The Castaway Bride (15 page)

He was tempted to laugh but fought against the impulse. “Was that so bad?”

“It seemed bad then. Everyone laughed. And it didn’t get much better. While the other kids were chowing down on turkey at Thanksgiving, I was gagging on nut roast.”

This time Matt couldn’t stifle his laughter and she glared at him. “It wasn’t funny. Teenagers want to conform, not stand out from everyone. I got out of the commune as soon as I could and I’ve never gone back.”

“You mean you don’t see your parents?”

“Of course I do. When I can catch them between their travels.”

“They travel a lot?”

“That’s the irony of it all. Dad’s handcrafted furniture he sold became so fashionable they can afford to trip around seeking enlightenment wherever they want.”

Matt pushed his hair away from his forehead. “That’s some story. I’d like to hear more. Your parents sound great.” So very different from his own.

“They are great. But I don’t want to live my life their way and they still can’t see why not.” She jutted out her chin, giving her face an immovable, stubborn look.

“So that’s why they didn’t come to your wedding?”

Cristy stood up, taking a few steps away from him. “That’s a different story.”

“What do you mean a different story?”

She shrugged. “It’s no great mystery,” she said, without meeting his eyes. “The wedding was arranged in a hurry. They were in India.”

“I don’t buy that. Surely they’d fly to Australia for their daughter’s wedding.”

Cristy whipped around to face him. “If you must know, according to them the only reason for marrying is to be head over heels in love. They were disappointed in me. Couldn’t give the marriage their blessing.”

“So they knew you were marrying for money?”

Her eyes flashed. “You don’t get it, do you? Even though I told you how I felt about Howard. How I thought love would come after the wedding?”

Matt wanted to believe her. To be sure she wasn’t like the women who had made him so cynical about marriage—and fortune hunters.

She looked thoughtful. “I argued with Mom and Dad, told them I knew what I was doing.” She chewed on her lower lip. “But now I wonder if they were right.”

Relief flooded over him. Cristy was different. He knew she was.

“But who wants to talk about that?” she said, turning away. “It’s past tense. There wasn’t a wedding. So my motives don’t matter any more, do they?”

She closed the subject by walking away from him down to the water and stooping over to splash her face—giving Matt a tantalizing view of her slender thighs and the cheeks of her bottom that just started him wanting her all over again.

C
risty let the cold water run over her face. Her lips felt swollen from Matt’s kisses, her face reddened from his beard. She shivered with remembered pleasure of their lovemaking.

If that was lust, then what had she been running away from all these years? She couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt as satisfied, as fulfilled and—yes—as darn happy. Great sex had a lot going for it.

So why, when she’d just accepted the value of lust, had she started thinking about love all of a sudden?

The story of old Seth Hamilton had really gotten to her; started her thinking about things she’d never given much thought to before.

Like love that lasted a lifetime. And loyalty. And sharing. All the stuff she’d never considered when she was about to front up at the altar to say, “I do” to Howard Randolph Templetton III.

The stuff her mom had yelled at her was so important.

But what did that have to do with Matt Slade? Who knew if she’d ever see him again when they got off this island. He’d go his own way and she… where would she go?

Probably back to the States. What was there here for her in Australia with her job gone? She hadn’t really had much chance to think about it. Her visa might not even be valid if she wasn’t working for Howard’s company.

She sighed inwardly. Matt was so easy to talk to. But she’d better watch what she said; all this talk of love could lead her into dangerous waters. Waters she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be paddling in as they made her start to think about how she’d been living her life.

She cupped some water in her hands, ran up the shore and flung it in droplets on Matt’s bare brown back, laughing as he reacted to its coldness with a howl.

He grasped her by the ankles and captured her. “That’s not fair. Come here so I can take my revenge.”

Laughing, she acquiesced without a struggle as he pulled her back down to on the sand. He kissed her and she melted against him, kissing him back, the embers of passion ready to blaze into flames again at his touch. “If that’s revenge I’ll have to provoke you more often,” she murmured.

