Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong

chapter NINE



ORDINARILY, Rob didn’t mind the quiet.

He could work for hours in the wet-lab, painstakingly conserving a maritime artefact, not speaking to another being for the entire day. At sea it was often quiet, even when he was working in a team. Such a contrast to the endless, social yak he endured outside of work.

But the new silence on this tiny island was intolerable.

For the second time in as many days, Honor was avoiding him. At first, he considered that he was avoiding her. He was still angry and just wanted to punish her by keeping his distance—ironic how it felt so much like punishing himself. But now she was unquestionably avoiding him.

A day without her and he was getting bored with his own company. He had no idea how she managed months on end out here. That took a certain level of comfort with your own thoughts. Something he didn’t have. He hadn’t realised how very occupied Honor kept him. Talking to her, listening to her, thinking about her. Imagining. Even when she did crazy things, like stalking off into the trees.

He fisted and unfisted his hands absently, hearing the echo of the harsh words that had spewed from his lips. Lips that had been so delightfully engaged with hers only moments earlier. Nothing he didn’t think was true, and nothing he wouldn’t have said if asked, but words he’d rather have said more kindly. At the right moment. She was only respecting and honouring her family. He had to admire that.

To a point.

He leaned back on his bunk in The Player’s rocking cabin and looked at his watch. Not even nine o’clock. Way too early to be considering hitting the sack. There was no way his body was going to let him rest here. As if he wasn’t already worked up enough, the threat of sinking to Davy Jones’s locker preyed on him. Earlier in the day, Honor had offered to split the tent, back when she was still feeling warm and fuzzy towards him. Him at night while she was out surveying turtles, and her during the day while he made himself scarce.

But that was before he’d pawed her on the sand. Her sense of charity would have dried up for sure now.

Rob shook his head. He’d occupied himself all afternoon with rigging up one of his diving sensors down in the hull so that it would send an alert if water started filling The Player’s hull. Enough time to scramble out. But he wasn’t sleeping. And not just because he was anxious about possibly waking up to find himself bobbing on a cabin-full of cold water.

The echo of his angry words clattered around in his mind like a lottery wheel.

He needed to see Honor. Speak to her. Try to set things to rights. When there were only two of you on an island, you couldn’t afford to hurt someone and leave them that way. Particularly when one of them was a woman like Honor...

Such a bundle of contradictions. Exactly like one of the artefacts his team would spend a year of painstaking, gentle handling to release from its crusted tomb. Caked in rock-hard deposits, just waiting for someone to chip it all away and restore it to its former beauty.

I don’t think that’s a good idea, she’d said, so coolly. As though she was unaffected by what they’d just shared. He knew that couldn’t be true—her flushed skin and heaving chest had given her away and it wasn’t from the snorkelling. Her body might have been affected but, apparently, her mind remained perfectly inviolate. So too her heart.

Rob ground his teeth. Hearts—hers or his—had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t her heart he was imagining the taste of, the texture of—although he remembered the feel of it clearly, beating half out of her chest as she struggled to break from their kiss.

He had to make this right.

Five minutes later, he loped into an empty camp, dripping wet from his swim in from the boat. Technically, she hadn’t recanted the offer—she’d have to speak to him for that to happen—and so, in theory, the tent was his. If he got lucky, she’d pop back from the turtles for something. Otherwise, he’d see her in the morning at the changeover. Before she could disappear on him.

He peeled off his shirt and laid it over the tent top to dry overnight. His saturated board shorts followed. His naked skin dried almost immediately in the warm night air.

He crawled into Honor’s vacant tent, unzipped her single sleeping bag into a blanket and climbed under it. It was soft and silky and smelled just like her. He lay back in the darkened tent, soaking up her smell and feeling pretty chuffed with himself. His digital watch beeped the hour.

In bed by nine o’clock.

Bloody hell.

* * *

Honor stood at the edge of camp in the dying hours of the night and flashed her torch warily at her humble tent. There was a large male T-shirt draped where her sunflower should be. And a pair of shorts. Her stomach flipped over and her logbook fumbled from her fingers. She retrieved it from the sand.

