by Anne Stuart
He definitely needed to get rid of her, and fast. She was already disrupting his life far too effectively, and he was desperate to have his old life back.
He threw himself back on the bed, running a hand through his long hair. At least it was clean, untangled. His face was clean-shaven as well, and he wondered how she’d react when she saw him. Probably with complete disdain.
She liked her wild man. How would she like one who was marginally civilized?
The noise woke him. It was the middle of the night, but he was acutely sensitive to the sounds around him, and he heard the scrape of the chair, the faint creak as the guest room door opened, the soft sound of her footsteps. He held his breath, then released it in profound disappointment. She wasn’t coming to his bedroom, she was heading for the living room.
Was she fool enough to try to leave? He wouldn’t put it past her, and he certainly couldn’t just turn over and try to reclaim sleep without making sure she wasn’t going any farther than the living room.
The sound of the front door galvanized him out of bed, and he was out there in seconds, ready to haul her back, looking forward to an excuse to touch her. Because he knew what would happen when he did.
No such luck, though. She’d opened the door, all right, but she hadn’t gone out. She was sitting at the desk, a candle lit against the darkness, staring down at something.
“I thought you were trying to sneak out,” he said.
She must have heard his approach. She didn’t turn, ignoring him as she stared at the thing in her hand. Belatedly he recognized it, and he felt the familiar defenses closing down around him. He almost turned around and went back to his bedroom, rather than answer her questions.
But she had no questions. She wouldn’t speak to him, and it was making him absolutely crazy. He’d do anything to get her to acknowledge his existence, anything.
“That’s a picture of my family,” he said in the raw voice he was slowly becoming used to. He wondered if he’d ever regain his normal, deep voice, or whether it would always sound like gravel in a blender. “The last one taken.”
She didn’t react, but she still held the frame, looking down at it rather than back at him. He knew the portrait so well—his aunt had given it to him when he was seventeen. When he’d come back.
“We were supposed to be flying to Hawaii, making stops along the way. My father was a pilot, a damned good one, and he didn’t trust flying with anyone else.
“My mother was a botanist with the University of Sydney, my father was a geologist, and I was their only child. We traveled everywhere together, until that last flight.
“We crashed. A storm came up, out of the blue, and we went down in a cove off Ghost Island. My parents died, I didn’t. I was eight years old.”
She still didn’t turn. But she didn’t let go of the picture. “I’d been a normal kid up till then. Maybe a little more traveled than most, but I liked the usual things. Sports and television and rock and roll. I wasn’t really prepared for Ghost Island.
“I buried my parents,” he said without emotion. “And I lived alone on that island for nine years. I don’t know how I managed to survive, but I did, until stories began to circulate, and someone actually came looking for me. They brought me back to my aunt, my only living relative, and I was a national hero. The Wild Child, who’d survived in an Australian rain forest for nine years on his own.”
She set the photograph down, but she still didn’t move. He didn’t know whether he was reaching her or not, didn’t know what he really expected from her.
“I tried to make it back in civilization. I had lots of money—the insurance company had paid off on my parents’ deaths and my aunt hadn’t touched a penny of it. They’d paid handsomely for the death of their eight-year-old son, but once they found out I was alive they weren’t in any hurry to ask for it back. I guess the insurance company figured they’d be liable for a lot more, given my time on the island. They were the ones who’d had us all declared dead and the search for the missing plane called off.”
He moved into the room, closer to her. Her hair was a riot of unruly curls around her head, and he started to think maybe he liked short hair on women after all. At least, he liked it on Libby.
“I was what they called gifted. I finished my basic schooling in two years flat, went to university and decided to be a botanist like my mother. After all, if there was one thing I knew, it was plant life—I’d lived off it, slept under it, worn it for more than half my life. But I couldn’t do it. After six months in the city something snapped, and I took off. I bought this place, where I’m left alone, the way I like it. I go back to the city every year and teach a course or two, but mostly I live here and do research. And then I go off into the wilderness, for weeks, months on end. I think I’d go crazy if I had to be around other people without any break.”
He came up behind her. He could smell the scent of his soap on her skin, see her small, fragile shoulders beneath his T-shirt, and it gave him a strangely possessive feeling. Strange, because he’d tried never to possess anything in his life.
“And my name really is John. John Bartholomew Hunter. Better known as Hunter by the few people who can put up with me long enough to become friends. Tarzan to my enemies.”
Even that didn’t get a response from her. She pushed away from the table, and he stepped back so she wouldn’t bump into him. He was a man who lived by his instincts, and his instincts told him it wasn’t going to be tonight. She had too many things to work through.
“I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you this since you obviously couldn’t care less, but I figured I owe it to you. I’ll see about getting you home as soon as I can. In the meantime, don’t you think you could at least say something? At least look at me?”
Obviously not. She rose, blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness. And with better night vision than he would have given her credit for, she skirted him, went back to her room and closed the door behind her. The sound of the chair being wedged beneath the doorknob brought a faint, bitter smile to his face.
