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“Tell me something, Siren.”
“What?” I’m still sitting, my right ankle on my left knee, folding my bar’s wrapper into a small square.
He slams the hammer into the rock. “Anything.” A beat of silence passes, and he glances at me with a little smirk. “What’s the craziest thing that’s happened here that you remember? Something that really shocked all you Catholics.”
The answer comes quite easily to me. I feel my stomach dip, and I suppose my face must reflect…something. He lifts his brows; after a moment, he slaps his pants leg. “Oh—I think I heard about that. Can’t believe she did that to her.”
“What?” I’m stifling a smile.
“Oh, you know.” He lifts his brows. “The thing she did.”
“The thing?” I’m chuckling now, at his strangeness.
He nods once. “I know,” he says sagely. “And I see why you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, sod off.”
“Isn’t that a swear word for you English types?” He’s grinning, and I roll my eyes because he looks so proud of himself.
I slip my folded Atkins wrapper into a pocket on the front of my sleep shorts and force my aching legs to stand. “Being near you is wearing on my morals.” I say it lightly, but I cross myself discreetly as I walk around him.
He snorts, and for a while longer, we toil in silence, shards of rock flaking onto our shoes as we chip at the rim of the cave’s mouth.
When it becomes impossible to lift my arms, I sit on a nearby mini-boulder, rubbing at my knotted shoulders and watching him swing the hammer. Sweat coats his neck and back, and stains the waistline of his battered khaki shorts. His shoulder rolls as he reaches around to rub his back. Then he glances back at me, pirate-swarthy with his dark scruff turned into a light beard, and his high cheekbones, and those lips…
“So tell me, what do Tristan girls like yourself do for entertainment when you’ve got some down time?”
I snort. “Down time?”
He turns around to face me, wiping his forehead. “Not much of that around here?”
“Nearly never.”
“They were talking about you in the bar last night.” He runs a hand back through his sweat-wet hair, which I wish looked even a bit off-putting, and my tummy dips in response to his words.
“And?”
He shrugs. “Just saying how you work with the animals and at the clinic.”
“We all do different tasks. I’m no exception.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“You were hearing bits from Mac at the pub?” I bite my lip to hide a smirk.
He laughs. “Mac seemed all right.”
I look down at my lap, flexing my cramping fingers. “Seeming all right’s not his problem.”
“How does that work, anyway?”
“How does what work?” I look up as he takes a small step toward me. My stomach jerks downward in a sort of flipping feeling.
“How much liquor do you have here on the island?”
“And can someone drain the bar dry?” I put my hand to my damp forehead, shutting my eyes briefly. “Yes, most certainly. It’s happened before. The liquor comes on ships, of course, and only perhaps twice a year. If we run out, we’re out, and we’ve had people get too glad about the bottle.”
I hear his low chuckle. “Glad about the bottle.”
