Stranded with the Cowboy Billionaire

by Elana Johnson

  Mason woke sometime in the middle of the night to a sound he wasn’t quite sure about. He’d never actually slept on the island before, always electing to sleep on the yacht. He’d been out to Long Bar Island several times, of course. No one could build a cabin in a single day.

  The high-pitched wail started again, and he sat up and looked across the cabin to the other cot. Ivy tossed and turned there, the cot also squeaking with the movement.

  His first instinct was to wake her, comfort her. Standing on the beach with her earlier had been…nice. Simple. Sweet. Mason needed more of all three in his life, and he’d gone to bed with a grateful heart that she alone had answered his ad.

  “Ivy?” he whispered into the darkness.

  She quieted, and her breathing seemed just as even as before. He settled back to sleep too, but it wasn’t deep, and he never truly felt like he’d rested after that.

  However, when he woke fully, Ivy’s cot was empty, and the sunshine filled the cabin. He rubbed his hand through his hair and then across his eyes. He thought through what he needed to do that day and came up with…not much.

  All of the supplies had been brought over from the yacht yesterday. He could sort through those this morning. But they had food and water. They had shelter. Since he wasn’t much of a talker, he’d brought board games and puzzles, crossword puzzle books and several decks of cards.

  He found Ivy outside, crouching down in front of the circle of stones he’d made yesterday for their fire pit. He hadn’t actually started a fire though, and he’d made them sandwiches from the cold items he had in the best cooler money could buy.

  But this morning, Ivy had a thin line of smoke coming up from the fire pit. Surprise and admiration moved through him as he crossed the sand to her. “You started a fire?”

  “I thought I’d scramble eggs for breakfast,” she said without looking at him. She coaxed the flame cupped beneath her hands to glow brighter, and Mason found her downright sexy in that moment.

  With tousled hair and dirty hands, crouched over a baby spark and trying to get it to play nice with the tinder. She was so much more than he’d first given her credit for.

  “One of my favorite foods is scrambled eggs,” he said.

  “Really?” she asked. “Out of all the foods there are?”

  Mason shrugged. “My grandmother used to make them with sour cream.” The memories slipped through his mind, bringing a smile to his soul. “And they were one of the very first things my mother let me cook by myself.”

  Ivy simply blew on the flame again, but it didn’t catch. In fact, it went out. “Starfish,” she said under her breath, and Mason liked that she could use the word in happy situations and frustrating ones.

  “You’ve got to put the shavings by themselves,” he said.

  “I tried that,” she said. “They burnt too quickly, and then the fire was gone before I could get anything else to catch.”

  “I can do it.”

  She lifted those blue eyes to look at him, and Mason almost stumbled backward from the flames she had in her gaze. “I can do it too.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t.” Mason felt like he’d just been hollowed out with a single look and a few words.

  “I don’t need you to do everything for me,” she said.

  Mason frowned. “I never said that.”

  “Right.” She twisted away from him, but the sarcasm in her last word wasn’t lost on him.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “I heard you talking in your sleep.” Ivy cut him a dirty look and went back to piling the shavings from the fire-starting kit. “And this box lies. This says ‘Easy!’ It’s not easy.”

  Mason once again wanted to help her, but he kept his hands to himself. “What did I say in my sleep?”

  “Something about how you didn’t want me to mess anything up.”

  “How do you know I was talking about you?”

  “You said, ‘Ivy, don’t touch that. Leave it alone. No, don’t mess it up.’” She cocked one eyebrow at him and plucked a match from the book. He could see she’d already used several, and a blip of panic moved through him.

  He did want to tell her not to mess this up. He didn’t have unlimited matches, and it was only the second day.

  “I don’t even know what I was dreaming,” he said. “Are you really going to be mad about something I said while I was asleep?”

  “The mind always brings out our true thoughts while we sleep,” she said, which Mason took as code for yes.

  “How do you even know that?”

