“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t recall asking you what you thought,” Grayson said. “I have meetings I need to get to. I don’t have a pilot. This is the most sensible way for me to get myself there.”

  “The meeting can wait, Grayson,” Halle said urgently. Her anger with him seemed to have evaporated all of a sudden, and the only thing she could feel was concern. “This is really dangerous. You shouldn’t be doing it.”

  “You don’t think I can handle flying my own plane?” He sounded on the verge of real anger.

  “When was the last time you flew it?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s like riding a bike.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “You’ve never flown a plane, so you couldn’t possibly understand,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  She swallowed. “Well, I don’t know if I can come with you,” she said.

  She had to admit that, more than anything, she hoped he would take her reticence as a reason to delay his trip. She wanted him to realize that he was being needlessly reckless. Maybe if he saw that she wasn’t willing to take the risk, he would decide not to do it either.

  But his face was set. “You do whatever you want,” he said. “Makes no difference to me if you want to go a little bit sooner than you’d planned. But don’t be thinking that you can skip out on this trip and come back for the next one, Halle. If you’re done now, then you’re done, and that’s it for us.”

  Halle closed her eyes.

  She hadn’t told him that she needed the payment she would get for one more journey to help finish paying off her father’s mortgage. After what had happened between them, she hadn’t felt up to opening up to him any more than she already had.

  But he seemed to understand without being told that she needed the last trip, that she wouldn’t be willing to give it up.

  And he was right.

  She hated that he had this power to manipulate her decisions, and she definitely didn’t agree with this choice.

  But the truth is, he’s right. It probably will be fine. After all, he’s flown the plane plenty of times before. The worst that could happen was that he would get into some kind of trouble for flying without a license. And a man like Grayson could probably just buy his way out of any trouble he got into.

  Either way, it won’t be my problem.

  “Fine,” she said, her voice tight. “I’m in.”

  He got up, stacking his papers. “All right, then,” he said. “I’m going to want you in the cockpit with you while I fly.”

  “What?” She blinked. “What good is that to you? I don’t have any idea how to fly the plane.”

  “I’m not used to being in the cockpit alone,” he explained. “I’ll do better if I have someone I can talk to while I fly.”

  Halle gritted her teeth. She couldn’t think of many things that sounded worse than a long flight confined to a tiny cockpit with Grayson.

  But he was her boss. He had the right to make demands of her, at least for one more trip.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll ride shotgun. Just as long as you know you can’t actually count on me to do anything.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Grayson said wryly.

  He doesn’t have to be so rude.

  But Halle was beginning to think that maybe Grayson had no idea when he was being rude.

  And to think I spent so much time thinking that we were really bonding. It was hard to remember now how she could have seen him that way.

  She made her way into the cockpit and dropped into the copilot’s seat, knowing that the next few hours were going to be among the longest of her life.

  Chapter 17

  Grayson

  It was great to be back at the controls of the plane, Grayson thought, and the takeoff couldn’t have gone any smoother.

  Not that you would know it by looking at Halle.

  She reminded Grayson of the way his driving instructor had looked when he was fifteen years old, sitting there as tense as a coiled spring. She looked as if she expected something terrible to happen at any moment.

  It was almost offensive. What did she think he was going to do? Surely she’d seen how well the takeoff had gone. It should have put her fears to rest about his ability to fly the plane.

  Instead, her nerves only seemed to be mounting.

  “Nice quick four-hour flight,” he said, hoping that that would help her relax.

  Instead, she just nodded tensely.

  Grayson scowled. “Are you going to be like this for the whole flight?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “You look like you think I’m about to fly into a tree or something.”

  “We’re forty thousand feet up. There aren’t any trees.”

  “I know that,” he said irritably. How could he ever have found her banter charming? She obviously just delighted in acting like a know-it-all. “So why are you so worked up?”

  “If you don’t like it, I can leave the cockpit,” she said. “I don’t want to make this any more difficult for you.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” he asked. “Acting this way because you’re hoping I’m going to send you out of the cockpit?”

  “Grayson, honestly, do whatever you want.” She sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest, but her body did seem to relax somewhat.

  “Should we talk about it?” he asked her.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Why you’re quitting on me.”

  “Now you want to talk about it?” She looked at him in disbelief. “You’ve been avoiding this conversation since I told you I was leaving.”

  “Well, maybe now I want to know why.”

  “Now that you’ve got me trapped in a cockpit and I can’t get away from it?”

  “If you want to get away from the conversation, I don’t think you can call me out for avoiding it,” he pointed out.

  “Fine,” she said. “We’ve both been avoiding it, then.”

  “This might be our last chance to discuss it,” he said. “Since we’ll be going our separate ways after Barbados.”

