The Castaway Bride (3 page)

She didn’t want ice. She wanted the warmth of his hands stroking her. And never stopping. She yearned to close her eyes and savor with a sigh this extraordinary feeling. If she were a cat she’d be purring.

This bliss was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Certainly not with Howard. Six weeks had not been long enough to progress from pal to lover. They’d decided to wait until their wedding night for anything more than a kiss or a cuddle. And his pleasant kisses and tentative caresses had done nothing to thrill her.

Not like this thrilled her.

Just as her toes started to curl over with delight, her rescuer abruptly took his hands away and stood up, uncoiling his broad-shouldered, muscular body like a lithe jungle animal.

His action jerked Cristy awake from a trance. A warm, sensual trance where the world had shrunk to him, her, and the magical feel of his hands on her body.

Her voice returned with a rush. “No ice. Th… thanks. My foot’s fine.”

“Good.” He stood back a step from her at the same moment she stepped back from him. She was tall but he was taller and he towered above her.

She had never felt more mortified. This stranger had delivered first aid; she’d accepted it as a caress. Dear heaven, she hoped he hadn’t guessed how she’d reacted to his touch. Surely he couldn’t see her aroused nipples through the fabric of her gown?

She couldn’t look him in the eye for fear her turbulent feelings showed in her own eyes. Rather, she concentrated on the hem of her dress—now looking less than pristine bridal after being trailed over gravel, dirt and deck.

She picked up her skirts. In an effort to regain her dignity, she started to hobble away from him on her remaining three-inch heeled white satin pump. She glanced back to the resort. Howard and the others had taken the path that headed toward the other end of the marina. But they’d be back.

“Wait a minute.”

She stopped and turned at the sound of her rescuer’s voice.

“Show me your other foot,” he commanded.

Too startled to do anything but obey, Cristy pushed it forward from under her long skirt. “It’s okay I—” she started to say but stopped, speechless, as in one swift action he reached down for her shoe, slid it off and ripped off the heel.

She snatched back both shoe and dislocated spike heel. “Hey! That was a perfectly good shoe!”

She was too shocked to say anything more sensible. Did he have any idea of what she’d paid for these delicate scraps of leather and satin? With so little time to plan the wedding, she hadn’t been able to shop for a sale bargain.

He shrugged his broad shoulders with total male disregard. “The other one was broken.” He didn’t need to add,
so what’s the fuss?
His expression said it for him.

“Yes but—” Outrage choked her voice. Those shoes were works of art.

“You don’t want to trip again. And you can’t walk on this deck in sharp heels like that— you’d ruin it in seconds.” His voice was gruff and his jaw tense.

She stared from the broken heel to him, to the polished deck, and back to him again. “I can’t believe you did—” she started, but he gave her no chance to continue.

“In fact that’s not good enough. The shoes are still too rough on the deck. They’ll have to go altogether.”

He moved toward her again but Cristy stepped back, so that the railing pressed hard into the small of her back. “No!” she gasped in sudden panic that had nothing to do with shoes and everything to do with his proximity. “I… I can take them off myself.”

Without taking her eyes off him, she leaned down and slid off her shoes. “Happy now?” she asked, as she stood up again. She took a step away from the railing—and had to grab onto it as her silk-stocking clad feet slid from beneath her on the polished deck.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she wailed. “My stockings are so slippery I…” She faltered to a halt. A glint in his eyes and the hint of a wicked grin made it only too obvious what he was thinking.

“I don’t need any help to take off my stockings,” she hissed. Again on the type of impulse she never gave in to, she pulled up her skirts to above her right knee and unsnapped her garters. Slowly, provocatively, she rolled her silky stocking down the length of her slender leg, not breaking eye contact with him for a moment. Then dangled the flimsy wisp of silk in front of her. “See?”

“I can see.”

Through dangerously narrowed eyes he appraised her bare leg, his gaze travelling from the tip of her pink-painted toes to where her thigh disappeared into a froth of lace. Then his eyes moved upward and lingered where her breasts swelled lushly over her tight, boned bodice—that darn too-tight, too-low, way-too-sexy bodice.

