“I don’t know. The man’s spooky. He seems to know things.”
Becky squinted at the paper. “Sheesh.”
“What?”
“It’s a map. He promised it to me over a week ago. Apparently there’s a waterfall that would make a great backdrop for wedding pictures. Can you figure out this drawing?”
She handed the map back to him. It looked like a child’s map for a pirate’s treasure. Drew looked at a big arrow, and the words, Be careful this rock. Do not fall in water, please.
“I’ll come with you,” he decided.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s unnecessary.” She snatched the map back and looked at it. “Which way is north?”
“I’ll come.”
The fight went out of her. “Do you ever get tired of being the big brother?”
He thought of how tired he was of leaving Joe messages to call him. He looked at her lips. He thought of how tired he was getting of this friendship between them.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” he muttered to himself.
She sighed heavily. “If you have a fault, do you know what it is?”
“Please don’t break it to me that I have a fault. Not right now.”
“What happened?”
“I said I’m not talking about it, if you’re not talking about it.”
“Your fault is that you don’t answer questions.”
“Your fault is—” What was he going to say? Her fault was that she made him think the kind of thoughts he had vowed he was never going to think? “Never mind. Let’s go find that waterfall.”
* * *
“I don’t know,” Becky said dubiously, after they had been walking twenty minutes. “This seems like kind of a tough walk at any time. I’m in a T-shirt and shorts and I’m overheating. What would it be like in a wedding dress?”
Drew glanced at her. Had she flinched when she said wedding dress?
“Maybe her royal highness, the princess Allie is expecting to be delivered to her photo op on a litter carried by two manservants,” Drew grumbled. “I hope I’m not going to be one of them.”
Becky laughed and took the hand he held back to her to help her scramble over a large boulder.
“Technically, that would be a sedan chair,” she said, puffing.
“Huh?”
“A seat that two manservants can carry is sedan chair. Anything bigger is a litter.”
He contemplated her. “How do you know this stuff?” he asked.
“That’s what a lifetime of reading gets you, a brain teeming with useless information.” She contemplated the rock. “Maybe we should just stop here. There’s no way Allie can scramble over this rock in a wedding dress.”
He contemplated the map. “I think it’s only a few more steps. I’m pretty sure I can hear the falls. We might as well see it, even if Allie never will.”
And he was right. Only a few steps more and they pushed their way through a gateway of heavy leaves, as big and as wrinkled as elephant ears, and stood in an enchanted grotto.
“Oh, my,” Becky breathed.
A frothing fountain of water poured over a twenty-foot cliff and dropped into a pool of pure green water. The pond was surrounded on all sides by lush green ferns and flowers. A large flat rock jutted out into the middle of it, like a platform.
“Perfect for pictures,” she thought out loud. “But how are we going to get them here?”
“Wow,” Drew said, apparently not the least bit interested in pictures. In a blink, he had stripped off his shirt and dived into the pond. He surfaced and shook his head. Diamonds of water flew. “It’s wonderful,” he called over the roar of the falls. “Get in.”
Once again, there was the small problem of not having bathing attire.
And once again, she was caught in the spell of the island. She didn’t care that she didn’t have a bathing suit. She wanted to be unencumbered, not just by clothing, but by every single thought that had ever held her prisoner.
SO AWARE OF the look on Drew’s face as he watched her, Becky undid the buttons of her blouse, shrugged it off and then stepped out of her skirt.
When she saw the look on Drew’s face, she congratulated herself on her investment in the ultra-sexy and exclusive Rembrandt’s Drawing brand underwear. Today, her matching bra and panties were white with tiny red hearts all over them.
And then she stepped into the water. She wanted to dive like him, but because she was not that great a swimmer, she waded in up to her ankles first. The rocks were slipperier than she had expected. Her arms began to windmill.
And she fell, with a wonderful splash, into where he was waiting to catch her.
“The water is fantastic,” Becky said, blinking up at him.
“Yes, it is.”
She knew neither of them were talking about the water. He set her, it seemed with just a bit of reluctance, on her feet. She splashed him.
“Is that any way to thank me for rescuing you?”
“That is to let you know I did not need to be rescued!”
“Oh,” he said. “You planned to fall in the water.”
She giggled. “Yes, I did.”
“Don’t take up poker.”
She splashed him again. He got a look on his face. She giggled and bolted away. He was after her in a flash. Soon the grotto was filled with the magic of their splashing and laughter. The days of playing with him—of feeling that sense of belonging—all seemed to have been leading to this. Becky had never felt so free, so wondrous, so aware as she did then.
Finally, exhausted, they hauled themselves out onto the warmth of the large, flat rock, and lay there on their stomachs, side-by-side, panting to catch their breaths.
“I’m indecent,” she decided, without a touch of remorse.
“I prefer to think of it as wanton.”
She laughed. The sun was coming through the greenery, dappled on his face. His eyelashes were tangled with water. She laid her hand—wantonly—on the firmness of his naked back. She could feel the warmth of him seeping into her hand. He closed his eyes, as if her touch had soothed something in him. His breathing slowed and deepened.
And then so did hers.
When she awoke, her hand was still on his back. He stirred and opened his eyes, looked at her and smiled.
She shivered with a longing so primal it shook her to the core. Drew’s smile disappeared, and he found his feet in one catlike motion. As she sat up and hugged herself, chilled now, he retrieved his T-shirt. He came back and slid it over her head. Then he sat behind her, pulled her between the wedge of his legs and wrapped his arms around her until she stopped shivering.
The light was changing in the grotto and the magic deepened all around them.
“What were you upset about earlier?” he asked softly.
She sighed. “I unpacked Allie’s wedding dress.”
He sucked in his breath. “And