by Nikki Logan
A dirty grin spread across his gorgeous face.
‘Of the covers, you pervert.’ If he’d noticed how fast she capitulated he didn’t comment. But Honor didn’t miss it. She thinned her lips at her body’s own betrayal. ‘But you make one wrong move and you’re out on your overly-gymned butt.’
He rolled back over and snuggled down into the air mattress, mumbling, ‘Got it.’
Seconds later, he was asleep. His pulse beat slow and steady through the air mattress, reaching out to her. Lulling her. Seducing her without even trying.
Fantastic.
Honor yawned and crawled down on top of the mattress and the sleeping bag, making sure her body weight would hold the fabric discreetly in place. It wasn’t cool enough to need a covering and at least she had a bed to sleep in.
With any luck, when she woke up he’d be gone.
If she slept at all, which was feeling pretty unlikely given the solid mass of man just inches from her own body. But he radiated a thick, soothing heat and in no time his warmth swirled around and through her exhaustion and helped nudge her into a deep sleep.
Her last conscious thought in the early hours of the morning was to wonder how long it had been since she’d fallen asleep next to someone else.
Her first thought on waking was to wonder how long it had been since she’d slept so dreamlessly. But the happy glow of dreamlessness faded quickly and warning tingled in the very cells of her body. The weight of dread pressed down on her chest.
No, not dread. Rob! His arm draped casually over her and his face was too close on their shared pillow. She’d forsaken it in favour of distance when she’d fallen asleep, so she must have moved her head onto it whilst asleep. And, unconscious, Rob had been only too happy to share. His scent carried the slight muskiness of a man who needed a freshwater shower but, instead of being off-putting, it only served to make her muscles tighten. Pheromones. He was as hot as a furnace, even with her sleeping bag shrugged half off, and his skin scorched hers where it touched.
Her heart should have been pounding with mortification at finding herself so intimately snuggled. But curling into his side didn’t feel wrong. In fact, it felt strangely right to slip out from under his hold and let his arm carefully slide down to the place she’d vacated. As if they’d been doing it all their lives.
Not that there was necessarily a correlation between feeling right and being right. There couldn’t be.
As she crawled backwards out of the tent into daylight, her wristwatch told her she’d only had four hours’ sleep, but there was no way she was going back into—
‘G’morning.’
The sleepy voice reached her just as Rob’s hand locked carefully around hers. She was powerless to resist his muscled pull and she sank forward onto her knees as the tent flap dropped uselessly into place behind her. Even in the dim light, she could see that he was relaxed and sleepy.
For some reason, that made her more nervous.
‘What time is it?’ He made the question redundant by glancing at his own watch. His eyebrows rose and then moved closer in a frown. ‘I’ve been asleep for nearly twelve hours!’
‘Lucky you. I’ve only had four.’
Her voice was cautious, measured. It didn’t sound as breathless as she felt now that chest was displayed for all to see. Despite the dimness in the tent, her eyes remained acute when it came to his body.
‘It seems your island agrees with me.’ His surprise seemed genuine. He flopped back on the bed.
‘What are you doing?’
One eye opened. His hand stayed curled around hers. ‘Lying in. It’s Sunday.’
Honor couldn’t have told him what colour the sky was, much less what day of the week it was. Must be lack of sleep. Tiredness made her unreasonable. ‘No. It’s my turn to sleep now. You get out.’
‘Charming! Are you always this friendly in the morning?’
Her shoulders straightened. ‘I don’t usually need to be friendly. I’m usually alone.’ For the first time, when she said the word alone the word she heard was lonely.
Damn.
He slid his powerful forearms up behind his head and regarded her from under shuttered lids, giving nothing away. ‘Is that any excuse for poor manners?’
Honor hissed. Okay. He wanted to do this …
‘Look. About yesterday …’ ‘What happened yesterday?’ ‘Ha ha.’ She didn’t buy his bemused frown for one second. Or was that just her feminine pride stinging? No way could he have forgotten the … dolphin foreplay … in the lagoon yesterday. That had to stick in the mind, even for a man like him. ‘Look, I’m sorry I was a bit abrupt about leaving the beach. I probably could have handled that better.’