What the heck was he doing in her tent? Excitement warred with common sense. She should have rescinded her offer. He should have realised it was void! Either he was extremely obtuse or extremely thick-skinned. She knew he wasn’t dumb—far from it, daily proof of his sharp mind had made her regret her assessment of him as an empty, pretty vessel.

So being in the tent wasn’t accidental. She’d wondered vaguely where he had been sleeping before tonight. Not on his boat since that first night, and who could blame him with water slowly trickling into the hull? Hanging out in there when you were conscious was one thing... She had a sneaking suspicion he’d been dossing down on a beach somewhere, which wasn’t ideal either. While there were no creepy-crawlies on Pulu Keeling—having risen out of the ocean, its only native life was marine or bird—the beach would still harbour a million things a man might not want sneaking up on him in the dark, like football-sized robber crabs. They usually preferred the leaves and fronds that littered the island’s floor but if a perfectly tasty, perfectly unconscious snack presented itself on a beach...

It made sense he’d prefer to use her tent. And since she wasn’t in it...

She sank onto one hip. She could wait him out. He couldn’t stay in there for ever, although he was just about stubborn enough. She packed away a few of her work things and poured a drink of fresh water from her stash. Ate the last of her muesli bars. If he wasn’t here, she would probably hang around in camp until the sun was well and truly up and then slide in with her complimentary airline eye-mask on until she fell asleep. But, since his arrival, she’d taken to crawling into bed almost as soon as she’d finished her shift. Just to minimise the chances of running into him. Not because she didn’t like him...

On the contrary...

She moved to the tent’s entrance, stepping quietly in the fine sand of the clearing. His shirt blew pennant-like in the pre-dawn breeze. Not accidental. Deep down, she knew that was his way of pre-warning her, of giving her an escape clause.

Her heart lurched. It didn’t help her resolve when he did kind things like that. Maybe he’d come to camp last night to talk. Maybe that was why she’d hit the turtle nests so early yesterday evening. Knowing he was braver than her.

Honor gently peeled back the flap of the tent’s entrance and peeked inside. Rob lay sprawled out on his front, her sleeping bag askew but still covering the bits that counted. One arm stretched out in front of him—where she would have lain, had she been with him, a sneaky voice pointed out—the other tucked under him. She ran her eyes from his fingertips, along his sculpted bicep, over a bulging, tanned shoulder, to his well defined back. Visions of Michelangelo’s David came to mind even in his relaxed, sleeping form.

Her heart thumped as she remembered how it felt to run her hands over those muscles. She’d never, in her life, put her hands on firmer, healthier—manlier—flesh.

Guilt tore at her. Get a grip, Brier. Just hours ago, she’d called a halt to any further physical interaction with him and here she was, already contemplating what it might be like to call a halt to the halt!

There would be no more kissing.

She let the flysheet drop with an angry hiss.

Where was she going to sleep now? She had no idea what time he’d gone to bed, he could be there for hours yet. She was exhausted. After the emotional upheaval of the dive yesterday and the sensory roller coaster of what came after—though she forbade herself to think about that in any detail—she’d practically fallen asleep while monitoring the nests. Only a hatching just as her eyes slid closed had kept her attention—that and the threat of having to dig out the abandoned nest to count the shell remnants.

The beach was safer during the day but hot and impossible to sleep on without the semi-darkness afforded by her little tent. Her eyes turned in the direction of the lagoon. Rob’s boat would be no safer for her than for him. Although at that moment Honor might have taken her chances out at sea rather than risk being alone with him for two minutes.

She sighed and looked back towards the tent. Her tent. Currently being illegally used by an oaf with a nipple piercing. Bad enough that he’d invaded her island. Her peace. Her dreams...

Why shouldn’t she have a good night’s sleep? After how she’d spoken to him on the beach, he was hardly likely to try anything on with her. A painful lump formed low in her throat.

She refused to admit to herself just how much she had needed the contact on the beach. Not the kissing necessarily, but the intimacy, the shared goal. Breathing in someone else’s air. A man’s touch. It had been too, too long since she’d experienced that. More than four years.

Not just any man. Rob’s touch. That was what made it so unacceptable.

If it were just a physical connection she craved, everything would be so much simpler. The scientist in her knew that attraction was explainable in chemical terms. She twisted her head to line her eye up with the split in the now slack tent entry flap to spy the long length of strong brown leg he’d exposed by flipping over. With material like that, it was no wonder she was attracted. He was, without question, the best-looking man she had ever met. And the best built.

