Chapter Five

You know, if I didn't want to wring her neck on a constant basis, I'd say Abby is a really cute girl. More of a Mary Ann than a Ginger, but I've always had a thing for Mary Ann.—Dean Woodall, Day 3

As soon as we got back to camp, Dean tossed his bag onto the sand. "I'm going to take a walk," he said and turned away before I had a chance to answer.

I set down my bag and relaxed in the warm sand for a few minutes, wiggling my toes in the grains. I glanced backward at our small camp and my spirits deflated. We had a fire pit, but no fire. I had a makeshift platform for a bed, but no cover. We didn't have anything to eat or drink.

Some paradise.

I found a couple of coconuts while trekking through the woods, but discovered that Dean had taken the axe with him. Stomach grumbling, throat dry, I realized I didn't even know where the well was. With no way to eat the meager food, and not quite ready to delve into my peanut butter stash yet, I decided to work on my shelter.

All I really needed to make my small shelter complete was some sort of cover to protect it from the wind (and rain, if I should be so unlucky). I decided on a small A-frame, since that seemed the easiest to make, and set about creating it. The wood was easy enough to find, though I didn't have anything to lash it together with… I ended up using my pink string bikini to hold the frame together. Like I was going to wear that. Shelter was far more important. I dove into my task with single-minded determination.

By the time I glanced up, the sun was going down, I was covered in sweat and bug bites, and I hadn't given a single thought to making fire. But my small shelter was done! I felt a sense of pride as I looked at the small thing and glanced over at the blanket that stuck out of Dean's pack with a smug sense of pride. One of us would be sleeping well tonight, and even though he had a blanket, I had a shelter.

I gathered some wood and tinder to make a fire, but the sun was too low into the sky and I couldn't see what I was doing—I was mostly guessing at this point anyhow. Dean was still nowhere to be seen, and I stared longingly at my coconuts, still covered in the tough green casing. I could try and split one against a fallen tree, but if I busted it, I'd lose all the good milk inside it. Even though I was trembling with hunger, I forced myself to wait, cradling it in my arms and sliding into my shelter with my backpack to wait for Dean's return.

I must have fallen asleep at some point—I started awake when I felt something warm and heavy touch my feet. "What—"

"Take my blanket," Dean said in a gruff voice, shoving it onto my legs. "Your teeth are chattering so hard I can't sleep."

I hadn't realized how cold I was until he'd tossed the blanket over me, and I snuggled under it gratefully. "What about you?" I asked sleepily. "My shelter isn't big enough for both of us."

"Don't worry about me. I can't sleep anyhow," Dean said, and I heard him walking away.

Morning came when I could no longer deny the gnawing hollow of my stomach with sleep. I crawled out of my shelter, coconut in hand, staring blearily up at the sky. Still morning, but not early. The sun was high.

Dean sat a distance away on the sand, his shoulders rolled slightly as he hunched over something. He looked… tired. Even from this angle. It gave me a twinge of guilt to see that, and I approached slowly, still holding my coconut. Part of me wanted to hide it, but he'd been generous enough to share his blanket with me—the least I could do is offer to share my food.

If I had to.

He didn't glance over at me as I approached, fixated on his task, and I peered over his shoulder. He had sticks in his hands, his shoelaces tied to a bowed stick, and he was trying to rub them together to make fire. He was doing it completely wrong. Judging from the sweat on his forehead, he'd also been at it for a while.

My stomach growled and I decided to skip pointing out the obvious, moving around him and looking for the axe. It sat on the far side of his left leg, half-covered in sand a few feet away, and I moved to pick it up. "Morning."

He grunted something that might have been a hello, not looking up from his task. With the bow and string, he sawed back and forth on another stick of wood, obviously trying to make fire. Doing a damned pitiful job of it, too.

I hefted the axe and examined my coconut, trying to determine the best way to open it. I had no friggin' clue. After a moment, my hunger won out and I simply dropped it on the ground a fair distance away and lifted the axe.

"You're going to hurt yourself," Dean said behind me. "Especially if you hold the axe like that."