His hand slid to her breast and her nipples pebbled in response, her body arching towards him. But as he tugged at her dress, she pulled away, breathless.

“Before we make love again I’d like to know some more about you,” she said.

She’d never made love with a stranger before and wasn’t too sure of the etiquette when you’d shared bodies before you’d shared life stories. Heck, she didn’t even know what kind of music he liked, or his favorite ice cream flavor. Stuff you usually sorted on a first date.

She picked up his hand, tracing the calluses that roughened the palms and the pads of his fingers. “These, for instance, tell me you work with your hands.”

“I’m a builder.”

“A builder? I’d whistle when I walked past your construction site any time.”

Her breath caught as she imagined him wearing tight shorts that showed butt cleavage when he leaned over, a leather tool apron, his legs long and strong and ending in sturdy boots. She’d whistle all right.

Matt laughed. “I don’t work much on site these days. But I started off as a bricklayer and laying bricks is tough on the hands.”

“So you—?”

“I’m more of a manager these days. I have my own company.”

“Constructing houses or big buildings?”

“Both.”

Cristy sensed he wasn’t telling her the whole story. Just like when he’d sold her that tale about his dog being his best friend.

That was okay; he was entitled to his privacy over his business affairs. She could care less what he was worth, so long as he was honest. But twice he’d accused her of being a gold-digger, she couldn’t risk sounding mercenary by pressing for more details.

She decided to keep the conversation more general. “Do you enjoy your business?”

“Yeah. I do. Or I did.”

“You did? Why—?”

Matt took her by the shoulders and twisted her to face him. His eyes were dark and serious. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this.”

“Because I’m a good listener?”

The darkness left his eyes and he laughed again. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t talked to anyone about it before and we may not see each other again after this.”

Why did those words hurt? They shouldn’t. They were strangers taking some no-strings fun together, never pretending there was a tomorrow for them.

“So we’ve got, like, the privacy of the confessional?” She made her voice as carefree as possible.

“You could say that. Although I’m not talking about anything sinful.” His brow furrowed. “Or am I?”

She pulled away from him. “What do you mean?”

He picked up a stick and began drawing circles with it in the sand. “My brother Danny worked for me. I had a girlfriend. She and Danny had an affair and tried to embezzle from me. I reported them to the police.”

“You reported your own brother?” Cristy couldn’t help her voice from reverberating with shock.

He dug into the sand. “Yeah. And I haven’t stopped feeling bad about it since.”

“But if he did the dirty on you…”

“He’s a lawyer. I reported him to the Law Society. It didn’t do great things for his career.”

“But a lawyer embezzling from his own brother. He deserved to be reported.”

“I thought so too, at the time. I was angry.”

“And hurt.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“So you ran away? On your boat?”

“Ran away? No. I just needed time out to think.” His voice was gruff.

Cristy found herself tracing with her toe the circles Matt had drawn in the sand. “And what about your girlfriend?” She held her breath for his answer.

“Julia?” He snapped the stick in half and threw it in the bush. “She proved her true colors. She was in it with Danny for the money. It was all her idea. But she didn’t care for him any more than she cared for me. He was devastated.”

She breathed out. “So that hurt, too, huh?”

Shutters came down over his eyes. “I was well rid of her.”

Why did her heart contract so painfully at the thought of Matt with another woman? Someone who was important enough to cause the pain that showed on his face, no matter how he tried to mask it. “Did you love her?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought I did. She was fun—or she was until I made it clear I wasn’t going to marry her. She wanted a meal ticket. So she tried my brother instead.”

“You sound very… harsh when you say that.” Cristy looked at her toes circling in the sand.

Matt was silent for a moment. The waterfall thundered, the wind rustled through the trees, a lone bird sang out. Then he drew her close, put his finger under her chin and forced her to look up at him.

His voice was husky. “I told you Cristy, I’m not the romantic type.”

She could see the struggle on his face. This wasn’t coming easily to him. “And I’m not the settling-down type either. I don’t know that I’ve got it in me.”

“Got what in you?” Why was he telling her this? Warning her off?

