Caught In A Storm Of Passion

CHAPTER THREE

The crash site—Moratunga Island, one hundred miles north of Tukamumu.

CHASE BECAME AWARE of two things simultaneously. The wind and the pain. The former was slashing at his face along with needlelike rain, and the latter...jeez...was threatening to explode his brains all over the inside of his skull.

He gave a rough groan and fought the urge to empty his stomach. On the bright side, pain meant that he was alive. Which was good, he mused drowsily as he began drifting off into comforting darkness. Real good. Alive meant it had all been a bad dream...

He jerked awake, his heart lurching into a dead run as his gaze flew around the cockpit and he realized something was wrong with this picture. He instantly knew it was the wrong move when pain tore through his head and the smell of burnt plastic made him gag.

Fire!

The thought had him grabbing for his harness, which he released an instant before he realized he was hanging practically upside down.

The controls broke his fall, his left shoulder taking most of the impact before he slid to the floor in a groaning heap.

Holy freaking moly!

Chase lay dazed for a couple minutes, his shoulder radiating pain and fire, his head throbbing like an open wound. Finally his vision cleared enough to recognize that there was—what the hell?—vegetation growing inside his best girl.

Either he was hallucinating or—

The storm!

Oh, yeah.

He sucked in a breath when memories rushed back. The crash.

He’d crashed his plane.

Un-be-freaking-lievable.

Muttering curses about stupid storms that weren’t supposed to change direction so fast, Chase grabbed his shoulder and sat up. His stomach instantly revolted and he froze. Okay. Note to self. No moving until the nightmare faded.

When it didn’t, he sucked in a careful breath and blinked up into the darkness, wondering why there were two mannequins hanging a foot from his face. He knew for a fact there were no mannequins on the cargo manifest.

Then he realized that he was seeing double, and that he was looking at... What the heck was her name? He squinted past the pain and caught sight of a cascade of tawny gold hair a few feet away. His heart surged into his throat as he recognized... Amelia? Dammit, his brother was going to— No, wait. Not Amelia. Evelyn—Amelia’s evil twin—and her arms, legs and hair were hanging limply from the harness.

“Eve...Evelyn?” he rasped, wondering how long he’d been out. A couple of minutes? Hours? Vaguely alarmed by her utter stillness, he cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey, Doc!”

Nothing. Not even the slightest of movements. He sucked in air, shoving down panic, and attempted to squelch the awful thought that came with the dread. His heart pounded. No, no, no! No way was the feisty doc—

“Eve! Wake up, dammit.”

Head spinning, and nausea clawing its way into his throat, Chase hauled himself upright with his good arm. The world tilted, along with his stomach, and he braced himself between the chair and the controls until the urge to vomit settled. Not only did the thought of all that cool fire being extinguished leave a bitter taste of loss in his mouth, it filled him with a sudden hollow desolation he couldn’t explain.

They’d only just met, for cripes’ sake, and he didn’t even like her. But she was his responsibility—not to mention his future sister-in-law, sort of—and the first thing he needed to do was check her vitals.

He fumbled beneath that thick curtain of tawny hair and searched for a pulse. When he found it, in the soft spot just beneath her jawline, his breath whooshed out with relief at the strong and steady rhythm.

She was alive.

With the realization dawning on him that they’d just cheated certain death, Chase reached into his shirt with unsteady hands. His fingers encountered the Saint Christopher and he pulled it out, pausing to give it a noisy, grateful kiss.

Thank God she was alive and breathing.

He was breathing too, which meant that when he checked her over for other injuries he got a little sidetracked by the sight of the long naked legs...all four of them...which any red-blooded man would have noticed. Two of the four feet were bare, and her ivory silk blouse had worked loose from her skirt, exposing a few inches of skin that suddenly seemed more erotic than if she was naked.

Which was just plain stupid. He lived in paradise, where women wore a heck of a lot less in public. Besides, he had way more important things to obsess about. Like the fact that she was still unconscious. Like the fact that he’d crashed his damn airplane...well, somewhere.

Hell! He couldn’t believe it. He’d flown these waters for almost five years without a single incident.

Shoving unsteady fingers through his hair, Chase looked around and tried to come to terms with reality. It couldn’t be a coincidence, he told himself wildly, that the day she’d practically thrown herself into his arms and then tried to head butt him to death, this had happened.

The woman was bad luck.

One he needed to avoid. Like a death plague.

Besides, she was uptight and anal—his least favorite type of woman. “The type of woman I moved thousands of miles to get away from,” he informed the unconscious woman irritably. “The last thing I need complicating my life.”

Even temporarily.

So why the hell was he so fascinated by her damn-your-hide attitude and glowing amber eyes?

