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‘Right...’ she said, feeling her own jaw tightening. Really? Did he have to be quite so much of a pill? Hadn’t he given her enough grief already? ‘So are you saying we might be stuck here for another hour or two?’
His flat gaze met hers. ‘We’re stuck here until I say it’s safe to leave.’ Each word was drawn out to make it abundantly clear he was the one in charge. ‘Which could be days, not hours.’
‘You can’t be serious...’ she murmured, shock reverberating through her body.
Days? Dear God.
‘Don’t get your panties in a twist. This is a hell of a lot worse for me than it is for you,’ he said, disgust dripping from every word.
‘How can it be worse for you?’ she began. ‘You’re not the one who has been accused of—’
‘Stop bugging me and go back to the house and wait,’ he said, slicing her distressed defence right down to the bone, the way he had done earlier. Without giving her a chance to explain.
Bugging him? How dare he?
Her temper sparked and sizzled as she opened her mouth to snap back at him. But when his eyes flared, the challenge in them unmistakable, she swallowed down the retort.
He wanted her to argue with him. So he could feel superior and vindicated and display more of his temper. She refused to give him the satisfaction.
As a child she’d always backed down in the face of her father’s disdain, and it had left her feeling hollow and inadequate. But now, as she forced herself to nod and swung round to make her way back to the house, she didn’t feel cowed—she felt righteous. Confronting him about his snotty attitude was not going to help her cause.
Unfortunately, though, the moment of righteousness didn’t last long as the truth of their situation began to sink in as she climbed the stairs from the dock. Panic and anxiety turned into a brick in the pit of her stomach as she reached the porch and stared out across her island prison.
The view across the inlet had distress churning under her breastbone.
Last night’s storm was visible in the bent and broken branches of the lush evergreens which grew from the rocky crags that formed the cove. A rainbow shimmered over the headland as the bright morning sun hit the mist clinging to the shoreline.
Her throat thickened. The staggering beauty of Luke Broussard’s home drew forth memories from the night before which had been haunting her ever since she woke up.
Luke’s hands on her, his lips, his mouth, touching, tracing, tempting, tormenting... Helping her to discover pleasures she’d never even known her body was capable of.
But it wasn’t just the sex that had seduced her, she thought miserably. It was the way he’d held her afterwards, stroking her hair, murmuring nonsense into the darkness...
Nonsense he probably said to every woman he slept with.
She blinked and blocked out the staggering beauty of the landscape, attempting to block out the memories still torturing her, too—memories that were all false. She’d imbued last night with a significance it had never had. It had been about sex and only sex. Nothing more than a cataclysmic physical connection which had blindsided her because she had no experience whatsoever of physical intimacy.
She’d been much more vulnerable than she’d realised last night—which had to explain all the foolish, reckless, wrong decisions she’d made. Decisions which, ultimately, she had to own.
Yes, Luke was behaving like a domineering, bad-tempered jerk, but she needed to suck up her disdain and make the best of it. And hope like hell he could find a way off the island quickly... Because spending another night here with him was not something she wanted to contemplate, let alone actually negotiate.
At least with him busy she would have a little respite from that judgemental glare—and super-snotty attitude.
Her stomach grumbled as she dumped her borrowed backpack in the entrance hall. She pressed her hand to it. Her rising irritation was not sitting very well with her hunger and her anxiety. First things first: she needed to eat.
Opening the fridge, she spotted the pancake batter he’d made earlier but never had the chance to use. She blinked away the sting in her eyes, stupidly reminded of his offer to make her breakfast—before he’d spotted Ashling’s text and turned into Cro-Magnon man.
Ignoring the sealed container, she reached for some cold cuts. She’d never been very good in the domestic sphere. She’d never had to learn more than the absolute basics when it came to home catering—cereal and takeaway—so making pancakes was out. Which was a good thing. Because having a congenial breakfast with the man was also not going to happen now.
She poured herself a cup of the lukewarm coffee dregs sitting at the bottom of the state-of-the-art coffee maker on the counter. Terrific. She was probably going to need an engineering degree from NASA to figure out how to use that, too.
After hunting down some sliced rye bread, she began slapping pieces down on the countertop with a lot more force than was strictly necessary, while indulging in a stress-busting fantasy of slapping the bread against Luke Broussard’s granite-hard skull.
But then an idea occurred to her. And she seized on it for no other reason than it allowed her to feel a little more in control... A little more herself again after twenty
-four hours of losing herself and becoming someone she didn’t even recognise—that crazy lady who had decided to take a motorbike ride and then a plane journey with a guy who fired her senses but had the manners of a Neanderthal.
The only way to take back control of this disaster was to be the bigger, better person. She was not going to rise to Luke Broussard’s outrageous accusations, or lower herself to the level of having a temper tantrum over something that could not be changed.
