by Lowe, Anna
Entangled
a Serendipity Adventure Romance
by Anna Lowe
Entangled
Copyright 2015 by Anna Lowe
www.annalowebooks.com
[email protected]
Cover art by Fiona Jayde Media
www.FionaJaydeMedia.com
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Serendipity Adventure Romances
Uncharted
Entangled
Windswept
Adrift
and
Off the Charts
(a short story prequel to Uncharted)
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Off the Charts
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Sign up for my newsletter at annalowebooks.com to get your free copy of this prequel to the Serendipity Adventure Romance series.
All Julie Steffens wants is a quiet couple of days on a Caribbean beach. Just her, a good book, and the balmy sea breeze. But the minute she meets Seth Cooper, sparks start to fly, and she's tempted into the one type of adventure she's never tried. The only question is, will one night be enough?
Contents
Title page
Copyright
Serendipity Adventure Romances
Free book
Entangled
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
Thank you
Sneak Peek: Windswept
More from Anna Lowe
Entangled
Cara Leoni hasn’t hiked into a mountaintop village in Central America to experience the rain forest; she came to seal a business deal. Everything depends on it: her job, her future, her pride. The catch? Her competition has already negotiated its own arrangement with the local chief. Now she’s trapped in the jungle, the clock is ticking, and her only hope is the one man she vowed never to trust again.
Tobin Cooper was only planning on a couple of laid-back weeks on the beaches of Panama, but before he knows it, he’s racing his rusty motorcycle into the wild side. Venomous snakes, poison darts, and ruthless drug runners aren’t half as frightening as the idea of facing his ex-fiancée again. The odds of an epic fail are ninety-nine to one, but hell, his whole life had been lived in that one percent zone. But this time, it’s not about adventure — it’s about survival. If he and Cara are going to escape the jungle alive, they must rebuild trust, one kiss at a time.
Chapter One
There was no way this could be the right bridge.
No way.
Tobin looked left, then right, but it was just him there. Him and his motorcycle in the middle of five hundred square miles of rain forest, plus a creaky rope bridge hanging over a ravine. One of those made-of-vines, hang-on-for-your-life kind of jungle bridges you only see in movies or travel brochures.
Or Panama, fittingly.
The funny thing was, he’d come to this part of Central America picturing something entirely different. The Panama Canal. Surf breaks. Beach bars and coconut-husk drinks.
But there was a whole different side to Panama — the tangled jungle side, where jaguars prowled, tribesmen wore face paint, and only the fittest survived. Where rain fell in solid sheets — or so he’d been told. He’d managed to time things right for a change and come in dry season. More like dumb luck, because his timing, well, it always seemed to be a little off.
He cut the engine, swung off the bike, and tried the first of the wooden boards that formed the ramp of the bridge. Solid enough.
He gripped the handholds on either side and took another step. At least there was that: the bridge only looked like it was made of spit and vines. It was actually made of spit and thick wire. Rusty wire, judging by the smudge of orange on his palm.
But hell, life was for living, even if it meant risking your neck from time to time. He took another couple of steps out, edging away from firm land and out over the ravine. The bridge was barely a yard wide, but it stretched on and on across the gorge, a thin sliver squeezed into a lush green jungle that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
The farther he ventured, the more the roar of the river filled his ears, and the more the bridge wobbled and bounced. The footboards were slippery and beginning to rot, and it was all too easy to imagine putting a foot right through one and plunging into the rushing river, a hundred empty feet below.
Probably not the best place to stop and swing his backpack off to pull out the camera, but he just couldn’t pass up the chance. He held on with one hand and turned the camera around for a selfie.
Another great shot for his Adventures in Central America album, if he ever got around to making one. Another shot he’d probably never let his mother see. And another picture of him in an amazing place, alone.
He snapped another few shots, trying to get the motorcycle in the background, because he’d made it clear across Central America on that thing. Too bad he’d left his machete strapped to the saddlebags, because that would be the ultimate picture to send to friends back home. He could imagine what his friends back home might say — they of the eighty-hour workweeks, mortgages, and two-point-one kids.
“Tobin, man, keep living it up.”
“We’re living vicariously through you, Tobin.”
“Now that’s the way to live.”
Of course, there were other opinions, too. The ones who asked when he was finally going to grow up. Settle down. Get serious about someone.
Which he might have been tempted to do, if he wasn’t still in love with a woman he’d last seen six years ago. If she hadn’t backed out forty-eight hours before they were supposed to say I do, who knew? He might just be living that suburban life. Enjoying it, even. Kissing the love of his life goodnight, every night.
