That got him talking about something else. While he obviously left out a lot of details, at least he wasn’t brooding anymore.
Iris did, though, because yes. She wanted that kiss from him. The thought of going back to Getaway Bay and having him message Ivy made every cell in her turn sour.
She wove until he finished talking, and she was nowhere near making a hat. “I think I’ll use this as a bedroll,” she said. “And you know what? We should go cut some of those dragon fruit leaves. They were thick and would probably make this platform less like sleeping on logs.” Because it was like sleeping on logs.
“Good idea,” he said. “You’ve got the knife this time?”
“Yes,” she said, reaching into her hip pack and pulling it out. Eden really had prepared her well for the trip—but only if she took the tools with her.
A couple of hours later, their shelter had been drastically improved by the addition of the palm frond mats and the dragon fruit leaves. They were long pieces of near-rubber, somewhat like a flattened cactus without the spines.
“So much better,” she said with a smile as she stretched out on the padded logs. “I’m going to sleep great tonight.”
She hoped. She hadn’t the past couple of nights, though she did doze at least a little.
“We should probably have a little to drink,” Justin said, and Iris slipped off the platform to follow him.
He poured her a cup of water and watched her drink it before he did the same. “It’s not great warm, is it?”
“Nope.” Iris didn’t want to complain, but ice would be a drastic improvement to this island experience. As would air conditioning. She thought of all the modern conveniences she normally took for granted, and she vowed that when she got back to Getaway Bay, she wouldn’t be like that anymore.
Justin filled the filtration system with more ocean water, and they retreated back to the shade. “I’m going to take a nap,” he said with a yawn.
“Can I join you?” she asked.
“Sure.” He stretched out on the platform, a sigh leaking from his mouth.
Iris lay down beside him, barely enough room for her there. She adjusted her body, and her hand touched his. He started to pull away, but Iris kept her fingers firmly in his.
He turned toward her, and she said, “I do want that kiss at some point, Frogman.” She wasn’t normally so bold and forward, but it seemed like Justin needed something straightforward to latch onto.
“Maybe just put it in your plan,” she said. “For the future.”
“How far in the future?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “You’re the planner, not me.”
He chuckled, lifted her fingers to his lips, and settled down to sleep. Iris did too, but fantasies of him kissing her while their legs tangled in the hot island sand kept her awake long after his breathing had evened.
When Iris woke, she was alone in the shelter. The wind had picked up, and her hip pack flapped against the pole. The noise had disturbed her sleep, and now she looked around, almost desperate to find Justin.
Because if there was anything worse than being stuck on a deserted island, it was having to be alone. She’d seen the movies. People went crazy out here by themselves.
She stood up and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, though it wasn’t exactly cold. In that moment, she realized clouds had gathered in the sky. It was going to rain.
And rain meant drinking water.
Her pulse pounded in her temples. They needed to gather as much rainwater as they could. Then they could drink more than a couple of cups each day. Frantically, she looked around their camp, as if a bucket or a barrel had magically appeared during her nap.
Of course, nothing had.
Desperation clogged her throat as her eyes landed on the mats she and Justin had woven. They’d hold water. Wouldn’t they?
She shoved off the dragon fruit leaf pad and snatched up the two mats she and Justin had made. She could make boats out of them. Hammocks. Something that would hold the water when it fell.
Working quickly, she tied one end of her mat to the outside pole of the shelter. It wasn’t big enough to reach the next tree truck, but she had the nylon cord from her survival kit. With that, she managed to get the mat strung up between the two items.
She didn’t care if she had to stand in the rain and coax the mat into the right shape to hold the water. In fact, she’d do it with an open mouth.
A gust of wind picked up, almost blowing Iris away as she reached up to steady the mat. The first raindrops fell, and she made sure the mat was open at the top, exactly like a hammock.
The water felt good on her scorched skin, and she turned her face into the rain as it fell. A smile touched her lips, and she turned when she heard Justin yell her name.
“Here,” she called, waving as he came out of the jungle. “It’s raining.”
He dropped the load of rambutan and dragon fruit he’d been off collecting and ran for the filtration system they left out in the sun.
He poured the filtered water into a coconut half-shell they’d been using as a cup and set out several others they’d cleaned out too. “Great idea with the mat,” he said, glancing at their shelter. It wasn’t water-proof at all, but right now, Iris didn’t care.
Justin opened the bag he usually filled with sea water and held it open for the rainwater to fall into as well.
Iris met his eye, and the two of them started laughing. If anyone could see them, they’d be laughing too. It was quite comical to have them both standing out in the rain, holding open any container they could find and getting soaking wet.
Chapter Eight
The storm passed quickly, but Justin estimated they’d collected several cups of water from the microburst. His stomach cringed at the idea of eating dragon fruit for dinner, but he had no other choice. Well, a rambutan.