He sat partly up, which only served to slide the sleeping bag further down. Her breath caught just as it did on his hip.
‘You’re apologising to me?’ His confusion seemed genuine this time.
‘Well, yes. I was rude.’
‘So was I. And presumptuous.’
Honor thought about it. ‘I’m not going to say I wasn’t hurt by what you said. But it wasn’t presumptuous.’ Or wrong, truth be told. She would much rather spend the rest of eternity in the muted silence of the fishes’ realm than deal with the world up here. Now that Rob had shown it to her.
He sat fully up and tentatively tugged the sleeping bag higher to increase its cover, as if he’d suddenly wearied of the sensual game. One part of Honor mourned the loss.
‘I made some comments that … I regret,’ he said. ‘I’ve only known you six days.’
Honor lifted her eyes and spoke from the heart. ‘You know more about me than some people I’ve known my whole life. You’ve earned the right to speak your mind.’ She swallowed. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it more gently.’
Sincerity stained his eyes as deep a blue as the lower parts of the reef. She’d gladly spend eternity lost in those, too. She shrugged. ‘It’s not fatal. I’m sorry I walked away.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘How you did it, or that you did it at all?’
She took a breath. ‘I panicked. I should have explained better. I hurt you.’
‘No.’
‘Rob, I saw your face before you went back in the water.’
‘That was irritation.’
‘That was hurt.’ The question burned. ‘Why did it hurt you so much? I’m sure I’m not the first person ever to—’ she struggled for words that were kinder than reject you ‘—turn you down.’
He laughed loud and hard. ‘No. I had my share of that in the early years. Before I learned to refine my aim.’
Honor frowned. ‘Refine it to what?’
He shrugged. ‘Likely success.’
She stared, waiting for him to continue. He shifted awkwardly in the brightening tent. Honor realised she’d all but forgotten to feel uncomfortable about him still being here.
‘There’s a certain type of woman I do particularly well with, and another type I do spectacularly badly with.’
Honor choked and spoke before thinking. ‘Women without pulses?’
Heat roared up her skin as he smiled gently. ‘Women without agendas.’ His big toe wriggled out from under the covers to gently touch her thigh where she sat cross-legged next to him. It was a comfortable, undemanding touch. It just kept them connected.
‘Understand that I live two lives back home,’ he went on. ‘By morning I’m this mild-mannered archaeologist surrounded by some of the finest minds in our field. Then I hit Dalton Industries and everything changes. I’m expected to be one hundred per cent charisma. I wine and dine, I schmooze and charm. I’m good at what I do there.’
‘I’m sure you’re good at what you do in the lab, too.’
‘Yeah, I’m good. But I’m not the best. There are some serious players in that team. The women there aren’t the slightest bit affected by the things I’m good at.’
Honor doubted that entirely. ‘Maybe they’re just being profess
ional.’
‘Some of them barely take me seriously.’
She frowned. ‘Because you’re good-looking?’
‘Because I’m lightweight. Compared to my colleagues.’
‘That is not true.’ Defensiveness surged out of her from somewhere. She swallowed it down and his toe stroked his thanks on her leg. That was it. Just one tiny point of contact and electric current surged out from it. ‘Why do you stay if it makes you feel bad about yourself?’
He shrugged. ‘Because I love it. I want to be one of those legends.’
‘Why? What is it you love so much about it?’
‘Shipwrecks are …’ He frowned. ‘They have so much potential. They lie so quietly on the sea floor, waiting for us to find them.’
‘There are lots of discoveries waiting to be made. Why sunken ships?’
‘Because they’re eternal. Finding them ensures they endure in history. There’s so little in this world that lasts.’
‘Like?’
He shrugged. ‘Friends. Women.’
‘Love?’
