Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (9 page)

Is it true that no two grains of sand are
alike? Or is that reserved for snowflakes?

Palm and coconut trees fringe the lush,
green growth that borders the beach. Beyond this is higher ground
bedecked with dense trees taller than anything I have ever seen in
my life. The air is balmy and very humid. It is also extremely
fresh, and the salt sea tang carries itself on the breeze.

I remember being blown by that freaky gust
of wind off the deck and into the sea. I remember being majorly
freaked out. It was as if a giant hand of air had plucked me off my
feet and thrown me into the sky

Naturally, I landed.

I can swim like a fish, ironically, which is
what kept me afloat – my ability to tread water for hours on end.
But the sea was extremely choppy and there was no way anyone could
swim for long in those waters. That is, until the life buoy came
sailing into the air and struck me in the side of my head like a
well-aimed shoe.

I’m saved, I thought.

Except that I wasn’t.

But what surprised me was the sight of Kurt
Taylor diving in after me. Of all the stupid, dumbass things to
do.

I mean . . . what would you do if someone
goes overboard, right? You’d yell for the crew immediately. Yes,
you’d throw out lifebuoys, but then you’d yell for the crew first.
That way, someone other than yourself actually knows that a victim
has gone overboard. You don’t dive in after the hapless victim,
because then NO ONE will know that you are BOTH overboard.

You get it, right?

I get it. I’m a strategic planner. A
thinker.

Obviously, Kurt Taylor hadn’t got the memo
on what to do if people pitched overboard from a luxury cruise
liner.

Of course he wouldn’t get it. He is a
convicted felon, sentenced to hard labor with a mop and a wash rag
on a ship on which he should be the nightly star attraction.

Kurt!

I sit up.

Where the fuck is Kurt?

Panic suddenly seizes me. My back protests
something awful as I clamber to my feet. My feet are bare,
naturally. I remember my heels coming off the moment I struck the
surface of the water. My green dress – the one that was so
expensive and in which I had looked so good in the night before –
is mostly dry now and encrusted with the grime of salt.

Salt-baked dress. Haha. Take that,
Prada.

If you think I’m being cavalier about all
this, I am not. I’m terrified as hell. And when I’m terrified, my
mind goes into an endless chatter of consciousness, where it makes
– out of its subconscious volition, I swear – lame jokes and word
associations and anagrams and everything that has been explored in
‘The Da Vinci Code’.

My legs are wobbly, but I make myself walk
down the beach, looking for anything that can be construed as a
body. I realize that the specter of Kurt Taylor actually
dying
fills my head with more horror than actually
encountering the dead drowned body of Kurt Taylor himself.

He can’t die!

He just can’t!

We have unfinished business!

“Kurt?” I try to call, but my voice comes
out in a squeak.

The life buoy has also washed ashore, and it
lies there, covered with sand. I’m not sure if it is
my
life
buoy or Kurt’s. They don’t exactly come in ‘His’ and ‘Hers’
matching rings.

You see what I mean when I say that my mind
babbles when I’m scared out of my wits?

“Kurt?” My voice comes out stronger now.

Where the hell is he?

Of course, there’s a possibility he could
have drowned at sea. I remember both of us clinging to our life
buoys, and I remember his arm forming a link around mine so that we
wouldn’t be parted.

I remember him telling me, “Just close your
eyes and rest. I’ve got you.”

I remember being so tired that I actually
obeyed him in spite of my initial instinct to say, “Don’t tell me
what to do!”

I remember closing my eyes, and feeling his
hand – still warm despite the wetness that pervaded us – and
drifting off.

Until I woke up here.

Only I have no idea where ‘here’ is and
where Kurt Taylor is. Theoretically, he would never let me go and
we should both end up on the same beach.

My heart skips several awful beats. I still
can’t locate Kurt Taylor.

I continue to trawl the shore. I’m not sure
if we are on an island, or if we have washed up to mainland. But
one thing is certain. We are in the tropics. The sun is too high
and the weather is too humid. I have only been walking for a bit,
and already the sweat is clinging to my salted and tattered green
dress.