Acknowledging his physical superiority didn’t feel disloyal to her husband. It was a bit like eyeing off a red Porsche in the showroom window and then driving home in your sturdy sedan. But harbouring those other feelings certainly did. She had no business being attracted to Rob’s personality, his lust for life or his smile. Or feeling the way she did when he looked at her sideways, when he thought she wouldn’t see. Or wondering about his childhood and what made him tick. What made him so sad.

Those sorts of thoughts had no place in her neatly ordered new existence.

Fortunately, she was half made of will, as experience had proven. If Honor Brier told herself that she wasn’t attracted to someone, well, that was just how it would be. It was how she’d survived the past four years.

But she’d also done it by not prioritising anyone ahead of herself. Letting him sleep in meant she’d go tired. And that meant she’d be sleepy tonight. She surveyed the darkened little bubble and made her choice.

She made no effort to be silent as she whipped the entry zip open and threw it back to let her torchlight stream in. She nudged him with her foot, not particularly gently. ‘Rise and shine, Goldilocks. My turn to sleep.’

It was such a stirling impersonation of him she stifled a giggle. Rob rolled half on his side and flung one muscular arm up to shield his eyes as though his vampire half would implode with light’s touch. Her giggle amplified.

‘Am I entertaining you?’ he murmured up at her, thick and gritty. Morning voice. God, how long had it been since she’d heard one of those?

‘You’re in my bed. Time to get up.’

He squinted at his chunky watch, pressing its side to throw extra light on the numbers in the dark. ‘It’s four-thirty in the morning.’

‘I’m aware of that. I’ve been up all night while you’ve been in here getting your beauty sleep.’

He blinked up at her in disbelief. She fought hard not to find it irresistible. ‘Four-thirty, Honor.’

‘This is my bed.’

His massive body scooted over and turned on its side away from her before wriggling back down under the sleeping bag. ‘There’s plenty of room. Squeeze right in.’

‘I am not sleeping with you, Rob Dalton.’

He looked back at her over a smooth, rounded shoulder. ‘Yeah, I got that back on the beach.’

‘In here,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not sleeping with you in here.’

‘Fine. Boat’s not locked.’

Silent seconds ticked by. ‘Rob. Get out.’ He didn’t answer but he couldn’t possibly have fallen back to sleep that fast. Even at four-thirty in the morning. ‘Rob?’

He groaned and rolled back over. ‘Climb in, Honor. Your virtue is assured and I’m whacked. I’ll sleep on top of the covers if it helps...’ He started to fling the sleeping bag back and she got a flash of long, muscular, naked thigh.

She tore her eyes away but dived at the sleeping bag to hold it in place. The last thing she needed was more mental pictures in her already crowded and confused mind. ‘No. You stay covered. I’ll go on top.’

A dirty grin spread across his gorgeous face.

‘Of the covers, you pervert.’ If he’d noticed how fast she capitulated he didn’t comment. But Honor didn’t miss it. She thinned her lips at her body’s own betrayal. ‘But you make one wrong move and you’re out on your overly-gymned butt.’

He rolled back over and snuggled down into the air mattress, mumbling, ‘Got it.’

Seconds later, he was asleep. His pulse beat slow and steady through the air mattress, reaching out to her. Lulling her. Seducing her without even trying.

Fantastic.

Honor yawned and crawled down on top of the mattress and the sleeping bag, making sure her body weight would hold the fabric discreetly in place. It wasn’t cool enough to need a covering and at least she had a bed to sleep in.

With any luck, when she woke up he’d be gone.

If she slept at all, which was feeling pretty unlikely given the solid mass of man just inches from her own body. But he radiated a thick, soothing heat and in no time his warmth swirled around and through her exhaustion and helped nudge her into a deep sleep.

Her last conscious thought in the early hours of the morning was to wonder how long it had been since she’d fallen asleep next to someone else.

* * *

Her first thought on waking was to wonder how long it had been since she’d slept so dreamlessly. But the happy glow of dreamlessness faded quickly and warning tingled in the very cells of her body. The weight of dread pressed down on her chest.

