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Isobella gasped. ‘Alex!’
He ignored her, his gaze rapidly seeking the marks he was all too familiar with. His breath hissed out as he took in the magnitude of her scars, horrified by the extent of them. Rivulets of water beaded her skin, pearling on the flat planes of her abdomen, pooling in the shallow recess of her belly button. He didn’t notice.
Nor did he notice the transparency of her underwear, the visibility of her erect nipples or the dark patch at the front of her satin knickers. He had eyes only for the damage, for the ugly purple brands left by the tentacles as they had fired their deadly poison into her beautiful body. His gaze raked her stomach with clinical intensity. Her long, lean torso was completely covered, from the ribs down to beyond the band of her pants.
Things suddenly became clearer. Her dislike of the ocean. The way she hid herself away. The startling empathy she’d shown him. And Danielle. The Isobella Nolan phenomena was suddenly making sense.
‘Isobella,’ he whispered, his gaze flicking momentarily to her face.
He noticed the trachey scar for the first time, and another piece of the puzzle fell in place. All those high-necked shirts. That god-awful bow. His eyes returned to her abdomen, unable to look away.
Isobella’s breath heaved in and out. She was speared to the spot by his brutal inspection. She stood before him, more vulnerable, more exposed than she’d been in her life. More than she’d ever been modelling lingerie on a Paris catwalk. More than three weeks in Intensive Care. More than the other night, when she’d been practically naked and he’d been deep inside her.
But she couldn’t move. It was like that moment again—the moment when theFleckeri had attacked and the pain had been so intense that for a few seconds she’d been completely paralysed. Unable to scream, to move, to get away, to seek help.
His gaze rooted her to the spot. Warmth suffused her face. A breeze blew, chilling her wet skin despite the heat of the day and his incendiary stare. She was laid bare, and absolutely incapable of doing anything about it.
Alex groped behind him for the moulded bench that lined the sides of the cruiser and sat down heavily. ‘Oh, my God.’ He raked his hands through his hair and then reached out to trace the whip-like blemishes.
She saw shock furrow his brow, a look of horror tauten his full lips, and Isobella’s brain finally switched on. She recoiled from his touch. ‘No!’ Hot tears stung her eyes as she turned her back to him, desperately pulling together the edges of her ruined shirt.
‘They’re…They’re…’ He groped for an apt description.
‘Hideous,’ she finished for him, as she whipped around, her fingers worrying the edges of the shirt together at her throat.
Alex blinked at her vehemence, his brain still grappling with what he’d just seen. He noticed the familiar movement of her hand to her throat and realised it wasn’t a nervous gesture, as he’d originally assumed. ‘No!’ he denied vehemently.
‘And yet you look at me as if I have a disease you’re going to catch,’ she spat. Anthony had done exactly the same thing. Before he had run. At least she’d had one night of blind passion when her body had been revered by Alex. She looked around for the sarong she’d discarded before her leap into the ocean.
Alex ran a hand through his hair. ‘No. I’m just…in shock.’ Her scars were by far the most extensive he’d ever seen. ‘I look at them and I can’t even begin to imagine the pain…the trauma you must have been through. But then I look at them and clinically…they’re fascinating.’
Isobella bit down on her tongue to stop more tears welling in her eyes. First he looked at her as if she was contagious, and then like a specimen under a microscope in one of his labs.
She gave a short, derisive laugh. ‘To think men used to look at me with yearning. Do you know how many magazines this body sold?’
Alex stood, her words sinking in, her identity finally dawning on him. ‘Oh, my God—you’reher . You’re Izzy. Izzy Tucker. The model. The one who was stung on a beach off Cardwell during a photo shoot. The one we’ve been looking for.’
Well, give the man a cigar.‘The very same.’ She located her sarong and tied it tight around her waist, using it to keep her shirt together.
He took a step towards her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She took a step back. ‘It was none of your business.’
She was in total flight now. Her secret had been discovered. And, like the wounded animal she was, she knew the best form of defence was attack. She needed to push him back behind the line they’d crossed.
