by Brynn Kelly
“I gave you a pretty good fat lip,” she said, twisting and sliding around him like a seal. “I’d say sorry, but it’s kinda part of the deal.”
He shrugged. “It was a smart move.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Of course it didn’t.”
“Race you to the jetty.”
She duck-dived and pulled away with the same languid strokes he’d watched that morning. He was surprised she still had energy for it. He powered through the silky water. As he neared, she upped her stroke rate. He matched it, and put on a surge of his own, glad to stretch a different set of muscles. Tension dissolved from his chest for the first time in days. They sure looked like a couple of carefree newlyweds.
They reached the end of the jetty together. “Check out the fish,” she gasped, treading water.
A school of angel fish flitted under their feet, with parrot fish circling farther down. The water was clear as vodka right to the grains of sand far below, a break in the coral that bloomed and swayed around them. Yep, it was goddamn beautiful. She was goddamn beautiful.
“Oh, look!” She touched his shoulder. “Turtle!”
He dived out of her reach, eyes stinging against the salty water, and surfaced several meters away. Turtles. Theo was crazy about turtles.
And Rafe was just plain crazy. This was crazy. Tu agis sans passion. What the hell kind of game was he playing? He needed time out—from her.
“Do you think there’s snorkel gear?” she said. “I’ve love a closer look.”
“You know this isn’t really a honeymoon?”
“Are you always this dour?”
“I’m heading in. I need to eat.” And get my head straight.
“I’ll stay out for a bit. Save some for me, honey.”
* * *
Damn. She’d struck out.
Holly starfished in the water, eyes closed against the high sun, her body rising and falling with the lagoon’s gentle swell. If only the movement would unknot her stomach. Just when she thought she was gaining ground, he’d pulled away.
Where could she get some of his self-control? Even in the water her body throbbed, from the run, and from the shock of feeling nearly every muscle in his body taut against her—and he seemed to have more muscles than regular people. She sure was screwed if she got charged up at an encounter like that. Normal people didn’t react like that, did they?
Normal. Whatever that was. He’d been married to a “normal” woman, was possibly still not over her. Maybe Holly just couldn’t compete with normal.
She swam for another twenty minutes, to collect herself and for the sheer chest-bursting liberty of it, then breaststroked to shore, her stomach still swirling.
Under a tree on the clipped lawn, he’d set the picnic table with the kind of food she’d forgotten existed. He sat on the bench seat with his back to the table, facing the ocean, wearing shorts and a deep blue T-shirt, one leg folded across the other. Wet clothes hung from a rope he’d strung up between two palm trees. He’d done laundry?
After a cursory glance her way, he reached for a towel that was draped over the seat, and tossed it to her. She took the hint, and wrapped it around her torso. Crap, her underwear didn’t leave much to the imagination. She hadn’t meant to be that obvious. Maybe she’d pushed it too far, too soon. They had a few days on the island, he’d said. A few days to take his defenses from rock to Play-Doh.
If the ransom was paid, she could go on her way without him being any wiser to her deception. If not, she wanted him on her side when the shit went down. Maybe then, she could come clean. In the meantime she was safer to play princess and hope for the best.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said, shoving her hair into what she hoped was a sleek style.
“You were right,” he said, raising a glass of juice. “We may as well make the most of a bad situation. Cheers.”
She poured herself a juice and sat at the other end of the bench. Hmm. Just what did he mean by that? A bird plummeted into the water, a flash of orange and electric blue.
“Salute,” she said. “Or is it santé?” High school French hadn’t covered drinking etiquette.
He cocked his head, frowning.
“You speak French when you’re surprised. Or turned on.” She swiveled to focus on the food as heat rose up her face. What was that about? She never blushed, especially when she was on the job. Had to be the air temperature. “Are you French?”
“Uh.” He uncrossed and crossed his legs.
Stifling a triumphant smile, she began to assemble a sandwich—ham, lettuce, tomato, olives. Anything basic and relatively fresh made her drool like a mastiff after prison food.
“Are you French, Jack? I can’t pick your accent. And I swear your English is better than mine.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and dipping. “I’m a lot of things, and nothing. If I was a dog, I’d be a stray mongrel.”
Just like her. “Guess that makes me a prize Chihuahua.”
The bench shook with his laughter, deep and throaty, and only half-bitter. It did gooey things to her stomach. Man, that was so wrong.
“Pampered but scrappy as hell,” he said.
“That’s me.” Half the truth, at least.
“Your foot—it’s bleeding.”
“Really?” Blood trailed from the arch of her foot, mixing with water and grains of sand. “It’s nothing. You should have seen what I did to the shark.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“I cut myself on the coral. No big deal.”
His forehead crinkled. “We need to wash it. Coral carries dangerous bacteria and toxins. And in the tropics the last thing you want is an infection. I’ll find a first-aid kit.” He disappeared into the cabin.