Cristy grew alarmed at the intensity of his expression. She felt the flush on her cheeks deepen painfully as she realized how foolish she’d been. He would read her defiance as a come on. And who could blame him? Her heart started hammering hard against her chest.

With suddenly trembling fingers she let her skirt fall down to cover her legs again, tightening her thighs together under its protective cover.

“I’ll… uh… I’ll take the other one off in the bathroom,” she muttered.

He looked down at her and then past her to the shore. “Do you want to stand around arguing about it or do you want me to get you out of here?”

Cristy swung around to follow his line of vision. She’d been so mesmerized by the touch of this stranger’s hands she’d nearly forgotten her predicament. The black dots and the pink blob had grown alarmingly. Howard, his posse of groomsmen, and Miriam had made an about turn and were heading for the jetty. Now she would be clearly in their sights.

Forget the shoes. Forget the stockings. Forget everything else but escape. “Get me out of here! Pronto!”

Her rescuer—she still didn’t know his name—cast off the mooring rope. Within seconds she felt the yacht’s auxiliary engine purr into life and the deck started to vibrate beneath her feet. She clutched the railing for support.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she urged under her breath. Why had she wasted valuable time letting her rescuer fool around with her foot? She had to get away from Starlight Island. She could not face Howard. Could not face Miriam. How could anything they say make any difference? But they were closing in on her. So close she could clearly hear them shouting at her to get off the boat, see the furious expression on Howard’s face.
Oh hurry!

As the boat gathered speed, that gap of choppy, turquoise water between the boat and the jetty grew to a few feet, then a few yards and then a distance that Howard wouldn’t dare to swim.

The wedding party shrank smaller and smaller until they seemed like so many black ants—and one pink one—scurrying around on the shore.

She realized she had been holding her breath and she let it out with a sigh. No way could they catch her now. Her wedding was behind her. She had escaped.

I
n the cockpit, Matt’s hands clenched tight around the wheel. Usually he loved the sensation of facing endless blue horizons with the powerful boat at his command. It was the kind of freedom he’d dreamed about for much of his thirty-four years.

But that was when he had the boat to himself and no one but himself to please. Sharing
Wayfarer
with a runaway bride wasn’t part of the picture. He must have been insane to invite her on board.

What was it about this woman he’d known only for a heartbeat that made him behave so irrationally? That made him throw away those rules for his solitary new life he’d forged so painfully out of treachery and hurt? That had lured that pesky white charger out of retirement?

He’d come up here to these islands off the Queensland north coast to take time out. Executive burnout, he’d joked to his friends in explanation of his shock decision to take a long, open-ended vacation.

To his board of directors in Sydney, panicked at the thought of his absence for even a few days, he’d given a more mundane excuse.

But he hadn’t given anyone a hint of the real, gut-wrenching reason for his escape. He could never talk to another person about the horror of discovering his girlfriend Julia and his brother Danny together in bed, and embroiled in a treacherous plot to embezzle him of his fortune. Or the actions he’d been forced to take to thwart them.

A muscle tensed painfully in his jaw. He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted long, solitary hours on his boat. Only him, the ocean and his plans for the future. Plans that did not include a woman.

Especially not this woman, who embodied everything he distrusted.

His hands clenched even tighter on the wheel as he remembered how he’d felt as he’d pulled the runaway bride to her feet from where she’d fallen on the deck. The feel of her warm, soft body in his arms, the heady scent of roses that had invaded his senses.

Her creamy breasts had swelled voluptuously over the top of her dress and when he’d leaned over her he’d seen a tantalizing glimpse of one delicate pink nipple. He’d had to fight himself not to stare or, worse, reach out and caress her.

But that was nothing compared to the battle he’d fought with himself when he’d probed her ankle for injury.

During his years on construction sites he’d checked hundreds of suspected breaks and sprains. But nothing had prepared him for the feelings that had threatened to overtake him as he held in his hands that slender, fine-boned foot in its soft, silky stocking.

