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She fell asleep almost instantly in the seductive coolness of the perfectly climate-controlled jet. She woke halfway through their journey as they refueled in Spain, ate the omelet the flight attendant served once they were airborne and went back to sleep. She must have slept for a long, long time, because when she woke again it was dark and Coburn was nudging her to put her seat belt on for landing.
She rubbed her eyes, drunk on sleep, and slid the belt on. Looking out the window, she searched for the bright lights of New York. It was pitch-black outside. She looked at Coburn, confused. “Didn’t you say we were about to land?”
He looked up from his paperwork. “We are.”
She looked out the window again. It was as if they were in the middle of nowhere. Alarm bells rocketed through her. “Where are we?”
“About twenty miles north of an island in the Caribbean.”
Her vision went red. “You said you were taking me home.”
“Eventually, yes, I will.”
Her fingernails dug into the leather seat rest at the nonchalant expression on his face. “What do you mean, eventually?”
He looked at her then, an expression of deadly intent in his eyes. “I’ve taken a week off work. My friend Arthur Kent has offered us the guest cottage on his private island.”
“Why?” The question was delivered in a tone just short of shrill.
“Because,” he drawled, “you and I are about to put our marriage back together for the sake of this baby, Diana. It’s just you, me, this island and a whole lot of soul-searching to do.”
Her breath jammed in her throat. “You can’t be serious.”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve never been so serious about anything in my life.”
That night at his apartment flashed through her head. The extreme destruction they had wreaked together... How it’d felt as if he’d gutted her as a hunter did a prime piece of kill...
She shook her head. “It will never work. Nothing about us works anymore, Coburn.”
An emotion she couldn’t read flickered in his eyes. “I think we proved in creating this disaster that some things still do work.”
Heat stained her cheeks. “Sexual compatibility does not make a relationship.”
“But it is an integral part of it.” He moved his gaze over her face, raked it down over her body in a blatant perusal, then brought it back up again. “If we have to build some kind of a foundation on my ability to make you beg, so be it. We aren’t leaving this island until we learn how to communicate, sweetheart. If getting you off gets me into your head, I won’t hesitate to play that card.”
Her nails dug harder into the leather. She had both hands on her seat belt ready to pounce on him when the attendant came into the cabin to check they were buckled up. She fell back into her seat, temples pounding.
Coburn’s gaze glittered. “Hang on to that emotion a little longer, tiger. We’re alone on the island until Thursday night. Soon you can let it all out.”
As if. She pressed her lips together mutinously. She might be having a baby with him, but she was not spending the week on a deserted island trying to put their marriage back together. Or sleeping with him again. Definitely not that.
The first thing she was going to do when they stepped off the plane and she was alone was call her father and get him to charter a plane to come get her.
Except it was the middle of the night when they touched down on the runway. A waiting car and driver drove them to a dock on the edge of the palm tree-strewn island, and there they transferred to a boat. She took in the inky dark sea that loomed around them as they zoomed across it toward a tiny island ahead that glimmered with a handful of lights.
They were in the middle of nowhere. Literally. Panic settled into her bones, deep and jarring.
When they reached the shore, she stepped out into the steamy night air that carried the scent of a dozen tropical flowers and the salt of the sea. There was only a canopy of palm trees fronting a lush forest. She couldn’t see anything beyond.
Coburn ushered her into the Jeep SUV waiting for them, then slid in beside her. The road they traveled was a narrow, bumpy passageway. She closed her eyes against the nausea that rose in her throat from too much motion. Too much emotion. Fatigue overtook her again. She fought it, but it’d been as if she’d had a sleeping sickness since she’d gotten pregnant, and she hadn’t slept well in Africa.
“Sleep,” Coburn instructed beside her. “We’ve got a good twenty-minute ride across the island.”
