probably shouldn’t include going back for another squeeze.
‘You’re right. I...er...was thrown by the level of attention. I’m not used to it.’ If anything she tried to avoid those kinds of situations where she was the focal point of interest in case people studied her too closely and spotted her secret shame.
She caught the glint of his smile in the moonlight as he looked down at her. Compared to her last port of call, she should’ve been more at ease under the cover of darkness but her birthmark may as well have been blazing under his night vision she felt so exposed here with him.
‘You’re beautiful and smart. Of course they want to know your story.’ The tone of his voice was soft enough to snuggle into, never mind the unexpected compliment almost bringing her to a swoon.
Except he was back on the move again, not lingering for a romantic smooch under the stars. She definitely watched too many movies. Probably because reality was too damn anticlimactic. She sighed, forced to gather herself together and remember this was no holiday romance, as much as she wanted to get carried away as far from real life as possible.
He didn’t elaborate on what had prompted the ego boost and she had to hold her tongue to stop herself from pushing for more praise. How had he reached the conclusion she was either of those things? And did he have any interest in her beyond work and doing favours for her brother? Would it matter if he did?
The resulting silence between them stretched out to Miriama’s house, giving her time to get her head back out of the clouds. He hadn’t seen her true, vivid, scarlet colours. His assessment of her looks and personality was based on a lie. He knew nothing of the scarred woman beneath who’d been rejected time and time again.
By the time they reached her doorstep she’d firmly landed her backside back on earth with a thud. All he’d been trying to do was illustrate how ridiculous her assumptions had been. He probably hadn’t even meant what he’d said but it had been so long since a man had paid her a compliment she’d taken it and twisted it into something it wasn’t. She blamed the kava. Apart from the numbness and the tingles, she’d add delusions to the list of side effects. She’d have to remember to ship a crate of the stuff back to England with her.
* * *
To Joe, the short walk to Miriama’s seemed twice as long as usual. That was the trouble with island life. It was too easy to get caught up in the beauty of the surroundings. They should really think about investing in some streetlights here. The electric hum and fluorescent orange glare might have made this feel less like a walk home after a first date than the moonlight and the sound of the sea.
All he’d intended to do was put her mind at ease that the people here weren’t perhaps as...duplicitous as those she may have encountered recently. Instead, those careless few words had given away his less-than-platonic thoughts about having her here. Now he was watching her in the dim light of the doorway, pouting and tracing the outline of her lips with her fingertips.
‘What are you doing?’ He cocked his head to one side, fixated by her fascinating courtship display. If this was designed to pique his interest even further, it was working. His whole body was standing to attention as he followed the soft lines of her mouth, envying the manicured nail that got to touch them.
‘Just checking my lips are still there since I can’t feel them any more.’ She poked her pink tongue out, parting her lips to dampen them, leaving them moist and a temptation too great to ignore any longer.
He stepped forward to give her a soft peck on the lips. Enough to satisfy his curiosity but insufficient to quell the rising swell of desire inside.
If he didn’t break away soon this would change from a simple goodnight kiss into something steamier and liable to offend Miriama. Especially as Emily wasn’t protesting against this.
‘Yup. They’re still there. Goodnight, Emily.’ He turned his back on her and walked away so he couldn’t see the dazed look in her eyes and her still-parted lips, although the sight and taste of her would probably be seared in his brain forever.
He ditched all thoughts of going to bed and chose the path back down to the beach instead. There was no point trying to go to sleep when adrenaline was pulsing through his whole body. That had been a dumb move, an impulsive one, one born of pure instinct and lack of judgement. He’d wanted to kiss her so he had, without any thought to the consequences of his actions. That spur-of-the-moment thinking was fine when it came to picking a new place to visit where no one but him would come a cropper if he made the wrong decision. When it came to kissing emotionally fragile divorcees related to his best friend it had the potential to get messy.
He lifted a pebble from the beach and threw it, watching it skim the surface of the water before disappearing into the darkness along with his common sense. He pitched another and another, venting his anger at himself in the only way possible without punching something. In the end he stripped off his clothes and chucked himself into the sea to cool off. Late-night skinny-dipping had often been a way for him to unwind but tonight it was his attempt to cleanse himself of his transgression. He didn’t kiss women because he’d made an emotional connection with them, he kissed them because he wanted to. This was a woman he was going to be working with closely for the next two weeks and he was in serious trouble if he couldn’t go one evening without controlling himself around her.
He dipped his head below the surface but even as he scrubbed his face with his hands he knew the cold salty water couldn’t wipe away the taste and feel of her lips on his. The damage was already done. All he could do now was add it to the list of mistakes he carried with him and hope Emily didn’t expect anything more from him than medical input and local knowledge. He’d hate to disappoint her as well as himself.
* * *
Emily suspected the local brew had a lot to do with her falling asleep the minute her head touched the pillow and the weird dreams that followed. She spent the night imagining she was stranded on a desert island with a hunky sea captain who looked suspiciously like Sgt Joe Braden coming to her rescue. There was no need to overanalyse it. It was simply her mind trying to make sense of the day’s events, and better than spending all night worrying about what sort of creatures lurked in her small room, or thinking about that kiss.
Joe more than likely left dazed women in his wake with his throwaway kisses every day and would have no clue of the impact it had made on her. It was silly really to obsess over something so fleeting, but up until last night her husband had been the only man she’d ever kissed.
She remembered every tiny detail of the brief connection between her and Joe. The firm but tender pressure of his mouth on hers, the bitter taste of kava lingering on his lips and her body frozen while her veins burned with fire.
The past eighteen months had made her a jaded divorcee so she shouldn’t have had her head turned so easily. She really needed to work on building up those walls if she was being a fangirl over a peck on the lips from a glorified babysitter.
Today was the start of her placement alongside last night’s fantasy figure. There was no room for schoolgirl crushes when she was already on edge about working here. She’d risen with the sun, showered with the aid of a bucket of cold water, breakfasted on bread and jam with Miriama, and checked on Joni, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. As she walked towards the medical centre she tried to focus on the positives instead of the nerves bundling in her stomach.
The sky was the brightest blue she’d ever seen, her skin was warmed by the sun and she’d swapped her usual restrictive formal attire for a strappy pink sundress and flats. She was confident in her work and her capabilities, it was more the personal aspects
