The Castaway Bride

by Kandy Shepherd

  “I don’t appreciate your timing, Sam. Hoping for a spot of breakfast are you?”

  What was going on here? “Sam? You called it Sam! You… you know this monster?”

  The beast blinked coldly at her and took a step forward on its scaly legs. Cristy pushed herself backward against the hard frame of the bed.

  “Don’t you come near me,” she ordered. It blinked at her again.

  “Relax. He won’t hurt you. He’s a pet of old Seth the hermit—lizards live for years, you know.”

  “A pet? You told me that it would attack.”

  Matt pulled a face. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist teasing you.”

  “Teasing me?”

  “Yeah. Well, I knew Sam wouldn’t hurt a fly. Uh, actually he could do serious damage to a fly, I guess. But not to us.”

  “We were never in any danger?”

  “No. Seth tamed him and when Sam senses someone’s in the hut he hangs around, hoping for scraps. He’s very partial to bacon.”

  “B… bacon?” Not human fingers or toes?

  Matt addressed the lizard. “Sorry, old mate, the cupboard is bare.”

  “Don’t encourage him and don’t even think about feeding him.” Cristy felt her voice rise. “And I don’t appreciate you teasing me. I was really frightened.”

  “You don’t like old Sam?”

  “I think he’s hideous.”

  “He’s not the prettiest of pets, I admit,” said Matt, getting up from the floor.

  Cristy shuddered. “He’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “But he grows on you,” said Matt. “Sure you wouldn’t like to get to know him?”

  “Get him out of here!”

  “C’mon mate,” Matt said soothingly as he ushered the reptile out with an old broom that was resting near the door. “The lady doesn’t want you around.”

  Matt disappeared out the door after the slowly moving lizard. Cristy heaved a sigh of relief. “Send him far away,” she called after him. “But don’t hurt him.” She didn’t believe in injuring animals just because they frightened humans. Sam could just head back the forest where he belonged.

  Minutes later Matt returned, striding through the doorway, magnificently unconcerned with his nakedness.

  “Is that…thing gone?” Cristy said, suddenly feeling self conscious about her own nudity. She pulled the sheet up and over her breasts.

  Matt sat down next to her. “He won’t be back—he only comes for the food, not the company.”

  “I was petrified,” she said with a shudder.

  “I know. I’m sorry I teased you.”

  “Th… that’s okay,” she said. The Aussie humor took some getting used to.

  “Talk about thwarted,” Matt said, starting to laugh. “Reptile interruptus.”

  Cristy laughed, too, if a bit shakily. “I guess we weren’t expecting visitors.”

  Matt put his arm around her and she snuggled close. She kissed him on the sexiest curve of his jaw.

  “We don’t have to stop,” she said, as invitingly as she could, though in truth she’d lost the mood. A meeting with a prehistoric Australian monster wasn’t exactly a turn on. And her hip was beginning to throb where she’d banged it on the floor; bruises bloomed all the way down to her thigh.

  “You don’t sound so keen.”

  “No. Yes. Well…” she started, knowing how half-hearted she must sound.

  Matt got up and put on his black undershorts. Then he held out his hand to help her to her feet. Cristy rose awkwardly, clutching the sheet to her with one hand, accepting his offer of help with the other.

  She looked up at him. “Are you sure you don’t want to—?”

  “I’ll take a rain check, if you don’t mind. I think we’ve both lost the impetus.”

  Cristy bit her lower lip. She was satisfied. Oh, so satisfied. While Matt… It didn’t really seem fair. “I feel… I feel like I owe you one.”

  Matt’s eyebrows rose. “We’re not keeping a balance sheet on orgasms here.” He laughed. “What are you, an accountant or something?”

  “I am, actually. Or I was.”

  He assessed her face and body with a slow narrowing of his eyes that made her want to blush.

  “You don’t look like an accountant.”

  Cristy bristled, primed by years of such comments. “That’s a very sexist remark. And if I had a dollar for every time I’d heard it I’d be a wealthy woman.”

  “Okay, okay. I take your point. He grinned wickedly. “But I sure wish my accountant looked like you. Tax return time would become a pleasure.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her briefly, just long enough to send her senses zinging. “Take that on account. And we’ll settle up later.”

  He reached for his T-shirt and slid it back over his head. “How are you at slicing mangoes? I’m going out to get some coconut milk.”

  “From the juice bar at the mall, you mean?”

  “Yeah, the one you shin up the coconut palm to reach. Wish me luck.”

  “Just don’t bring Sam back with you.”

  Cristy watched Matt as he strode out the door and her heart did that curious little flip. Not only was Matt the sexiest man she’d ever known but he was fun, too. Kind to animals. And generous.

  She blushed as she thought about what had happened. She’d had an orgasm just from him sucking her nipples. What would the real thing be like?

  He’d said he’d take a rain check.

  When?

  Her heart plummeted. What if they were rescued this morning and she never got a chance to even the score?

  She felt suddenly desolate at the thought of being without Matt. Once they were rescued they’d go their separate ways and the thought was inexplicably painful.