Biting back a curse at his idiocy, Chase massaged his throbbing temple and ordered himself not to think about underwear. But the more he tried not to think about lace and silk, the more he recalled his first glimpse of her heart-shaped butt, encased in that tight soft green skirt, bent over the bathroom counter at Port Laurent.

It had sparked some pretty racy fantasies that had just about fried his brain. And before he’d known it his gaze had been sliding down a pair of spectacular legs more suited to a Vegas showgirl than a workaholic doctor.

He’d blamed it on testosterone and abstinence, of course.

And now possibly concussion—because the sedate little business suit would have looked perfectly respectable on anyone who didn’t have enough curves to rival the Indy 500 race track.

Obviously living like a monk made a guy think about sex even when he’d just crashed his plane. Obviously he’d hit his head really hard. Maybe he even had brain damage.

Well...hell.

Too bad Mother Nature had decided to have a little fun with him, he thought darkly, swiping at a trickle of something warm and sticky on his face. She’d fried the right engine and most of the electronics. And if that wasn’t bad enough she’d made him look bad in front of this sexy, uptight doc after he’d promised her everything was going to be okay. But it wasn’t okay, he thought morosely, looking at the vegetation invading the damaged cockpit. Not by a long shot.

Deciding to leave Dr. Eve where she was, until he’d made sure they weren’t about to slide tail-first into an active volcano, Chase pulled himself upright. The move brought him closer. Closer to the intoxicating scent of woman...closer to temptation.

He quickly lurched out of reach, telling himself it was a good thing he was over women like her.

A real good thing.

* * *

Eve surfaced slowly, aware of a gang of vindictive road workers using power drills inside her skull. She frowned and tried to shift away from the excavation, but the move sent pain stabbing through her.

Oh...ow! What...what the—?

Carefully drawing in a shallow breath, she took stock, wondering where she was, why she couldn’t remember...and why the heck someone was sitting on her chest. Then something cold and damp touched her head, right where it hurt. She gave a distressed moan and lifted her hand to swat feebly at the annoyance.

“G’way,” she mumbled crossly, shivering when a trickle of cold water made its way down her throat.

“Keep still,” a deep, familiar voice ordered, sending a bolt of something that felt like panic through her body.

Her eyes and mouth flew open, with the intention of giving him a piece of her mind, but the words froze in her throat when she found the hunky sea god close. Very close...and wet. As if she’d invaded his ocean kingdom and he was holding her hostage.

Yikes.

Every thought promptly flew right out of her head.

It was like déjà vu.

Or more like déjà dead.

She moaned softly on realizing that every part of her hurt. Even her eyes, which she narrowed against the light.

“Oh, great,” she rasped hoarsely. “I should have known. I’m dead, and the pilot from hell isn’t done torturing me.”

A spark of amusement briefly lit his storm-gray eyes, along with a look of what couldn’t possibly be concern and wild relief. Could it? And why hadn’t she noticed before how long and thick his dark lashes were?

Annoyance replaced the amusement, momentarily distracting her from the wet cloth he pressed to her pounding head. She tried evading it, but he gently cradled her head and turned her toward him.

“Keep still,” he muttered irritably. “I had to move you before I could check for internal injuries.”

“Isn’t that my line?” she rasped, gasping when he hit a particularly tender spot. “Ouch!” She grabbed his hand, her fingers barely fitting around the brawny wrist as she attempted to hold him off. And when she discovered that all she could do was cling weakly as he carefully dabbed the area, she grimaced.

Oh, yeah—and moaned. She could definitely moan too, she discovered—the low sound was slipping out without her permission. It was downright embarrassing. Besides, she was the doctor, dammit. Wasn’t it her job to heal the injured?

“That...hurts...”

What didn’t hurt was the oddly arousing sensation of crisp hair against her sensitive palm. It was more like a lifeline to something solid and safe. Then she noticed something dark and wet matting his thick hair, the pallor beneath his smoothly tanned skin, and her senses abruptly sharpened into medic mode.

With renewed determination she shoved his hand away and struggled into a sitting position, gasping and wheezing because her chest felt as if it was being crushed.

“What...what the heck have you done to me?” she rasped, wondering if this was what it felt like to have a coronary. If so, she suddenly had a wealth of sympathy for anyone who’d ever had one.

His startled, “Huh?” was followed by a growled, “I saved your ass, if that’s what you mean...” accompanied by an injured scowl, as if she should be grateful that she ached everywhere. And she meant everywhere. “And just in case you forgot, lady, this is the second time in less than eight hours.”

Eve ignored him and looked past his mile-wide shoulders and aggravated expression.

What she saw had her eyes widening in shock.

