by Anne Stuart
"I don't know."
"Don't know? Or won't tell me?"
She bit her lip, hoping the small amount of pain would help clear her fogged brain. "I'll tell you," she said. "I owe you that much."
"You do indeed. But it can keep until we get off the beach. We're going to be here a while—we'll have plenty of time for bedtime stories."
She looked at him sharply, wondering what he meant by that. But he'd already turned and headed toward a narrow path cut through the underbrush, a box of supplies on his shoulder. He was barefoot, wearing his rumpled white linen trousers and a pale blue shirt, and his gait was completely steady. Obviously his so-called wound was a fake.
Would she be following her executioner into the jungle, away from witnesses? Absurd. If he'd wanted to kill her, he'd had innumerable chances. She was being a hysterical, paranoid ninny.
"Are you coming?" He'd paused at the edge of the thicket, his expression patient.
"I'm coming," she said, reaching down to scoop up the blankets she'd been lying on.
It seemed to take him no time at all to set up a rudimentary camp. Even with the sun dipping low, the air was warm, torpid, the gentle trade winds that abounded around St. Anne cut off by the heavy greenery surrounding the lagoon. It was a small, translucent pool of water, warm from the midday sun, and Francey knelt beside it, sluicing some over her face to help wake her up.
"The weather's supposed to be good for the next few days," Michael said in a diffident voice. "I thought we might not bother with any sort of shelter for the time being. Unless you'd rather I rigged something up."
We, she thought. Was she going to be sleeping with him? It was all part and parcel of this gathering sense of unreality. "I'd like to sleep under the stars," she said.
He nodded, moving back to the boxes of stores that had been left there. "The one thing Cecil didn't manage to provide is a change of clothes," he said, his back to her. "You might want to rinse out your dress in the lagoon. If it's like my clothes, it's probably all stiff and sticky from the salt spray. You needn't worry about the drinking water—Cecil brought plenty of that. We can use the lagoon for bathing."
"That's a good thing," she said. "I'm all stiff and sticky, never mind my clothing." But she made no move to unfasten her dress. She was wearing her French bathing suit underneath, a reminder of the innocent day they'd planned, but some idiotic remnant of modesty kept her from moving.
Michael didn't have any such inhibitions. With one last glance at the makeshift kitchen he'd set up, complete with propane cookstove, he turned and walked to the edge of the lagoon, stripping off his shirt as he went and sending it sailing. She almost looked away as he reached for his belt, wondering for a moment just how immodest he was, and then she realized he must be wearing his bathing suit, too. She couldn't keep from watching as he stripped off the water-stained trousers and dumped them beside the lagoon.
She laughed then, in a kind of nervous relief, and he turned to look at her. "I warned you I was pale and skinny," he said. "I didn't think I was that amusing, however."
"I was afraid you weren't wearing a bathing suit," she confessed. "And I wouldn't have expected you to wear something quite so baggy," The bathing suit was a huge pair of trunks that ballooned around his body. But he was wrong; he wasn't pale and skinny at all. He couldn't match her own darker tan, acquired after several weeks beneath the Caribbean sun, but he was a lovely sort of golden shade. And he wasn't skinny. Lean, possibly leaner than he usually was. But there was no disguising the corded musculature of his chest, his shoulders and arms, even his legs. And, oh, my God, his legs.
The limp hadn't been faked. None of his injuries had been. As she looked more closely, past the momentary distraction of sheer masculine beauty, she saw the vicious red scar on his thigh, the jagged tear in his side, and older, paler scars scattered across his golden skin.
All amusement fled in shocked horror at the pain he must have been through. "Michael," she said in an anguished voice. "What did they do to you?"
A shadow crossed his face, a hint of such strong emotion that she couldn't even begin to decipher it. And then it was gone again, and he'd crossed the clearing to her, his hands warm and hard on her shoulders. "Doctors can be butchers," he said easily. "But they put me back together after the accident, and I have to be grateful to them."
