The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum. Jennifer Greene

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      And Mary thought, for all the drama and tension of the last couple of days, she was feeling better than she’d felt for months.

      Or years?

      Because she’d made abandoned love to a guy she hardly knew?

      But she did know him, she thought. She watched the laughter in his eyes, she watched the way he fondled Heinz’s floppy ears, she saw the tension in his face that could never be resolved until he knew his brother was safe, and she thought...she did know this man.

      Somehow in the last twenty-four hours he seemed to have become part of her.

      And that was crazy, she told herself. Any minute now the world would break in, and part of her would disappear back to Manhattan.

      Besides, she didn’t do relationships. She’d trusted her father with her whole heart and he’d turned his back on her. His back was still turned. How did you walk away from something like that?

      ‘I read your book,’ he said, and she froze.

      ‘You read...’

      ‘Werewolves and dragons—and me.’ He grinned. ‘Entirely satisfactory.’

      She was on her feet but feeling like the earth was opening under her. Her writing... It had always been her escape. This man had read it? ‘You had no right...’

      ‘I know,’ he confessed. ‘But I was bored. Do you mind?’

      ‘I don’t show my writing to anyone.’ It was part of her, the part she disappeared into when life got too hard. That he’d seen it...

      ‘You should. It’s great.’

      ‘It’s fantasy.’

      ‘I suspected that,’ he said gravely. ‘I haven’t exactly learned how to handle a six-pronged sword in real life.’

      She closed her eyes.

      ‘Mary, I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘You look like... It seems important. I shouldn’t have intruded. I shouldn’t have looked.’

      He shouldn’t have looked into her? What was it about this man? He was seeing...all of her.

      She opened her eyes again met his gaze. Straight and true. Where had that phrase come from?

      He was a man to be trusted?

      Maybe she had no choice. She’d already exposed so much.

      Deep breath. What would a normal...writer...say if someone had read their work? ‘You think it’s over the top?’ she tried, cautiously, and he seemed to relax.

      ‘It is over the top and it’s great.’ He grinned. ‘A few more thousand words and the publication world awaits.’

      ‘Don’t mock.’

      ‘I’m not mocking,’ he said, and there was that look again. Straight and true. ‘Mary, it’s awesome.’ Then his face changed, to an expression she could hardly understand. ‘I think you’re awesome,’ he added. ‘I wish there were some dragons I could slay on your behalf in real life.’

      This was doing her head in. Any minute now she’d step forward and take this man and hold him.

      She didn’t do relationships. She didn’t trust.

      She could trust this man?

      ‘M-meanwhile, we need to figure how to get off this island,’ she managed, and heaven only knew the effort it took to get the words out.

      ‘We do,’ he said ruefully. ‘Fantasy’s great, but the real world awaits us.’

      ‘It does,’ she agreed, and then she muttered an aside. ‘I just need to keep remembering it.’

       CHAPTER SIX

      THE REAL WORLD broke in half an hour later.

      Helicopters appeared in the distance, buzzing out over the islands but mostly out to sea.

      ‘The yacht race was a disaster,’ Ben said as they watched them. ‘That’s who they’ll be looking for. The race was full of idiots like us, in expensive boats but not enough skills to cope.’

      ‘How many sailors have the skills to cope with a cyclone?’

      ‘We could have done better. I never questioned the seaworthiness of the life raft. The salesman told me it was state of the art. I knew how to set it up but it never occurred to me that it was little more than a giant beach ball. I just hope other yachts had better equipment.’ He shaded his eyes, watching a couple of dots of helicopters flying out on the horizon. ‘If they’re still searching, I hope whoever they’re looking for had a better life raft than ours.’

      ‘They’re probably looking for you.’

      ‘Or Jake.’

      ‘Let’s face probabilities, shall we?’ she said astringently. ‘At last report, Jake was being winched to safety. You, on the other hand, were drifting in a beach ball. So they’re looking for you. Driftwood. Matches, fire, smoke. Stat. We need to get smoke up there fast before the weather closes in again.’

      ‘Is the weather closing in?’

      ‘Who knows? I hope someone, somewhere is working frantically to restore a transmission tower but nothing’s coming through on my radio. Or my phone.’ She flicked her cellphone out of her pocket. ‘Dead.’

      ‘Is it charged?’

      ‘You tell me to try turning it off and on again and I’ll tell you where to put it, tech-head.’ She tossed him the phone. ‘Here. You play with the on and off buttons, then make your way back to the cave at your leisure. I’m off to try a less tech-heavy form of communication.’

      ‘Mary...’

      She’d started to turn away but she stopped and looked back at him. ‘Yes?’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, and they were a mere two words but all the power in the universe was behind them. He looked at her, just looked. Their gazes held for a long, long moment, and in the end it seemed to tear something when she had to turn away.

      ‘My pleasure,’ she managed, but as she headed back to the cave she felt those stupid tears slipping down her face again.

      What was wrong with her? Smash ’em Mary was turning into a wuss.

      There was a part of Smash ’em Mary that didn’t even want the helicopter to come.

      * * *

      Only the helicopter did come. The fire took hold and she covered it with green leaves. Smoke billowed upwards, the chopper changed course and headed toward them.

      Ben had made his way back by СКАЧАТЬ