She gasped at the sight of the padded seats, twisted at odd angles, and the stuff strewn everywhere. There was also a large plastic sheet covering a jagged hole where the wall—fuselage?—used to be. Chase must have rigged it to block out the storm, but water still continued to pour in along the sides.

Then the truth dawned on her and her gaze snapped back to him, her mouth dropping open at the realization that they’d—

“Ohmigod, you crashed?”

Dull color crept up his neck and he snapped out an insulted, “I did no such thing. The storm—”

“We’re upside down!” she interrupted, craning her head around his wide shoulders, slack-jawed as she studied the crazy angle of everything.

It made her feel off balance, because neither the floor nor the ceiling was where it should be.

Her gaze swung back to his, and when he opened his mouth Eve sucked in a quick breath and accused, “You said everything was going to be okay.”

A muscle twitched in his hard jaw and his expression darkened even more. “It is.”

“You said you’d handle things.”

“I did,” he gritted out, his stormy gaze locking with hers so intently that Eve finally realized he wasn’t as calm as she’d thought. And he looked...embarrassed, even.

They were barely hanging on to life and he was embarrassed? Typical alpha guy.

“How? In case you haven’t noticed, you crashed your plane.”

“No kidding?” he drawled, with a wealth of sarcasm that Eve thought was entirely unwarranted. “Congratulations, Miz Observant. In case you haven’t figured it out, direct lightning strikes tend to fry electronics. So, yeah,” he snarled, “we crashed. Happy?”

She sighed, recalling the sight of the seaplane, gleaming white and obviously well cared for as it bobbed gently on the bright blue waters of Port Laurent. “I’m sorry. It was a beautiful plane.”

He grunted, looking even more dejected if that was possible.

She tried for a conciliatory tone. “Do you...um...know where we are?”

He was silent for a couple beats, then he flicked her a speculative glance, as though trying to decide how to tell her that they’d crashed on the back of a giant sea turtle—or maybe in the middle of a volcano.

“You mean other than in a wrecked plane?”

Something very close to panic edged its way into Eve’s consciousness. He was looking at her with hooded gray eyes that had gone strangely wary. Conciliation went right out the window.

“You have no idea where we are, do you?”

“Well, not at the mo—”

“Oh. My. God.” Her eyes widened and clung to his, in the vain hope that he was joking. “You don’t!” she accused, the crushing feeling in her chest returning with a vengeance.

“Well, not exactly,” he growled, flashing an unreadable glance in her direction. “But you’re fine, aren’t you? No broken bones or anything? Right?” He didn’t even have the grace to look apologetic.

Eve’s heart lurched into her throat, threatening to cut off her air. She gasped for breath and clutched at her chest, where her heart threatened to punch its way through her ribs.

She sucked in another painful breath. This could not be happening. She’d fallen asleep and was still having a nightmare about the South Pacific and a flyboy from hell. But that was okay. Any minute now she’d wake up and—

“Fine? You call this fine?” Her voice rose to a hysterical squeak. “Oh, God.” Air whooshed in and out of her lungs a few times as she tried to calm herself, but she wasn’t getting calmer—in fact her vision was graying at the edges. “I...think...I’m having...a heart attack.”

“You’re just hyperventilating,” he said, with such masculine impatience she was tempted to whack him in the head. Oh, wait. He’d already been whacked in the head—which probably explained his abhorrent personality.

No, that wasn’t true. He’d been like that before the crash.

“Take a deep breath before you faint again.”

“I am not going to faint,” she snapped, trying to calm her panicked breathing. Oh, God, she was totally going to pass out. “I just can’t seem to...to take a deep...breath. My chest...feels...it feels like...you...punched...me.”

“That’s just bruising from the harness. Maybe you should let me check you out?” he offered helpfully. “Maybe you broke a few ribs.”

“And maybe you should back the hell off,” Eve wheezed, slapping at the hand reaching out to help unbutton her silk blouse. “You just want to gawk at the goods.”

Chase sat back with an exasperated huff. “Lady, I’ve already ‘gawked at the goods,’ as you so delicately put it,” he announced.

* * *

When she narrowed her eyes on him, as though imagining taking a scalpel to his intestines, he gave a careless shrug. “If it makes you feel better, you’re not my type. So I can be all professional without going insane with lust.”

Eve growled, and when Chase ventured a glance at her face she was—surprise, surprise—glaring at him, her lush bottom lip caught between pearly white teeth.

He groaned silently. Dammit. Now was not the time to be noticing her mouth. She was mad. He was mad. And they both needed medical attention. And since she was the doctor—yeah, well, maybe he shouldn’t think about her kissing anything better...

