“Poppy—your head. It’s bleeding. What happened?”
The stairwell lights flicker. They both hold their breath, waiting, tense. More electronic alarms start bleating. Before either of them can say or do anything, the stairwell plunges into total darkness. The ship’s engines fall silent.
Alarms clang, beep. Klaxons echo. They hear shouting outside the stairwell. They wait. Hoping, believing, the lights will come back on.
The PA crackles again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the bridge. We’re experiencing a technical issue with our propulsion and electrical systems. Please remain calm and stay inside your cabins or public areas while we conduct an assessment. Further information will follow shortly. Repeat: Please stay calm. Follow crew instructions. Our crew is trained to assist you. More information will be forthcoming.”
Faint emergency lights begin to brighten in strips along the edges of the stairs. The strips glow eerily into the hollow darkness.
They hear another announcement coming from outside the stairwell.
“Code Delta. Muster prep. Code Delta. All crew. Code Delta.”
Patrick grabs her arm, tries to lift her up. Blood pours from her temple. Her legs won’t work.
“Poppy. Come on. We need to get out of here.”
Her vision swims. She sways.
“Poppy—stay with me!”
“Code Delta. Repeat, all crew. Code Delta.”
She feels herself slipping away.
Arrabella
Arrabella has taken a room in a beautiful white Cycladic-style hotel perched on the edge of the caldera rim, with dramatic views spilling over the sea. Sunset was magnificent, but now it’s dark and the wind has risen into a fury. She’s frustrated as she struggles to get the hotel internet connection to work.
She tried calling Patrick earlier to say she’d arrived in Fira and would rejoin the cruise by tender first thing in the morning—weather permitting, of course. The hotel concierge warned that with winds like this, tenders might be canceled. Her frustration doubles.
When she looked out the window moments ago, she could see the lights of the great ship out in the caldera. So close, yet impossibly far.
She calls Patrick’s phone. Again.
It goes to voicemail. Yet again.
A spark of worry ignites again in her chest. She closes her eyes, reliving the moment she came back from death, saved by the skill and sheer will of a Danish EMT who happened to be dining in the taverna above the tiny cove where she’d taken her gyro.
Arrabella had ordered it from the same taverna. She’d told the staff about her shellfish allergy, but they either pretended to understand or failed to completely grasp the danger. Some part of her gyro must have come into contact with shellfish in the kitchen. Arrabella had gone into anaphylactic shock while eating it on the beach and watching the sunset. She’d been brooding over her horrible fight with Patrick and the bombshell he’d dropped on her about not being Angus’s biological son.
She’d woken in a Crete hospital.
The Danish couple came to visit, and the man explained how he realized she might be in anaphylactic shock. He told the Greek EMTs as they arrived, and they administered epinephrine instantly. It saved her life. She’d been transported to the hospital, where she was given antihistamines, corticosteroids, oxygen, and IV fluids, and she was kept under observation.
In that hospital bed, shaky and sore, and emotionally drained on every level, having been given a second chance at life, Arrabella experienced a come-to-God kind of moment.
She realized that maybe it doesn’t matter if Patrick gets nothing of the Angus empire. He’s still a very wealthy man in his own right, with status, and power. The magazine division is essentially his.
She vowed to let her ex go, finally. Fully. Wholly.
Shecando this.
Patrick has been good to her. She can be good for him. She can still become the powerful driving force behind him. Together, they can still go places. Big, glittering, wonderful places.
The world still sees him as a McGregor son. Doors will open.
