Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong (16 page)

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 help 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.

Honor leaned back and began unbuttoning her cotton shirt, her eyes locking on his. Her confidence was all an act, he knew, but the heated glow of her eyes … He could just imagine inspiring the real thing. He just needed one hour and a whole lot more willingness on her part.

‘And this?’ She pulled one side of the shirt off her shoulder.

He moved so swiftly she had no chance to prepare. His fingers closed around the fine fabric of her shirt and he held her briefly as her eyes flew wide. Then he gently pulled the shirt back up and smoothed it into place.

‘Don’t do this, Honor.’
It cheapens us both.

Her pulse beat so hard he could hear it in her voice. ‘Do what?’

‘You can’t prove the point you’re trying to make. I’ll never buy you as someone who doesn’t care. Because you do. I can feel it.’

‘Jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?’

‘Methinks she doth protest too much.’ If his father was dead he’d be spinning in his misogynistic grave. ‘You want me.’ He eased forward to rest his arms either side of her. It brought their bodies into intimate contact. ‘You care for me.’

Her whole body tightened between his arms. ‘It’s been less than a week, Rob.’

It hadn’t felt good to have Honor remind him about all the women he’d slept with, to highlight the absence of meaning in most of those encounters. Did she really feel the need to rub it in? It was unbearable, coming from her, from those lips.

‘A hundred and twenty hours. That’s like forty dates.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous …’

‘I just want you to be honest with yourself.’ He leaned into her subtly, increasing the contact, torturing his own screaming skin. She arched partly into him before stopping herself.

‘But you won’t accept me being honest with
you’

There was desperation in her voice but also a thin vein of sincerity. It made him pause. Was she serious? Could she really have felt nothing for him and yet responded like that? She was no ‘right now’ girl. The woman oozed ‘forever'. Then again, what in his dismal romantic history made him think he knew women at all? He narrowed his eyes, a sick feeling coming over him.

‘You felt nothing?’ He stared intently, conscious of how much hung on her answer.

‘I …’

‘“I felt nothing, Rob”. Say it and I’ll leave you alone for ever.’

A tear trembled on her lashes and he leaned in to kiss it gently off.

Her throat cracked. ‘You want more than I can give. Why can’t I just be attracted physically to you?’

‘Because that’s not enough.’

Say it, Honor!

His hands moved up to stroke her shoulders, her scars. She twisted under him in protest and desire shot like a bullet from his gut up into his chest. Dangerously close to his thumping heart.

Honor looked him in the eye. ‘I felt nothing, Rob.’

A shocking silence filled the tent and Honor
struggled against the deception. An age ticked by before he spoke, his eyes dark and pained. ‘You’re a terrible liar.’

He fell forward and took her mouth hard with his. It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t politely cautious like his other kisses had been. It was harsh and insistent and angry. And embarrassingly welcome. As long as his tongue was tangling with hers, his hot hands branding her skin, she could pretend everything would be okay.

Even though, deep down, she knew it wouldn’t be.

His kiss became gentle and he steadied her back to a more upright position. His lips pulling away from hers left her as bereft as a woman waving a lover off to war. Something indefinable gave way inside her. She couldn’t lie to this man. The truth may well hurt one of them—both of them, ultimately—but lying wasn’t an option.

She sucked in two deep breaths to regulate her breathing. ‘It doesn’t change anything. I don’t want this.’

‘Your body does.’ He rested his hand over her left breast. ‘Your heart does.’

She shook her hair. ‘My mind doesn’t.’

‘Your mind is outnumbered.’

She shook her head. ‘It has casting vote. It has seniority.’
‘I can see that.’

‘This can’t happen again.’

‘Didn’t we just do this yesterday? Look how long that lasted.’

Reality bit. She wasn’t going to be able to just walk away from this. Or him. ‘Then it goes no further.’

The cogs turned wildly in that handsome head. ‘Agreed.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What is agreed?’

‘That we go no further than this.’

‘That’s not what I—’

‘It’s a fair compromise. Very modern.’

She stared at him. ‘Rob, this is ridiculous. I’m not suggesting we can make out like a pair of teenagers whenever we want but go no further …’

‘Why not? ‘ He leaned up and pressed his lips to her throat, causing a tremor that ran down her spine. She lurched backward. ‘It’s a great plan.’

‘It’s a ludicrous plan.’ It did nothing to address the question of her loyalty to her family.

Except limit the damage.

Honor frowned. That was something, after all. Maybe it would get them through the next few uncomfortable days without tearing off too big a chunk of her soul. And when the supply boat came with the parts Rob needed, they could part as friends. Not enemies.

‘People do this all the time, Honor. Get to know each other slowly. Enjoy each other. Without making a big physical commitment.’

The fact that idea was such a novelty to him said a lot about the world he came from. A faster, racier world than any she’d ever known. ‘It won’t change my feelings, Rob.’

It was written all over his face. He thought he could take a mile if she just gave an inch. That was because he didn’t truly know what he was up against. She’d been living on the memory of her family for four years now. These past few days—no matter how intense, no matter how breath-stealing—were a blip on her emotional radar. Just a few more days and she could get back to normal.

It wasn’t as if they’d be kissing twenty-four seven. Surely she could contain her growing feelings for a few more days?

‘No further,’ she warned and then only half dreaded the celebratory contact she knew would follow. But Rob surprised her by giving her the most radiant of smiles and then the most gentle of kisses on her forehead.

His hand slid up to cover her eyes and press her lids closed as he pulled his naked body out from under her sleeping bag. ‘Wouldn’t want to tempt you so soon into our agreement,’ he joked, his voice moving away from her.

The appalling conceit made Honor laugh and she felt kilos of weight lift off her shoulders. Weight she hadn’t known she’d been carrying.