He pointed behind her. “We came in from the southeast and passed a highway just before landing. There will be a town or someone to help us.”
Jade raked a hand through her hair and let out a laugh. “This is just great. I didn’t exactly dress for trekking through . . . wherever we are.”
He went to the back side of the plane and pulled on the storage compartment. “Well, Red, unless you packed your hiking boots in this suitcase, you’re going to have to make do with what you have.”
She barely resisted the urge to strangle him, but he had saved her life, so she cut him a break. Her suitcase consisted of a pair of tacky orange shoes to match her equally tacky bridesmaid’s dress, toiletries, underwear, running shoes with shorts and a sports bra, and another sundress to ride home in. Some may not believe it, but she truly was a minimalist.
Cash tugged out her suitcase and sat it in the grass. “We need to start walking. I can take this.”
“Let me at least change my shoes.”
She squatted down and unzipped her suitcase. When she flipped the top back, she found her tennis shoes in the top compartment.
“That’s the dress?”
Glancing over her shoulder, she caught Cash standing behind her. Her bridesmaid’s dress wasn’t in some fancy garment bag. She’d been spiteful and rolled it up and put it right on top. Her mother would have heart palpitations if she saw this packing method.
“I’m tempted to leave it here in this field.” She slid off her sandals and threw them into the case before zipping it back up. “It’s hideous.”
“It’s quite . . . orange.”
Jade came to her feet and shot him a glare. “Either my cousin truly hates me or she’s fully grasping this autumn-themed wedding. I choose to believe both.”
She reached out to grip his shoulder as she shoved her feet into her tennis shoes. Not the cutest fashion statement with her favorite black cotton dress, but whatever. She wasn’t too concerned at this point, considering she was still thankful to be alive.
“I’m never going to make it to the rehearsal,” she muttered.
Cash grabbed the handle on her suitcase and started walking. “Probably not, but we can’t stay here. We need to find transportation and I need to call Jax.”
Right. The plane. A much more important issue than the wedding she’d never wanted to be in to begin with.
“How the hell will you get that thing out of here?”
“Hopefully, we can figure out what went wrong with the engine and use that field to take back off. If not, we’ll have to call in a team to extract it and get it back to Haven—which won’t be cheap.”
Jade followed at his side and wished she would’ve thought to take a rubber band from her toiletry bag to pull her hair up. She slid her purse down to her wrist and opened it up as she kept up the pace. Surely she had something in there, because at this rate, the heat from the sun would have her hair all frizzled and plastered to her back by the time they found civilization.
She could already hear her mother throwing a fit about “Jade missing the rehearsal and dinner and how that would look.” No doubt she’d twist her pearls in a frenzy and then paste a smile on her face and make some lame yet convincing excuse as to where her rebellious daughter was.
Jade let out a laugh as she thought of what her mother might say to all of her stuffy country-club friends.
“What’s so funny?” Cash asked.
She smoothed her hair over one shoulder to give some relief to her back. “Everything, actually. Not the broken plane, but the fact that I’ll miss this evening, my mother’s reaction when she realizes it, and how she’ll fumble around trying to come up with a plausible excuse as to why.”
Cash glanced her way and grunted. “It’s just a rehearsal. You’ll make it to the wedding.”
Jade pursed her lips. “Doesn’t really matter. She’d be upset even if I did make it to the rehearsal because I didn’t bring my plus-one.”
“Plus-one?” Cash asked.
Jade stepped over a small dip in the ground. She’d have to be careful or she’d twist an ankle. Wouldn’t that just top off this disastrous day?
“You know, my date,” she explained. “I’ll show up alone, which will just
add to her ever-growing list of my disappointments.”
“Your mother can’t be that disappointed in you,” Cash defended. “You’re a successful woman and making it on your own.”