by Selena Kitt
"Ha." She rolled her eyes at that. "I don't know how to do shipwrecked. I know how to vacation and arrange charity events and make an entrance. I'm great at making an entrance."
"I bet you are."
"I'm also a fantastic runaway bride, by the way." She dug her toes deeper into the sand. "I can run away like nobody's business. Oh, and I'm better than anyone I know at getting drunk and passing out on yachts."
"Mixing alcohol and sleeping pills?" He raised his eyebrows at her. He avoided the runaway bride remark. "No wonder you slept through the storm."
"I don't suppose you've got a bottle of scotch somewhere on that boat?"
He shook his head. "I have several months' supply back on the island."
"The island. That's where you came from?"
He nodded.
"So who sent you?"
"Who sent me?" He laughed. "If I'd been sent, I would've come in a bigger boat. I just happened to be by my radio when your distress call came in. I got a visual on your ship, so I hopped in the RHIB and went out to see if there were any survivors."
"Just like a Boy Scout—or, I guess, a Navy Seal?"
"I still help little old ladies cross the street."
The flicker of a smile at that.
"Wait…" Darcy crossed her legs, pulling her dress over them, and faced him. "That radio thing you had—did you tell someone you were coming to get me? I mean—is there anyone else who knows we're out here?"
He met her eyes, trying to decide if he should level with her. He didn't want to scare her. And she seemed like the kind of woman who didn't really like to look reality in the face too often, if she could help it. The fact was, the atmospherics were terrible that day. He'd just barely received the yacht's SOS, and the distance between them had been short. It was entirely possible no one else heard it at all. And his relay may have gone unnoticed too.
"I'm sure someone else heard the SOS from the Feckless," he told her, sugar-coating the truth. "And the lifeboats they took are bound to have EPIRBs on them."
"EPIRBs?"
"Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons," he said and laughed at that 'are you speaking English?' look again on her face. "They're kind of like the black box on a downed plane. It sends out a distress signal that rescuers can trace."
"They really left me." She squinted out at the water, as if she might see the crew and passengers of the Feckless out there in their lifeboats. "My father's going to have some butts."
"So, uh…" He paused before hazarding the question that had been eating at him. "Did you have some kind of cruise plan? Did your captain let anyone know when and where the ship was supposed to arrive?"
"I don't know." She shrugged, clearly unaware what an important question this was. "We were supposed to end up in California. A month from now. Or two? I don't know, I didn't plan on…"
He looked at her, still squinting out at the water like she was looking for something she might never find.
"Mixing sleeping pills and alcohol wasn't an accident, was it?"
She didn't answer him. She didn't have to.
"You woke up and found out you weren't dead," he observed. "And then decided you didn't want to be."
"Something like that." Her jaw tightened and she hugged her knees again.
"So it was your father's boat?" He changed the subject.
She nodded.
"Your captain—he was competent?" He smiled when she gave him a strange look. "I mean… do you know if he was reporting his position from time to time?"
"Gus?" She shrugged. "He was drunk a lot. There was a radio man. I think he did stuff like that, but… I'm not sure."
This didn't look good. And why had the ship sunk to begin with? She said she had no idea. Certainly the seas had been rough, but not enough to sink a vessel that size. For all Daniel knew, there were no EPIRBs either on such a sloppily run vessel.
The Feckless just might end up as one of those ships that, from time to time, vanishes without a trace—not because of some supernatural 'Bermuda Triangle' mystery, but out of sheer negligence and disregard for nature's enormous power.
"What a mess." Darcy sniffed, giving a little shake of her head.
"We can clean it up." He stood, nodding toward the pile of supplies. Of course, he knew she wasn't just talking about their current predicament. One thing at a time.
Darcy sighed but she followed him.
Daniel was beginning to think their best course of action might be to try to get off this island themselves. Sitting around and hoping wasn't going to get them anywhere.
In the meantime, they had to survive, and most of that was obviously going to be on him. But he thought Darcy was teachable, as she'd proved in their row to shore—and beyond that, she intrigued him.
His island girl had been easy. No words—they didn't even speak the same language—but there had been no real connection either. Darcy Haverford was different. As much as she drove him crazy—she drove him to distraction too.
It was a dangerous combination, one he'd escaped a long, long time ago.
Maybe Darcy wasn't the only one who'd been trying to run away from something.
Chapter 3
Darcy watched him do everything he could to make sure they would get found.
She watched him lay out a huge pattern of stones that spelled 'SOS' on the beach. She watched him do this on more than one site on the island. She watched him prepare the boat's flares, ready to be lit if they spotted a vessel or an airplane.
But there had been no airplanes and not a single ship on the horizon.
They'd found fresh water—a pool not too far inland. There were coconuts, and there were other roots and some fruit they could eat. Daniel had survived on his island for a little over a year on such fare, supplementing it with wild game. He didn't have his bow here, but there were other ways of trapping and hunting animals. And there was, of course, plenty of seafood.
Darcy complained about all of it—but she watched him the whole time.
Daniel thought of himself as a patient man. He didn't have anger management issues. He was trained to be calm in the craziest situations, and for the most part, he'd maintained that demeanor. He'd learned to control his adrenaline rushes and surges of feeling. They came and went, like waves. You could master them, if you needed to. And he had.
