“I love it, I love it, I love it.” She finished with a hard, smacking kiss, then leaped down to attack the box. “But it’s outrageously expensive. I shouldn’t let you give me an outrageously expensive present right out of the blue. But I’m going to because I can’t stand the idea of not having it.”

“It’s rude to turn down a gift, and anyway, it’s not out of the blue. A day early, but I didn’t think that mattered. Happy birthday.”

“My birthday’s in April, but I’m not arguing because . . .”

She caught herself. The pulse began to throb in her temples, hot and hard. Helen Remington’s birthday was in April. Nell Channing’s was listed clearly on all identification as September nineteenth.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. Slipped my mind.” Because her palms sprang with damp, she wiped them hastily on her jeans. “I’ve been so busy, I forgot about my birthday.”

All of his pleasure of giving her the gift curdled, left a sour ball in his belly. “Don’t do that. Keeping things to yourself is one thing. Lying to my face is another.”

“I’m sorry.” She bit down hard on her lip, tasted shame.

“So am I.” Because he wanted her to look at him, he cupped her chin, lifted it.

“I keep waiting for you to take the step, Nell, but you don’t. You sleep with me, and you don’t hold anything back there. You talk to me about what you hope to do tomorrow, and you listen when I talk to you. But there’re no yesterdays.”

He’d tried not to dwell on that, tried to tell himself, as he’d told Ripley, that it wasn’t important. But now, slapped in the face with it, he couldn’t pretend. “You let me into your life from the day you stepped onto the island.”

It was true, perfectly true. What point would there be in denying it? “For me, my life started from there. Nothing before then matters anymore.”

“If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have to lie to me.”

Panic wanted to climb into her throat. She countered it with a snap of temper. “What difference does it make if my birthday’s tomorrow, or a month from now, or six months ago? Why does it have to matter?”

“What matters is you don’t trust me. That’s hard on me, Nell, because I’m in love with you.”

“Oh, Zack, you can’t—”

“I’m in love with you,” he repeated, taking her arms to hold her still. “And you know it.”

And of course, that was perfectly true as well. “But I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what to do with what I feel for you. Trusting that, trusting you, it’s not that simple. Not for me.”