hearing problem.”
Lola didn’t even try to hide her smile. “Or maybe you’re not top dog.”
“Honey, there is no question about who is top dog around here.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe I’m top dog.”
He rocked back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I know you’d like to think you are, but you don’t have the right equipment to be top dog.”
She didn’t suppose he was talking about the equipment in the duffel bag. He was so delusional and male, she laughed. “What equipment is that?”
“I think we both know.” His gaze slipped down the buttons of her dress, over her breasts, to the bunch of cherries covering her crotch. “Or maybe you need me to show you,” he said, and lines appeared in the corners of his teasing blue eyes.
“I’ll pass.”
He shrugged as if to say,
“Stay there,” he said, and set the duffel bag on the other side. Then he came back for Lola and straddled the stream, with a foot on each side of the bank. She could have crossed the stream on her own, but when he reached for her hand, she took it as she had last night and all morning. Their palms touched and little tingles traveled up her wrist. As she stepped over the stream, she looked up into his eyes. And there it was again. The heated flicker of desire. The dark hunger in his light-blue eyes that he couldn’t hide. The craving that stirred passion deep in her stomach.
He dropped his gaze as he dropped her hand. “Is your dog getting heavy?”
Baby weighed somewhere between five and six pounds, but after a while, he made her shoulder ache. “A little.”
Max took the purse from her and placed the strap over his head and one shoulder. He reached for the duffel and started out again. Lola wished she had a camera to take a picture of Max carrying a purse with Baby’s head sticking out of it, the dog’s spiked collar making him look very tough. Max Zamora, carrying the dog he’d once threaten to drop-kick into the Atlantic. Somewhere beneath that hard, well-developed exterior, Max was a pussycat.
Baby chose that moment to let out a bark. He struggled to jump out of the purse.
Max placed a restraining hand on the dog. “If you make me chase you again, B. D., I’m going let that iguana eat you.”
Well, maybe not a pussycat, but he wasn’t quite the bad guy he wanted everyone to believe he was.
It took them another ten minutes or so to reach the highest part of the island, a breathtaking plateau heavy with Caribbean pines and rich foliage. They moved toward its edge and gazed over the side. The back of the island was less hospitable than the front, with jagged cliffs and vertical slopes. Pines and palms, but no Club Med. No reclusive rock star taking a break on his private island, just miles of ocean and endless sky.
They fought their way through low bushes to the middle of the plateau and discovered a blue hole. The freshwater spring was surrounded by pines and tall grasses. The hole was approximately fifty feet across, and a slight breeze rippled the water.
Max set the purse and duffel bag on the ground and Baby crawled out to stretch his legs. Then Max knelt on a rock jutting out from the shore, cupped his hands, and drank. “Damn, that’s cold,” he said as Lola sat beside him. She reached in the duffel bag and pulled out a canteen they’d filled earlier with drinking water from the tap.
“Any thoughts on what to do now?” she asked him. The back of her dress and the bodice was still damp, and she let the pashmina fall to her waist, hoping the slight breeze might help it to dry.
“Explore a bit more, then build a huge bonfire. After the storm last night, there should be rescue planes in the air.”
“What about a beacon?” Lola asked. “I saw it on that movie with Anne Heche and Harrison Ford. They were stranded on an island and looked for some sort of beacon so they could break it. Then, supposedly, someone would come to fix it and they’d be rescued.”
“A navigation beacon?”
“Yeah, I think that was it.” She slipped off her shoes and stared down at her dirty feet. She took a thin bar of soap from her purse and scooted to the edge of the rock.
“It would have to be on the highest point and free of vegetation.” He stood and looked around, his hands on his hips. His spread fingers pointed to his crotch. “Over there, maybe,” he said, and pointed to the west.
She removed her gaze from him and stuck her feet into the cold water. “You go. Baby and I will stay here and wait for you.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded and lathered her feet with the soap. “Baby needs a rest.”
Max chuckled and once again knelt beside her. He placed his hand beneath her chin and raised her face to his. “Okay, if Baby needs a rest,” he said against her lips, and she wasn’t so certain he was talking about the dog. As natural as if she’d known him forever, she leaned into him and opened her mouth beneath his. His tongue gently made love to hers, and the kiss was soft and sweet and turned her insides all warm. She dropped the soap to the ground and raised her hand to the stubble on his cheek. She ran her fingers through his thick short hair, but he pulled back, and the kiss ended before she was ready.
“Behave,” he said, and stood.
He took the canteen, a box of Chex Party Mix, an apple, and a bag of Ritz crackers. Lola was left with a wheel of Camembert, an apple, a box of wafer-thin crackers, and a hunger that suddenly had nothing to do with food.
Chapter 8
The sun overhead had yet to reach midday, but it warmed Lola’s back and arms. She finished washing her feet and legs, then she dug around in her Louis Vuitton bag and pulled out a small compact. She stared into the small mirror and gazed at her reflection, one-quarter of her face at a time. She looked like hell and searched in her bag again until she found her essentials. A pair of tweezers, a small bottle of Estee Lauder face lotion, mascara, blusher, and a tube of pink lip gloss. As she plucked several stray hairs from the perfect arch of her brows, she told herself that she wasn’t primping for Max.
That’s what she told herself, but she wasn’t very convincing. Not when just the simple thought of his kisses sent tingles down her spine and brought warmth to her cheeks, as if she were sixteen again and had a crush on Taylor Joe McGraw, captain of the basketball team.
Taylor Joe hadn’t known she was alive, but Max did. He let her know each time he looked at her.
From about the age of fourteen she’d noticed boys and, as she got older, men, looking at her. But Max was different. What she saw in his eyes was deeper. Darker, like the pull of something sinful and forbidden, and Lola had always had a weakness for sinful things.
She brushed mascara on her lashes until they looked long and feathery, then applied her blusher and lip gloss. Once she finished with her cosmetics, she put them away and looked out across the blue hole at the pines and tall grasses. A bug flew in front of her face and she swiped it away. She was certain today was Tuesday, but so much had happened since Saturday night, it felt as if a month had passed.
Baby barked at two dragonflies and would have fallen in the water if she hadn’t grabbed him. She quickly glanced up at the sun overhead. It seemed to her that an hour had passed, and still no Max. She got up and moved their things from the buggy shore and found a nice place behind dense shrubbery and directly beneath a scrub pine. She spread her pashmina on the ground and she and Baby sat and ate crackers and cheese.
For the first time in several days, she was alone with only her dog. And without Max by her side, promising he’d make sure she returned home, she began to envision a life stuck on this island. A steady diet of reptiles and fish. The three of them growing old and crazy, Max looking as bad as Tom Hanks in
Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she had to battle back the panic that threatened to pull her under. She
