I couldn’t stop screaming my head off.
“Ohhhmmmmmyyyygoooooshhh!” I yelled along with a few other words that I would not repeat in front of children.
“Getttttmeeeeeeeddoooowwwwnnnnnnnnn!”
But my screaming was all for naught as I doubted anyone could hear me except the seagulls flying past me.
Come on, Janie. You got this. Take some big breaths. It’s not like you’re plummeting to your death—yet.
Eight gasps later, my heart was still practically in my throat and I could see that my little adventure had drawn the attention of the people on the yacht, who were standing on the deck and staring up at me.
Unfortunately, not exactly for the reasons I’d originally wanted.
As we’d discussed before, the two minutes I’d asked for were now up, and the rope on my parachute thingie was being slowly pulled back in. My goal in booking this adventure hadn’t been to see what it was like flying hundreds of feet in the air above shark-infested waters as some tourists might have wanted. No, my goal was getting close enough to the yacht as to draw some attention to myself so that when our boat engine seemingly wouldn’t start again—something that was going to cost me another fifty—they might take pity on me and offer a ride.
Well, I’d definitely succeeded in drawing attention.
The ride back in was getting a little rocky, and I was bounced up and down, which earned another torrent of screams from my throat. Just as I was about ten feet from being pulled to safety on the back of the boat, I heard the unmistakable sound of a rope snapping, and I was suddenly thrown backward into the air again.
Something told me that things had gone seriously wrong.
This time I was too freaking terrified to do more than whimper as I hit the water, my butt being dragged against its surface as the parachute kept pulling me out to sea, and I became aware of two things. One, that I was going to die, as any minute the waves were going to crash against the chute and drag me down along with it. And two, that along with my tour boat, a WaveRunner was chasing me down.
The WaveRunner guy dived in and quickly grabbed the rope pulled through the water after me. Almost immediately I could feel the momentum easing as the guy’s weight and strength slowed me down. But I was still going under. I grasped at the harnesses that had been keeping me safe a moment ago and now threatened to take me down along with the chute.
Why hadn’t I learned that me and water just didn’t mix?
Another WaveRunner approached, and between the two riders, I was pulled out of the harness and onto the back of the first WaveRunner. I was suddenly freezing, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they might fall out of my head.
“…shock…get her calmed down…” someone said.
I don’t know how much time had passed before the WaveRunner reached the back of the yacht and people were lifting me up and onto the deck. Someone wrapped a blanket around me and sat me down on a bench overlooking the same ocean that had nearly killed me.
Slowly I became aware of the faces that were staring at me in concern and curiosity. My teeth chattering had stopped, fortunately, and the feeling in my hands, feet, and butt had started to return.
“You doing better?”
The accent was distinctively British, and I looked up into a pair of light baby blue eyes. This was the guy who’d rescued me. And he was adorable.
I smiled. “Yeah, I think so. But remind me to kill Lars.”
“Lars? Would that be the owner of the little operation that just about had you killed? Because I’m afraid he already recovered what was left of his equipment and jetted away.”
Of course he had, taking along with him my flip-flops and my bag. Fortunately, I’d had doubts as to Lars’s trustworthiness and had been careful to remove anything of real value from the bag except for the cost of the launch and lunch money. I’d also taken several photos of him on my cell phone that I left with Holly back on the beach—you know, should I never return.
“Do you want us to contact the police? I feel like we should report the man for nearly killing and then abandoning you.”
Now that I was safe and no longer at risk of being shark food, I was feeling a little more generous where Lars was concerned. After all, I was here. Exactly where I’d wanted to be—even if how I got here wasn’t how I’d planned it.
“No, it’s fine. It will teach me never to trust a guy who guarantees a one-hundred-percent safe experience for fifty bucks.”
“Now that you’re safe and sound, maybe we should perform some sort of introduction. My name is Colin Fitzgerald, and these are my friends Rip Charleston, Leila Rasmussen….” He continued to go around the dozen or so faces until he’d introduced me to everyone. Of the names, however, I noticed that Grayson’s was absent. Had I gotten the wrong boat?
“I’m sorry to crash your party.”
“Oh, no worries. It made the afternoon all the more exciting. Besides, it’s not my party or my boat. My friend Grayson actually put this together but he had to leave unexpectedly.”
Grayson had to leave? Like, the entire island? Before I could sink into depression that all my efforts and near death had been for nothing, another realization sunk in. He’d said his name was Colin Fitzgerald.
I knew I’d heard that name somewhere.
“And you’ll have to forgive me for asking, but you are…”
“Jane. Jane Carmichael.”
“Well, Jane Carmichael, it’s a real pleasure to meet you,” Colin said and smiled again, his eyes crinkling in the corners as he did, his sandy-blond hair already half-dried from his ocean swim and rippling in the soft Pacific winds.
In an instant, I remembered where I’d heard that name, where I’d seen that face.
Colin Fitzgerald from Manchester, England, whose family had holdings in pharmaceuticals, I think. Number seventeen on my list of eligible under-fifty billionaires.
Grayson, shmayson.
This guy right here could quite possibly be my future husband. I just needed to feel that zing, which, if I stared into those eyes for much longer, was inevitable.
“You have got to be the luckiest woman on the face of the planet,” Holly said later that night as she looked me up and down, stopping at chest level. “Push them up a little higher.”
I looked down at the girls that were already pushed up in a gravity-defying feat thanks to my new bra. “If they were any higher, they’d be spilling from my dress,” I said, grabbing the glass of wine and taking a drink, careful not to smudge the deep red lipstick I’d stained my lips with tonight.
Today had been a day of ups and downs. Literally.
After our introductions, Colin and I spent the next little while chatting with each other to the exclusion of everyone else on board, and by the time we’d docked, I’d secured an invitation to have dinner with him tonight. I still could not believe how quickly I’d gone from my near-death experience to having the greatest miracle of all delivered in the form of one gorgeous British billionaire who rescued me from said death experience.
It was fate, pure and simple.
I stared at the image in the mirror. I’d decided to wear my hair down so it just skirted my shoulders in smooth, shiny waves—a huge improvement from the massively frizzy mop that I’d been stuck with since Colin had fished me out of the ocean. And although I had seen Colin’s eyes dart more than a few times at my, um, assets, this dress definitely screamed for attention.