She spotted Grayson several yards down the beach. He was holding his cell phone high in the air and turning in circles, and it couldn’t have been more obvious that he was trying to pick up a signal.

  A part of Halle wanted to laugh. And he was so sure about my cell phone provider being second-rate!

  But this meant that they officially had no way of calling for help. The airplane’s communications system wasn’t working, and neither of them were able to use their phones.

  Her anger flickered again, and this time she actually perceived a flash of fear.

  If they couldn’t call for help, what were they going to do?

  How were they ever going to get off this island?

  She had seen it well enough on the way in to understand that this place definitely wasn’t inhabited. It was entirely forest, with just a little strip of beach around the perimeter. Who knew how long it had been since anyone else had set foot on this island?

  Who knows how long it will be before anyone realizes we’re here?

  Overwhelmed, she sank down to sit on the tilted steps of the plane and leaned her head against the railing. What were they going to do now?

  Grayson was making his way back toward her. The only expression she could make out on his face was one of frustration. “We’re not going to be able to call for help,” he said, sounding annoyed. “At least, not yet.”

  She couldn’t believe it. “You’re acting like it’s not a big deal.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re acting like you’re just annoyed because this is inconveniencing you.”

  “It is inconveniencing me,” he said. “In case you forgot, I’m supposed to be in Barbados right now, meeting with investors. Instead I’m here on an island in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Wow, your priorities are really messed up,” Halle said. She was practically shaking with anger. “How can you still be thinking about your investment meeting? We’re stranded, Grayson! We can’t call for help, and that plane definitely isn’t going to take off again. And this island—do you know where we even are?”

  “Somewhere in the Caribbean, I’m pretty sure,” Grayson said.

  “Oh, okay. That’s very helpful,” Halle snapped. “Look at this place. I don’t think anyone’s set foot here in months. How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?”

  “Someone will find us,” Grayson said. “Don’t get so emotional.”

  “Oh, you are not calling me emotional right now. I’m stranded on a deserted island thanks to the fact that you weren’t willing to reschedule a meeting.”

  “You know how important my meetings are,” Grayson said. “And it’s not my fault that plane went down.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said coldly.

  “What happened to us could have happened to anyone.”

  “And you really expect me to believe that a flight instructor wouldn’t have known how to deal with it better than you did? That someone with a bit more experience would have known what they were doing in the air? All you kept saying, over and over, was that you didn’t know how serious the problem was, and that you wanted to put the plane down as a safety measure. If we’d had an experienced pilot, he might have known how far we could safely fly. We might have made it to Barbados! Or at least to a populated island where we could get some help!”

  “I know you’re not criticizing me for erring on the side of caution and getting that plane on the ground,” he said. “The engine might have failed altogether at any time. Maybe I put us down before I strictly needed to, but the fact that we’re on the ground right now is why we’re alive. You say my priorities are messed up, but I wasn’t willing to gamble with our lives. You should be thanking me right now.”

  “Thanking you?”

  “You’re alive because of me.”

  “Grayson, that’s insane. Who knows how long we’re going to be stuck on this island? Who knows whether we can survive here?”

  “We have food and shelter,” Grayson said. “The plane is fully stocked. We’ll be fine here for a long time. It might not be comfortable, but it’s not going to kill us.”

  “Not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t told me I had to come.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “What I said was that you were free to go if you wanted to.”

  “Yeah, but you said I wouldn’t be able to come back if I made that choice,” she said. “You knew I wanted to make one more flight with you, and you made sure it was this one or nothing at all.”

  “I don’t know why you care,” Grayson said. “You’re quitting anyway. If you really didn’t want to come with me on this flight, you could have quit early. No one was stopping you.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Halle said. She was mortified to find that her eyes were filling with tears now. He had made her so angry that she couldn’t bear it. “I needed the money from my job with you, Grayson. One more flight, and I would have been able to pay off my father’s mortgage. I would have been able to ensure that he wouldn’t lose his house. That’s the whole reason I took this job.”

  “So you were going to bail because you’d gotten what you wanted, in other words,” Grayson said.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Halle asked coldly. “You bailed on me when you’d gotten what you wanted.”

  Shock registered on his face.

  But Halle didn’t care. She wasn’t going to sit here and argue with him. By coming on this trip, she had earned the money she needed, and she was going to claim it—assuming she didn’t die on this island, of course.

  In the meantime, she wasn’t going to waste any of her time talking to Grayson. She didn’t care if the two of them never spoke a word to each other again as long as they lived.

  She turned and walked away from him, off down the beach.

  “Halle!” he called after her.

  She didn’t look back. She didn’t care. There was nothing he could possibly say that she would want to hear.

  She kept walking until the plane was far in the distance, until she could barely even see Grayson anymore. Then she dropped to her knees in the sand and buried her face in her hands.

