Chapter 1
DanielJones’slefthipached like a bitch.He gripped the armrests of his airplane seat as he breathed through the pain.
“Are you a nervous flyer?”the woman next to him asked.
Dan glanced at her, his teeth clenched.In the five minutes since he’d sat down, she hadn’t stopped talking, even though she’d been busy strapping her little boy into the window seat.
“No,” he said.“I’m not nervous.”
“Lucky you.”
Yeah.He was lucky, all right.Lucky to have survived the freak horse riding accident that had put him in a coma last summer.Lucky that his muscle mass had protected his vital organs and that the horse’s hoof had struck only a centimeter from his brain.
“I mean, I don’t freak out or anything like that,” the woman continued.She had an American accent, short hair that was dyed pink and purple, and lips that were stained red with long-ago-applied lipstick.Her eyelashes were covered in glitter too, like she’d been dressed up for a party that had ended yesterday.“It’s just that when I think about being so up high with nothing below my feet, it sometimesdoesmake me want to freak out, but I guess the trick is tonotthink about it, huh?”
“I s’pose.”Dan laid his head back and closed his eyes.
“I should be used to flying,” she added, “but I still get anxious before take-off.Although as soon as the engine fires up and it’s all go-go-go, it’s kind of exciting, isn’t it, baby?”
Baby?
Dan cracked one eye open.
“So, you’re British?”she asked.“As soon as we’re up high in the air, you can sit on my lap.”
Dan jerked his head.Ah.The child.That last bit was for the child.
The way she kept switching like that in the same breath, Dan couldn’t keep up—and neither did he want to.Stealing himself against the agony of moving his body, he turned as much of his back toward her as was possible in his cramped airline seat.
“Don’t do that,” she said firmly.
What the—?“Look, I—”
“Aw, c’mon, honey.Work with me here.”She was talking to her child again.The small boy was wriggling in his seat and shoving away the toys she’d placed around him.“We’ll be flying soon.Look, here’s the flight attendant, getting ready for take-off, yay!Vroom-vroom, we’re going up, up, up!”
Ugh.Baby talk.His sisters used that same tone with his nieces and nephews.Dan pulled his painkillers out of his pocket and popped another into his mouth, hoping this one would take the edge off—or, at the very least, drown out this woman’s voice.
“Got a headache?”she said.
Head, legs, knee, hips.Heart.Everything ached.Dan sighed.“Yes.”
“Traveling takes it out of us.”
She could say that again.
Six months after the accident that had nearly killed him, Dan’s body still needed to heal.But he’d needed to leave England.Those journalists and photographers were still camping outside his house, always so trigger-happy to take shots of the Great Daniel Jones—Olympic sprinter, once the fastest man in the world—now limping like an old man.
Conspiracies and rumors about his long-term health were already rife.Flipping out at those obnoxious paps outside the clinic last month had only fueled the gossip and speculation, and his agent dropping him last week had been the last straw.Now, according to the headlines, Dan Jones was all washed up.His reputation as Britain’s National Hero in shreds.
And soon, those same gutter presschurnalistswould be sniffing out the truth about him and Isabella.
That’s why he’d had no choice but to put himself through this horrendous thirty-five-hour-and-counting journey to the tiny South Pacific island of Rarotonga, part of the Cook Islands.
The objective?
Get as far away as possible before his and Isabella’s split hit the headlines.
The irony?
