for shore, doing a clumsy one-armed crawl—her other arm still firmly clamped over her chest—that he might have found funny if it was anyone but her. As soon as he made sure she was standing up on the ocean bottom, he looked around.
The missing article was floating several yards away. He swam over and grabbed it, knew it was the wrong time to think how delicate it felt, how fragile in his big, rough hands, what a flimsy piece of material to be given so much responsibility.
He came up behind her. She was standing up to her shoulder blades in water and still had a tight wrap on herself, but there was no hiding the naked line of her back, the absolute feminine perfection of her.
“I’ll look away,” he said, trying to make her feel as if it was no big deal. “You put it back on.”
Within minutes she had the bathing suit back on, but she wouldn’t look at him. And he was finding it very difficult to look at her.
Wordlessly she left the water, spread out her towel and lay down on her stomach. She still wouldn’t even look at him and he figured maybe that was a good thing. He put on the snorkeling gear and headed back out into the bay.
He began to see school after school of butterfly fish, many that he recognized as the same as he would see in the reefs off Australia: the distinctive yellow, white and black stripes of the threadfin, the black splash of color that identified the teardrop.
Suddenly, Ronan didn’t want her to stay embarrassed all day, just so that he could be protected from his own vulnerability around her. He didn’t want her to miss the enchantment of the reef fish.
Her embarrassment over the incident was a good reminder to him that she had grown up very sheltered. She had sensed the bikini would get his attention, but she hadn’t known what to do with it when she succeeded.
In his world, girls were fast and flirty and knew exactly what to do with male attention. Her innocence in a bold world made him want to share the snorkeling experience with her even more.
They would focus on the fish, the snorkeling, not each other.
“Shoshauna! Put on a snorkel and fins. You have to see this.”
He realized he’d called her by her first name, as if they were friends, as if it was okay for them to snorkel together, to share these moments.
Too late to back out, though. She joined him in the water, but not before tugging on her bathing suit strings about a hundred times to make sure they were secure.
And then she was beside him, and the magic happened. They swam into a world of such beauty it was almost incomprehensible. Fish in psychedelic colors that ranged from brilliant orange to electric blue swam around them. They saw every variety of damselfish, puffer fish, triggerfish, surgeonfish.
He tapped her shoulder. “Watch those ones,” he said, pointing at an orange band. “It’s a type of surgeonfish, they’re called that because their spines are scalpel sharp.”
Her wonder was palpable when a Moorish idol investigated her with at least as much interest as she was giving it! A school of the normally shy neon-green and blue palenose parrot fishes swam around her as if she was part of the sea.
He was not sure when he lost interest in the fish and focused instead on her reaction to them. Ronan was not sure he had seen anything as lovely as the awed expression on her face when a bluestripe snapper kissed her hand.
He was breaking all the rules. And somehow it seemed worth it. And somehow he didn’t care. Time evaporated, and he was stunned when he saw the sun going down in the sky.
They went in to shore, dried the saltwater off with towels. He saw she was looking at him with a look that was both innocent and hungry.
“I’m going to cook dinner,” he said gruffly. Suddenly breaking the rules didn’t seem as great, it didn’t seem worth it, and he did care.
He cared because he felt something, and he knew it was huge. He felt the desire to know someone. He wanted to know her better. He wanted things he had never wanted and that, in this case, he knew he could never have.
These four days together had created an illusion that they were just two normal people caught up together. These days had allowed him to see her as real, as few people had ever seen her. These days had allowed him to see her, and he had liked what he had seen. It was natural to want to know more, to explore where this affinity he felt for her could go.
But the island was a fantasy, one so strong it had diluted reality, made him forget reality.
He was a soldier. She was a princess. Their worlds were a zillion miles apart. She was promised to someone else.
With those facts foremost in his mind, he cooked dinner, refusing her offer to help, and he was brusque with her when she asked him if he knew the name of a bright-yellow snout-nosed fish they had seen. She took the hint and they ate in blessed silence. Why did he miss being peppered with her questions? Did she, too, realize that a dangerous shift had happened between them?
Still, getting ready for bed, he was congratulating himself on what a fine job he’d done on reerecting the barriers, when he heard an unmistakable whimper from her room.
Surely she wasn’t that embarrassed over her brief nude scene?
He knew he had to ignore her, but then she cried out again, the sound muffled, as if she had a blanket stuffed in her mouth. It was the sound being stifled that made him bolt from his room, and barge through her door.
She was alone, in bed. No enemy had crept up on him while he’d been busy playing reef guide instead of doing his job.
“What’s the matter?” He squinted at her through the darkness.
The sheet was pulled up around her, right to her chin.
“I hurt so bad.”
“What do you mean?”
He lit the hurricane lamp that had been left on a chair just inside her door, moved to the side of her bed and gazed down at her. She reluctantly pulled the sheet down just enough to show him her shoulders. That’s why she had been quiet at dinner.
Not embarrassed, not taking the hint that he didn’t want to talk to her, but in pain. Even in the light of the lantern he could clearly see she was badly sunburned. Cursing himself silently, he wondered how close she had come to heat exhaustion.
White lines where her bikini straps had been were in sharp contrast to her skin.
Because her skin tones were so golden it had never occurred to him she might burn. It had not seemed scorchingly hot out today. On the other hand he should have known breezes coming off the water could make it seem cooler than it was. It had never occurred to him that someone who lived in this island paradise might not avail themselves of the outdoors.
He remembered, too late, what she had said about her mother. “Has your skin ever seen the sun before?” he asked her.
She shook her head, contrite. “Not for a long time. I was allowed to come here until I was about thirteen, but then my mother thought I was getting to be too much of a tomboy. She thought skin darkened by the sun was—”
“Let me guess,” he said dryly. “Common.”
