boat went over another wave, and suddenly the day’s lunch didn’t seem so secure in her stomach. She swallowed thickly then took a deep breath before meeting his eyes.
“I’ll be here as much as you need me to be,” he said, his gaze soft. “You’re my best friend, chérie, and that’s what friends do.”
Friends. Her insides did another crazy swoop, just before the nausea surged again. This was no confession of love, no happily-ever-after, no I-can’t-live-without-you. This was Marco offering his friendship and support, just as he’d always done throughout the tragedies of her embarrassingly public private life.
She swallowed a weird swell of abject disappointment. “Marco.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.... I haven’t made any decision. Plus...” She took a breath. “I can’t—I won’t—have a baby just because you want it. And once this gets out—whatever my decision—there’s going to be a media frenzy. Your career is more important than front-page gossip.”
“Kat—”
“You know what the headlines were like last time. Do you honestly think I’d do that to you? I... Oh, God.” She clutched her stomach.
He grabbed her arm, his face creased with alarm. “What’s wrong? What—”
She turned to the railing but wasn’t quick enough. In the next second, she threw up all over the deck, right on top of Marco’s expensive Italian leather shoes.
Two
“Guess I should’ve seen that coming,” Marco said drily as she rushed to the railing and continued to throw up over the side.
When he placed a gentle hand on her back, she shrugged it off with a groan. “Oh, God, don’t.”
His gaze darted from her to briefly stare up into the dark storm clouds. It was about to rain and rain hard, and if his captain, Larry, hurried, the crew could make it safely back to the mainland before it all came down. What he needed to discuss with Kat was between them alone; he certainly didn’t need anyone else encroaching on their privacy.
He returned to Kat’s doubled-up figure and shifted uncomfortably on the deck. He should’ve thought about seasickness. She wasn’t a great sailor at the best of times, and with the added pregnancy, he wasn’t surprised she’d thrown up.
“Can I get you anything?” he said now, frowning as her thick breath rattled in her throat. It tore little pieces from him, listening to her force down the nausea, willing herself not to throw up. She hated being sick, and he’d held her hair back on more than one occasion, watching helplessly as she went through the motions while he’d soothingly rubbed her back and made the appropriate sympathetic noises.
She stayed like that, bent over the railing, unfazed by the wind and ocean spray on her face until they finally docked at Sunset Island’s small jetty twenty minutes later. As the boat edged slowly into position, Kat pulled herself upright, swiping at her mouth and swallowing thickly with a grimace.
“Bathroom,” she muttered, and he silently watched her head into the cabin.
Five minutes later, as he was going over his choices in a long lineup of conversation starters, she emerged, her face pale and grim, a swipe of lip gloss on her mouth.
When she walked out onto the deck, that weird, tumultuous, out-of-control feeling had receded, only to be replaced with trepidation. This crazy situation was totally out of his hands, and that thought freaked the hell out of him. Yet she...she looked so cool and blank as she strode toward him that he felt the sudden urge to kiss her, to dislodge that perfect composure and make her as frustrated and confused as he felt.
Stupid idea. Because Kat had made it clear she wanted to forget what they’d done all those weeks ago. And if he looked at this logically, that was the sensible thing to do. They were best friends. Throughout all their sucky personal relationships, her mother’s death, his one marriage and divorce, her two, plus the crazy media attention they always seemed to attract, their friendship endured. Sure, the papers always hinted at something more, but they’d both laughed and shrugged it off a long time ago.
Yet now, as his insides pitched with uncharacteristic uncertainty, she looked almost...calm. As if she’d already made a decision and was confident in making it.
She was so damn strong. Sometimes too strong. Just one of the things that both attracted and annoyed him.
“I don’t know what more we have to discuss,” she said now, watching his crew prepare to dock. “This is a waste of time. Plus, with the approaching cyclone, we need to let people know where we are.”
“I called the authorities before we left, plus your father, my mother and Connor,” he said calmly.
“Wow. You really planned ahead for this, didn’t you?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “All bases are covered. We’re perfectly safe.”
Her face creased with such serious doubt that he had to smother a laugh.
Safe? No way, not when her expression became suddenly tight and he knew exactly where her thoughts were going. If they were anything like his, it was back to That Night, replaying every intimate second over and over, despite his determination to shove it to the back of his mind. She didn’t want to be stuck anywhere with him, least of all in such an intimate personal space.
Her breath snapped in, eyes darkening just before she glanced away, and his groin tightened. It was incredibly arousing, knowing she was obviously remembering their crazy-hot lovemaking. Lovemaking that had, instead of quenching the hunger, only succeeded in stoking his desire for more.
His low groan was lost in the noisy preparations for docking, yet when he gently took her arm, she shot him a dark scowl and dug her heels in.
His eyebrows ratcheted up. “You’re going to stay on the boat in protest?”
“I should.”
“Well, that’s a dumb idea. A storm’s coming, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re the one who dragged me out here.”
He sighed. “Look, chérie, come to the house. If you want to yell at me, at least we’ll be safe.”
She paused, seeming to go through her limited options, until her chin went up and she shot him a glare. “Fine. But as soon as the storm’s passed, you’re taking me home.”
He almost smiled. Almost. “Okay.”
She gave him a final look then swept past him, down the gangplank and onto the rickety jetty, her heels echoing dully as he commanded his crew to take the spare vessel and return to the mainland.
* * *
They took a golf buggy to the house, efficiently moving along the road that edged the west side of Sunset Island. Just like all the times before, when the place came into sight, Kat held her breath and marveled at the architecture of the magnificent six-bedroom house. It was all glass and timber walls set in a lush tropical rain forest, with natural lines, arches and a sloping roof set on sturdy stilts, perfectly sheltered among the vegetation to avoid the fiercest storms yet taking spectacular advantage of the amazing
