Although there are many characters taken from GH in this story, the character introduced as "Jason" is NOT Jason Quartermaine/Morgan.

Olivia Newton John, "Xanadu" from "The Lost Horizon"

Brenda stared at the orange and red flames that were leaping into the night sky. She looked behind her at the small lean-to that she and Jax had spent their time constructing.

He had found some strong palm branches to use for support struts, and then he had shown her how to weave the palm fronds together to form a roof for their shelter. He used the nail file to cut notches in the branches, and finally found some larger logs to use for the basis of their temporary home.

When he had finished, he stood back and put his hands on his hips. "Well, it’s not the Taj Mahal, but at least it will keep a roof over our heads if there’s rain."

He finally broke the silence. He sat across the flames from her on the sand. She still perched on the log, which he had dragged closer to the fire. It was more comfortable for her to sit there and keep her injured ankle elevated. "So, princess, what do you think of my first attempt to build a fire in a long time?"

She nodded silently. "Not bad. Are you a camping nut or something?"

"Naw. I just learned a lot of survival techniques growing up in Australia. Young boys have to go through a ritual of maturity called walkabout – it ‘s a matter of surviving in the Outback. I had an Aboriginal friend named Thomas, and we used to go exploring in the Outback a lot when we were kids." Jax stared into the flames. "Thomas would be proud of me to see that I still remember how to build a fire."

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Jax stared at Brenda in the flickering firelight, and he had an unexpected surge of desire shoot through his veins. He had a mental flash of the two of them, laying before a roaring fireplace somewhere in the mountains. They were reclining on a soft, white fur rug, and they were both gloriously nude. As he closed his eyes for a second, he imagined taking her petite, delicate body into his arms and laying her back onto the furs, kissing her senseless by the light of the fireplace. He had to shake his head to bring him back to reality. But when he looked at her exquisite features and he remembered the feel of her soft curves against his back, the fantasy threatened to intrude again.

{Get a grip, Jax. It’s just the setting. Anybody would begin to have fantasies – stranded on a lush, warm, exotic island with a beautiful woman. In a situation where you have to be her protector and provider – no wonder you have this powerful urge to take her in your arms and find out if those lips really taste as wonderful as they look.}

He sat and thought for a minute. {Why does her name sound familiar? It’s not like you deal with record companies or ditzy models on a regular basis. But there’s something about it that rings a bell…} Jax cursed himself mentally for not checking on her before the flight left. But when he found out there was a charter headed for LA, he was just so anxious to get back home and finally officially be free, he bumped the regular pilot and decided to fly the Lear himself back to the States. {I wonder if she’s got a boyfriend back in LA. She’s not married. She’s not wearing a ring and she hasn’t mentioned a husband she’s missing. Of course, I’m not missing Miranda, either….}

Jax’s stomach growled loudly. Brenda looked up at the sound of it. "Well, princess, I guess that says it, loud and clear. I did my "thing." Now it’s time for you to do yours."

"Excuse me?"

Jax motioned to the hut. "I did my duties as the resident male and built our shelter. Now it’s time for you to do your duties as the resident female and get dinner."

Brenda saw red and bowed sarcastically. "Of course, sir. And what will you be having for dinner – the surf and turf or the escargot?"

As Jax was about to answer, Brenda reached down into the tote bag at her feet and pulled out a cheese and crackers set. She flung the box of crackers into his lap, and it landed painfully close to a delicate area. {Darn! I wish my aim had been better. Maybe that would quiet his macho tendencies for a while.} "Will cheese and crackers do, sir? I’m afraid we just ran out of the surf and turf!"

Jax smiled broadly. "I’m not sure. Is it domestic cheese or imported?"

She reached into the bag and found the spreader and container of cheese. "I’m not sure. Why don’t you find out for yourself?" Her patience was wearing thin. Her nerves, which had been frayed since the airplane first shuddered, were close to breaking.

