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“Whoa. I hope your uncle is okay.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Everything about this day had gone so wrong. Right now, she just wanted to go to bed and try to sleep it off. “Not much we can do right now but wait.”
“But the storm. Don’t you think we should figure out what’s going on?”
She’d been through dozens of false alarms with storms on this island. The weather was the least of her worries. “You do whatever you want, Zane. For me, I’m going to get some sleep and try to forget that you don’t want to have sex with me.”
Six
By late the next morning, the rain was coming down in torrential sheets, and Zane was deeply concerned about what might be in store for Allison and him on Rose Cove. He couldn’t get a signal on his phone. The other resort guests were all gone. Zane had been to the dock several times, hoping there would be a boat there, but he’d had no luck. Either they’d missed them all or no one was coming to get them. Angelique had told Allison to hunker down, but Zane wanted to make one more attempt to look for a way off this island. And he wasn’t going without Allison. He had to keep her safe. Even if she hated him, he was going to drag her along.
He trudged down the beach to her cottage, rain pelting his entire body while the wind pushed against him, forcing Zane to dig his feet deeper into the sand with each step. His thighs burned from the effort; his skin stung from the sheets of rain. He squinted through the drops but could see up on Allison’s patio. Her doors and windows were closed. Once he arrived at her back door, Allison was nowhere in sight, so he had to knock. As he waited for an answer, he turned back to the ocean. The waves that had been so lovely and calm a day or two ago were now starting to rage. The water was at a full-on churn like a washing machine. Best-case scenario as far as Zane could guess would be that the storm would only skirt the Bahamas and they wouldn’t sustain a direct hit. But with no access to a forecast, it was impossible to know what they were waiting for, whether this was as bad as things would get or if this was only the beginning.
He turned back to the door and pounded again. “Come on, Allison. Answer the damn door.” Impatient, he turned the knob and stepped inside just as she stumbled out of her bedroom.
“Zane. What the hell? You just walk in here? I was taking a nap. There’s nothing else to do with this weather.”
Zane hated how beautiful she looked. He especially hated the way his entire body had gone warm and his face had flushed. He might have been struck by a sudden case of best-friend guilt yesterday, but that didn’t change the fact that he wanted her badly. “It’s getting worse out there, and I have no cell service, so I don’t know what’s going on. Are you able to get any bars?”
“Oh, this from the guy who criticized me for using my phone.” She turned on her heel and retreated to her bedroom.
He had no choice but to follow her. “Don’t be mad about yesterday. This is important.”
She was standing in front of her dresser, staring at her phone. The bed was disheveled, and good God he wanted to scoop her up and lay her down on it. But this was no time for that. “I’m planning on being mad about yesterday for as long as I feel like it.” She held her phone up over her head at a different angle, then off to the side. “And no. I’m not getting any bars, either.”
Zane still wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly yesterday afternoon when she’d said that thing about him taking away the thing she’d wanted for fifteen years. Was it really possible that she’d had some sort of crush on him all that time? And if so, what in the world was he supposed to do about that?
“I think we should grab our stuff and camp out by the marina in the hopes that somebody shows up.”
She cast a look at him that said she thought he was an idiot. “There’s no shelter out by the dock. We’d literally be standing there in the rain. Quite possibly forever.”
“Do you have a better idea? I have to think that your aunt and uncle are worried about you. That they would try to send someone to get you.”
“Angelique and Hubert have a lot on their plates right now, and they know the weather here better than anyone.” She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head. “Now, the rest of my family is another case. I don’t even want to think about Scott right now. He’s probably losing it.”
There was that name again—the reason for this state of torture he was in with Allison. “They’re probably all worried sick. I’m also thinking there’s no way they’ll let you stay here if there’s a way to safely get you back. Which is why I think we need to stay as close to the dock as possible.”
“Okay. Fine. Let’s go. It’ll just take me a minute to pack up.”
“Perfect. I’ll be back in five.” Zane ran over to his place as fast as the rain and wind would allow, and chucked everything into his backpack. By the time he returned, Allison was waiting for him.
“This is a terrible end to what should have been a perfect vacation,” she said.
Somehow, Zane sensed that she wasn’t merely talking about the weather. “I know. But I’m not going to die out here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, either.” Not thinking, he took her hand and led them around to the path that would eventually take them to the main office. When they arrived up at the clearing, the ground was littered with palm fronds. The trees were bowing with every new gale. “The wind is only going to get worse,” he called out, still pulling her along.
“I’m not worried about wind so much as I’m worried about the water. If there’s a big storm surge, the sea level will rise considerably. Ten feet. Maybe more. I don’t know how smart it is to wait by the dock.”
She had a point. When Falling Brook was hit by Hurricane Sandy, the storm surge had been overwhelming, flooding countless homes and businesses. People had died. It had been a disaster in every sense of the word. “We have to find a way to leave a message at the dock to let someone know we’re still here, but then we need to find the high point of the island.”
“That’s going to be the honeymoon cottage up on the hill. The one they’re renovating.”
“Won’t we be sitting ducks up there? If there are tornadoes, it could pluck the building off the top of the cliff and toss it out into the sea.” It seemed that no matter what they did, they were in deep trouble.
“It’s somewhat protected, because the back side of the building is built into the rocks. And it’s on the western side of the island, where the winds won’t be quite as strong.”
“You really know a lot about hurricanes.”
“My brother is a weather nerd.”
