Sail Away

But Lilly wasn’t a savior. She wasn’t an action heroine. She wasn’t a Bond girl.

So what the heck was she doing here trying to save a man who wouldn’t have so much as noticed her if he’d come across her any place else? More important, what was she doing being so afraid for him, as if he meant something to her?

It’s those feet, she said to herself with a wry smile she didn’t feel. I go to do my good deed for the day and find myself obsessing over naked toes.

And hands. And wry, sweet, unfocused eyes the color of deep ocean.

Lilly shook her head as if she were shaking off water and headed for the bathroom to try to scare up some supplies. She should have been laughing at her ridiculous predicament. Instead she was praying.

“You’ve been shot!”

“I was thinking...”

Lilly looked up from the wound she’d just exposed. “Did you listen to me? I said you’ve been shot.”

Positioned with his back against the headboard, his head already circled in a dramatic slash of white gauze, Cameron Ross flashed her an easy grin. “I heard you. Since I’m still alive and my leg seems intact, I imagine it’s all right.”

Lilly wanted to cry. She wanted to run. She was way out of her league here, and it just kept getting worse.

“No, it is not all right,” she insisted. “You can hardly stand up, you have a concussion, and now I find out you’ve been shot. How can that be okay?”

He smiled like a little boy. “I’m alive,” he said. “Considering the alternatives, that’s not bad. Now, are you going to listen?”

Lilly took a second to shut him away beyond closed eyelids. She was tired already, and she’d just been up today. Not out in a life raft for two days. She’d let Cameron sleep for two hours, and he looked more alert than she felt. It wasn’t fair. And that didn’t even take into account the problem at hand, which was the extent of the injuries he’d sustained. Considering how battered and bruised he looked, he should be semi-comatose.

Lilly took another look at the angry gash in his thigh, where the bullet had entered. The salt water hadn’t hurt it, but the time hadn’t helped. Lilly couldn’t think of anything else to do than what she’d already done for his head. Hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment and a dressing. Trying to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking, she set to work.

And did her best to ignore the hard ridges of muscle in that thigh. The flat, washboard abdomen only inches north.

Everything else in between.

Lilly shut her eyes again. This was insane. She was losing her mind, terrified one minute, lusting the next. Or maybe the same. She couldn’t tell anymore. She just knew she should never have told him to strip off that tux. Now he was lounging on the bed in boxers and bandages, and she was in more trouble than ever.

“Lilly?”

Silk boxers. With cartoon figures of Tweety Bird and Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian, who all seemed to be laughing at her.

She refused to open her eyes. “Yes.”

“You’re not getting sick on me, are you?”

If only it were that simple. “No.”

“How soon is the storm coming?”

That did get her to look at him. Lounging back on that bed, lean and male and magnificent, even with those unfocused eyes and all the bruising and abrasions starkly set against too-pale skin. “What?”

He smiled, as if it would help coax the information free. “When was the next storm expected?”

Distracted, Lilly took a look out the window, where the sun was sinking in a red haze to the west. So instinctive was her adjustment to the feel of the increasing swell beneath her that she hadn’t even noticed it. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Tonight sometime. Maybe early morning.”

“You mean you can’t read the waves or anything? I thought you said you were Hawaiian.”

She spun on him, ready to snap, only to see the glint of humor in his eyes. Here he was injured, held captive, and he was trying to make her feel better. She could fall in love with a guy like this.

Good thing she knew better.

She managed a none-too-enthusiastic grin. “We Kokoas have the distinction of being the only Hawaiians ever to sink our outrigger.”

“A fine one to be making cracks about us haoles.”

She wanted to giggle. The problem was, if she giggled, she would never stop. Her hands were shaking, and she wanted to vomit. And he was the one with the head injury.

“My Portuguese ancestors, on the other hand, landed on Hawaii during a storm just like this one... well, they didn’t land so much as smash into the shore.”

“Quite a family tree.” His grin was still light and easy, and Lilly wanted to play along. Until his next declaration. “I figure we can use the storm to get free.”

Lilly had been all set to clean his leg. That brought her attention sharply back. “We can what?”

That grin again, brash and fearless, as if he weren’t darn near horizontal from the last try. “Well, it worked before. Why not again?”

“It did not work before,” she retorted. “You’re right back where you started. Only this time you’re working on only one leg and half a brain.”

“Ah, that’s okay,” he assured her. “I have a feeling I’ve never worked on more than half a brain before anyway. What kind of distraction can we provide?”

That brought her to her feet, balled fists on hips. “Don’t do this,” she insisted. “We should wait here. Find out what’s going on. Wait until the ransom is paid, and then we’ll be released.”

