Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,27

evening, avoiding eye contact. He followed her. She rustled in the store box for some flavoured noodles and set a small pot of water to boil on her camp stove. He watched her the entire time; she ignored him just as determinedly.

‘Honor...’ He had to try.

She spun brightly towards him. ‘I’m looking forward to the hatch tonight. Technically still too early, but you never know!’

‘Honor...could we—’

‘Would you like some noodles?’ There was a frantic tinge to her over-bright gaze, as though she was only just holding it together.

He sighed, wondering how she could possibly repress all her emotion now her world had imploded. ‘Yes, sure, if you have enough.’

Honor busied herself making two-minute noodles. She specialised in avoidance. She’d perfected the art over the past four years. Back then, it was the only way she could manage the overwhelming feelings. These days it was pure habit.

She over-stirred the cheap noodles cooking in her little camp pot. It was something to do. Anything was better than thinking...than feeling. Busy work while she got her broiling emotions under control. She just wasn’t up to looking at Rob—not yet. Large parts of the afternoon were blank but she knew she’d lost her bundle on the reef and he’d had to clean up the mess back here in camp. There’d been tears and way too much information and he’d had no choice but to deal with what she’d lumped on him.

Mortification stiffened her movements, kept her back rigid. Poor guy. He’d looked uncomfortable, as though she expected him to ask her about it, that she needed him to. The truth was she needed no one; she could cope on her own. Just because he was the only other human being on the island didn’t mean he was obliged to help her. The sooner she made this clear the better.

‘Honor—’

‘Almost done.’

She couldn’t look at him and concentrated on stirring in the noodle seasoning packet. Her growling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since the small muesli bar at noon. She scooped half the noodles into her bowl and handed the still-hot pot to him. It was the best she could do on an island where there was only one set of everything.

She sat on a stump, as far away as possible from him, and pushed her noodles around in the bowl. Despite her hunger, her appetite deserted her.

The silence grew palpable.

‘I’m sorry I asked you to come out with me,’ he murmured finally.

I bet you are.

She stirred her noodles, hating the tightness in his voice and knowing she was the reason for it. She hadn’t ever thought she’d come to miss his cocky self-assuredness.

She sighed. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was my choice to help you.’ It was the perfect out, an opportunity to back away and put things between them back onto a light, harmless level.

He didn’t take it.

‘What happened out there?’

He flicked his head towards The Player, concern live in his eyes. It almost undid her all over again. She studied her bowl. There may well have been ten feet between them but his energy reached out to tangle with hers. Suddenly, she found herself possessed with the desire to talk. Share. Open up. It was the strangest sensation.

She swallowed slowly. ‘I haven’t been on a boat, alone, since...’ She cleared her throat. ‘It was so silent out there. Just the slap of the water on the side of the boat, the birds overhead. I thought I could do it...’

He put his uneaten noodles aside and moved to sit on the ground in front of her as her heart lurched. His closeness had comforted her before; now it rang alarm bells.

She rushed on. ‘I wanted to swim ashore. I would have risked it, even with the swell on the reef, but I knew I couldn’t leave you down there.’ Her voice was tiny now. ‘It was such a long time. I just...the flashbacks...’

It happened again now—a momentary flash of staring up at the azure sky, the sickening silence, the stickiness of her own blood congealing around her, the stink of terror.

Her two mouthfuls of noodles threatened to come back up.

Rob dropped his head and studied his feet. Uncomfortable at her show of emotion? She shifted on the log. When he lifted his gaze, it burned into her soul like acid. Or ice.

‘It’s my fault you were out there. I couldn’t wait. I wanted it now.’ Colour was high in his cheeks.

Honor stared at him and knew—without needing to know anything more about him—that