by Talia Hunter
“Now’s when I introduce my knee to your cajones.”
“Don’t forget to jump back so I don’t head butt you when I double over.”
She bought her leg up, careful not to connect, then bounced back lightly. “This is all great. But I also want to do proper fighting, like in the videos. Less breaking free of holds. More killer punches.” She dropped into a fighting stance, with her knees bent and fists raised. “You want to go a few rounds, hot shot?”
He matched her pose, feeling a rush of enjoyment at the prospect. It had been years since he last did any martial arts training. He’d have to be gentle, but it would be fun to spar with her. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“You scared?”
“Only of bruising you.”
“Big talk, hot shot. Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.”
He feinted toward her, all too aware that if he accidentally connected with a punch or kick, he could do some serious damage. Instead, he swept her foot out with his. She went down on the sand with a grunt. To her credit, she scrambled right back up. “You have long legs,” she complained.
“Then let’s make it fair. I won’t do any more leg sweeps or kicks.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I want to learn to beat you without any advantages. But okay.”
When she went for him, she didn’t hold back. Lunging forward, her punch grazed his stomach and probably would have winded him if he hadn’t jumped back. When she pressed the attack with another punch, he barely had time to block it. Stepping back again, he stumbled on the churned-up sand and almost went down. She wasn’t just fast, she was so determined to beat him, she was ready to mow him down. Her lips were compressed, and her look of complete concentration made him want to smile. He’d call her adorable if she weren’t a little scary.
She lunged again and this time he managed to reach in and tap her ribs. But she caught him as he was pulling away, her fist slamming into his side. He grunted as the breath went out of him and clapped his hand over the place she’d struck.
“Ouch!” she yelled. “That really hurt.” She shook her hand, her face contorted. “It feels like I broke my fingers.” Another shake of her hand, then she touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” As if he’d admit to anything else.
“Time out?” She sat and he eased down on the sand next to her.
He pulled his hand from his aching side and sucked in a deep breath. “That’s a wicked right hook you’ve got there, slugger. When you decide to do something, you throw everything into it, don’t you?”
“That’s the way I was raised.” She extended her hand in front, palm turned away to show her red knuckles. “I think that punch hurt me more than it hurt you. My fingers are throbbing, all along here.”
He reached out and touched the red flesh gently. “We should go back and ice it.”
She shot him a glance that was almost shy, her cheeks flushing. “I’d better not have seriously hurt it. I have too much to do.”
That made him think of his own pressing business, all the work waiting for him in his office. But it wasn’t pressing enough for him to move. Not yet. She was sitting close, and although they weren’t touching, their training session had built a sense of companionship between them. The sun had risen higher, and though the brilliant sunrise colors had disappeared into the endless blue of the tropical sky, the sand was becoming pleasantly warm. Small waves shushed in and out, and the water was so clear he could see small, dark fish darting through the shallows. Even more scenic were her long, golden legs, stretched out on the sand in front of her. They were spectacularly inviting.
“How do you know how to fight anyway?” she asked. “Is there some kind of secret handbook that boys get issued at birth?”
“I went to a military boarding school. Fight training was part of the curriculum, and I studied karate as an after-school elective.”
“Military boarding school,” she repeated, picking up handfuls of sand and letting the grains run through her fingers. “That’s where you disappeared to?”
He glanced sideways at her. “Tiny didn’t tell you?”
“She didn’t say a word. And at school, there was all kinds of gossip about Tiny’s mysterious older brother. Rumors flew.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“You probably don’t want to know.” She shot him a sideways look. “For the record, you’ve never actually killed anyone, right?”
“What?”
She grinned. “In our all-girls’ school, gossip and speculation were part of the curriculum.”
He couldn’t smile back. Tiny hadn’t wanted to talk about him, to the point where she hadn’t even set the gossips straight. That realization burnt like an ember in the pit of his stomach. He’d let Tiny down, so she’d shut him out.
“You okay?” she asked, her grin disappearing. When he didn’t answer, she touched his arm. “What made you decide to go to military boarding school?”
“The decision was made for me.”
“By your aunt and uncle?”
Dalton nodded. “They’d been saddled with two kids they barely knew. One of those kids was an angry thirteen-year-old with a bad attitude. They couldn’t cope, so they sent me away.”
She screwed up her nose. “That must have been difficult.”
“Worse for Tiny.”
“Really? Why?”
“She was only ten. Our mother had died barely a year before, and our father…” He broke off, wondering why he was talking to her about the past. He’d never spoken to anyone about it, not like this.
“Your father?”
“He didn’t cope well,” he said curtly. No need to share the details of that awful time. The cyclone that killed their mother had also flattened their home and destroyed their only boat. The generator and water tank had both been damaged, so they’d had no electricity or clean drinking water, and barely any food. They’d bathed their mother as best they could and waited for help to arrive from the mainland, knowing their mother’s body wouldn’t last long in the tropical heat.
They’d waited four long, terrible days. A fire had been their one comfort, and they’d been able to boil some water. Their father had been no help. He’d closed himself off when they’d needed him most.