No, not dread. Rob! His arm draped casually over her and his face was too close on their shared pillow. She’d forsaken it in favour of distance when she’d fallen asleep, so she must have moved her head onto it whilst asleep. And, unconscious, Rob had been only too happy to share. His scent carried the slight muskiness of a man who needed a freshwater shower but, instead of being off-putting, it only served to make her muscles tighten. Pheromones. He was as hot as a furnace, even with her sleeping bag shrugged half off, and his skin scorched hers where it touched.

Her heart should have been pounding with mortification at finding herself so intimately snuggled. But curling into his side didn’t feel wrong. In fact, it felt strangely right to slip out from under his hold and let his arm carefully slide down to the place she’d vacated. As if they’d been doing it all their lives.

Not that there was necessarily a correlation between feeling right and being right. There couldn’t be.

As she crawled backwards out of the tent into daylight, her wristwatch told her she’d only had four hours’ sleep, but there was no way she was going back into—

‘G’morning.’

The sleepy voice reached her just as Rob’s hand locked carefully around hers. She was powerless to resist his muscled pull and she sank forward onto her knees as the tent flap dropped uselessly into place behind her. Even in the dim light, she could see that he was relaxed and sleepy.

For some reason, that made her more nervous.

‘What time is it?’ He made the question redundant by glancing at his own watch. His eyebrows rose and then moved closer in a frown. ‘I’ve been asleep for nearly twelve hours!’

‘Lucky you. I’ve only had four.’

Her voice was cautious, measured. It didn’t sound as breathless as she felt now that chest was displayed for all to see. Despite the dimness in the tent, her eyes remained acute when it came to his body.

‘It seems your island agrees with me.’ His surprise seemed genuine. He flopped back on the bed.

‘What are you doing?’

One eye opened. His hand stayed curled around hers. ‘Lying in. It’s Sunday.’

Honor couldn’t have told him what colour the sky was, much less what day of the week it was. Must be lack of sleep. Tiredness made her unreasonable. ‘No. It’s my turn to sleep now. You get out.’

‘Charming! Are you always this friendly in the morning?’

Her shoulders straightened. ‘I don’t usually need to be friendly. I’m usually alone.’ For the first time, when she said the word alone the word she heard was lonely.

Damn.

He slid his powerful forearms up behind his head and regarded her from under shuttered lids, giving nothing away. ‘Is that any excuse for poor manners?’

Honor hissed. Okay. He wanted to do this...

‘Look. About yesterday...’

‘What happened yesterday?’

‘Ha ha.’ She didn’t buy his bemused frown for one second. Or was that just her feminine pride stinging? No way could he have forgotten the...dolphin foreplay...in the lagoon yesterday. That had to stick in the mind, even for a man like him. ‘Look, I’m sorry I was a bit abrupt about leaving the beach. I probably could have handled that better.’

He sat partly up, which only served to slide the sleeping bag further down. Her breath caught just as it did on his hip.

‘You’re apologising to me?’ His confusion seemed genuine this time.

‘Well, yes. I was rude.’

‘So was I. And presumptuous.’

Honor thought about it. ‘I’m not going to say I wasn’t hurt by what you said. But it wasn’t presumptuous.’ Or wrong, truth be told. She would much rather spend the rest of eternity in the muted silence of the fishes’ realm than deal with the world up here. Now that Rob had shown it to her.

He sat fully up and tentatively tugged the sleeping bag higher to increase its cover, as if he’d suddenly wearied of the sensual game. One part of Honor mourned the loss.

‘I made some comments that...I regret,’ he said. ‘I’ve only known you six days.’

Honor lifted her eyes and spoke from the heart. ‘You know more about me than some people I’ve known my whole life. You’ve earned the right to speak your mind.’ She swallowed. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it more gently.’

Sincerity stained his eyes as deep a blue as the lower parts of the reef. She’d gladly spend eternity lost in those, too. She shrugged. ‘It’s not fatal. I’m sorry I walked away.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How you did it, or that you did it at all?’

She took a breath. ‘I panicked. I should have explained better. I hurt you.’

‘No.’

‘Rob, I saw your face before you went back in the water.’

‘That was irritation.’

