“Bryce?” she prompted.
He’d been fully prepared to negotiate, but somewhere in the middle she’d gone and pulled the equivalent to a surprise witness out of her hat, and he was left struggling to get his case back on track.
“One more,” he managed, his throat more than a little raspy. Fuck, he might need a cold shower after this.
“When you leave me to my bath,” she stepped an inch closer, and only a breath separated them.
His world got even hotter.
“Be sure not to peek,” she tacked on with a smirk, then turned and walked away as though she hadn’t been half a second from being hauled into his arms.
And if he’d thought for a second that he could have pulled it off without his leg taking them both to the ground, he would have tried.
* * *
He still hadn’t moved by the time Darby reached the stuff she’d brought with her to get cleaned up. The drying mud was itching like crazy and she wanted it off. She wanted a whole lot of things, mainly not be stuck on an island in the South Atlantic with an ex who might end up hating her more than he already did.
His improved mood gave her hope that maybe they could talk about it without him blaming her. She’d tried to tell him about the baby, but thinking about it forced her to wonder if she really had tried hard enough.
Her twenty-one-year-old former self had been convinced that she’d done everything right and she’d still ended up alone when she’d needed him the most. Now…if she could do it all over again, would she do anything differently?
“Need me to find you a wheelchair, Captain Dan?”
“I’m good.”
She glanced at him, watching as he lowered himself to the sand, keeping his back to her.
“I won’t peek,” he said before she could get her mouth open. “I need to rest my leg for a bit.”
If she hadn’t heard the pain in his voice, she would have thought he was just screwing with her. She almost wished he was. It was impossible to miss how much he was limping and she would bet the cut had started to bleed again.
It wouldn’t be hurting him so badly if she hadn’t gone off on her own. He hadn’t wanted her around, but maybe she should have told him where she was headed so he wouldn’t have worried.
Not that she’d expected him to.
Pushing her guilt aside, she stripped off the rest of her muddy clothes and snagged the soap. With one more glance over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t looking, she walked to the water, testing the calm surface with her toes.
It was warmer than she’d expected.
Wading in past her knees, she watched where she was stepping. The last thing she needed was to step on some kind of coral or shellfish and injure herself further. Lowering herself to her shoulders, she made quick work of scrubbing the mud away. It took a little more work to clean the dried blood and grit from her hair.
As far as she could tell, Bryce hadn’t turned around. Probably didn’t want her to renege on their deal. She dried off without him making a comment and pulled on a clean shirt and shorts.
After rinsing off her muddy clothes and repacking the bag, she walked to where Bryce sat.
Pale and sweating more than he should have been given the temperature, he shook his head. “I’m not sure I can get back up without help, Darby.”
Dropping the bag, she crouched next to him, waving him off when he tried to stop her from looking at his leg.
She peeled back the bandage as gently as she could. Although the cut didn’t appear to be deep, it was red and puss had started to pool in two spots. Her pulse spiked. “It’s infected.”
He nodded as though he’d already suspected as much.
“We need to clean it out and get you something for the fever.” She did a mental check, trying to remember how many caplets were in the container she’d brought with her. Enough to see him through a fever?
And if his condition deteriorated?
Bryce gripped her hand, his palm damp. “We’ll be okay.”
“I know.” Pretty sure he could see right through the confidence she was determined to project, she moved to his other side, sliding her good arm under his and around his back.
The heat rolling off his body could have warmed a small house. How had he remained on his feet so long?
“Stubborn ass,” he muttered as though he’d read her mind.
“Which one of us are you talking about?” She braced herself to take as much weight as she could as he tried to stand.
He didn’t answer her, his eyes closed, the lines around his mouth tight with concentration. He shifted his balance and Darby bit her lip as they staggered, the movement jarring her arm still in a sling.
“Just one step at a time,” she advised, but she wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince.
They were both panting by the time they reached the raft shelter. There was no easy way to lower him to the ground, and Bryce—realizing that too—let go of her and let himself drop.
“Fuck.” He clenched his jaw, his upper body trembling.
“Stubborn ass is right.” She should have insisted on checking his leg earlier.
When he was positioned with his back against the tree and opened his eyes, she peeled back the bandage for another look.
She dug into her bag for a pen. Feeling his gaze on her, she drew a line above and below the redness surrounding the cut. What happened if the infection spread before help arrived?
Don’t think about it.
“I was joking before.”
He gave her a blank look.
“The whole Captain Dan thing. It was a bad joke. Awful.” Before she started to ramble, she grabbed the Tylenol and the water. “Take these.” She held out the medicine and the bottle of water that was half-gone.
He only took enough of a drink to wash the pills down.
“More.”
If he thought about arguing, the look on her face probably changed his mind. “Fine.” He took another drink.
“I have to wash the pus away.”
“Sounds like a good time.”
Not wanting to waste any more of their water than she had to, she hunted through her suitcase until she found something that would allow her to rinse the wound more slowly.
