LITMIR.BIZ

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on his part—of pure masculine strength, and she could feel her heart skip a beat every time he lifted the ax with easy, thoughtless grace. She remembered again the strength in those hands, tempered last night, and shivered.

      But today his strength was not tempered at all. He certainly seemed angry, the wood splintering into a thousand pieces with each mighty whack of the ax blade, tension bunching his muscles, his face smooth with a total lack of expression.

      He had not even asked her how her sunburn felt, and it felt terrible. Could she be bold enough to ask him to dress it again? She felt as if she was still trembling inside from the way his hands had felt pressing those soothing cloths onto her back last night. But he looked angry this morning, remote, not the same man who had been so tender last night.

      “Ronan?” she pressed, even though it was obvious he didn’t want to talk. “Are you angry about something?”

      Actually, something in him seemed to have shifted last night when he had questioned her about her marriage. He had gone very quiet after she had admitted she wasn’t being forced to marry anyone.

      “No, ma’am, I’m not angry. What’s to be angry about?”

      “Stop it!”

      He set down the ax, wiped the sweat off his forehead with a quick lift of his shirt collar, then folded his arms over his chest, looked askance at her.

      “I didn’t mean chopping the wood,” she said, knowing he had misunderstood her deliberately.

      “What did you mean then, Princess?”

      “Why are you being so formal? You weren’t like this yesterday.”

      “Yesterday,” he said tightly, “was a mistake. I forgot myself, and it’s not going to happen again.”

      “Having fun, going snorkeling was forgetting yourself?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “If you call me ma’am one more time, I’m going to throw this coconut right at your large, overweight head!”

      “I think you might mean my big, fat head.”

      “That’s exactly what I meant!”

      He actually looked as though he might smile, but if he was amused he doused it quickly.

      “Princess,” he said, his patience elaborate and annoying, “I’m at work. I’m on the clock. I’m not here to have fun. I’m not here to teach you to swim or to identify yellow tangs for you. My job is to protect you, to keep you safe until I can get you back to your home.”

      “I could have been assassinated while you were out there chopping down the jungle,” she said, aware her tone was growing snippy with impatience. How could he possibly not want more of what they’d had yesterday?

      Not just the physical touch, though that had filled her with a hunger that felt ravenous, a tiger that needed to be fed, but the laughter, the easy camaraderie between them. It was that she found herself craving even more. How could it be that he did not want the same things?

      “I think,” he said dryly, “if assassins had arrived on the island, I would have heard a boat. Or a helicopter. I was only a few seconds away.”

      He was deliberately missing the point! “Bitten by a snake, then!”

      He didn’t answer, and she hated that he was treating her like a precocious child, though for some reason his attitude was making her act like one.

      “Eaten by a tiger,” she muttered. “Attacked by a monkey.”

      He sent her one irritated look, went back to the wood.

      “I’m making a point! There is no danger here. None. No assassins, no snakes, no tigers, no mad monkeys. It would be perfectly fine for you to relax your vigilance.”

      Crash. The wood splintered. He gathered the splinters, tossed them in a pile, wouldn’t look at her. “I relaxed yesterday. You got a large, overweight sunburn because of it.”

      “You are not feeling responsible for that, are you?” His lack of a response was all the answer she needed. “Ronan, it wasn’t your fault. It’s not as if it was life threatening, anyway. A little sunburn. I can hardly feel it today.” Which was a lie, but if it got rid of that look from his face—a look of cool professional detachment—it would be a lie worth telling.

      He said nothing, and she knew this was about more than a sunburn.

      “Are you mad because I agreed to get married?”

      Bull’s-eye. Something hard and cold in his face shook her. “That falls squarely in the none-of-my-business category.”

      “That’s not true. We’re friends. I want to talk to you about it.” And suddenly she did. She felt that if she talked to Ronan, all the chaos and uncertainty inside her would subside. She felt that the terrible loneliness that had eaten at her ever since she said yes to Prince Mahail would finally go away.

      She felt as if she would know what to do.

      “My cat died,” she blurted out. “That’s why I agreed to marry him.”

      It felt good to say it out loud, though she could tell by the look on his face he now thought she was certifiably insane.

      “But you have to understand about the cat,” she said in a rush.

      “No,” he said, holding up his hand, a clear stop signal. “No, I don’t have to understand about the cat. I don’t want you telling me about your personal life. Nothing. No cat. No marriage. Not what is on or off your mother’s approval list, though we both know that what isn’t on it is cavorting in the ocean in a bathing suit top that is unstable with a man you barely know.”

      “I do know you,” she protested.

      “No you don’t. We can’t be friends,” he said quietly. “Do you get that?”

      She had thought they were past that, that they were already well on their way to being friends, and possibly even something more than friends. These last few days she had shared more with him than she could remember sharing with anyone. She had felt herself opening around him, like a flower opening to sunshine.

      He made her discover things about herself that she hadn’t known. Being around him made her feel strong and competent. And alive. It was easy to be herself with him. How could he say they could not be friends?

      “No,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t get it.”

      “Actually,” he said tersely, “it doesn’t really matter if you get it or not, just as long as I get it.”

      She felt desperate. It was as if he was on a raft and she was on shore, and the distance between them was growing. She needed to bring him back, any way she could. “Okay, I won’t tell you anything about me. Nothing.”

      He looked skeptical, so she rushed on, desperate. “I’ll put a piece of tape over my mouth. But I can’t go out in the sun today. I was hoping you’d teach me how to play chess. My mother felt chess was a very masculine game, that girls should not play it.”

      Even though he’d specifically told her not to mention her mother to him, she took a chance and believed she had been right to do so, because something flickered in his eyes.

      He knew she’d be a good chess player if she got the chance, but if he’d realized that, he doused the thought as quickly as his smile of moments ago. He was silent, refusing the bait.

      “Do you know how to play chess?” If she could just get him to sit down with her, spend time with her, soon it would be easy again and fun. She wanted to know so much about him. She wanted him to know so much about her. They only had a few days left! He couldn’t spoil it. He just couldn’t.

      He took up the ax and put another piece of wood on the stump he was using as a chopping block. He hit it with such furious strength she winced.

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