I bristled at that and turned to glare at him. "I'm starving and this coconut is going into my stomach in the next five minutes or I am going to have to go after small woodland creatures with this axe. Got it?"

I could have sworn that his mouth twitched at that. "I saw the other coconut you left out for me last night—thanks." He stood up and brushed the sand off of his swim trunks and moved over to stand beside me, his hand out for the axe. "Let me do it."

A scowl touched my face, and I glared at him even harder, hugging the axe to me. "Is this some sort of macho bullshit?"

"No, this is a I-really-don't-want-to-have-to-bandage-you-up sort of bullshit. It took me forever to figure out how to crack mine open, and your hands are shaking. Now give it to me or you're going to hurt yourself."

Reluctantly, I handed over the axe. He had a point, and my hands were indeed shaking like leaves. I moved back a couple of feet so he could split open my coconut for me, but still hovered nearby, watching closely. I didn't want to take my eyes from it, for fear that this was a trick and he'd run off and eat my food.

But it seemed that I was more suspicious than he was. With easy, sure movements, he peeled the green husk from the coconut and used one tip of the axe to chop a hole at the top of the coconut and then held it out to me. "Drink that. When you're done drinking it, I'll crack it open for you."

With overjoyed fingers, I snatched the nut from his hands and raised it to my mouth. The first sweet mouthful touched my lips and I wanted to pass out at the sheer heaven of it. Wet and sugary, it was the best thing I'd ever tasted. I took another thirsty gulp and then glanced over guiltily at Dean. It took everything I had to hold out the coconut and offer him a drink. "Did you want some?"

He waved me off. "Nah. I had three of them this morning."

"Three?" I sputtered, anger surging past my guilt. "Where did you get three?"

Dean gave me an odd look, the I'm-stuck-here-with-the-crazy-girl glance I'd come to recognize so well in the past two days. "We're on a tropical island. They're everywhere. You can have three for breakfast if you want, too."

Right. I hadn't realized. Hunger was making me faint—and stupid. Of course there were coconuts on the island. I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me to look for more. Exhaustion, I supposed. We had rice, too—once we figured out how to boil it.

I tipped my head back and finished draining the coconut, disappointed when it was empty and I had to hand it back. A moment later, Dean split it with an easy crack of the axe and handed the two halves back to me. I crammed the thick white meat into my mouth as fast as I could. Oh god, it was so good and my stomach was so empty.

Dean moved back to his fire-building supplies and took up the bow again, his shoulders setting in the same resigned stance that I'd seen before. I said nothing as I scooped and ate, scooped and ate. He picked up the bow and began to saw at the wood again, the sticks twisting back and forth with great speed… and little results.

When I'd pried the last ounce of coconut from the empty husk and licked my fingers clean—gritty sand and all—I watched Dean for a moment more. His face was dripping with sweat, his movements exhausted but steady.

"You're doing it wrong," I decided to blurt out despite my better judgment.

He lifted his head, squinted at me and swiped at his forehead with one hand. His mouth set in a hard line. "What do you mean, I'm doing it wrong?"

I crawled over in the sand, moving to the other side, and pushed his hands away from the fire-making implements so I could study them easier. It was obvious to me where he'd gone wrong. "Here," I said, and pointed at his bottom stick, where he'd carved a small hole to catch the spark. "You need some tinder and then cut a notch here for the ember."

Dean tried to take it back from me. "Listen, I have—"

I held it away from him. "Can you just trust me and do it, already?"

We glared at each other for a few moments and then he got up and headed down the beach to get a palm leaf. By the time he returned, I had a notch cut into the wood and had started setting everything back up again—wood, coconut fluff for tinder, and the leaf itself. I put everything in place and then handed him the bow again. "You want to do it, or do you want me to?"

"By all means," he said with a gesture. "Go ahead."

Clearly he expected me to fail. I snorted at that and positioned the bow, then set to work.

If you've ever made a fire out of sticks, well, you know it's not an easy task. You have to get the friction going really well, and that means sawing very hard, which also means sawing very fast. My arm was screaming after about thirty seconds, but I wasn't about to give up. Instead, I ignored the sweat beading on my brow, bit my lip, and continued to continually move the bow back and forth, trying to coax a spark from the implements.