‘That was hurt.’ The question burned. ‘Why did it hurt you so much? I’m sure I’m not the first person ever to—’ she struggled for words that were kinder than reject you ‘—turn you down.’

He laughed loud and hard. ‘No. I had my share of that in the early years. Before I learned to refine my aim.’

Honor frowned. ‘Refine it to what?’

He shrugged. ‘Likely success.’

She stared, waiting for him to continue. He shifted awkwardly in the brightening tent. Honor realised she’d all but forgotten to feel uncomfortable about him still being here.

‘There’s a certain type of woman I do particularly well with, and another type I do spectacularly badly with.’

Honor choked and spoke before thinking. ‘Women without pulses?’

Heat roared up her skin as he smiled gently. ‘Women without agendas.’ His big toe wriggled out from under the covers to gently touch her thigh where she sat cross-legged next to him. It was a comfortable, undemanding touch. It just kept them connected.

‘Understand that I live two lives back home,’ he went on. ‘By morning I’m this mild-mannered archaeologist surrounded by some of the finest minds in our field. Then I hit Dalton Industries and everything changes. I’m expected to be one hundred per cent charisma. I wine and dine, I schmooze and charm. I’m good at what I do there.’

‘I’m sure you’re good at what you do in the lab, too.’

‘Yeah, I’m good. But I’m not the best. There are some serious players in that team. The women there aren’t the slightest bit affected by the things I’m good at.’

Honor doubted that entirely. ‘Maybe they’re just being professional.’

‘Some of them barely take me seriously.’

She frowned. ‘Because you’re good-looking?’

‘Because I’m lightweight. Compared to my colleagues.’

‘That is not true.’ Defensiveness surged out of her from somewhere. She swallowed it down and his toe stroked his thanks on her leg. That was it. Just one tiny point of contact and electric current surged out from it. ‘Why do you stay if it makes you feel bad about yourself?’

He shrugged. ‘Because I love it. I want to be one of those legends.’

‘Why? What is it you love so much about it?’

‘Shipwrecks are...’ He frowned. ‘They have so much potential. They lie so quietly on the sea floor, waiting for us to find them.’

‘There are lots of discoveries waiting to be made. Why sunken ships?’

‘Because they’re eternal. Finding them ensures they endure in history. There’s so little in this world that lasts.’

‘Like?’

He shrugged. ‘Friends. Women.’

‘Love?’

‘Definitely love.’

His parents had so much to answer for. How early in life was Rob looking for things that might last? ‘There’s more. More than that.’

‘I want to make a difference and discover mysteries and have rookie lab-rats look at me like the sun shines from my research.’ His fists tightened. ‘I’m great at what I do for my father’s firm but I feel great in the lab. In the water. Diving for wrecks.’

‘Then that’s where you’ll find the right kind of woman.’

Rob laughed. ‘Underwater?’

‘Where your passion lies.’

His eyes darkened and Honor’s breath came faster.

‘What makes you think I’m looking for Ms Right?’ he said.

‘We all search for our perfect fit.’

‘Are you, Honor?’

Her eyes widened. ‘I was. Once.’

‘But not now?’ She shook her head. Rob’s gaze grew intense. ‘He must have been some man.’

Honor’s blinking eyes felt heavy. It had to be her weariness. It had nothing to do with the hypnotic stroke of Rob’s toe against her leg. A deep pain bubbled up and spilled over in the tightness of her voice. ‘They were my family. It’s hard to imagine anything more perfect.’

Honor frowned at her own words. Perfect? No. Her marriage had been far from that.

‘That’s a big call. What if another Mr Right comes along? Or do you believe there can only be one?’

Did she believe that? Honor remembered having long conversations about true love as a girl, tangled up with her mother in an oversized hammock under a giant paperbark. Tanya had certainly believed it; she’d pined for her lost love all of Honor’s life. And she’d been alone just as long.

Was her love for Nate perfect? It was deep. It was warm and familiar and safe. Nate had anchored her to the earth more than sending her soaring in the heavens. He’d never wrapped his arms around her and rolled her in the shallows. He’d never sent her blood thrumming just by touching her.

Her throat tightened. ‘Yes. I think there’s only one perfect fit for everyone.’

Rob nodded. Pushed. ‘What if he wasn’t it?’

