The rational part won. Barely.
Damn it.Despite his previously hard stance, he wasn't a monster.
He watched her for another thirty seconds, noting the way her shoulders hunched against the wind, the way she'd drawn her knees up to her chest in a futile attempt to conserve body heat. Her designer luggage was probably ruined. And her pride—well, that seemed irritatingly intact, given that she hadn't come crawling back to beg for shelter.
Stubborn. He could almost respect it.
Almost.
His sister's voice echoed unbidden in his head—Megan, with her ER-nurse bluntness and zero tolerance for his antisocial tendencies."You did WHAT? You left a woman outside in a tropical storm because she annoyed you? Jesus, Alex, I know you're socially hopeless, but that's a new low even for you."
He could already picture the disappointed head shake. The lecture about basic human decency. The reminder that their mother would've rolled over in her grave.
With a sigh etched deep into his frown, he flung open the door with a growled, "Get in," the words tasting like vinegar in his mouth.
He wasn't about to become the asshole who let a woman drown in her own reckless stupidity—no matter how much he wanted to.
Lily stumbled across the threshold, a wet mess of moss-green eyes and shivering limbs. Water pooled immediately on the wooden floor, spreading in a dark stain around her ruined sandals. She looked smaller somehow, diminished by the storm in a way that made something uncomfortable twist in Alex's chest.
He ignored it.
Alex thrust a coarse towel at her, his eyes narrowing as she clutched it to herself. "Don't drip on anything," he ordered, trying not to notice how the droplets from her hair traced a path down her neck.
"Thank you," she breathed, her teeth chattering. "I t-thought tropical storms are supposed to be warm? I feel frozen to the b-b-bone."
"Yeah, well, you don't exactly have a lot of meat on your bones to retain any heat," he said, shuffling papers and scattered notebooks to clear a spot amongst the chaos of his research. Resentment punctuated his movements as he tried to quickly prioritize his paperwork into manageable sections within the small space.
Lily wrapped the towel around her shoulders like a cape, her eyes scanning the cabin with undisguised curiosity. Charts covered nearly every vertical surface—tide tables, species identification guides, hand-drawn maps of the reef system. A microscope dominated the small table by the window, surrounded by petri dishes and sample containers. Stacks of waterproof notebooks teetered precariously on every available surface.
"Cozy," she said, and he couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or genuine. "Very 'mad scientist chic.' I dig it."
"It's a research station, not an interior design project."
"I mean, it could be both. A few throw pillows, maybe some fairy lights?—"
"No."
She held up her hands in surrender, but her lips twitched with suppressed amusement. "Just a thought."
It had taken two years of grant proposals and groveling to get access to Ilot Serenite's protected beach.
And here she was, invading his scientific sanctuary as if she'd just sailed over for a weekend getaway with friends, ready to party the night away with her vapid followers in cyber attendance.
"Look," he started, his voice hard as the coral beneath the island's waves, "there are rules if you're staying here." His gaze sharp and unyielding. "You follow them, or you find yourself another shelter."
"Rules? Okay, sure, like what kind of rules?" Lily asked, her teeth slowly losing their chatter as she warmed. "Like who gets to shower first and stuff like that? Which, I totally get, one time I stayed the weekend with a bunch of girlfriends in Cabo and we had to have a bathroom schedule or it was pure chaos. Can you imagine seven women sharing one bathroom? It was literally a nightmare, so yeah, I totally get it."
"That's not at all what I'm talking about," he retorted with irritation. "Rule number one: don't touch my stuff. Rule number two: keep out of my way. And rule number three: no questions unless you're dying or something is on fire. Clear?"
"What do you mean no questions?"
He glared. "I mean, don't pester me with your nonsense because you're bored. I have two weeks to get my research finished and I'll need every minute toget it done. I don't have room in my schedule to be your entertainment. Got it?"
"Just out of curiosity, what does one do when there's no shred of civilization around?"
"That's a question—and that's up to you to figure out. I'm not your babysitter, your tour guide, or your fill-in vacation buddy. Got it?"
Lily tilted her head, studying him with an expression that made him feel uncomfortably like a specimen under his own microscope. "You know, most people at least offer stranded travelers a cup of tea before laying down the law. Maybe some cookies. A warm blanket that doesn't smell like it was used to dry fish."
