Honor waited while he added his spare anchor to the first he’d dropped and then he dived headlong into the frigid depths and swam towards her. The razor edge of the dropoff threatened, but on his second attempt those powerful arms pushed him up and over into the lagoon, guiding the inflatable from behind towards the beach. The water was warmer and gentler on the island side of the reef-break, and teemed with brightly coloured fish enjoying the protection the coral band afforded. They darted, kamikaze-like, around the giant two-legged predator who’d appeared in their midst nudging the dinghy to shore.
Honor’s weary muscles pressed her along, closer to the island, and then she stood in the calf-deep splash waiting for him, breathing deeply. They couldn’t drag the inflatable far onto the shingle beach; the rocks threatened to shred it in moments. It rested instead on the fine-ground sand closer to the waterline.
Her unwanted guest emerged from the small surf, his saturated clothes glued to every muscled plane. ‘I’ve got it. Take a break.’
Nothing he could have said would have moved her sooner. She dropped the tow rope and bent for one of the parcels in the little boat, trying to disguise her puffing. ‘I’m fine. What is all this stuff, anyway?’
‘Recovery gear, mostly. Photographic equipment, sonar, GPS.’
That stopped her in her tracks.
‘You’re a raider?’ She intentionally used the derogatory term for a salvager. She watched him closely for a reaction.
Lord, what will I do if he is? They were a long way from the Cocos cluster’s five-strong police presence.
His face tightened. ‘I’m a maritime archaeologist.’
‘What’s the difference?’
One dark brow shot up. ‘The difference is,’ he grumbled as they lugged gear from the inflatable up above the high water mark, ‘one is sanctioned by the Australian Government, in accordance with the Historic Shipwrecks Act. The other is naked theft.’
‘You’re a shipwreck hunter?’
He smiled, bright and glorious. ‘I’m a shipwreck finder.’
She studied him, her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t look like an archaeologist.’ And he really, really didn’t. He looked like something from an underwear commercial.
‘You don’t look like a dugong.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing.’ He grinned and thrust out a sandy hand. ‘Robert Dalton. Rob, to my friends.’
She took it, nodding her greeting. ‘Robert.’ His smile twisted slightly. ‘I’m Honor Brier.’
‘And what are you doing all the way out here, Honor Brier? Pretty much the last place I expected to see a woman.’
‘Because of an old Malay myth that says women can’t be on this island?’
‘No. Because it’s supposed to be uninhabited.’
‘I live here eight months of the year. I oversee the turtle nesting and audit the booby colonies.’
He didn’t so much as smile at the word this time; she had to give him a bonus point for fast learning. He dumped the final box on the dune top.
‘You live here for eight months? On an island with no fresh water and no services?’ And no people. He didn’t need to say it; he wasn’t the first one to point that out to her. She shrugged.
He looked at her as if she was a little bit crazy; with no clue how close to the truth that was. ‘What do you do?’
She spoke more slowly, wondering if he’d spent so long in the looks queue at birth they might have been out of stock over in the brains department. She grabbed her side of the inflatable. ‘I supervise the nesting and audit …’
‘The boobies, I know. I meant what else do you do, to pass the time?’ He stepped to the edge of the dinghy. ‘One, two three … lift.’
They shuffled up the sand, carrying the empty inflatable over the many rocks littering the shore above the high-tide mark.
‘Nothing else—that’s it. It’s my job.’
He stared at her. ‘Alone?’
‘Yep.’ Until now.
He whistled. ‘Who’d you tick off?’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘No one! I choose to come here—I love it.’ And it was the closest point on the planet to—
She caught herself before even thinking about them in this jerk’s presence and dumped her side of the inflatable.
He cringed as it bounced on the rocks. ‘Hey, hey—’
Adonis or not, he’d be repairing a puncture, too, if he didn’t watch what he said. ‘Your stuff should be fine here until tomorrow. There are no storms forecast … tonight.’ She threw the dismissal over her shoulder, marched to where the second buoyancy sack waited by the water’s edge, hauled it over her shoulder and staggered up the beach with as much dignity as she could on the caving sand.
She turned back and saw him looking at the thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment sitting exposed on her shore. Then he grimaced and followed her as she turned up an almost unrecognisable track between the thick coconut palms fringing the dunes.
Honor shifted from foot to foot. She’d never intended anyone to see her little campsite and now a complete stranger stood in the midst of her ‘stuff'.
Two seasons ago she’d lined the little track leading from the beach with seashells so it formed a sweet pathway to camp. She’d splashed out on a designer fly-sheet for the tent—one with Van Gogh’s Sunflowers screen-printed on it—and although it did look rather odd in the middle of the tropical wilderness, the touch of whimsy pleased her. She’d even thought about planting some ground cover to help bind the fine white sand that found its way into everything, but decided against it. Pulu Keeling may well have been Australia’s smallest National Park, but it was still protected by the same regulations and restrictions afforded to the biggest mainland parks. Making a homely garden was a big conservation no-no.
So she just lived with the sand. Everywhere.
Rob gazed about him with a kind of fascination as he trailed her up from the shore. This island was her home-away-from-home, her sanctuary, and he’d been rudely dismissive of it, as though it wasn’t a rare piece of paradise with lush trees, crystalline waters and masses of wildlife.
Don’t you dare say one word. Not a word.
‘This looks pretty comfortable,’ he said in total defiance of her thought projection.
Suspicion stained the compliment. ‘Everything I need is here.’
It was true. Tent, field equipment, first aid, emergency flares, books, laptop, batteries, radio, fuelled-up generator, provisions and a mountain of ten-litre water tubs full of fresh water. Each in its designated place and each swum in across the lagoon at the beginning of every monitoring season. And swum back out empty at the end.
When he reached the edge of the campsite, he turned back to admire the view she’d been staring at for four years. Coconut trees bowed towards each other and formed a perfect picture frame for the sparkling ocean beyond the lagoon. The thirty-foot pisonia forest overhead offered protection from the worst of the weather and shade from the blazing equatorial sun.
He was silhouetted against the bright day outside the trees and Honor fought to ignore how solid and fit he looked with her lagoon as a backdrop, the wet T-shirt still clinging to his muscular back. His legs were long, contoured and as tanned as the rest of him. He was tall and lean with surfer’s shoulders. All of him was toned—sculpted but not muscle-bound. She imagined the kind of precise gym-work that went into keeping him in such balanced shape and assumed