Thank God that wasn’t going to be my problem much longer.
“The weather has been glorious recently,” the taxi driver said, unprompted. “No sign of monsoons or hurricanes, not that it’s the season for it. You should have a beautiful trip.”
I turned just in time to see his eyes glancing between us in the rearview mirror, full of questions.
“Are you two on your honeymoon?” he asked.
“No,” we both said in unison, our voices unnaturally sharp and loud in the enclosed space.
The driver turned his eyes quickly back to the road, both eyebrows raised like he was jumping right to some other unsavory conclusions—and really regretting having asked anything in the first place.
After all, if a couple wasn’t going to Saipan on a honeymoon, why would they be going? Evidently, giving his expression, the driver assumed it was because we were having an affair. I almost laughed at that. He couldn’t have been further from the truth if he’d tried.
“We’re here on business,” I said pointedly. “I’m his assistant.”
The guy’s eyebrows got even higher—which I hadn’t thought was possible—and he turned his eyes back to Damon, looking… admiring.
Oh, no. Now he thought Damon was sleeping with his freaking assistant, and he was practically congratulating him with his eyes. I hadn’t thought I could get any angrier at the situation, but it turned out I’d been wrong about that. Because now, I was absolutely fuming.
What was wrong with people? This was none of the driver’s business, first of all. And secondly, where did he get off, just jumping to the conclusion that I had to be sleeping with Damon? I mean yeah, the guy was too hot for words, all muscles and bronzed skin and short brown hair that curled at the ends no matter how often he got it cut, with—
Wait. Wait just a second. None of that was the point. It didn’t matter how good-looking Damon might be. The driver had zero reason to just assume that I was sleeping with him. I was a career woman, dammit, and I deserved the respect that came with it.
Luckily, we got to the place where Damon had made reservations soon after that, before the driver had a chance to make any more assumptions. I practically exploded out of the cab, leaving Damon to deal with paying the driver, and raced around to the trunk to get my suitcase and bag before finally turning toward wherever Damon had decided we should stay while we were here.
What I saw took my breath away.
He’d rented us some sort of private beach house, though it looked like it was part of a collection of villas, probably all controlled by one hotel—which, I assumed, would offer things like food and Wi-Fi, with restaurants in some larger building within walking distance.
The villa itself was incredibly charming. Whitewashed walls combined with bright red shutters—decorative only, I assumed, considering they didn’t look as though they moved—and a bright red front door to match.
I turned and looked back toward the beach, enjoying the view the windows would have. The sand was a bright, sparkling white, the ocean fifteen different shades of turquoise, and the morning waves sizable enough that they would be good for surfing—if someone wanted to try. Behind us, I knew, the terrain was rainforest and lush grass, spreading up into the mountains of Saipan and feeding the hot, tropical atmosphere around us.
It would have been paradise. If I wasn’t there with a man who had already told me that he wanted to forget he’d slept with me.
* * *
I had literally just thrown my suitcase down and turned to find the bathroom when the world around me exploded. Or no, not exploded, but rather… felt as if something deep underground had blown up. I was thrown to the ground, where I covered my head and tried very hard not to move at all.
Because you know, if the world is going to explode around you, not moving is definitely the right choice. Laying there like a freaking sacrifice is the way to go. Some heroine I would be. If I was ever in an action movie, I would definitely be the first one to die.
A split second after the shaking stopped, Damon came sprinting into the room. I looked up to see him wide-eyed and panic-stricken, to the point that I almost jumped to my feet and told him to sit down. Instead, though, he came sliding to a stop on his knees right next to me, his hand on the small of my back.
“Aubrey! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I sat up slowly, looking around at the villa like there was going to be some sign on the walls telling me what had just happened. There wasn’t, of course. But the walls also seemed to be still standing, which seemed like an awfully good thing after all that rocking.
“I’m fine,” I said. “What happened? Was that an earthquake or something?”
“Maybe,” he said, frowning. “But it didn’t feel like just an earthquake.”
At that moment, his phone dinged and he pulled it out of his pocket. A quick scan of the alert and he looked up at me, his eyes even larger than they had been before.
“Trouble,” he said quietly. “Anatahan just erupted. It’s only seventy-five miles from here—and that means we took the brunt of it. Saipan is going into lockdown, in case it happens again. Every structure is being checked for damage. All flights are grounded. Transportation is halted because they want people to stay put rather than getting out there and getting in the way of any emergency vehicles. We’re… trapped here until further notice.”
I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. A freaking volcano had erupted? Yes, we had them in Hawaii, and yes, they sometimes went off, but we never shut down entire islands because of it. Then again, we didn’t exactly have as much infrastructure near active volcanoes as they did here.
And regardless of what we would have done in Hawaii, Saipan evidently had specific rules for this sort of situation. Rules that included locking everyone into their houses until the government could be sure it would be safe for them outside. Rules that were going to keep Damon and me trapped in the same house until further notice.
