Must Be Magic (Spellbound) (22 page)

“Quick for you, or me?” He grit his teeth.

“Well I do feel a lingering urge to get even for you dragging me into the water the other night.” Once the bag was emptied, she used a fresh bandage from the first aid kit. “We’ll need to keep doing that until signs of infection are gone.”

Neither of them said anything about what would happen if it didn’t clear up on its own.

“Rest for a while.” She set her supplies over to the side.

He shook his head but made no effort to move.

“You’re staying put or I’m voiding our deal.”

“That wasn’t one of our conditions.”

“It is now.”

He watched her from beneath heavy lids. “You would have been a challenge in the courtroom.”

She laughed, tiring herself by exerting even that much energy. “You would have destroyed me.”

“Maybe.”

She turned around, ignoring every part of her that just wanted to curl up next to Bryce.

“What are you doing?” He grabbed her hand, the near-scorching warmth reminding her of how high his fever must be.

“Just going to grab the bag I left on the beach. Close your eyes. I’ll be back in a minute.”

With a soft squeeze, he released her hand and she crawled back out from beneath the raft. She took another sip of water herself, then walked back to collect her bag.

Bryce’s eyes were still closed by the time she got back, but she didn’t think for a second he was sleeping. Not yet anyway. He’d fight it for as long as he could.

Keeping her back to him in hopes of discouraging any conversation, she picked up his fire-starting instruments. How hard could it be?

What felt like hours later, her hands tired and raw, she’d managed to capture enough of a flame to ignite the brush.

More than once she’d wanted to give up. Each time she’d glanced over at Bryce, his complexion paler than the last time, and forced herself to keep trying. Desperate, she tried magic and nearly set herself on fire, never mind the leaves overhead. With three holes in her shirt and her optimism fading faster than the day, she’d kept at it.

She made it to her feet for a victory dance that was little more than a wiggle, given how worn out she felt. One down, two to go.

They still needed food and another source of water. Moving back to the raft, she checked on Bryce, unsure whether to be relieved that he didn’t feel any hotter than earlier. He’d need more Tylenol soon, but she didn’t want to wake him just yet.

Lying down for just a minute, she stared up at the inside of the raft. Where are you, Alex? She gripped her amulet as though she might get some kind of signal that he knew they were okay, that he was coming. That someone was coming.

When she felt her eyes grow heavy, she rolled to her side to sit up, and froze. A green, grapefruit-sized shape lay on the ground nearby.

Why did it look familiar?

She crawled from beneath the raft and walked to where the object lay half-hidden in the surrounding vegetation, one side of it rotting.

Breadfruit.

“Breadfruit!” she shouted, quieting only when Bryce made a sound in his sleep. She tipped her head back to search the trees above, but couldn’t spot anymore.

So where had it come from?

Darby woke sometime later to find the sun had gone down, and the fire only glowed with faint embers. Rising to rescue the flames before they went out and she had to start the entire process all over again, she passed the small pile of breadfruit she’d gathered and smiled.

Once some smaller sticks were on the fire, she dragged on her sweater and crawled back beneath the raft to check on Bryce.

She’d cleaned out his wound twice more and gotten some more Tylenol into him, but his fever still hadn’t come down.

He shivered in his sleep. She curled up next to him, willing him to come out of it. She wouldn’t let herself panic yet, but she could feel the paralyzing feeling growing inside her despite how much she tried talking herself out of it.

“Darby.” Her name left Bryce’s mouth, followed by words too quiet for her to understand.

“I’m right here.” She smoothed the damp hair off his forehead.

His fever had spiked.

Taking the cloths she’d used earlier, she ran down to the water, drenching and wringing out each one, then returned to place them on his forehead and chest.

He groaned, tried tugging at the one on his chest, his movements jerky.

“Hey,” she said softly, taking his hand in hers.

He stilled for long moments, then the tremors started again.

“Stay with me,” he whispered, when she reached for more medicine.

“You need more Tylenol.”

“Just. Need. You.” Each word was broken by a teeth-chattering shiver.

Getting more Tylenol into him was a challenge, but he swallowed the water, clinging to her the whole time.

She didn’t know how many times he cycled through the shivers and trying to throw off the cloths she used to cool his skin. She only managed to clean his wound once more, with him unable to lie still through it.

“I wish…” Bryce whispered sometime in the night.

She lifted her head from his shoulder. “For what?”

“Depends.”

Knowing it was the fever talking, she lay back down.

“Need all the luck I can get,” he murmured.

“You’re going to be fine.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing that to be true. She could handle it alone, could handle building fires and waiting for someone to find them.

But she couldn’t handle losing Bryce.

“Love…you…”

She pressed her lips to his overheated skin, wishing that wasn’t the fever talking.

Dawn was no more than a slice of pinkish-orange on the horizon when he calmed, but not until she woke an hour or two after that did she realize his fever had finally broken.

Chapter Ten

“You shouldn’t be up.”

Bryce lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the early-morning sun and spotted Darby walking toward him, soaked head to foot. “I slept all day yesterday.”

And the day before that if he counted when his fever had kicked in. But not before he’d gotten a nice glimpse of her ass as it had disappeared into the water when she’d bathed herself.

At least he was pretty sure he hadn’t dreamed it.

“You needed the rest.”