  “I read it once.”

  Mason scoffed. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  The shavings caught the flame, and Ivy focused on the little pile in front of her, gently feeding it bigger pieces of fuel until the flames had truly caught on a piece of wood big enough to play for a while.

  “I got it,” she said, true shock in her voice. She looked at Mason, wonder in those blue eyes. “I did it.”

  “You did it,” he said, smiling at her. “Now don’t let it go out.”

  Her expression soured, and Mason sighed. Would he ever be able to say anything right? He apparently couldn’t even do so while he slept.

  With the fire going strong, they both straightened. Ivy looked at him with apprehension. “I do want you to know that I don’t need to be babysat out here. I can take care of myself.”

  “Noted.” He leaned toward her. “What if I want to take care of you?” He wasn’t sure where the question had come from. He usually only said what had to be said, and maybe this was one of those times.

  His pulse beat against his breastbone while he waited for her to respond. “Maybe I’m not the only non-talker.” He grinned at her, tucked a loose piece of her hair behind her ear, and went to get the carton of eggs from the cooler.

  She whipped up the eggs and cooked them right over the flame. The pride in her body language wasn’t hard to read, and she smiled at him as she handed him a plate of his favorite food.

  “My favorite food is hot chocolate,” she said as she sat next to him on the long log he’d dragged over next to the cabin. The fire danced merrily in front of them, and Mason let the relaxation move through him.

  “I think that’s a drink,” he finally said. “Not a food.”

  “With marshmallows.”

  “Oh, now, there you go,” he said. “Definitely a food.”

  “When Eden was stuck on Bald Cliff Mountain, I made hot chocolate by the gallon.” She shook her head as a smile crept across her face. “No one drank it but me.”

  “It seems like an odd choice for a tropical location,” Mason said, hoping he wouldn’t offend her unknowingly again.

  “Yes, well, we don’t all have such practical favorites.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “So what are we going to do all day? You don’t talk, and I can’t do anything.”

  “Ivy, I never said that.”

  “I know,” she said, meeting his eye again. “I guess I am a little high-maintenance, and maybe I’m a little sensitive about it.”

  “High-maintenance in what way?” he asked.

  “Oh, you know. I like shoes and clothes and getting my nails done.”

  Mason nodded, though all of those things sounded like his worst nightmare. As long as he didn’t have to go to the salon or the mall, he should be fine. “I brought games and puzzles. We could start one of those.”

  “Okay.” Ivy wanted to play outside, so Mason moved the table out to the sand, and they started flipping over pieces to make the city of Paris. Ivy started talking about her job, and then the pets she’d had growing up, and Mason just listened to the sound of her voice.

  After an hour or so, he just needed to be alone. “I’ll be back,” he promised, and then he ducked into the foliage behind the cabin, the sound of silence worth all the gold in the world.

  You like her though, he told himself as he moved down the path he’d created that led to the spring. And he did like her. He
wasn’t sure he was her type though, and he wondered if she’d last for the full three months on the island.

  The days passed, and boredom became the thing Mason fought with the most. He didn’t want to do another jigsaw puzzle. He couldn’t care less about crossword puzzles. Ivy turned out to be very good at card games and board games and word games, and it was no fun losing to her over and over again.

  The island wasn’t that big, and he hadn’t brought anything to work it with anyway. No shovel. No seeds. No saw to cut a tree down and whittle it into something useful. Not only that, but Ivy had started making a list of all the things it would be nice to have on the island, as if the groceries, cabin, and loads of bottled water weren’t enough.

  Every time Mason felt his temper ignite, he excused himself to take a walk around the island. He never went too terribly far, as forty square miles was more than what it sounded like. And he always returned in a better mood, ready to talk about something else. Fine, Ivy did most of the talking.

  But she didn’t seem to mind, and Mason didn’t either. He told her about his brothers. His childhood. Nothing too revelatory in his past that needed to be discussed. She didn’t mention anything either.

