Adam

by Irish Winters

  The grime was gone from Shannon’s pretty face. She glowed like a new mother should.

  For his part, he’d gone down to the surf to wash. He knew she watched when he stripped out of his jeans down to his boxers, and that made him smile, too. All of their dealings had somehow ended up on an intimate level. Why stop now?

  In a wild moment of abandonment, he dropped his boxers before he strode into the waves with his clothes in hand. Maybe seeing him naked would alleviate some of the discomfort she’d felt when he’d stripped her clothes away for the delivery. He hoped. Despite the extenuating situation, his male mind planned another intimate encounter with Shannon in the not-too-distant future. Somehow, some way, it was going to happen. Let her watch.

  He scrubbed his hands with the fine powdery sand until he was clean enough to handle baby and mother again. No doubt about it, that boy had been in a hurry to get there. Maybe he should’ve named him Speedy instead of Squeaks. Adam scrubbed his clothes in the sand, too. The incoming waves made for a decent agitator and the sand would do for detergent.

  Keeping an eye on Shannon, he waved, and she waved back. That girl had the biggest smile on her face, too. Breakfast was next on his agenda. Then a nap.

  Casting his eyes down the beach to the graves, he thought of Donavan and the still undone chore of the day. That strange woman’s body had to be buried next. Another grave. That made five.

  But not Squeaks.

  His happiness tempered, Adam went commando. He donned his wet jeans and stuffed his underwear in his back pocket before he walked to Shannon.

  “Hi,” she said shyly.

  He crouched near mother and child, knowing full well she’d watched him bathe in the buff. “Hungry?”

  Light blues scrolled over his chest and down to his unbuttoned pants. A different kind of hunger glittered in her pretty eyes, one that would have to wait, but yeah. She’d seen and she liked.

  Shannon made like she was going to get up from her cozy parachute bedding, her elbows stuck in the sand behind her.

  “Give me a break.” He pressed a hand to her shoulder and leveled her back to earth. “I’m cooking today, Mama. My treat. What would you prefer, the peeled bananas or the sliced papaya? Our chef dried a lovely sea bass on a stick, or maybe it’s filet of flounder. Your choice?”

  “You know what I’d really like?” Her eyes filled, dark and misty.

  He read her mind, if only because he wanted the same. Eventually. But there was no reason not to taste now.

  “I think I know,” he whispered on his way to her lips. The problem was that taste would only whet his appetite, and she was in no shape for more. He kept this contact chaste. “We really should eat. Food,” he qualified.

  She giggled coyly, and the easy feeling settled between them. She wasn’t pushing him away anymore or blocking him with that invisible, hands-off wall.

  “You know what I’d settle for?”

  “Sushi?” he teased.

  “No. I’m sick of fish.”

  “Me too. I just didn’t want to say it out loud.”

  “I’m thinking cheeseburger with a dill pickle.” She rolled her eyes like she was in heaven, and he could’ve sat there and watched her forever. This was the real Shannon, and she was delightful. “Extra fries. Those spicy-coated fries they have at Dinah’s Diner. And ketchup. I know it sounds crazy, but I want lots of ketchup on my fries.”

  He laughed. “How about a chocolate shake?”

  “Yes, but...” She deflated. “Fish and fruit will do. I guess.”

  “I could trap one of those rats we’ve seen shinnying up the coconut trees. They might taste good roasted over a slow fire.”

  That put a stop to the pity party. “Ewww.” She punched his bicep gently, and the camaraderie of that simple act felt good.

  He tapped the end of her nose. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  In no time at all, he returned with enough of their current menu items to at least fill them. But he’d interrupted something very important. Shannon was trying to nurse an uncooperative preemie. She covered herself and turned away, red-faced.

  “Is he eating?” Adam asked, going for the nonchalant approach. He’d seen enough women breastfeeding in his jaunts across the world. He wasn’t embarrassed by it. She shouldn’t be, either.

  Shannon shook her head. The squirming infant in her hands arched his head back and let out a scratchy mew. “I think he’s hungry, but... I don’t know how to get him to, umm, open up.”

