When Lilah awoke, she was alone. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked around. Sunlight filtering in through the chinks in the hut turned dustmotes into sparkling gems. The disorder of the palm fronds that served as both floor and bedding were physical reminders that last night she had slept with Joss.
Joss.
A small smile played about her lips. Sometime during the course of the afternoon before, she'd come to a realization. She was so madly in love with him that the mere sight of those broad bronzed shoulders was enough to make her heart quake.
She couldn't marry him. What he was made that quite impossible. She had accepted the reality of that. But she could love him. For a little while. For as long as they were on the island. An enchanted world, for the two of them alone. Something to remember when she was old, when she had been married to Kevin for years and her children were grown and Heart's Ease had enjoyed another fifty years of prosperity.
When they were rescued they would go their separate ways. That was how it had to be. But for now, just for now, just for once in her life, she would indulge herself. She would love him. Just for a little while.
The only difficulty seemed to be letting him know how she felt.
She'd tried the night before, creeping close to him as they settled down to sleep. He had resolutely ignored her, keeping his back turned and fighting his impulses heroically. But he had trembled as if he had had a fever.
Another smile curled her mouth. Whatever he might think, she was not so ignorant as not to know what that meant. He wanted her, but he was determined not to do anything about it no matter how she tempted him.
He was a gentleman. But she had thrown her cap over the windmill and discovered, to her joyous astonishment, that deep inside she was no lady. Not where he was concerned. The knowledge that they had only this little time together had made her bold.
What he'd said about "fond" being cold comfort when two people were in bed together had started her thinking.
Never in her life had she felt about a man the way she felt about Joss. From the very first moment she'd set eyes on him, so dashing and debonair as he had appeared to her then, an instant attraction had quivered to life between them. Even when the truth about him had been revealed, the attraction had never died. It had grown, fed on nothing but glimpses of him. It had flourished, despite her efforts otherwise. And he felt it too. She'd seen it in his eyes every time he'd looked at her: in the gazebo at Boxhill; from the block at the slave auction; on the Swift Wind before he had kissed her; and here, on the island, before he had stalked away from her on the beach that first morning, before they'd had that dreadful fight and he'd kissed her so shockingly; and last night when he'd emerged naked and gloriously beautiful from the sea.
Her eyes had rivetted on him as he'd walked toward her and she got her first real look at a naked man. He was all hard muscle sheathed in bronze satin and soft fur, and her heart had started to pound as shed stared.
If she was never again in her life going to feel this way about a man, shed better do something about it. Or she would go to her grave mourning the wonderful shimmering gift that life had offered her and she had spurned.
What was between them couldn't be forever. Heart's Ease and her father and Kevin were forever.
But Joss could be for now.