She shivered in the warm night air, and he pulled the blanket up around her body, pulling her tight against him. She looked up at him, but the clouds had thickened, and he couldn't see her face, her expression. It didn't matter. He knew it in his heart.
"Michael…" she said, her whispered voice a question.
He stroked her shoulder, realizing absently that his own hands were trembling. "Go to sleep, love," he said, and meant it. Love.
"But…"
"That was for you, love. We'll worry about me next time."
That phrase, next time, calmed her. It calmed him, even though he knew it was a lie. A moment later she was asleep, her arms tight around him, as if she was afraid he might drift away from her. She knew him better than she realized.
There would be no next time. Tomorrow Michael Dowd would be gone from the face of this earth, either by the grace of the intelligence bureaucracy or a vengeful God. He would never see her again, and for that he was grateful. In barely more than a week she had become the worst weakness he'd ever known, and he couldn't afford weakness.
He wondered with a trace of amusement which part of his body was more uncomfortable: the pooled heat and hardness between his legs, or the damage in his side. A man wouldn't die of frustration, but it felt a hell of a lot more terminal than the slow seeping pain beneath his ribs.
Moving his head, he placed his lips against her forehead. The night was still all around them, dark and silent. There was no danger, not from the three men whose bodies he'd hidden on the far side of the little island. Not from the woman asleep in his arms.
Only from himself, and his own lost soul.
Francey let him sleep when she rose from the tumble of blankets. He looked pale in the early light beneath the golden layer of his tan, and there was a faint film of sweat on his forehead. Even in his deep sleep he'd clung to her for a second as she slid out of the makeshift bed, then released her with a sigh. She'd sat back on her heels, nude in the early-morning sunlight, and watched him for long minutes, wondering if he were going to wake, wondering if they were going to continue what they'd started last night.
She wasn't ready to. Not yet. If she crawled back under the blanket and woke him, then there would be no going back. She couldn't give herself heart and soul to a man again and risk having that gift thrown back in her face.
Not that she'd actually given herself to Patrick, she reminded herself pragmatically, pulling her sundress over her head and fastening the first few of the tiny buttons. Not her heart, not her soul, not even as much of her body as she'd shared with Michael last night.
She could feel the color rise in her cheeks, and she glanced back at the sleeping man. It was a lucky thing for her that he was so exhausted, his breathing deep, noisy, his color pale in the shadowy light. It gave her time to pull her defenses back around her, to decide how she was going to handle things when he finally awoke.
She could admit it now—she'd never loved Patrick. If she had, she wouldn't have waited so long to go to bed with him. Patrick had been wooing her, charming her, for five months before she'd finally decided she trusted him enough to make love with him.
She'd known Michael Dowd for eight days. She didn't believe half of what he told her, but if he asked, she would strip off her sundress and lie down with him again. She didn't trust him to tell her the truth, but she would trust him with her life. In fact, she already had.
The smell of coffee didn't move him. The crash of pans as she cleaned up lacked the power to reach him. She swam in the lagoon, washing her hair and rinsing it with the imported water, and still he slept, his noisy, stertorous breathing the only sound in the stillness.
She was floating lazily on her back, listening to him, when the first trickles of uneasiness hit her. She'd slept with him two nights ago, and before that she'd been sleeping within hearing distance for almost a week. She knew without question that he wasn't a man who snored.
And he wasn't snoring now. He was struggling for breath.
She vaulted out of the lagoon, scrambling to his still body in the bedroll. He didn't flinch as she dripped water over him, and his skin was cool, clammy beneath her damp hands.
"Wake up, Michael," she said urgently, tugging at his shoulders.
His eyes fluttered open for a moment, and they were dazed, blank. They focused on her, and for a moment she thought she was looking down at a stranger. Some demon who'd stolen into Michael's body and was staring at her out of dark, dangerous eyes.
"Francey," he said, his voice a thread of sound. "Got to tell you…hurt…Travers…watch…" His eyes shut again, as if the effort were too much for him.
"You're hurt," she said, trying to make sense of his ramblings. "You want me to watch for Travers. I will, Michael. I'll go out to the beach and keep watch for him." She started to rise, but his hand shot out and caught her wrist with unexpected strength.