I need to come ashore.’
‘Not going to happen. Not without a permit.’
‘The Player’s compromised. It wouldn’t be safe to set out without patching the breach.’
The Player—how very apt. The way he stroked the bright blue gunnel of his boat told her how important the vessel was to him. She knew all about men and their boats. ‘Then you’d better head back to Cocos—’
‘I’m coming in. If you want to stop me, knock yourself out. I’m not going to sea until I’ve made repairs.’ He crossed his arms, causing his sea-soaked T-shirt to mould to his broad chest. Honor retreated one pace. She couldn’t stop him, not if it truly wasn’t safe, but she’d never had cause to bring someone unauthorised onto the island in her many seasons on Pulu Keeling. She wasn’t certain what the procedure was.
‘So, are you sending me back out to drown or can I come ashore?’
She sucked in a breath at his choice of phrase and grabbed at the buoyancy sack to steady herself. He couldn’t know …
Her voice cracked slightly. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘Where can I enter the lagoon?’
‘You can’t.’ She fought to sound normal. ‘You’ll have to moor where you are.’
He scanned the lagoon. ‘Are you serious? What about the south side of the island?’
‘Everyone swims into Pulu Keeling. It’s an atoll, completely surrounded by coral reef. Why else would I be hauling all this stuff in by hand?’
Piles of technical equipment mounded in every spare inch of his boat. Honor wouldn’t risk leaving it all in a vessel with a damaged hull in the unpredictable weather of the Keeling Islands, and she knew he’d feel no different.
‘It’s not too late to change your mind, head for Cocos.’ Her tone was hopelessly optimistic.
‘No. I’ll come ashore. I have no choice.’
Neither do I, apparently.
They hardly spoke as they stripped The Player and Honor knew from his grumpy movements that she wasn’t the only one less than pleased with the circumstances they’d found themselves in. Then the sheer hard work of towing load after load of expensive equipment across the lagoon literally took her breath away, making conversation impossible.
He passed items to her one by one and she stacked each one along with her buoyancy sack into The Player‘s inflatable dinghy, which bobbed in the protected lagoon. Some pieces were heavier than others, but she managed every one without complaint. Pretty Boy sealed the cabin, dropped the weather shields, started the engine one final time and motored a few metres away from the reef where he could safely drop anchor.
Honor waited while he added his spare anchor to the first he’d dropped and then he dived headlong into the frigid depths and swam towards her. The razor edge of the dropoff threatened, but on his second attempt those powerful arms pushed him up and over into the lagoon, guiding the inflatable from behind towards the beach. The water was warmer and gentler on the island side of the reef-break, and teemed with brightly coloured fish enjoying the protection the coral band afforded. They darted, kamikaze-like, around the giant two-legged predator who’d appeared in their midst nudging the dinghy to shore.
Honor’s weary muscles pressed her along, closer to the island, and then she stood in the calf-deep splash waiting for him, breathing deeply. They couldn’t drag the inflatable far onto the shingle beach; the rocks threatened to shred it in moments. It rested instead on the fine-ground sand closer to the waterline.
Her unwanted guest emerged from the small surf, his saturated clothes glued to every muscled plane. ‘I’ve got it. Take a break.’
Nothing he could have said would have moved her sooner. She dropped the tow rope and bent for one of the parcels in the little boat, trying to disguise her puffing. ‘I’m fine. What is all this stuff, anyway?’
‘Recovery gear, mostly. Photographic equipment, sonar, GPS.’
That stopped her in her tracks.
‘You’re a raider?’ She intentionally used the derogatory term for a salvager. She watched him closely for a reaction.
Lord, what will I do if he is? They were a long way from the Cocos cluster’s five-strong police presence.
His face tightened. ‘I’m a maritime archaeologist.’
‘What’s the difference?’
One dark brow shot up. ‘The difference is,’ he grumbled as they lugged gear from the inflatable up above the high water mark, ‘one is sanctioned by the Australian Government, in accordance with the Historic Shipwrecks Act. The other is naked theft.’
‘You’re a shipwreck hunter?’
He smiled, bright and glorious. ‘I’m a shipwreck finder.’
She studied him, her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t look like an archaeologist.’ And he really, really didn’t. He looked like something from an underwear commercial.
‘You don’t look like a dugong.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing.’ He grinned and thrust out a sandy hand. ‘Robert Dalton. Rob, to my friends.’
She took it, nodding her greeting. ‘Robert.’ His smile twisted slightly. ‘I’m Honor Brier.’
‘And what are you doing all the way out here, Honor Brier? Pretty much the last place I expected to see a woman.’
‘Because of an old Malay myth that says women can’t be on this island?’
‘No. Because it’s supposed to be uninhabited.’
‘I live here eight months of the year. I oversee the turtle nesting and audit the booby colonies.’
He didn’t so much as smile at the word this time; she had to give him a bonus point for fast learning. He dumped the final box on the dune top.
‘You live here for eight months? On an island with no fresh water and no services?’ And no people. He didn’t need to say it; he wasn’t the first one to point that out to her. She shrugged.
He looked at her as if she was a little bit crazy; with no clue how close to the truth that was. ‘What do you do?’
She spoke more slowly, wondering if he’d spent so long in the looks queue at birth they might have been out of stock over in the brains department. She grabbed her side of the inflatable. ‘I supervise the nesting and audit …’
‘The boobies, I know. I meant what else do you do, to pass the time?’ He stepped to the edge of the dinghy. ‘One, two three … lift.’
They shuffled up the sand, carrying the empty inflatable over the many rocks littering the shore above the high-tide mark.
‘Nothing