  “He might be too little to suckle,” Adam said softly. He’d heard the plaintive note in her voice. “Won’t he latch on?”

  She blinked up at him, and he’d embarrassed her again. But honestly, he could help if she’d just let him. Adam set the banana leaves loaded with fruit and fish on the ground. Breakfast could wait. Squeaks needed to get the hang of nursing first.

  “Try this.” He held his first two fingers up like a scissors. “Take your nipple between your fingers like this.”

  He wanted to show her what he meant, but figured hands-on training would push her over the edge. She’d already cringed just baring herself. Blinking up at him, he could tell she was mortified to let him watch, but a man had to do what a man had to do. Once this little guy started nursing, Shannon would get over it.

  Adam gulped. But was he going to live through the effect of the sight of her lush naked breast on his male body? That was all she needed to see—him horny and loaded for action. He brushed his damp jeans to lessen the hard-on springing to life. Not happening.

  Shannon was too preoccupied to notice. She’d pulled her baby in close, her tongue working her lower lip and her brows knitted in concentration.

  “Yes,” Adam breathed softly, watching the Squeaks brush his sealed tight lips over her delectable mauve-colored tip. Breastfeeding is simply and perfectly natural. It ensures the survival of the species. Yeah, right. With the right woman, it can also turn a guy on.

  He groaned for the strength to endure.

  But the little guy didn’t grasp the concept. Squeaks arched his back and moved his head back and forth like he was searching, but never really opened his eyes or his mouth to find his mama. Shannon whimpered and…

  The big guy in command sprang into action. Without thinking, Adam’s fingers were on the soft pillow of her breast. Very gently, he lifted Squeaks’ head and steered his mouth to his mama’s dripping nipple. The little guy was stubborn. Adam more so.

  At last, Squeaks offered a soft grunt at being tortured, but in the process, he opened his mouth. His cute face scrunched into a frown. Because Adam knew how things worked, he squeezed Shannon’s breast very carefully, milking it. A tiny stream dribbled over the baby’s lips and into his mouth. He brushed his head back and forth and opened up. Adam tucked her in between the boy’s lips, and just like that, Squeaks figured it out. He latched on.

  “You see, he’s got a tiny mouth right now, and—” Adam made the mistake of looking into her eyes. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore, but he was. Heat swarmed his cheeks at the intimate liberty he’d just taken.

  “You make it look simple,” she said coyly. Her full lips blossomed into radiance.

  “It is,” he said, but right then he didn’t know if he meant her nursing her baby or him having sex with that baby’s pretty mother.

  “You have very soft hands.” Her eyes glowed. He looked down to where he still cupped her. Her hand rested calmly over his. The moment stormed him, and he was falling. Hard.

  “Shannon...” His heart banged inside his chest.

  “Yes?” She waited breathlessly. Squeaks suckled, and Adam couldn’t think. In the twinkling of her pretty blue eyes, she’d become his sun, moon, and stars.

  He brushed his thumb over her bare breast while Squeaks managed a couple more heartwarming grunts. The most incredible sense of protectiveness filled Adam’s soul. Words came to him; words that fit the moment perfectly; words he should say.

  He didn’t.

  “I had a dog once. Ah,
I mean...” He stumbled over the size-eleven foot in his mouth. “Mabel was a new mom, and she didn’t know what to do, either, and...” He looked away. Tell me I didn’t just compare Shannon to a dog. Way to go, Torrey.

  “Did Mabel’s puppy live?”

  He nodded. “All ten of them.”

  “Wow.” Shannon’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of puppies.”

  He relaxed. She wasn’t offended.

  “I’m sorry about before, you know, when I was....” She paused. “I kept thinking of my ex, that this is all his fault. And it happened so fast. I barely found out I’m expecting a baby, then I’m in labor and I’ve never had a baby before, and I just... I just...”

  “You just survived a plane crash.” He reminded her. “That’s a miracle all in itself. It’s probably why you went into early labor, too. Give yourself a break, Shannon. Were you in labor sitting out there in the jungle waiting for Ramsey to show?”