Somehow, that seemed even worse than knowing that there could be a ton of red-hot lava heading our way at any moment.
Chapter 13
Damon
I was sitting at the kitchen table, my chin resting in my hands as I stared at the paper sitting on the table in front of me, trying to reorganize the letters to where they actually made sense. Or better yet, actually made something that looked even a little bit like a plan.
Because I hadn’t flown all the way to the Mariana Islands—dragging Aubrey with me—just to get here and get stuck rather than meeting with the governor the way I was supposed to. I hadn’t spent all this time and money just to get here and be grounded in the rental I’d secured for us!
I mean, regardless of how nice that rental might be. Regardless of the beach that was literally right outside the door, with its beautiful water and even more beautiful mountainous jungle scenery. Yes, it was insanely gorgeous and all that—but I was also from an island that had all that same stuff.
And I was on this island because I needed to do business. Not for the scenery.
All of which brought me right back around to the even more personal problem here. Because as much as I wanted it to be, this wasn’t all about the business I wasn’t doing right now. Yes, it sucked that I wasn’t going to be able to meet with the governor immediately. Yes, I was beyond frustrated at this delay—and even more frustrated and edgy at the idea of staying cooped up in this house for who knew how long. Sure, I had a bit of panic about that whole volcano-erupting thing that had happened, because that wasn’t the sort of thing you could just blow off.
I was also annoyed that I’d flown all this way for what could end up being nothing—and even more annoyed that I’d pulled Aubrey out of her life to come with me.
If I’d known that a volcano was going to disrupt life on the island, I might even have taken Aubrey up on the suggestion to do this over the phone instead of in person. Because right now, that was starting to look like it would have been a much smarter option.
And the enormous
girl-shaped elephant in the room was that it was Aubrey that I had brought with me.
The girl I’d stupidly slept with, and then managed to infuriate in ways that I still didn’t completely understand. The girl who had told me straight out that she was willing to come with me on this trip, but that she was also going to turn her resignation in as soon as we got back to Hawaii. And that there was exactly nothing I could do about that little problem.
The girl that was more important to my life than anyone else—and who I was also on the verge of losing.
Of course she was the one I was stuck here with. And on one hand, it should have been fine, because being stuck in the same house, on a small, conveniently gorgeous tropical island, should have meant that I had time and space and the opportunity to actually sit down and talk to her and get it all sorted out. Figure out what was wrong and then find a way to fix it.
And in a perfect world, that probably would have been true.
But I wasn’t living in a perfect world. Not even close. Instead, I was living in a world where she’d taken one look at me when I told her about the volcano, sighed heavily, and then turned around and walked into her room, slamming the door behind her—which I took to mean we weren’t going to be having any cozy nights together on the couch, discussing our situation and how we could fix it.
Instead, it seemed, she’d chosen Door Number Two: Not Speaking to Damon at All.
I didn’t like Door Number Two. I wasn’t the sort of person who did well with other people ignoring me. Particularly when there were problems to fix.
Door Number Two was also going to make this whole ordeal even more difficult. On both of us. Because she might be angry enough that she didn’t want to talk to me, but that didn’t mean I was going to stop trying.
We were Damon and Aubrey, for goodness’ sake. We were the dynamic duo. The two people who had never seen a business deal they couldn’t get done. The pair that had never met another businessperson they couldn’t talk into something. The duo that had never seen a deadline they couldn’t achieve, as long as they tried it together.
We were better together than ninety-five percent of the people I’d seen in business, and that was no small thing. We knew exactly how to move together, what we could do if we put our minds to it, and we knew how to get it done in the quickest, most efficient way.
And the straight-up truth was that I wasn’t willing to let her go. Not without a fight. So she might not want to talk to me. Fine. That didn’t mean I was going to stop talking to her—or stop trying to convince her to stick it out.
At that moment, the woman in question threw open the door to her room and came striding out, her steps quick and confident, her eyes on the front door of the villa. She had her bathing suit on, I could see, and a set of board shorts pulled up over her hips. A boy’s brand, so that they hung loosely around those hips, barely clinging to her body. A loose tank covered the top half of her body, though it did very little to hide the toned, athletic muscles underneath.
My heart jumped up into my throat, my brain immediately thinking that she must be here to talk it out. To at least say something.
And she did say something. It just wasn’t anything to do with us.
“I’m going for a swim. I figure that as long as we’re stuck here, I might as well take advantage of a different flavor of ocean water.”
And then she was gone, leaving me staring after her in shock.
“That’s it?” I asked myself on a gasp. “We’re stuck here for who knows how long, and she’s going for a swim?”
If I was going to get her to listen to me, I was going to have to come up with a much better plan than just wanting it badly enough to get it done.
I flipped the next sheet over on my notebook, frowned, and then started writing down what I hoped would—could—become a plan for winning Aubrey back.