As the rain stopped, Iris slowly lowered her hand, testing to see if the mat would hold the water without her help. It did, and she sighed as she wiped both hands through her hair. She was shapely with her clothes stuck to her, and sexy with that water dripping from her face.
Justin looked away, his fantasies once again flying into overdrive. But she’d said—twice—that she was married to her company. He’d watched Theo and his wife go through some hard things with regard to how much his boss worked, and Justin didn’t want that kind of relationship.
He didn’t need a woman waiting at home for him either, but the idea wasn’t all bad in his mind. Iris had pegged him correctly when she’d said he planned ten steps ahead. When she’d said she wanted him to kiss her, he’d paused to try to figure out how to make that step one.
Napping had won out over simply lunging at her, and Justin was still trying to figure out when a kiss between them would be appropriate.
“That was awesome,” she said, twirling in the sand, laughter bubbling from her throat. Justin moved over to the coconut shells and combined them as much as possible so he could pour the rainwater from the filtration bag into the empty ones.
No sense in thinking they had all the water they needed. With another night approaching, and then another morning, another day, Justin had to start thinking long-term.
Unable to sleep, he’d walked the island again, and there was nothing in any direction. Not another smidge of land on the horizon. No evidence of other human life previous to them. Nothing but ocean in all directions.
The fruit trees puzzled him, but he supposed the wind could carry seeds a long way. He was grateful they had what they did, but he felt weaker with every passing day that he didn’t eat protein.
With the water situation handled, he turned to Iris. She sat on the edge of the platform, looking out at the ocean. “The waves seem angry,” she said.
He followed her gaze. “They do.” He drew in a deep breath and sat next to her. “For dinner tonight, we have the option of dragon fruit,” he said in a game show host voice. “Or rambutan. Which will you pick?�
��
She looked at him and laughed, and Justin decided their situation could definitely be worse. Neither of them were injured too badly—just a sunburn from the first day on the boat that was already starting to fade. There was no snow. And no one trying to kill them.
“Rambutan for me,” she said. “To start. After that, I think I’ll have the…dragon fruit.” She gave him a sly smile, and Justin returned it before handing her a bunch of rambutan.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said as he used the all-in-one tool to slice open dragon fruit appetizer. “At some point, we’re going to have to consider leaving this island.”
She jerked her eyes to his. “What?”
He nodded toward the boat. “We have the boat. I can get us back over the break.” At least he hoped he could. Not in weather like this, with a wind blowing from the west that could chap a man’s face.
“And we head south again. We came north to find this place. So we go south, and we should run back into Maui.”
“We should?” She shook her head. “I don’t like the sound of that. You have no idea where we are.”
No, he didn’t. “But the archipelago of islands is south,” he said. “We’ll have to hit it eventually.”
“So…what? We just load up onto the boat and sail for days in the sun?” She looked at his face and then his arms. “You’re still burnt from last time.”
“I just don’t know how much longer we can stay here,” he said. “That’s all. I’m just thinking ahead.” He popped a bite of fruit into his mouth. They could load up all the water they could carry with them. All the dragon fruit the boat would hold. And just go. At least then, he’d feel like he was doing something besides waiting for someone to come find them.
They ate in silence, and Justin hated that he’d caused it. But someone had to start thinking long-term, and it wasn’t going to be Iris.
“How long do you think we should wait?” she finally asked. “Like, let’s agree on a day.”
Justin shrugged one shoulder, as if he’d never thought of it. “It’s what? Day three here?”
“It’s night three,” she said. “Day three will be tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said. “Assuming that cruise line discovered we were gone on the first day, there should be a boat already out looking. We got here in a tiny lifeboat in about twelve hours. A big, powerful boat with an engine? Shouldn’t take nearly as long.”
He hoped she understood what he was really saying. The ocean was huge. Their island was small. It could be very possible that they’d never be found.
“Maybe we should build a fire,” she suggested. “Send up some kind of signal someone could see from far away.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I can do that in the morning.” He finished his last piece of fruit, nowhere near satisfied but unable to put another bite in his mouth. “I think we plan to evacuate on day seven. Think about it, Iris. We can’t be that far from a populated island.”
She kept her head down but looked up at him. “How far?”
“If I keep the boat moving south, I think we’d only need to be on it for a day. Tops. Twelve hours to get here, heading due north. We couldn’t have been that far from Maui when those whales attacked. The course took us right along the north side of it.”
He shouldn’t have taken them north. He knew it, and he wondered if Iris did too. Surely she did. She wasn’t stupid.
She nodded, her mouth a tight line. “Okay,” she said. “Day seven.”
“Okay,” he echoed, looking down to the boat on the beach. Day seven gave him enough time to fashion a canopy for the boat. Something they could hunker down under to stay out of the sun. He’d weave whatever leaves and branches together that he had to, and he’d find a way to keep the drinking water pure as well.
He had to.
Because he didn’t think help was coming.