She bit into her sandwich, closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The sea washed in and out, the breeze teased her face. No matter what became of her in the next week, at least she’d had the simple pleasure of this moment. In prison right now she’d be lying sleepless on her bed, trying to zone out the unvarying soundtrack of cries, groans and jeers of the other inmates. If the senator’s people hadn’t approached her, she’d be fighting a bunch of other homeless people for a spot under a freeway bridge. Here there were goddamn frangipanis. There were worse places to die—not that she planned to.
We may as well make the most of a bad situation.
Yep. They might as well.
Chapter 8
After a couple of minutes Jack’s footsteps trailed back from the cabin. “You’re not supposed to be enjoying this.”
Holly opened her eyes. He stood over her, a wry half smile imprinting a dimple in his cheek. A pirate with a dimple—who’d have thought? “You’re in my sun.”
“Sorry, your highness.”
He settled on the grass in front of her feet, his long legs sprawled, with a bowl of water and first-aid kit beside him. Crap—he intended to play doctor?
She pulled her foot under the bench. “I can do it.”
“You eat. I like having something to do with my hands. Doing nothing drives me crazy.”
She blew out a breath. When was the last time she’d willingly let a man touch her? An hour or two ago, he’d pinned her to a tree. She could let him clean a stupid cut. Laura would have no problem with someone worshiping at her feet—and it was a chance to get close to him, maybe draw him out.
“Come on, I won’t bite,” he said.
The run and swim sure had relaxed him. She inched her foot forward. He grabbed the heel and pulled it onto his knee. Awareness reverberated up her leg and pooled in a part of her that hadn’t seen action in a long time.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” he said, all business. “But I’ll give it a thorough clean.”
He poured a cloudy liqu
id into the bowl and directed her foot into it. It was as warm as the air surrounding them.
“This might hurt.” With a piece of gauze, he gently brushed over the wound.
She flinched.
“Painful?”
“Ticklish,” she said, through a mouthful of baguette. Thank God boredom had prompted her to raid Laura’s bathroom supplies on her last layover and wax her legs and paint her toenails, for the first time in six years.
“Suck it up, princess. The guy who taught me to do this ordered us to spend a good ten minutes cleaning coral wounds.”
“Is first aid something you were taught in the military?”
He froze. Dark eyes flicked up to meet hers. Bingo.
“Don’t look so scared,” she said. “It’s obvious you’re some kind of military man—you don’t smell bad enough to be a real pirate. I won’t tell, I promise. But I can’t help wondering how you got caught up in all of this.”
“If I told you I’d have to kill you. In fact, I’d have to kill me.”
“I’m not asking for name, rank and serial number. Just a, ‘Once upon a time there was a nice young pirate called Jack...’”
“Consider ignorance your ticket to freedom.”
“Consider disclosure your insurance.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ever thought about what might happen if they catch you? If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll lie and say you weren’t involved in the kidnap. That you rescued me and saved me from a shark and a horde of pirates—and from death by coral.”
“It’s not going to happen like that.”
“How can you be so sure? Maybe those men today recognized me.”
“If they did, they won’t be putting in a call to your daddy—they’ll be back here later to steal my captive and take the ransom for themselves.”
“You don’t really think that’s a possibility?”
“I’m trained to think in possibilities.”
“Then why don’t you have a gun? Or a phone? I don’t get why we’re unprotected.”
“You fed the protection to the sharks, remember?”
“Only one of them.”
He tightened his grip on her foot.
“Ouch,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“As far as I can tell, it was in your best interests to lose those guys as much as mine.”
“Shoving a guy into a shark’s mouth isn’t my style. He tripped.” He scraped the wound, too hard. She bit her gums. “And we’re not unprotected. I’d bet on you against a shipful of pirates. Where did a rich girl learn to fight like that?”
“I’ll tell you something about me if you tell me something about you.”
“I don’t play games, or make bargains.”
“I’ll go first, then. So I like to be able to take care of myself—maybe because I’ve been so protected. It’s empowering to know you’ve got your own back.”
She’d finished her sandwich and was wiping her hands by the time he responded.
“How did you learn?” He sounded pissed, like he was being forced to ask the question, like he itched to know but was reluctant to risk starting a real conversation. She’d have to take her time with it, draw him slowly into her confidence.
“Just picked stuff up, I guess. My father’s bodyguards gave me pointers. I think they enjoyed it.”
“I bet they did. Did your father stop beating you after that?”
“What?” Her cheeks chilled.
“Your father. Did he stop hitting you once you learned how to fight back? Or was it Jasper who did the beating?”
She swallowed. “What are you talking about?”
“When we were up on the cliff you flinched when I approached to help you up, tried to hide yourself. Someone’s hurt you, in your past. Repeatedly.”
“I was scared of you. What did you expect?”
“Scared of me? If only that were true. I don’t think much scares you at all. No. It was more than that. It came from within.”
