your call. Do you want to go another round with her?”
“Is that a serious question?” She spoke between her teeth and he almost smiled because he suspected he was the lesser of two evils, which was a refreshing change for a man who usually found himself the greater of the two.
“I should probably warn you that at least ten locals currently have eyes on us, including Rita Fisher. She spreads gossip like butter on dinner rolls. You climb into my car and you know what they’ll be saying.”
“I don’t care if the whole damn island is lining up for front-row seats for whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing,” she said. “Get me out of here.”
They made it to the SUV he’d left unlocked and there was still no sign of Mel.
Brittany shot in so fast she almost scratched the paintwork and he gave a faint smile as he strolled around the car and slid into the driver’s seat.
“So it’s not just spiders. Never thought you’d be afraid of Mel.”
“I’m not afraid, but I don’t want to kill her on my first day home. I’ll alienate the islanders.”
He’d lived that way his whole life and she must have been thinking the same thing because she sent him a glance and sighed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
“It’s been a hard morning, that’s all. I’m a little tired of people sympathizing with me.”
“They’re all sorry about your wrist.”
“It has nothing to do with my wrist.” She muttered the words under her breath but he caught them anyway and wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him that his presence would cause her a problem.
“They’ve said something to you?”
“No.” She answered a little too quickly and he wondered for the millionth time in his life why people couldn’t just attend to their own business and leave others alone.
I don’t care what anyone thinks. I want you to be the first, Zach. Do anything. All of it.
The memory came from nowhere and messed with his concentration.
He gave himself a mental shake, trying to delete the image of her naked. He wished he hadn’t broken into her cottage when he’d heard her scream. He should have called the emergency services and gotten the hell out of there. Then he wouldn’t have seen her wet and gleaming from the shower.
“What are you waiting for? Drive, or I’ll push you out and drive myself.” She spoke through her teeth and he snapped back into the present and glanced at her face.
“I’ll drive, but you need to smile or we’ll have the law on us.”
“Why would the law care whether I’m smiling?”
“Because the good people of Puffin Island will want to be reassured that you came with me of your own free will and that I didn’t kidnap you with the intention of taking you back to my lair so that I can do bad things to you.” The engine roared to life. “Again.”
“Again?”
“They’ve never forgiven me for corrupting you the first time around.”
Her gaze held his for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary and he knew she was remembering exactly what he’d done to her in the dark of her bedroom that first night.
He remembered it, too. Every stroke. Every gasp. The softness of her. The addictive combination of eager and innocent. The breathless exploration of untouched flesh. She’d given and he’d taken. All of it. Everything she’d offered, without hesitation or conscience. Back then he’d seen life as black-and-white, good and bad. She’d said yes and he’d seen no reason to hold back.
It was only with the benefit of maturity he’d begun to see the world in shades of gray.
Almost incinerated by a rush of sexual heat, he shifted in his seat.
He might have thought he was the only one suffering if it hadn’t been for the slight change in her breathing.
Their eyes held and they shared a look that said a thousand times more than words.
Then she turned away and fixed her eyes on the road.
“There was no corruption, just choice. Mine. Let’s go.”
He drove away from the busy hub of the harbor and took the forest road that wound upwards through the center of the island. In places the road narrowed to the width of one car and in the winter it was usually impassable except by snowmobile.
It was one of Zach’s favorite places. Over a thousand acres of rolling mixed forest, interspersed with rustic trails peppered by roots and rocks, hidden ponds and streams gushing full with silvery water. Here pine, spruce, fir and white cedar grew together along with bunchberry and lowbush blueberry. Summer tourists rarely ventured into the interior of the island unless they were the adventurous type, preferring instead to spend their time on the beaches near the harbor or sailing in the sparkling waters of Penobscot Bay. As far as Zach was concerned, they were missing the best part of the island, but as the peace of the forest was part of the reason he loved it, he wasn’t about to broadcast its charms.
He took the bridge over Heron Pond and then steered left down the unmarked track that led down to Shell Bay. A squirrel bounded across the road in front of him and he stepped sharply on the breaks.
He heard the hiss of indrawn breath and turned to look at Brittany.
“You’re in pain? You taking anything for it?”
“I don’t like swallowing drugs. I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You’re the color of an oyster.”
“You’re comparing me to smelly shellfish? You always did know how to compliment a girl.” She watched as the squirrel darted up a tree. “You’ll put a spider outside and do an emergency stop for an animal, but I bet if that had been one of the islanders, you would have run right over them.”
“Depends on the islander. There are a few I’ll slow down for. So what happened to your wrist? You were demonstrating weapons? Accident with a newly discovered Greek ax?”
“Nothing so glamorous. I wasn’t looking where I was putting my feet and fell down a hole I’d been excavating a few minutes earlier.”
One of the things he’d always liked about her was her ability to laugh at herself.
“Anything interesting in the hole?”
“A few things. Cretan arrowheads. Ceramic fragments.”
“But your expertise is weapons?”
She frowned slightly, as if surprised that he knew that. “Bronze Age weapons. Aegean Bronze Age, although I dabbled in Celtic for a while.” She settled her