Dalton had been digging a grave for his mother when a boat had finally arrived.
In the weeks and months that followed, they’d had the generator repaired and a team of men had come to rebuild their house and some of the resort’s buildings. Their father had shown little enthusiasm for helping with the rebuild. In fact, the only thing he’d been enthusiastic about had been making sure a glass of amber liquid was always within reaching distance.
Dalton’s uncle had begged the whole family to come back to Sydney, saying the island wasn’t safe. Their father had agreed the island was dangerous. And that seemed to be the very reason he’d decided to stay, although he’d eventually sent Dalton and Tiny to their insistent uncle.
“Our father cut himself off from us,” he said. “Tiny relied on me instead. She’d essentially lost both her parents, and when we went to live in Sydney, she also lost the only home she’d ever had. I was all she had left. And then I got myself sent away to boarding school, leaving her with nobody and nothing. She was devastated.”
“But that wasn’t your fault.”
Dalton shrugged. Of course he was at fault. If he hadn’t been so angry and difficult, he could have stayed at his aunt and uncle’s. Stayed with Tiny. He stared out to sea, searching the horizon for something he knew he’d never find. There was no way to change the past. All he could do was look after Tiny now, the best way he knew how.
“When I saw her yesterday, Tiny said you hate Lantana,” Rosa said softly.
“That’s right.”
“But you grew up here. Did you like it back then?”
“Before the cyclone, I did.”
“What did you like about it?”
He stared at her, not su
re how to answer. Once, he’d liked everything about it. But now all he had were bad memories and worse dreams.
“I’d better get to work,” he said finally, pushing himself to his feet. “Lots to do.”
She scrambled up too. “Come on, there must be something. Did you like to sail?” She motioned to the Lady of Lantana, which was moored a little way off the beach. Tiny had acquired the yacht a few months ago. She’d been planning to charge the guests to borrow it, but the yacht needed a spruce-up, so she’d been letting people use it for free in the meantime.
“I did a bit of sailing back then,” he said, thinking of the cruisers who sometimes anchored their yachts in Lantana’s sheltered bay. One had stayed for several months, and had taught Dalton how to handle a boat.
“Then we should take the yacht out one morning. See if you still enjoy it.”
“You want me to take you sailing?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. Was she hitting on him? Not that he’d object if she was, but she’d seemed so serious about doing a good job here, he hadn’t expected her to want to blur those professional boss-employee lines. At least, not so quickly.
“Sure. Why not? If you think you’ll have fun.” She bent to slip on her sandals, and he couldn’t help but admire the movement. Her toenails were painted a bright, fire-engine red, a color as bold as she was.
“I’ll have to wait until my first day off,” she said, straightening. “Which won’t be until after the wedding. But you could always go out on your own in the meantime.”
“Do you like sailing?” he asked.
“I’m sure I will.” She gave him a smile that made his breath catch. “We’ll go out and enjoy ourselves, okay? Just like you used to do when you were a kid.”
Not exactly like when he was young. He’d left Lantana at thirteen so he’d never taken a beautiful woman out on the water. But Rosa was obviously eager, and the Lady of Lantana had a bed that was large enough for two.
“It’s a date,” he said.
9
The next day was Thursday. Rosa had worked late into the evening each day since she’d arrived, and still had a lot of last minute things to organize for the wedding. There’d been a problem with the cake, and a delivery hadn’t arrived so the dinner menu needed to be changed. Plus, the bride and groom were both scientists and had decided they wanted their guests to figure out logic puzzles, of all things, to find out where they were sitting at dinner. What the hell was wrong with a normal seating plan?
But she needed to take a break from wedding tasks, and this morning Tiny had asked her again about how far she’d gotten with Dalton. Time to devote some time to helping her friend.
Rosa turned to a fresh page in her pad. At the top of the page, she wrote, The Dalton Project. Then she wrote three column headings: Like, Dislike, and Maybe.
Under Like, she wrote Fight Training. They’d trained for the last three mornings, and she was pretty sure he’d enjoyed it as much as she had. She added Sailing into the Like column too, as he’d seemed enthusiastic about their upcoming day on the water. Other activities, like Jogging, Snorkeling, Swimming, and Fishing went into the Maybe column.
Kava Ceremony also went into the Possible column. She was organizing one for the guests, but she’d make sure he came. Mere’s father was performing the traditional Fijian ceremony, and she was looking forward to it herself.
She hesitated a moment, then added Naked Fight Training to the Possible column. Well, there was no harm in thinking about it, was there?
So far, there was nothing in the Dislike column. Except maybe the whole idea of being on the island, although as far as she could tell, there wasn’t a thing to dislike about it. And how unfair was it that he was set on dragging Tiny away against her will? She was a grown woman who could make her own decisions. Being pressured to sell her home by her brother was practically abuse.
She couldn’t figure Dalton out. When she thought about what he was doing to Tiny, she wanted to strangle him. But being with him meant succumbing to his spell. Nobody who could make her laugh with a half-Scottish half-Pirate accent could really be bad, could they?
