Chapter Twenty-Seven

Olivia slowed and allowed her feet to sink into the sand as she took in the view. The glowing white sand separating the lush tropical rainforest from the Coral Sea’s turquoise water wasn’t bad. But the sight of her former friend with benefits and current walkabout tour guide striding across the beach in a pair of board shorts was truly something to behold.

Yesterday she’d been in the middle of the Outback. Today she stood on a private island, complete with its very own coral reef, smack bang in the center of the Great Barrier Reef. The Great freaking Barrier Reef. The only thing these two magical worlds shared was the cloudless sky that seemed to stretch on forever and the man who made her feel like a princess.

“Move your arse, Doc.”

Well, maybe not quite a princess, but he made her feel pretty damned good. She glared at the man standing knee-deep in the water. He drove a stupid car, lived in a supervillain lair, worked way too hard, and had way too much money for his own good. No, Jarrah Mereki Harper wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect for her.

He answered her glare by blowing her a kiss, which had her smiling back like a pathetic groupie. The man was rich enough to charter a private jet and book a private villa on an even more private tropical island with zero notice. Yet he wore a pair of faded board shorts that looked even older than her practical, if a little modest, black one-piece. She tugged at the Lycra and hoped what it left to the imagination drove him as crazy as his castaway shorts drove her. She allowed her gaze to linger on the waistband of said board shorts, which hung low enough to provide a tantalizing glimpse of the trail of fine black hair leading to the remarkable appendage she’d well and truly claimed for herself. Her stomach clenched as the ever-present clock hanging over her head ticked beside her ear.

A frigid shadow drifted across her cloudless world, and his teasing grin vanished as if he’d been swept up in the same storm. She widened her smile until her cheeks burned and charged across the sand toward him with her snorkel and flippers slapping her thighs. If all she had were forty-eight more hours with him, there was no way she was wasting any of them staring at what lurked on the horizon.

After a wrestling match in the shallows that involved as much groping as actual grappling, she finally slid her feet into the flippers and pulled on her mask. She’d somehow even kept her swimsuit on and relatively intact, which had seemed an impossibility midway through their bout. His board shorts hadn’t fared so well and looked like they’d survived a shark attack, which hadn’t been far from the truth considering how close she’d come to biting a chunk out of his butt.

With every lazy kick, the Great Barrier Reef wrapped her up in its warm embrace and insulated her from the constant tick-tock inside her head. The realm she snorkeled through was even more magical than the world she’d left behind. A craggy kaleidoscope of coral extended into the cobalt distance like an ancient city as her eyes darted from one exotic creature to the next. Each new discovery seemed even more spectacular than the last.

A huge turtle drifted into sight and had her squeeing through her snorkel. Spinning around, she searched for her dive buddy to point out their visitor only to find him watching her like an aquatic bodyguard. She’d grown so used to his presence she wasn’t even surprised. With a graceful kick and pull from his arms, he glided toward her and captured her hand. Together, they floated after the turtle as she lazily went about the business of life until she paddled off the reef’s edge and out into the abyss.

Olivia’s stomach dropped as she hovered above the coral wall descending almost vertically into the depths as the chilling theme from a certain movie she had no intention of reliving filled the eerie silence. The most she’d had to fear in the warm head-deep water behind her were stone fish, scorpion fish, blue-ringed octopus, sea snakes, cone shells, moray eels, and pissed-off clown fish. Beyond the reef’s protection lay the cold, dark world of giant predators.

Jarrah squeezed her hand before releasing it and gently kicking out over the precipice she clung to. Slowly turning to face her, he held out his hand and beckoned her forward. The gesture was as gentle as the eyes studying her through his mask. He didn’t push, didn’t demand, he just floated above the depths and held out his hand.

Beneath him lay an invisible world filled with the stuff of nightmares. He didn’t look down or to the side; he simply held her gaze and asked her to join him in the unknown. The smart thing to do was to wave him away and paddle back into the sun-warmed shallows where she could live out her days in the world she knew. But she’d gone way past smart, and she no longer wanted a life in the shallows if he wasn’t by her side.