Nerd In Shining Armor Part 11

"I don't know what difference the color makes to the discussion. It's gone, in any case."

"I just want to picture it, is all." She handed him the jacket. "And I think you should picture it, too, as a fitting memorial to something that has departed from your life forever, because you didn't have the good sense to appreciate the effort involved in creating it."

He arranged the jacket next to the towel. "All right, I admit it was a rotten thing to do, but don't you think you're getting a little carried away with this subject?"

"Nope. I'll bet she spent hours and hours bent over her work, all for love of you, Jack." She squeezed water from the matching skirt and pa.s.sed it up to him. "She probably even had poor eyesight and arthritis in her hands."

Jack groaned.

"What color was it?" Next she wrung out her bathing suit and held it out to him.

"Orange and yellow, I think."

"You think? You paid so little attention to it that you don't even remember what color it was? Your sins are piling up on you, boy."

"Okay, you might as well know the truth. I'm color blind."

"Color blind?" She stared at him in astonishment. "Well, shut my mouth. That explains a heap of things. Why didn't you tell me that a long time ago, when I was trying to do something about your look?"

He shrugged. "What difference would it have made? I couldn't expect you to show up at my house every morning and pick out my clothes."

That idea had more appeal than she wanted to admit. Dressing Jack would be fun, now that she realized he had a decent body. Undressing him wouldn't be a real ch.o.r.e, either. "There is a solution, you know. Wear black." She could see him in all black, too, looking better than those velvet paintings of Elvis that Aunt Maizie had in her front room.

"I'd probably mess that up and get navy or purple mixed in there."

"Not if you asked the salesperson to sell you only black clothes." She gazed up at him. "Right?"

"I guess."

"You don't want the salesperson to know you're color blind, do you?"

When he didn't answer, she figured this physical failing was a touchy subject for him. "Being color blind is nothing to be ashamed about," she said more gently. "It's not like it's your fault or anything. Try being my aunt Nelda, who has six toes on her right foot. That's not her fault, either, but you should see the way people make fun of her every blessed time she goes wading in the crick. She's threatened never to go again, on account of that."

He smiled down at her. "You sound like my grandmother. She used to tell me to be glad I had all my fingers and toes."

"I'll bet I would like your grandmother. Is she still alive?"

"Uh-huh. She lives in Nebraska. I've tried to get her to move over here, but she's very attached to her little house and I don't think she'd ever do it." He glanced at the suitcase. "Anything else to hang up?"

Nothing but her pale blue underwear, and she was feeling a little shy about giving him that. She shouldn't be shy. This was good old Jack, after all. Even so, she couldn't just hand him her panties and bra. "That's it." She unzipped her makeup bag and took out her tube of sunscreen. "Come on back down here and I'll put some lotion on your back."

"Okay." He crouched down with his broad back facing her.

Uncapping the tube, she squeezed coconut-scented sunscreen onto her fingers before laying the tube back inside the suitcase so it wouldn't get all sandy. Then she rose on her knees and smeared the lotion over his right shoulder.

He flinched. "Yikes. That's cold."

"Sorry. It's because your skin's so warm." Warm and smooth. Nice. His indoor-white color was starting to turn pink, but the sunscreen should save him from getting burned. She went back for more lotion, because there was a lot of area to cover.

And she was having a good time. If anyone had asked her before today, she would have said Jack probably had a bony, skinny back, but it wasn't at all. He was firm and very touchable. She made several pa.s.ses over his shoulders and then got more lotion before heading down toward the waistband of his jeans.

With the way he was crouched, the waistband of his jeans gaped at the small of his back, right where a sprinkling of hair followed his spine down under the elastic of his tighty whiteys. She wondered if he wore Fruit of the Loom or Hanes or Jockeys, like the pair the King had left in her grandmother's bedroom.

Whatever the brand, Genevieve figured Jack would have great buns underneath the cotton. She never intended to find out about that. She'd never find out about what was on the flip side of those briefs, either, although parts of her were acting very interested in that area.

Time for a distraction. "Jack, I have the best idea. I'll teach you how to whittle, and you can make your grandmother something. And when you give it to her, you can tell her how much you regret your behavior regarding the afghan, and this is how you're showing it, by giving her a gift from the heart."

"You whittle?"

Maybe she shouldn't have told him. "I suppose you think that's peculiar."

"No. Well, maybe, a little. I always thought of whittlers as being old guys with beards sitting on a sagging front porch with a hound dog lying beside them and banjo music in the background."

"Picture a barefoot little kid in place of the old guy with the beard, and you've painted it just about right. We always had c.o.o.n dogs lying around, and I don't know a single porch in the Hollow that isn't slightly swaybacked. My uncle Harley was the best banjo picker in the hills of Tennessee. Or so he always told us." She gave his back one final swipe. "There, you're done."