“But if you ask real nice...” he drawled, helping himself to a mouthful of bottled water and wishing it was expensive whiskey instead. Because, man, if there was ever a time for alcohol-induced mindlessness, it was now. “When we get outta here, I’ll help you with that little problem you were screaming about earlier.”

Large amber eyes blinked at him in confusion, and then he knew the instant she recalled what she’d been talking...screaming...about before they’d crashed. Her eyelashes flickered and her throat convulsed around an audible swallow. A faint blush crept into her cheeks.

Then her pink tongue sneaked out and slid over that bottom lip he was having such hot fantasies about and he was the one swallowing hard.

“Wh-what problem?” she rasped. “The only problem I have here is you.” Her gaze slid around the interior of the cabin rather than look at him. “And the fact that you crashed your plane.”

Ignoring her attempts to distract him, he held out the bottle and said, “Well...it was kinda hard to hear above all the hysteria, but I think you were babbling something about never having had a screaming orgasm.”

She snatched the bottle on a strangled squeak of horror. “I most certainly did not.” The blush had turned wild, staining her pale skin a rosy pink.

“You most certainly did,” he said, enjoying himself enormously now that her attention had been diverted from his plane and her panic attack.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m th-thirty. Of course I’ve had org—plenty of those.”

He pointed at her. “See? You can’t even say it.” He swallowed a chuckle when she made a growling sound in her throat. “You’re not my type, or anything, but I don’t mind admitting it took everything I had just to concentrate on flying. Which, come to think of it, was probably why we crashed.” His look turned accusatory. “So I guess it’s your fault.”

“You’re...you’re insane,” she spluttered.

He hitched a shoulder. “Anyway, I thought...being fellow survivors and all...” He clenched his jaw on a chuckle at her expression and turned it into a cough. Her face was a mix of relief, outrage and stunned disbelief.

Priceless.

And almost worth crashing his baby.

Almost.

“Besides,” he continued after clearing his throat, “not many guys get to be wrecked on a deserted tropical island with an exotic underwear model.”

Her eyes widened and her fingers gave a convulsive jerk. Water shot up the plastic neck of the bottle, spilling all over her hand and down the front of her shirt. For about ten seconds she spluttered, her mouth opening and closing several times. She looked ready to toss the water in his face. Or maybe smack him on the head with it.

Considering he already had the mother of all headaches, he carefully edged out of reach.

“Better not waste that water,” he warned, in case she gave in to temptation. “It’s all we have.”

* * *

Fighting the heat of embarrassment at being reminded of her temporary loss of control, Eve tugged nervously at her skirt and couldn’t help thinking about the fact that she wasn’t “his type.”

Really? That’s what you’re focusing on?

“Lingerie,” she said primly, wriggling around to pull at her narrow skirt. She didn’t know why she cared. Let him look. There was absolutely no way she wanted this...this rude, obnoxious heathen thinking she was his type. Thinking that she wanted to be his type—even if she did get a hot flash every time his gaze dropped to her legs.

She didn’t. Not even if he were the last man on earth.

“Huh?” The heathen gave her an odd look and she wondered for a mortifying moment if she’d spoken out loud.

“Lingerie—not underwear. Men wear underwear. There’s a difference.”

“Hmm...” he murmured, squinting at her chest as though he could see through her blouse.

She quickly glanced down and gave a sigh of relief when she saw that he couldn’t.

“So you do model lingerie?”

Of course he knew she didn’t. He was just baiting her. The jerk.

“Of course not,” Eve snapped, rising irritably to the bait, anyway. “What gave you that idea?”

“You did.”

“I think you hit your head,” she said, eyeing his bruised, battered face and the wet gleam of blood matting his dark hair with sudden concern. But despite the obvious pain around his eyes he looked... Oh, boy! He looked good. Like an irreverent, roughed-up pirate, ready to raise hell.

Her belly quivered. A really hot hell-raising pirate, darn it.

His mouth quirked, as though he knew what she was thinking. “Maybe you should let me check it out for myself. For educational purposes, of course,” he added innocently when she gave a muffled growl. “To show me the difference between lingerie and underwear.”

Seeing the wicked gleam, she narrowed her eyes to dangerous slits. “You. Are. Evil,” she said through clenched teeth, and shifted farther away from him—which wasn’t far enough, given their cramped quarters. “And instead of focusing on my underwear you should be thinking about where we are and...and...” She sucked in a shaky breath as their situation hit her. “Oh, God, how we’re going to be rescued.”

He sent her a dirty look, as if she’d insulted his manhood, and gingerly lay down on the pile of towels he’d used to make a pallet. When he said nothing—even closed his eyes—Eve wondered if his head injury had affected his memory.

Fear crawled into her belly like a sly fox invading a chicken coop.

“What about the radio? Did you try the radio?”