“Kurt?” I call again.

And then I see him.

A body. Lying in the sand behind some
boulders.

My heart literally stops.

My feet pick up speed and then they are
literally flying to where he is. As I round the boulders, I see
that he is half submerged in seawater. A trail of blood lends a red
cast to the water around his right leg.

He’s hurt! Oh shit!

“Kurt!” The panic is very obvious in my
voice.

I quickly place my hands under his armpits
and tug him out of the water. His body is heavy and very limp. He
is passed out, and his wet face is tranquil in repose. He is still
breathing, thank God. I pull him up the shore until his feet are
completely cleared of the water.

I don’t know the first thing about treating
a wound. I need help. I need reinforcements.

I look around frantically. But there is no
one. We are marooned in the middle of nowhere. Kurt has only me to
tend to him.

I have to be strong for the both of us. I
can do this. I really can.

Taking a deep breath, I inspect Kurt’s prone
body. He still has all his clothes on, although his feet are bare,
like mine. Sand covers the skin of his hands and feet.

I have to take off his pants to see where he
is bleeding from.

The thought of taking off Kurt’s black pants
fills me with a strange feeling.

Oh, come on. It’s not as if you’re taking
his pants off for
that
thing
.

Mustering my courage, I kneel by his body
and start to undo the zipper of his pants. His pants are soaked
through, and my fingers fumble as I finally manage to wriggle his
waistband beneath his hipbones. He wears Calvin Klein underwear,
and I can’t help noticing the nice bulge in his crotch. And he
isn’t even hard.

Stop it.

I pull down his pants gingerly. I can’t help
observing his thighs. They are muscular and very, very taut. He
must do cardiovascular exercises fairly often. Dancing, I’ll bet. I
read somewhere (OK, I didn’t really read it but merely skimmed
through the article) that he worked diligently at improving his
chosen craft. He took singing and dancing lessons in addition to
songwriting.

I must admit I was impressed when I read . .
. I mean
skimmed
through those factoids.

I work his pants over his knees, and that is
when I notice the bleeding gash on his left shin. It is a linear
cut, and I think he must have dashed it against some rocks or coral
when he was washed ashore.

I have to stop the bleeding.

His shirt is made of a material which looks
as if it can be easily torn. Now I have to take his shirt off as
well. Undoing his buttons, I shrug it off his shoulders and arms.
Not an easy feat, I can tell you, especially since I’m caught by
the sight of his marvelously formed chest and his brown, enticing
nipples.

His nipples are the particularly protuberant
sort. Very erotic.

Stop it this instance!

His arms are nicely muscular as well. But I
already knew that. When he was a high school jock, he already had a
spectacular body. It only serves that he would grow into that body
when he became a man. How old is he now? Twenty-three? He is in the
prime of his physicality, and it shows in every magnificent part of
his body.

Too bad he’s such a prick.

Still, he did dive in to try to save me.
That has to count for something. Stupidity, perhaps, but it was
still something.

I rip a large swath of his shirt with a
cracking sound which seems too loud for the quiet atmosphere of
distant chirping birds and rustling trees and washing waves. Then I
fashion a sort of tourniquet and bind it around his shin. His leg
is heavy as I lift it. I make several rounds and ensure the wound
is covered tightly.

I can only hope he doesn’t get an
infection.

Kurt stirs. I tense.

His eyes flutter open.

“Rebecca?” he says weakly.

“I’m here. You’ve been hurt and I think
you’ve had a concussion.” My words spill over. I am aware that he
is now mostly undressed except for his underwear. “I had to bind
your wound. Look at it. Neat, huh? Are you all right?”

I’m babbling again. I am indirectly
apologizing for taking almost all his clothes off.

I’m sorry for looking at you. And we still
have that unresolved issue between us, so I don’t find you
attractive.

His eyebrows crinkle as he frowns. Then he
groans. His hand goes to the back of his head as he tries to sit
up.

