Didn't I Warn You by Amber Bardan

Author:Amber Bardan [Bardan, Amber]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

I SAT IN the speedboat, gazing up at the yacht towering above us. Under normal circumstances, this would be considered a big speedboat. Much bigger than the one Dad used to take Josh and me out in. Mostly Josh—but sometimes me, too.

Next to the yacht, the speedboat could’ve been a toy.

The sea lay calm as a painting but so much more vivid than anyone could hope to capture on canvas. You’d never know it’d stormed last night. The sun blazed in the sky, and we in the speedboat were nothing more than a speck in the vastness of the ocean.

“You ready?”

To let Haithem whisk me off into nothingness?

Sparkling blue stretched around us. Not a scrap of the land he’d promised.

I nodded.

He reached underneath my seat, pulled out a life jacket it and handed it to me. I put it on and did up the straps as tightly as they would go.

He started the boat, steering us away from the sun. I held my hat on my head with one hand. The air cascaded over us. Haithem’s T-shirt rippled over his back. I almost hadn’t gotten into the boat with him looking that way. Pale blue T-shirt, white board shorts, bare feet. Casual, like some regular hunk. I preferred him in his immaculate, formal dress. At least that made him look like what he was—someone to be reckoned with.

Not sexy beach guy.

The boat hit a bump. My backside rose off the seat then slammed back down. A thrill ran from my knees to my head.

I laughed and gripped the edge of the seat.

Haithem glanced over his shoulder—striking me with an even deeper thrill. He pulled a lever, taking us faster. We rushed across the ocean, parting the air and water around us. My insides rose and fell, while my outsides flailed and bounced. He turned the boat in an arc.

My heart lifted.

I shook with laughter. Air swept the hat from my head. I lunged for it, but it blew into the water, disappearing from sight as we sped on. The boat slowed, and I glimpsed the so-called land.

Starting as a pin-sized island, it grew into something big and vegetated enough to outrank a sandbar, but it wasn’t what I’d anticipated when I’d asked for solid ground.

We drew closer, approaching a small dock—the only evidence anything human had ever been to the island. Haithem stopped the boat and helped me out.

My feet hit wooden planks, yet the ground still didn’t seem steady as it should be. I took a step, and the dock rolled. I stumbled off onto the sand and sat.

“Sea legs,” Haithem said, carrying a basket and a bunch of towels out of the boat. “You’ll adjust in a minute.”

I kicked off my sandals and buried my feet in the hot beach. I’d been longing for the hard, unshakable security of land beneath me—concrete, bitumen, brick paving perhaps.

Trust Haithem to be sneaky.

“I’m not sure I’d call this land.”

He dropped the towels and basket in a patch of shade. “If we go in a little farther, there’s dirt.

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