* * *
An hour later, I had a plan penciled out, and I thought it just might be good enough to work. I also had some additional thoughts down on what to do about the governor—and Josh Brody—because as it turned out, writing down a plan for Aubrey had made the creative juices start flowing, and before I’d known it I’d been writing furiously on both lists, my pen almost not able to keep up with my brain.
The problem, I’d realized quickly, with doing this particular writing by hand rather than on my laptop, was that I could have moved a lot more quickly with typing.
Still, the flow of ideas had been glorious, and it wasn’t lost on me that the very thought of Aubrey had helped me get to work on the other issues.
Because that was what always happened. She’d always been the Watson to my Holmes, the foundation to my flights of fancy. The place where my eagle came to rest. The calm spot I needed if I was going to make sense of all the ideas flying around in my head.
I tipped my head on that thought, my brain finally coming around to reality, and glanced up at the clock. It had been nine or so when she had decided she was going swimming. I knew because I’d looked up and been surprised that we’d already been at the villa for so long.
It was ten fifteen now. And she hadn’t taken a surfboard or a set of snorkeling gear.
No matter how much she liked the water, that was an awfully long time to just be swimming.
I jumped up at the thought and dashed through the front door, my eyes on the horizon and already scanning the surface of the water before I even got through the doorway.
We were right on the beach, which meant I had a clear view, but I had to cross the usual beach clutter before I actually got to the sand: weeds and driftwood and some small trees and rocks all piled up in something that looked like a demarcation point between ‘beach’ and ‘other.’ And through that detritus, I could see a path that led from the villa to the beach. It was right in front of our doorway—and it had fresh footprints in the sand.
Aubrey’s footprints.
I hadn’t needed the confirmation that she had in fact headed for the beach (because where else would she have been going?), but those footprints gave my feet wings, and I flew down the path and to the sand, absolutely certain, for reasons that I couldn’t quite nail down and didn’t really even try to, that something horrible must have happened.
When I got to the beach, I saw that I was absolutely correct. Aubrey was about two hundred feet out in the water, and though she was the strongest swimmer I knew, having been born and raised in the oceans of Hawaii, I could see that she was in trouble.
She was splashing desperately, her head disappearing under water one moment and then reappearing a moment later—and not in a way that said she was diving down and looking at something. No, it looked panicked. Unwilling. Unintentional.
And on top of that, she was shouting for help. Or rather… screeching in a way that said she was in a whole lot of trouble.
My pace increased until my feet were barely hitting the sand at all, my hands working to remove my clothes, and I hit the water within seconds.
Chapter 14
Damon
I’d never saved anyone from drowning before, and I didn’t know exactly how you were supposed to do it, but I knew there were a couple basic principles. First, get to them as quickly as humanly possible. Second, make sure you don’t get caught by whatever has them. Third, get them out of said thing that has them (be it octopus, shark, or riptide), without getting caught or maimed yourself. Fourth, get them to the surface, and somehow figure out how to swim with them in tow.
After that, I figured I’d have to come up with another set of steps. For right now, though, I was going to focus on steps one to four. Because doing anything with Aubrey on the beach necessitated getting her to the freaking beach first.
The water itself was very warm when I hit it, which made the swimming part easier, and I’d stripped down to just my boxers so I didn’t have much drag as I knifed through the water. I might not have been a surfer like Aubrey, but I’d also grown up in Hawaii, and that meant I was like a fish when I needed to be. I’d grow
n up swimming and snorkeling, and it only took me a couple minutes to get to her vicinity.
That was when I felt the riptide.
I didn’t know what was going on in this little bay, but there was definitely an undertow here—far out for one, my mind said, though that didn’t matter. I could feel the water around my feet sucking out toward the ocean while the water on the surface pushed toward the shore, creating a sort of push-pull effect that wanted to get you off-balance in the water, then grab you by the feet and rush you right out toward the ocean.
If it didn’t drown you first. Because that was the problem with riptides. They caught at your feet and pulled you under, and by the time you knew what was going on, it was too late—and you were too tired—to do anything about it.
About ten feet away, I could see that Aubrey was fighting that fatigue. I had no idea how long she’d been out here struggling with the current, but her face was flushed red and when her head broke the surface again, she was gasping for air, her mouth open in an ‘O’ and her eyes wide and frightened.
It took an awful lot for the ocean to frighten a water baby like Aubrey. And that was when I knew exactly how much trouble she was in—and that she was awfully close to the end of her reserves.
Land was right there. And she had no way to reach it.
God, she must be terrified.
The thought did something to me. Something that included energy suddenly flooding through my entire body. I felt like I’d suddenly become a real-life superhero. Adrenaline was a heck of a drug.
Aubrey spluttered on the wave that tried to break over her head but managed to keep her head above water, and our eyes met. I could see the relief flooding hers, and my name on her lips.
“I’m going to get you out of this!” I called. “Sit tight. I’m going to try to figure out how to get out there.”
The Billionaire's Lockdown Baby Page 6