“Maybe you should just lie down until you
feel better,” I suggest.

He looks me up and down as if I have a ripe
pimple on my nose. His expression is dazed and confused.

“Are you OK?” he asks.

“No worse for the wear.”

He manages to balance himself on his
buttocks. He glances at my makeshift bandage.

“Can I look at it?”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s bleeding and I’ve
just gotten it to stop.”

Indeed, the blood is seeping through the
absorbent material of his shirt. That fabric is not made to be
gauze, I can tell you.

“The bandage will need to be changed later
on,” I say. “Here, let’s get out of the sun.”

I help him stand up. He smells of sea and
salt and his own peculiar brand of man smell as he leans gingerly
on my shoulders and hobbles into the shade of the trees. I am very
aware of his masculinity.

“I’m OK,” he finally says as we both plunk
our bodies down into the shade.

The ground is strewn with pebbles and patchy
grass and dried leaves. The sun dapples in between the leaves. Out
there, the waves are roaring as they flow and ebb, flow and
ebb.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Hell if I know.”

He licks his lips. “I think we should
explore.”

“With your leg like that?”

“I’m not a baby.” He gets up again.

“Sit down. Rest a bit. Let’s think of what
we should do next.”

“You’re always the one who has to be in
control, isn’t that the case, Rebecca?” he shoots.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you always have to boss people
around. Here we are, shipwrecked, and you still have to be the one
in charge,” he says with a touch of bitterness.

My jaw drops in surprise.
Oh, of all the
nerve!

And to think I thought I found him
attractive.

I quickly close my mouth before a mosquito
can decide to go in.

“I’d just suggested that we should sit down
and plan what we should do next instead of barging into the
tropical forest like a Neanderthal. Besides, you are in no shape to
walk around, Mr. ‘I Jump, You Jump’.”

It is his turn to drop his jaw in
amazement.

“Excuse me, but didn’t I just rescue you
from certain death by drowning?” he says acidly.

I’m a little abashed, but I’m on a roll.

“Yeah, but look at us now. Maybe you should
just have called for someone and they would have hauled us
both
onboard. Instead, thanks to your bullheadedness, we’re
both stranded here instead of being on the ship.”

OK, I’m awful. I’m really, really awful.

But I can’t help it. Kurt Taylor brings out
the worst in me. And I can’t help it if I find him so damned
attractive when he is half-naked and oozing sensuality without even
trying. I can’t help it if we had that disastrous past together
connected by a tenuous thread called Adeline Frost.

I can’t help it if I always push the people
I’m most uncomfortable with away.

His face flinches, and I know I’ve hit
home.

Ouch
.

“Maybe I should just leave you in there to
drown next time,” he says.

“Yeah, maybe you should.”

We both turn away from each other to sulk
like petulant little children.

And to think we might be stuck here with
each other for a very long time.

KURT

Rebecca is right, of course. I should have
alerted one of the ship’s crew before blindly hurling myself into
the vortex. But it’s too late now to rue what I should have or
should not have done, because we are both now marooned on a
deserted island.

Or is it really an island?

My throat is parched and my stomach rumbles
something rude. I uncurl my long legs and get up.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty,” I
say to her. She has her back to me, of course. “I’m going to see
about getting us some fresh water.”

I venture off towards the forest without
another word. I don’t know where I’m going, of course. All I know
is that walking around barefoot is a bitch. Pebbles and twigs dig
into my soles. My left shin hurts something silly.

“Wait!” she calls after me. She scrambles to
her feet and runs after me. “I’m coming too. Don’t go off like
that. We might get lost. We need some landmarks so that we can get
back to the beach.”

She is right again, of course. I curse
myself. She is right about a lot of things.

“I think I’ll know how to find the beach
again,” I say in a huff. “It isn’t as if we left a boat full of
supplies down there or something.”

I’m right too, of course.

She shoots me a glare. “Well, you certainly
left your clothes behind. You want to bring those along or are you
planning to walk around like Tarzan?”