Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong

chapter SIX



ROB swallowed hard and squinted. Tears wouldn’t help her now, while she sat there bleeding from her very soul.

He remembered the story in the newspapers. An Indonesian trawler found the bodies still lashed together a hundred miles from where they’d gone overboard. There was no imagining the physical and emotional agony Honor must have suffered in the weeks—months—after the accident.

He kneeled and tipped her wordlessly forward into his arms. What did you say to a woman who had lost everything and survived to relive it daily? She didn’t resist this time. She clung to him and sobbed dry tears. The horrible, agonised wheeze broke his heart.

A dozen image fragments tumbled through his mind. Her scars, the razor-sharp propeller of a marine motor, Honor bleeding to death on the deck of a yacht while her son and husband drifted away.

Then he saw himself, joking about whether she was going to send him back out to drown; telling her she would make a good mother; criticising the turtles for not protecting their young. And Honor refusing to leave the dying booby chick.

So it wouldn’t be alone.

How had she not gone mad?

Rob thought about his own life—the challenges of his parents and their expectations and the revolving door of empty relationships—and realised it wasn’t even close to what this tortured woman had lived through.

And he’d judged her for being brittle.

‘Shh...’ He could do nothing but stroke her and rock her while she cried. It was completely inadequate. He wasn’t equipped for this, figuratively or literally. Back in his own world, he would have given her a couple of Valium, a few kind words and tucked her into bed as he’d done so often with his mother. Here there were no drugs and absolutely no words.

But there was a bed.

He swung her into his arms and moved towards the tent. He lay her on her side and let her curl into the foetal position. She looked so fragile, lying there, her sobs turning into exhausted hiccups and eventually to sleepy breaths. He imagined her story in his head, imagined it was his family out there, him waking in the hospital to find his life destroyed. Honor and his child gone.

He frowned. Not Honor. A wife, any wife.

It was simply unimaginable.

He lay down and curled around her, tucking her back into his chest. He wanted to tighten his hold but didn’t want her to stir. If she slept, hopefully dreamless, she wouldn’t hurt. He could do that much for her, at least.

He draped a heavy arm across her cold body and rocked and rocked and rocked.

* * *

Day turned to evening before they spoke again. Honor had fallen into an exhausted sleep and Rob stayed, tucked close to her, stroking her hair from time to time and murmuring senseless words into her fevered ear.

She finally stirred in his arms and stiffened, resisting him even before she fully woke. He rolled away and gave her some space.

‘I wanted to make sure you were warm,’ he said, before she gave him a serve for being in her bed.

She sat up shakily. ‘What time is it?’

Not the first words he’d expected. ‘Ten to six.’

Her head whipped around. ‘In the morning?’

‘In the evening. Same day as the dive.’

She sagged. ‘Oh. Good. I thought I’d missed the first night of the hatch.’ Her voice was hollow but otherwise normal. His heart sank. Back to business. Was she really going to say nothing?

She shuffled to the entrance of the tent and climbed out into the golden light of evening, avoiding eye contact. He followed her. She rustled in the store box for some flavoured noodles and set a small pot of water to boil on her camp stove. He watched her the entire time; she ignored him just as determinedly.

‘Honor...’ He had to try.

She spun brightly towards him. ‘I’m looking forward to the hatch tonight. Technically still too early, but you never know!’

‘Honor...could we—’

‘Would you like some noodles?’ There was a frantic tinge to her over-bright gaze, as though she was only just holding it together.

He sighed, wondering how she could possibly repress all her emotion now her world had imploded. ‘Yes, sure, if you have enough.’

Honor busied herself making two-minute noodles. She specialised in avoidance. She’d perfected the art over the past four years. Back then, it was the only way she could manage the overwhelming feelings. These days it was pure habit.