But Darcy—this spoiled little rich girl, used to her extravagant lifestyle, having servants obey her every whim—set him on edge. Even when she wasn't complaining about something—and that wasn't often—she made him grit his teeth and she tested his patience to its limits. She didn't listen to a thing he told her—in spite of the fact that they were both in a life and death struggle for survival, and he knew what the hell he was doing.
He told her not to drink too much coconut milk. She ignored him and spent a night in their makeshift outhouse, groaning loud enough to keep him awake. He told her not to play with the machete—she seemed to like hacking at branches, for fun or release, he wasn't sure—that it was dangerous and she wasn't skilled in using it. The thing had gotten away from her and she'd nearly cut off her own toes. Her pinky-toe had been sliced, just across the tip, and she'd cried while he grumbled 'I told you so's' and bandaged it.
He told her not to walk too far down the beach—even set a line of stones as a boundary—but she'd wandered away, collecting seashells, while he was setting traps. By the time he'd realized she was gone, he couldn't even see her on the beach anymore.
"What?" she'd asked innocently at his red-faced, breathless form—he'd been jogging up and down the beach calling her for an hour—when he finally found her sitting behind a big piece of driftwood, sorting through her shell collection, which she kept in a giant conch he'd found and given to her on their first day.
She'd been there the whole time, ignoring his call.
He'd tried to keep his cool. And had mostly succeeded as she sighed and gathered her shells, putting them back in the big conch, complaining the whole time about his overprotecti
ve nature.
It wasn't until she'd stood, wiping sand off her bathing suit bottom—thankfully she'd been wearing a bikini under her sundress, because it was the only thing she had to wear now—and looked him up and down before saying, "You're not the boss of me, you know. You can't tell me what to do," that he'd really lost it.
"I'm just trying to keep you safe, Darcy." He'd reminded her of this through gritted teeth. "Now stop acting like a child—unless you want me to treat you like one."
"Fuck you." She'd glared at him with such hatred, it had surprised him.
"I don't fuck little girls." His words hit her hard. He saw it on her face.
Then she'd hit him. It was an amusing assault, really—Darcy was half his size and he couldn't help his smile as she pummeled him with her fists, her conch shell full of shells forgotten on the sand.
It was the scratch she left on his cheek that did it. She was a wildcat, screaming things at him he didn't even understand—something about forcing her to do things she didn't want to do—when he caught both of her wrists and jerked her against him.
That knocked the wind out of her and she looked up at him, wide-eyed and a little afraid.
Good. Maybe she'd listen to him and actually live through this if she was afraid.
"You're goddamned going to do exactly as I say—your fucking spoiled little life depends on it. Do you understand me?"
"Fuck you," she said again, but this time her words were hollow. But she brought a knee up, which he easily evaded—and that was it.
Daniel had had enough. He hefted Darcy over his shoulder, listening to her squeal and scream at him, barely feeling the fists she used to thwack his back.
He'd bent to pick up her conch shell and carried her like that back to their camp.
That's when he'd given her the ultimatum.
"If you pull some childish little stunt like that again, I'll spank your ass so hard you won't be able to sit down for a week."
"Yes, Daddy," she'd snapped, grabbing her conch shell from him and going into the tent to sulk.
But later, when dinner was ready—he'd caught a small fox in one of his snares, using peanut butter from the supplies, of all things, as bait—she'd come out to sit by the fire and eat what he'd cooked for them. They'd sat in silence most of the time, but at the end of the meal, Darcy told him it was a good dinner—and then mentioned she'd seen he'd picked up the conch with her shells in it and brought it back to camp.
That was as close as Darcy got to an apology, apparently.
Then she went back to the tent to sleep again.
It was the next day, after he built pyres all afternoon near their SOS rocks, hoping he could light them as signals to passing planes or boats, that Darcy dropped the bomb on him.
"You're wasting your time." She said this from under the shade of a palm tree, still dripping wet from her cool-off in the salt water. Her bikini was yellow and pink, a strange choice for a redhead, he thought, but hadn't said. She filled it out nicely anyway, even if he would have preferred seeing her in black, in stark contrast to all that auburn hair.
"You never know," he replied amiably enough.
"No, I mean it." She stopped drawing in the sand with her stick and looked up to meet his eyes. "You're wasting your time. No one is coming for us."
"We talked about this," he reminded her. "Any good captain worth his salt would have sent out a distress signal. They'll have EPIRBs on the life boats. We're not that far from the site where the yacht sank. Someone will come."
"No, they won't." Darcy shook her wet head, poking at an insect with her stick, hurrying it along. "I paid them not to. They won't tell anyone—especially my father."
"You paid them?" Daniel stopped stacking the branches he'd chopped off with his machete and stared at her. "To do what, exactly?"
"Turn it all off." She sighed. "The GPS tracker system and, oh, whatever else there is on a boat that tells people where you are—and where you're going. I paid Gus a whole helluva lot of money to sail me away. Then… when we were far enough away… I went down into the engine room…"
"You didn't." Daniel was standing over her now, drawn in by her tale.