“Jackpot.” She withdrew the small stack of zippered sandwich bags tucked at the bottom of her suitcase. She always brought along extra when she traveled, so her toiletries didn’t leak on anything.
“Let’s reserve that word for when a boat goes by.”
She nearly grinned. Using one of the alcohol wipes in the first aid kit, she wiped off the back of her earring then used it to make three small holes in the corner of the sandwich bag.
“I’ll try to make this as quick as I can.” Once she poured some water into the bag, she used it to gently rinse out the wound on Bryce’s leg.
“Quick for you, or me?” He grit his teeth.
“Well I do feel a lingering urge to get even for you dragging me into the water the other night.” Once the bag was emptied, she used a fresh bandage from the first aid kit. “We’ll need to keep doing that until signs of infection are gone.”
Neither of them said anything about what would happen if it didn’t clear up on its own.
“Rest for a while.” She set her supplies over to the side.
He shook his head but made no effort to move.
“You’re staying put or I’m voiding our deal.”
“That wasn’t one of our conditions.”
“It is now.”
He watched her from beneath heavy lids. “You would have been a challenge in the courtroom.”
She laughed, tiring herself by exerting even that much energy. “You would have destroyed me.”
“Maybe.”
She turned around, ignoring every part of her that just wanted to curl up next to Bryce.
“What are you doing?” He grabbed her hand, the near-scorching warmth reminding her of how high his fever must be.
“
Just going to grab the bag I left on the beach. Close your eyes. I’ll be back in a minute.”
With a soft squeeze, he released her hand and she crawled back out from beneath the raft. She took another sip of water herself, then walked back to collect her bag.
Bryce’s eyes were still closed by the time she got back, but she didn’t think for a second he was sleeping. Not yet anyway. He’d fight it for as long as he could.
Keeping her back to him in hopes of discouraging any conversation, she picked up his fire-starting instruments. How hard could it be?
What felt like hours later, her hands tired and raw, she’d managed to capture enough of a flame to ignite the brush.
More than once she’d wanted to give up. Each time she’d glanced over at Bryce, his complexion paler than the last time, and forced herself to keep trying. Desperate, she tried magic and nearly set herself on fire, never mind the leaves overhead. With three holes in her shirt and her optimism fading faster than the day, she’d kept at it.
She made it to her feet for a victory dance that was little more than a wiggle, given how worn out she felt. One down, two to go.
They still needed food and another source of water. Moving back to the raft, she checked on Bryce, unsure whether to be relieved that he didn’t feel any hotter than earlier. He’d need more Tylenol soon, but she didn’t want to wake him just yet.
Lying down for just a minute, she stared up at the inside of the raft. Where are you, Alex? She gripped her amulet as though she might get some kind of signal that he knew they were okay, that he was coming. That someone was coming.
When she felt her eyes grow heavy, she rolled to her side to sit up, and froze. A green, grapefruit-sized shape lay on the ground nearby.
Why did it look familiar?
She crawled from beneath the raft and walked to where the object lay half-hidden in the surrounding vegetation, one side of it rotting.
Breadfruit.
“Breadfruit!” she shouted, quieting only when Bryce made a sound in his sleep. She tipped her head back to search the trees above, but couldn’t spot anymore.
So where had it come from?
* * *
Darby woke some time later to find the sun had gone down, and the fire only glowed with faint embers. Rising to rescue the flames before they went out and she had to start the entire process all over again, she passed the small pile of breadfruit she’d gathered and smiled.
Once some smaller sticks were on the fire, she dragged on her sweater and crawled back beneath the raft to check on Bryce.
She’d cleaned out his wound twice more and gotten some more Tylenol into him, but his fever still hadn’t come down.
He shivered in his sleep. She curled up next to him, willing him to come out of it. She wouldn’t let herself panic yet, but she could feel the paralyzing feeling growing inside her despite how much she tried talking herself out of it.
“Darby.” Her name left Bryce’s mouth, followed by words too quiet for her to understand.
“I’m right here.” She smoothed the damp hair off his forehead.
His fever had spiked.
Taking the cloths she’d used earlier, she ran down to the water, drenching and wringing out each one, then returned to place them on his forehead and chest.
He groaned, tried tugging at the one on his chest, his movements jerky.
“Hey,” she said softly, taking his hand in hers.
He stilled for long moments, then the tremors started again.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, when she reached for more medicine.
“You need more Tylenol.”
“Just. Need. You.” Each word was broken by a teeth-chattering shiver.
Getting more Tylenol into him was a challenge, but he swallowed the water, clinging to her the whole time.
She didn’t know how many times he cycled through the shivers and trying to throw off the cloths she used to cool his skin. She only managed to clean his wound once more, with him unable to lie still through it.
“I wish…” Bryce whispered sometime in the night.
She lifted her head from his shoulder. “For what?”
“Depends.”