She over-stirred the cheap noodles cooking in her little camp pot. It was something to do. Anything was better than thinking...than feeling. Busy work while she got her broiling emotions under control. She just wasn’t up to looking at Rob—not yet. Large parts of the afternoon were blank but she knew she’d lost her bundle on the reef and he’d had to clean up the mess back here in camp. There’d been tears and way too much information and he’d had no choice but to deal with what she’d lumped on him.

Mortification stiffened her movements, kept her back rigid. Poor guy. He’d looked uncomfortable, as though she expected him to ask her about it, that she needed him to. The truth was she needed no one; she could cope on her own. Just because he was the only other human being on the island didn’t mean he was obliged to help her. The sooner she made this clear the better.

‘Honor—’

‘Almost done.’

She couldn’t look at him and concentrated on stirring in the noodle seasoning packet. Her growling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since the small muesli bar at noon. She scooped half the noodles into her bowl and handed the still-hot pot to him. It was the best she could do on an island where there was only one set of everything.

She sat on a stump, as far away as possible from him, and pushed her noodles around in the bowl. Despite her hunger, her appetite deserted her.

The silence grew palpable.

‘I’m sorry I asked you to come out with me,’ he murmured finally.

I bet you are.

She stirred her noodles, hating the tightness in his voice and knowing she was the reason for it. She hadn’t ever thought she’d come to miss his cocky self-assuredness.

She sighed. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was my choice to help you.’ It was the perfect out, an opportunity to back away and put things between them back onto a light, harmless level.

He didn’t take it.

‘What happened out there?’

He flicked his head towards The Player, concern live in his eyes. It almost undid her all over again. She studied her bowl. There may well have been ten feet between them but his energy reached out to tangle with hers. Suddenly, she found herself possessed with the desire to talk. Share. Open up. It was the strangest sensation.

She swallowed slowly. ‘I haven’t been on a boat, alone, since...’ She cleared her throat. ‘It was so silent out there. Just the slap of the water on the side of the boat, the birds overhead. I thought I could do it...’

He put his uneaten noodles aside and moved to sit on the ground in front of her as her heart lurched. His closeness had comforted her before; now it rang alarm bells.

She rushed on. ‘I wanted to swim ashore. I would have risked it, even with the swell on the reef, but I knew I couldn’t leave you down there.’ Her voice was tiny now. ‘It was such a long time. I just...the flashbacks...’

It happened again now—a momentary flash of staring up at the azure sky, the sickening silence, the stickiness of her own blood congealing around her, the stink of terror.

Her two mouthfuls of noodles threatened to come back up.

Rob dropped his head and studied his feet. Uncomfortable at her show of emotion? She shifted on the log. When he lifted his gaze, it burned into her soul like acid. Or ice.

‘It’s my fault you were out there. I couldn’t wait. I wanted it now.’ Colour was high in his cheeks.

Honor stared at him and knew—without needing to know anything more about him—that this was the first time he’d ever admitted anything of the kind. She studied his face and realised that his pained expression was not embarrassment or awkwardness. It was something else. She felt her reserve slip more than a little, and another piece of armour fell away.

‘You’re in pain today because of me,’ he said. He looked up at her with naked, raw shame.

Her breath caught.

There was the man she’d been wondering about.

* * *

Avoiding Rob on an island scarcely more than one square kilometre took some doing but she’d pulled it off for a whole twenty-four hours. It was no accident she’d spent last night watching for hatchlings and most of today sleeping, lingering in the tent longer than she needed to until she was sure he wasn’t around.

What had possessed her to reveal her most intimate secret to someone she hardly knew? She’d said things she’d never even told her counsellors. She couldn’t have picked a less suitable person to open up to. The last sort of someone to trust with a chunk of her soul.

She had a good handle on Rob Dalton after their few days of forced cohabitation. He was a player. Charming, undoubtedly talented, probably spoiled. Things came easy to men like him and he had the look of someone who hadn’t had to fight for much in his life.

