The Christmas Surprise

by R. R. Banks

  Burning them would have taken that potential power away from me, but it also would have assuaged Virgil and bought me the actual freedom from him that I had thought about and dreamed of during those long, dark nights alone in the cavernous house. I should have just given up the thought that I would ever be able to use the information that I had on him to earn myself some sort of justice for everything that he had put me through. At least then I could have put it behind me, moving forward with a life that wouldn’t be riddled with constant threat lurking around every corner.

  Chapter Nine

  Hunter

  We had found absolutely no evidence of other people on the island the first time that we had gone searching, or during any of the times that we had gone scavenging for food, so I didn't know why I thought that it would be any different when I ventured out on my own. Somehow in my mind, however, I had convinced myself that it would be different this time, as if heading out by myself would somehow magically make crates of food and clothing appear in the trees or people show up so that they could help us. As I pushed my way through the thick jungle, I just knew that any moment I was going to find an elusive resort tucked up close to the beach on the other side, or at least a small hut where an eccentric rich old man lived. The further I walked and the more of the same trees, rocks, and sky I saw, however, the less I really believed it and the more I knew that I was just repeating it in my mind so that I wouldn’t lose hope. That wasn’t going terribly well for me and I could feel the nervousness and panic starting to settle into my belly.

  I wasn’t cut out for this. I wasn’t made for outdoor life, especially outdoor life that didn’t involve a comfort station and a group of people who actually knew what they were doing. I might have been able to carry armloads of fruit out of the jungle and had helped Gavin create the help sign out of shells and rocks, but I didn’t think that that really qualified me as a wilderness man. The truth was that I had never even been to an island before. I had never even been on a cruise until I climbed aboard the post-wedding celebration cruise that had brought me here. The lack of knowledge of the landscape, plants, and animals made me feel like I was at a distinct disadvantage. I was accustomed to at least having research to back me up in unfamiliar situations. I might not fully have the grasp of what was happening or what I was supposed to be doing, but I would have facts and figures in my mind that could at least give me a sense of stability and control.

  It was that attention to detail and mastery of research and calculations that had landed me the job with Mr. Royal at the agency. Even though he had advertised for an assistant, the somewhat rambling description of the job position had revealed that he needed something much more than just a person who could take notes and run memos for him. That was more the domain of Cindy, his secretary. Instead, the brilliant but somewhat scattered older man was looking for someone who would be able to understand what he was saying even if he didn’t say all of the words that he needed to, decipher his thoughts and actions, and overall act as a sieve for what went from him out of his office and through to the rest of the agency. I looked over figures before they went to the accountant. I read through memos before I had them distributed. I screened mail that came in as well as went out. Most of the people throughout the agency didn’t have any idea of the scope of everything that I handled for Mr. Royal, and I was perfectly fine with that. All that mattered was that the things got done and the agency ran smoothly.

  It was that thought that still made me feel guilty when I thought about everything that had happened with Mr. Royal and Lucille. Their brief marriage hadn’t been as shocking to me as it had been to many of the other people in the agency. It was just another of the impulsive flights of fancy that I had come to know in Mr. Royal, and one that I often thought that I should have been able to catch before it happened. I should have been able to distract his dirty old man mind enough to convince him that gorgeous young twenty-somethings don’t just fall head over heels in love with men old enough to be their grandfathers and covered with enough liver spots to be considered kin to a Dalmatian. Mr. Royal was one of the most endearing and likable people I had ever encountered, but he was never going to grace the front of People as the World’s Sexiest Geriatric. If I had been able to just keep him away from Lucille, we never would have been subjected to the misery of having the icy woman take over the agency while her new husband traveled the world. I still wasn’t sure that Snow had gotten over the doughnut debacle yet.

  Thoughts of Snow and how she had reacted, not at all gracefully, to the sudden and non-forewarned disappearance of her beloved morning coffee and doughnuts in the office breakroom, filled my mind. If I had been able to detect that something might be happening and stop Mr. Royal from marrying Lucille on a whim and a hopeful Viagra prescription, I wouldn’t have had to convince Snow to take the several months’ worth of vacation that she had accumulated over her time working at Royal and Company so that she could get away from Lucille and avoid any more conflict. Of course, that would mean that she wouldn’t have met Noah until he had come to take over the company, and likely wouldn’t have pursued a relationship with him. While that might not have been the best course of events for her, it would mean that I wouldn’t be here fighting off Godzilla mosquitos and hoping that the bacon cheeseburger tree I drew when I was eight had sprung into existence and was just around the bend. I considered Snow a dear friend, but right then I wasn’t above choosing my own selfish needs over the possibility that she might not have gotten to marry Noah when she did.

  If that had happened, though, I also would have never met Eleanor.

  I was surprised by the thought that suddenly flickered through my mind. Why would I have thought that?