She wanted to say something about the other scars, the older ones. The kind of scars she'd never seen before, not ones that had come from a surgeon's knife, but something rougher, cruder. "Yes," she said vaguely.
"Now take off your dress so I can laugh at your bathing suit," he said gently.
It was an unfortunate fact that when he was so close, touching her, looking at her with unexpected tenderness, she could deny him nothing. She reached for the tiny row of buttons between her breasts, and then jerked back in sudden pain.
His face darkened. "What's wrong?"
"I must have hurt my wrist. Sprained it, perhaps…" And suddenly she remembered those brief, paralyzing moments in the sports car, when he'd taken her wrist.
His face showed no expression at all. The very blankness of it told her more than obvious guilt or regret would have. "You must have hurt it when you fell," he said flatly, his hands leaving her shoulders. Moving to the buttons between her breasts, unfastening them, his strong, clever hands brushing against her.
She held herself very still, afraid to breathe. Not afraid of the pain he'd inflicted on her in a moment of desperation, but afraid of her reaction to the feel of his hands on her breasts, the warmth of his body so close to her.
He had freckles on his shoulders, she saw. A faint tracery of golden hair on his chest. And for a man as deft as he was, it was taking him too long to undo the buttons.
She stepped back, away from him, tearing at the dress with sudden anger. He let her go, watching with faintly hooded eyes as she stripped off the dress and dived into the lagoon, slicing beneath its cool depths in one graceful arc.
By the time she surfaced he was in the water at the opposite end of the pool, and that odd, breathless moment might never have existed. "Well, I'll say one thing," he drawled in the gathering twilight. "You couldn't call your bathing suit baggy."
She wasn't going to blush. The two scraps of black cloth had been the best she could manage in the small, trendy boutiques on St. Anne. She'd tried to get a larger size to cover more of her, but it simply fell off her body. In the end she'd settled for this, knowing that no one else would see it.
But it hadn't worked out that way. Still, she had every intention of staying in the water until it was fully dark, rather than let Michael see her with those unsettling eyes of his.
"There're some soap and shampoo in one of those boxes," Michael added, treading water. "You want me to get them for you?"
It was the one thing he could say that would make her lower her guard. At that point she would have accepted soap from the ghost of Caitlin Dugan herself. "Yes, please," she said.
He levered himself out of the pool, and she watched him, watched with interest as she saw a strip of dark material beneath the flamboyant swim trunks. If he could embarrass her, she could return the favor. "Are you wearing underwear beneath those trunks?" she called out.
He turned back to her, his clothes in his hands, and leaned over to pick up her discarded dress. "I don't wear underwear," he said. "That's my real bathing suit."
Before she could realize his intent he'd tossed all the salt-stiffened clothes into the water, including her only decent piece of clothing. She dived for it, hoping to save it from a watery fate, but it sank beneath the surface before she could make it. then he was in the water with her, swimming towards her with clean, long strokes, unhampered by the soap and shampoo he was carrying.
And suddenly he was close, too close, in the water. "Need some help?" he asked.
Her wrist was feeling better with the cool water surrounding it, and she wondered again whether she'd imagined the pain. It didn't matter. Even if it was broken
, she wouldn't ask him for any kind of help that would require him to put his hands on her again. His touch was too overwhelming in her current fragile state. "I can manage," she said, backing away from him.
He let her go, a fact that surprised her, moving away through the water to gather the scattered wet clothing. She turned her back to him, using the shampoo and soap he'd given her to manage a fitful bath, then dived beneath the water to rinse the bubbles from her hair. When she surfaced she saw she was alone in the pool. Michael was standing by the cookstove, and the damp, oversize trunks were low on his hips, clinging to the black strip of material.
She grimaced. At least he had something baggy to cover his modesty. Except that she didn't think he was in the slightest bit modest. If she said anything at all about it, he'd probably strip off the baggy trunks. And she didn't think that would be a good idea at all.