She was attracted to him, no question. Flashes of his strong body in the surf, in the wetsuit, against her skin kept coming back at inappropriate times. His casual confidence was appealing to someone who lacked the kind of social grace that he was gifted with. And that lazy smile...

Honor rinsed the toothpaste out of her mouth and spat into the earth, then covered it with loose sand. More roughly than she’d meant.

There had been the occasional intriguing glimpse beneath the very pretty façade, but otherwise she found him safely one-dimensional. All good looks and superficial charm. And that was the way she’d like to keep him.

Until yesterday. His raw shame drew her to him. She’d been intrigued by the imperfection. Something she suspected they might both have discovered at the same time.

She’d panicked and dashed off into the trees without thanking him for getting her safely back to camp, without acknowledging his apology. Not that he had apologised, technically, but he was trying to. Maybe that was new to him, too?

She sighed. Maybe yesterday wasn’t the finest day for either of them. He had manipulated her into going out on his boat, intentionally or not, and she had dumped all her troubles into his lap and then left him hanging when he’d opened up to her with his shame.

Was that why she’d panicked? She didn’t want to be drawn to him, to like him or understand him. Imagining herself in his arms was nothing more than pure physical reaction. It was so much simpler when he was superficial and unlikeable.

Safer.

She’d already exposed her soul; exposing her heart, too, would be the height of foolishness.

Honor shook her head to clear her unwanted thoughts and pulled her shirt on over her swimsuit. Yesterday’s shirt and the one from the day before. She only brought a handful of clothes to the island. What did it matter if the birds and crabs saw her in the same clothes week in and week out? It was ridiculous to be self-conscious about it now just because there was a man on the island. She reminded herself that Rob was in a worse position. He only had the clothes he’d sailed out in and a couple of spare T-shirts from The Player. The man was gadding around, shirtless, in black board shorts most of the time, but every time she saw him, it was like seeing that sensational torso for the first time. If the catch in her breath was any indication.

Honor moved away from camp towards the far side of the island, back towards the bay where the Emden memorial stood proudly. It would be the last place he would expect to find her if he was looking for her. It was also the first place she’d be likely to find him if he wasn’t.

She ignored the thought.

She stepped carefully around clumps of trees bordering the inland lake, moving quietly so as not to disturb the wildlife resting there. The collective noise of hundreds of birds clucking, chortling or roosting disguised her movements and allowed her to reach the opposite shore with relative stealth.

Her heart lurched as she spotted him through the trees. He stood ankle-deep in the wash, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his head tipped forward in thought. Honor shrank back into the shade of the shore trees to watch him. She wasn’t ready to see him again, to confront the anger in his eyes. Or, worse, the pity.

A frown creased his forehead where his hair fell forward over it. He kicked absently at shells on the sand under the lapping waters. Not rough enough to be anger, but agitated enough to be... What—confusion? There was no question in her mind that he’d never admitted to anyone what he’d admitted to her yesterday. Perhaps not even to himself. That he was self-absorbed.

She studied him, free for the first time to do so unobserved. Standing one-quarter onto her, his board shorts hung low on his narrow hips, fit snugly across firm buttocks and draped over toned quads. Above them, his tanned back broadened out to a pair of shoulders that spoke of hidden strength. Not massive, but well formed and powerful. Not for the first time, Honor wondered how much of the real Rob he hid from her. From the world. Possibly from himself.

He turned and moved onto the shore. She held her breath and tucked back into a cluster of emerging coconut plants below the trees. If he saw her, she’d look completely ridiculous hiding in the bushes, but if she stepped out now, he’d know she was looking for him—spying on him—and after she’d given him such a earful for spying on her...

She squirrelled deeper, then froze as he moved up into the trees. If he looked to his right, he’d see her. Pin her with that heart-stopping gaze. Honor had a fleeting urge to rustle in her hiding spot, to bring on the confrontation.

But it passed and so did Rob and she hissed her breath out slowly and closed her eyes.