Suddenly a routine first-aid examination had become something incredibly, surprisingly sexy.

As he’d stroked her warm flesh, his para-medical training had fled his mind. He could only think about how he’d like to push her skirts up and caress first her shapely calves, then her thighs, as she sighed and moaned her pleasure. His jeans had become uncomfortably tight.

And then she’d hauled up her skirts and let him feast his hungry eyes on those long, long legs. Her thighs were as creamy and smooth as her breasts. Was the rest of her body the same? Did her—?

Enough! He swung the wheel down hard—so hard he wrenched his shoulder. He cursed at the sudden pain.

Some old sailors still thought it was bad luck to have a woman on board their craft. The more beautiful the woman, the worse the luck. The sooner he could get this bride off
Wayfarer
the better.

He slowed the engine and went forward to hoist the sails.

C
risty tucked away her heel-less shoes behind a coil of rope and clambered up the narrow stairway to the cockpit. She halted just before she reached the top.

Her rescuer had his back to her as he stood at the helm. He was framed by a magnificent view of glistening aquamarine waters and clouds scudding across impossibly blue skies.

She should be looking out for frolicking dolphins or scanning the horizon for a glimpse of a whale. But all she could do was stare in fascinated appreciation at the rippling play of the muscles in this man’s powerful arms and back as he steered the boat.

This was how a male body was meant to look. When God had created Adam this was the blueprint.

She swallowed hard and shook her head to rid herself of the too-disturbing thought. She still felt unnerved by the shivers of pleasure that had coursed through her body in reaction to his examination of her foot. And mortified by the positively wanton way she’d stripped off her stocking.

Stress
. That was it. Stress is what had caused her extraordinary reaction. She pushed the other errant thought away—fought it, pummeled it, tried to banish it from her mind. It wasn’t—it couldn’t be—because she was attracted to him.

This man, with his untamed pirate good looks, was the same wildly appealing type as the man who had not just broken but pulverized her heart when she’d been a trusting nineteen-year-old.

In the nine years since, she’d lived her life according to her own personal motto
you can’t trust lust
. Lust—that thrilling, aching need for a man that overrode good sense and caution like a fever—was not in her game plan.

Lust had gotten her pregnant to her first-ever lover. Lust had seen her abandoned when she’d refused a termination. Lust had lead to her empty and aching and alone after she had miscarried. Through her tears she’d vowed that she would never endure that kind of anguish again.

For nine years she’d tamped down her sensuality. Had run from men who physically thrilled her and dated only the safe and suitable. Her strategy had culminated in her decision to marry a man who was just a good friend. She now believed herself truly immune to the appeal of men like this hot Australian buccaneer.

All the same, as she thought about how his hands had felt on her foot—her foot for heaven’s sake!—she was glad she wouldn’t be on his boat for long.

She lifted her full skirts and awkwardly completed her climb up the narrow stairs. The cockpit seemed large and luxurious. Below deck, behind her, a panel of instruments blinked, flashed and quietly beeped.

As her skirts rustled near, her rescuer stepped back from the wheel. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on her. When they did they hardened and narrowed. His mouth set in a cynical line as if his thoughts had not been pleasant.

At the sight of his expression, Cristy felt a sudden lurch of fear deep down in her stomach. She knew absolutely nothing about this man she had so rashly entrusted with her safety. Had so foolishly provoked. For all she knew, he could be a serial killer. Running away with him could have been a deadly mistake.

The silence that fell between them was tense and awkward. She swallowed hard against the fear she was finding impossible to ignore. How did you ask a possible serial killer where he was taking her and how long would it take, please?

She cleared her throat and tried to speak but only a squeak came out.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m C… Cristy Walters,” she finally managed stutter. “We… uh… haven’t gotten around to introductions.”

“Matt Slade.”

Matt. The name suited him. But then axe-murderers often did bear normal, attractive-sounding names.

She decided to placate him, just in case. She forced herself to stretch her mouth into a polite semblance of a smile. “Matt, I… I appreciate your help. Thank you.”