  Cristy acknowledged that this—for her at least—had gone way beyond lust. She hoped against hope that no rescue boat would arrive this morning. Because she intended to make every second she had left with Matt count and not run away from an experience that she knew she would remember for the rest of her days.

  Two hours later, Matt strode ahead of Cristy toward the beach. This woman was hot. He hadn’t even put her into drive and she had roared off without him.

  Old Sam had a bad, bad sense of timing. Matt felt thwarted, frustrated. But it gave him a good feeling to know he could give Cristy such ecstasy, so easily. And the way she’d been feeding him slices of mango at breakfast, slipping them provocatively into his mouth, made him confident that his turn would come. With interest.

  Yet he sensed Cristy wasn’t as experienced as she wanted him to believe. There was something almost innocent about her seductive breakfast manners, as though she’d been trying out something very new to her.

  He wasn’t complaining. She could practice on him all she liked. And it made him even more intrigued by her; keen to know her better in the time they had together.

  He turned around. “C’mon slowpoke.”

  “I am not a slowpoke,” she protested. “It’s these darn flip-flops. You trimmed one shorter than the other.”

  While he’d been out getting the coconuts, she’d changed back into the remnants of her wedding dress With her breasts swelling lushly out of the top and her long legs slender beneath the short, ragged skirt, she looked like some Robinson Crusoe fantasy come true.

  And she was his.

  He shook his head against the sudden thought and the rush of pleasure it gave him. No. She was not his. She was another man’s bride. She wore the ring to prove it. And he’d better keep reminding himself of that—he’d broken his own code by going as far with her as he already had.

  It was getting harder and harder to keep up his barriers against her. But if he let himself get too close to her, he’d be gutted when they were picked up by a rescue boat and she waved him goodbye and waltzed back to her hubby-to-be.

  So why not treat this as something temporary? Temporary, and somehow separate from his real existence. A seafaring fantasy with Cristy the mermaid sent b
y his good mate King Neptune to offer comfort to a shipwrecked sailor.

  “Wait up!” she called and he held out his hand to her.

  Cristy stopped in her tracks as they reached the beach and stood in awe at the sight that met her eyes. “Wow!” was all she could think to say.

  The dull clouds had blown away, and the sullen, choppy gray sea had calmed to miraculous turquoise waters lapping quietly at the edge of the white coral sand. The only evidence of the storm was the scatter of fallen palm fronds on the sand—and the disappearance of Wayfarer.

  She glanced sideways at Matt. “It’s a shame about your boat.”

  “She would have been broken up on the reef.” She saw him swallow hard. “But she… she was insured.”

  “Insurance doesn’t make up for losing something you loved. I think that boat was special to you.”

  “Even though you thought I’d stolen it.”

  Cristy looked sharply up at him but he was smiling, his eyes creasing in that deliciously sexy way. She felt herself color as she started to protest. “I did not. I just wondered—”

  He cupped her chin in his hand so she had to look up into his eyes. “You’re a terrible liar, Cristy. Do you know that everything you’re thinking shows on your face?”

  “It… it does?”

  He nodded. “And you had me down as some itinerant boat thief.”

  “Well, I…” She floundered, knowing she’d incriminate herself with every word.

  “I do—did—own the boat, and I do have a job, and I’m actually quite respectable.”

  “I didn’t for one moment think that you weren’t,” she protested.

  “Did you know the tip of your nose got very red when you said that?”

  Cristy’s hand flew to her nose. “It did not!”

  Then she looked up at him and saw he was laughing. She smiled ruefully back. “I guess maybe I was guilty of judging by appearances. I should know better, after all it’s my job to see below the surface of things.”

  “As an accountant?”

  She shook her head. “I trained as an accountant but now I’m an analyst for a stock-broking firm. I check out companies to see how honest they’re being to the market in the way they present themselves.”

  “That could be a useful skill to have, especially in these times.” His mouth twisted cynically. “Can you tell if people are doing the same thing?”

  Cristy frowned. “I’m not sure I know what you mean?”

  “Can you tell when people are being dishonest in the way they present themselves to other people?”

  She hesitated. “As well as anyone else, I guess. I tend to take people as I find them. What about you?”

  “I’m more cynical. I’ve found people are often very different to the way they present themselves.”

  “Are they? You’ll find with me that what you see is what you get,” she said, puzzled as to the turn the conversation was going.

  “Is that so?”

  Their eyes met and Matt was the first to look away. He shrugged. “You sound like you enjoy your job.”

  “I love it.” Then she remembered and cursed a mild curse.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “By running away from my wedding I’ve kissed goodbye to my job.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “I worked for Howard’s family company. That’s how I met him. Now I—”

  Matt’s face darkened and he took a step back from her. “You mean you were marrying your boss?” His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were dark and difficult to read.

  “Well, yes. If you put it like that.” With his arms folded tightly across his chest he looked formidable. And judgmental.

  “Now you’re the one making assumptions where you shouldn’t be.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You’re accusing me of being some kind of… gold-digger, aren’t you?”

  “There are women who would marry their boss for financial gain, yes.”

