Page 12 of Ship Wrecked

One last tweak to a braid, and the other woman stepped away from Maria’s chair. “Done. Enjoy scrounging for seaweed and hauling rocks, both of you.”

Maria and Peter got to their feet and headed for the shoreline, primped for another day of filming that would leave her staggering, sore, and exhausted on her way back to their hotel.

Maybe Peter’s own exhaustion could explain why he’d lingered in a chair at the other end of the trailer and thumbed through a dog-eared paperback while Jeanine had worked on Maria today, instead of going outside and finding an isolated spot near the filming location. It wasn’t raining yet, so that wasn’t his motivation for staying. Besides, the island’s frequent drizzle—nippy even in June—hadn’t prevented him from fleeing her presence before today.

So, yeah, this was odd.

She and Peter had made it through their first week of on-location proximity without further hostilities, although the chill between them remained. Before today, he’d still avoided her whenever possible, and she’d remained civil but hadn’t pushed her company on him.

To be fair, he kept his distance from everyone. But with the crew, as opposed to her, that distance seemed more due to blanket awkwardness than specific dislike. He might appear unfriendly in their presence, but she’d come to suspect he simply didn’t know how to make casual conversation or find common ground with people he didn’t know. Both of which she would gladly help him with, if he’d only thaw enough to let her.

Which he might not, and so be it. She wouldn’t let his iciness bother her. In fact, she’d been using it to enhance her performance. Because the unspoken tension that coalesced between them, thicker than the island’s frequent fog? It helped her get into character. Cassia was an independent, determined woman marooned alongside a man she didn’t like and didn’t trust and to whom she found herself unwillingly attracted.

Maria could relate.

They’d almost reached the semicircle of crew surrounding the area where Cassia and Cyprian were hauling rocks from the shoreand stacking them into an initial shelter. More a wall than anything else, really. A windbreak that would suffice for the summer, as they built more permanent shelter and preserved food in preparation for the long, dark winter ahead.

To her absolute shock, Peter cleared his throat and—spoke? To her?

“Jeanine’s mistaken,” he muttered, looking straight ahead. “No more hauling rocks today.”

Maria glanced around, but there was no one else in hearing distance.

Weird.

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

He tilted his head toward Ramón, their director, who was studying something near the shore. “This morning at breakfast, Ramón said we were moving on to the food-gathering scene.”

Even before he’d hated her, during their one night together, she wasn’t certain Peter had strung this many words together in a row. Had an Irish witch cast a chattiness spell on him? Or, alternatively, removed a Curse of Manful Silence from his very soul?

“So...” When he didn’t fling himself away from her in disgust after a single syllable, she continued slowly. “We’ll be doing some fishing, then.”

He halted just out of hearing range of the crew, all of whom were eyeing them curiously. “And foraging for other things. Wild leeks from the grikes. Seaweed and shellfish from the shore. He said they’ll plant fake birds’ nests and eggs for us to find too.”

Fy fan, this conversation was agonizingly boring, especially since she already knew what was going to happen, so did he, he knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew.

She could only assume his newest version of an olive branchinvolved a tedious recitation of previously acknowledged information. Which—fine. She’d take it.

Okay, what else did they both already know? “We’ll be preserving the food next week, then. Sun-drying the seaweed and so forth.”

“Smoking the pollack.” He nodded. “Salting and drying it too.”

She supposed she shouldn’t tell him thatsmoking the pollacksounded like an unfortunate euphemism for oral sex.

Whatever. Time to up the ante, because she was done talking about pollack.

Turning toward him, she smiled and waited to speak until he made reluctant eye contact. “Eager to choke down more dulse today?”

When they’d filmed their half-drowned first scene on the island, they’d eaten fronds of the reddish-purple, leathery seaweed in take after take, picking it directly from the rocks while the tide was out, washing off small snails and pieces of shell, and consuming it like the starving Vikings they were pretending to be.

It was a delicacy. She got that. When dried, no doubt it was delicious as a flavor enhancer, and maybe even as a snack. She could even admit to having enjoyed the first few mouthfuls of the fronds, fresh and still dripping with ocean water.

But she was relatively certain another dulse-filled day of filming would require a vomit bucket just out of camera view, readily available between takes.

“Choke down?” He blinked at her. “Eating endless dulse was the highlight of my week. I can’t get enough.”

Her brow pinched in a confused frown. “Really?”

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