And after what seemed like eternity, a small plume of smoke rose. "You got it!" Dean yelled in my ear, and leaned in to blow on the small kernel of fire. It flared and we hastily shoved the fire-making sticks aside, adding more bits of dried coconut husks to try and keep it going. And when it was a real flame, Dean wrapped the entire thing in the palm leaf and carried it back to our fire pit, placing the smoking bit at the bottom of the wood pile with delicate hands. I followed behind him, wiping my brow.

"How did you know?" He glanced over at me, then turned back to blow on the flame some more.

"Know what?" I said. "How to build the fire?"

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the fire pit as he fed the flickering flame more and more tinder and small sticks of wood. "I've been trying since last night. I rubbed those sticks for so long and so hard I thought my arms would fall off, and you managed to do it in twenty minutes."

I moved closer to the building fire, pleased that he'd been so struck by my efforts. "I reviewed a book for a celebrity survivalist once. Very big deal for the publisher, and the guy was a total asshole. He wrote it himself instead of having his ghostwriter do it, or so he told me. Anyhow, he was a real jerk, so I hired a wilderness survival guide and we went through each 'survival' tip in the guide. And I gave him an F." I nodded at the fire, my mouth curving into a smile in remembrance. "He got the whole fire-making thing wrong too. Same reason—that stupid notch at the bottom."

Dean shook his head at me, his mouth not quite curving into a smile. "You just love proving people wrong, don't you, Abby?"

I didn't respond, but I didn't need to. The smile on my face was enough. It felt good to smile after three days of complete and utter misery, and I got a funny, warm feeling in my stomach when Dean smiled back, his own mouth moving into a slow and devastating curve.

God, why did I have to get stuck with such a beautiful—and arrogant—man?

To distract myself from the look he was casting in my direction, I nodded at the fire. "I can take care of it."

Dean glanced over at the stump with our Tribal Summons. "We have mail, you know."

I groaned at that. "Again today?"

He nodded. "Probably some sort of reward challenge. The boat should be here soon." He glanced over at me, blue eyes focused on my face, so vivid against his dark tan. "I think we need to have a serious talk before we go, however."

I wanted to growl at that. We were being civil adults for the moment, and it was a nice change. I didn't want to go back to hating him just yet. It was far too exhausting. "Do we have to?"

"Look. We're both here because we want to win. I think we need to reconsider our… tactics."

I had to smile reluctantly at that. "What, you mean screaming at each other is not exactly going to get us to the end?"

A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth as well. "Something like that. We need to work together if we're going to make it to the final rounds. If we keep ending up at the bottom of the heap, we're going to get knocked off, no matter how much of a train wreck we seem to be."

I nodded at that. He had a very good point.

"I hate losing, and I think that we'd be a good team if we could just get it through our hard heads that we need to work together—"

I began to roll my eyes at him. "You don't need to butter me up—"

"I'm serious," he interrupted me again and gestured at the fire he was slowly feeding. "Look what we've accomplished in a short hour. We've eaten, we've got fire, and we can boil our water. You have a shelter, but you're still freezing at night. I have a blanket but no shelter, so I'm warm and covered in bug bites from sand fleas." He paused to scratch his arm, as if emphasizing his point. "The point is, neither one of us is sleeping."

I remained silent at that, thinking about how well I'd slept last night with his borrowed blanket. The blanket that he'd given to me. He'd gone and walked the beach the entire night, probably trying to keep warm, and spent the morning trying (unsuccessfully) to build a fire. Yeah, we weren't exactly rocking Endurance Island with our skills.

At my silence, he sighed. "Look, Abby, I realize you've gotten into your head that you don't like me because I'm a handsome, athletic guy—"

I sputtered at that, my goodwill toward him teetering dangerously closer to zero.

"—but you can hate me after the game, when one of us has won two million dollars."

"I don't hate you," I protested. "But you didn't exactly endear yourself to me when you stepped on me to swim your way to shore and win, you know."

"Was that you?" He grinned widely. "Oops."

