watched, it somehow dropped from the low-hanging limb and managed to drape itself across the back of her neck.

  Shannon stood perfectly still, her face white, her eyes wide, pleading.

  “It’s not poisonous,” he reassured her, reaching for the snake.

  As he did so, the reptile curled its body around her throat.

  He cursed under his breath as he realized the stupid creature didn’t seem to know it wasn’t big enough to consume human prey. And while it didn’t have any venom to worry about, there was a real possibility it could cut off Shannon’s supply of oxygen.

  He wrapped his fingers around the body, behind its head. The boa i
mmediately flexed its muscles, tightening its coils in protest.

  Shannon gasped and instinctively began clawing at it.

  “Relax,” Mike told her, forcing himself to do the same as he worked at untangling the boa. But the snake was determined to hold on, and he was having trouble getting a solid grip.

  At last he managed to wrap his fingers around the body and unravel it from Shannon’s neck. The creature responded to the indignant handling by twisting around his arm. If Mike hadn’t been so concerned about Shannon, he might have been impressed by its tenacity. Instead, he was just pissed off.

  Still holding the back of its head in one hand, he grabbed for the tail end with the other and stretched his arms apart so the snake couldn’t maneuver into an offensive position again. He held the stance until it stopped struggling, then finally tossed it back into the bushes.

  When he heard the rustle of it retreating through the long grass, he turned back to Shannon.

  Her face was still white, her eyes still wide and filled with terror. And while she hadn’t moved a single step since she’d first set eyes on the snake, her entire body was now trembling.

  Mike gathered her close in an instinctive gesture of comfort.

  A mistake, he realized immediately, because although she clung to him like a frightened child, she wasn’t a child. The soft curves that pressed against him were definitely those of a woman—a woman he had no business putting his hands on. Not when her life was in danger because he’d left her alone when she was vulnerable.

  But when he might have drawn away, she burrowed deeper against him.

  “It’s gone.” He rubbed his hands gently down her arms.

  She continued to hold on to him, continued to tremble.

  “Snakes are pretty common here,” he told her, “but they don’t get much bigger than that one.”

  Despite his casual tone, he had to admit that he’d experienced a few moments of unease when the constrictor wrapped itself around her throat.

  “It seemed big enough to me.” She shuddered. “I’m terrified of snakes.”

  He could tell it was a difficult admission for her to make. A woman as fiercely independent as Shannon wouldn’t easily admit to any kind of weakness, and he imagined that she’d only done so now because events of the past twelve hours had chipped away at her usually impenetrable facade.

  “They’re not among my favorite creatures in the world, either,” he admitted.

  “Really?” She asked the question with her face still buried in his shirt.

  “Really.” He brushed a hand over her hair, worked his fingers through the wet ends that were tangled together.

  “Sharks scare me to death, too,” she confessed softly.

  “Sharks?”

  She nodded. “While I was swimming, all I could think was that I’d rather die from a gunshot than be eaten by a shark.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry that we’ll find any hammerheads in the trees around here,” he assured her.

  She eased out of his arms, looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “I’m just surprised that a woman who is worried about sharks would choose to jump off a boat in the middle of the ocean where the nearest landmass was miles away.”

  “Death at the hands of my abductors seemed imminent, while being eaten by a shark was only a possibility.”

  “Sharks or no sharks, you could have died in the water. From hypothermia or dehydration or any number of things.”

  She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin just a fraction. “I know, but at least it was my decision.”

  He shook his head. There was no denying that the woman had guts. “Dylan warned me about your independent streak.”

  “Independence isn’t a character flaw.”

  “It could be when it compels you to take a midnight swim in the middle of the ocean.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” she challenged. “Sit around and wait for you to rescue me?”

  “Yes.”

  His response startled her into silence for a moment.

  “I was finalizing my plans to get onto the yacht when you jumped off,” he told her.

  Her brows drew together. “How were you going to do that?”

  “Trust me—I would have managed it.”

  “You keep insisting that I should trust you, but you haven’t given me any reason to do so.”

  “I saved your life,” he said. “Twice.”

  She nodded. “But I might never have ended up on Drew’s yacht if you’d been honest with me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you’d told me that you were a private investigator when we first met, if you’d told me the truth about why you were in Florida, I would have been more wary when Drew showed up at my door with the same story.”