“What are you, a psychiatrist?”
“I’ve learned a few things about how the mind works. Who was it?”
He settled into a rhythm of slow strokes over the arch of her foot. She forced her leg to relax, in case he could feel her tension. If he could see through that much of her facade, what else had he picked up on? She hadn’t given him enough credit. Rookie mistake. She took a swig of juice, stalling. This was meant to be about drawing him out, not her.
But you had to give something to get something back, right? Maybe if she opened up, gave him as close a version to the truth as she could without giving the game away, he’d start to give a damn about her.
He didn’t press her, just continued brushing the wound, firing tingles up her legs with every stroke. She sure could use a topic of conversation that took her mind off his touch.
“My father. He’d get drunk, and start accusing me of all sorts of stuff. I think he genuinely thought he had to beat the evil out of me. His parents—” She gulped back the words. Jack had done his research on Laura. She couldn’t claim the senator’s parents were crazed religious zealots, like her grandparents. They were probably upstanding regular Baptists. She fought to remember details of Laura’s life, gleaned from the same internet sources Jack might have seen. “My mother died when I was a baby, and I guess he took her death harder than he wanted to admit.”
“Is he still violent?”
“No, not to me. Not to anyone, as far as I know.”
“Not since you learned to fight back?”
“Something like that.”
“Tell me about that.”
How far should she take this? He was skating dangerously near the truth of her. But he was also looking at her differently—like an ally, not a princess. “I’ve never talked to anyone about this before, except my shrink.” That, at least, was true. He didn’t need to know it was a prison shrink.
“Who better to tell than someone you won’t see again after this week?”
She released a shuddering breath. “Okay... I was about fourteen, but small for my age. I used to hang out a lot in the gym at school, trying to stay away from home—before school, after school. I’d join in with the wrestling team, the boxing team, try some martial arts. Picked up something from all of them. I learned to use momentum and accuracy to make up for what I lacked in body mass, learned the strongest parts on a woman’s body and the weakest parts on a man’s, learned that the body only moves in certain directions—reverse those and you cause pain. Simple, really.” She left out the no-holds-barred fight club. Laura’s private high school probably hadn’t had one of those. “My fighting style was never very pretty—I wouldn’t have won any competitions, but I wasn’t in it for that. It was unpredictable, at least.”
“That’s a good strength. Didn’t your father wonder where you where?”
“He was too preoccupied with his...political ambitions to notice. He thought I was in dance class.” She grinned. Nice touch. Truth was, her parents had never cared where she was, as long as she wasn’t asking anything of them, or cramping their drinking habits. They only wanted her around for the welfare checks.
“I waited about a year,” she continued, “taking the beatings, keeping myself sane and strong by imagining myself rising up to him, imagining what I’d do to him. Stupid, really—it got to the point I was taking on guys much bigger and stronger than him in the ring, and slaying them, but I just had this block when it came to my dad. I was serving up the beatings out of the house, and meekly taking them at home. I was scared that if I took him on before I was ready he’d bash the life out of me, literally. I had it in my head that I needed to be unbeatable by the time I took him on, so I’d train and train till my knuckles bled.” She clenched and unclenched her fists. “Pretty su
re I broke a few bones in my feet, too. Kids at school started calling me Trinity. I kinda liked it.”
He frowned.
“You’ve never seen The Matrix?” she said.
“What’s that—a movie?”
“Are you even of my generation? You’ve got to see The Matrix. Trinity’s this kick-ass girl fighter.”
“I’ll put it on my must-see list,” he said, drily. “What tipped you over the edge?”
“One night he came after me, worse than before, because this time he had something else on his mind. Like he’d suddenly realized I wasn’t a kid anymore, and there were whole other ways he could use me.” She rubbed her palms into her eyes. Crap. She’d gone too far—forgotten she was playing a role. Accusing a senator of that put her in dangerous territory, even if there was no one Jack could tell.
“You don’t have to go into details. I just want to know what you did to the bastard.” Jack’s jaw was set, his eyes glimmering dangerously, like he hated her father as much as she had, like he was right there with her in the cramped living room of her childhood home. If only.
“This goes no further, right?”
“Of course.”
She swallowed. “I just let him have it, like this thing that had been building up inside me for all those years just...exploded. I used everything on him—punched and pounded and kicked and scratched and—” Pain cut into her palms. She released her fists. She’d been clenching them, driving her fingernails nearly through the skin. “And he was so shocked he balled up in a corner and cried. And I just kept on going. Until suddenly I got it. I got it that...”
“That what?”
That the same thing had happened to him when he was a kid, and in that moment he’d gone back there. That I was beating up on someone who was just like me. “That it was over. That he’d never do it to me again. That he was just a coward who’d been picking on an easy target, and I wasn’t his punching bag anymore.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? You grew up in America—don’t they have laws?”