‘Definitely love.’
His parents had so much to answer for. How early in life was Rob looking for things that might last? ‘There’s more. More than that.’
‘I want to make a difference and discover mysteries and have rookie lab-rats look at me like the sun shines from my research.’ His fists tightened. ‘I’m great at what I do for my father’s firm but I feel great in the lab. In the water. Diving for wrecks.’
‘Then that’s where you’ll find the right kind of woman.’
Rob laughed. ‘Underwater?’
‘Where your passion lies.’
His eyes darkened and Honor’s breath came faster.
‘What makes you think I’m looking for Ms Right?’ he said.
‘We all search for our perfect fit.’
‘Are you, Honor?’
Her eyes widened. ‘I was. Once.’
‘But not now?’ She shook her head. Rob’s gaze grew intense. ‘He must have been some man.’
Honor’s blinking eyes felt heavy. It had to be her weariness. It had nothing to do with the hypnotic stroke of Rob’s toe against her leg. A deep pain bubbled up and spilled over in the tightness of her voice. ‘They were my family. It’s hard to imagine anything more perfect.’
Honor frowned at her own words. Perfect? No. Her marriage had been far from that.
‘That’s a big call. What if another Mr Right comes along? Or do you believe there can only be one?’
Did she believe that? Honor remembered having long conversations about true love as a girl, tangled up with her mother in an oversized hammock under a giant paperbark. Tanya had certainly believed it; she’d pined for her lost love all of Honor’s life. And she’d been alone just as long.
Was her love for Nate perfect? It was deep. It was warm and familiar and safe. Nate had anchored her to the earth more than sending her soaring in the heavens. He’d never wrapped his arms around her and rolled her in the shallows. He’d never sent her blood thrumming just by touching her.
Her throat tightened. ‘Yes. I think there’s only one perfect fit for everyone.’
Rob nodded. Pushed. ‘What if he wasn’t it?’
Rage oozed up just below the surface. Honor swallowed it back. ‘He was. I married him.’ She said it with a force that suggested those two were even remotely connected.
‘What if you hadn’t met the most perfect fit for you yet?’
‘What are you doing—auditioning? He was.’ Her defensiveness startled even her. ‘You’re as bad as my mother.’
‘She didn’t approve?’
Tanya’s concerned words shortly after Justin had been born came back to her now. About Nate being right for her because he’d given her a son and because he gave her the love her father had never been around to give. And whether that was enough. Honor had cried after her mother left for what that suggested about her. For what that suggested about Nate. But mostly because a deep part of her had feared her mother’s criticism might have been on the money. Nate had been older. He’d worn cardigans to his academic job. He’d frowned when he found her dancing barefoot in cut wet grass. She’d talked herself into believing that her mother was simply angry that she didn’t have her little Mini-Me to tie-dye fabric and buy hippy music with any more. It had been easier to hurt her mother than to hurt herself.
Because what if she was right.?
‘Nate worshipped every breath I took.’ And the son that they created together.
‘I can believe it. Doesn’t mean he was the right man for you.’
The words were gentle. And logical. And nothing she hadn’t wondered deep down since her mother first planted the seed.
‘I think I would know,’ she said now, rather too sharply.
‘How many men had you slept with before him?’
Shock made her jaw drop. ‘That’s none of your business.’
‘I’ll take that as a zero.’
‘Why do you measure everything in terms of sex? What about intellectual compatibility? Emotional intelligence? Social fit? ‘ Connecting with someone alone on an island was a world away from staying connected with them once you got back to a life of parties and dinners with strangers.
His eyes blazed into hers and his voice grew hard. ‘I’m not talking about sex, Honor. I’m talking about the kind of connection that might make a woman want to touch a man without even noticing she’s doing it.’
Honor frowned, then followed his steady gaze down to her side, where her fingers had tucked comfortably around the heel of the foot he’d been rubbing against her. She pulled her hand away as if his skin burned her. It practically had.