So much for mending fences. What had he expected, that she’d weep over his childhood? He hadn’t wept over it—hadn’t wept over anything since he’d buried his parents twenty-five years ago.
Which reminded him. Hunnicutt had the absolute gall to have bought the deserted island for his little experiments. He’d bought his parents’ resting place, and even if John had felt any urge to forgive and forget his incarceration, he wasn’t going to ignore that. As soon as he got rid of Libby he could concentrate on making Hunnicutt pay a suitable recompense.
He’d do everything he could to get her off-island by tomorrow. There was only one small, bitter problem with that.
He didn’t want her to go.
LIBBY WAS AMAZED she’d slept so well. It had to be late morning—the sun was streaming in the windows of her small room, and all was still and quiet.
She really didn’t want to leave the safety of the bedroom. She wasn’t ready to face him…John…again. But she was starving, restless and unable to stay in bed a moment longer, and she steeled herself to deal with him. Just because she had to see him didn’t mean she had to talk to him.
She moved the chair and flung open the door defiantly. All for nothing. The kitchen was deserted. And so, her instincts told her, was the house.
She didn’t find the note until after she’d taken another long, blissful shower and stolen another set of his clothes. The marks on her hips had faded, but her wrist was still sore and bruised. Maybe she’d get over him when the bruises disappeared. Maybe not.
He’d left the note by the picture of the young boy and his parents, the picture that had haunted her dreams. “Gone up island to see about getting you a way out of here. Be back tonight. John.”
She crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it in the trash. And then for some reason she picked it out again, smoothing the wrinkles. Foolishness on her part—she was going to be out of there before long
, and she shouldn’t need anything to remember him by. But she tucked it in the pocket of her shorts, anyway.
She was starving enough to try making scrambled eggs out of powdered egg and powdered milk on the gas stove. The results were surprisingly good. No Tab, of course, and at the moment she would have killed for any kind of pop, even an orange soda. She made do with coffee, taking a large mug of it out onto the front veranda.
She dragged a wicker rocker over to the wide railing, propped her feet up and stared out at the ocean, cradling the coffee on her stomach. The sound of the waves was incredibly soothing, the wind rustled the palm trees overhead, and in the distance she could hear the cry of birds. She had probably never been anywhere so remote in her entire life.
She should be anxious, restless, desperate to get back to people and civilization. Though she wasn’t quite sure why. What people? She had friends, but mostly they’d been Richard’s friends, not hers. The women she knew were either humorless workaholics or giddy airheads.
She missed her family. She had that much in common with John—they were both alone in this world, no families left. But that was about all.
She tilted her chair back, staring at the horizon. They must be somewhere near the Great Barrier Reef if she remembered her Australian geography, which was questionable. There was no denying that the climate here was perfect, the scenery gorgeous, the air heavenly. If she were to live here she wouldn’t have nearly so Spartan an existence. She’d have electricity and a satellite dish for telephone and television and Internet connections. She’d have a much better variety of food, a less-intimidating library, and a fireplace for rainy days.
The place could use a pantry, full of useful stores. A decent stereo would help matters as well. And closets—the house had no decent closets, and the sheets on her bed were practically threadbare. Something light, cotton, with flowers on it…
She sloshed some of the hot coffee on her stomach, staining his T-shirt as she sat up abruptly. What the hell was she doing, planning her future? There was no future for her in a place like this, with a man like him. Even if he wanted her, which he obviously didn’t, she’d have to want him as well, which was outside the realm of possibility. So the sex had been…quite nice. Obviously she’d chosen poorly in the past. Next time she wouldn’t settle for messy and undignified. Next time she’d see if she could find a partner who could make her feel things. A partner like John.
She slammed her feet on the porch. “Idiot,” she said aloud, knowing he wasn’t anywhere near to hear her voice. “Stupid, sentimental, irrational, romantic, impractical idiot. The sooner you get out of here, the better.”
There was no one there to disagree, only a small, insistent voice in her head, and she’d learned long ago to ignore it.
She looked out at the waves rolling gently onto the shore. It was incredibly soothing, just sitting there watching the ocean. She could have sat there forever, for weeks, for months, for years. She could have sat there forever. With him.
She might as well accept the fact that she’d been avoiding for the last twelve hours. Hell, she’d been avoiding it for longer than that, but those days didn’t count. She hadn’t even known what she was up against.
The bottom line was, she didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to leave him, didn’t want to leave this place. She wanted to go into the back of the house, take off all her clothes and climb into his big bed. She had the most insane desire to start cleaning, rearranging things, when she’d never been much of a nester in her entire life. She wanted this place, and this man, and she wasn’t going to have, either. So she sat on the lanai, staring at the ocean, and let herself cry.
Times like these called for desperate measures, she thought when her first fit of weeping had passed. Times like these called for chocolate.
The bastard had none, only that elderly candy bar that she’d consumed the night before. Oh, sure, he had more than a case of beer, but the closest thing to chocolate was an old tin of baker’s cocoa. She was desperate enough to try a spoonful, but she spat it out, shuddering. It was unsweetened.
