“Did you?” he asked, against his better judgment. Of course the smell of her hair and her soft curves pressed into his body made him feel as if he had no judgment at all, wiped out by sensory overload. And yet even for that, he registered her saying she’d had a bad childhood and he ached for her. There were things even a warrior could not hope to make right.
“Terrible,” she said with a defeated sigh. “Filled with fighting and uncertainty, making up that always filled us kids with such hope and never lasted. It was terrible.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re so invested in children. Giving them the gift of happiness that you didn’t have. You do have that gift, you know. So engaged with them, so genuinely interested in them.”
“Did you have a good childhood?” she asked, and her wistfulness tore through the barriers around his heart that usually kept him from sharing too deeply with anyone.
“Camelot,” he said. “I can’t remember one bad thing. I often wonder if every family is only allotted so much luck, and we used ours up.”
“Oh, Joshua,” she said softly.
“My parents were crazy about each other. And about us. We were the fun family on the block—my dad coaching the Little League team, my mom filling the rubber swimming pool for all the neighborhood kids. And it was all so genuine. I see parents sometimes who I think are following a rule book, thinking about how it all looks to other people, but my folks weren’t like that. They did these things with us because they loved to do it, not because they wanted to look like great parents.”
“And because of that they were great parents.”
“The best,” he remembered softly. “Every year for three weeks they rented a cottage on the seashore. We had these long days of swimming and playing in the sand, we had bonfires out front on the beach every night. There wasn’t even a TV set. If it rained, we played Monopoly or Sorry or cards.”
He realized he had never felt that way again. Ever. Not until he had come here.
And to feel that way was to leave yourself open to a terrible hurt.
Was he ready?
A sudden sound made him jerk up from her. Without his noticing, so engrossed in protecting her and comforting her, and sharing his own secret memories with her, the wind had come up on the lake.
Some warrior. Some protector! He had not tied the canoe properly. It had yanked free of its mooring, the sound he had heard was it crashing into a rock as it bounced away from the small island.
He ran for the water, plunged in, could not believe the cold and stopped.
“Leave it,” Dannie cried.
Good advice. He should let the canoe go, but everything about Moose Lake Lodge said the Bakers were operating on a shoestring. He’d been entrusted with their canoe.
“I can’t,” he shouted at her, moving deeper into the water. “Can you imagine how the Bakers will react if the canoe drifts back there, empty? What about Susie?”
He took a deep breath and moved deeper into the water, felt her movement on the beach behind him.
“Stay there,” he called. “I’ve got it under control.”
He was used to speaking, and people listened. Naturally, Dannie did not. He heard her splash into the water, her shocked gasp as the icy water filled her shoes.
It made him desperate to get that canoe before they were both in deep trouble. He was up to his waist, he lunged forward, and just managed to get the rope that trailed off the bow of the boat.
He pulled it back toward shore, grabbed her elbow as he moved by, steering her in the right direction.
“I told you not to come in,” he said.
“I was trying to help!” she said, unrepentant.
“Now we’re both wet.” But what he was thinking was it had been a long time since he had been with the kind of woman who would plunge into that water with him. He knew a lot of women who would have stood on shore, unhelpfully hysterical or more worried about her haute couture than him!
Still, they both could have got in trouble and it would have been his fault. He was aware of freezing water squeezing out of his shoes and that, wet up to his chest, his teeth were chattering wildly and in a most unmanly way.
Except for the fact it might save the Bakers some distress, his rescue was wasted. When he inspected the canoe it had a hole the size of his fist in the bottom of it from where it had smashed into a rock.
He inspected her, too. She was wet past her waist, had her arms wrapped around herself. She was reacting to the cold in a very womanly way, and he did his best not to whistle with low appreciation.
Think, Joshua snapped at himself.
He was stranded on an island. With a beautiful woman. Who was shivering, and who had hair that smelled of Hawaii.
They were both going to have to get these wet clothes off quickly. And not in the way any red-blooded man wanted to have the first disrobing happen.
But because the May wind was like ice as the spring day lengthened and chilled, if they didn’t get out of these wet clothes, there was a real chance of hypothermia.
There was only one option.
They were going to have to seek shelter in the honeymoon cabin.
Just his luck that he was going to end up half-naked in the honeymoon cabin with Dannie Springer. Maybe it was because he was shaking with cold that he couldn’t quite figure out if he had landed in the middle of a dream or a nightmare.
CHAPTER SIX
DANIELLE SPRINGER had been in a few awkward situations, but this one definitely rated as Most Embarrassing, especially given the fact she was in the company of Most Sexy. If she hadn’t known that about him before, she certainly couldn’t miss it now that she had seen his soaked clothes mold every inch of his fine male body.
What had started off as a day full of potential, was now quickly declining toward disastrous, as quickly as darkness was sweeping over the small island.
She had broken down in front of him, shared confidences she never should have shared. When the canoe had ripped away, she’d been devastated. He had been in the middle of telling her important things, real things about himself. Thankfully, his own confidences had snapped her out of her self-pitying recital of woe.
Watching him push out into the water to save the canoe, she had thought sadly, only Dannie Springer would be alone on an island with a man like that, lamenting her last, lost boyfriend. It was no excuse that Joshua had encouraged her. That’s what men who were successful with women did. That was their secret weapon. They listened.
Except it was becoming increasingly difficult to see Joshua in the light of his playboy reputation.
Especially after the way he had looked talking about his family, the tenderness in his voice, he seemed like the most real man she had ever met. Poor Brent seemed like a comic book character in comparison. Joshua Cole seemed genuine. That’s why the trust element was there, despite the fact she had known him only a matter of days. That’s why she had let her guard down, when she of all people, jilted, should have her guard up higher.
When had she decided it would be okay to trust him with her heart? It was the way he looked at her, compassionate intensity darkening the shade of green of his eyes. Something she interpreted as interest, hot, male and intoxicating was brewing just beneath the calm surface.
Yet for all that male energy—sure and strong—the way he had conducted himself over the past few days