Life was safer and more reliable when it was just her and Karim against the rest of the world.
“Come on, baby.Let’s go.”
She checked her map of the island and coaxed Karim to walk to the nearest beach with promises of more splashing.It was still early, but surely at least one of Atiu’s 300 inhabitants would be milling around doing something, somewhere, hopefully wanting to be interviewed about life on the island.And right now, that’s all she wanted.Some life.Some distraction.Something that would take her mind off Daniel Jones and the hatred in his eyes, directed solely at her.
Danclosedtheshutters.Through the cracks, he’d seen Libby and Karim play on the logs, and the volume of his angry words from last night ramped up full blast in his head.
God, he hated that he’d scared Karim and made him cry.Hated that Libby’s voice had shaken when she’d been comforting her son.
Disgusted with himself, he moved away from the window.
Well, at least now she had even more material on him.He’d threatened her with lawyers, but she would’ve seen through his bullshit by now.Lawyers couldn’t stop her from publishing anything that she’d witnessed this past week.What would her articles say, anyway?That he wascranky, that he’d told her to shut up?That he’d been sick?That his mum had a boyfriend fifteen years younger?
Those weren’t lies.
They were facts.
And Libby hadn’t climbed over any fences or pressed her face up against any windows to get to them.
Dan dropped down onto the narrow single bed he’d slept in and scrubbed his face, wishing he could scrub out the memory of last night just as easily.Well, not all of last night.Dinner with Libby had been nice, and so had sitting on the sofa.Libby on his lap…
He sighed away another wave of hurt and disappointment.
She’d only been after him for a story!
After grabbing his bag last night, common sense had struck fifty meters down the road, snapping him out of his angry trance.Shit.He hadn’t known where to go or who to turn to.He was alone in the middle of the South Pacific, a tiny dot of a man on a tiny dot of an island bloody miles from bloody anywhere.
The road had been eerily quiet, but the light shining from the house next door, where the kids lived, had beckoned him.Like a hopeless moth drawn to a flame, he’d knocked on the door.A woman had greeted him, Christopher Mac at her side.
“Have you come for advice?”the cocky kid had asked.
“Yes.Where can I find a place to stay?”
Christopher Mac had grinned.“Have you left your wife?”
“We’re not married.”
“Neither’s half the island,” the woman—Christopher Mac’s mother—had said with a chuckle.
“You can sleep in my room.”Christopher Mac grabbed his arm.
“No, really, I just want to—”
“I share it with my brother, but he won’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
So that’s how Britain’s National Hero had spent the night, listening to the snores of two little boys and the crows of a cockerel who didn’t know the difference between night and day.
The noise of children playing in the next room snapped him back to what he’d been about to do before he’d heard Libby’s voice outside.He’d been looking for a fresh T-shirt so he could dress, thank his hosts, and find somewhere else to stay.But his belongings were scattered all over the floor around his empty bag.Just as well that he’d slept in his clothes last night, because now half of them seemed to be missing.
The concept of private property is different from that of the western world.
Yeah, right.
His other pair of shorts was on Christopher Mac’s bed.His socks, not that he needed any here anyway, were on the floor next to another pile of his clothes.The same clothes Karim had puked on.
Why the hell had Libby washed them?
Why had she stayed when he’d been sick?