Jax recognized her state of mind and realized she needed a break from his teasing. He held up the cheese container. "Looks great to me." He glanced down at the bag. "Want to share some of the rum with me, or shall we have wine this evening?"

Brenda shrugged. "Either one." Jax knew he had to try to draw her out of the depression that appeared to be sinking in. He went and got one of the coconuts that they managed to find earlier in the afternoon. He had cracked it and they enjoyed the meat and juice earlier, and now the shells had dried just about enough to serve as crude drinking cups. He returned to the fire and, taking one of the bottles of wine, poured a liberal amount in one for himself. He held the other shell up to her, and she reluctantly took it from him. But as soon as he poured just a little of the strong liquid in the shell, she motioned for him to stop.

He sat back and sipped the wine. "So – you say you are part owner of a record label?"

Brenda nodded, sipping the wine and munching on a cracker. "Um-hmmm…..it’s called L&B Records. I’m the "B" for Brenda and my best friend is the "L", for Lois. We’ve been pretty successful lately. One of our artists won the Grammy last year for best record."

Jax nodded. Now he knew why she looked familiar. He remembered seeing articles about her and her friend in the Journal. About their Cinderella success story with their tiny record label that suddenly began to roar after the Grammy win. And about her infamous relationship with a gangster.

{Well, maybe not a gangster. Not a convicted one, anyway. Some guy who lived on the East Coast and controlled mob activities for the Eastern seaboard. Jax remembered reading that he commuted to spend time with his moll in LA. And now, you’re stranded with the moll.} Jax mentally shook his head at his bad luck. {Great. Now you’ve got the hots for a woman whose significant other would have you in concrete overshoes before the night was out if he ever found out that you touched her.} Jax tried to remember what he had read about the model’s relationship with the gangster. {What was his name? Corinthos? Something Corinthos?} They weren’t married, as he recalled. In fact, he seemed to recall reading that the model was reluctant to make a commitment to the gangster. So maybe there was hope after all.

Then Jax realized that while he had been trying to figure out if she was really available or not, the model had been rambling on about the different recording artists she and her partner had been able to sign to the label since the Grammy Award. She had paused, and apparently had realized that he hadn’t been giving her his full attention.

She waved at him. "Excuse me – Earth to Jax – are you in there?"

He blinked. "Oh, I’m sorry. I just kind of zoned out there for a minute. All that talk about business – sometimes I find it kind of boring, ‘ya know." She fumed, and he once again was secure in the knowledge that she had no concept who he really was. "So, what about family. You have a lot of relatives living in LA?"

Her face fell, and it surprised him. "No. I had a sister, Julia, but she died a few months ago. Now it’s just me and my friend and partner, Lois."

He could see that she was still in a lot of pain at the loss of her sister. He wanted to say something to comfort her, but in a split second, she closed herself off tighter than a drum. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked around the small area lit by their fire.

"Well, I think I’m going to turn in for the night. There’s really nothing more to do out here, and that way we can get an early start." She let out a long breath. {What else do you really think you need to do, Brenda? The man had gathered a large supply of fresh fruit, hollowed out a log to catch the rain for a water supply, and even had gathered rocks to use to set up a large SOS in the sand for planes to spot. What you should really be doing is thanking God that you got stranded here with Jax of the Jungle and not Sonny. He probably would be just as useless as you are.}

Brenda took the now-empty tote bag and tried to bunch it up to use as a pillow under her head. She thought sleep would never come, but eventually the stress of the day and the dull roar of the pounding of the waves on the beach lulled her into a light slumber.

*~*~*~*

Julia’s moans woke her up. She had dozed off in a chair next to Julia’s bed after another particularly grueling session of chemotherapy. Brenda roused with a start to see Julia tossing back and forth on her pillow, nearly pulling out the IV’s that delivered the toxic substances that would hopefully kill the cancer cells and not her healthy ones.