  “I didn’t think so. My back hurt, and I ached, but... I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “And you didn’t move? You just stayed out there all night with me? On the hard ground?”

  “You said not to move.”

  “And then you helped bury Donavan?”

  She nodded. “What else could I do? He was a good person. I wanted to be there for him… and you.”

  Adam shook his head. This girl was incredible. She’d taken everything he’d thrown at her to heart. This woman was champagne and caviar. He was beer and pizza. What could they possibly have in common? He intended to find out.

  “Don’t forget. I brought food.” Reclaiming his hand, he settled alongside Shannon and her child. Adam offered her a slice of papaya off the edge of his knife. “So tell me about What’s-His-Name.”

  “Brit Paxton?” Her countenance clouded as she took the fruit. “He’s a handsome man, intelligent—cavalier when he wants to be. He’s every woman’s dream. That about sums him up. He’s in foreign relations. A lot of them.”

  Adam caught the sad pun. The man was a cheater. “He know about Squeaks?”

  “Yes. My father doesn’t, but Brit does, only he doesn’t want children. He told me to get ride of it.”

  Adam’s fists clenched at the disgusting notion of ridding the world of an infant as pure as Squeaks. Brit Paxton was a damned ass. The world could do without him.

  “I’d still be with him, but...” Shannon looked out to sea. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I had the same dream three times in a row, one right after the other. That’s when I knew I had to leave him—that he’d never be home and want to be with just me.”

  Adam couldn’t imagine not wanting to be with Shannon. She had a way of making everything—better.

  “It was a message from his grandfather, only...” She sighed. “I’d never met the man. He died before Brit and I were engaged, but in my dream, he told me to leave Brit and to think of the baby.

  That got Adam’s attention. What a crazy dream.

  “He was right about everything.” She bit her lip like she was debating her next words.

  “Your ex wasn’t all bad.” Adam nodded to Squeaks, hoping she’d smile again. “He got this little guy right.”

  There was an entirely different world in the depths of those sad blues of hers. He leaned in for another kiss, and she met him halfway. With his hand gently at the back of her neck, he pulled her to his mouth, softly tasting the most delightful woman he’d ever met—strong, courageous, and innocently vulnerable at the same time. The thudding in his heart morphed into a consuming fire. Rolling to his knees, he cupped her face between both hands, worshipping his new true North.

  “Thank you, Adam,” she breathed as they broke their tender hold.

  “For what? I’m just an overbearing frog who thinks he knows everything, even about nursing mothers.” Forehead to forehead, he chuckled. “Maybe I ought to become a maternity nurse. I could teach, what’s it called, lactation?”

  “You do look cute when you’re embarrassed.”

  His heart soared. She thinks I’m cute. How silly. How sweet. How odd that he felt like he was sixteen, and about to become a man all over again.

  “So what about you?” she asked. “What’s your sad story?”

  “Not sure I have one.” He settled beside her again. “I grew up in South Carolina. Dirt poor. Guess I’ve had my share of bad luck, like everyone else.”

  “Do you still have family back there?”

  “Yes. Granddaddy moved in with my folks a couple years ago. Got a big family and a couple dogs, cats. You name it, we’ve had it at one time or another.”

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “One sister. Two Nieces. Three nephews. Sandra married one of the good ol’ boys from Clemson. Lives down the road a-piece.”

  “Clemson?”

  “Clemson University. Home of the Tigers. Best football team in the world.”

  The smile on her face melted his heart all over again. Whatever was happening between them, he didn’t want it to stop.

  “Were you their quarterback?” she asked with something akin to awe in her voice.

  “Nah.” He shrugged it off, knowing a lady of her upbringing probably wouldn’t understand the sport anyway. “Wide receiver.”

  “What does a wide receiver do?”

  He winked. “They catch pigskins and babies.”

  Shannon offered another embarrassed smile. “So, umm, no ex in your life?” she asked, a hint of anxiety to her question.

  “Heck no. My last girlfriend was bad enough. I came home from a three-week op and had to call the police just to get into my own apartment. She’d thrown all my things out.”

