‘So, where do we go now?’ Zoey looked out at the darkening skies, a nervous line marring the skin between her eyes.
A gnawing feeling of doubt settled in Ash’s stomach. Was he doing the right thing, taking her away from this wedding? He’d promised her just two weeks ago that he’d make sure she went through with it. But even then he’d not felt entirely comfortable making that promise.
Watching her with David, he’d been worried. Or unsettled, perhaps. Nothing Ash could put a finger on, but just a sense of wrongness. Maybe it was the way that David’s eyes never left her, especially when she was talking to other people. Or perhaps the way that they only ever said yes to engagements he wanted to go to, and arrived and left on his clock, not Zoey’s.
Or maybe it was just that Ash didn’t like him much.
Whatever it was, Ash had to admit that he was glad Zoey wasn’t marrying him. If she’d gone through with it, there was an interminable future of boring dinners listening to David talking about how important he was, and how magnanimous, supporting Zoey in her little job at the gallery.
Yeah, he was definitely doing the right thing.
‘The company has a villa on a private island, not far from this one. Freshly refurbished and awaiting inspection by yours truly next week. I even know where the spare key is hidden. We could borrow one of your guest’s boats and be there before bedtime.’ He nodded to the array of boats moored up at the hotel, ranging from small speedboats to large private yachts. Many of the wedding guests had decided to make a longer trip of the event and hired boats for the occasion to tour the region—relishing the excitement of island-hopping in the tropics instead of yachting around the Med for a change. Ash had been hoping for a chance to take a trip out on one of the boats anyway, so really he was killing two birds with one stone.
Actually, this all sounded like a pretty good plan for one he’d just come up with on the spur of the moment. Hopefully the villa had an equally luxurious drinks cabinet, and he and Zoey could wait out the wedding sipping cocktails by the pool before they headed back to face the music.
‘Borrow a boat from somebody?’ Zoey asked, sounding less enamoured of his plan. ‘Doesn’t that mean going back into the hotel we just escaped from and telling one of my guests that we’re leaving? Kind of defeats the object, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I wasn’t exactly going to ask,’ Ash admitted. He’d always found it better to seek forgiveness rather than permission in situations like these.
‘So you want to steal a boat. From one of David’s friends and family? Because I can’t see that making me any more popular with them.’ As if she thought running out on her own wedding wasn’t going to achieve that on its own. Sometimes Zoey had no sense of priorities.
‘No,’ Ash explained patiently. ‘We’ll bring it back tomorrow. After the wedding that won’t be. And we’ll only borrow a small one, anyway. They probably won’t even notice it’s gone.’
‘I’m not sure—’ Zoey broke off abruptly as another voice filled the air. David’s.
‘Zoey? Are you out here?’
‘Boat?’ Ash whispered.
Zoey nodded. ‘Boat.’
And then they ran.
* * *
As if she wasn’t feeling guilty enough already, now she had boat theft to add to her weighty conscience.
Ash had commandeered a small yacht with surprisingly little trouble—one that had been hired, she had a feeling, by David’s boss—which made Zoey wonder if he’d actually done this before. Funny, if she’d been asked this morning she’d have said that she knew everything there was to know about Ash Carmichael. After all, Grace had talked about him incessantly since the moment they met, so it was hard not to. And that was even before Grace died, and suddenly all they had was each other.
A tragedy like that brought people together. Made them close. Helped them know and understand each other in a way they never would have done, otherwise.
But somehow she still hadn’t known that he’d worked in a hotel kitchen, or that he knew how to hotwire a boat, or whatever it was he’d done to steal this one.