And it reminded me I could probably stand to clean up, too. Giving her a wink, I grabbed her toiletry bag and went down to the waters to enjoy the modern pleasures of toothpaste and shampoo. Our lagoon teemed with fish: tuna, marlin and a few other tropical varieties. We were in a current-day Garden of Eden.
Back up, I was rewarded with her admiring glance. If she got to wear a bikini, it was my turn to strip down to just my boxer briefs. Humid and at least in the high eighties, it honestly was the way to go. And it gave us so much more skin to explore at all times.
Wrapping my hands around her waist, I leaned down for a kiss. “You clean up good.”
“So do you.” She had a small dimple when she smiled and I brushed my knuckle against it, then gave it a kiss.
“I wanted to say,” I began, “I’m not sure I’ve told you yet how much you impressed me when all hell broke loose in the plane. Lots of people would have panicked.”
“Oh, I was panicking,” she assured me.
“But you didn’t show it. You did what needed to be done, got our life preservers on, took out the raft. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“I think I was in shock.” She shook her head, still denying the compliment.
“I’m grateful to have you here with me.” I kissed her again, this time deeper, letting her feel how much I meant it. She smelled like fresh flowers and pressed against me, all soft curves.
“I must still be in shock,” she murmured. “Because I’m almost glad I’m here with you.”
“We did both need to get away from it all.” Somehow it struck us both funny at the same time and, the stress and strain we’d been under melted into deep laughter. We doubled over, leaning against each other for support.
“We sure did that.” She gasped for breath, holding her stomach, wiping her eyes.
“Come on. Want to see more of the island?” Much as I hated to do it, I gave her my dress shirt as a cover-up over her bikini. I didn’t want her getting sunburned, and I did have a T-shirt I could wear.
But our walk, showing her the other side of the island, had the opposite effect I was hoping for. I looked around and saw how gorgeous it all was. But Caroline looked around and realized from that shoreline no other islands were visible. Nothing but a blank stretch of pure blue sea and open sky.
“I don’t want to die here,” she said in a small voice, staring into the void.
“That’s not going to happen,” I tried to assure her, taking her into my arms again. But she stayed rigid with panic.
“I’m only 26. There’s so much I haven’t done yet!” she cried. “I’ve never been to Paris! I’ve never had an orgasm during sex! I haven’t even finished binge watching Outlander season two! Claire was starting to annoy me. She can be really selfish, so I stopped watching, but I always meant to go back and now I can’t!”
“So, let me see if I can get your bucket list straight.” Hands on her shoulders, I looked into her eyes. “First, Paris. That’s easy. I’ll take you there next week.”
“How can you?” Her eyes were wide with anxiety. “We’re stuck here forever. We’ll be skeletons.”
“That’s only if a shark doesn’t attack and eat us first. No remainders, then.” She gave me a horrified look. “I can’t have fun?” I asked her.
“No!”
“Even though we’re going to get rescued and we have everything we need to survive for the time being?” I held her to my chest and I could feel her relax a bit, the crest of her anxiety ebbing. “Now, back to your bucket list. The last item was something about a TV series?”
“A very important series based on a series of books.” She sounded defensive, and slightly amused. Which was a vast improvement on panicked.
“Oh, I understand. Let me ask, is this series a romance?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it ends happily.”
“You don’t understand. It’s very complicated. There’s time travel.”
“Still going with a happy ending.”
“You’re such a spoiler.” She smacked me on the arm.
“But wait, there’s one last item on your list I’m interested in discussing.”
She squirmed slightly in my embrace. She knew what I was talking about. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You didn’t actually need to pay attention to my outburst.”
“I always pay attention when an orgasm is mentioned.”
“Or the lack of one.” She sounded slightly forlorn.
“So, never during sex?” I had a hard time believing it. She was such a melting pool of warm, delicious sensuality. But the caveman in me liked knowing I’d be the first to do that for her. Because there was no question. It would happen.
“No.” She shrugged, acting casual. She wasn’t fooling me. “It’s not that unusual. Lots of women don’t achieve orgasm through intercourse.”
“That might be your problem right there.” I diagnosed her. “Are you calling it intercourse? Because that’s the least sexy word I’ve ever heard.” She started laughing. “That’s better.” I rubbed her back, happy I was able to get her more relaxed. “But anyway, about your orgasms.”
“You can forget about that.” She waved her hand, dismissively. As if.
“That’s not going to happen. Remember, I’ve watched you orgasm before. It’s pretty unforgettable.” She looked down, but I saw that dimple re-appear on her cheek. I’d made her smile. “In fact, I’ve had it on my mind a lot.”
“We’ve got a lot of other things to think about,” she tried admonishing me. “Like survival. Ooh, what are those?” In a classic diversion technique, she pointed at something and dashed off to it. It was interesting, though, a large branching tree with what looked like bright red seedpods.
“What are they?” she asked, cupping one in her hand.
I pulled it off and broke it open. “I think they’re almonds.” I pulled a brown oval nut out and tried it. Delicious. We harvested a few more pods, as well as some more dried husks for fire tinder, and found our way back to our cave.
As we walked, she got me talking about myself, how long I’d been at the helm of Kavanaugh Investors, the path I’d traveled straight and serious for as long as I could remember. I didn’t think twice about it. It was simply what was expected of me, and I rose to the call of duty.
“So this whole nowhere to be, no deadline to meet thing is pretty weird for you, too?”
I’d never experienced anything like it, and it turned out neither had she.
“You and I are a lot a like,” I realized as we sat and sorted our finds back at the cave.
“Is it my Harvard MBA degree? Or my billion-dollar business?” she teased. The mouth on that one. I liked it for so many reasons. “No, I know what it is.” She nodded. I waited for the sass. “It’s my royal title.”
“Laugh if you want, but I mean it. I’ve seen how hard you work. How you take care of your sister. You do what’s expected of you and more, too.”
She sat back on her heels, appearing to give my statement more consideration than I’d thought she would. “I have taken on a lot.”
With my urging—and as she put it with nowhere to go and no deadlines to meet—she started telling me about it, how her parents had essentially taken off, leaving her to care for her 13- and 15-year-old sister and brother when she’d only been 18.
“That’s outrageous!” I sounded angrier than she did. Her calm resignation made me even madder. “How could they do that to you?”
But even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. Shitty parenting happened all the time. My parents hadn’t exactly shouldered their parenting responsibilities the whole way through, either. They’d just had more resources and extended family to fall back on. I’d seen it all around me, too, kids sent to boarding school who essentially never saw their parents, spending the summer off on expensive sailing excursions and tours of Roman ruins. They’d never admit it, but I bet all of us at 14 would have traded all of
it for a simple meal at home with a parent who cared.
Not that I’d ever spent time feeling sorry for myself. I’d been given way too much, for one. And perhaps even more importantly, what good did it do?
“Do you resent them?” I had to ask, even more fascinated with this woman than I already had been. She had such a depth of strength to her.
“No,” she answered immediately, and I already felt I knew her well enough to sense she was telling the truth. “Zoe and I are so close. And all resentment does is eat away at you. It doesn’t make sense. But I do hope, now that she’s older, maybe I can start making more of my own choices.”
“Having more fun?” I asked, a hopeful note in my voice. I knew how to show her a good time.
“You could probably stand that, too,” she agreed, wrapping her arms around my neck. I leaned down again, kissing her neck, my fingers already at those bikini ties just begging to be untied.
Then her stomach growled. We laughed, my chin against her forehead. “You need food.” I kissed her head. So many bodily needs to satisfy. I had to remind myself, they’d all get met in good time. But first, food.