  “I don’t know that this is the best time.” She was looking at the instrument panel. “You should be focusing on flying.”

  “Halle, there really isn’t much for me to do now that we’re airborne,” he said. “I just have to keep an eye on the instruments and make sure everything stays as it should be, and that we remain on course. It’s not like driving a car.”

  “I realize that,” she said. “I have been in planes once or twice in my life, you know.”

  “All right, all right,” Grayson said, shaking his head. Apparently she was just incapable of civilized conversation at this point. “Just forget I asked.”

  “Grayson,” she said. “You know why I’m leaving. I don’t know why you’re determined to make me say it.”

  “I don’t know why,” he insisted.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “Then don’t worry about it.”

  Grayson didn’t know why he was being so difficult. He did have some idea of why she was leaving, of course. It was clear what had changed between them, why things were different now.

  Maybe the problem was just that if he admitted what was wrong between them, he would be forced to admit that it was his fault.

  Maybe he was hoping that she would say something to absolve him.

  Or maybe I’m still hoping I can convince her to stay.

  He knew how unlikely that was. He wasn’t crazy. They’d been treating each other like strangers since that night at his house. And he knew he had been a jerk about it. Calling her a car service, as if she’d just come over to do him a favor… God, aside from anything else, I should have driven her home. That would have been the decent thing to do.

  He had been so spooked by how intimate the evening had been. But that wasn’t an excuse. Of course she was angry with him. Of course she wanted nothing more to do with him.

  I would apologize if she would just say it.

  But somehow, he couldn’t be the one to say it first. He couldn’t make himself that vulnerable with her. Not again.

  He was distracted from his worries by a warning light illuminating on the instrument panel. Frowning, he leaned forward.

  His heart skipped a beat.

  “What is that?” Halle asked.

  “Dead engine,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell if it’s actually dead or just an instrumentation failure…”

  “The plane’s still up,” Halle said. Her voice was shaking. “Doesn’t that mean the engines are working?”

  “Definitely means at least one is. This just indicates the failure of one engine.”

  “Can we fly with just one?”

  “Well, it depends what caused the first one to fail. If it’s something that might affect the second one…we don’t want to be in the air if that fails.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” His heart was hammering.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve only ever seen this before in a simulator!” He was aware that his voice was rising in both pitch and volume. His heart was hammering. He grabbed the controls and forced the plane into a descent, doing his best not to drop too quickly out of sheer panic.

  “What are you doing?” Halle screeched.

  “If the engine’s about to fail, we can’t be forty thousand feet up.” He felt like he was reciting the textbook. “I’m going to look for somewhere to put down.”

  “We’re flying from Miami to Barbados, Grayson! Where are you planning to land?”

  “It might be a water landing,” he said. “Hang on to your cell phone.”

  “You’re going to put the plane in the ocean?”

  “I might not have a choice,” he snapped. “Put your seat belt on.”

  They were descending quickly now. Grayson fought to keep his breathing under control. If he didn’t keep a level head, this could turn into a disaster.

  They broke through the cloud layer

  He was looking at an expanse of blue.

  Knowing that there was nothing below them but ocean was different from seeing it. He tried desperately to remember where the inflatable raft was on this plane. There was one, wasn’t there? He’d passed the safety equipment test, but that had been so long ago—

  “There!” Halle said, leaning forward and pointing.

  Grayson looked. Sure enough, there was a spot of green in the water, rising to meet them.

  “That’s land, isn’t it?” Halle asked. “We can land there.”

  “We can’t just land there. We don’t know what that is. There isn’t going to be a runway or anything.”

  “It’s better than being in the middle of the ocean!”

  That was extremely debatable, Grayson thought. Still, there was nothing to be lost by doing a flyover and taking a look.

  As long as the engine holds out, that is.

  “Seat belt,” he said again, his voice tight, and Halle yanked her seat belt into place and connected it.

  Grayson steered the plane low over the island, looking around desperately for somewhere to put the plane down—a stretch of abandoned road, or perhaps an empty field. But there was nothing that fit the description of what he was looking for.

  The island appeared to be nothing but trees, surrounded at the exterior by a narrow strip of beach. Grayson’s heart sank.

  I’ll have to land the plane in the sand.

  A landing on sand was better than landing in the water. But it was definitely going to be rough.

  “Hang on,” he said, bringing the plane in low.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Halle said, her voice breaking. She was hyperventilating, Grayson realized, and he wanted to help her, but getting this plane down had to be his priority. He’d worry about everything else once they were on the ground.

  At least the beach was long. He swooped over the sand, lowering his speed as much as he could, until—

  Slam! The landing gear touched down. Immediately, the back half of the plane began to fishtail, sending them spinning. Halle screamed.