"It’s dark! Brenda! Where are you? It’s so dark, and I’m so cold!" Julia wailed, frantically reaching for Brenda.

Brenda jumped up to take Julia in her arms. "I’m here, Jules, I’m right here. I’ll turn on some lights." She ran to flip the switch in the hospital room, flooding it with the cold, sterile fluorescent light, and then ran back to Julia’s bed. She grabbed Julia’s flailing hands, but Julia was in a haze induced by the strong medicine and it didn’t register. "There, Jules, the lights are on, now."

"Brenda! It’s so dark! Don’t let them leave me in the dark! Make it light, Brenda!" The tears ran down Brenda’s cheeks and splashed onto the hospital bed, but they still didn’t make Julia coherent. Brenda climbed into the bed gingerly with her sister, and held her for dear life.

"I’m here, Julia. I’ll make it light, I swear it to you. I’ll never let you in the dark." She crooned to Julia and tried to get through to her, but it never made an impact.

The next morning, Julia woke to find Brenda still in the bed with her. She gently woke her sleeping sister, and now that she was coherent, she explained to Brenda that she wanted her to go find the hospital administrator. She wanted to sign the paperwork – she wanted to end the treatments and just let nature take its course. No more darkness. No more cold. No more chemotherapy. And then, several weeks after that – no more Julia Barrett.

"I’m here, Julia. I won’t let it be dark! I’ll keep you in the light with me! Hang on, Julia! Don’t leave me!"

Jax awoke to Brenda’s screams in her sleep. He ran over to where she lay, and could see that she was having a terrible nightmare. Her eyes were still closed, but he could see the reflection of tears on her cheeks. He got down beside her and tried to take her into his arms without scaring her.

"Brenda, wake up, love. It’s Jax. You’re dreaming. You’re safe here with me." He realized now her fear of the darkness. It didn’t stem from some childhood terror. It came from the real terrors of adulthood and the loss of her sister. He glanced over at the now smoldering embers of their fire, and while he wanted to go stir it into life, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her. Jax realized he had a sudden, fierce urge to make all her pain go away, and just hold her and comfort her.

Suddenly, Brenda’s eyes flew open and when she turned to face him, all he could think of was that movie Mum had forced him to watch when he was a boy – the one about the little deer that loses his mother in a forest fire. Her eyes were a rich dark brown, but they brimmed with tears. He felt her body stiffen.

"Jax! What happened?" She looked around her and then touched her face and realized she had been crying in her sleep. "Oh, God…." She sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, pulling out of his embrace.

"I think you had a nightmare," he said softly. "Something about your sister…."

She kept her face buried in her knees. "I’m sorry. I thought I had stopped having those." She looked up at him, and he saw that she was still crying. "Did I scream? I’m sorry if I woke you."

He reached out to take her in his arms again, but saw her shrink away and decided it probably wasn’t wise. "You didn’t wake me, Brenda. I wasn’t asleep yet. Do you want to talk about it? It might help."

Brenda looked off into the distance. "No. I don’t want to talk about it. You can’t help. Nothing can help." She hugged her knees again.

He felt so d*mn useless. "If you’ll be OK for a few minutes, maybe I’ll go and stoke up the fire again." He looked at her with a question in his eyes, and she nodded.

"That would be nice." He sprang back up on his bare feet and went over and soon the orange and red flames were jumping into the night sky again. But when he turned back to her, he noticed that she had curled up into a ball and apparently had tried to go back to sleep.

{No way, lady. You’re not going to shut down on me like that. Nobody shuts Jasper Jacks out of something once he makes up his mind.}

As Jax walked slowly back to where Brenda lay in a fetal position, he had to almost laugh at his thoughts. {Well, Jax, God apparently never heard of your rule. God sure decided to throw a monkey wrench into your plans this time. Just when you were about to get what you’ve wanted for so long, you get stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere with a woman who drives you crazy. Crazy with desire.}

Jax walked back to where she lay, now quiet again. Obviously the loss of her sister had affected her deeply. Jax sat down next to her, trying to imagine his life if he were truly alone in the world, as she was.