  As another afternoon faded into evening, he laid on the sand next to her, their hands intertwined. She’d fallen silent, and Mason really liked the times like this. Time where he could hear himself think and feel the presence of another human being beside him.

  “Ivy?” he asked, his voice really quiet.

  “Mm?”

  “I really like you.”

  She shifted next to him, but he kept his eyes closed and his body perfectly still. “I like you too, Mason.” He heard the smile in her voice, and he let one drift across his face too.

  “Are you glad you came?” he asked.

  “You know what? I am.” She shifted again, sliding right into his side. Both of her hands held his, and he liked the added warmth of her body beside his. The wind picked up, and the sun went behind a cloud.

  The change caused Mason to open his eyes, and he looked up into the sky. Blinking, it took a few moments to process that things were darkening quickly.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, sitting up. Ivy came with him, and she sucked in a breath at the same time he did.

  The snarling storm coming toward the island seemed to be moving at the speed of sound. When the first raindrops hit his skin, he said, “Get to the cabin, Ivy. Now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ivy’s heart sprinted in her chest as she ran toward the cabin. Mason arrived before her, but he waited for her to dash past him before he slammed the door. “Let’s put the couch in front of it.”

  Panting, and with panic rolling through her, she helped Mason push the couch into the door. The wind slammed into the cabin in the next moment, and a yelp tore from her throat.

  This wasn’t a permanent structure. It might not even stand.

  Something pounded on the roof, and Ivy cowered into Mason. “What’s that?”

  “Rain.” Mason looked up too. At least nothing was dripping from the ceiling—yet.

  Ivy took a breath. Then another. Everything seemed eerily quiet, and then something huge and hulking hit the cabin.

  She screamed. Mason yelled. They both darted away from the couch where they’d been standing.

  There was no bathroom here. No plumbing that went down into the ground. No help.

  “The main support is back here,” Mason said, taking her hand and leading her toward the back wall. He pulled the loveseat over and turned it so it was perpendicular to the wall. Then he hauled over the table and the chairs, creating a small shelter for the two of them to huddle in.

  “In, in,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. Ivy practically dove between the loveseat and the overturned kitchen chairs, pulling one closer to her so she could cower under it if she had to. She didn’t really fit, but Mason joined her, pulling his chair in as well.

  He grabbed onto the table and pulled that into them as well, covering them and part of the loveseat with the tabletop.

  Relief rushed through Ivy at the same time the ceiling got ripped off the cabin. A scream tore through her throat as the wind snaked its icy hand inside the cabin.

  “It’s okay,” Mason said, yelling to be heard above the storm. The rain pounded on the table and the loveseat behind them. There was no way she was going to stay dry through this ordeal, and she clung to the chair legs, her fingers gripped so tight, so tight.

  Noise filled the air that she couldn’t make sense of, but beside her, Mason said, “The yacht.”

  All at once, the shrieking sounds in her ears made sense. They were metal. Metal being twisted in ways it shouldn’t.

  Her heart sank to her toes and rebounded back to her chest, settling in the wrong spot. The yacht. They were stuck on this island without that yacht. She couldn’t shower without that yacht.

  Orchid’s warnings about how nice a hot shower was after only a few days ran through her mind, an utterly ridiculous thing to be thinking about given the circumstances.

  They’d hauled in all the food, thankfully. The water. Their luggage. All of it was getting soaked, but Ivy put it out of her mind.

  She had to survive this storm. Then figure out how to live with whatever Mother Nature left behind for them. For almost three months.

  One, two, three…. She kept counting until she reached eight—the number of days they’d been on this island together.

  Eight, seven, six…. She counted backward and then forward while the storm raged around her.

  Every muscle felt stretched tight, and she wasn’t sure how to get them to stop screaming.

  All at once, as quickly as the storm had descended upon them, it passed over. Silence reigned, but Ivy didn’t dare move.