  Now, at last, all the emotion that her anger had been suppressing came bubbling to the surface.

  Shock.

  Fear.

  And worst of all—gratitude. Gratitude toward Grayson. Because he had saved their lives by getting the plane on the ground. And even though it had been incredibly stupid of him to try to fly here in the first place, he had dealt with what had happened as well as he possibly could.

  But she couldn’t forgive him. Not while he was still acting like he hadn’t made any mistakes. Not while he was treating like she was the one who was being irrational, just because she was upset at being stuck here.

  Let’s just see how he feels when he doesn’t have anyone to talk to for days on end.

  Grayson had hardly been able to stand the idea of being alone in the plane’s cockpit for a few hours. He put up a tough front, but she knew how sensitive he was to his loneliness. He’d let her see behind the curtain a little.

  Well, she certainly wasn’t going to play nice and keep him company now that he’d gotten them into this situation. Let him look out for himself.

  She found a place to sit in the shade of a palm tree, high up on the beach, where the waves wouldn’t reach her. She leaned against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes.

  Maybe we’ll be rescued.

  In the meantime, though, she was going to have to find something to eat and drink. She wasn’t going to go back to that plane and accept help from Grayson unless she had no other choice.

  She looked around. Maybe there would be coconuts on the beach? She knew that coconut water would be good to drink, and the meat could be eaten for sustenance…

  Sure enough, there were a couple of coconuts on the ground, and looking up, she saw more hanging in the tree above her. She felt a rush of satisfaction, of knowing that she wouldn’t have to take anything from Grayson at all—

  And then she paused.

  How was she going to get the coconuts down from the tree? The few on the ground wouldn’t sustain her for long. And even if she did get them down, how was she going to break them open?

  She reached out and rolled the nearest one closer to her. Raising it over her head, she brought it down against a rock, then examined the outside.

  Not even a dent.

  Her heart sank. She was surrounded by food and water, but she couldn’t access it.

  I’m not going back to Grayson.

  She was just going to have to hold onto the hope that they might be rescued before she needed to eat.

  She stared out at the ocean.

  Right now, that seemed like an incredibly slim chance.

  Chapter 19

  Grayson

  Oh, I can’t believe her. I can’t believe she would blame me for this.

  Grayson was braced with one hand against the wall of the plane, doing his best to rescue as much food as possible from the galley, thinking through what it made sense to do right now. Obviously, the best strategy was going to be to eat all the fresh food as quickly as possible, before it went bad. The stuff that would keep, he tossed toward the main cabin to make it easier to access.

  How long was this food going to be able to sustain them?

  He wasn’t sure. He was glad, now, about the fact that he always kept his plane stocked to accommodate guests. It had felt like there was too much food, but now he could see that there was enough to last them a good while if they rationed it.

  Water was another, more concerning matter.

  He did have bottles of water on the plane, but there were only a couple dozen of them. Fine if they knew they were going to be rescued in a couple of days, but they couldn’t be sure of that. And out here in the hot sun, on the beach, staying hydrated would be extremely important.

  Grayson did his best not to think about the shortage of water bottles as he unpacked them, and how short a time they would last. How in only a few days, they would probably have run dry.

  We’ll be rescued by then, he told himself firmly.

  He sank down to a sitting position on the plane’s floor and threaded his hands through his hair, gripping it in his fists.

  What if we’re not rescued?

  He glanced over at Halle in time to see her lift a coconut above her head and bring it down hard against a rock. He flinched. He could feel the anger emanating from her, even though she was yards away now. I bet she wishes she was hitting me with that coconut.

  For the first time since the plane had touched down, he felt a pang of remorse for what he had done.

  Halle was right. She’d told him that she hadn’t wanted to fly today. And instead of conceding, as he should have done, he had refused to take no for an answer.

  Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just tell her it was fine if she didn’t want to come along this time?

  It wasn’t as if he had needed a flight attendant, given the fact that he had spent the whole trip in the cockpit. There hadn’t been anything for her to actually do.

  It was that I wanted a copilot.

  He’d been uncomfortable flying by himself because he had never done it before, and he had wanted someone with him. He’d been unwilling to wait for an instructor, so he had asked Halle to fill in.

  I really shouldn’t have done that.

  She had no qualifications. She didn’t know what to do in a plane. He shouldn’t have put that responsibility on her. But he had, because he had felt sure that if he just had someone riding along with him, he would be able to do what needed to be done.

  And because he had been so desperate to get to his stupid meeting.

  I shouldn’t have done any of the things I did today. I definitely shouldn’t have tried to fly the plane without an instructor. I wasn’t ready for that. Why did I do that?

  He knew why, really. It was because he had been so determined to make it to his meeting on time. He had been so preoccupied with the idea of expanding his business that he hadn’t been willing to compromise. After all, the hotels were all he had. What was he supposed to do? Not prioritize them?