  He hated to admit it, but she had a valid point. “I didn’t tell you at first because Dylan asked me to keep the surveillance low-key. He wasn’t sure if there was any real danger, and he didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. And when Conroy was killed, he believed the threat had passed.”

  She considered his explanation for a moment. “Okay, that was at first,” she allowed. “What about later, when you introduced yourself to me on the beach?”

  Mike hesitated, knowing this was where things got a little sticky. “I didn’t tell you then because my reasons for being with you had nothing to do with my assignment.”

  She was obviously skeptical.

  “I was attracted to you. It was as simple—” and as complicated “—as that.”

  Shannon pondered his words as she followed in his footsteps. After the snake incident, she was more than happy to let Michael lead the way through the trees, to struggle along behind him through the hanging vines and palmetto fronds.

  It was as simple as that.

  Except nothing was ever as simple as it seemed, least of all the attraction that still simmered between them. She could deny it all she wanted, but it was there—hanging in the air as thick and heavy and all-encompassing as the humidity.

  And how completely inappropriate was that?

  They were stranded on a deserted island, at the mercy of the elements and the bugs—she paused on that thought to slap at another mosquito on her arm—and deadly predators with no way to escape, and she was thinking about her nonexistent sex life.

  A sex life that had almost been brought back into existence by Michael last night. Except that she’d kicked him out of her room because she’d been too stubborn and proud to admit that she was afraid. She couldn’t help but think how different her situation might be right now if only she’d let him stay with her.

  She wondered if they should discuss what had happened between them, then discarded the idea as quickly as it had come.

  She didn’t want to discuss it, she didn’t even want to think about it. It was probably the last thing on his mind right now, anyway, after the events of the past few hours.

  “Are we going to talk about it or continue to tiptoe around it?”

  His question proved her wrong, unnerving her with the realization that his thought process had so closely paralleled her own.

  “I’m perfectly happy to keep tiptoeing,” she said.

  “Figures,” he grumbled. “Most women want to talk a relationship to death, but you don’t want to talk at all.”

  “We don’t have a relationship. And I’m willing to talk about anything but last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was a mistake—a glaring error in judgment.” She flushed, realizing how incredibly insulting that sounded. “Not because of you personally, but because I don’t do things like that.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Things like what? Taking strange men back to your hotel room?”

  “Exactly like that,” she agreed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s irrational and irresponsible.”

  “And you’re alway
s rational and responsible,” he guessed.

  Except for last night… “Always.”

  “That doesn’t sound like very much fun.”

  She shrugged. “Fun isn’t high on my list of priorities.”

  “Maybe it should be. Maybe, if you let yourself have some fun every once in a while, you wouldn’t have made such a—what did you call it?—glaring error in judgment.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

  “That wasn’t a mutual decision. And I’m curious as to what may have inspired your out-of-character behavior.”

  She remained silent. A conversation, by definition, required more than one person, and she could end this one by simply refusing to be a part of it.

  “If you don’t know,” he continued. “How can you be sure it won’t happen again?”

  He was deliberately baiting her, but she still couldn’t prevent her instinctive and emphatic response. “It won’t.”

  He turned to face her, forcing her to stop abruptly. He was close. So close she could feel the heat emanating from his body—heat that frazzled her nerve endings and scrambled her thought processes.

  “How can you be sure?” he asked again.

  She swallowed. “Because anything personal between us would be a mistake.”

  “The timing and the circumstances might not be ideal,” he admitted. “But it’s already personal between us.”

  She moistened her chapped lips with the tip of her tongue, realizing her mistake when his gaze zeroed in on her mouth.

  “Isn’t there some kind of rule against involvement with a client?”

  His smile was slow, sensual. “I figured you for the kind of woman who would play by the rules, but I didn’t expect you to hide behind them.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “And you’re not my client,” he pointed out.

  “A mere technicality.”

  “An important distinction.”

  The insects continued to buzz around them, but she was oblivious to them now. She was oblivious to everything except Michael. She could see only him, the dark sheen of his hair, the undisguised hunger in his eyes, the sensual curve of his lips. She could hear only him, the steady rhythm of breath moving in and out of his lungs. She could smell only him, the elemental scent of male heat and earthy sweat. She’d worked in fragrance development early in her career at Divine Cosmetics. She understood the role of scent in triggering certain responses, but she’d never met a man whose natural essence triggered her own pheromones.