Without a doubt, Eddie was arrogant and cocky and loved the sound of his own voice. But when you’re facing something truly overwhelming, sometimes you need that. You need someone arrogant, someone even a little bit crazy. Because they’re the only person who won’t be scared.
I slowly shifted sideways, the horizon tilting before my eyes, not really thinking what I was doing. I just sort of sank. And it was only when I was over at forty-five degrees that it hit me that I’m about to put my head on his shoulder. It had just felt, for a brief moment, like the right thing to do.
Only now, I’d realized and I was stuck at a diagonal. I couldn’t keep going, or I actually would put my head on his shoulder. I couldn’t go back, or he’d notice.
“What are you doing?” he asked in an amused voice.
“I have an insect in my ear.” I said. I have no idea where that even came from. I slapped my hand against the opposite side of my head. “I felt it fly in there. It was red, with a purple stripe”—shut up, shut up, that’s not even remotely convincing!—“so I’m just trying to—” I whacked my head a few more times.
“Do you want me to take a look?” he asked.
“Oh! No, I think it’s...you know. Flown—” But he was already lifting me upright, while at the same time scooching over in the sand so that he was closer to me. He made a very cursory examination of my ear. I mean, if there really was a venomous insect in there, I’m not even sure he would have spotted it.
“I don’t see anything,” he told me.
I swallowed. “Well, good,” I said. “I obviously got it out.”
He stared into my eyes, so naturally I looked away. Except I couldn’t seem to break his gaze. “Um,” I said.
“Why are you so frosty?” he asked.
I blinked. “Frosty? I’m not frosty.” Look away. Why can’t I look away?
“You’re totally frosty. You’re either biting my head off or you’re totally cold. What did I do?”
My heart was suddenly racing. I felt like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Nothing! It’s just—” His gaze was doing weird things to me. It was pouring raw energy into me, like being hooked up to a live wire, and it was soaking down, right down inside me to—
To that part of me I’d thought was long ago shut down and locked up. That throbbing, pulsing engine between my thighs. And I was breathing faster and my heart was thumping and…oh God, it wasn’t just lust. It was much worse than that.
“It’s just that you’re…you,” I said at last. “You’ve slept with 10,000 women.”
He burst out laughing, and that gave me a second to look away and calm down a little. “You believe that?”
I shifted a little on the sand, sort of shrugging with my body, not trusting my voice.
“Think about it,” he said. “I’m thirty. Assume I started on my sixteenth birthday. That’s six hundred and twenty five women a year. That’s one point seven a day. Not taking account of leap years.”
I blinked at him. “You’re…very good at math.”
“Nah, I worked it out on a calculator, ages ago, when people started saying it.”
I had to ask. “So how many women have you slept with?”
“How many men have you slept with?”
I blushed. “That’s—”
“Personal?”
I nodded in an okay, point taken way. And when I stopped nodding, he was looking right into my eyes.
“I’m not frosty,” I mumbled. “I just don’t—” I didn’t know what to say. I don’t want to be just another conquest? I don’t think I can take being abandoned again? Whatever he said, he’d have an answer for it. And I was in the sort of mood where I just might buy that answer. I swallowed. The blood was rushing in my ears again, my heart pounding. “I…I just….”
We stared at each other.
“FISH!” I yelled, jumping up. “We should try to catch a fish. We have to eat. I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry? We should fish.”
He gazed up at me, but I wasn’t going to fall into that trap again, so I looked at his arms. Solid and thick with muscle. I switched to his legs. Powerful. Powerful enough to go hard and fast, and to keep going all night long—
I looked at a rock. A rock was okay, right? I breathed for a moment and felt the heat inside me slowly die down. “We should fish,” I said again, more firmly. “You catch it; I’ll cook it.”
***
Adam stood in the shallows, jeans rolled up to his knees. His t-shirt was off, because he was using it as a fishing net. He’d tied knots in the sleeves and neck and now he was scooping it through the water, trying to get a fish. I stood a few meters behind him, on the beach, and watched as he scooped. And scooped. And scooped.
“Any fish,” I said helpfully. “Any one will do.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” he said in a low voice. He scooped again, more violently, and almost fell over.
“I would have thought you’d be better at this,” I said. “As a man. A rock star. Alpha male. Isn’t this prime alpha male sort of stuff? Hunting and gathering?”
“It’s surprising,” he said between scoops, “how seldom...I have to catch fish...during a gig.”
“You didn’t manage to start a fire, either,” I said thoughtfully.
“Look—Ah! I got one!” He held the t-shirt aloft, the water draining out of it. There was indeed a dark shape thrashing around inside. He passed the t-shirt to me.
“What?” I shoved it back to him. “I don’t want it!”
“You said you’d cook it!”
“I will cook it, after its dead! I’m a chef, not a veterinarian! I can’t put it down!”
The fish was thrashing harder and harder in the t-shirt. “So you want me to catch it and kill it?!” he asked.
“Yes!”
The fish was going crazy now, snapping its jaws. Adam juggled it around, trying to keep his fingers out of the way. “How?!”
“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Isn’t it meant to just die, out of the water?”