  Grayson fought to get the plane back under control, but the controls were no longer responding to him at all. The wheels couldn’t grip the sand. There was nothing he could do.

  The plane tipped dangerously to one side, and Grayson found himself staring out the window at the sand below—

  And then it stopped.

  Grayson gasped, trying to recover his breath. He could hear Halle whimpering a little beside him.

  Finally, he managed to look over at her. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Are you?”

  He nodded.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “We need to call for help,” he said, reaching for the plane’s communications system. “I can send a radio signal to the nearest airport and have someone come and pick us up.”

  She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders were heaving, and Grayson could see that she was still having trouble recovering from what had happened.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked her.

  She nodded, but didn’t speak.

  He reached over, thinking of resting a hand on her shoulder, but thought better of it at the last minute. Instead, he turned his attention to the communication system and started spinning the dial, trying to find an open line.

  But there was nothing. There was no sound on any channel.

  Anxiety flooded him. He glanced over at Halle. She still wasn’t looking at him.

  “Halle?” he said.

  She didn’t say anything, but she made a little noise to indicate that she was listening.

  “You’ve got your cell phone?” he asked.

  She lifted her head. “Why?”

  “The radio isn’t working.” He held it up. “We’ll have to phone for help.”

  Halle held her phone out to him. At first he wondered why she hadn’t just made a call herself, but then he saw that her hands were shaking.

  He took it from her and looked at it.

  “You’re not getting any service,” he said. “No bars.”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

  He was relieved to hear that her voice was a bit steadier, even though he could tell that she was angry with him. “Who’s your provider?” he asked.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “They must not offer very good coverage.”

  “Oh, okay. So it’s my fault.” Her anger was escalating. “May I remind you that I’m not the one who thought they could fly this plane?”

  “It’s not my fault,” Grayson said. “The engine failed. I didn’t shut it down.”

  “There’s a reason you’re supposed to fly with an instructor,” Halle said. “You didn’t know what the hell you were doing up there, Grayson. You could have gotten us killed.”

  “I beg your pardon?” That was going too far. “I saved our lives, Halle. I’m the one who landed the plane without anyone getting hurt. What did you expect me to do?”

  She didn’t answer. Grayson unfastened his seat belt and headed toward the cabin of the plane.

  “Where are you going now?” Halle demanded.

  “To get my phone,” Grayson said. “Someone has to call for help, and you clearly can’t.”

  He made his way out of the cockpit, fuming. What right did she have to be so angry? It wasn’t like she would be missing an important business meeting because of this. She was going to be paid overtime. And besides, he had saved her life.

  She should be thanking him.

  He found his phone in the pocket of his jacket and held it up, looking at it with a frown.

  Maybe he had spoken too soon when he had criticized her service provider.

  He didn’t have any bars either.

  Grayson cursed inwardly. Now what are we going to do?

  Chapter 18

  Halle

  I can’t believe this.

  Halle was simmering with anger. And, truth be told, she was doing her best to maintain that anger, because she wasn’t looking forward to the feelings that would no doubt come creeping in when she let it go.

  Anger was the only thing keeping the fear at bay.

  There was no way she was going to stay here in the cockpit and wait for Grayson to figure things out. She wrestled with her seat belt and managed to disconnect it. It took some effort, because the plane was tipped pretty dramatically to one side and all of her weight was resting against the belt.

  She remembered, suddenly, that Grayson had been the one to remind her to put it on when they were going down. She wondered what might have happened to her if she hadn’t done so.

  I’d have been badly hurt, probably. Maybe even killed.

  Her outrage flickered for just a moment. He had been right when he’d said that he had saved her life.

  But on the other hand, if it hadn’t been for his determination to make this trip, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. And she hadn’t wanted to come. He had threatened her with the loss of her job if she hadn’t agreed. That was the only reason she was here right now.

  Her anger came surging back, powerful and terrifying, washing away anything else she might have been feeling. It was a relief. It was good. She would rather feel this than anything else right now.

  She made her way carefully out of the cockpit, holding onto the wall to keep herself upright.

  The cabin was empty. The doors between the various compartments stood open, as did the door leading out of the plane altogether, and she could tell that Grayson wasn’t in here at all anymore. He must have gone outside onto the beach.

  Little though she wanted to see him, she did want to know what he was doing. She climbed down the stairs, slipping once or twice, eventually making her way onto the hot sand.

  It was painfully humid out here, and the sun was bright overhead. Halle was used to the weather in Florida, but this was much worse. She pulled off the jacket she’d been wearing and tossed it back into the plane. Then she used the hair elastic on her wrist to wrap her hair up into a messy bun, to keep it off her neck. There wasn’t much she could do to dispel the heat, but it was better than nothing.