The next morning, he sawed at the branches of a nearby banyan tree, choosing skinnier ones he could add to the boat without putting too much weight on it. Without a hammer and nails, everything had to be lashed together, but the palm tree bark ripped easily enough and stayed in long strips.
Iris collected their drinking water and set out more to filter. She went into the forest alone and returned with more fruit. She came down to the boat and held things in place while he tied and tightened.
He told her about his friends still in the SEALs, only mentioning the good things or the funny situations they’d found themselves in. Number one, most of what he’d done for a living was classified, and number two, he missed his old life in the Navy.
Talking about it with her helped, and she seemed to enjoy his stories.
“Will I get to meet this Heath Hawkins?” she asked. “He seems like a real character.”
“Heath’s great,” Justin said. “And yeah, I imagine you’ll meet him.” He pulled the last binding tight and stood back. “There. We have four poles over the boat now.”
His fingers ached, but Iris hopped out of the boat like they hadn’t been working all morning. She bumped him with her hip. “Is the meeting going to happen before or after you kiss me?”
“Oh, you’re still hung up on that.”
“I’m just saying it’s private out here,” she said as she started up the beach toward the shelter.
That it was. Justin chuckled as he followed her, catching up to her easily. He took her hand in his and tugged her close to his side. “Maybe you should stop badgering me about kissing you.”
“Badgering you?”
“Maybe I have something romantic planned,” he said. “And you’re just making it harder to do.”
“Romantic?” she brushed her hair out of her eyes as they arrived at camp. “I know it can’t be roses and chocolates. Or even dinner.” She gave him a playful smile, and Justin decided to abandon all his plans.
He put his free hand on the tree trunk beside her head and leaned down. She froze, her eyes searching his. “You’re absolutely maddening,” he whispered, ducking his head closer to her, noticing that she closed her eyes and waited.
He drew out the moment, really making her wait for him, and then he brushed his lips across hers. Sparks of light popped behind his closed eyes, and a growl tore through his throat. He cupped her face and kissed her, thrilled when she moved her hands through his hair, down the back of his neck.
Pressing her into the tree behind her, he kissed her deeper, wondering why he’d waited so long to abandon his plans and make her his.
And the best part?
She kissed him back with an equal amount of passion, power, and pure desire in her touch.
Chapter Nine
Iris had never been kissed the way Justin kissed her. She held onto his shoulders, trying to enjoy the ride before she had to get off. He was utterly in control, though she fought him for it every step of the way.
If he didn’t have her pressed against the tree, she wouldn’t be able to stand, and when he finally pulled away, she still wanted more.
He kept his face very close to hers, and she didn’t dare open her eyes yet. “Passable?” he whispered, his lips catching on her earlobe and making her shiver.
“Mm,” was all she could come up with. His touch felt like silk on her waist, and she didn’t dare move so he’d keep doing whatever he was doing to her. Stars seemed to beam through her whole body, and she wanted to feel this adored every day of her life.
“I haven’t kissed anyone for a while,” he said, finally putting a few inches between them.
“Well, you’re not rusty at all.” She opened her eyes to see him run one hand up the back of his neck, as if nervous.
“No?”
Iris grinned at him. “Were you nervous?”
“Yes.” He smiled back at her, his dark eyes devouring her. “You’re surprised by that?”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to lift one shoulder into a shrug as casually as he did. “You’re this big, buff, tattooed Navy SEAL. I’m just…Iris.”
; He touched his lips to her forehead, and then her cheekbone. “You’re smart, and sexy, and you scare me.”
She put her hands back on those broad, decorated shoulders. “How do I scare you?”
“You just do,” he said, backing up fully now. He kept his eyes low too, and Iris sensed he had a secret he wasn’t willing to share yet.
Which was fine, honestly.
They had four more days on this island, and she’d get it out of him soon enough.
In the middle of the night, Iris lay in the safety of Justin’s arms, his breath falling softly against her shoulder as she gazed up into the starry sky. She felt utterly alone, though she wasn’t. It was a strange feeling that moved through her powerfully and made her shiver.
Instantly, Justin pulled her closer, his lips touching her shoulder. “You okay?” he whispered.
At least now she knew he wasn’t asleep—and that he was very good at pretending he was. “Do you ever wonder what you’re doing here?” she asked him. “I mean, even the sky is this huge thing. And we’re just…nothing.”
“Mm,” he said, his voice definitely sleepy. “It’s easy to feel insignificant.”
“Yes, insignificant.” That was how she felt. She liked to think her company would fall apart without her, but deep down, she knew they wouldn’t. “Like, what have I done with my life?”
“Plenty,” he said. “You own your own company, Iris. That’s huge.”
“You served your country for two decades. That’s something, at least.”
Justin didn’t move behind her. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-one,” she said.
“You’ve still got time to do something amazing,” he said. “If that’s what you want. I think you’re doing just fine.”
She sighed and snuggled into him, the stars still staring her in the face. “Do you think there’s more out there?”
“Like, God?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
Stranded with the SEAL Page 5
