His advent on the island was still a good thing. Anything that distracted Archer and kept him busy was a benefit. “How long are you staying with us, Mr. Gunnison?” she inquired, reaching for her glass of wine.
Before she realized it Archer had snatched the wineglass from her hand, just as she inhaled the bouquet from a very fine cabernet. “Oh, no, my darling!” he chided, clearly ignoring the fact that he’d ordered her a gin and tonic earlier. “You know you shouldn’t combine the wine with all those painkillers you take. I’ll have to talk to the servants—there shouldn’t have been a wineglass at your place setting, and they should know that by now.”
Hardly, Sophie thought testily, since she hadn’t been at the table for God knew how long. Before she could respond, Malcolm answered her question.
“I expect to be here a week or so,” he said.
Excellent! She couldn’t have asked for better timing. “How lovely,” she said in her breathiest voice, batting her eyes at him. If Archer wanted games, then she could play them.
To her shock she thought she saw a flicker of reaction in those very green eyes of his, one of amusement. A moment later it was gone, and she knew she’d imagined it. Malcolm Gunnison didn’t give a damn what she said or what she did, and he presumably had no sense of humor at all. Few of Archer’s confederates did.
Gunnison’s good manners didn’t extend to dinnertime conversation. He and Archer spent the entire time conferring, leaving Sophie to concentrate on the first steak dinner she’d had in recent memory. It was absolutely worth it—Archer always had the best. The wine would have been lovely with it, but she let go of that particular injury. There were fresh asparagus, crusty rolls, new potatoes, and a lemon tart of such lightness that Sophie could have devoured the entire thing. Her midnight workouts left her with a strong appetite, one she couldn’t assuage with the bland garbage Rachel brought to her. When she got off this fucking island, she was going to eat like a pig.
So she ate slowly, cherishing every bite, pushing the sound of their voices—Archer’s upper-class, Eastern Seaboard drawl mixed with Malcolm’s cool, British accent—into the distance. She was half-aware of the stranger’s voice—there was something inherently delicious about it, the depth and timbre of it, as well as the accent. Too bad he was clearly a cold-blooded criminal, probably a sociopath like her husband.
Then again, he was very good-looking, with those piercing green eyes. It explained the odd pull she felt, the fascination. That, or she’d developed a taste for murderous psychopaths. The thought was depressing.
Not that he was paying any attention to her. She might as well be invisible, though she had little doubt he’d instantly rise when she left the table.
“Are you ready for bed, darling?” Archer interrupted her confusing thoughts. “I know how it tires you to come downstairs, and I wouldn’t want you to overdo.”
So they were ready to get down to the nitty-gritty and didn’t want her around to hear. Fine with her. She’d go upstairs and watch The Walking Dead again, knowing full well that the man—the men—downstairs were a hell of a lot scarier than phony zombies.
She set her face in an expression of weary gratitude. As usual, energy was pumping through her, and she could have stayed up for hours, but she knew the role she had to play. “I hate to admit it,” she said faintly, “but I really do need to retire. I’m sorry to leave you two on your own, but I’m certain you have a lot to talk about.” She began to roll back from the table, wishing she’d thought to tuck some rolls beside her, but then they’d fall out when Joe carried her upstairs. Maybe next time, if there was a next time, she’d wear something with an empire waist so she could tuck extra food inside her bra.
Malcolm rose, and this time Archer joined him, moving to give her a chaste kiss on the forehead. “I won’t join you tonight then,” he said regretfully, and relief flooded her. Not that she had expected him to come up that night—she’d sometimes gone months without seeing him—but sooner or later she was going to pay for her subtle misbehavior with pain, not with sex. Chances were that he’d wait until his guest had left, but she’d already be long gone.
Her room was hot, stuffy, when Joe deposited her back inside, and he went and started the air-conditioning before turning back to her. “Anything I can do for you, missus?” He insisted on calling her that, much as she hated it.
Sophie laughed wryly. “Bring me some more of the lemon tart,” she said, “and maybe a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food to go with it.”
At least Joe wasn’t a man to hide his thoughts or feelings. His mouth widened in a conspiratorial grin. “I can do that. You wouldn’t be able to finish the whole pint of ice cream, though, and the rest would melt.”
“Wanna bet?”
“I’ll send Elena up. Mr. Archer will be too busy with his guest to notice.”
So Joe knew she was under restricted rations too, and he didn’t mind breaking the rules in small ways. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her if he was ordered to, but he’d be very sad about it for a few days.
Elena arrived by the time she’d stripped off her clothes and pulled her nightgown around her, zombies already streaming. Elena didn’t make the mistake of questioning Sophie’s ability to devour an entire pint of ice cream—after all, she was a woman. And she’d brought up at least half the torte.
Sophie was the prisoner of a psychopath, trapped on an island, in a wheelchair, with criminals and killers all around her. But right now she had zombies and ice cream, and she intended to enjoy every minute of it.
Chapter Four
Mal looked at the man he was going to kill and smiled pleasantly. “She’s quite lovely.”
“My wife?” Archer MacDonald said disingenuously, looking after her departing figure. “She is, isn’t she? She’s had a hard time the last few years since the . . . accident, but she never complains.”
“Accident?” All this was news to Mal, and he cursed the faulty intel that had sent him into this situation half-blind, though it was no one’s fault but his own. It had been up to him to make sure all the information he had was up to date and correct, and he’d spent the past month in New Orleans working on it. Clearly he hadn’t spent long enough, but he’d been itching to get to work.
For a moment he wondered whether Archer would change the subject, but eventually the man grimaced, poured a little more scotch into his own glass and into Mal’s, and set the bottle back on the table. “She was shot by accident. Someone was trying to kill me,” he said.
Mal raised his eyebrows. He didn’t bother asking why—both of them were aware of Archer’s true nature and his business interests. He had enemies by the score. “How did they get so close?”
“I’d overestimated how safe I was here on the island. It hasn?
??t happened again.”