I tilted my head at him and took a step closer.
“Excuse me?” I asked. I took another step. “Excuse me? What did you say?” He shook his head and I took a couple more steps, losing some of the impact of my anger as I stumbled through a dip. “No, no, no. That’s not how this works. You don’t get to mutter things at me under your breath and have me not ask you what you said. If you’re going to say something, you’re going to say it to me.”
“Why?” Gavin demanded, turning to stare at me. “Because you’re so entitled that you think that everyone should do exactly what you say, exactly when you say it?”
“Entitled?” I repeated, stunned.
Of course, it hadn’t been the first time that I had had someone say that about me, but it was the way Gavin said it, spitting it at me like it was the worst possible thing that he could think of to say.
“Yes,” he said, facing me now. “What I said was that you are just like all the others, and that is exactly what I meant. All of you rich bitches are exactly the same. You think that everyone either worships you or fears you because your money, and that the more ancestors you have who had money, the more important you think you are. Anyone else is just put here to do your bidding.”
“That’s not true,” I said, tears stinging in my eyes as I looked around, desperately searching for Hunter. “That’s not who I am.”
“Of course, it is,” Gavin said. “You don’t think that I can see the money dripping off of you? You don’t think that I can hear it in every word that you say to both me and Hunter? You might have gotten him all starry-eyed so he doesn’t realize what he’s dealing with, but you’re not fooling me. Whoever you are, you’ve got serious money behind you, and whoever you are pretending to be, there’s a reason. I’ve been working my ass off trying to figure out what we’re going to do here, and all you can do is bitch. It could be a hell of a lot worse. Why don’t you just appreciate your surroundings a little bit.”
“Appreciate them?” I asked, still trying to process the nastiness that he was spewing at me. “I’m not sure what it is that you’re experiencing, but apparently it has stopped you from noticing that we are not in a revival of the Blue-Fucking-Lagoon.”
“That’s a great movie.”
The voice behind me made me jump and I turned around to see Hunter standing on the top of a rock that jutted out into the ocean. A wave crashed at the base of the rock, sending a spray of white foam up to his feet and I felt my knees go a little weak.
“What?” I asked, his words not fully going through my mind.
“Blue Lagoon,” he said. “It’s a great movie. I used to watch it all the time when I was little.”
Oh, dear lord. How old was he?
“A little racy for an evening family movie, don’t you think?” I finally asked.
Oh, shit. How old was I?
Hunter shrugged as he started down the rock toward the beach.
“I don’t honestly remember anybody watching it with me. We had a VHS of it that had been recorded off of the TV and it was one of about three that I could reach where they were kept, so I just kind of watched them in rotation.”
“He probably didn’t even realize that it was racy,” Gavin said and I looked over to see that he was back to stabbing at the water to catch more fish to toss up onto the sand. I hated to see them flopping around the way that they did, but I hated being hungry more, so I was going to deal with it. “Maybe he thought that one of those birds that they show was the stork and that’s how they got the baby.”
“You seem to be going pretty deep into that movie to make fun of someone for watching it,” I snapped.
Hunter was walking toward me and I hoped that he hadn’t been standing on the rock long enough to hear what Gavin had been saying. I had already spilled enough about Virgil when we were in the jungle. I couldn’t let him find out more.
I was thinking about that as he came up, his eyes seeming to purposely avoid me. My heart clenched and I felt a flicker of blended, uncomfortable emotion wash over me. I wish that I understood why I had pulled away from him in the jungle. He had been right there, looking at me with the expression in his eyes that I had been hoping to see the night of the wedding. As soon as that thought went through my mind, I realized that that wasn’t the case, and that that had been exactly why I had pulled away. The night of the wedding all that mattered to me was that Hunter was young, gorgeous, and sexy. He seemed like the perfect man to take care of the stress that I had been feeling and get me on to my new life. He was going to be my sampler, my training wheels, and I just wanted to see the same attraction and desire in his eyes that I was feeling. When we were sitting together in the jungle, however, I saw something much more. There was emotion in his eyes that I didn’t know if I was ready to face. I didn’t even know if I was able to feel that way again. He didn’t know me, and I was doing everything that I could to make sure that he never did. The last thing I needed was to not only admit the deeper attraction that was pricking at the back of my mind, but to see the same in him and have to admit that I had done something wrong.
“Do you think that we could wrap up the theater review and someone could actually help me with this shelter?” Gavin asked.
He had climbed up out of the water and tossed his spear onto the sand. He would come back for the fish after they had stopped twitching, which was exactly how I preferred them. After this she would never be able to look at a sushi bar the same way.
“I still think that it’s ridiculous that you’re going to all this trouble to build a shelter,” I said. “We’re not going to be here long. They’ll have noticed that Hunter and I are missing from the ship and come looking for us.”
“And miraculously find us on an island that has nothing on it and is who knows how far away from the ship’s route?”
“He’s right,” Hunter said.
“What?” I asked, swinging my head to look at him.
“He’s right,” Hunter replied. “I thought that it was going to be better if I went off on my own, but I’ve been thinking more about it, and I don’t think that it would be a good idea for us to fracture. As much as none of us really relish the idea, we need to rely on each other right now. The reality is that we really don’t know how long we’re going to be here. Of course, we would hope that the people on the ship would have noticed by now that we aren’t there anymore, but that doesn’t mean that they would know how to come find us. And to be completely honest, they might not have noticed. I assure you that those men who were chasing us didn’t go to the head of security and tell him what happened. The people with the wedding on the cruise might notice that we weren’t at the activities, but it’s entirely possible that they would just think that we decided to have more relaxing vacations and were just not going. It could be quite a while before they’re able to retrace their steps, figure out when we went overboard, and then find us.”
“So, we’re just screwed is what you’re trying to tell me?” I asked.