  I turned around and was planning on following a widely curved path in the opposite direction back toward the beach when I heard the muffled sound of crying coming from somewhere ahead of me. I crept forward carefully and pushed aside the large frond of a palm ahead of me. As if the strange and unexpected thought of her had led me toward her, Eleanor was sitting on a moss-covered rock, her head in her hands as she sobbed. I quietly approached and crouched down in front of her, resting a hand on her back.

  "Eleanor?" I said gently. "Are you alright?"

  I always hated that question. Why did people ask that when they saw other people crying? It wasn’t like sitting there sobbing was a normal reaction to everything just going perfectly well in life. And yet, when people saw someone else crying, the first thing that always came to mind was “are you alright?”

  I half expected her to string together some colorful and illustrative curses that ensured I knew exactly what she felt about me and the fact that this was largely, likely entirely, my fault, and that I sounded like a blithering idiot checking in on her when she was clearly not alright. Instead, Eleanor looked up at me and tried to brush the tears from her face.

  "I'm sorry," she murmured.

  "No," I said, settling down beside her. "Don't say you're sorry. You’re allowed to feel whatever you want to feel right now. I just want you know that I'm here if you want to talk about it."

  "Those men who were on the boat," Eleanor started, but then hesitated as if she wasn’t completely sure that she wanted to keep going with that train of thought.

  "Yes?" I said, trying to gently guide her forward.

  I had been thinking about what she said about her ex-husband since she mentioned him on the cruise ship, and now she finally seemed as though she was willing to tell me what was really going on.

  "They're never going to stop, are they?" she asked. "They are just going to keep coming after me until they finally get me, aren't they?"

  Despite the hot, heavy air around us, Eleanor was visibly shaking and her arms were wrapped tightly around her body. I shook my head and slid closer to her so that I could meet her gaze again.

  "They can come," I said, "but they won't get you." Eleanor started to look away and I reached out to tuck a finger under her chin and lift her face to look at me aga
in. "They won't get you. I won't let them."

  What had started as me just trying to comfort and reassure her had become a vow, a promise to her that I meant with everything in me. Eleanor didn't look away this time. I felt warmth building within me and tension filling the space between us. Led by the same compulsion that I had tried to ignore after the wedding, I reached up and ran my fingertips along the curve of her jaw, briefly allowing them to brush across her lips. I leaned forward toward her, longing to taste those soft, full lips again. For a moment Eleanor leaned toward me as well, but then she pulled back suddenly, looking away and pushing back so far on the rock that she nearly toppled off. The moment between us shattered and I felt embarrassment mixed with frustration wash over me. I couldn’t understand Eleanor’s sudden resistance. She had been ready, willing, and eager when we were at the hotel, and I had been the one to have second thoughts. Now she was pulling away from me, looking at me like she was horrified by my advances.

  "You should probably go back down to the beach," I said, my voice gruff with humiliation and confusion as I climbed to my feet.

  Without looking back at her, I continued through the trees and toward the soft rush of water that I heard in the distance. I wanted to rinse off and try to regain some feeling of normalcy even in surroundings that were anything but normal. Wandering through the jungle trying desperately to come up with a viable plan for what we were going to do was bad enough when I felt like I had some sort of connection with Eleanor, even if it was just the type of connection that we had to maintain because of everything that we had gone through together already. Now I felt like that tenuous link had not just dissolved, but had burst into flames and pushed us irreparably apart. I was not only embarrassed by the rejection and frustrated by the situation we had found ourselves in and my inability to figure out how to resolve it, but now I felt totally isolated and alone. I was walking those same damn high school hallways again, albeit with a few extra bugs this time, and I hated every instant of it. I started peeling off my shirt before reaching the edge of the outcropping, but I stopped before jumping off into the water when I saw Gavin already waist deep in the pool below.

  Of course. I can’t even take a bath without something going wrong.

  Yanking my shirt back down over my head, I stalked through the trees and back toward the beach. I didn’t want to be near either one of the others anymore. I was done with summer camp. I might not know what I was doing or how I was going to get out of this alive, but that didn’t mean that I needed to pretend that this was a bonding opportunity. I needed some time to myself and then I’d help them build a shelter, find supplies, and do what needed to be done, but that was all. Eleanor had made it expressly clear that she had just been toying with me and any guilt that I had felt walking away from her was gone now. Someone had to have noticed that we were missing and be looking for us, and once they came, we’d go about our lives and try not to think about this ever again.

  Chapter Ten

  Eleanor

  Worst. Vacation. Ever.

  I picked my way across the hot, coarse sand, knowing that I probably looked like a really pissed off flamingo, but not really caring anymore.

  “What are you doing?” Gavin asked from where he was standing in the shallow water watching fish and taunting them with a spear. “You look like a pissed off flamingo.”

  Exactly.

  “If you haven’t noticed, you are walking around in your boots and I’m barefoot. If you’d like to try digging your feet down into the sand you, too, might discover the delightful little chunks that seem to have been turned into glass by the blazing hot SUN.”

  I flailed and kicked at the sand as I screamed the final word, letting out some of my frustration, but still feeling plenty, all bottled up ready to explode whenever it found the right time.

