LITMIR.BIZ

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hard life you’ve chosen?” she asked him, even though what she really wanted to say was how? How will I ever find what I’m looking for? I don’t even know where to look!

      He shrugged, tilted his chin back toward the sun. “Our unit’s unofficial motto is Go Hard or Go Home. Some would see it as hard. I see it as challenging.”

      Was there any subtle way to ask what she most wanted to ask, besides How will I ever find what I’m looking for? It was inappropriate to ask him, and too soon. But still, she was not going to find herself alone on a deserted island with an extremely handsome man ever again.

      She had to know. She had to know if he was available. Even though she herself, of course, was not. Not even close.

      “Do you have a girlfriend?” She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

      He opened his eyes, shot her a look, closed them again. “No.”

      “Why not?”

      His openness came to an abrupt end. That firm line appeared again around his mouth. “What is this? Twenty questions at the high school cafeteria?”

      “What’s a high school caff-a-ter-ee-a?”

      “Never mind. I don’t have a girlfriend because my lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to having a girlfriend.”

      “Why?”

      He sighed, but she was not going to be discouraged. Her option was to spend the week talking to him or talking to herself. At the moment she felt her survival depended on focusing on his life, rather than her own.

      Maybe her desperation was apparent because he caved slightly. “I travel a lot. I can be called away from home for months at a time. I dismantle the odd bomb. I jump from airplanes.”

      “Meeting the grizzly bear wasn’t the most exciting thing that ever happened to you!” she accused.

      “Well, it was the most exciting thing that I’m allowed to talk about. Most of what I do is highly classified.”

      “And dangerous.”

      He shrugged. “Dangerous enough that it doesn’t seem fair to have a girlfriend or a family.”

      “I’m not sure,” she said, thoughtfully, “what is unfair about being yourself?”

      He looked at her curiously and she explained what she meant. “The best thing is to be passionate about life. That’s what makes people really seem alive, whole, isn’t it? If they aren’t afraid to live the way they want to live and to live fully? That’s what a girlfriend should want for you. For a life that makes you whole. And happy. Even if it is dangerous.”

      She was a little embarrassed that she, who had never had a boyfriend, felt so certain about what qualifications his girlfriend should have. And she was sadly aware that passion, the ability to be alive and whole, were the very qualities she herself had lost somewhere a long the way.

      As if to underscore how much she had lost or never discovered, he asked her, suddenly deciding to have a conversation after all, “So, what’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done?”

      Been shot at. Cut my hair. Ridden a motorcycle.

      All the most exciting events of her life had happened yesterday! It seemed way too pathetic to admit that, though it increased her sense of urgency, this was her week to live.

      “I’m afraid that’s classified,” she said, and was rewarded when he smiled, ever so slightly, but spoiled the effect entirely by chucking her under her chin as if she was a precocious child, gathered their plates and stood up.

      Shoshauna realized, that panicky sensation suddenly back, that she had to squeeze as much into the next week as she possibly could. “I’m putting on my bathing suit now and going swimming. Are you coming?”

      He looked pained. “No. I’ll look after the dishes.”

      “We can do the dishes later. Together. You can show me how.”

      He said another nice word under his breath.

      She repeated it, and when he gave her that look, the stern, forbidding, don’t-mess-with-me look, she said it again!

      When he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, a man marshaling his every resource, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dreading this week every bit as much as she was looking forward to it.

      “How about if we do the dishes now?” he said. “In this climate I don’t think you want to leave things out to attract bugs. And then,” he added, resigned, “if you really want, I’ll show you how to make biscuits.”

      She eyed him suspiciously. He didn’t look like a man who would be the least bothered by a few bugs. He’d probably eaten them on occasion! And he certainly did not look like a man who wanted to give out cooking lessons.

      So that left her with one conclusion. He didn’t like the water. No, that wasn’t it. And then, for some reason, she remembered the look on his face when he’d put that pink bikini back on the rack in the store yesterday.

      And she understood perfectly!

      Ronan did not want to see her in a bikini. Which meant, as much as he didn’t want to, he found her attractive.

      A shiver went up and down her spine, and she felt something she had not felt for a very long time, if she had ever felt it at all.

      Without knowing it, Ronan had given her a very special gift. Princess Shoshauna felt the exquisite discovery of her own power.

      “I’d love to learn to make biscuits instead of going swimming,” she said meekly, the perfect B’Ranasha princess. Then she smiled to herself at the relief he was unable to mask in his features. She had a secret weapon. And she would decide when and where to use it.

      “Hey,” Ronan snapped, “cut it out.”

      The princess ignored him, took another handful of soap bubbles and blew them at him. Princess Shoshauna had developed a gift for knowing when it was okay to ignore his instructions and when it wasn’t, and it troubled him that she read him so easily after four days of being together.

      He had not managed to keep her out of the bathing suit, hard as he had tried. He’d taken her at her word that she wanted to learn things and had her collecting fruit and firewood. He’d taught her how to start a decent fire, showed her edible plants, a few rudimentary survival skills.

      Ronan had really thought she would lose interest in all these things, but she had not. Her fingers were covered in tiny pinpricks from her attempts to handle a needle and thread, she was sporting a bruise on one of her legs from trying to climb up a coconut tree, she gathered firewood every morning with enthusiasm and without being asked. Even her bed making was improving!

      He was reluctantly aware that the princess had that quality that soldiers admired more than any other. They called it “try.” It was a never-say-die, never-quit determination that was worth more in many situations than other attributes like strength and smarts, though in fact the princess had both of those, too, her strength surprising, given her physical size.

      Still, busy as he’d tried to keep her, he’d failed to keep her from swimming, though he’d developed his own survival technique for when she donned the lime-green handkerchief she called a bathing suit.

      The bathing suit was absolutely astonishing on her. He knew as soon as he saw it that he had been wrong thinking the pink one he’d made her put back would look better, because nothing could look better.

      She was pure, one-hundred-percent-female menace in that bathing suit, slenderness and curves in a head-spinning mix. Mercifully, for him, she was shy about wearing it, and got herself to the water’s edge each day before dropping the towel she wrapped herself in.

      His survival technique: he went way down the beach and spearfished for dinner while she swam. He kept an eye on her, listened for sounds of distress, kept his distance.

      He

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