  She lifted her head to find Mason still bent over the chair. “I think it’s passed,” she said. Her voice sounded like a phantom of itself, and she suddenly understood why her sisters had changed so much after their experiences on deserted islands.

  She couldn’t even think straight, and her thoughts flew from one side of her mind to the other. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go see what the damage is.”

  She leaned into the table and slid it over enough so she could stand and step over the chairs. The sky above her still held some ominous clouds, and rain peppered her face as she looked up.

  The walls were still standing, and Ivy moved the big couch too to get to the door. “Everything we have is going to be wet,” she said, expecting to find Mason behind her.

  But he was still over by the loveseat. She returned to him. “Mason, come on. The storm is mostly past us.”

  He looked up at her, a glazed look in his eyes. Ivy had seen this shocked look before, and she bent down. “Hey,” she said kindly. “It’s fine. Let’s go look around.” She extended her hand toward him, and he took it.

  She wasn’t strong enough to pull him up, and he got himself on his feet. “That was like being in a tornado,” he said. “I survived one of those as a boy.” His voice came out lower than normal, definitely with more emotion than Ivy had heard in the week they’d spent together.

  “Wow, a tornado,” she said. “We have hurricanes here.”

  “Is that what that was?”

  “I doubt it,” she said, stepping toward the doorway. The door hung on by one hinge. Her heart ping-ponged around now, as she had no idea what to expect on the other side of the doorway. She stepped out enough that Mason could follow her, and together, they faced the water.

  The waves crested and foamed with white tips, coming up the beach much farther than they had previously. Branches and palm fronds littered the beach.

  But the biggest problem was the yacht.

  It clearly drifted in the water, pressing closer and closer to the beach. “It’s going to get stuck,” she said. It was still a magnificent vessel, but the glass she’d looked out as Mason had steered them here was obviously shattered. One of the railings she could see was
bent at an odd angle.

  “I’ll row out to it and see if I can anchor it,” he said.

  “I’m going with you.” She stepped when he did, both of them seeming to realize at the same time that their lifeboat had disappeared. “Can we swim?” she asked.

  “I guess we’ll have to.”

  Ivy went with Mason, something new and painful opening up inside her chest. She’d never done anything of honor. No one cared that she knew which dresses were new or in style. Anyone could feed a guinea pig.

  She knew she was a good sister and a good aunt and a good daughter, but as she waded into the water, she felt powerful in a way she never had before. She felt necessary. Needed.

  And brave.

  She didn’t have to swim to reach the yacht, as it had beached itself far enough up the beach that the water only went to her chest. Every swell of the waves, though, and she bobbed up and then went under, so she was dripping with saltwater by the time she climbed on board Starlight.

  She blew her breath out and wiped her hair out of her face. “Okay, that wasn’t so bad.”

  Mason’s mouth in that tight line didn’t agree. He went inside where the dining room, kitchen, and living area was, and Ivy followed him. She didn’t want to be alone right now for some reason, almost like the storm would return and sweep her off the face of the earth the way it had the lifeboat and the roof.

  “Everything’s wet,” he said, looking around. He stepped over the burners he’d used to make their sandwiches and twisted the knobs. Nothing happened. “No power.”

  “The lower cabins would provide decent shelter,” she said. “I mean, not if there’s another storm like that. But if it starts raining a lot or we need to get out of the sun.”

  Mason said nothing. He just cast one more look around this large cabin and then went back outside. Frustration filled Ivy, but she went with him.

  There was no power on the bridge, and the chain that had held the anchor to the boat had snapped. He had no way to fix it, and they ended up returning to the island just a little wetter than they were before.

  Ivy started picking up branches and palm fronds and making a pile. She didn’t need to do it. She wasn’t even sure why she was doing it. But the rain stopped while she worked, and the sun returned, and before she knew it, her clothes were dry, and her stomach wanted food. Now.