  “And you’re saying I’m one of them?”

  He shrugged.

  She flushed with anger. “How dare you judge me without even knowing me. I wasn’t marrying Howard for money. And I resent you saying that. You sound like—”

  She realized what she’d nearly said and bit her lip.

  “Like who?” asked Matt.

  “Like none of your business,” she hissed.

  “So why were you marrying Howard?”

  What gave with the interrogation? “I don’t know why I have to answer that question.”

  “You don’t. I’d just like to know.”

  Did she really know the answer herself? She turned away from Matt and paced a few feet on the sand, nearly tripping on her uneven flip-flops and then righting herself. She turned back to face him.

  “I was marrying Howard because he was decent and kind and I thought he’d be a good husband and father. I can’t deny I wasn’t attracted to his lifestyle—it was about as far away from the commune as you could get. He comes from one of America’s most highly regarded families. His father is close to the President. But I wouldn’t have married him just for the Templetton millions. Friendship, admiration, mutual respect—that seemed a good basis for marriage. Better than—”

  She stopped herself. Better than being blinded by physical attraction, she’d been about to say. But she had had no intention of explaining her “you can’t trust lust” policy of deciding on the men she dated. And that Howard had passed the lust test with flying colors, that is, there hadn’t been any. Affection—yes. Admiration—yes. Intense physical attraction like she felt for Matt—not for a moment.

  Matt’s voice was gruff. “What about love? Did you love the guy?”

  “Love? What’s love got to do with it?” she quipped, stalling for time, avoiding his gaze.

  “Quite a lot when it comes to marriage, I would have thought,” he said, more grimly than she thought was called for.

  “Well… I didn’t love him in the hearts-and-flowers kind of way. We both knew that—and to be honest I think he felt the same. But we were great friends. Had been since we’d started working together—even though he was the boss.”

  She scuffed her flip-flop in the sand. “I thought… I thought the ‘in love’ bit would grow once we were married. I thought a marriage based on honesty and friendship stood a better chance than something started by… by an irrational emotion.”

  And yet for all his high-sounding talk, Howard had betrayed her with her bridesmaid.

  Matt snorted cynically but Cristy ignored him. His questions were making her think.

  She went on. “Now I’m not so sure. After all, he was groping another woman before we even fronted the marriage celebrant. Maybe I didn’t know Howard at all. I guess I had a lucky escape.”

  Matt made another cynical noise. “That backs up everything I think about the institution of matrimony.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Avoid it at all costs.”

  “Really?” She wondered why she should feel so disappointed at his words.

  “The frosting was taken off the wedding cake after living through four of my mother’s marriages.”

  “Four?”

  “Yup. The first to my father whose life she made hell; the second to Danny’s father who made her life hell; the third to a compulsive gambler. She’s on her fourth now—she married him for his bank balance, he knew it, and so far, so good.”

  “How awful for you.”

  “It wasn’t great.”

  Cristy sensed a deal of pain behind his simple words and she gave up a silent prayer of thanks for her own parents, admittedly eccentric, but married thirty years and devoted to each other—and to their family. They still tried to interfere way too much in her life but she knew, much as it annoyed her at times, they only did it out of concern.

  “So Danny is only your half brother?”

  “Yeah, though I’ve never thought of him as anything less than my full brother.”

/>   “Does Danny—?”

  She didn’t get a chance to ask anything further as Matt put his hand gently over her mouth to silence her.

  “Who cares about Danny or my mother or your bridegroom?”

  “Ex-bridegroom,” she managed to mumble against his hand.

  “All that’s important right now is this,” he said, replacing his hand with his mouth in a kiss that made her forget everything but him and the flood of feeling his touch unleashed.

  He held both her hands and pulled her close to him, letting her feel his arousal. “I want to take you to a special place.”

  “Yes, yes,” she murmured urgently, rocking her hips against him, remembering the special place he’d taken her to this morning and aching to revisit it. This time without interruptions from a lizard named Sam.

  Matt pulled away from her, a hint of a grin lifting the corners of his mouth. “I don’t mean that special place. Well I do. Hell, c’mon, I’ll take you there.” He pulled her along to a faint track that opened ahead of them through the palm trees and undergrowth. Feeling almost giddy with anticipation, she went with him.

  Matt was gratified at the look of wonder on Cristy’s face as they pushed their way through the rainforest into the cool of the clearing. “Matt, this must be the most beautiful place on earth.” Her voice was low with awe.

  “I think so,” he said.

  Ahead of them was a waterfall pouring down the mountain and over a small cliff into a deep, green pool surrounded by mossy rocks, a small sandy foreshore, and clusters of extravagantly lush tree ferns.

  “I thought the beach was paradise, but this is where you come when you tire of paradise,” she murmured. “Look at the way the water comes down and breaks into spray. It’s sparkling like diamonds. And there are little rainbows.” Her eyes shone to rival the spray.

  Matt smiled, inordinately pleased at her reaction. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “I love the sound the waterfall makes. And what’s that lovely smell?”

  He gestured towards the vegetation. “Some kind of tropical flowers. I don’t know their names. White things.”