He stared down into the ravine, watching the river tumble and split, each drop of water finding its own snaking path between the boulders. If the average guy was the mainstream, shooting down the middle of the river, he’d be the drop stuck over there in the back , swirling and tumbling and having a great old time. Not actually getting anywhere but right back where he started, ready for another wild, wet ride.
Good old Tobin, living it up. He sighed.
He looked up and found himself two-thirds of the way across. Veils of mist hung over the lush green landscape. A scar of a cliff opened a view of a waterfall that gushed in three uneven stages, but the rest was wild, tangled, and impossibly thick.
No sign of the village he needed to find. No sign of a road.
He rubbed a foot across the slippery footboard, and the rotting wood creaked. Time to turn around. He had a sense o
f adventure, not a death wish. And he’d wasted enough time. Somewhere out there was the right bridge, the right road. The one leading to the damsel in distress he was supposed to be rescuing.
He backtracked, wondering what was scarier: that he was her only hope, or the idea of seeing her again. Because the damsel in question wasn’t the type to hang around waiting to be rescued, especially not by him. Cara was as likely to greet him with a right hook as a kiss.
So yeah, the odds of an epic fail were roughly ninety-nine to one. But hell, he lived his whole life in that one percent zone. Why buck tradition now?
And anyway, this was about her, not him. And definitely, definitely not about what they’d once had.
Definitely not? the back corner of his mind protested.
He gritted his teeth. Definitely not.
Chapter Two
He spider-walked back to his motorcycle fast enough to make the whole bridge bounce up and down. Time to get to that village, wherever the hell it was, and get Cara out of whatever trouble she was in.
He’d barely set foot on terra firma when a wizened old man half hidden under a stalk of bananas appeared on the dirt road.
“Hola,” Tobin started. His Spanish wasn’t great, but it worked. Mostly. “Tucumba?” He pointed across the bridge. “Aqui?” This way?
The man greeted him with a gap-toothed smile and a flurry of syllables. Tobin did his best to follow along. Viejo meant old, nuevo meant new, and puente meant bridge. The old man was pointing over Tobin’s shoulder, which meant the new bridge was over there. It had to be, because if this was the new bridge — man, he’d hate to see the old one.
He fired up Lucy, the battered old 500cc Kawasaki he’d picked up in Belize, and rattled around a couple of potholes the size of a small Central American country.
Half mile up the road, he spotted it: the new bridge. Wide enough for a jeep. High enough over the gushing river to make an alternative out of the question. Crumbling enough to make an engineer wince. And bristling with guards clad in fatigues.
Tobin eyed the scene from above, letting the engine idle.
The guards were heavily bearded Che Guevara-types, right down to the bandoliers, brown caps, and black leather boots. What were they guarding, sixty miles away from the Columbian border?
Guarding against drug runners, probably. A spike of heat rushed through his veins. What the hell was Cara doing up here, alone?
The guards weren’t doing much guarding, though. They were all clustered around a tiny shack with their backs to the bridge, their focus inside. One of them shifted, and Tobin glimpsed a flickering blue light.
Television? Out here?
His eyes shifted higher, to the small satellite dish on the roof. Maybe it wasn’t for strategic communications, but for entertainment. Which could only mean one thing.
Soccer. The World Cup was on, half a world away, and every man, woman, and child in Latin America seemed to be tuned in. He’d heard radios blaring all the way across the country. Some big game was on today.
And maybe, just maybe, that was his chance. Because there were two options for getting across that bridge: rolling up with a smile and submitting to the standard single-male-gringo treatment: a half-hour scrutiny of his passport, his bike, his pockets. Even then, they might not let him through. He’d heard a special permit was required to go this far into the jungle, and he had nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
Which left him with option two.
Tobin eyed the bridge and the road that disappeared around a bend on the other side. He might just make it.
Might.
In any case, he didn’t really have a choice.
Stuck in Tucumba, Cara’s message had said. The one he’d received two days ago in an email from his cousin Meredith. An email that forwarded a whole series of messages that spun off from a short text from Cara.
Stuck in Tucumba, in the highlands. They won’t let me out. Will miss my dead—
The message cut off there. Cara’s parents were frantic — so frantic, that when they found out Tobin was in Panama, they wrote back right away.
Get Tobin! Get Tobin to help Cara now!
There wasn’t a PS, but he could hear Cara’s father muttering all the same. And if the bastard fucks this up the way he fucked up everything else, he’s dead meat.
Yeah, her dad was a gem that way. A hard-working pizza parlor owner who probably had a distant connection to the mob — an Uncle Rocco who could wipe Tobin’s ass off the planet with a single shot to the head. Never mind that Tobin’s name had once been embossed alongside Cara’s on a wedding invitation. These days, he was persona non grata. They were only making a temporary exception because he was the closest one.