"It's getting dark," he said, his back to her. He had a beautiful back, she noticed now, even through the gathering shadows. She'd never really noticed a man's back before, but his was quite extraordinary. Strong shoulders, narrow hips, golden smooth skin. She sighed, treading water, and a stray chill rippled through her skin.
"I'm not finished," she said, taking a few strokes to warm herself.
"You can't spend the night in the pool, Francey," he said with a great deal of patience. "You'll have to come out sooner or later."
"Later will do me fine," she said, swimming backward, then diving under the water again. Later might not be such a good idea. He was busy right now, managing some sort of dinner with his Boy Scout training. She could probably manage to slip out unnoticed and wrap herself in one of the scratchy wool blankets Cecil had thoughtfully provided in lieu of clothing.
She surfaced by the far edge of the pool, shaking the water from her face, and she realized with sudden horror that he was gone. The camp stove was untended, the clearing vacant, and she was alone…
Strong hands caught her, hauling her out of the lagoon with seeming effortlessness. She struggled for a moment, but he stilled her with the simple expediency of wrapping his body around her chilled, almost nude one. "If you make us both fall back into that lagoon, Francey," he growled in her ear, "I'm going to be very irritated."
She stopped her struggles. Not so much because of his threat, but because her skimpy bikini wasn't made for wrestling matches. And the more she struggled, the more her chilled, damp body rubbed against his warm, dry one. The effect it had on her was disturbing and undeniable. And she didn't even want to consider whether or not it was having an effect on him.
He released her then, abruptly, only his hand steadying her from tumbling back into the lagoon. If he'd made a smutty remark, tried to touch her in any way, she would never have forgiven him. But he kept his gaze on her face. "Dinner's almost ready," he said. "And I found a T-shirt in the bottom of one of the boxes. Now, I'd much rather wear it. For one thing, it's getting cooler, and I'd just as soon keep you wearing as little as possible. But as we've already ascertained, I'm a perfect gentleman. So the T-shirt's yours."
She didn't know what to say. Except that his blue eyes were looking steadily into hers, and his manner was back to what she was accustomed to. Calm, sexless, friendly. She was the one suffering from an excess of awareness, an excess of imagination. Not Michael.
"That would be very nice," she said politely. "What's for dinner?"
His mouth curved up in a smile. "Now, that's the bad news. Cecil might have left us plenty to eat, but it's all godawful. Tonight we have freeze-dried shepherd's pie. Fresh shepherd's pie is bad enough, but freeze-drying it is a crime against humanity. After that, I suggest we try to get some sleep. It's almost full dark, and there's not much we can do once the sun sets completely. I don't think it would be wise to keep a fire going after dark."
She glanced over at the clearing. He'd managed a makeshift bed. One. Big enough for both of them. She looked back at him, a question in her eyes. "We're sleeping together?"
"Unless you want to freeze. I'm looking forward to your bedtime story. Who'd want to kill you, and why?"
"You wouldn't believe me," she said glumly.
He smiled then, just a faint, amused crinkling at the corners of his eyes. "Try me," he said. "I'm a lot more gullible than you'd think."
The T-shirt was a vast improvement. It was of a heavy cotton jersey and hung halfway to her knees. She wished she dared take off her wet bathing suit, but she didn't. Not because of the effect it might have on him, but what it might do to her.
Dinner was as horrendous as Michael had predicted, but they polished off every scrap of it, including emptying a bag of tasteless muesli for dessert. The water carried a designer label, and there was a full case of it, and there were even a couple of bottles of an excellent Chardonnay. When Michael extinguished the camp stove, darkness closed in around them, lit only by the brightness of a thousand stars in the inky sky overhead.
"Sorry there's no moon." His voice was slightly muffled in the darkness. He was over by the lagoon; she could see his body huddled down beside the water.
"Could you have arranged one?" she countered. The makeshift bed was behind her, and she wished she could come up with a reasonable alternative.
"Maybe if I'd had prior warning," he said lightly, rising and moving toward her, his gait smooth and even despite the evidence of his recent injuries.
