“Jesus fuck,” he cursed, wrapping Lennox in a gangly side hug to stop the abuse. “Will you at least try to hold on?”
Whatever his intended rebuttal, Lennox instead squawked like a chicken as the plane gave one final jerk and shudder before finally sticking the landing.
After a short taxi and zero apologies, the plane came to a stop next to a small building teeming with people, luggage, and chickens.
Led by a scrappy rooster, the small flock marched through the grass alongside the runway, pecking and kicking at the ground while the rest of the passengers deplaned. No matter where in the world he went, there was always some scrawny cock marching around full of self-importance.
“Friends of yours?” he asked, earning a glare.
“Westin?”
A mountain of a man stood just inside the building’s entrance, holding a sign for the resort. He greeted them with a gleaming smile as two other men swarmed the luggage cart and raced their bags out to a waiting van.
“That would be me.”
The man’s mouth twisted downward as he looked at his phone, then back at the two of them. “I was expecting… Ah, no matter. Please, follow me.”
Lennox took two steps, then paused. “Wait, both of us?”
The representative gave them a strange look. “Yes?”
“You only called him.”
“Ah, yes. Sorry. For some reason, the passenger list has you under the one name. I’ll ask Marta to update your info when we arrive.”
Lennox grumbled something about Christians that Evan refused to even try to make sense of and followed their keeper outside.
A shiny, clean transport van sat idling with their luggage neatly stacked inside. Whether impeccable service or a highly intricate kidnapping, it was still more appealing than the little plane.
They traveled a series of narrow, winding roads riddled with potholes and pedestrians with questionable survival instincts to a small marina. Accustomed to Boston cab drivers, Evan took it in stride, but Lennox was a disturbing shade of green by the time they’d arrived.
“Perfect weather for a honeymoon, eh?” the jovial giant announced as they settled onto a well-equipped forty-foot powerboat. He offered them each cold beers from a cooler next to his feet as they got underway.
Evan winced and quickly cracked and quaffed half the beer. “Uh, yeah.”
Lennox turned to him with comically wide eyes and mouthed,honeymoon?
“Yes, but no,” he muttered, snagging the beer Heath didn’t want before he could place it back into the cooler. This wasn’t the sort of small talk he wanted to be having with the world’s judgiest bastard.
“It’s one or the other, Westin.”
Evan lifted a brow. Westin? Could it be that Lennox had declared him a nemesis in turn? The idea pleased him.
“The wedding didn’t happen.”
Lennox snorted. “Came to her senses, did she?”
The anger roared back, and Evan frowned, chugging the rest of his beer and half of the other. He should actually thank Lennox for his intrusive needling. He’d been a solid distraction for the past few hours.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Fucking Lucy.
“This is your first time with us?” their captain shouted over the roar of the boat’s quad-engine. His eyes were on the horizon,and Evan wondered if he was oblivious to their conversation or tacitly ignoring their glaring.
The question had at least sidetracked Lennox, who scratched at his chest and chuckled awkwardly.
“Yes. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he shouted back, parroting one of the brochure’s many catchphrases.