Rage oozed up just below the surface. Honor swallowed it back. ‘He was. I married him.’ She said it with a force that suggested those two were even remotely connected.

‘What if you hadn’t met the most perfect fit for you yet?’

‘What are you doing—auditioning? He was.’ Her defensiveness startled even her. ‘You’re as bad as my mother.’

‘She didn’t approve?’

Tanya’s concerned words shortly after Justin had been born came back to her now. About Nate being right for her because he’d given her a son and because he gave her the love her father had never been around to give. And whether that was enough. Honor had cried after her mother left for what that suggested about her. For what that suggested about Nate. But mostly because a deep part of her had feared her mother’s criticism might have been on the money. Nate had been older. He’d worn cardigans to his academic job. He’d frowned when he found her dancing barefoot in cut wet grass. She’d talked herself into believing that her mother was simply angry that she didn’t have her little Mini-Me to tie-dye fabric and buy hippy music with any more. It had been easier to hurt her mother than to hurt herself.

Because what if she was right...?

‘Nate worshipped every breath I took.’ And the son that they created together.

‘I can believe it. Doesn’t mean he was the right man for you.’

The words were gentle. And logical. And nothing she hadn’t wondered deep down since her mother first planted the seed.

‘I think I would know,’ she said now, rather too sharply.

‘How many men had you slept with before him?’

Shock made her jaw drop. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘I’ll take that as a zero.’

‘Why do you measure everything in terms of sex? What about intellectual compatibility? Emotional intelligence? Social fit?’ Connecting with someone alone on an island was a world away from staying connected with them once you got back to a life of parties and dinners with strangers.

His eyes blazed into hers and his voice grew hard. ‘I’m not talking about sex, Honor. I’m talking about the kind of connection that might make a woman want to touch a man without even noticing she’s doing it.’

Honor frowned, then followed his steady gaze down to her side, where her fingers had tucked comfortably around the heel of the foot he’d been rubbing against her. She pulled her hand away as if his skin burned her. It practically had.

‘That’s not... That’s...’ Humiliation washed over her. She bit back the sting of tears that threatened. ‘That’s just physiology.’

‘You think so? So if I ran my hand up your thigh...’

Honor gasped, not because she was shocked by his words, but because she was shocked by her body’s reaction to just his words. Every part of her screamed.

‘...only your nerve endings would get engaged?’

Breath hitched up in Honor’s chest. ‘Only my body... Not my heart. Not my mind.’

He stared out at her from under thick lashes. ‘You think they’re not connected?’

She shrugged casually, faking it one hundred and ten per cent. ‘Not necessarily.’

He was silent for a long time. ‘In you it is. Very necessary.’

The truth took the wind out of her sails. Four hours’ sleep was nowhere enough to fuel this kind of battle. ‘What do you want from me, Rob?’ she sighed.

She sagged back into the mattress and dropped her head. Surrender echoed in her voice and Rob felt the primal, predatory surge of victory. ‘I want you to admit that yesterday meant something.’

Hazel eyes sparkled back up at him. ‘Why?’

Good question. What the heck was he doing, forcing the issue like this? Had he slipped into some kind of bizarre twilight zone when he set foot on the island? Some alternate reality where he gave a damn whether the woman he was with was emotionally invested in their relationship? Since when had he started worrying about their motivation at all? He grimaced.

Right about the time he hit Pulu Keeling’s outer reef.

Sex, for him, had become a quest. Always good. Often great, but increasingly hollow. His father continued to keep score of his own conquests—presumably there was some kind of family record up for grabs—and volume had always been the primary aim. Now, here Rob was, obsessing over whether or not a woman cared for him before she so much as kissed him. Irony twisted his smile. Dad would be so proud!

‘Let me ask you something.’ Her voice was breathless, as if she was fighting for her life. ‘How many women have you slept with?’

In the space of a heartbeat, the power shifted. One minute she’d been as helpless as a mouse in a cat house and then suddenly the light in her eyes changed and she came out swinging. It didn’t help the desire he was working hard to suppress. He found courage a massive turn-on.

‘Come on, Rob. More than ten? More than twenty?’

‘More than,’ he said, guarded.

Her face said but of course and he felt the tiniest hint of shame.