  “She threw you out of your place?”

  “Did I mention she was demented?”

  “How could she do that?”

  “Beats me. Guess she’d had three weeks to get herself worked up. Enough about me. I’ve got a question for you.” His heart vacillated somewhere between God, I love this girl and outright pounding like the Clemson U drumline before a homecoming game. One minute he could think; the next he was tongue-tied and trying real hard to remember what he’d wanted to ask. “Would you let me take you to dinner when we get off this island?”

  “Yes.”

  He liked that she’d answered quickly. With one last long and lingering kiss, he settled closer to Shannon and her baby, never wanting to be separate from them. The feeling Adam had always thought impossible surrounded him now.

  It felt like happily-ever-after.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Hey! Look what we found.” The sun was high overhead. Connor and Izza were on the beach, dragging something behind them in a long gray sheet. They’d been gone all morning, but it looked like they’d been successful.

  “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Adam pushed up from the ground beside Shannon.

  They’d been discussing names for little boys. He’d been reluctant at first to share his opinions since Squeaks wasn’t his son. Still, she’d insisted, so at last, he’d acquiesced. His father’s name was James. His grandfather, straight off the old sod, was Malone.

  She tried it on for size. James Malone Reagan. Jimmy. It fit. Like she and Adam seemed to fit. That he’d memorized a poem as long as “Bury Me With Sailors,” then delivered it with perfect diction and reverent inflection to his lost teammate, had taken her by surprise, but it also connected her to him at a fundamental level. This man of brawn and muscle, the guy who thought he was responsible for the troubles of the world, had a definite tender side to him, a side that cherished a sweet lullaby and the written word as much as she did.

  He’d made a magnificent sight standing there against the endless blue of the ocean, his arms behind his back and his head bowed. His shoulders squared and deeply tanned. His bare chest heaving and the breeze in his face. More than once, she’d thought he might break down at the raw emotion in his voice, but he’d held it together for the entire poem, and Donavan got a sendoff the angels would have been proud o
f.

  But that voice. How rare indeed. She could listen to Adam all day and not grow tired of the rich honey in that rugged, manly baritone, sprinkled with a touch of southern charm. His drawl didn’t come through often, but when it did, it soothed her soul as much as it plucked at her heartstrings and toyed with her libido. The man was pure magic with that sexy, smoky voice. Step aside James Earl Jones. Adam Torrey was in the house.

  “Hey.” Adam crossed the beach to Connor and Izza, peering down at the thing they’d dragged back. It had to be an animal, though she’d not seen any that large on the island yet. Maybe a small beached whale? A seal? It was big enough. Whatever, it was dead. She covered Jimmy’s face with her hand. He didn’t need to be inhaling the stench blowing upwind.

  A mountain of clouds piled high in the northern horizon added to the pleasant sight of two bare-chested men, tanned and getting tanner every day. They’d gotten scruffier, their hair always tousled. Connor and Adam dragged the thing to where the woman’s body still lay.

  Izza had stepped away from the two men, shielding her eyes and looking toward the opposite end of the beach and the wreck. Her ponytail ruffled in the breeze. She lent the scene an exotic air with her deeply bronzed skin and tank top, as if maybe they weren’t really castaways on a deserted island, as if maybe this was all a dream and they’d all wake up on a Caribbean cruise with piña coladas.

  Jimmy Malone stretched, and Shannon forgot about the rest of the world. She counted his toes and fingers, each one perfectly formed and so miraculously tiny. When she looked up, the three agents stood over the woman. Connor nudged the corpse with his boot while the other two bent to take a closer look at it.

  Shannon cringed. There was no way she’d touch anything so gruesome or that decayed. Ewww. A shiver raced up her neck at the notion. But Izza did. She pulled something up and out of the body, holding it pinched between two fingers, and looking up at the men like it was important. She had a plastic bag in her other hand, and that was so like Izza. She’d brought a whole new depth to scavenging. Where Shannon saw garbage floating in the water, Izza saw something else.