Rosa checked her watch. The ferry would be arriving soon, and one of her jobs was welcoming the new guests who’d be arriving. She had just enough time to check her email to make sure nobody had sent her anything urgent.
Scanning her inbox, Rosa spotted a new email from her sister. But the email was already marked as having been opened. Weird. This was definitely Rosa’s first time seeing it, and when she checked the time stamp, Carin had only sent it a couple of hours ago. So why did her computer think she’d already read it?
She stared at her screen for several long moments, trying to figure it out. Computers didn’t make mistakes, so someone must have read that email.
Rosa crossed her arms across her chest, suddenly cold all the way to her bones.
Could Otto have hacked her computer? Did he have her email password? Had he been reading her mail?
The thought was vile. And she should have seen it coming. It was one of the things Otto had done to Rosa’s friend, before Rosa’s photograph had sent him to jail.
With hands that were suddenly shaky, Rosa pulled up the setting to change her password. She contemplated changing it to the worst swear word she could think of, and eventually decided on LeaveMeAloneYouBlisteringButthole. Apparently the longer a password was, the harder it was to crack. Otto could choke on that one.
Finally, she got up. Her stomach was too tight to stay sitting and she needed some air.
Just outside the building, Dalton was stripped to the waist again, hacking at the large, overhanging bushes with his machete, cutting them back from the path. As upset as she was, she stopped, riveted by the way the muscles in his back were working. Perspiration glistened on his skin and branches parted under the large knife with loud thwacks.
On impulse, Rosa strode over to him. “Can I have a turn?”
He turned, obviously surprised. His gaze went first to her capri pants and up to her white cotton top. Then his eyes lifted to her face and he frowned. “You okay?”
“I will be.” She held out her hand for the machete, and with a shrug, he handed it over.
Rosa shifted her grip, feeling the weight of the knife, and imagining Otto’s head poking out from the bush. Her blade hit with a satisfying crack, slicing through the plant’s stem. She swung again and again, until her breath was coming fast and her top was sticking to her back. Then she stopped, panting, and handed back the machete.
“Feeling better, slugger?” he asked.
She nodded. “Little bit.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She considered the offer, then shook her head. “I’ve got to meet the ferry.”
“Then I’ll walk you.” He grabbed his T-shirt which was lying by the path and pulled it on, leaving the machete beside the hacked-off stalks.
“Thanks, but you don’t need to.”
He didn’t bother to reply, just walked beside her toward the wharf. Their shoes crunched over the shells, but neither of them said anything. Rosa’s mind was spinning.
No matter how often she told herself she wasn’t afraid of Otto, truth was, some nights in Sydney she hadn’t gotten a moment’s sleep because every noise had sounded like the footsteps of someone creeping through her apartment. She hated that he could make her palms sweat and her heart race.
All her life she’d fought to do things her way. She’d worked her ass off to succeed so her parents would have nothing to complain about, and when they complained anyway, she’d faced them down. Nothing had ever made her so much as flinch.
Nothing, until Otto.
But she’d refused to run from Otto, even when he’d sent her photos of herself with threats scrawled across them in red ink. Even when Tiny had offered her a job on Lantana, telling her that she should get out of Sydney before the harassment got worse. She’d turned down the offer because she wasn’t about to let Otto drive her away. But when she�
��d gotten the phone call from Mere saying that Tiny needed her, she hadn’t just rushed to help her friend, had she? As much as she hated to admit it, she’d also been relieved beyond words to let herself get on a plane and leave Otto far behind.
But all that meant was from now on, she had to be twice as tough. She’d work harder at fight training. And she’d—
“No sign of the ferry yet,” said Dalton. “We’re early.”
Rosa blinked. While she’d been deep in thought, they’d reached the end of the pier. The only thing in front of them was sparkling blue sea and a cloudless blue sky. A couple of shags circled, searching for fish. As she watched one dive into the water, Rosa let out a long breath. If only her sister was here with her. It didn’t matter how tough Rosa became if Carin wasn’t safe.
Rosa snuck a glance at the man beside her. She only came up to his shoulder, and he was wide and strong beside her. A man-rock of solidity and reassurance. His black, tousled hair lifted in the slight breeze, and his chin was unshaven, the stubble dark. He looked like he could wrestle sharks and break coconut shells apart with his bare hands.
Part of her yearned to lean into him and find out what it would be like to be folded inside the safety of his large, capable arms. But that was the part of her that was weak. She’d never been able to depend on anyone but herself, and Rosa Roughknuckles didn’t need any help, did she?
“Thanks for walking me here. I’ll just sit and wait.” She sat down on the wooden boards of the wharf with her legs dangling over the edge and the water just under her feet.
“I’ll wait with you.” He eased down next to her, his own legs dangling next to hers.
She glanced sideways at him again, but he was looking down at the water. Maybe he was there because he was worried about her, but he didn’t push or try to coddle her. The silence between them was restful. Companionable. It was nice.
Under their feet, the fish were nibbling kelp off the wooden posts. If Otto ever came to Lantana, she’d like to push him in the water and let the fish nibble his face off.