Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong - By Nikki Logan Page 0,57

set up a deep gnawing in her stomach.

She shouldn’t touch him again. It would only complicate things and make it harder when the drop vessel came. Tomorrow. One more day. One more dawn. Her heart sank. Rob would leave tomorrow. Not just for a while, but for good. She’d like to say not a moment too soon, but the truth was it was a number of moments too late.

The moment with the dying chick. The moment with the six kisses. The moment he gave her back the ocean. The moment he ripped into her soul with the truth.

All of them sending her plunging deeper into dangerous, unchartered emotional territory. All of them pounding at her heart, demanding entry. All of them screaming I love you despite the complete impossibility of that. It had only been a few days.

Really: she’d been falling for him from the moment he’d first smiled at her.

Love just didn’t happen that quickly. Lust did, though. That could be all that was going on with them. But her experience on the beach the other night made a mockery of that thought. The way her heart had melted at the image of a young Rob, hankering for the love and attention of parents who were too busy socialising to see what a special soul he had. She could easily imagine him burying himself in the comfort of story books—space stories, dinosaurs, pirates—anything that lessened the impact of his home life. Not hard to see how his bright teenage mind, fuelled with images from childhood adventure stories, could have developed a fascination for shipwrecks and archaeology. The past would have been infinitely preferable to his present.

Ugh, she was doing it again. She didn’t want to think about Rob as an unhappy, defenceless child. To imagine what made him tick. To wonder how that fitted with the man he was today. The only child she should be thinking about was Justin.

Justin...

But Rob made it harder by leaning his weight on her carefully constructed barriers and shoving his foot into the emotional door she’d prefer to slam shut between them. Did he even know he was doing it?

She stiffened her spine and marched into the tent, not caring if she woke him. Intent to do so, in fact. She knew what had to be done. Before it was too late. ‘Come on, sleeping beauty, wake up. My turn.’

Creeping into bed with him would only delay the inevitable. She’d done it last night because she’d found herself in such a deep pit of despair she had to feel something or she would simply have walked out into the dark ocean. Rob was the any-port-in-a-storm of her overwhelmed emotions. The hard strength of his body had been an anchor she’d literally clung to for her life. And he’d made no demands on her except for the desperate press of his lips that she was sure he didn’t know she was awake to feel.

She was going to hurt him. Badly.

She nudged his sleeping form heavily with her bare foot. The snoring rapidly stopped on a surprised snort.

‘Did you just kick me?’ Gritty eyes peeled open to blink at her in confusion.

‘No. I nudged you with my foot. Come on. It’s my turn to sleep. Go take a mid-morning swim or something.’

He sat up, watching her warily. ‘You aren’t coming back in here with me?’

Taking the bull by its horns was every bit as perilous as it sounded. She stood as tall as the tent allowed and looked down on him.

‘I...no, Rob. I’m not.’

‘You’re not?’

‘I don’t want to and I have a right to express what I want.’ Ugh. She wanted to slap herself at the petulance she heard in her own voice.

‘You don’t want to?’

Okay, he was sleep deprived but did he really have to repeat everything she said? She nudged him with her foot again.

‘No, I don’t.’ He stretched up towards her. Her hands flew up. ‘And before you say “Oh, really?” and hit me with that killer look, I’m willing to acknowledge that you could quite easily change my mind and have me stripping off my clothes—’ she ignored the flames that burst into life in his eyes ‘—but the fact remains, I don’t want to.’

She looked warily at him as he digested this. Silent seconds ticked by. She sank down next to him on the mattress. Defeated.

‘I leave tomorrow,’ he said quietly. Simply.

‘I know.’

‘And you don’t want to?’

‘We had to stop some time.’

Suspicion narrowed his gaze. ‘Let’s stop tomorrow.’

‘No, Rob. I’m