“What’s he doing here?”
“I couldn’t leave him on the boat.”
I look around the room for somewhere I can set him down. When I find nothing better, I cross to the shelves on the wall and nudge him off my arm onto the top shelf.
“What are you doing?” Grumpy Pants demands.
“At home, Taco roams free at the resort. He has a cage he sleeps in at night, but other than that, he does what he wants.” I return to my duffle bag and start unpacking it. Most of its contents are Taco’s—his food, his bowls, the portable perch I made him from a camera tripod. I start with that. “But I think we can both agree we shouldn’t let him out until after the storm passes.”
I carry the tripod over to Taco, who gives a disgruntled squawk before flapping down to the perch. Whoever owned him long before Uncle Red had broken one of his wings so Taco couldn’t fly properly, though he gets around well enough.
When I turn back to Jonah, he’s gaping at me in abject horror.
He gestures broadly toward me and Taco. “You’re staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Both of you?”
“Obviously.”
If he can speak in one-word sentences, then so can I.
He huffs, props his hands on his hips, and gives me a hard once-over. “You can’t stay here, Peanut.”
I narrow my gaze at him. That’s the second time he’s called me that, and frankly, it’s annoying. Yeah, I get it. I’m not short by most people’s standards, but he’s a veritable giant, so I probably seem pint-sized to him. Moreover, I have the general proportions of…well, a peanut still in its shell, curvy and round on the top and the bottom. It’s impolite for him to berate me for it, but whatever. I am past caring what he thinks of me.
“So?” Clinging to my commitment to single-word answers, I raise my eyebrows and purse my lips.
When he says nothing, I give the room another look. This building is pretty much all one room, so he must live in the cottage. I grab my duffle and my backpack and head for the door.
He follows me out, and I take the worn path in the evil grass that leads around the north side of the building to the cottage.
“There is a hurricane coming and you do not want to be here when it makes landfall.”
“Storm.”
“What?”
At the door to the cottage, I turn and look back at him. “It’s a tropical storm.”
I try the knob and the door opens. I march into the cottage. I barely have time to take in a kitchenette, a living area, and two open doors, white tile visible through one, an unmade bed visible through the other. The room is dark and blissfully cool.
He stomps in behind me and slams the door shut.
“That’s not my point. You don’t belong here and—”
I whirl to face him. “I belong here as much as you do.” I drop my bag and take a step closer to him. Yeah, I didn’t hold on to my single-word sentences vow very long, did I? How could I when he’s so infuriating? “Until Uncle Red signs over the land to the both of us and then we get a divorce, both islands are equally ours. If you can be a dumbass who insists on riding out a hurricane, then I can, too.”
He yanks his hat off and scrubs his hand over his hair, shoving it back. “I don’t want you here.”
“Yeah. I get that. You’ve made that abundantly clear. You don’t like me. Maybe you even hate me. But whatever I did that first day we met is irrelevant, because—”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He practically growls the words, taking another step closer to me as he tosses the hat onto the sofa.
“I know this much. Raul took the only boat you had when he evacuated. That means if I leave you here and things do get bad, you have no way off the island. Unless you’re planning on lashing the two turtles together and riding out on their backs like Jack Sparrow.”
He narrows his gaze, those massive arms crossed over his even more massive chest. But he doesn’t refute me, which just confirms my point.
