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“Took long enough.”
“It was a busy place.” Smiling sweetly, she picked up a peanut from the dish on the table and popped it into her mouth. “I guess a lot of women had spilled on themselves.”
He lifted a brow over the rim of his sunglasses but didn’t comment. She wanted to squirm under the intensity of his gaze, but managed a smile as she lifted her glass to her lips. Feeling a tiny drop of sweat slide down her temple, she silently prayed he didn’t notice that she was nervous as a mouse trapped in a rattler’s cage.
“Cheers,” she said, touching the rim of her glass to the top of his dark bottle. “To the honeymoon.”
The muscles in his face flinched a little. “Cheers,” he muttered, but his eyes didn’t meet hers. Instead, he scanned the sea of people strolling past the umbrella tables situated in the courtyard.
Inwardly, Nikki breathed a sigh of relief. The lemonade was tart and cool, and now that she’d accomplished her mission, she could relax. They finished their drinks, and though Nikki protested, Trent insisted they return to the hotel.
She wanted to argue with him, but he was insistent and guided her back to the carriage stop. She decided it was better not to do battle just then. Besides, the sun was blistering, heat waving up from the cobblestone streets. Only the breeze off the ocean offered any relief. Nikki’s face began to hurt again and her ankle throbbed.
Trent helped her into the carriage.
Two days, she thought, as the horse trudged slowly up the hill. Only two days. Then she would pick up the pictures. Finally she might have an answer or two about Trent McKenzie, the heretofore mystery man.
So what would she do if she discovered no sign of her “husband” in the shots? Worse yet, what would she do if he was in the photographs, holding her hand, kissing her, flashing his sexy smile toward the camera?
Her stomach did a nosedive. What if she found out that she really was married to this stranger?
CHAPTER SIX
“I want to go back to the mission,” Nikki said calmly as she shuffled the cards she’d been playing with for nearly an hour. Slowly but surely she was going out of her mind, cooped up with this man she wanted to trust, but couldn’t let herself. She’d spent most of the time since they’d gotten back from the carriage ride pretending to play solitaire, surreptitiously studying him from beneath lowered lashes, willing herself to remember, knowing in her heart that a man like Trent McKenzie was unforgettable.
“You’re not serious.” He was stretched out on the bed, half listening to some Spanish program on the television while flipping through the pages of a sports magazine devoted solely, it seemed, to soccer. He’d been restless, as restless as she, since returning from the carriage ride. Like the clouds gathering in the tropical sky, the tension between them had grown heavy and oppressive.
“I’m dead serious, Trent. I think I should go back to the mission.”
“Are you out of your mind?” He tossed his magazine aside.
“What mind?” she quipped, though the joke fell flat and he raked his fingers through his hair in the frustration that consumed them both.
She knew the mission was a dangerous topic, but going back up that trail was something she’d decided she had to do. Before they left the island. While she still had the chance.
Sitting at the table near the French doors, she looked back to his long body lying so insolently over the mussed bed covers and tried not to notice the dark hair on his legs or the open V of his shirt and the chest hairs springing from darkly tanned skin. She even tried to dismiss the concern and worry darkening his gaze.
She continued shuffling cards, listening to them ruffle rather than think about how that atmosphere in the room had become sultry. She’d caught him looking at her, staring at her with eyes that seemed to burn straight to her soul. She flipped a card faceup. The jack of diamonds. “I think if I went back up there, to the ‘scene of the crime,’ so to speak, I might remember something. Something important.”
“There’s no road that goes all the way to the mission. You’d have to walk, and that ankle of yours—”
“We could ride.” She flipped another card. Queen of hearts.
“Ride? Ride what?”
“Motorbikes.”
“Too bumpy.”
She slapped down several more cards. “Horses, then. There’s got to be some way up there.”
“I don’t think you’re ready to go horseback riding.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think.”
“Like hell!” He leaped from the bed and strode across the room. In one swift motion, he shoved her cards out of the way and placed his palms flat on the table so that his head was lev
el with hers. “You’re my wife, damn it. My responsibility. I’m not going to have you hurt yourself again and—”
