Terms Of Their Costa Rican Temptation

‘Are you okay?’

Skye squeaked in surprise, causing him to smirk, which just made her feel worse.

‘No, I didn’t sleep well.’

‘Because of the alcohol?’

‘Because you snore.’

The sound of Benoit slashing and sweeping through the rainforest came to a sudden halt and she looked up to find him staring at her in horror.

‘I do not snore,’ he said, sounding so indignant she couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Oh. You snore.’

‘No one’s told me—’

‘You stick around long enough to have that discussion?’ The words took her by surprise as much as Benoit from the look on his face and the racing heartbeat in her chest. Apparently, this was another symptom of the hangover. Or him. She still wasn’t sure. Either way, he chose to ignore her question.

Skye flinched as she caught her already ruined shirt on a branch and heard another tear. Back in the plane Benoit had given her privacy to change back into her clothes from the day before and she now hated the pair of jeans that had once been her favourite. They were still covered in mud from yesterday. She’d have given anything for a clean top but that, along with a lot of other things, had been left at the airport with her luggage.

They’d been walking for three hours now and she hoped that there wasn’t much more to go. At first she’d been fascinated by the steam rising from the ground of the rainforest, watching it dissipate in the heat of the morning sun. The strange bird calls, feathers fluttering high above them. But the swishing sound of Benoit’s machete had now become commonplace and she was sweaty and uncomfortable. It couldn’t be too much longer until they reached his home, could it?

She wondered what it would be like and imagined industrial steel and masculine chrome, so very different from her and her sisters’ little place in the New Forest. There was space enough for Mum to stay there when she visited, but since Skye had been able to rent a place for herself and her sisters Mariam hadn’t liked to be held down by the constraints of a home. She spent her time drifting between friends she’d met on the festival circuits, or other friends with alternative lifestyles. Mum had always been into alternative medicine, but her latest venture was candle magic. Skye loved her desperately, but couldn’t see how a candle was going to magic her back to health.

But if she found the map in time, if they found the jewels in time, if the estate could be sold in time...

A branch slapped against her cheek, shock ricocheting through her, and she wondered if Benoit had done it on purpose. For a moment she’d thought things might have thawed between them, and she’d relished the exchange of whole sentences rather than the monosyllabic sparring of their first encounter. But there was a silence between them now that made her uncomfortable. It was so different from the constant noise of her sisters, or the irregular eruptions of the machinery on the building site where her office was in Rob’s construction firm.

‘So what are you doing out here?’ she called out to Benoit.

‘You have to ask?’

She sighed. ‘No, I mean in Costa Rica. Why have you gone all...mancenary?’

‘Okay, you’re just making words up now.’

‘No, it’s like mercenary, but without the training.’

‘Is this some new form of misandry? Putting “man” in front of a word and making it a term of abuse?’ he replied, surprising her, from the look on her face. ‘Because I don’t particularly care for it. Having never disliked, mistreated or misspoken to, or about, women I’m not sure why you’re directing this at me.’

‘Did you say all that to get out of explaining why you’re in Costa Rica?’

‘Did you answer a question with a question to avoid providing an answer?’ he fired back, despite the shock sparking in his chest that she’d called him on it. Because no one did that any more. He’d imagined her getting outraged, storming off in a huff and leaving him—as usual—not having to explain himself. Skye Soames, he was beginning to see, rarely did as he expected. But, from the look in her eyes, she wasn’t going to answer so eventually he conceded, ‘I’m not good in the morning without coffee.’

‘You have coffee at the house?’

‘Coffee, food, a shower.’

She groaned out loud, the sound making the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention.

‘I’ll have the coffee, while eating a sandwich in the shower. So...you’re here to...?’

Benoit wanted to growl, and not just because she was refusing to give up the interrogation. The thought of her in his shower... He purposefully shut the door on that mental image. She was completely off-limits. If not because of her obvious innocence, then most definitely because of the idea turning in his mind like a screw.

Map. Marriage. Skye. Map. Marriage...

Perhaps he could use her interrogation to at least test the waters slightly.