Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
E VE HAD TO hand it to Logan. He’d taught her to carry a sensible assortment of items when leaving for a day hike—most of which turned out to be unnecessary today. They arrived with the rest of the guests at one of the uninhabited islands to find the groom’s family had installed a pop-up store and takeaway shack on the beach.
The shack was on pontoons so it could be floated back to whence it had come, once the day was over. Its large wooden awning was levered up with poles to shade the order window. Racks of sarongs, beach towels, flip-flops and sunhats stood nearby.
“This was arranged last year, before they knew there’d be a storm,” Eve overheard someone say while she was flicking through the sarongs. “They thought everyone would be swimming and snorkeling all day then dancing on the beach until sunrise. The band will perform at the resort tonight instead.”
At least there was a portable loo. Eve used it before heading out with Logan across the island.
Logan was hungover after the stag party on the mainland last night. There’d been a hen party for the bride at the resort, but Eve had been happy to stay alone in the suite, catching up on reading after she composed a blistering email to her brother asking him to read her most recent proposal and give her the promotion she deserved.
She was taking out her frustration with Dom’s imposing presence on her brother, sure, but she wasn’t wrong.
Whether Dom had joined the stag party, she didn’t know. He had looked fresh as a daisy when he had waded in from one of the other boats. He wore loose swim shorts in shades of blue with a white surf shirt that hugged his torso so lovingly, she could count the muscles in his six-pack.
Disgusted with herself for noticing, Eve set a grumpy pace along the trail to the far side of the island. The track climbed up through the rainforest then across the top of a hill that opened into grassland. When they arrived at a lookout, they paused to photograph the stunning views of empty islands surrounded by swirls of white sand and turquoise waters.
The track then descended toward a bottle tree and a sign that marked a split in the track. One read Spit, the other Turtle Bay.
They chose turtles and descended to a private beach of powder-white sand with a sea turtle sunning itself in the lapping surf.
“This is beautiful.” Eve stayed well back from the creature, but used the zoom feature on her phone to snap a photo of it.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Logan braced his hands on his knees. His face glowed with perspiration. “This isn’t normal behavior for me,” he assured her as he looked to the scrub at the edge of the beach. “Just old friends behaving like we’re still in college. Oh, I meant to ask you...” Logan straightened to take out his electrolyte drink and sip it. “I picked up a text from your brother before we left. He asked me if Dom is upsetting you. Is he?”
“What? No. Why would he?” She lowered her phone, growing prickly. From the heat .
“I don’t know.” Logan shrugged. “Nico said you sent him an email that sounded bitchy. His word.” He held up a staying hand as she snapped her spine straight.
“That doesn’t make it okay to repeat! And wouldn’t you be bitchy if you were being held back every second of every day?”
“He’s not holding you back.” He took another pull off his drink. “He’s being realistic.”
“In what way?” Why was he taking her brother’s side?
“I’m not trying to insult you, Eve.” His tone said, calm down .
“Yet you’re managing to.” She strained to sound ultra-reasonable instead of incredibly irritated, which she was. “I think it’s very realistic that, after four years of dedicated service, my brother give me more responsibility in the family company. When Jackson was twenty-five, he was given all of Europe to oversee. Christo has the Pacific Rim. I’m not even head of marketing yet.”
“Because Nico knows that you claim you want a top position in the business, but that will change once you’re married and have children.”
“I’m not claiming to want it. I know what I want.” And she was affronted that Logan seemed to doubt that. “A husband and children could be years away. I don’t know how I’ll feel when that happens so how could Nico?”
“Years?” Logan’s brows crinkled with a patronizing aren’t-you-cute? expression. “Darling, we have to marry within the year so I can hit the ground running with the next campaign cycle. If you want to put off children for a short time after that, I suppose I can agree, but voters prefer family men, not power wives who put their career ahead of their husband’s. I think you’ll find that between raising our children and keeping up with the duties of a congressman’s wife, you won’t have time to spare for Visconti Group. Which is what I told your brother when you and I started dating—”
“Oh, my God,” she cut in, putting up a staying hand. “Was that your marriage proposal to me just now? I respectfully decline.”
“Eve.” His mouth tightened with dismay. “Don’t be like that.”
“I’m not saying that with hard feelings, Logan. Honestly. I’m glad we’ve established that we want different things.” In fact, she was profoundly relieved. “I’ll go back to the landing beach where I will catch a lift with the first boat willing to take me to the hotel. Then I’ll pack and leave you to enjoy the wedding and the rest of your life with whoever wants to dedicate her life to being your wife and only your wife, because that woman isn’t me.”
“Wait, stop. Come on. You can’t leave. What would I tell people?” He put out a pleading hand.
“Say I had a family emergency.” She paused in starting toward the track. “My brother will definitely need surgery to remove the job I’m about to shove up his—”
Logan cursed and clutched his stomach, then staggered toward the weeds.
What a catch.
“Bye, Logan.” She spun to push herself up the winding incline with such force, her thigh muscles burned. She was impelled by anger at Logan and his assumptions, and her brother and his sexist dismissal of her, and her whole family for only seeing she had value as a wife, not as an employee. Not as a person.
