Best of Fiona Harper. Fiona Harper

he’d actually been struck by the unexpected beauty of it all. Odd, really. Because to Finn McLeod beauty wasn’t normally found caged within four walls and a ceiling, no matter how grand the old building was. True beauty was usually found in wild, open spaces.

       She must have been really young then. Little more than a kid. And yet he’d never seen something move that way before—so free and fluid and graceful. Except maybe the Northern Lights over the Arctic.

       Didn’t seem to have much of that fluidity about her now, though, which was a pity. In the wild, you had to go with the flow. She was going to need every bit of flexibility she possessed if she was going to survive the challenges of the coming week.

       He sighed, folded his hands behind his head and peered up into the featureless sky, hoping to see the twinkle of a star eventually. Perhaps conversation would have been better, because now the other two castaways were asleep he was left alone with his thoughts.

       He’d thought he and Nat were the perfect couple. What on earth had gone wrong? He just didn’t get it.

       Must still be numb, though, because he wasn’t feeling half as crushed as he’d expected to. Sad and disappointed, yes, but not devastated. But that was because he was strong, he supposed. Resilient.

       He thought he saw a pinprick of light up above and stilled his thoughts for a few seconds while he tried to focus on it.

       Hmm. Having a broken heart wasn’t nearly as bad as people said it was. He’d always thought those people who sang the whiny love ballads on the radio were being overly dramatic, and now he felt justifiably superior about being right about it all along.

       He had a feeling his heart was mending already. In true Fearless Finn style, he was sure he’d survive.

       The drip of water on the leaves above her head was keeping Allegra awake. At least, that was what she was telling herself. Drips and the cold. And the ridges of the bamboo poles, of course. It certainly wasn’t anything else.

       Not the sense of being turned upside down and back to front. Not the electric charge thrumming between her and the man lying next to her. Or the fact it was almost certainly a one-way sensation. No, those things weren’t bothering her at all.

       She sighed and rolled over onto her back. Every part of the motion was painful. She’d be bruised from head to toe in the morning, wouldn’t be able to dance properly for days…

       Her stomach dropped to the same chilly temperature as the night air swirling around inside their makeshift shelter.

       Dancing.

       She wasn’t planning on doing any of that for the next seven days, was she? So it really shouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t be there to dance the Saturday evening performance of The Little Mermaid. Tamzin would be thrilled to take her place. So there was no need for Allegra to rehearse, no need to do class.

       She sat up and hugged her arms around herself. Everyone would be furious with her. Stephen. Her father. The choreographer. The Artistic Director of the company… The list was endless.

       She’d let them all down.

       Guilt washed over her, matching its tempo to the crash of surf on the beach. She hugged herself tighter and rested her chin on her knees.

       But she’d been letting them all down for months, anyway, hadn’t she? Who wanted a soulless robot as their partner, or their principal dancer? Or their daughter?

       And now she was seeing the same hesitation in the eyes of the one man she’d hoped would save her from it. Collecting leaves and plaiting vines? He didn’t think she could do it, did he? Didn’t think she’d last a week on this island. She swivelled her head to look at Finn. Couldn’t see him, though, even though his feet must be right beside her. It was way too dark. She wanted very badly to poke him in the ribs right now and tell him he was wrong.

       She didn’t, of course.

       Mostly because she feared he was right. Escaping from her life had been such a wonderful fantasy. But that was all it had ever been—a fantasy. Too bad she hadn’t realised that before she’d snapped and turned it into a reality.

       Now she was stuck here on a stormy desert island with a surly cameraman capturing her every shortcoming and a man who saw what everyone else saw when they looked at her. A disappointment.

       To make matters worse, she’d probably kissed goodbye to her career as well. What had she been thinking?

       Nothing.

       She hadn’t been thinking at all, simply reacting. Like a tectonic plate that after years of crushing pressure had popped free, sending tremors in all directions. Every area of her life had been affected by this one rash decision. The only rash decision she’d ever made. She should have been thankful for her stale little life. At least last week she’d had a life.

       Finn shifted position beside her and her heart did a little skip, a little flutter, and then settled back into place. She eased herself back down gently so she was facing him in the darkness, could feel the warmth of his even breath on her cheek.

       The rain was easing off now, but she didn’t really register it because the drumming of her pulse in her ears picked up the insistent rhythm and kept it going.

       This was stupid. She was reacting to his every movement, his every breath, as if she really were a love-struck teenager. At least, she imagined this was how teenage crushes went. She hadn’t really had time for them when she’d been the right age.

       She’d lost herself in dancing in her teenage years—her way of coping with her mother’s death. When she’d been dancing, she hadn’t had to think about anything else. She’d been able to shelve the grief and let other emotions flow through her instead. Such a relief. But at some point in the last decade that well had dried up. She couldn’t seem to feel anything any more. She’d even stopped missing her mother.

      Soulless…

       She closed her eyes against the velvet darkness, even though it made no difference—shut out no extra light from her eyeballs.

       In the utter and complete darkness senses other than sight started working overtime. Her whole body throbbed in response to the nearness of Finn. It seemed those set-aside teenage hormones had definitely caught up with her. She’d not really had many chances to release them before now. She’d had a few relationships, all brief and fairly unsatisfying, all eventually sacrificed to a career that didn’t believe in evenings and weekends.

       And then one night after a performance, when she’d been too hyped up to sleep, she’d switched on the television and clapped eyes on Finn McLeod, and that had been that.

       Teenage crush. Big time.

       Except most teenagers didn’t get the opportunity to do anything but stare at a poster on their bedroom wall. If they were lucky, they might catch a fleeting glimpse of their crush outside a theatre or a TV studio. They certainly weren’t offered the chance to spend a week alone with him on a desert island.

       And there lay the problem.

       Crush and opportunity had collided, and now she was reaping the consequences. Unfortunately, sleep was nowhere to be found and in the silence and darkness consequences were hitting her fast and hard in the middle of her forehead.

       She breathed out slowly and lay very still.

       She’d done it now. There was no going back. She’d have to live with those consequences. Even the fact that Finn McLeod thought she was a hopeless substitute for the hot tennis player who should have been lying beside him in the shelter instead of her.

       In the midst of all the doubts and fears swirling inside her, something happened. Something small hardened. A tiny seed. A kernel of determination and perseverance. The very thing that had helped her survive ballet school and the early days of the company and had rocketed her to where she was now.

       She’d show him. She’d ace every task, follow every instruction to the letter.