“Tell that to the fish!” It was trying to force its way out of the t-shirt now, buttons pinging off. “We’re bloody awful fishermen!” Adam yelled.
“I know!”
Adam glanced around desperately, then swung the t-shirt and whacked the fish against a rock. It went limp. “There,” he said, panting, and threw me the bundle. “Your turn.”
***
“Wow,” said Adam, minutes later. “You’re lethal with those things.”
I glanced up at him. I was kneeling beside a flat rock, working on the fish. I’d already gutted it and taken off the scales. Now I was filleting it. “This is just cooking,” I said. “I can do cooking.”
He squatted down, watching. “Where did you learn? In the islands?”
I shook my head and told him about San Francisco and the restaurant, and coming out to the islands two years ago. There was a Nathan-shaped hole in my story.
“And you’ve never been back to the States?” he asked. “Not once?”
“There’s nothing for me there,” I said.
“No family? No friends?”
I felt my chest tighten up. I had plenty of family and friends back in San Francisco. I’d barely contacted them since the aborted wedding. I’d basically dropped off the face of the earth. That was one reason I’d fallen in love with the islands: apart from their beauty, they were a good place to disappear.
I looked around at the empty horizon. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“I prefer to be on my own,” I said at last.
***
The fish wasn’t great. I steamed it in another bamboo pot and it was difficult to estimate the timing, so I overcooked it by a good few minutes. And without spices and sauces, it was pretty bland.
But we hadn’t eaten since the previous evening.
“It’s delicious,” said Adam. “Superb. Forget the head chef, thing. When we get home, you can be my personal chef. You can make me a fry up every morning.�
��
A fry up. And on the yacht, he’d wanted pizza and fries and shepherd’s pie. And then it hit me. It wasn’t just safe, boring food….
“It’s comfort food,” I said aloud. “You’re been living on comfort food, this whole trip.”
He looked shocked…but then shrugged guiltily.
“What’s bothering you?” I asked. I thought back to Eddie, and the conversation I’d heard. “What’s been going on? Why were you in Mexico?”
Things started to twist around in my mind. I’d been thinking the booze was why he was sometimes a mess. What if it was the other way around? What if the booze was just a symptom?
But he shook his head and kept eating. I sat there frowning, watching as he went back behind his shield of jokes and bravado. I felt as if I’d caught a glimpse of something, but I wasn’t sure of what.
“What about Ozzy?” I asked suddenly. “He’s been out there all day on his own. Do you think he’ll come back?”
In answer, Adam held up a morsel of fish.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “He’s probably halfway across the island by now. He’s not going to—”
“Mrrrp.” Ozzy came bounding across the sand and snatched the fish from Adam’s fingers, then glared his disapproval that dinner had taken this long.
***
By the time we’d eaten the fish, the sun was going down. Adam scaled one of the trees and hacked down some huge, surfboard-sized leaves to use as bedding mats. He was also very proud of what he found hiding underneath the leaves: bananas. They were a little under-ripe, but a hell of a lot better than going hungry.
As the sun went down, it couldn’t have been later than ten, but I was exhausted. I gathered up an armful of leaves and went to lay them down by the fire...which gave me a problem. How far from Adam was appropriate? Opposite him, so the fire was between us? For what, protection? That made it look as if I was scared of him. Right next to him, then? But that would look as if I wanted something to happen, and I absolutely, definitely didn’t. A third of the way around, then. Sort of neutral ground.
I could feel him watching me as I lay down, but he said nothing. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to sleep.
It was impossible. The fire kept my front nicely warm, but the wind chilled my back. And having the dark jungle behind me, filled with God-knows-what, made the back of my neck prickle.
After a half hour of tossing and turning, he said, “Can’t sleep?”
I sort of grunted and didn’t answer, burying myself into my leaves a little as if he’d disturbed me.
A few minutes later, “Do you want me to come and sleep beside you? Against your back?”
I pondered. I wanted so badly to say No, to act affronted. “You’re keeping your clothes on,” I said at last, a warning tone in my voice.
“I’m shocked you’d imagine anything else.”
I kept my eyes closed as he approached. I could hear the soft crunch of the sand under his feet and then the vibration of his body settling down behind me. And then his chest touched my back and I jerked at the sudden warmth of him. I forced myself to relax, but my heart was racing.
Next his shoulder touched my shoulder. And then his calf touched my calf. And then his groin was pressing against my ass. Was that his—I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just the hardness of his leg—he was solid with muscle, there. Hard and bulging and—
Stop it!
We lay there for a second, touching from shoulder to foot. I wasn’t cold anymore.
Then a hand landed on my elbow and then started to slowly slide around my front. “Wait,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Putting my arm round you,” he said.
“I didn’t say you could put your arm round me.”
“What am I supposed to do with my arm? Put it up in the air?”
I felt him lift his arm vertical, like a flagpole. He held it there, waiting me out.
Well fine, I decided. I’ll call his bluff. He can hold it there all night if he wants to. I’m not going to break.
“Okay, fine,” I said, thirty seconds later. “But if you touch a boob, I’ll kick you in the balls.”
