by Nikki Logan
Why wouldn’t she talk to him?
Before he knew it, he’d offloaded the inflatable’s contents onto the high, dry part of the reef and was on his way back in for a second load. It felt good to be puffing with exertion and he knew that, soon enough, his thoughts would clear of the woman with the maddening barriers and all he’d be able to think about was the next run, the next lift.
If he could just focus on the business of getting all this gear back on the boat …
An image shimmied into his mind of the day they’d dragged all this equipment onshore, how he’d stood close to a wet and glistening Honor. His attraction had been instant and so had her hostility. But how much had changed in just ten days? What else could change if only he had ten more?
But he didn’t. The supply vessel came in thirty-seven hours. It would stock Honor up with all the things she needed to re-establish her solo existence here. It would come with everything he needed to motor away from this island.
He would go.
And she wouldn’t stop him.
Sudden, brutal realisation of that hit him hard in the solar plexus. Rob winced. It was going to be a long afternoon of not managing to keep his mind off her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HONOR shook her head for the third time and forced her focus back to the nest markers glowing under her UV light in the darkness. It annoyed her that she’d drifted off again. A whole nest could have emerged and emptied in the time she’d been staring into that moonlight trail across the endless expanse of black ocean. Thinking.
This wouldn’t do. She had to get a grip. Just because he wasn’t here was no excuse to let her emotional guard down. The Rob of her imagination was every bit as dangerous as the flesh and blood man. Maybe even more so because her imagination had always been prone to wild exaggeration. If she thought banning him from accompanying her out here tonight was a good way to keep him off her mind she was dead wrong.
Pretty much the only way to keep him from haunting her thoughts was to be with him. Curled up in the tent, stretched out on the beach, floating in the water. Venting all her emotion through her lips where they met his expert ones. She didn’t want to think about where he’d earned that experience or who with. She got the feeling he was reining himself in to fifty per cent capacity while she was giving him everything she had. Her kisses were even starting to change to be more like his.
Would every kiss she ever shared be an echo of Rob?
Honor caught herself on that thought. When had she started imagining any kisses at all in her future? That meant a partner. And partner meant relationship. Which was absolutely not on her radar. Still, ten days ago she never would have imagined appreciating the way someone’s body fitted perfectly against hers as they lay in the sand. Or that she’d draw such joy from curling up against a hard-as-steel chest and listening to the vibrations as he talked endlessly against her hair. His deep voice was as silken as his body, whispering her name close to her ear. Honor … ‘Honor?’
She jerked up straighter in her seat and realised she’d been staring off into the moonlight. Again. A flush stole up her throat. ‘Sorry—what?’
‘I asked if you’d had any luck.’ Rob emerged from the trees out onto her beach.
She swung her gaze back to the nest markers. Nothing had changed. As if she would have noticed if it had! ‘Uh … no. Nothing yet.’
Her body reacted instantly to his presence, to the smell of him in the still night as he stepped closer to her. He was clothed for a change, a moss-green sweatshirt stained with engine oil and clearly rummaged from on board The Player, but that didn’t stop her from visualising him how she knew him best. Low slung board shorts and the skin God gave him.
She shook her head to clear the tantalising image away. This was just getting ridiculous! Irritation at herself spilled over. ‘I told you not to come. What do you want?’ It was rhetorical. She didn’t expect an answer so it was no surprise when he didn’t give her one. Except that then he did.
‘I want you to look at me.’ She swivelled her head around to face him. ‘No, not just at me. At me.’ His fingers made a V and pointed directly at his eyes.
Honor took a breath as he stepped closer. Even in the dim light, the blue of his gaze was molten. For a second, her body flared in primal response and then she realised that his intensity was not sexual. Her guard shot up immediately.
He squatted in front of her, keeping his stare locked on hers. She battled to hold it but couldn’t. Her lashes dropped away from the intense heat.
‘Why is that so hard, Honor? You have no problem having my tongue down your throat but you won’t look me in the eye.’
‘Rob …’ She fought the frostiness she could feel rising in herself. He didn’t deserve that. She knew that much, at least. She forced her face back to his. Her stomach tightened at the uncertainty she saw in his eyes, right at the back. She knew she’d put it there.
‘I’ve spent the afternoon wondering why you’re avoiding talking to me,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure how you can be so … connected … when we’re together in the tent and then so disconnected the rest of the time.’
‘We talk.’ She knew he wouldn’t let her get away with that.
‘Not about anything of consequence. The weather, how our supplies are going. Not about your family or your dreams or what we’re going to do when the supply boat comes.’
Not that. Honor was nowhere near ready to think about what that meant. Or her dreams— he figured way too highly in them lately. She took the lesser of three evils. ‘What do you want to know about my family? Or what’s left of it.’
He dropped his eyes, frustration chasing over his face. She looked away, knowing that was a cheap shot.
‘Want to tell me about what happened with your mum?’
Heat stole up her throat. ‘Nope.’
‘Then how about what you imagined you’d be doing when you grew up back when you were a kid.’
