“Just keep us pointed southeast at a hundred and seventy degrees.”
The next twenty minutes were perhaps the most harrowing of her life, which was saying a lot, as not all that long before she’d had a gun pointed at her head. The storm whipped around them like a hurricane. At least it felt like a hurricane when she was in an inflatable that was being held together by duct tape in seven- or eight-foot swirling seas.
It felt even worse when the duct tape came off.
•••
Whether it was too much water or the pressure building underneath, Annie didn’t know, but one minute the tape was holding the seam and the next it was flapping against the side.
“The tape!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dan said.
She turned back to look at him to see if he was as confident as he sounded. There wasn’t a crack or a chip of uncertainty in that granite facade.
God, was he even human? How could anyone be that calm?
“‘Don’t worry about it’?” she repeated incredulously. “It’s deflating!”
Blue eyes held hers. Ice-cool and steady. “There’s nothing we can do about it right now. It’s one air tube. We’ll stay afloat, but you might have to bail. Just keep us on course.” She must not have responded fast enough. He took her chin. “Annie, I need you to trust me, all right?”
She thought about it for a moment and nodded. It was crazy, but she did. The last thing she should be doing was trusting a stranger. Except this one had saved her life. And what other choice did she have? She had to trust him. She didn’t have anyone else.
“That’s my girl.”
My girl.Why didn’t that sound as bad as it should? Before she could process that, he leaned down and put his mouth on hers in a kiss that was so fast and fierce she was too stunned to object or respond. She felt the warmth, the surprising softness of his lips, and the firm pressure in a hard blast of awareness that flooded her senses and instantly engulfed her with heat.
He tasted of wind and rain and the faintest hint of coffee. She felt the tickle of his beard against her skin—it was softer than she realized—and then it was gone, leaving her spinning. Reeling. Dumbfounded.
Wanting more.
But the kiss had served its purpose. Though brief, it had forged a connection between them. They were in this together, and he would keep her safe. He had this.
It had also discombobulated her, which she was pretty sure had been his intention as well. She was too busy thinking about the kiss to be scared. Too busy wondering why he’d done that—and whether he would try to do it again—to panic.
Somehow Annie stayed calm, even when one side of the boat grew so deflated they began to take on water. Even when he told her a few minutes later to start bailing. She didn’t panic. The solid strength of the body next to hers was reassuring. Anchoring. A tether in a storm.
He never lost his cool. Never once showed even the barest flicker of worry or anxiety—even when one side of the boat began to sink visibly in the water. He was focused. In command. Poseidon and the other sea gods could throw their worst at him, and he would keep on fighting back.
He seemed to know exactly what to do. How to maneuver the boat over the vicious swells. When to increase and decrease the throttle. How to ensure that the small boat didn’tflip or take on too much water from the crashing waves. How to keep them heading steady toward their destination even without her holding the map and compass. She was too busy bailing.
His confidence, determination, and skill told her that she was in good hands.
Still, she’d never been so happy to hear the words “there they are” when the series of small islands finally appeared on the horizon. She was even happier after they circled and found a place to land and her feet touched solid ground.
Dan dragged the inflatable up the rocky beach of the biggest island—although the other four “islands” of the archipelago hardly qualified. They were more like big volcanic rocks shooting out of the sea covered in white guano from the thousands of seabirds that nested on their cliff sides. This was the only island of size—probably a half mile by a quarter mile—and the only one with a bay. She didn’t want to think about that for too long. They were safe. What-ifs didn’t matter.
The island was shaped like a crescent. Ahead of her, up a little from the shore, was a flat, grassy, relatively sheltered area that looked as though it might have been used for pasture at one time—if, as she suspected, the strange round stone huts that littered the hillsides had served as shelter for animals. Once they were beyond the small flat area, the grassy hills rose steeply to the top of the cliffs that she’d seen on the other side as they came around.
While she looked around, Dan had secured the boat by tying it to a rusty steel post and putting a few heavy-looking boulders in its hull to prevent it from blowing away if the winds reached the bay. But the storm didn’t feel as powerful here. The natural shelter had taken the edge off its fury.
“Let’s see if we can find someplace dry. If those cleats”—the cleats must be the stone huts—“and this pole mean anything, this place was inhabited once.”
Annie gave him a horrified look. Who would want to live way the heck out here?
He smiled at her expression. “They probably wouldn’t have lived here year-round. Some of the smaller islands in theHebrides are used to graze sheep in the summer. I suspect this one would have also been used for the birds.”
Annie’s nose wrinkled with distaste. She’d heard of the traditional Lewisian “Gana Hunt” for young gannets. Every year a small group of men traveled to a remote island off the north coast of Lewis to kill thousands of birds for the meat, which was considered a delicacy. It was the method of killing—by blows to the head—that provoked outrage from some groups. She knew it was part of the Lewis history and tradition, but that didn’t mean she didn’t find it distasteful and wish they would find a new one.