It took her ages to realize what she did have. Dried eggs and oil and flour and sugar. All the things she needed to make brownies. John didn’t have anything useful like a cookbook among all his learned tomes on botany, but the blessed tin had a recipe on the back. No measuring cups, either, but she simply guessed. She almost gave up when she was ready to put the pan into the oven and discovered that the damned thing didn’t have an automatic pilot, and she considered sitting on the porch and eating the batter plain. But she was made of sterner stuff than that, and if brownies weren’t worth risking life and limb for, then what was?
To her amazement the oven lit easily enough, with only one terrifying pop. She’d had to fashion a brownie pan out of several thick layers of tinfoil, and she slid it into the oven, keeping her fingers crossed. If they worked, she’d survive. Brownies made anything bearable.
She almost started crying again when the brownies came out. They were perfect—soft and chewy, and she ate half the pan, burning her mouth as she did it, letting the blissful chocolate waves wash over her. As long as there was chocolate in the world things could never be too bad.
She was half tempted to hide the rest of the chocolate in her room—he didn’t deserve to share her body or her chocolate, but she decided that would be too petty. Instead she decided to snoop, wandering through the place, trying to figure out what kind of man John Bartholomew Hunter really was. It was growing dark when she struck gold. A small hardcover book, clearly written for older children, was tucked sideways in one of the bookshelves. A gangly teenager with familiar eyes stared out from the cover, and the title, Wild Child, told the rest. The book was copyrighted fourteen years ago, but that didn’t matter. It was his past that interested her. She already knew the present.
She took one of the oil lamps back to her room, curled up on the bed and started to read. She was so engrossed she didn’t hear the front door open, didn’t hear the footsteps in the kitchen.
It was only when a shadow darkened her door that she looked up, startled, at the strange man standing there, watching her.
And then she realized it was John.
Chapter Thirteen
He’d shaved. His jaw was smooth, tanned, unadorned by the rough beard. His hair was too long, pushed back from his face, but it was smooth and silky, not the tangled mat that it had been. He wore the same clothes she did, the only clothes he seemed to own—khaki shorts and a white T-shirt, and for some reason the sight of him in a shirt, when she was so accustomed to him wearing so little, was even more disturbing.
She looked into his face, schooling her own expression into one of utter disinterest. It was rough going. He had the face of an angel. No, the face of a fallen angel, high cheekbones, a strong jaw, a rich, generous mouth. And his eyes, his deep brown liquid eyes, no longer shuttered and opaque, watching her, expecting something from her. Something she wasn’t willing to give.
“Don’t tell me the shock of my appearance isn’t enough to make you speak?” he said, the irony clear in his raspy voice.
She wanted to turn her back on him, turn to the book, but she couldn’t. For one thing, she couldn’t quite bring herself not to look at him. He was like chocolate for the eyes, and she was having a hard time resisting, at least the looking part.
And she didn’t particularly want him to see what she was reading. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how curious she was about his past. She already knew he was older than she’d thought, thirty-three years old. She knew things she hadn’t wanted to know—about the little boy alone on an uninhabited island, trying to survive, and part of her wanted to jump up and put her arms around him, to put his head on her breast and stroke his face.
But that wasn’t what she really wanted, and she knew it.
And it certainly wasn’t what he wanted. He just wanted her gone, and his blessed privacy back again. Nothing personal, of course. He’d learned to live wi
thout people and he preferred it that way.
“There’s a boat coming for you tomorrow morning that’ll take you to the mainland. The captain’s an old friend of mine, and he’ll see to it you get your passport replaced and get a ticket home. Unless you were wanting to go back and talk to Hunnicutt.”
She turned her back at that, carefully shielding the book from his gaze.
“I thought not. The captain will be here midmorning, so you won’t have to put up with these primitive conditions for too much longer. Once I deal with Hunnicutt I’ll see about getting your belongings shipped back to you in the States. I assume he’ll have your address.”
That almost got her, but she kept her gaze on the wall. Deal with Hunnicutt? What did he think he would accomplish against someone with Hunnicutt’s billions? That kind of money could buy any kind of protection—he’d be helpless.
It wasn’t her concern, she reminded herself sternly. Even if she were disposed to talk, he wouldn’t listen. She’d gotten him out of that mess, and he’d returned the favor. They were even. If he chose to walk straight back into the lion’s den again, then it was out of her hands.
“You know,” he said casually, “you’d make one hell of a wife. You’ve got the silent treatment down pat—it’s almost as effective as the Chinese water torture. If I had to choose between some of the little electric experiments that first doctor was practicing on me and your class-A snit, I think I’d prefer the electricity.”
That made her turn. The word wife was a lot more shocking than anything else he could have said, and he seemed to realize it. He took a step back, a physical distancing, but she didn’t move, watching him out of calm, steady eyes.
“I’ll make dinner,” he said. “But just so you don’t have any more nasty surprises, I thought I better mention something. My mother was French.”