Three orange suits scrambled to a lifeboat.
“For the love of all things holy…” Static crackled over the mic as Larry’s awe-filled words blatted through her headset.
“Not now.” She struggled to fight the winds while gaining altitude.
“Holy shit,” Andrew echoed.
Hand on the stick, feet working the pedals, she fought the storm. Then she saw it. A wave approached the rig. Not a forty or fifty-footer, but one of the monster waves Aiden told her about. It crested in the distance and rolled forward without a care for what, or who was in its path.
“Did they make it to the lifeboat?” The last she saw, all three men were outside the lifeboat.
“I don’t know,” Larry said. “I can’t see.”
She spun around and searched the structure. All lifeboats were attached to the rig, but she saw no men.
“Oh my God.” Her grip tightened and she resisted the urge to go to them, to save them, but what could she do?
There was nothing to do, except watch the monster wave slam into the superstructure. Her breath caught as the rig canted beneath the hundred-foot monster. Ever so slowly, it rose as the wave pushed at the supports. The deck tilted, slanting at an unnatural angle. The whole thing rolled, pushed around like nothing more than a child’s toy bobbing like a cork.
She bit back a scream as the rig capsized.
Everything slowed down. The tilting of the rig. Her laser focus on the lifeboats. The sheets of rain and the lumbering wave as it moved with lethal destruction. The whine of the rotors filled her ears. The vibrations of the engine rattled through the seat. Wind buffeted her from every direction and she struggled to stay in the air.
But she did.
She lifted them away from the capsized rig as it rolled on its side and crashed into the heaving sea, and as she gained altitude, the bottom dropped out of her world. Her heart broke. Tears streamed down her face. And she gulped against the overwhelming pain of losing someone she loved.
Aiden!
A scream struggled to rip from her throat, but she tamped down her fear and swallowed her pain. There were four others who depended on her to fly them to safety. Julian had other plans about that, tossing everything in his arsenal he could. Gusts buffeted the helicopter. Lightning crashed all around. Updrafts yanked her up while downdrafts tried to slam her into the water. She flew as high as she could, giving her room to recover from the gut-wrenching drops and even scarier gusts that tried to flip her in the air. The engine groaned. The rotors cut through the air. She kept them on a steady path, heading towards calmer air.
This was the job she trained for. It was one she excelled at, and she wouldn’t let her crew down.
Julian raged around her. The maddening gusts and downdrafts kept her on high alert as she turned the helicopter south.
She took in a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves, and swallowed past her grief. Turning on her microphone, she reached out to her crew.
“How’s everyone back there?” She needed to hear something positive.
“We’re okay,” Andrew said. “Stable and secure. You’re doing great Ariel.”
She wasn’t doing great. Inside, she was falling apart, but Andrew was right about her piloting. The sheets of rain thinned, then cleared. The gusts faded, petering out to nothing of concern. The thick clouds overhead began to break apart as she cleared the inner rainbands and headed to the edge of the storm.
Her white-knuckled grip on the stick eased, and she shook out her hand. Eyes on her instrument cluster, she watched her fuel gauge as it dropped.
The flight to the drillship took her to the bottom of her fuel reserves, but they made it. The winds lessened and the sky brightened. She touched down on the drillship as it floated on calm seas with bright blue skies overhead. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, as if Julian had never existed.
But Julian was still out there. It swallowed an oil rig and took three men with it.
The crew of the drillship topped off her tanks. She was back in the air in less than an hour and headed to Tampa with her injured still on board.
Tears spilled down her cheeks not knowing if Aiden and the others made it. The lifeboat hadn’t released when the wave hit. After that, she didn’t remember much else, too preoccupied with fighting the storm. Her heart clenched. Her gut churned. She wanted to break down and cry, but there was a job to be done.
And she did it.
Years of flying and over a thousand hours in the air helped her to focus on the job. She didn’t allow herself to think about anything else and tried not to let hope die in her heart.
The Coast Guard had been notified. Those on the drillship made sure that happened, and a search would be underway as soon as possible. There was still hope.
When she landed in Tampa, it was to a beautiful, sunny day. The sun set to the west across the Gulf, sinking below the water in a blaze of yellows and red.
Somewhere out there, Aiden struggled to survive.
Or so she hoped.
Chapter 21
Ariel
After a day spent waiting for Julian to downgrade from a hurricane to a tropical storm and stagger inland where he finally gasped and fizzled into weakened bands of thunderstorms, Ariel brought Andrew and Larry home to Mobile.
She had avoided them while grounded in Tampa, heading to her hotel for the night where she spent the entire evening crying until her eyes burned.
The flight home was a somber affair, and she muted her headset microphone so the guys couldn’t hear her gut-wrenching cries. After dropping them off at the base, despite their protests, she waved away their offers of food and company.
Calls to the Coast Guard ripped out her heart and gutted her from the inside out. There was no sign of an emergency beacon assigned to any of the lifeboats on the rig.
They would get back to her. She would be the first to know.
They promised.