He stood and stretched, looking way too good doing it. "Thanks."

"Put some on your chest and arms." She thrust the tube of lotion at him.

"Then I'll do you."

She panicked at the thought. "That's okay. I can reach everything that's exposed." If she felt as nice to him as he felt to her, they could get into trouble, with him having a crush and all. And her getting increasingly attracted. She knew it was on account of them being marooned and Jack being her rescuer. Once they were back in Honolulu she'd stop thinking of his hands and his mouth and his ... other stuff.

She turned back to the open suitcase. There was another reason her thoughts were going in that direction. Six of them, to be exact, lay in the bottom of her suitcase. Now that she'd taken out everything except her underwear and her makeup bag, one or another of those six packets kept slipping into view. She thought the suitcase might have had elasticized side pockets once upon a time, but they'd been ripped out by the time she became the owner.

She shoved the packets under her bra and panties and makeup bag as she listened to Jack rhythmically slapping more lotion on his bare arms. It sounded like two people having s.e.x. Two specific people. People marooned together who wouldn't be discovered for hours and had six condoms.

"Did you bring a knife?" he asked.

"A knife?" She couldn't imagine why he'd ask.

"To whittle with."

"Oh." She'd been so sidetracked by the image of having s.e.x with him that she'd plumb forgotten about her offer to teach him to whittle. "No, but I have a pair of manicure scissors in my makeup bag. I could make do with those." She turned to glance up at him and found herself having to look past his crotch in order to get to his face. She gulped. "Do you really want to learn?"

"It'd be a way to kill some time until we're sure Brogan is gone for good." His attention veered from her to the blue underwear in her suitcase. "Those look wet, too. Why don't I hang them up?" He leaned over and reached one long arm toward the suitcase.

"Never mind." She spread her hand protectively over her damp undies. "They'll dry in there."

"Ifyousayso."

"I do. So are you ready for me to teach you to whittle? First we have to find some small pieces of driftwood." She had to change her position and change it fast. This view of his male equipment was not helping her mental condition at all. She got to her feet, but in the process kicked the suitcase slightly. The contents s.h.i.+fted.

"Whoa." From the tone of his voice it was obvious he'd seen at least some of the condoms.

She banged the lid shut and avoided his gaze. "Never you mind about that, either." She started toward the beach. "Come on. Let's find something we can whittle."

"Hold on." He grabbed her arm. "You didn't trust that smarm-meister to bring his own, and yet you were willing to go to bed with someone that irresponsible?"

"When it comes to makin' babies, I don't trust any man."

His grip on her arm gentled, and a soft light came into his eyes. "You could trust me."

Chapter 9.

Condoms. The suitcase Jack had rescued, the one that had nearly turned him into shark bait, the one that meant so much to Gen that the thought of tras.h.i.+ng it had made her cry-that same suitcase had contained condoms. And not just one, either. If he'd known the suitcase had condoms in it, he would have dived down to the sunken plane, if necessary. Condoms were even more exciting than energy bars.

This put a whole new light on things. True, she'd brought the condoms on account of Nick, but Nick had been revealed as a murdering, embezzling creepazoid, so Jack could rightly a.s.sume she had no more interest in Nick as a s.e.xual partner. She had no interest in Jack as a s.e.xual partner, either, but he had a decent chance to remedy that and absolutely zero compet.i.tion. Statistically, he was in fine shape.

She smiled at him. "When I said I wouldn't trust any man, I wasn't talking about you."

"Good, because I-wait a minute." What had sounded like a compliment might have been the exact opposite. "Is that because you don't think of me as a man?"

"Well, of course I know you're a man, but-"

"You don't think I'm highly s.e.xed?"

She began to laugh.

"Don't you dare laugh about that." Warmth crept up from his neck to his face. "Don't you dare."

"I'm sorry." She struggled to control herself. "But take a look at the evidence, Jackson."

"Jack."

"Okay, Jack." She began ticking off items on her fingers. "You haven't had a date in a c.o.o.n's age, you pay no attention to how you look, I've never heard you tell a dirty joke, and your head's buried inside your computer for days on end. If s.e.x was that important to you, you'd be spending more time on it."

She had a point. Dating usually wasn't as much fun as writing code, and he'd never had a s.e.xual itch so great that it distracted him from his work until he'd met Gen. He'd have to conclude that s.e.x per se wasn't important to him. s.e.x with Gen was a different story. He'd fantasized about that ever since coming to work at Rainbow Systems.

"Maybe it's just that I'm very discriminating," he said at last.

Her cheeks turned pink. "See, that's what I'm talking about. You've had a crush on me for a long time.

A highly s.e.xed man would have done something about it."

"Being highly s.e.xed and being confident don't always go together."