‘And how many of those were you emotionally involved with?’

He didn’t answer. The shame intensified.

‘Let me ask that another way. How many of them were emotionally involved with you? All? Half?’

‘Honor—’

‘Let’s be generous; you’re a good-looking man, after all. Let’s say half.’

Anger swiftly moved in to replace the discomfort warming his features. She was painting a vivid picture and he didn’t like it. ‘Why be cheap? Let’s say three-quarters.’

She smiled a bitter smile. ‘So, based on your extreme level of experience with the opposite sex, you think you could tell the seventy-five per cent of women for whom it meant something from the twenty-five per cent for whom it didn’t, based on their physical responses to you?’

Yes... No... What? ‘I imagine I can, yes.’

Honor took a deep breath and scooted up to kneel in front of him. She leaned in closer. He sat perfectly rigid—under the sleeping bag as well as above.

‘So when a woman does this...’ she pressed her hands onto his bare chest and he felt the tiny echo of trembles before they stilled ‘...do you take it as a sign she’s falling for you?’

His heart thumped violently under her hand but he didn’t otherwise move. ‘Not necessarily.’

She leaned in and pressed her hot, soft mouth to the skin of his shoulder, birthing a ripple of shivers and a clenching of his abdomen.

‘And this?’ she said. ‘Would this be a giveaway?’

If he didn’t lighten things up, this was going to go badly awry for Honor. Did she have no idea what she did to him? ‘Depends. Am I naked in a tent at the time?’

She glanced up and met his eyes and he watched the bravado slip sharply like a rock fall. She was so not up to this. This kind of game was what he’d expect from women in that other part of his world. Not Honor. But she barrelled onwards, as though her end game wasn’t perfectly obvious.

Honor leaned back and began unbuttoning her cotton shirt, her eyes locking on his. Her confidence was all an act, he knew, but the heated glow of her eyes... He could just imagine inspiring the real thing. He just needed one hour and a whole lot more willingness on her part.

‘And this?’ She pulled one side of the shirt off her shoulder.

He moved so swiftly she had no chance to prepare. His fingers closed around the fine fabric of her shirt and he held her briefly as her eyes flew wide. Then he gently pulled the shirt back up and smoothed it into place.

‘Don’t do this, Honor.’ It cheapens us both.

Her pulse beat so hard he could hear it in her voice. ‘Do what?’

‘You can’t prove the point you’re trying to make. I’ll never buy you as someone who doesn’t care. Because you do. I can feel it.’

‘Jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?’

‘Methinks she doth protest too much.’ If his father was dead he’d be spinning in his misogynistic grave. ‘You want me.’ He eased forward to rest his arms either side of her. It brought their bodies into intimate contact. ‘You care for me.’

Her whole body tightened between his arms. ‘It’s been less than a week, Rob.’

It hadn’t felt good to have Honor remind him about all the women he’d slept with, to highlight the absence of meaning in most of those encounters. Did she really feel the need to rub it in? It was unbearable, coming from her, from those lips.

‘A hundred and twenty hours. That’s like forty dates.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous...’

‘I just want you to be honest with yourself.’ He leaned into her subtly, increasing the contact, torturing his own screaming skin. She arched partly into him before stopping herself.

‘But you won’t accept me being honest with you.’

There was desperation in her voice but also a thin vein of sincerity. It made him pause. Was she serious? Could she really have felt nothing for him and yet responded like that? She was no ‘right now’ girl. The woman oozed ‘forever’. Then again, what in his dismal romantic history made him think he knew women at all? He narrowed his eyes, a sick feeling coming over him.

‘You felt nothing?’ He stared intently, conscious of how much hung on her answer.

‘I...’

‘“I felt nothing, Rob”. Say it and I’ll leave you alone for ever.’

A tear trembled on her lashes and he leaned in to kiss it gently off.

Her throat cracked. ‘You want more than I can give. Why can’t I just be attracted physically to you?’

‘Because that’s not enough.’

Say it, Honor!

His hands moved up to stroke her shoulders, her scars. She twisted under him in protest and desire shot like a bullet from his gut up into his chest. Dangerously close to his thumping heart.

Honor looked him in the eye. ‘I felt nothing, Rob.’