A week later, there was still no word.
Her apartment was a mess. She’d been neglecting it. Hell, she’d been neglecting everything. Grease slicked in her hair and her pits stank. She ran out of clean clothes. When she sniffed a discarded pair of panties to see if they were okay to reuse, she decided enough was enough.
First order of business, she needed a shower. With her hair washed and smelling of lilac and rose, rather than horrendous body odor, she set to the task of gathering her clothes. At the bottom of the pile, she found her discarded flight suit. Still damp, it reeked to high heaven.
Work had given her a week’s time off, but it would soon be time to get back into the pilot’s seat. The only problem was all she could think about was Aiden and his baby blues.
As she loaded the washer, she checked the pockets of her flight suit and brought out the damp remnants of Aiden’s note. Cradling it in her hand, she battled a new influx of tears. It was the only thing she had from him. With a swipe to her cheeks, she wiped away her tears. He made her promise not to read it until she got safely to land, but in the chaos of the flight, she’d forgotten all about it. Or maybe her mind had played a trick on her?
Carefully, she unfolded the note, trying not to tear the fragile layers. The ink on the paper had run, but she could still make out the bold, determined, strokes of Aiden’s hand.
Dear Ariel,
Do not cry for me. Don’t worry. I’ll move heaven and earth to find you. It will take more than a hurricane to take me from the one I want, and know that I want every piece of you very much. Because of that, I will return to you. Have faith in me.
Love,
Aiden.
Gut-wrenching sobs overcame her. She dropped the note and collapsed on the floor. He was gone. She punched at the pile of dirty clothes and all the unfairness of the universe.
“You promised me! You promised!” Her cries pierced the air and bounced off the walls, ringing in her ears. She rocked back and forth, tucking her knees to her chest. The ringing continued.
Ringing?
She
cocked her head, that sound came from the doorbell. Wrapped in nothing more than her robe, towel tight around her wet hair, she screamed at whoever had the balls to knock on her door. Didn't they know her entire world had fallen apart?
The last thing she needed was someone trying to sell her shit.
“Go away!”
Her shout did nothing to dissuade the person behind the door. They reverted to pounding.
“Go. The. Fuck. Away!” She tossed a book at the door. It hit with a solid thunk and tumbled to the floor.
“Ariel, I swear, if you don’t open this fucking door right now, I’ll put you over my knee and you won’t be able to sit for weeks. I’ve come a long way to see you!”
Her entire body stilled.
It couldn’t be.
“Ariel!”
His voice.
“Open…”
His amazing…
“The Goddamn…”
Beautiful…
“Door!”
Voice!
“Aiden?” She scrambled up from the floor and ran to the door. Yanking it open, the most amazing blue eyes took her in.
“I hope to hell that’s not how you open the door for all the guys.”
She looked down and gasped at her gaping robe. Her boobs flashed him along with everything else. Grabbing her robe, she tried to cover up, but Aiden held her wrists and stepped inside. As the door shut, his lips crashed down on hers, flooding her with warmth, and setting off an inferno inside her body.
“Aiden,” she said on a sigh. “How?… What happened?”
He shrugged her robe off her shoulders.
“They were supposed to call me with news,” she said beneath his kisses.
“Ariel…” His lips trailed over her jaw and down her neck. “Shut the fuck up and show me where the bed is. I need to be inside of you. Now.”
Her heart swelled with joy. Seeing him safe and sound was only half as good as feeling him in her arms. All the fears rattling around inside her head flitted away. Her grief evaporated.
Aiden was alive and looking amazing as always. His forever blue eyes welcomed her into his arms and she tumbled into his heart. Right where she belonged.
“You have to tell me what happened,” she said. “That monster wave picked up the rig and tossed it like a toy.”
“Is that what happened?”
“You didn’t know? I was so worried. The three of you were outside as I was lifting off, then the wave hit. I didn’t see the boat launch.”
“Oh, it launched all right. Worst rollercoaster ride in the world. I don’t recommend it.”
Images of the wave hitting the rig brought back that horrible sinking feeling in her gut. “I thought you died.”
“It’s going to take more than a monster wave to keep me from you. Didn’t I tell you to have a little faith?”
If faith was all it took, she had plenty of that. Words didn’t form in her head as he backed her up against the bed.
“I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to bury myself so deep you’ll never forget me. It’s all I could think about while bobbing around like a cork.” He snickered. “Well, that and not throwing up.”
“You know, talk about you spewing your guts isn’t very sexy.”
“It’s not?”
She grinned as she shook her head. “No, it's not.”
“Well, then let me get my sexy on.”
“Get your sexy on?” She giggled. "That's even worse."
“Oh yeah, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” He pushed her back onto the bed and pulled his shirt over his head. Holy rippled abs. She’d almost forgotten how magnificent he was.
She licked her lips.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
He tugged at his belt buckle. “Hmm, well, I think you’re going to like this even more.”