He gunned the engine and rattled along the single-track road, slaloming between ruts and dips that would have torn the bottom out of most four-wheel drives.
Will not fuck up. Not this time.
The road dipped downhill so steeply, the back wheel left the ground with a lurch that echoed in his gut. He sped around a bend to the approach to the bridge.
His eyes flicked briefly from the ruts in the road to the guards. Still focused on the game.
Back to the road, blurring under the front tire.
Back to the guards, closer now. His heart thumped in his chest.
The road straightened and Tobin opened up the throttle. The engine roared in his ears, but so did the river, and the guards didn’t hear him.
Yet.
Then everything became a blurry rush as he zoomed right past them and onto the bridge.
“Argentina dos, Brazil uno!” the television commentator cried. “Gooooooaaaaalllll—”
The goal celebration was drowned out by the shouts of the guards, who’d finally spun into action and reached for their guns. He could see them in the sideview mirror, now that the road was smooth. Smooth enough to hit another gear and gun it for the other side. A hundred feet and he’d be out of range, around the bend.
Eighty. The motorcycle flew off the lip of the bridge and back onto the dirt on the other side. He absorbed the impact with his elbows and knees and hung on for dear life.
Ping! He didn’t hear the first bullet so much as felt it cut through the air.
Fifty feet to the bend. God, he hated being rushed.
A second shot rang out, and a third, then so many that he couldn’t discern between the rat-a-tat-tats exploding all around him and the jarring of the bike. All he could do was duck — as if that did much good — and speed on.
Crunch! The sideview mirror shattered.
“Crap.” He’d just had that mirror replaced, too.
Thirty feet. The roar of the river subsided now that he’d reached the other side. The sound of bullets, though, grew louder. Ping! Ping!
Ten feet. He hunched over the handlebars and leaned into the bend with a hard twist on the throttle. And zoom! He was in the clear.
“Shit!” He jerked the handlebars right. The blind turn hid a half-gutted truck, raised on bare axles, and a couple of logs. A wreck of a thing, but still solid enough to kill a motorbiker in too much of a rush. It loomed over him, and he tucked his elbow in tight. Cleared the wreck by an inch, and that was with half his weight stuck way out to one side. Raced on and told his heart to get the hell out of his throat and back to beating something steadier than a frantic bongo beat. Because he was fine. Absolutely fine, right?
He glanced back. The guards didn’t seem to be taking up the chase. Not yet, anyway. The road was empty but for him, Lucy, and a startled old man with a reluctant mule. Tobin puttered past them and around a bend, then screeched to a halt, staring up. Straight up.
The engineers who built the bridge seemed to have called it a day there because the road petered out into a nearly vertical trail more fit for a goat than a four-wheel drive.
The man with the mule caught up with him. Tobin cut the engine and pointed up. “Tucumba?”
“Si, Tucumba.” The man smiled and plodded on
like there weren’t a dozen guys likely to come sprinting around the corner any second. Like there wasn’t raw, ragged jungle on either side. Like the love of his life wasn’t being held captive somewhere up there.
“Tucumba,” he half muttered, half sighed.
Tucumba. If nothing else, there was kind of a high that came with living life this close to the edge.
Kind of.
He stashed Lucy as far off the road as he could. Which wasn’t very far, considering the python-thick vines and tree roots. The jungle crept over the sides of the road, just biding its time before reclaiming stolen territory. The leaves of the nearest bush were each as big as an umbrella, and it didn’t take long to hide Lucy. He slung his backpack over his shoulders, grabbed a water bottle from the saddlebags, and glanced back the way he’d come. No sign of the militia yet. If he was lucky, they’d already given up on him and gone back to the soccer game. If he wasn’t lucky, well…
He took off, trotting up the mountainside.
Forty-eight hours ago, he’d been teaching beginner surfers off an endless sandy beach on Panama’s Pacific coast. Now, he was sweating buckets and making like a soldier on some kind of marathon forced march. A Swiss soldier in an overgrown tropical version of the goddamn Alps. That’s what it felt like after the first hour.
And the second, and the third. By which time he wasn’t trotting, but trudging along. He might as well have poured the contents of the water bottle over his shirt for all that he was sweating now.
Sweating and swearing and slogging along. How the hell did Cara get to a place like this? Why? An image of her socked him so hard, he nearly stumbled. The first time they’d met, her coal-black eyes and long black hair made him think of a Roman goddess. The last time he saw her… Well, he’d rather not think about that.