  “You’re just like all the others,” Gavin muttered.

  I tilted my head at him and took a step closer.

  “Excuse me?” I asked. I took another step. “Excuse me? What did you say?” He shook his head and I took a couple more steps, losing some of the impact of my anger as I stumbled through a dip. “No, no, no. That’s not how this works. You don’t get to mutter things at me under your breath and have me not ask you what you said. If you’re going to say something, you’re going to say it to me.”

  “Why?” Gavin demanded, turning to stare at me. “Because you’re so entitled that you think that everyone should do exactly what you say, exactly when you say it?”

  “Entitled?” I repeated, stunned.

  Of course, it hadn’t been the first time that I had had someone say that about me, but it was the way Gavin said it, spitting it at me like it was the worst possible thing that he could think of to say.

  “Yes,” he said, facing me now. “What I said was that you are just like all the others, and that is exactly what I meant. All of you rich bitches are exactly the same. You think that everyone either worships you or fears you because your money, and that the more ancestors you have who had money, the more important you think you are. Anyone else is just put here to do your bidding.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, tears stinging in my eyes as I looked around, desperately searching for Hunter. “That’s not who I am.”

  “Of course, it is,” Gavin said. “You don’t think that I can see the money dripping off of you? You don’t think that I can hear it in every word that you say to both me and Hunter? You might have gotten him all starry-eyed so he doesn’t realize what he’s dealing with, but you’re not fooling me. Whoever you are, you’ve got serious money behind you, and whoever you are pretending to be, there’s a reason. I’ve been working my ass off trying to figure out what we’re going to do here, and all you can do is bitch. It could be a hell of a lot worse. Why don’t you just appreciate your surroundings a little bit.”

  “Appreciate them?” I asked, still trying to process the nastiness that he was spewing at me. “I’m not sure what it is that you’re experiencing, but apparently it has stopped you from noticing that we are not in a revival of the Blue-Fucking-Lagoon.”

  “That’s a great movie.”

  The voice behind me made me jump and I turned around to see Hunter standing on the top of a rock that jutted out into the ocean. A wave crashed at the base of the rock, sending a spray of white foam up to his feet and I felt my knees go a little weak.

  “What?” I asked, his words not fully going through my mind.

  “Blue Lagoon,” he said. “It’s a great movie. I used to watch it all the time when I was little.”

  Oh, dear lord. How old was he?

  “A little racy for an evening family movie, don’t you think?” I finally asked.

  Oh, shit. How old was I?

  Hunter shrugged as he started down the rock toward the beach.

  “I don’t honestly remember anybody watching it with me. We had a VHS of it that had been recorded off of the TV and it was one of about three that I could reach where they were kept, so I just kind of watched them in rotation.”

  “He probably didn’t even realize that it was racy,” Gavin said and I looked over to see that he was back to stabbing at the water to catch more fish to toss up onto the sand. I hated to see them flopping around the way that they did, but I hated being hungry more, so I was going to deal with it. “Maybe he thought that one of those birds that they show was the stork and that’s how they got the baby.”

  “You seem to be going pretty deep into that movie to make fun of someone for watching it,” I snapped.

  Hunter was walking toward me and I hoped that he hadn’t been standing on the rock long enough to hear what Gavin had been saying. I had already spilled enough about Virgil when we were in the jungle. I couldn’t let him find out more.

  I was thinking about that as he came up, his eyes seeming to purposely avoid me. My heart clenched and I felt a flicker of blended, uncomfortable emotion wash over me. I wish that I understood why I had pulled away from him in the jungle. He had been right
there, looking at me with the expression in his eyes that I had been hoping to see the night of the wedding. As soon as that thought went through my mind, I realized that that wasn’t the case, and that that had been exactly why I had pulled away. The night of the wedding all that mattered to me was that Hunter was young, gorgeous, and sexy. He seemed like the perfect man to take care of the stress that I had been feeling and get me on to my new life. He was going to be my sampler, my training wheels, and I just wanted to see the same attraction and desire in his eyes that I was feeling. When we were sitting together in the jungle, however, I saw something much more. There was emotion in his eyes that I didn’t know if I was ready to face. I didn’t even know if I was able to feel that way again. He didn’t know me, and I was doing everything that I could to make sure that he never did. The last thing I needed was to not only admit the deeper attraction that was pricking at the back of my mind, but to see the same in him and have to admit that I had done something wrong.

  “Do you think that we could wrap up the theater review and someone could actually help me with this shelter?” Gavin asked.

  He had climbed up out of the water and tossed his spear onto the sand. He would come back for the fish after they had stopped twitching, which was exactly how I preferred them. After this she would never be able to look at a sushi bar the same way.

  “I still think that it’s ridiculous that you’re going to all this trouble to build a shelter,” I said. “We’re not going to be here long. They’ll have noticed that Hunter and I are missing from the ship and come looking for us.”

  “And miraculously find us on an island that has nothing on it and is who knows how far away from the ship’s route?”