She laughed, and it was easy. Nice.
Yes, she thought again.This could work.As long as she kept things in perspective. Kepthimin perspective.
“Come on,” she cajoled. “What do you say? Want to be my pal?”
His face looked comically forlorn. “Apparently, agreeing to be friends is somewhat of an epidemic on this island. But I suppose if that’s all you’re offerin’…” He let the sentence dangle and glanced at her hopefully.
“It is.” She nodded decisively.
“Well, I guess I accept.” He offered her a hand. She shook it. But when she went to pull back, he held on, the look in his eye having turned from teasing to intense. “On one condition,” he added.
Misgiving had her narrowing her eyes.
“At some point, I’m going to ask a favor of you.” His voice was low, and it seemed to have an edge. “And when I do, you have to agree to it.”
“What kind of favor?” Why was she suddenly breathless?
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Mmm-mmm.” She shook her head. “Way too broad. I can’t agree to something like that. What if you ask me to jump off a bridge or run out and kill a bunch of kittens?”
His mouth flattened. “You really think I’d ever ask you to do either of those things?”
“No. But you see my point.” She tried to tug on her hand again, but he held firm. Little electrical pulses of awareness shot up her arm.
For a long time, he said nothing, simply stared at her until she blinked and looked away. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower than usual. “Those are my terms, Christina.” No one ever used her full name except for him. And why that should make her feel giddy, she’d never know. “Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” she said hoarsely. At the same time, the voice in her head screamed,Are you crazy? Stop! Turn back! There be dragons ahead!
Smiling broadly, he tossed an arm around her shoulders. “Good. Now, mind if I grab a pole and join you?”
“Plenty of fish in the sea for both of us,” she said, and thought she saw his eyes narrow slightly.
Then he winked and headed for the shed.
Watching him go, she tried to shake off the feeling that she’d just made a deal with Satan himself.
Chapter 19
11:23 a.m.
Alex was a wreck.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do with herself. What to do with the deep, abiding sense of loss that left a gaping hole at the center of her.
How could I have been so wrong about someone? And worse, how could I have allowed myself to fall head over heels for that same person?
She’d always thought herself a good judge of character. Able to spot a bad penny when it turned up in her path. But apparently, she was blind as a bat if that bad penny happened to sport miles of muscles, raven-black hair, and eyes the color of the blue glass used to make nineteenth-century cobalt medicine bottles.
So what did that say about her?
That she was shallow? That she was no better than a teenager who was a slave to her hormones? That she wasn’t as smart as everyone said she was?
None of those possibilities made her feel overly proud. Couple that with the sharp pain that pinched in her chest each time her heart beat, and she’d been battling the urge to cry ever since leaving Key West.
After landing on Wayfarer Island, she would’ve preferred a distraction. Would’ve liked to divert her attention away from herself and her heartache by relocating their underwater search grid from the small reef at the back of the island to the large reef at the front. But the guys had declared it a holiday.
Her second thought had been to lose herself in a book. She hadn’t finishedThe Buccaneers of America, arguablythesourcebook on seventeenth-century piracy. But no matter how hard she’d tried to focus, the words had blurred on the pages. And Mason had been in the kitchen, banging pots and pans, further exasperating any chance she had at concentrating.
