down at her, the contours of his muscles defined even more with tension. His hard body all the more glorious. ‘I’ll leave you in peace to wallow.’
He turned and ploughed his strong legs into the water, dived in and swam to retrieve the diving gear where it had sunk earlier.
Honor’s legs shook as she ran up the beach, her soul flapping out behind her.
CHAPTER NINE
ORDINARILY, Rob didn’t mind the quiet.
He could work for hours in the wet-lab, painstakingly conserving a maritime artefact, not speaking to another being for the entire day. At sea it was often quiet, even when he was working in a team. Such a contrast to the endless, social yak he endured outside of work.
But the new silence on this tiny island was intolerable.
For the second time in as many days, Honor was avoiding him. At first, he considered that he was avoiding her. He was still angry and just wanted to punish her by keeping his distance—ironic how it felt so much like punishing himself. But now she was unquestionably avoiding him.
A day without her and he was getting bored with his own company. He had no idea how she managed months on end out here. That took a certain level of comfort with your own thoughts. Something he didn’t have. He hadn’t realised how very occupied Honor kept him. Talking to her, listening to her, thinking about her. Imagining. Even when she did crazy things, like stalking off into the trees.
He fisted and unfisted his hands absently, hearing the echo of the harsh words that had spewed from his lips. Lips that had been so delightfully engaged with hers only moments earlier. Nothing he didn’t think was true, and nothing he wouldn’t have said if asked, but words he’d rather have said more kindly. At the right moment. She was only respecting and honouring her family. He had to admire that.
To a point.
He leaned back on his bunk in The Player’s rocking cabin and looked at his watch. Not even nine o’clock. Way too early to be considering hitting the sack. There was no way his body was going to let him rest here. As if he wasn’t already worked up enough, the threat of sinking to Davy Jones’s locker preyed on him. Earlier in the day, Honor had offered to split the tent, back when she was still feeling warm and fuzzy towards him. Him at night while she was out surveying turtles, and her during the day while he made himself scarce.
But that was before he’d pawed her on the sand. Her sense of charity would have dried up for sure now.
Rob shook his head. He’d occupied himself all afternoon with rigging up one of his diving sensors down in the hull so that it would send an alert if water started filling The Player’s hull. Enough time to scramble out. But he wasn’t sleeping. And not just because he was anxious about possibly waking up to find himself bobbing on a cabin-full of cold water.
The echo of his angry words clattered around in his mind like a lottery wheel.
He needed to see Honor. Speak to her. Try to set things to rights. When there were only two of you on an island, you couldn’t afford to hurt someone and leave them that way. Particularly when one of them was a woman like Honor...
Such a bundle of contradictions. Exactly like one of the artefacts his team would spend a year of painstaking, gentle handling to release from its crusted tomb. Caked in rock-hard deposits, just waiting for someone to chip it all away and restore it to its former beauty.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, she’d said, so coolly. As though she was unaffected by what they’d just shared. He knew that couldn’t be true—her flushed skin and heaving chest had given her away and it wasn’t from the snorkelling. Her body might have been affected but, apparently, her mind remained perfectly inviolate. So too her heart.
Rob ground his teeth. Hearts—hers or his—had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t her heart he was imagining the taste of, the texture of—although he remembered the feel of it clearly, beating half out of her chest as she struggled to break from their kiss.
He had to make this right.
Five minutes later, he loped into an empty camp, dripping wet from his swim in from the boat. Technically, she hadn’t recanted the offer—she’d have to speak to him for that to happen—and so, in theory,