I clenched my jaw. Half of me wanted to sock him in the face—old, cocky Dean—but the other part of me wanted to laugh at the boyish smile he wore as he glanced up at me over the fire. To me, that seemed to be new Dean. The Dean I was going to be living and sleeping with for the next six weeks.

Sad to say, but in the past hour, I had really warmed up to new Dean. I scratched at my bug bites and gave him a small, reluctant shrug. "All right. We can work together."

He nodded. "What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. I'll stop hiding the axe and the map to the water well."

My jaw dropped. "You were hiding stuff?"

Dean grinned and gave me an innocent look. "You're hiding your peanut butter, aren't you?"

I bristled at that. "The peanut butter is pure protein and sugar. I'm saving it," I began, and then choked on the words when his expression changed. Sigh. "We need to save it," I corrected myself. "For when we're tired and exhausted and a challenge is coming up."

"You mean like today?" he said and squinted at the shore. In the distance, a small red boat was pulling up, and I knew we were going to rush off to the challenge soon.

He did have a point, though. Even after a belly full of coconut, I was still weak and shaky and he looked exhausted too. We could use a little energy before the challenge and to cement our deal together. So I got up, brushed the sand off my bottom, and glanced over at the boat.

Dean cursed under his breath. "Man, they have shit timing, don't they? Just when we got our fire started."

I moved toward the shelter, gesturing at a massive log I'd dragged over the other day. "Put that big hunk of wood over the fire. It'll smolder and keep it burning."

"More tips from that book?"

I smiled as I ducked into my makeshift shelter, digging for my bag. "Never piss me off."

"Boy, no kidding." But his laugh was admiring. "What are you doing?"

I pulled the peanut butter jar out of my bag and brandished it. "Cementing our alliance of two with a goodwill gesture," I said, and when he reached for the jar, I pulled it out of his reach again. "Not so fast there, buddy. We need to parcel this out and make it last if we're going to be taking hits before every challenge."

I expected him to bitch about it, or get ugly with me, but his mouth only curled into that amused smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Damn, his eyes were really blue, especially under the bright sunlight. "You're the boss," was all he said.

With deliberate, almost shaking fingers, I screwed off the cap of the peanut butter jar and removed the protective seal. A thin layer of peanut oil covered the top. The scent wafting up from the jar—roasted peanuts and oil—made my stomach growl, and Dean gave a small, deep moan. "Damn, that smells good," he said.

I nodded and glanced around—the only sticks we could use for scooping out the peanut butter were covered in sand and camp filth, so I decided to use the next best thing. I stuck my dirty finger in my mouth and sucked all of the grit off it and then carefully dug into the jar. After all, my mouth was probably the cleanest thing on this island at the moment. With careful precision, I scooped a glop of the chunky peanut butter onto my finger, the mound glistening, and held it out to Dean. Just a small amount, a tablespoon at the most. Just enough to stave off hunger pains and give us a burst of energy.

My thought was to hold out the peanut butter so he could transfer it to his own finger. Perhaps the sight of me sucking on my finger before had distracted him, because he leaned in and took my finger in his mouth, rasping his tongue against it.

And just like that, the world flipped.

Heat rushed through me at the feel of his tongue, his hot mouth sucking on my skin. I forgot about the peanut butter that was his original goal and my body flushed, my mind skidding to a halt at the sight of his beautiful mouth over my skin, the feel of his tongue against my flesh. I must have shivered or tried to pull away, because his hand grasped my own and held me there as he lapped and rasped against my finger, cleaning my skin.

Searing me to my core.

A wave of heat pulsed through my body and I inhaled sharply. Dean's gaze moved to my face, and I knew that he was realizing the same thing I was. His tongue moved slowly against my skin, sensually. His eyes were locked on my own, and his tongue gave my skin one last flick that I felt all the way down to my sex. Then he released my hand. "Sorry."

"It's okay," I said in a daze, my gaze still locked on his mouth.

He nodded at the shore and stepped past me, clearing his throat. "Boat's here."

In a daze, I stared down at my finger and wondered if I could put it in my own mouth after that… or would it be dangerously close to kissing him?

Our team dynamic had changed again. I touched my finger to my lips and stared after Dean thoughtfully.