"I did." She dug her toes into the sand. The red polish on them had started to chip. "Pulled some hose and water started coming in like crazy. The warning systems were off, so no one knew until it was too late."
"You sank the boat…" He blinked at her, not sure whether he was horrified or impressed by her ingenuity. "Why?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She looked out at the water, not at him. The day was bright, beautiful, not a cloud in the sky. "I wanted to die. Or… at least, I wanted my father to think I was dead. I wanted everyone to think so."
"Why?"
"I was supposed to get married in Chile," she told him softly. "I didn't even know the guy. He couldn't even speak English. Can you imagine? It was all so… primitive. My father thinks he owns everything—including me. Did you know arranged marriages still happen? Well, they do."
Daniel didn't say anything, just absorbing this new information.
"I told him I wouldn't do it," she went on, digging her feet further into the sand, up to her ankles. "I told him I'd run away. I'd kill myself. I told him I'd never speak to him again. He didn't care. He said I had to—or he'd cut me off. From the money."
"So you went to Chile."
"Yeah." She sighed, wrapping her arms around her knees and putting her chin on them. "But I couldn't go through with it. I met this guy—and no way. He was as old as my father. Balding. Fat. And he wore so much cologne. I gagged every time he got near me. But that wasn't the worst of it…"
He waited for her to go on.
"My father said he was 'traditional'. I found out what that meant when I talked to his sister. At least she spoke English. The truth is—he wanted to breed me." She made a face, wrinkling her nose.
He noticed she was getting freckles on it from being outside in the sun so much on the island, which he found adorable, but she would likely have a fit about if she could see herself in a mirror.
"The man needed sons, apparently." Darcy snorted a half-laugh. "A dozen sons. I was going to be stuck in a place where I didn't speak the language, being fucked by a fat, bald, rich old man, barefoot and pregnant in wine country. That was what my father signed me up for. All because this guy, this Hugo Ramirez, was going to partner with Daddy in the wine business. Like the casinos and all that weren't enough? He had to branch out—and use me to do it?"
"That's… rough."
"Savage," Darcy agreed with a shudder. "That's what it is. So—I made good on my promise. I ran away."
"And you tried to kill yourself?"
"I tried." That half-laugh again, a shake of her wet head. "But I failed. I thought taking the sleeping pills and drinking half a fifth of tequila would do it. But no."
Jesus.
He was surprised she had survived her overdose, let alone managed to crawl to higher ground on the yacht and get a distress call out. She should, by all rights, be dead. But she wasn't. She was here.
"But they all think I'm dead," she reminded him. "They'll tell my father—and my Chilean fiancé—that I drowned."
"Do you still want to die?" he asked quietly. He remembered seeing a look in her eyes, just before she let go and let him catch her. Something that reminded him of his own struggle with this world.
"No." She frowned out at the ocean, squinting into the sun. "But I don't know if I want to liv, either. If that makes any sense."
"It does."
She turned her head to look at him, resting her cheek on her knees. The look in her eyes made him want to scoop her up and hold her—but he knew better. It would be like trying to hold a porcupine.
"Anyway, that's how I know." She looked back out toward the water. "No one will be looking for us. When they make it back to shore, they'll tell my father the boat sank and I was in it. There would be no reason for them to come look for me."
He nodded, his mind racing wit
h possibilities. This island wasn't as nice as his own—it was much smaller and certainly uninhabited. Still, they'd be safe here, and they had plenty of food and water to survive.
"You said there'd be a reward if I got you home safely," Daniel reminded her. "Is that true?"
"Sure." She snorted. "My father would pay a pretty penny to anyone who returned his property."
"But you don't want to go home?"
She sighed. "I sure as hell don't want to stay here."
"It's not so bad." He smiled when she gave him a sharp, quelling look. "Island living is pretty great, actually."
"You're so… plebian." She gave a delicate little shudder. She managed to look elegant and sophisticated, even sitting under a palm tree, wearing just a bikini.
"I take that as a compliment." Daniel laughed, looking down at her, hands on his hips. "Come on, princess. We have work to do."
"More work?" she groaned, covering her head with her arms to hide. "You're a slave driver!"
"I want to teach you how to make rope."
"Make rope?" She looked up at him, aghast at this idea. "I've already broken two nails!"
"Good." He grinned. "Less claws to scratch me with. Come on."
"So fucking uncivilized," she muttered under her breath, but she followed him.
He figured keeping her as busy as possible would solve several problems. First, it would keep her from getting bored, which she did quite easily. Secondly, it would allow him to keep an eye on her. He didn't like it when she disappeared for too long. It worried him. Maybe it was her past, and the things she'd told him about being suicidal. He thought that storm had passed—but he wasn't sure.
Better safe than sorry—that's what he told himself as he looked across the beach at her, trying to make rope the way he'd taught her. She really was quite hopeless at it—he'd have to redo most of what she'd done himself. But it kept her hands and her mind busy. Even if she had broken another pretty red nail in the process.
"Another one!" She pouted, showing him the ragged nail. It happened to be on her middle finger, which she waved at him with disdain. "You're a bastard! What do we need rope for anyway?"