Her pulse started throbbing. Her lips wouldn’t move. He’d engineered this entire conversation to get under her skin. Desperation made her rash. And obvious. She leaned her torso forward and pressed her lips to his ear. Hot. Breathing words into it just the way he liked. About as diverting as a battleship sliding up onto the reef behind them.
God, she hoped so.
‘Not this, that’s for sure,’ she whispered, offhand. ‘Nine-year-old me would have gagged at the boy germs.’
Rob sighed and leaned into her lips. But then he reached up and framed her jaw as he pulled his face away from her touch. His eyes bled agony. ‘Something, Honor. You have to give me something.’ His nostrils flared.
‘Please.’
Alarm bells clanged deep in her mind, but her heart responded to the raw pain in his plea. There were some things she couldn’t talk about—even with him. As painful as it was, her mother was the lesser of so many evils. She took a breath and sat back.
‘Mum came to the city when she was six months pregnant with me. I never knew my father; she always said he was just a guy who was passing through. When I was little, I just accepted that. It wasn’t until I got older that I realised what that meant.’
‘What did it mean?’
‘It meant my grandparents threw her out. It meant she got pregnant to a drifter. She always said she’d loved him but … who knows. She must have only known him a few days.’
You fell for Rob in less, a dangerous voice whispered. Which love should be trusted more—the one that took a few days or the one that took a few years?
‘You think she did it on purpose?’
‘Get pregnant? No. Do something shocking and irrevocable? Definitely. She was a rebel through and through. She was only seventeen years older than me. Almost like an older sister. We struggled through a lot but we always had each other.’
Honor’s mind filled with memories of the bad times. And the good.
Rob’s voice eventually brought her back to the present. ‘So what happened?’
She looked to
the nesting sites for a long time, wondering if she should answer. He sat there, his interest clear in his expression and wearing his hope pinned to his sleeve. He really wanted this.
She took a breath. ‘Mum never approved entirely of Nate. She thought I sold out to the first decent man that came along. An older, buttoned-up man who, she thought, crushed my spirit. That caused a lot of tension between us. But, when the accident happened, she dropped everything to nurse me back to health. She flew to Darwin and got me back on my feet.’
‘Sounds like a strong woman.’
Her smile was tight. ‘That’s one word for it. Unfortunately, I’m not, or wasn’t then. It was too soon for me to get back on my feet.’
‘You fought?’
Honor felt the stab of memory. The hurtful words, the tears. ‘I wasn’t ready. She’d never lost what I lost. You don’t just … get over something like that on command.’ She blew out a puff of air. ‘We stopped seeing each other for a while.’
‘How long is “a while”?’
‘Three years. Probably four now.’
Dark eyebrows shot up. She didn’t miss it. ‘So you just never saw her again, to this day?’
‘I went home to Perth; she chose to stay behind in the North. It’s what she’s good at, running away from conflict.’ Honor pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She hadn’t meant to tell him all that; she’d only meant to tell him enough to satisfy his cursed curiosity.
‘Depends on your perspective.’
She swung her eyes back to his. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s easy to judge from outside the situation.’ Bold eyes met hers. ‘Someone looking in here might think you’ve done the same. Coming here. Staying. They might call that running away.’
Blind pain twisted her guts in a taloned fist. She pushed up out of her seat. ‘Really? Is that what you think?’
He stared at her, too intent on having his say to worry about the dangerous tone in her voice.
‘Earlier in the week, yes. But now …? I see a woman who has forgotten how it feels to be normal. Because her life is so artificial here.’ He held her eyes. ‘The very act of being here prevents the healing you came to find.’
The pain intensified into a sharp ache. Her voice was a blistered croak and a dull nausea started up deep in her gut. ‘Why?’ she squeezed out.
Compassion saturated his features but there was pain behind it. ‘I can navigate, Honor. You were three days out of Exmouth, headed for Christmas Island. But they sent the Aussie military for you so you must have still been in Australian waters. I figure that put you in the middle of the Javan trench about three hours north-east of here.’
Honor’s insides twisted like a slingshot. The only thing tighter was her voice. ‘Your point?’
He took both her icy hands in his and pressed his lips to them. ‘You’ve built a life on the closest bit of land to where they died. It’s like living in a cemetery. You’ve made this whole island—your whole life—a memorial.’ His eyes alone carried enough sadness for both of them. ‘You don’t want to heal, Honor. You want to remember.’
Panic ripped through her. She almost swayed from the sudden suction of blood from her extremities into her torso, as though her vital organs were under direct threat.
‘Do you seriously think you’re in a position to cast stones? A man who’s put his life on hold for the father he’s frightened of? Who lives in the past because it’s better than the present? ‘ Honor pushed on, desperate to escape the reality that he was painting. ‘You’re living a double life rather than being true to what you want. You’re burying yourself in a world you despise rather than facing the reality of the man you are. Being authentic. How is that any—’
‘Don’t make this about me, Honor,’ he said through tight lips. ‘Avoiding the topic will not make it go away.’
‘I don’t owe you anything, Rob. A few hot and heavy nights doesn’t buy you any part of my soul. Of me.’
‘Is that all we’ve shared?’ His eyes were bleak.