She tried very hard to face down his skepticism. It didn’t work.

“Is that how the movie came out?” he asked gently. “The one where I’m kidnaped? Did the kidnapers let the president go after the ransom was paid?”

Lilly stared out the window. “It was just a movie.”

Biting back an oath at the effort it took, Cameron launched himself up to sit, his legs hanging off the side of the bed. “I may not remember much, Lilly,” he told her, his eyes empty of that mad sparkle, “but I think I remember that if a kidnaper is going to let his victims go, he generally tries really hard not to let them see his face.”

Well, that made her feel better. “I know.”

“Then you know we have to get out of here.”

That brought her head up. “How?”

He looked around as if he could actually focus. “I don’t know. Let’s check out the room and see if we find anything. Who knows? Maybe the ship’s computer system goes through here and I can reprogram it.”

“This isn’t a movie, Cameron.”

He smiled. “But I do know computers,” he said. “Find me one, and maybe I can do some damage.”

“You sit down,” she said. “I’ll look.”

He shook his head and got unsteadily to his feet. “No. We’ll both look.”

Lilly took a look as every inch of his more than six feet uncoiled before her and found herself struggling for breath. “Well, would you at least put some clothes on first?” she demanded. “It’s really hard to be serious about this when the only thing you’re wearing is Daffy Duck.”

She saw the real confusion in Cameron’s eyes when she said that. He looked down, as if trying to remember what he would find. “I could probably use a good mouthwash and a shave, too, couldn’t I?” he admitted ruefully.

Lilly almost laughed. His head couldn’t be so banged up that he didn’t realize how stop-traffic-on-a-six-lanehighway-gorgeous he was. Pecs and a six-pack, her sister would have said. The Impossible Dream, was how Lilly saw it. And topped off with a face that only seemed more roguish with that stubble of beard he was affecting. Gentle and wise and rare.

And she wasn’t even going to consider his feet.

So she turned around and began searching the cabin.

The room would have been huge even if they’d been on land. It was also clean. No, not clean. Almost sterile. Devoid of little musses and dropped objects that signified real occupation. Empty of personal photos or comfortable clutter.

“Don’t you know anybody well enough to hang their picture?” she asked.

There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

Lilly flinched. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Well, we won’t get any hints about the real Cameron Ross in this room. I don’t think he lives here.”

She got another pause, this one longer. Lilly turned to see Cameron standing in the bathroom, balancing himself with his hands against the sink, his consideration on the man in the mirror.

“Familiar?” she couldn’t help but ask.

He didn’t answer right away. Just kept staring. “I don’t ever think it occurs to anyone that he won’t recognize the face he sees in the mirror.”

Lilly didn’t even realize she was moving until she stood next to him in the bathroom door. “You mean it?”

She should have sounded less afraid. She shouldn’t have reached out to touch him. But when he turned, she was right there, her hand on his arm. And he smiled. A smile that only hinted at the turmoil that must have been going on behind those sky-blue eyes.

“Kind of silly to be this afraid of somebody I’m supposed to know pretty well.”

Lilly was a toucher, just like her tutu had been, and hers before her. So her natural instinct was to touch. To offer comfort. Without a qualm, she just rose on her toes and wrapped her arms around him.

And he held her, too, curling around her as if she were his last hold on sanity. As if he were reassuring himself with her reality to bolster his own.

“It’s going to be okay,” she insisted in a whisper, her cheek against his chest. “I promise.”

His instinctive laugh was a rumble against her ear. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, young lady.”

Lilly pulled her head back and smiled for him. “But I can keep them,” she said. “My ancestors were kahunas. The keepers of the secrets, who knew magic and medicine the likes of which we’ll never know again. They knew things the world has lost, and in my dreams they share them with me. I know what’s going to happen, and I know what isn’t. And I know you’re going to be okay.”

She said it more for the soothing sound of a voice, any voice, to pull him away from whatever precipice on which he found himself balanced. She didn’t realize how much she wanted to believe it, just this once. Just for him.

She didn’t realize how her wish would affect him.

She did when he kissed her. Wrapped in his arms, tight against his chest, her body full and flush against his, her hands against his broad back, her head tilted and her eyes, impossibly, closed.

Lilly Kokoa had been a practical girl. She was a practical woman. For just a moment, though, a hairbreadth of time locked on the edge of disaster, she lost her logic and flew.

And then pulled gently away.

Her breathing was ragged, her skin on fire where it met his, her mind in a puddle. She saw only needy blue eyes, craggy, haggard cheeks, the beginnings of a beard that had left her own cheeks scrubbed. She heard the syncopated rasp of their breathing and knew exactly what she had to say.