“And now I need to not rest.” Although he had to be careful with his leg, he couldn’t just sit there anymore. And today he at least had enough strength to stand.

Because of Darby.

He didn’t know how she hadn’t exhausted herself looking after him, trying to keep his fever under control, getting him to drink and even eat a little bit last night. Mashed breadfruit wouldn’t be making his top ten favorite foods anytime soon, but it had felt good to eat, and even better to tease her about her cooking skills.

She’d only burned it once so far, though.

When she hadn’t been keeping an eye on him, she’d gotten the fire going, found food and even set up some kind of water-catching system involving two pieces of rope and two of the empty water bottles.

Now they were just waiting for it to rain again.

“Darby vs. the Girl Scouts?” he’d asked when he’d seen it earlier that morning.

“Man vs. Wild,”
she’d answered while checking his leg.

His wound was looking much better and Darby had gathered the edges of the cut together with a butterfly bandage and applied a new dressing earlier.

He might not be able to tackle that hilltop again just yet, but he could handle a short walk down to the beach, especially since she’d found a long branch to help him keep most of the weight off his leg when he walked.

“You can’t push yourself too hard.”

“I can’t sit in these clothes anymore.”

She scrunched up her nose. “You’re right about that.” They both knew she was teasing, since she’d helped him change more than once already.

“Hey,” he warned, pretending to take a swing at her butt with his crutch. Which was all well and good until he overcompensated and tipped forward.

Darby was against him in an instant, steadying him. “Maybe the fever affected your hearing. I said you need to take it easy,” she added in a softer tone.

“Maybe you’re right.”

Her brow arched. “Uh-huh,” she said, clearly not sure where he was going with his comment but suspecting something.

“You should probably give me a sponge bath.”

She jammed the crutch against his side instead. “On second thought, a little stroll will be good for you.” She walked backward. “I’ll grab you some soap and clean clothes.”

Laughing, he carefully made his way to the water’s edge to wait for her. She was right on his heels, reminding him how much easier it was to move without an injured leg.

She set his stuff on the sand.

“What’s with the tape and the sandwich bag?”

“You’ll want to protect that cut as best you can. If there is any bacteria in the water and it gets into that cut, it could make your wound worse.”

How much
Man vs. Wild
had she watched to know that?

“Did I already miss your bath?” He nodded to the clothes still dripping water at her feet.

“I was…fishing.”

“And the fish won, I take it?”

“This time.” Grinning, she turned away.

For one scary moment last night, when he’d been lucid long enough to worry, he thought he might never see that smile again.

Reason one hundred and one why he was reluctant to let her go too far away.

“You’re feeling better too.”

She shrugged. “When your fever broke the other morning, I realized I could look at our situation two ways. One, we’re stranded and have no idea when help is coming. Or two, we bought ourselves a few extra days of vacation.”

“Vacation?” Leave it to Darby, even under the most unlikely conditions, to find a way to stay positive. “If you like roughing it.”

That smile was back. “Reminds me a little of the camping trips my parents took my family on when we were younger. Except with more sun and fewer people.”

His own parents weren’t exactly the camping type, but they’d had their share of family vacations. “Must have been fun.”

“For us, sure. Hell on our parents. The van would be barely unpacked and we’d all take off and my parents would get stuck setting everything up.”

“They didn’t use their magic?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure. And then they helped all the other campers, too, so they wouldn’t call the media.”

This time he caught her in the butt with his makeshift crutch. “Smart-ass.”

“My family does have some common sense.”

“I didn’t mean—”

She put her finger to his lips. “No more Calder/Lancaster comparisons for the rest of our trip. It’ll be like that spring break when we—I—didn’t know better.” Her smile dimmed a little, almost as though she regretted bringing it up.

“Darby.”

“I know you still need answers—”

He did, but gone were the suspicions that she’d deliberately misled him or would have used a pregnancy to manipulate him. That kind of woman wouldn’t have stayed by his side every moment she could, treating his wound and fever, murmuring soft words to comfort him.

He let go of his crutch to grip her hips, tugging her closer. “Right now the only thing I need is help with my clothes.”

She waited a beat, then, “How is it that after everything, including recovering from fighting an infection, you’re already thinking about sex?”

“Your clothes are clinging to every inch of your body and all I want to do is peel them off one at a time. Slowly.” He could already imagine running his hands over her damp skin. “Can you really blame me?”

She bit her lip, making the pressure building behind his zipper intensify. “So it’s my fault you’re turned on?”

“If the sling fits,” he teased, wanting her closer. So much closer. They’d been through hell and somehow none of that mattered when she was right here, her gorgeous eyes seeing right through him and the devilish curve of her lips making it impossible not to smile back at her.

“It’s gonna be a bit difficult to strip you down when I’ve only got one good arm and you’re holding on to me like this.”

“I’ve always been a bit of a challenge.”

“I hope you’re not waiting for me to disagree with that.”

He laughed, helping her tug the shirt over his head. The warm slide of her fingers unleashed a rush of need that punched through his bloodstream.

The maneuver gave him an opening to slip his hand under her shirt, splaying his hand across her lower back.

She was right. It was crazy to want her so much. And that had nothing to do with the throbbing in his leg. He couldn’t take a look around without spotting the plane and a dozen other signs that this wasn’t anything close to a vacation.