"So you're trying to convince me that if you believed in yourself more, you'd turn into an animal?" Her color was still high, and she was looking at him with a speculative gleam in her eyes.

"Could be." He wondered how many condoms were in the suitcase. A guy with a low s.e.x drive wouldn't wonder things like that, would he? Of course, he didn't have much else to think about right now. Although he'd fantasized about Gen in the past, it obviously hadn't taken over his whole life or he wouldn't have been able to do his job.

Maybe he didn't have any compet.i.tion for Gen's attention right now, but then again, she didn't have any for his, either.

He'd always told himself that with the right woman he'd go crazy with l.u.s.t. He'd felt crazy with l.u.s.t ever since they'd crawled up on the beach, but maybe being marooned with someone wasn't a very good test. Once he got back to his keyboard he might put the whole idea of s.e.x out of his mind for days at a time, as she'd accused him of doing.

She continued to study him. "You are an original, Jack. I'll give you that." Then she dropped her gaze. "Come on, let's go hunt up some driftwood to whittle."

"Okay." Feeling dismissed, as if he weren't manly enough to capture her attention, Jack followed her to the waterline. He didn't like the status quo, but he wasn't sure what to do about it. Until the discovery of the condoms, he'd abandoned the idea of fooling around, because he wasn't sure he could keep himself in check. Now he was worried that he might be a keep-himself-in-check kind of guy.

Still, the condoms meant all his options were open. He'd been handed a golden opportunity to have the s.e.xual experience of his dreams if he could convince Gen to go along. A guy named Jack wouldn't let that opportunity slip through his fingers.

But what if it didn't turn out to be the incredible experience he'd envisioned? What if s.e.x with Gen, the most beautiful woman he could imagine getting frisky with, was only so-so? Would that mean that he was some sort of eunuch, saddled with a genius IQ and the s.e.xual drive of broccoli? He wasn't sure he wanted to find out the answer to that question. Maybe he was better off living in ignorance of his true nature.

At the waterline, Gen paused to shade her eyes. "Remember those clouds we almost flew into a few hours ago?"

"Yeah." It seemed centuries ago that they'd been up in the Sky King, terrified that they would both die. They'd made it through alive, which might mean his s.e.xual doubts weren't very important in the grand scheme of things. It was amazing how quickly perspective changed, because now, besides being alive, he also wanted to be a potent s.e.x G.o.d.

"They're building up and moving this way."

He squinted toward the horizon. "I'll have to take your word for it."

"Here, use the gla.s.ses." She whipped them off and handed them to him.

He put on the gla.s.ses and, sure enough, some big bruisers were headed this way. The line of clouds extended eastward, toward Oahu, which meant the entire chain of islands would soon be hit.

"I'd rather be worried about too much sun than have to deal with a storm," Gen said.

"So would I, and not just because we might get rained on."

"I know." She glanced over at him. "Bad weather means they'll have more trouble searching for us, huh?"

"That's exactly what it means."

Her expression grew serious. "I think we'd better find driftwood so we can make a fire. We can worry about the whittling later."

"You have matches in your suitcase?" Maybe the two of them needed to take a careful inventory, and not because they had to count the condoms. She might have brought all sorts of useful gear she'd forgotten about.

"No matches, but we can start a fire with some dry gra.s.s and your gla.s.ses."

"That only works in the movies, Gen."

"That shows what you know. I've done it plenty of times. When I was a kid that was the only reason I was happy about having gla.s.ses. I could start my own little campfires in the woods. You had a peculiar childhood, Jack."

He couldn't help laughing at that. "Fortunately for us, yours was completely normal."

Annabelle noticed that the weather was getting worse as Matt guided the boat he'd rented out of Haleiwa Harbor. She didn't say anything, though, because she didn't care how bad the weather got. Genevieve was out there in the same weather, and Annabelle intended to find her.

Lincoln stood beside her at the back of the boat, both of them watching the frothy wake as they headed out to sea. Lincoln had taken the news of the missing plane as well as could be expected. He'd panicked at first and had made Annabelle promise that under no circ.u.mstances was his sister going to end up dead. Annabelle had promised.

Because she'd said it with total conviction, Lincoln had settled down, but she couldn't have left him in Honolulu. He would have gone crazier than a hound with a nose full of porcupine quills if she'd made him stay with a friend while she went off with Matt. She was his security right now, and she knew it.

But to look at him standing in the wind with his earphones and his wraparound sungla.s.ses, anyone would think he didn't need her at all. Whenever Lincoln was plugged into those earphones, he bobbed his head in time with whatever was slowly destroying his eardrums.

Annabelle worried about his hearing, but she wasn't going to bother him about the earphones now. He probably needed the music to distract him from his worry about Genevieve. From this side she couldn't see the little gold earring he'd insisted on having put in last week. She usually tried to approach him from the nonearring side so she could pretend he hadn't done that.