“Um, there’s...something I have to tell you....”

He didn’t budge. Didn’t loosen his hold or his need or his fine, sweet gaze. “What?”

At least he sounded as confused as she felt.

So she closed her eyes. “You’re married.”

Which was, of course, the exact moment that their kidnapers slammed through the cabin door and knocked her straight back into his arms.

Three

“What are you two up to in here?” Huey demanded, automatic pistol pointed at Lilly’s back.

Cameron—though he still couldn’t quite think of himself as Cameron—just held on to her, as if that could somehow protect her from a trio of inept kidnapers carrying more firepower than the Dallas police department.

“Trying to get his injuries taken care of,” Lilly grated against his chest.

At least she wasn’t trying to pull out of his arms. He was sure he didn’t want her to, for the sole reason that these guys were itchy and unprofessional and might shoot. Not because she felt so healing there. Not because he could smell those flowers in her hair, or because he thought she had the softest skin he’d ever touched.

Which, of course, he shouldn’t be feeling, since he was already married to somebody else.

Married.

Nothing came. No image, no feeling, no name. He knew he still hadn’t lost that nagging feeling that he needed to be somewhere else, but the idea of a wife didn’t cement any reason for it. He just felt antsy, as if he had to get home.

He looked at Duey and Louise lining up behind Huey and decided that his matrimonial status could wait.

“What do you want?” he asked as calmly as he could.

Huey smiled. “Financial security in troubled times. Peace on earth. A house in Jamaica the size of LAX. Got a problem with that?”

Cameron shook his head. “Every boy’s dream.”

Huey laughed and pulled the gun in to rest across his chest, which he could do, since his partners still had theirs trained on ground zero.

Louise snickered. “That what famous movie stars wear under their evening clothes these days?” she demanded.

He looked down to realize that he was still damn near naked. Standing there with Lilly in his arms. Able to smell that plumeria that drifted off her like smoke and struck by the most powerful urge just to sink his face in that silky hair of hers.

Maybe he’d been in a lot of movies where he’d pretended this happened, but he would bet it had never happened to him in real life.

“My personal comment on fashion,” he said as evenly as he could.

He wanted to ask what they wanted. He was afraid to. Afraid they would demand that Lilly leave. Demand worse, when he knew damn well he didn’t have the skills to prevent it.

He had the urge, the overwhelming reflex, to just lash out. Considering the fact that he still couldn’t put his weight on his left leg, he knew how well that would work out.

Then Huey surprised him again.

“Who’s Ethan?” Huey asked.

He lifted his head, stunned. “What?”

“Ya deaf? Who’s Ethan?”

His answer was instinctive. “Me.”

Lilly almost cracked his chin with the back of her head when she looked up. “You?”

“What are you talking about?” Huey demanded, the pistol back in place.

He didn’t know. God, he just wanted to lie down for about four hours and figure it out. Tickle the rest of that memory loose. Figure out this married thing so he could get back to Lilly.

All he could do was close his eyes and hold his breath.

Ethan.

It was his; more than Cameron, more than the tuxes, more than this ship. But he didn’t know why. He didn’t know how.

“His middle name,” Lilly spoke up, turning carefully to face their captors.

“That don’t make sense,” Duey snapped.

“Shut up,” Huey told him. “Makes perfect sense. The computer keeps asking for Ethan, like it’s a password or something. Of course Cameron Ross isn’t gonna just put his real name out there for the world.” Then he turned to Lilly. “You sure?”

Lilly flashed him a smile. “You kidding? I’ve had Cameron Ross on my bedroom wall since I was twelve. I know more about him than his mother.”

Huey scowled with meaning. “You know he’s married?”

Cameron...no, Ethan. Ethan wanted to laugh. Didn’t it just figure he would be kidnaped by criminals who picked and chose their commandments?

“Of course I do,” Lilly assured the man. “What kind of person you think I am?”

Louise’s laugh said it all.

Lilly glared at the three of them. “You knocked me into him, you jerks. He wanted to clean up, and I was trying to get him into the bathroom on a leg that isn’t working very well because you shot him.”

All three looked down at the gauze and tape that circled Ethan’s leg.

“Oh,” Huey said, surprised. “Sorry.”

Lilly sniffed. “You should be. Now get out so he can finish. It’s getting pretty rank in here, and I doubt you’re going to let me get any fresh air any time soon.”

Obviously stunned at hearing that particular tone of voice coming from a kidnaping victim, Huey turned on Ethan with a little wave of his gun in Lilly’s direction. “You let her talk to you like that?”

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