She was panting and sweating as she arrived at the bottle tree in time to hear Dom and Cat on the lookout above her, taking photos.
Ugh . He was the last person she wanted to see when she was ready to burn down the patriarchy with the sheer force of her glare.
She veered down the track labeled Spit. It had taken less than an hour to hike across the island and the boats weren’t leaving until two. She would easily get back in time.
Or so she believed.
Dom was not a quitter, but nor was he a liar.
This wasn’t working with Cat. She leaned into him, eyes limpid, mouth soft and inviting and all he could think was, Don’t .
He couldn’t reject her days before she was supposed to be a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding, though.
At least they weren’t sleeping together. She might accuse him of leading her on when they had The Talk, but he’d barely kissed her cheek since a certain someone had arrived under his nose to torture him all over again.
“Dom?” Cat murmured, drawing a circle around the small logo above his heart. “Are we o—? Oh!” With a self-conscious smile, she stepped away, glancing beyond him. “Hi.”
Dom turned to see Logan coming up from the trail down to the far side of the island. He was sweaty and red-faced with exertion. He paused to give them a curt nod of greeting.
Dom braced himself for the sight of Eve, but she didn’t appear behind him.
“Where’s Eve?” Cat asked, looking past him.
“She had to leave,” Logan said with a sullen pout. “Family emergency.”
When? Dom had seen her leaving on her walk with Logan and they would have passed her on the trail if she’d already gone back. Or Dom would have felt her walk behind him while they were taking photos. He didn’t want a sixth sense where she was concerned, but he had one.
“Is it worth hiking down to see the turtles?” Cat asked Logan.
“There was only one and it went back into the water. I’ll see you at the thing later.” Logan’s gaze refused to meet his, striking Dom as shifty before Logan headed back to the cove where the boats were mustered.
Dom didn’t think the other man had done anything nefarious to Eve, but a sense of wrongness abraded his insides as the other man left. Dom’s ears felt pricked for her voice, his nose twitching to catch her scent.
“Trouble in paradise?” Cat elevated her brows in amused speculation.
Dom shrugged, irritated by the question. “Do you want to see the turtles?”
“He said there weren’t any. If it’s just a beach, let’s go back to the one we can swim at.”
The weather was turning cloudy and the water was too choppy for comfortable snorkeling. That’s why they had decided to walk instead of swim. Dom was reluctant to leave the trail, though. It was a gut-level response that he relied on when he made big decisions at WBE, the kind that wasn’t always backed up by logic and facts, but never steered him wrong.
Leaving the trail went against his instinct, but he took Cat back to the cove, compelled to see if Eve was, in fact, there.
She was officially an unhealthy obsession, he decided, when they arrived and he couldn’t see her. He scanned the crowd and counted the boats, noting that one yacht had left. It was feasible she’d been taken back to the resort. She wasn’t his responsibility anyway. She was his enemy , for God’s sake. Her whole family was a pile of thorns in his side.
He told Cat to swim without him and pondered whether to radio a boat he couldn’t identify while he watched Logan pour margaritas down his throat as though he was being paid to do it. Guilty conscience? Was there trouble in paradise?
“She had to leave,” he overheard Logan say to someone. “Family emergency.”
Dom knew he was behaving like a Victorian spinster, worrying about someone he had no business caring about, but he couldn’t shake a sense that Eve was still here. Just not here .
As the wind picked up and the first raindrops fell, boats began pulling in gear and families started gathering children and toys from the beach. Two boats left and the one that had been missing came back from circumnavigating the island. Eve wasn’t on it.
“Go with your brother. I’ll find someone going to the mainland,” Dom said to Cat, glancing at his watch. “I’ll catch up to you at dinner.”
Cat was surprised, but her sister-in-law asked for her help getting the children to the sailboat so she moved down the beach.
Dom glanced at the takeaway shack, thinking to tell the man running it not to leave until he’d checked back in with him, but Cat’s uncle was at the window.
Dom veered from admitting aloud that he was concerned about Eve. He barely wanted to admit it to himself. She was likely fine and had done exactly as Logan had said. She’d made her way back to the eco-resort and was on her way to the airport.
He glanced at his watch again, deciding to be sure. He worked out constantly, both cardio and strength. He could easily sprint across the island and be back before this regatta of disorganized boaters had launched itself.
He slipped into the trees and ran up the track, seizing the challenge, grateful for the sting of rain as he traversed the plateau, keeping him from overheating.
The goat track down to Turtle Beach tested his agility and the area was reassuringly empty. Logan hadn’t murdered her.
Dom decided to seek counselling when he got back to New York. This fixation he had developed wasn’t healthy.
He started climbing back up and almost ignored the sign labeled Spit, but his feet took him that direction before he’d consciously recollected Logan’s assertion that Eve had gone ahead.
A strange tingle hit him as he began jogging that direction. It was the same subconscious polarity that oriented him in an unfamiliar city back to his hotel or car. The same tingle that said, She’s here.