The hand tentatively slid around my front, well below boob level.
“Goodnight,” he said, his breath hot against my neck. It didn’t sound like “Goodnight.” It sounded like something very different. I adjusted my ass minutely and…no, that wasn’t his leg I was feeling.
“Goodnight,” I said firmly, and lay there staring into the fire, feeling his body against mine, until sleep finally took me.
Chapter 10
I opened my eyes. My body was a little numb from sleeping on the sand, but I felt a hell of a lot better than the previous morning, after the lifeboat.
The fire was still smoldering in front of me. Ozzy was curled up by my feet, furry and warm against the crook of my ankles. Adam was still pressed against me from behind, making me feel snuggly and lazy. I could feel his heart beating, hear the slow sound of his sleeping breath, and—
His hand had moved to just below my breast, the edge of it nudging up against the soft flesh. The touch of him made my breathing quicken. Maybe it was sleepy, morning sex hormones, but God, I wanted his hand on me. I wanted his palm against my nipple. Even as I thought of it, I could feel my nipple harden in response.
I realized that I was sort of clutching his arm in mine, my hand loosely around his wrist. So it would stay roughly where it was, if I moved.
A deep, hot throb went through me. If I just happened to move a bit in my sleep….
But you’re not asleep.
But I could be.
I shifted ever so slightly on the leaves, inching my body like an earthworm towards his feet. Ozzy sleepily opened one eye and glared at me.
I shifted a little lower. Adam’s hand slid up to the lower half of my breast. Immediately, the warmth of his palm soaked through my thin dress and bra. I could barely breathe.
My nipple was tantalizingly close to his fingers. But I couldn’t move any further down his body or it would start to look weird.
But if I….
No, you can’t. Really, you can’t. Really, really—
I gently lifted his arm, moved it and lowered it again, ever so gently, so that his hand cupped my breast. His palm settled against my nipple, just as I’d wanted it. I didn’t dare to move, but I didn’t have to. Just my breathing was enough to make my nipple slowly rub against his warm hand. I closed my eyes in pleasure.
He stirred behind me. I feigned sleep.
I felt his realization as to where his hand was. He snatched it back as if burned, which was sort of sweet.
I gave a yawn and “awoke.” “What are you doing?” I asked in a sleepy voice.
“Nothing!” he said guiltily, looking at his hand.
***
Breakfast was bananas and fish. Adam gazed at the beach as we ate. “We need to make a sign,” he said. “Something that can be seen from a plane…or maybe from a satellite.”
He seemed…different. His voice still had that cocky, arrogant tone, but there was something missing. I liked the new version.
“How big is that?” I asked doubtfully.
“Big. You can see a car on Google Maps, right? So each bit of the letter would have to be that big.”
I thought about it. Each letter was going to have to be twenty feet in size.
“But we only need three,” said Adam. “SOS.”
I looked up at the sky. The previous day had been cloudy, but today the sky was pure, clear blue. “And we have to do it out here on the beach, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to see it.”
“Right.”
“We’re going to fry without sunblock.” It was already getting warm, and it couldn’t have been much past eight.
We sat and stared at each other for a moment. Then he smiled. “I have an idea,” he said.
***
We were in the jungle, at one of the pools of mud we’d passed the day before. I looked
at it doubtfully. “This is your idea?”
“It’ll work like sunblock. All those minerals and stuff, coating your skin. The sun won’t be able to get through. Look, think of it like one of those expensive mud baths.” He dipped a hand into the gloopy, brown mud. “You’d pay hundreds of quid for this in a spa.”
“Do I look like I go to fancy spas?” I looked between him and the mud pool a few times. “There has to be a better way.”
He nodded and then stood there watching me, waiting for me to suggest something. God, he could be infuriating.
“Fine,” I said. “Clothes on or clothes off?”
He shrugged. “The mud’s going to protect us,” he said. “Might as well be cool. It’s going to be seriously hot out there.”
How convenient. And yet, for all I tried to summon up righteous indignation at this transparent attempt to get my clothes off, a dark heat was building between my thighs. “You first,” I said.
He nodded and looked right at me as he shucked off his t-shirt and then lowered his jeans. In just his shorts, he stepped slowly into the mud pool. The gloop squelched around his thighs. He sat and it oozed slowly over him, until it covered his shoulders.
I turned around. He was going to see me in my underwear anyway, but then I’d be covered in mud. My bare skin...that was different.
I lifted my dress, raising the hem up my thighs, then over my hips. Knowing that he was staring straight at my ass. I stopped there for a second, gathering my courage. Up over my tummy and chest, over my head and off. I took off my sandals, and then stood there in my bra and panties, breathing fast. To get to the mud pool, I was going to have to face him.
Breathe. Just breathe.
I slowly turned, looking everywhere but his face. I saw his head move out of the corner of my eye. Knew that he was staring right at me.
Get in the pool. Just get in the pool!
There was enough room for us to sit in it facing each other, like a Jacuzzi. I put one foot in—
“It’s cold!” I yelled, drawing it back. “Why didn’t you warn me it was cold?”
Shipwrecked with the Billionaire Rock Star Page 7