A shocking silence filled the tent and Honor struggled against the deception. An age ticked by before he spoke, his eyes dark and pained.

‘You’re a terrible liar.’

He fell forward and took her mouth hard with his. It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t politely cautious like his other kisses had been. It was harsh and insistent and angry. And embarrassingly welcome. As long as his tongue was tangling with hers, his hot hands branding her skin, she could pretend everything would be okay.

Even though, deep down, she knew it wouldn’t be.

His kiss became gentle and he steadied her back to a more upright position. His lips pulling away from hers left her as bereft as a woman waving a lover off to war. Something indefinable gave way inside her. She couldn’t lie to this man. The truth may well hurt one of them—both of them, ultimately—but lying wasn’t an option.

She sucked in two deep breaths to regulate her breathing. ‘It doesn’t change anything. I don’t want this.’

‘Your body does.’ He rested his hand over her left breast. ‘Your heart does.’

She shook her hair. ‘My mind doesn’t.’

‘Your mind is outnumbered.’

She shook her head. ‘It has casting vote. It has seniority.’

‘I can see that.’

‘This can’t happen again.’

‘Didn’t we just do this yesterday? Look how long that lasted.’

Reality bit. She wasn’t going to be able to just walk away from this. Or him. ‘Then it goes no further.’

The cogs turned wildly in that handsome head. ‘Agreed.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What is agreed?’

‘That we go no further than this.’

‘That’s not what I—’

‘It’s a fair compromise. Very modern.’

She stared at him. ‘Rob, this is ridiculous. I’m not suggesting we can make out like a pair of teenagers whenever we want but go no further...’

‘Why not?’ He leaned up and pressed his lips to her throat, causing a tremor that ran down her spine. She lurched backward. ‘It’s a great plan.’

‘It’s a ludicrous plan.’ It did nothing to address the question of her loyalty to her family.

Except limit the damage.

Honor frowned. That was something, after all. Maybe it would get them through the next few uncomfortable days without tearing off too big a chunk of her soul. And when the supply boat came with the parts Rob needed, they could part as friends. Not enemies.

‘People do this all the time, Honor. Get to know each other slowly. Enjoy each other. Without making a big physical commitment.’

The fact that idea was such a novelty to him said a lot about the world he came from. A faster, racier world than any she’d ever known. ‘It won’t change my feelings, Rob.’

It was written all over his face. He thought he could take a mile if she just gave an inch. That was because he didn’t truly know what he was up against. She’d been living on the memory of her family for four years now. These past few days—no matter how intense, no matter how breath-stealing—were a blip on her emotional radar. Just a few more days and she could get back to normal.

It wasn’t as if they’d be kissing twenty-four seven. Surely she could contain her growing feelings for a few more days?

‘No further,’ she warned and then only half dreaded the celebratory contact she knew would follow. But Rob surprised her by giving her the most radiant of smiles and then the most gentle of kisses on her forehead.

His hand slid up to cover her eyes and press her lids closed as he pulled his naked body out from under her sleeping bag. ‘Wouldn’t want to tempt you so soon into our agreement,’ he joked, his voice moving away from her.

The appalling conceit made Honor laugh and she felt kilos of weight lift off her shoulders. Weight she hadn’t known she’d been carrying.

‘Sleep now, gorgeous,’ he said from behind her ear. ‘I’ll wake you in a few hours.’

And then he was gone with a swish of the tent flap. Honor opened her eyes and sat swaying on the spot, the space around her feeling enormous now that he’d left it. She quickly stripped down to her underwear and slid under the sleeping bag before Rob’s heat and scent entirely dissipated.

She lay staring up at the sunflower ceiling, breathing him in. Smiling stupidly.

Rob wanted her.

Lord knew she wanted him too, but having him would never be an option. Kisses she could deal with. Maybe they’d keep him occupied enough that he wouldn’t notice how much of herself she was holding back. Maybe the thrill of the chase would disappear now that he’d got what he wanted—part of what he wanted.

Maybe turtles would take wing.

Part of her hungered to be close to someone again after so long. Her body had sung out with it yesterday and just now. But she trusted Rob to be as good as his word and not push her for more. Sometimes you had to feed the beast a little in order to control it.

She’d rather feed it her kisses than her soul.