"Your leg's much better," she observed, hoping to disconcert him, stalling for time.
"Yes, it is." He stopped a short distance away from her, as if he knew she was frightened. "You could probably still outrun me if you had a mind to."
She swallowed. "Is that supposed to set my mind at ease? Because if it is, it's failing."
Even in the inky starlight she could see the smile that creased his face. "I'm not going to chase you, I'm not going to rape you, I'm not even going to seduce you. Right now all I want to do is get some sleep, but I can't until you stop acting like a skittish virgin and lie down."
"I'm not a skittish virgin."
"No, you're not. So stop behaving like one and come to bed."
She couldn't come up with anything else to stall him. And suddenly she was bone-tired herself, the tumultuous events of the day catching up with her. Without a word she went over to the makeshift pallet, climbing in and pulling the light cotton cover over her. It was more comfortable than she'd expected, dangerously so. He'd fashioned some sort of mattress from the abundant greenery, and the smell of the crushed leaves was thick and evocative in the night air. She lay very still, legs together, arms crossed over her chest, and waited.
"You look like a mummy," he said affably, sliding in beside her. He was still wearing the baggy trunks, but he still had far too much skin exposed and was far too close. She could feel the warmth of him, even though they weren't touching. "Or maybe a crusader's wife, lying on her bier."
"I'm comfortable," she said stiffly.
"Well, I'm not." Before she realized his intent, he'd dragged her hands down from their protective position against her chest and pulled her body closer, his long bare legs brushing hers. She remained still, stiff, not bothering to try to move away. She knew without a doubt that he would simply haul her back. Besides, he was making no move to touch her, to caress her, to run his strong, beautiful hands down her arms, up under her loose white T-shirt. He was being as chaste as her posture dictated. "So tell me, Francey? Who's trying to kill you? And me, as well?"
She didn't want to talk about it. Here in the tropical darkness, she wanted to lie back and look at the stars, to feel the warmth of the man beside her and pretend life was still innocent. "It's a long story," she said.
"We've got a long time."
"I thought you were tired."
"I've got my second wind. Distract me."
She didn't want to think about the ramifications of that statement. It had been delivered in a bland enough tone, but she no longer knew her own mind. On the one hand, she wanted him safe, sexless, a boon companion. She didn't need the compli
cations of desire so soon after the disaster of her involvement with Patrick Dugan.
On the other hand, whether she needed it or not, she had it. Desire. For the man lying so close to her. And while she usually had the good sense to be grateful he didn't seem to want her, a part of her was miffed at his immunity.
The few suggestions she'd had that he might not be as immune as he seemed frightened her. She told herself that she was frightened of her own ability to cope. But she had to admit, deep down inside her innermost heart, that she recognized something about Michael Dowd that terrified her.
She looked up at the stars, taking a deep breath, willing herself to relax. "Once upon a time," she said in a low voice, "there was a very stupid girl. She had no excuse for her stupidity—she had a good enough brain, a good enough education. But when it came to people she didn't have much common sense. She believed what they told her. She wasn't hopelessly naive, mind you. She knew there was evil in the world. She just never thought it would touch her."
"But it did." He was touching her, she realized. His hand was on her wrist. The one that still ached. And he was stroking it gently, kneading away the lingering stiffness and pain.
"It did," she agreed. "She met a man."
"Ah," said Michael.
"Indeed. He was a very handsome man. Irish, with all the charm associated with the Irish. He could have had anyone eating out of his hand, including people who were a lot more sophisticated than she was. She was child's play for him. All he had to do was smile at her and she fell in love."
"I think you're too hard on her," he said, his voice a low rumble in the night. "It sounds as if she was up against someone who was completely out of her league."
"That's still no excuse for being so trusting." Her voice was hard. "But she believed everything he told her. Believed in the cause he was working for, believed in the future he had mapped out for both of them. And she would have given him everything, everything…" Her voice failed for a moment at the shameful memory.