She held his dull glare. ‘As far as I’m concerned.’ Awful silence glittered. Or was that just the tears welling in her eyes?
‘You’ve got nothing inside you, have you?’
Honor held her tongue. If she spoke he’d hear the pain slicing at her vocal cords. She was hurting. He was hurting. She never should have let him get close. Opened them both up to this kind of sorrow. This was her fault.
‘I think you should go now.’ The high-pitched whine of agony vibrated in her words. ‘Before either of us says anything else we don’t mean.’
Dark eyes held hers. ‘You think I didn’t mean that?’
Razors lacerated her heart. Her voice was low and tight. ‘Then you should go before you say anything else you do mean.’
His chest rose and fell just once—deep, slow. Awful. Then he turned and did as she’d asked.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ROB faked sleep as he heard Honor fumble at the tent flap. He wasn’t sure she’d even come back here after the scene on the beach. After the agony of his words. He’d left her to be alone with her thoughts and her turtles. As usual.
He was sure she’d find anywhere else to sleep today. The beach. The turtle clearing. Even his boat. Or go without rest altogether. But she didn’t. Instead, she silently let herself into the tent, shrugged off a few outer layers and then crawled right in beside him. Under the covers for the first time. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that was a come-on.
He knew goodbye when he saw it.
Her whole body still trembled. Was still icy-cold. He felt sick that his words had caused her such pain. He’d meant them to have impact but not the impact of live munitions.
She kept her body stiff and separate from his. She was intent on pushing him away but an unconscious part brought her here, back to him. A part that had power. He reached out and hooked one arm around her waist. To let her know he wasn’t still angry; that some things mattered more than what you said. She didn’t move—in either direction. He pulled silently, gently and twisted his body forward to meet hers. She let herself be pulled backwards and curled around his arm as he slid it up across her chest to grip her shoulder. He didn’t stop pulling until her whole frigid body tucked into the warm length of his, her convex curves fitting everywhere he was concave.
As if she was made to fit him.
She didn’t care that he was naked. He didn’t care that she wasn’t. The two of them lay together, his heat soaking into her skin, not speaking a word. Just letting their bodies commune. Her tearless trembles amplified for a few minutes but, eventually, they merged into a series of hard shudders that, in turn, finally turned into regular breathing as she fell asleep.
Rob lowered his head until his lips found her nape. He pressed them there hard, and held them against her as he squeezed his eyes closed.
This could only go two ways.
And he knew which way was most likely. Honor stopped in her tracks coming back from her nature-call as she heard the noises coming from her tent. The only mammals on this island were human but it sounded like a grizzly bear was having a fine old time fossicking through her stuff. Rob was snoring.
Her heart lurched like a reef-fish at low tide. On anyone else, she would have found the guttural growling irritating. On him … it was adorable.
Oh, Honor, you’re screwed! Guilt poured in hot on the tails of that thought and set up a deep gnawing in her stomach.
She shouldn’t touch him again. It would only complicate things and make it harder when the drop vessel came. Tomorrow. One more day. One more dawn. Her heart sank. Rob would leave tomorrow. Not just for a while, but for good. She’d like to say not a moment too soon, but the truth was it was a number of moments too late.
The moment with the dying chick. The moment with the six kisses. The moment he gave her back the ocean. The moment he ripped into her soul with the truth.
All of them sending her plunging deeper into dangerous, unchartere
d emotional territory. All of them pounding at her heart, demanding entry. All of them screaming I love you despite the complete impossibility of that. It had only been a few days.
Really: she’d been falling for him from the moment he’d first smiled at her.
Love just didn’t happen that quickly. Lust did, though. That could be all that was going on with them. But her experience on the beach the other night made a mockery of that thought. The way her heart had melted at the image of a young Rob, hankering for the love and attention of parents who were too busy socialising to see what a special soul he had. She could easily imagine him burying himself in the comfort of story books—space stories, dinosaurs, pirates—anything that lessened the impact of his home life. Not hard to see how his bright teenage mind, fuelled with images from childhood adventure stories, could have developed a fascination for shipwrecks and archaeology. The past would have been infinitely preferable to his present.
Ugh, she was doing it again. She didn’t want to think about Rob as an unhappy, defenceless child. To imagine what made him tick. To wonder how that fitted with the man he was today. The only child she should be thinking about was Justin.
Justin …
But Rob made it harder by leaning his weight on her carefully constructed barriers and shoving his foot into the emotional door she’d prefer to slam shut between them. Did he even know he was doing it?
She stiffened her spine and marched into the tent, not caring if she woke him. Intent to do so, in fact. She knew what had to be done. Before it was too late. ‘Come on, sleeping beauty, wake up. My turn.’
Creeping into bed with him would only delay the inevitable. She’d done it last night because she’d found herself in such a deep pit of despair she had to feel something or she would simply have walked out into the dark ocean. Rob was the any-port-in-a-storm of her overwhelmed emotions. The hard strength of his body had been an anchor she’d literally clung to for her life. And he’d made no demands on her except for the desperate press of his lips that she was sure he didn’t know she was awake to feel.