Just as he began to think he’d been bitten by a hallucinogenic spider, he heard a feminine voice swear a blistering and imaginative blue streak.
Relief crashed over him like a surge of surf, followed by a disorienting anger. Could she not tell time? Now they would arrive back at the resort together and have to make stupid explanations—
He came around a bend in the path and saw she was hurt. She was using a stick of driftwood as a cane. Her foot was out of her shoe with only her toes tucked into it as she limped-slid it forward. She was watching where she put her feet against the various roots protruding across the path, continuing to spill robust curses.
Her ankle was the size of a grapefruit and grossly discolored.
His heart stopped.
“Did something bite you?” That was bad. In this country, that could be very, very bad.
She snapped her head up. Her expression blanked before she cried indignantly to the sky, “Really? This is the help you send me?”
“Eve,” he said through his teeth. “Did something sting or bite you?”
“ No . I turned my ankle. It’s sprained.”
He looked again and realized the bulge was actually an ice pack secured with—
“Is that a condom ?”
“News flash, they can be used for other things. I took an ibuprofen, but I can’t walk on this foot. Can you go tell the boats to wait?”
“I’m sure they’ll do a head count.” He was not sure of that at all, or of its accuracy, given how people had been jumping on and off each other’s boats. “The kid in the takeaway shack won’t leave until everyone else does.” He hoped.
Dom moved to her side and slipped his arm around her. They both jolted at the electrical charge that zapped like an entire winter’s worth of static between them.
She glared at him. He glared back.
She shrugged him off and tried to continue walking without holding onto him.
“Don’t be stupid, Eve. You can’t do this without—”
“Don’t call me stupid.” She squared to face him, chin set at a belligerent angle.
Screw it . They could stand here and fight, missing the last boat, or he could duck, which he did, and throw her over his shoulder, which he also did.
“Don’t you dare!” she screamed as he straightened from grabbing her shoe. The day pack she wore slumped to knock into the top of his ass.
“Give me that.” He reached back to tug it free of her flailing arms and looped it over his free shoulder so the sack was against his chest.
“Put me down you freaking animal .” She kicked her feet and braced a hand against his spine, trying to straighten.
“Watch your head,” he commanded as he started back the way he’d come.
“Put me down .” She slapped his ass hard enough to sting.
“Bad news, Evie. I like that.” He did. Not because he had a kinky streak—although he did have a small one—but more because finally, finally, he was discharging some of his pent-up sexual energy. He wanted a tussle and a pillow fight and sex . Raw, dirty, endless sex.
He would settle for a slap on his ass and her weight on his shoulder while he puffed his way up the hill, muscles seared with strain. Her filthy mouth calling him filthy names while her hands clutched into his shirt and her breasts brushed his back was a dream come true.
She tried grabbing the sign as they passed the bottle tree.
“Settle down.” He gave her butt a warning tap, very tempted to let his hand linger there. “No one knows I came looking for you. We have to hurry or we’ll be stuck here.”
“I would rather fall down a crevasse and be eaten by goannas than be held by you.”
“You think I woke up today hoping I could run a marathon with radioactive waste on my shoulder?” They arrived at where the lookout gave a view of the back side of the island. He turned a slow circle. “See any boats?”
“No,” she said on a whimper.
“Hold onto my waist so you don’t bounce. I have to hurry.”
With another infuriated noise, she sagged down and hugged her arms around his chest. The temperature was dropping. Clouds were thickening on the horizon and fat, spattering rain was starting to soak their clothes.
“Why are you even here?” she mumbled into his back.
“Why are you?”
She didn’t answer, but after a few minutes of his half jog across the grassland stretch, she said, “This hurts my stomach.”
“I just want to get to...” He swore as he arrived at the spot where they could see the stretch of water toward the main island. He let her slide down and braced her while she balanced on one foot.
She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the rain and followed his gaze to the loose armada of boats already well into the distance.
“That little silver one at the back is the kid from the shack.” At least he wasn’t towing the shed, probably because the water was too rough.
A desolate noise broke from her throat. “They’ll do a head count when they get back, though, won’t they?”
“Some of them are going to the mainland. Cat thinks I caught one of those. I won’t be missed until dinner.” He looked to the desperation on her face. “Logan said you had a family emergency?”
“Don’t get excited. Everyone’s fine,” she said crossly. “I told him to say that to cover the fact I was leaving early.” She chewed her lip. “Hopefully, he’ll notice my things are still in my room and wonder where I am.”
“ Your room? You two aren’t sleeping together?” Satisfaction shouldn’t have glowed so ember-hot in the pit of his gut at that news. “Is that why you were fighting?”
She scowled resentfully. “What makes you think we were fighting?”
“You’re making up reasons to leave early. He was doing his best to get drunk once he got back to the beach. He won’t notice you’re missing.” He shook his head.
“Men are the bane of my existence,” she muttered, fists in knots beside her hips.
“So you don’t need a lift the rest of the way to the beach?” he asked with false pleasantness.
“Why are you even helping me?” Her voice strained with aggravated emotion.
“Because I don’t have your father’s stark absence of conscience when it comes to leaving people to die.”