Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong
Nikki Logan
Marooned in paradise with a bikini-clad beauty……is surely the only way for a truly committed playboy to get shipwrecked! Ideally, however, Rob Dalton would have chosen a slightly friendlier companion! Prickly conservationist Honor Brier clearly just wants to be left alone with her birds and turtles.Honor’s had more than her fair share of heartbreak, and the isolated island has been a perfect place to lick her wounds in peace. She has no time for accidental tourists. Yet Rob is charming and infuriatingly attractive – his sheer passion for life is difficult to resist. Slowly Honor is discovering that even playboys may have their good points…
Praise for Nikki Logan
‘Superb debut—4.5 stars.’
—RT Book Reviews on
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
‘Now, here is an Australian writer who manages to both
tell a good story and to capture Australia well.I had fun
from start to finish. Nikki Logan will be one to watch.’
—www.goodreads.com on
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
‘This story has well-defined and soundly motivated
characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.’
—RT Book Reviews on
Their Newborn Gift
About the Author
NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.
Visit Nikki online at www.nikkilogan.com.au
Also by Nikki Logan
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
Their Newborn Gift
Seven-Day Love Story
The Soldier’s Untamed Heart
Friends to Forever
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong
Nikki Logan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Pete: who I’d want with me if I was marooned on a
deserted isle, and who’d be able to build us an existence
to rival Robinson Crusoe’s.
Thanks to Ammon Hontz and Janine Rose for your help
with the undersea aspects of this story, and to
Helen Pickering for your assistance with all things Cocos.
Big thanks to my editor, Jo Grant, for believing in this
story so much.
CHAPTER ONE
Pulu Keeling (Island), Western Australia
‘What the …?’
Rob Dalton throttled the powerboat down to a gentle chug-a-lug and snatched up his binoculars. A frown stretched his sea-whipped skin and tipped his lucky fishing cap forward.
He was seeing things.
Must be.
He kept his eye firmly pinned on the natural lagoon created by the hazardous coral reefs around Pulu Keeling where he’d caught a momentary glimpse of her—and it. Clean, cold ocean swelled between The Player and the tiny island, obscuring his view just as he thought he might get another glimpse. Then there she was—swimming strongly towards shore, a glinting silvery mass propelling her along.
No way …
Rob lowered the binoculars and stared at the island. The towering trees and dunes and reef all seemed normal. So did the horizon. The one streak of cloud in the endless blue sky.
He rubbed under his sunglasses and lifted them to fit the super-powered field glasses more firmly to his face. She was still there, stroking across the lagoon. And it was still there too, powering along behind her. His breath caught hard in his chest.
Impossible.
But it sure as heck looked real enough, and out here, so far from everything … Who knew? He squinted in the mid-morning light, pressing the binoculars so hard to his face the rims bit into his cheekbones. Centuries of maritime mythology filled his mind. But she was no dugong and he was no sex-starved, nineteenth century sailor imagining a half-woman-half-fish in the distance.
Although you wouldn’t know it from the pace of his heart.
She neared land, her strokes steady and practised. The beach rose to meet her and then she stood …