Page 14 of Marrying the Enemy

She veered down the track labeled Spit. It had taken less than an hour to hike across the island and the boats weren’t leaving until two. She would easily get back in time.

Or so she believed.

Dom was not a quitter, but nor was he a liar.

This wasn’t working with Cat. She leaned into him, eyes limpid, mouth soft and inviting and all he could think was, Don’t.

He couldn’t reject her days before she was supposed to be a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding, though.

At least they weren’t sleeping together. She might accuse him of leading her on when they had The Talk, but he’d barely kissed her cheek since a certain someone had arrived under his nose to torture him all over again.

“Dom?” Cat murmured, drawing a circle around the small logo above his heart. “Are we o—? Oh!” With a self-conscious smile, she stepped away, glancing beyond him. “Hi.”

Dom turned to see Logan coming up from the trail down to the far side of the island. He was sweaty and red-faced with exertion. He paused to give them a curt nod of greeting.

Dom braced himself for the sight of Eve, but she didn’t appear behind him.

“Where’s Eve?” Cat asked, looking past him.

“She had to leave,” Logan said with a sullen pout. “Family emergency.”

When? Dom had seen her leaving on her walk with Logan and they would have passed her on the trail if she’d already gone back. Or Dom would have felt her walk behind him while they were taking photos. He didn’t want a sixth sense where she was concerned, but he had one.

“Is it worth hiking down to see the turtles?” Cat asked Logan.

“There was only one and it went back into the water. I’ll see you at the thing later.” Logan’s gaze refused to meet his, striking Dom as shifty before Logan headed back to the cove where the boats were mustered.

Dom didn’t think the other man had done anything nefarious to Eve, but a sense of wrongness abraded his insides as the other man left. Dom’s ears felt pricked for her voice, his nose twitching to catch her scent.

“Trouble in paradise?” Cat elevated her brows in amused speculation.

Dom shrugged, irritated by the question. “Do you want to see the turtles?”

“He said there weren’t any. If it’s just a beach, let’s go back to the one we can swim at.”

The weather was turning cloudy and the water was too choppy for comfortable snorkeling. That’s why they had decided to walk instead of swim. Dom was reluctant to leave the trail, though. It was a gut-level response that he relied on when he made big decisions at WBE, the kind that wasn’t always backed up by logic and facts, but never steered him wrong.

Leaving the trail went against his instinct, but he took Cat back to the cove, compelled to see if Eve was, in fact, there.

She was officially an unhealthy obsession, he decided, when they arrived and he couldn’t see her. He scanned the crowd and counted the boats, noting that one yacht had left. It was feasible she’d been taken back to the resort. She wasn’t his responsibility anyway. She was his enemy, for God’s sake. Her whole family was a pile of thorns in his side.

He told Cat to swim without him and pondered whether to radio a boat he couldn’t identify while he watched Logan pour margaritas down his throat as though he was being paid to do it. Guilty conscience? Was there trouble in paradise?

“She had to leave,” he overheard Logan say to someone. “Family emergency.”

Dom knew he was behaving like a Victorian spinster, worrying about someone he had no business caring about, but he couldn’t shake a sense that Eve was still here. Just not here.

As the wind picked up and the first raindrops fell, boats began pulling in gear and families started gathering children and toys from the beach. Two boats left and the one that had been missing came back from circumnavigating the island. Eve wasn’t on it.

“Go with your brother. I’ll find someone going to the mainland,” Dom said to Cat, glancing at his watch. “I’ll catch up to you at dinner.”

Cat was surprised, but her sister-in-law asked for her help getting the children to the sailboat so she moved down the beach.

Dom glanced at the takeaway shack, thinking to tell the man running it not to leave until he’d checked back in with him, but Cat’s uncle was at the window.

Dom veered from admitting aloud that he was concerned about Eve. He barely wanted to admit it to himself. She was likely fine and had done exactly as Logan had said. She’d made her way back to the eco-resort and was on her way to the airport.

He glanced at his watch again, deciding to be sure. He worked out constantly, both cardio and strength. He could easily sprint across the island and be back before this regatta of disorganized boaters had launched itself.

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