‘That’s not … That’s … ‘ Humiliation washed over her. She bit back the sting of tears that threatened. ‘That’s just physiology.’
‘You think so? So if I ran my hand up your thigh …’
Honor gasped, not because she was shocked by his words, but because she was shocked by her body’s reaction to just his words. Every part of her screamed.
‘… only your nerve endings would get engaged?’
Breath hitched up in Honor’s chest. ‘Only my body … Not my heart. Not my mind.’
He stared out at her from under thick lashes. ‘You think they’re not connected?’
She shrugged casually, faking it one hundred and ten per cent. ‘Not necessarily.’
He was silent for a long time. ‘In you it is. Very necessary.’
The truth took the wind out of her sails. Four hours’ sleep was nowhere enough to fuel this kind of battle. ‘What do you want from me, Rob?’ she sighed.
She sagged back into the mattress and dropped her head. Surrender echoed in her voice and Rob felt the primal, predatory surge of victory. ‘I want you to admit that yesterday meant something.’
Hazel eyes sparkled back up at him. ‘Why?’
Good question. What the heck was he doing, forcing the issue like this? Had he slipped into some kind of bizarre twilight zone when he set foot on the island? Some alternate reality where he gave a damn whether the woman he was with was emotionally invested in their relationship? Since when had he started worrying about their motivation at all? He grimaced.
Right about the time he hit Pulu Keeling’s outer reef.
Sex, for him, had become a quest. Always good. Often great, but increasingly hollow. His father continued to keep score of his own conquests—presumably there was some kind of family record up for grabs—and volume had always been the primary aim. Now, here Rob was, obsessing over whether or not a woman cared for him before she so much as kissed him. Irony twisted his smile. Dad would be so proud!
‘Let me ask you something.’ Her voice was breathless, as if she was fighting for her life. ‘How many women have you slept with?’
In the space of a heartbeat, the power shifted. One minute she’d been as helpless as a mouse in a cat house and then suddenly the light in her eyes changed and she came out swinging. It didn’t h
elp the desire he was working hard to suppress. He found courage a massive turn-on.
‘Come on, Rob. More than ten? More than twenty?’
‘More than,’ he said, guarded.
Her face said but of course and he felt the tiniest hint of shame.
‘And how many of those were you emotionally involved with?’
He didn’t answer. The shame intensified.
‘Let me ask that another way. How many of them were emotionally involved with you?
All? Half?’
‘Honor—’
‘Let’s be generous; you’re a good-looking man, after all. Let’s say half.’
Anger swiftly moved in to replace the discomfort warming his features. She was painting a vivid picture and he didn’t like it. ‘Why be cheap? Let’s say three-quarters.’
She smiled a bitter smile. ‘So, based on your extreme level of experience with the opposite sex, you think you could tell the seventy-five per cent of women for whom it meant something from the twenty-five per cent for whom it didn’t, based on their physical responses to you?’
Yes … No … What? ‘I imagine I can, yes.’
Honor took a deep breath and scooted up to kneel in front of him. She leaned in closer. He sat perfectly rigid—under the sleeping bag as well as above.
‘So when a woman does this … ‘ she pressed her hands onto his bare chest and he felt the tiny echo of trembles before they stilled ‘… do you take it as a sign she’s falling for you?’
His heart thumped violently under her hand but he didn’t otherwise move. ‘Not necessarily.’
She leaned in and pressed her hot, soft mouth to the skin of his shoulder, birthing a ripple of shivers and a clenching of his abdomen.
‘And this?’ she said. ‘Would this be a giveaway? ‘
If he didn’t lighten things up, this was going to go badly awry for Honor. Did she have no idea what she did to him? ‘Depends. Am I naked in a tent at the time?’
She glanced up and met his eyes and he watched the bravado slip sharply like a rock fall. She was so not up to this. This kind of game was what he’d expect from women in that other part of his world. Not Honor. But she barrelled onwards, as though her end game wasn’t perfectly obvious.