With a wiggle of his hips, he seduced her with the world's worst male striptease, but she didn’t care. Aiden lightened the mood and had her giggling as he stripped out of his clothes. Then he yanked her ankle and pulled her down the bed. His kisses began at her toes, meandered up her legs, had her moaning by the time he reached her thighs, and screaming moments later as the roughness of his stubble rubbed between her legs tickling that spot until she screamed.
As she spun down from ecstasy, he was on the move again, lips leading, hands following, lighting all her nerves on fire. He took control of her body and worshiped every inch of her skin. When he finally found her lips, he positioned her as he liked.
Lips touched lips. Skin slid against skin. She moaned with the sudden stretch of him filling her inside. Pleasure rather than pain fueled her screams. They came together in a tangle of limbs as the sheets twisted beneath them and pleasure drew them to greater and greater heights.
Sometime the next morning, he told her about the week he spent at sea, how the responder in the lifeboat failed to activate, and how a lovely yacht captain named Brie Hamilton rescued them and called the Coast Guard to end their week at sea.
She didn’t care about any of that. As long as he was in her arms, the world felt right again.
They spent most of the morning touching, kissing, and reconnecting. Eventually though, he forced her out of bed and into the shower.
“We have a lunch date,” he pronounced after fucking her against the shower wall.
“Okay, but I'd rather order in.” She never wanted to leave.
“Ah, no. We have a lunch date with two very excited women.”
“Really? Two?”
“Yes, a precocious nine-year-old who wants to meet the woman who’s stolen her daddy’s heart and an overly curious grandmother who’s dying to check out her new daughter-in-law.”
“Wow, no pressure there,” she said.
Aiden gathered her in his arms. “Ariel, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m in this for the long haul. If you’re going to be a part of my family, you need to meet Callie and Mary.”
Part of his family?
She was going to meet his kid? And his dead wife’s mother?
Chapter 22
Aiden
Aiden held back a laugh at the terror filling Ariel’s expression. She looked like she wanted to crawl into a black hole and never come out. It didn’t dissuade him from what he planned.
He had the worst week of his life to think about his future.
In between puking his guts out, fighting nausea, and surviving a week adrift, he decided not to wait another minute for a second chance at happiness. He knew what he wanted and he wasn’t willing to waste any more time chasing his dream.
Ariel felt good in his arms and fit perfectly around his cock. She brought a smile to his face and made his heart race. The woman was his kryptonite. Now, he needed to make her his forever.
"Get dressed! We're going to be late."
Ariel gave a squeak. "You can't make me."
"I can and I will. Now, Callie is waiting to meet you, and you don't want to keep a nine-year-old waiting. Trust me. The fallout is horrendous."
"Aiden, you're out of your mind."
“Callie is excited to meet you.”
“I don’t know that I can.” She retreated, but he refused to let her go.
"Have you not heard a word I've said?" He would shout it from the rooftops. He was head over heels in love with Ariel.
From the moment he watched her step out of that helicopter, his heart belonged to her. Some people might say it was crazy. They may be right, but then they knew nothing about true love.
Callie understood. She had the wisdom of childhood and believed in a love at first sight fairytale. He hoped Ariel didn't mind a few suggestions for the wedding because Callie had tons of ideas. There was a frog, a pumpkin, an iguana, and a few rats.
"You could have warned me." Ariel gave a huff, tossing her long hair over her shoulders.
He loved when she let her hair hang loose. It gave him something to grab while he fucked her from behind. His cock thickened, hungering for more. He'd
take her again, except they really did have to get going.
He crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't need to warn you. Now, what part of get your ass in gear do you find confusing?”
"You don't get it. I have nothing clean to wear. I haven't washed my hair, and I smell like sex."
"Best smell in the world, at least with my scent all over you."
"I'm not meeting your daughter smelling freshly fucked."
His eyes pinched. "You know, I think we need a very special version of a swear jar."
"I won't swear in front of your kid."
"Oh, I trust you won't, but I was thinking something fun for us." He rubbed his palms together, heating them up.
Her gaze dipped to his hands, but he didn't think she understood what he meant.
"Ten." He locked stares with her, wondering if she would figure out what he meant.
"Ten what? Ten cents or ten bucks?"
"Ten swats."
Her eyes widened, but from the way her pupils dilated and the hitching in her breathing, he struck a nerve. A very sexy and delicious nerve.
"You wouldn't?"
"I most definitely would. I love that filthy mouth of yours far too much, but the swats wouldn’t be for swearing.”
She hesitated. "Then what would they be for?” Her brows pinched and a flush crept up her neck. It colored her cheeks a rosy red.
"Simple. Disobey me and it's ten swats. How does that sound?”
Her hands covered her ass cheeks. "It sounds like I need to get dressed."
He came toward her and gripped her upper arm, a soft touch meant to reassure. "I would never do anything you didn't want to do, but damn woman if that’s not what I want with you.”
She bent her head.
It took a moment, but then she finally lifted her chin. Her bright eyes glittered and she held a smile on her face.
"I'm not against it," she hesitated, "but maybe that's something that we should take slow?"
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