Knowing it was the fever talking, she lay back down.
“Need all the luck I can get,” he murmured.
“You’re going to be fine.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing that to be true. She could handle it alone, could handle building fires and waiting for someone to find them.
But she couldn’t handle losing Bryce.
“Love…you…”
She pressed her lips to his overheated skin, wishing that wasn’t the fever talking.
Dawn was no more than a slice of pinkish-orange on the horizon when he calmed, but not until she woke an hour or two after that did she realize his fever had finally broken.
CHAPTER TEN
“You shouldn’t be up.”
Bryce lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the early-morning sun and spotted Darby walking toward him, soaked head to foot. “I slept all day yesterday.”
And the day before that if he counted when his fever had kicked in. But not before he’d gotten a nice glimpse of her ass as it had disappeared into the water when she’d bathed herself.
At least he was pretty sure he hadn’t dreamed it.
“You needed the rest.”
“And now I need to not rest.” Although he had to be careful with his leg, he couldn’t just sit there anymore. And today he at least had enough strength to stand.
Because of Darby.
He didn’t know how she hadn’t exhausted herself looking after him, trying to keep his fever under control, getting him to drink and even eat a little bit last night. Mashed breadfruit wouldn’t be making his top ten favorite foods anytime soon, but it had felt good to eat, and even better to tease her about her cooking skills.
She’d only burned it once so far, though.
When she hadn’t been keeping an eye on him, she’d gotten the fire going, found food and even set up some kind of water-catching system involving two pieces of rope and two of the empty water bottles.
Now they were just waiting for it to rain again.
“Darby vs. the Girl Scouts?” he’d asked when he’d seen it earlier that morning.
“Man vs. Wild,” she’d answered while checking his leg.
His wound was looking much better and Darby had gathered the edges of the cut together with a butterfly bandage and applied a new dressing earlier.
He might not be able to tackle that hilltop again just yet, but he could handle a short walk down to the beach, especially since she’d found a long branch to help him keep most of the weight off his leg when he walked.
“You can’t push yourself too hard.”
“I can’t sit in these clothes anymore.”
She scrunched up her nose. “You’re right about that.” They both knew she was teasing since she’d helped him change more than once already.
“Hey,” he warned, pretending to take a swing at her butt with his crutch. Which was all well and good until he overcompensated and tipped forward.
Darby was against him in an instant, steadying him. “Maybe the fever affected your hearing. I said you need to take it easy,” she added in a softer tone.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Her brow arched. “Uh-huh,” she said, clearly not sure where he was going with his comment but suspecting something.
“You should probably give me a sponge bath.”
She jammed the crutch against his side instead. “On second thought, a little stroll will be good for you.” She walked backward. “I’ll grab you some soap and clean clothes.”
Laughing, he carefully made his way to the water’s edge to wait for her. She was right on his heels, reminding him how much easier it was to move without an injured leg.
She set his stuff on the sand.
“What’s with the tape and the sandwich bag?”
“You’ll want to protect that
cut as best you can. If there is any bacteria in the water and it gets into that cut, it could make your wound worse.”
How much Man vs. Wild had she watched to know that?
“Did I already miss your bath?” He nodded to the clothes still dripping water at her feet.
“I was…fishing.”
“And the fish won, I take it?”
“This time.” Grinning, she turned away.
For one scary moment last night, when he’d been lucid long enough to worry, he thought he might never see that smile again.
Reason one hundred and one why he was reluctant to let her go too far away.
“You’re feeling better too.”
She shrugged. “When your fever broke the other morning, I realized I could look at our situation two ways. One, we’re stranded and have no idea when help is coming. Or two, we bought ourselves a few extra days of vacation.”
“Vacation?” Leave it to Darby, even under the most unlikely conditions, to find a way to stay positive. “If you like roughing it.”
That smile was back. “Reminds me a little of the camping trips my parents took my family on when we were younger. Except with more sun and fewer people.”
His own parents weren’t exactly the camping type, but they’d had their share of family vacations. “Must have been fun.”
“For us, sure. Hell on our parents. The van would be barely unpacked and we’d all take off and my parents would get stuck setting everything up.”
“They didn’t use their magic?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. And then they helped all the other campers, too, so they wouldn’t call the media.”
This time he caught her in the butt with his makeshift crutch. “Smart-ass.”
“My family does have some common sense.”
“I didn’t mean—”
She put her finger to his lips. “No more Calder/Lancaster comparisons for the rest of our trip. It’ll be like that spring break when we—I—didn’t know better.” Her smile dimmed a little, almost as though she regretted bringing it up.
“Darby.”
“I know you still need answers—”
He did, but gone were the suspicions that she’d deliberately misled him or would have used a pregnancy to manipulate him. That kind of woman wouldn’t have stayed by his side every moment she could, treating his wound and fever, murmuring soft words to comfort him.
Must Be Magic (Spellbound Book 4) Page 16