  He couldn’t be expected to do that.

  And yet, if he had been willing to postpone the meeting by even a few days, they wouldn’t be in this situation. They would still be on the mainland. He was sure the investors would have agreed to a postponement—they were eager to invest in a Bloom Resort. The only person who would have been bothered by it was Grayson himself.

  I have to face the facts. I just wanted to keep the meeting because I have nothing else going on in my life.

  He hadn’t felt like himself since Halle had told him she was quitting. That was why he had tried to get her to talk about her reasons for leaving today. He had hoped to get her to change her mind. What he couldn’t figure out was why he cared so much about it. It wasn’t like it would be hard to hire another flight attendant. Not at the rate he was paying.

  He looked over at her.

  She was rooting around in the brush now. He frowned, wondering what she was doing, and a part of him wanted to go over and ask her. But she’d made it really clear that she didn’t want to talk to him, and he wasn’t going to be the one to force things. That

  Whoever I find to replace her, they won’t be like her.

  That was almost certainly true. He didn’t like admitting it to himself, but the fact was that he had formed a much closer connection with Halle than he had ever expected to. Up until recently, he had genuinely considered her to be a friend.

  She was my friend. And I’m the one who ruined that. It had been so naive of him to think that things could just go back to normal after they had slept together, that he could just tell her it had been a mistake.

  Actually, he hadn’t even told her it had been a mistake, had he? He’d just started acting distant. Which was the very same thing she had done when she’d worried that their flirtation was becoming too much. It had bothered him then. Of course it bothered her now.

  Grayson sighed. I’ve really made a mess of everything.

  He checked his phone again. There was still no service. He’d been a jerk to accuse her of having a cheap cell phone provider. Of course most of what she had was going to be less pricey than what he had. And more to the point, his phone wasn’t working either.

  That plane going down had been traumatic for both of them.

  She must be so upset.

  He looked over at her again. She had emerged from the brush now, and she had a long stick in her hand. She was marching down toward the surf.

  He frowned. What was she doing?

  As he watched, she kicked off her shoes and pulled off her tights, throwing them up the beach and away from the water. Barefoot, she waded out, looking at the shallow waves crashing around her ankles.

  She stood very still for a few minutes, then stabbed her stick down into the water.

  Grayson stared. What was this about?

  Halle pulled the stick up and looked at the end of it, her face twisting in disappointment. She stood still again, waited for the water to settle around her, and then stabbed the stick downward again.

  Oh my God, Grayson realized. She’s trying to spearfish.

  She was so stubborn! She worked in his galley. She knew perfectly well that there was enough food to sustain them right here. She was just doing this because they’d had a fight, and because she was trying to prove that she didn’t need his help.

  Why on earth did he find that so endearing?

  But then, he had always found the strange things she did endearing. He had been charmed when she had talked back to him. He wouldn’t have taken that from almost anybody else in his life.

  She was just so utterly confident that it was impossible not to admire her, even when she was a bit wrong-headed. After all, Grayson prided himself on his own confidence, and he was man enough to admit that he had been wrong from time to time.

  Maybe never foolish enough to try spearfishing in the ocean with a stick I just found on the ground, though.

  Halle tried again, and this time when her stick came up empty, she kicked at the water in frustration. In spite of himself, Grayson had to laugh. He knew how dire their circumstances were, but it was impossible not to be entertained by Halle sometimes.

  For God’s sake, she doesn’t need to catch fish. I’ll get her something to eat.

  What he didn’t know was whether or not Halle would accept anything he gave her.

  But he hoped she would.

  Because, as he watched her now, he realized that the biggest mistake he had made in all of this hadn’t been sleeping with her. His real mistake had been the way he’d chosen to deal with the situation afterward.

  And not just the fact that he had been distant and dismissive. It was more than that.

  He shouldn’t have let her go at all.

  As improbable as it seemed, he had fallen in love with this woman.

  I wanted her to come on this flight because I wanted her with me. It wasn’t about wanting a copilot at all.

  He should have been honest with her. He should have told her that he’d wanted more.

  I didn’t realize it myself.

  But he should have figured it out. It was his fault that he hadn’t done so.

  His stomach was in knots, even as he sat watching her. How could he possibly hope to talk to her about this stuff? Things had been so tense and unpleasant between them lately that Grayson was sure she wouldn’t be open to hearing it. And even if she was, it would kill him to make himself that vulnerable.

  What if I tell her how I feel, and she says she doesn’t feel the same way?

  Maybe bringing it up was a stupid idea What could come of it? Hadn’t he already blown his best chance with her? She wasn’t going to fall for him now. Besides, she was always the one who had insisted that things needed to remain professional between the two of them.