LITMIR.BIZ

      Shoshauna awoke to light splashing across her bed, birdsong, the smell and sound of the sea.

      She remembered she was on her grandfather’s island and thought to herself, my heart is home. She remembered her narrow escape from marriage, the unexpected gifts yesterday: riding the motorcycle, buying the daring bathing suit and shorty-shorts.

      Kissing Ronan on the cheek. Feeling the muscles of his back as they shared the motorcycle, feeling his hands encircle her waist.

      Ronan was a gloriously made man, all hard muscle, graceful efficiency of movement, easy, unconscious strength, a certain breathtaking confidence in his physical abilities. Add to that the soft, firm voice, his accent. And his eyes! A soldier’s eyes to be sure, stern, forbidding even. But when the mask slipped, when they glinted with laughter, she felt this uncontrollable—and definitely wicked—shiver of pure wanting. He made her feel such an amazing mixture of things: excited and shy, aggravated, annoyed, alive.

      Shoshauna knew it was wrong to be thinking like that. She was promised to another. And yet…if you could pick a man to spend a week on a deserted island with, you would pick a man like Ronan.

      She gave her head a shake at the naughty direction of her own thoughts and realized her head felt unnaturally light and then remembered she had cut her hair.

      She had glimpsed her hair in the mirror of the motorcycle. Now she hopped out of bed and had a good look in the mirror above the dressing table.

      “Oh!” she said, touching her fingers to it. It looked awful, crushed in places from sleep, standing straight up in others. Despite that, she decided she loved it. It made her look like a girl who would never back down from an adventure, not a princess who had spent her life in a tower, at least figuratively speaking! In fact, she felt in love with life this morning, excited about whatever new gifts the day held. Excited about a chance to get to know Ronan better.

      But wasn’t that a betrayal of the man she was promised to?

      Not necessarily, she told herself. This was her opportunity to be ordinary!

      She realized she had not felt this way—happy, hopeful—since she had said yes to Prince Mahail’s proposal. Up till now she had woken up each and every morning with a knot in her stomach that shopping for the world’s most luxurious trousseau could not begin to undo. She had woken each morning with a growing sense of dread, a prisoner counting down to their date with the gallows.

      Her stomach dipped downward, reminding her that her reprieve was probably temporary at best.

      But she refused to think of that now, to waste even one precious moment of her freedom.

      Ronan had left the backpack in her room, and she pawed through it, found the shorty-shorts and a red, spaghetti-strapped shirt that hugged her curves. She put on the outfit and twirled in front of the mirror, her sense of being an ordinary girl increased sweetly.

      Her mother would have hated both the amount of leg showing and the skimpiness of the top, which made Shoshauna enjoy her outfit even more. She liked the way lots of bare skin against warm air felt: free, faintly sensual and very comfortable.

      She went out her door, saw his bedroom was already empty. She stopped when she saw his bed was made, hesitated, then went in and inspected it. The bedding was crisp and taut. She backed out when she realized the room smelled like him: something so masculine and rich it was nearly drugging.

      She went back to her own room, tugged the rumpled bedding into some semblance of order, declared herself and the room perfectly wonderfully ordinary and went in search of Ronan.

      He was at the outdoor kitchen, a basket of fruit beside him that he was peeling and cutting into chunks. She watched him for a moment, enjoying the pure poetry of him performing such a simple task, and then blushed when he glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow. He had known she stood there observing him!

      Still, there was a flash of something in his eyes as he took in her outfit, before it was quickly veiled, a barrier swiftly erected. And there was no hint of that flash in his voice.

      “Princess,” he said formally, “did you sleep well?”

      It was several giant steps back from the man who had laughed with her yesterday. She wanted to break down the barrier she saw in his eyes. What good was being an ordinary girl if it was as if she was on this island alone? If her intrigue with this man was not shared?

      “You must call me Shoshauna,” she said.

      “I can’t.”

      She glared at him. “I command it.”

      He actually laughed out loud, the same laugh that had given her her first glimpse yesterday of just how real he could be, making her yearn to know him, know someone real.

      “Command away, Princess. I’m not calling you by your first name.”

      “Why?”

      “It’s too familiar. I’m your bodyguard, not your buddy.”

      She felt the sting of that. Her disappointment was acute. He wanted the exact opposite of what she wanted! She wanted to feel close to another human being, he wanted to feel distant. She wanted to use this time together to explore his mysteries, he was just as determined to keep them secret.

      It was frustrating! Her mother would approve of his attitude, a man who knew his place and was so determined to keep their different positions as a barrier between them.

      But so would her grandmother love him. Her grandmother said soldiers made the best husbands, because they already knew how to obey. Not that he was showing any sign of obeying Shoshauna!

      And not that she wanted to be thinking of this handsome man and the word husband in the same sentence. She had just narrowly missed making marriage her fate.

      Still, she wanted him to participate in the great adventure she was on. How could she forget she was a princess, forget her obligations and duties for a short while, if he was going to insist on reminding her at every turn by using a formal title?

      “How about my code name, then?” she asked.

      He hesitated, glanced at her, shrugged. She couldn’t tell if it was agreement or appeasement, though whichever it was, she sensed it was a big concession from him, he suddenly refused to look at her, took an avid interest in the fruit in front of him.

      “I’ll do that,” she said, moving up beside him. Did he move a careful step away from her? She moved closer. He moved away again and without looking at her, passed her a little tiny knife and a mango.

      “Don’t cut your fingers off,” he said dryly.

      She watched for a moment as his own fingers handled the knife, removed a fine coil of peel from the fruit. He caught her watching him, again, put down the knife and turned away from her to put wood in the oven.

      “What are we going to make in there?” she asked eagerly.

      “I’m going to make biscuits.”

      “I want to learn!”

      “What for?”

      “It seems like it would be a useful skill,” she said stubbornly.

      “It is a useful skill. For someone like me, who frequently finds himself trying to make the best of rough circumstances. But for a princess?” He shook his head.

      “I want to know useful things!”

      “What is useful in your world and what is useful in mine are two very different things,” he said almost gently.

      Rebelliously she attacked the mango with her knife. Ten minutes later as she looked at the sliver of fruit in front of her, what was left of her mango, she realized he was probably right. Domestication at this late date was probably hopeless. She felt sticky to

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