Although he had been married to Miranda for 15 years, it wasn’t that tough imagining life without her. Essentially, his life HAD been without her for almost 13 years now. They were legally separated, and in his mind he had severed ties to her even before that. A divorce had never seemed that important or necessary to him. After his experience with Miranda, he had been convinced that he would never marry again. He would never put himself through that kind of pain again. And most of the women he had known in his life had been comfortable with that limitation.

The women in his life – and there had been some since Miranda. But in his fanatical pursuit of privacy, he had always been discreet. And the women never seemed to mind. He had always been perfectly clear with the beautiful women he came in contact with through his ownership of J&J Charters. He wasn’t free legally, but as long as it was kept out of the tabloids, he was always comfortable with having relationships. {Carpe diem – live for today. You always believed in that old saying, didn’t you Jax? Guess you never realized how close it came to the truth until today.} But he always made sure his affairs never made the front pages. He had to – for Jason’s sake.

Jax stared at Brenda when she shifted slightly in her sleep. But this woman – she was different. She made him long to be free, so that he could come to her without attachments -- free to start a long-term relationship. How could a woman he only met 12 hours earlier affect him so deeply?

Hadn’t Miranda affected him like that in the beginning? Probably. But that was before everything changed. That was before Jason.

Jason. At the thought of Jason, Jax’s body visibly softened. As Jax looked at the sleeping woman beside him, he now could understand just a portion of her pain. How would he feel if something ever happened to Jason?

Miranda had never loved Jason. Jax couldn’t understand how a mother could abandon a child like that. But Miranda was the perennial "party animal" and having a child slowed her down. Jax had parented Jason almost from the moment he was placed into his arms fourteen and a half years ago as a newborn. Jason looked to his father for all the love and guidance that should have come from his mother, but didn’t. And Jax was gladly there to give it to him.

Jax could easily imagine living without Miranda. In fact, if the plane hadn’t gone down, he would be back in LA, finally taking the legal steps to make sure that he would live without her for the rest of his life. Whether she agreed to it or not, this time, he WOULD get a divorce from her.

But if anything ever happened to Jason, a part of him would die, too. Jax stared at Brenda as she slept, and when she began to whimper in her sleep, he moved closer to her and lay down beside her. He went to take her in his arms, and at first, she seemed to tense up and almost woke. But then, as he tried to force some sense of calm and peace to flow from his body into hers, she seemed to relax a little. She actually snuggled into his embrace, and her breathing seemed to become more regular and slower. As Jax felt her drift into a peaceful sleep, he let go for the first time that day. He let out a long hitching sigh, and then fell into a deep sleep himself.

*~*~*~*

{Don’t you laugh at me, Thomas. This little fish is just very cunning. He’s not getting the best of me. Nobody – human or fish – gets the best of Jasper Jacks.} But as Jax stood motionless in the shallow cove, trying for he 18^th time to spear the small yellowtail that swam between his legs, he had to wonder if these were just ordinary fish. {Nope, Thomas. We never had fish like this back in the Outback. These must be super-fish.}

Jax let loose with an expletive, although he really wasn’t worried that Brenda would hear it. She was still sleeping soundly this morning when he woke. She had nestled her head on his chest during the night, and he regretted leaving her. But he knew that they needed something other than cheese and crackers for breakfast. And he had to admit to himself that she probably would feel uncomfortable with the knowledge that he had held her during the night. Although her subconscious was ready to accept his help, obviously her conscious self was not.

