Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong Read Free

‘Alone?’
    ‘Yep.’ Until now.
    He whistled. ‘Who’d you tick off?’
    Her mouth dropped open. ‘No one! I choose to come here—I love it.’ And it was the closest point on the planet to—
    She caught herself before even thinking about them in this jerk’s presence and dumped her side of the inflatable.
    He cringed as it bounced on the rocks. ‘Hey, hey—’
    Adonis or not, he’d be repairing a puncture, too, if he didn’t watch what he said. ‘Your stuffshould be fine here until tomorrow. There are no storms forecast … tonight.’ She threw the dismissal over her shoulder, marched to where the second buoyancy sack waited by the water’s edge, hauled it over her shoulder and staggered up the beach with as much dignity as she could on the caving sand.
    She turned back and saw him looking at the thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment sitting exposed on her shore. Then he grimaced and followed her as she turned up an almost unrecognisable track between the thick coconut palms fringing the dunes.
    Honor shifted from foot to foot. She’d never intended anyone to see her little campsite and now a complete stranger stood in the midst of her ‘stuff'.
    Two seasons ago she’d lined the little track leading from the beach with seashells so it formed a sweet pathway to camp. She’d splashed out on a designer fly-sheet for the tent—one with Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
screen-printed on it—and although it did look rather odd in the middle of the tropical wilderness, the touch of whimsy pleased her. She’d even thought about planting some ground cover to help bind the fine white sand that found its way into everything, but decided against it. Pulu Keeling may well have been Australia’ssmallest National Park, but it was still protected by the same regulations and restrictions afforded to the biggest mainland parks. Making a homely garden was a big conservation no-no.
    So she just lived with the sand. Everywhere.
    Rob gazed about him with a kind of fascination as he trailed her up from the shore. This island was her home-away-from-home, her sanctuary, and he’d been rudely dismissive of it, as though it wasn’t a rare piece of paradise with lush trees, crystalline waters and masses of wildlife.
    Don’t you dare say one word. Not a word.
    ‘This looks pretty comfortable,’ he said in total defiance of her thought projection.
    Suspicion stained the compliment. ‘Everything I need is here.’
    It was true. Tent, field equipment, first aid, emergency flares, books, laptop, batteries, radio, fuelled-up generator, provisions and a mountain of ten-litre water tubs full of fresh water. Each in its designated place and each swum in across the lagoon at the beginning of every monitoring season. And swum back out empty at the end.
    When he reached the edge of the campsite, he turned back to admire the view she’d been staring at for four years. Coconut trees bowedtowards each other and formed a perfect picture frame for the sparkling ocean beyond the lagoon. The thirty-foot pisonia forest overhead offered protection from the worst of the weather and shade from the blazing equatorial sun.
    He was silhouetted against the bright day outside the trees and Honor fought to ignore how solid and fit he looked with her lagoon as a backdrop, the wet T-shirt still clinging to his muscular back. His legs were long, contoured and as tanned as the rest of him. He was tall and lean with surfer’s shoulders. All of him was toned—sculpted but not muscle-bound. She imagined the kind of precise gym-work that went into keeping him in such balanced shape and assumed there were two personal trainers on standby somewhere awaiting his return to the mainland.
    Female, no doubt.
    He shifted his weight and stretched out a crick in that broad back and Honor wondered if she’d ever feel the same about her view again—or her island.
    She frowned. Where had that come from? Not her brain, certainly. One man spending five minutes on Pulu