Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,20

despite her pathetic physical protest.

She cried into his shoulder for a heartbreaking minute, then, as soon as she quietened, he let her pull away. The bright moonlight did nothing to hide the embarrassment that flushed her already blotchy face. He wanted to make a light remark, to ease the discomfort they were both feeling, but he breathed in her distress and remembered how careful she had been not to make light of his blood sensitivity. He owed her that much at least.

‘Ready to go now?’ There was nothing but gentleness in his words.

‘I have to monitor the turtle nests,’ she said, stepping away. ‘Camp’s back through there. Just follow the tree line to the right when you get through and it will take you back.’

‘Don’t you need anything? A torch? Supplies? How will I know you’re all right?’ Come back with me.

Rob cringed the moment the words left his mouth. Of course she would be all right. She was more a creature of nature than of man’s world. This island was her domain. He waited for the sarcastic lash to fall.

But her voice was soft. ‘We’re only a few minutes from camp. If I need anything I can come back.’ She stepped further into the trees, pointing towards camp so he could follow.

He turned and looked at the blanket of trees where she’d pointed and when he looked back at her she was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

ROB woke early the next morning from a heated, sleep-deprived dream in which a golden-haired mermaid nibbled her way up his legs, over his thigh and onto—

‘Son of a—!’

He flung himself upright from his loosely dug out groove in the beach sand to find a dozen small crabs with seashells for hats crawling across his body with nippers at the ready. They were the advance guard for a battalion of red hermit crabs that marched swiftly, diagonally down the shore like some kind of shared consciousness towards the dawn sea. And he was lying right in their path. He scrambled to his feet and they swarmed around him, uncaring and fixated on their watery goal.

Their intensity and determination made him laugh out loud as they spread over the shore like a blood tide and until the last, late marcher scurried desperately into the ocean and was gone. It was his second night spent on the beach and he was surprised at how natural it felt to wake there.

A man could get used to this.

Tired or not, he was desperate to see the Emden up close. He had been since their second visit late yesterday. His plan this trip had just been to find the marker and do some bearing work but now he’d seen the memorial and, knowing how close he was and how much time he had up his sleeve, he struggled to keep the sunken enigma out of his mind. She was like an elusive beauty frozen in time that he was desperate to meet.

He imagined what she must look like now, a hundred years on, covered in sea life. Eternal. How many things in this life were for ever? But wrecks...they just lay there, hidden, waiting for their shot at immortality. And he wanted to give that to them. Find them and make them eternal. He’d seen pictures, of course, but photos and video was never close to the real deal. The wreck had called him for a good portion of yesterday and she started up again as soon as he woke. He knew he had hours before Honor would wake from her night shift. What better way to spend it than with the other woman in his life?

He smiled. He hadn’t thought of Honor in...minutes. It was a sad day when a rusty old cruiser could push a gorgeous woman from the forefront of his thoughts—albeit a complicated, brittle woman.

Things hadn’t gone to plan that first night. He’d made an idiot of himself by stripping off in front of her, trying to put her at ease. She hadn’t been eased, she hadn’t laughed and she certainly hadn’t grown any less outraged. But she had called him Rob and that tiny slip gave him a sliver of hope. That she didn’t entirely hate his guts.

None of his trademark moves were having the slightest impact on her. If anything, they were making her more tense. And he was getting entirely rattled. What did he have if not his repertoire of moves? Certainly no scintillating personality to fall back on. He’d grown up entirely clear