“What it takes to make a commitment. To stick around when the going gets tough.” He was very close and she could see a nerve pull at the corner of his mouth, a vein throb in his temple.

“What do you mean?”

Matt stood back from her. “My dad didn’t have what it takes and I might not either. He walked out on my mother and me when I was just a kid.”

Cristy frowned. “So how does it follow that you’re the same? You’re you, not your dad.”

His laugh was cynical. “True. But I’ve been told all my life how like him I am.”

“By your mom?”

“Yeah. I look like him.”

“He must have been very handsome.”

He seemed taken aback at her words. Then he smiled, a slow grin. “I guess you mean that as a compliment.”

“I guess I do,” she said. Surely he couldn’t be unaware of how devastatingly good-looking he was? Of how just looking at him made her melt inside?

“Being told I was like my father was not a compliment from my mother, I can assure you. She blamed him for everything that was wrong with her life.”

Cristy could see the shadow of pain behind his eyes. “And blamed you, too, huh?” This big, hunky man obviously hadn’t had an easy life and his show of vulnerability made her yearn to reach out to him.

He shrugged his shoulders in dismissal. “I’m a big boy now—I don’t stress out about what my mother thinks of me. She’s what she is. Danny was always her favorite and I never begrudged him that.”

Her parents had never played favorites—or if they had, she’d never been aware of it. “I think that’s appalling. You shouldn’t play your kids off against one another. Your mom sounds… well, she doesn’t sound very nice.”

“On the contrary. She’s charming. You’d like her.”

How could he say that so cheerfully? She couldn’t bear to think of the pain he must have gone through as a kid—with the chocolate-and-condom-obsessed Danny being favored over him all the time.

“I most certainly would not. If you think I’d be friendly to anyone who’d been so mean to you, think again. And as for Danny, he deserves everything you did to him and more. If I met him I’d let him know what I thought of him. I’d…”

She faltered to a halt. Those were not the words of a woman speaking about a casual lover. They were the words of someone who cared about her man. Who’d fight and kick and claw for him.

She swallowed hard, tried to backtrack in her mind. She’d just discovered lust: delicious, carefree lust. So when had it gone and turned into troublesome, unpredictable love?

Because she was as certain as she would ever be of anything that she was falling in love with Matt Slade.

M
att stared at Cristy, amazed beyond speech at her show of loyalty to him. He wasn’t used to people standing up for him—especially a woman. All his life he’d had to fight his own battles.

To see lovely Cristy, her eyes shining with indignant anger on his behalf, was a sight he’d never forget. It was like a gift to him. A gift that somehow warmed part of his heart that had been frozen for a long, long time.

“Thank you,” he said, and reached out to stroke her face, her skin smooth and warm beneath his callused fingers.

Color flooded her cheeks and she seemed unable to meet his eyes. She bit her lower lip—her soft, sensuous lip that he longed to taste again.

“I appreciate what you just said.” He bent to kiss her.

Cristy pulled away from him and nervously fluttered her hands. She spoke way too fast.

“It was nothing. Silly of me really. I’m sure your mom is a very nice lady. And Danny, well, he sounds like a great guy. If you like guys who lay their brother’s girlfriends, that is.”

But try as Cristy might to backtrack on what she had said, she couldn’t take the joy of it away for him. She’d acted on instinct—and that instinct had been to believe in him.

How could he have ever placed her in the same category as women like Julia? Cristy Walters was unique. Beautiful inside as well as out. A forever kind of woman.

She was Miss Perfect all right—Miss Perfect-For-Him.

But he was a never-settle-down kind of guy. Yet—was it that irksome white charger at work again?—the thought of life with one woman, if that woman were Cristy Walters, didn’t seem quite so impossible as it had once.

But he’d fought against feelings like that for so long, he now didn’t know how to accept them.

He started to say something, to try and tell her how she was making him feel. Then Cristy leaned down to wipe some sand off her feet and her outsize diamond ring flashed blindingly in the sun. Flashed out a message: this woman was promised to another man. He choked off his words before he made a fool of himself.