Her arms fell to her sides, and she went limp. If it weren’t for his hand on her butt, holding her up against him, he figured she might have sunk into the sand. Hell, from the deadweight feel of her, she might have sunk through to Argentina.
As suddenly as he had kissed her, he pulled back and looked down at her. She gained her balance and stared up at him in stunned silence. Not moving. Amazingly, not talking. And from her dazed expression, she wasn’t thinking either.
He let go of her. “Sure, sweetheart.” He raised his hand and gave her a light swat on the backside.
Her gaping mouth snapped shut, and she went as stiff as a palm tree.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.” He gave her a wink and he strolled away. Whistling.
* * *
There wasan oldHebrew proverb Margaret had read once: When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth. She still had thirty-two teeth left, but she wasn’t certain she had any sense left.
She walked down the beach toward Lydia and the baby. Annabelle toddled alongside her older sister. The baby sat in the sand, then picked up a banana and held it up to her sister.
Lydia stared at the fruit with a weak look. “I’m sick of those.”
“I’m sick, too,” Margaret muttered as she plopped down to sit in the sand near the water. She had to be sick, she thought and pinched the pounding bridge of her nose, trying to will herself to forget Hank Wyatt existed.
But her mind flashed with the image of the man emerging from behind the rocks, his head bent and chest exposed while he buckled the belt on his pants. There was something wickedly private about that image as if she’d been part of an intimate moment.
It hadn’t bothered him. But it bothered her just as much as how he looked cleaned up. He had a strong square jaw, hair as black as the devil, classic features. A handsome man.
Shewassick.
Frowning, she stared at the sand and watched the waves slosh near her bare feet. She poked her lips with a finger, then licked them. They tasted like banana and tooth powder. And Hank.
There had to be something wrong with her. Shock. A delayed reaction to the trauma of being shipwrecked. Something. Some perfectly logical reason why she would feel something so incredibly illogical.
She put her palm up to her forehead. Perhaps she was fevered. She felt her cheeks and face. They didn’t feel hot. She wondered if malaria could make a person go numb like she had.
With a sudden sense of desperation, she searched her body for mosquito bites. There were none. Just as there was no logical reason for her reaction to Hank.
He’d kissed her, an act she certainly had experienced before. Shewasthirty-two years old. But she had acted like a young girl, standing there without a coherent thought in her head.
She rested her head in one hand and took a deep breath. Nothing was making sense. It was almost as if she had stepped into another world, an odd underworld, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice. A world where she didn’t even know herself. She closed her eyes and saw the foolish image of herself playing croquet with a flamingo. Then she imagined Hank standing behind her, his hands on hers, helping her hit the croquet ball.
Her eyes shot open. She was almost afraid to close her eyes again, afraid of what her mind might come up with next, so she stared down the beach.
Hank and Theodore weren’t in sight. They had gone to search the north end of the beach, combing the beach for anything they could use.
“No, Annabelle. I don’t want it.”
She looked up at Lydia, who was pushing away a banana that Annabelle was trying to stuff in her face. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I’m sick of bananas. Isn’t there anything else to eat?”
“Breadfruit. Those large round things, but Hank said they have to be cooked.” She paused. “How does one cook a breadfruit?” She gazed off at one of the breadfruit trees.
Lydia didn’t respond.
Margaret sighed and turned back to look at the sand. After a moment, she picked up a black shell and held it up. “There are plenty of mussels.”
Lydia wrinkled her nose.
“Mussels are wonderful.” She opened one of them. “Especially these little ones with the green tips.” Lydia groaned.
“Really. There’s a little Italian restaurant back home in North Beach. They serve the best mussels in white wine.” Margaret stared at the black shell in her hand. She turned it this way, then that. “If I could only figure how to cook these things.” She looked at Lydia. “I’m not much of a cook.”