Jax spied the elusive yellowtail again and moved slightly in the water. He was just as much cursing his own ineptitude at catching the fish as he was his impulsive action in throwing Brenda’s shoes into the ocean. When he found the sturdy tree branch this morning that was serving as his spear, he also found a strong short branch that he whittled to a razor point with the trusty nail file. But then came the problem of attaching it to the pole, and that was when his regrets began. He finally had to resort to using some long thick reeds he found growing near the cove, but he realized that the leather straps on Brenda’s shoes would have been a much more secure fastener.

{Well, Jax, you get an A+ for getting us off the Lear before it exploded. You get an A+ for constructing the shelter. But you stink out loud when it comes to impulsive actions. You get a resounding capital F for being so macho and throwing her shoes out into the surf. Maybe you could have even used the heels for something, they were so sharp. After this, think before you act. Remember what Thomas always told you.}

Jax fingered the shaft of the spear once more. He looked the yellowtail in the eye. Blue eyes met with deep black ones. "OK, mate, this is it. Your days are numbered, and today’s the last one. As much as I enjoyed our little romp here this morning, my feet are getting pruny. Now just hold still…." With one more sharp thrust, Jax let out a whoop as the spear finally connected with its intended target. He held the spear up over his head, the small fish still wriggling on the end. Splashing in joy, he waded back to the shore of the cove and sat down on the embankment.

He made his way back to the camp and glanced briefly inside the shelter. Brenda was still asleep, and he had to smile. She was snoring – loudly. He wished he could be there to see the look on her face when she woke to the smell of fresh fish cooking for breakfast.

He made his way down to where their fire had burned the night before. He gutted the fish, and then used some of the twigs he had brought with him to form a makeshift spit. Once he had suspended the fish over the fire and he smelled it starting to cook, he looked longingly at the ocean.

The waves were breaking gently on the white sand beach. Jax looked down at himself, his pants legs rolled up above his knees but still rather wet around the bottom edges. His chambray shirt was soaked again from perspiration. He took one more look at the fish, and decided that he had plenty of time while it cooked to take a quick swim and wash off some of the grime and sweat from the past 24 hours.

Shedding his clothes quickly, he ran down to the water’s edge and waded in. When the water level came up to his chest, he dove in, savoring the feel of the water against his naked skin.

*~*~*~*

Brenda came to consciousness with a start. {Where am I? This sure isn’t LA.} As the memories of the day before and the plane crash came flooding back, she sat up and hugged her knees, laying her head down for a moment. She brought her head back up as she stretched lazily, but then, she came up with a start as she wondered where Jax had gone.

When she emerged from the shelter, the first thing she noticed was the fire going again, and some kind of substance suspended above it, smoking. Her stomach growled loudly when she smelled it. {Jax must have been up already. I wonder what it is. Oh, God … please don’t let it be anything disgusting like lizard or snail.} As she got closer to it, she could see that it was much too large for either of the repulsive items she had already ruled out as breakfast food. But still, she didn’t see Jax.

Brenda looked up and down the beach. It almost looked like one of those ads from a magazine. Unspoiled white sand beach, fluffy clouds in an azure sky, beautiful gentle waves lapping at the shore. Everything that you would want in a vacation resort.

But this was no vacation. She had no change of clothes, no sunscreen, no poolside bar with happy hour, and would have had no food or shelter without the Jax’s quick thinking. Suddenly, she began to feel the stirrings of panic. Where was he?

Just then, she heard him calling her name. She put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, and saw him. He was running towards her slowly, making his way out of the surf, still dripping on the sand. She put her hand up to her mouth, but then took it away. {Don’t act like a ninny, Brenda. He’s obviously trying to get a reaction out of you.}

When he came to stand within 5 feet of her, he put his hands on his hips. Grinning from ear to ear, he stood before her, still dripping wet, and still as naked as a newborn baby. The man obviously was very comfortable with his nudity, and Brenda tried to keep her eyes from straying southward. She was about to try to come up with some nonchalant remark, but he beat her to the punch.

"Well, good morning, princess!" he said with a toothy smile. "See anything that interests you for breakfast?"

To be continued…..