Caught in the Surf (2 page)

It wasn’t raining anymore, although the air did hold a dampness in the form of a thick mist. Casey’s long-legged strides took him across the tarmac swiftly, and Lani had to run to catch up to him. Even after she caught up, she had to trot two steps for each of his.
 

“Slow down, would you?” Lani snapped. “Not all of us are a thousand feet tall.”

Casey didn’t answer, but he did slow his stride so Lani could keep up without having to run. She suspected he was smirking, but it was too dark to tell. He led them across the tarmac to a path leading toward the beach and a long pier, to which was tied a single-engine seaplane bobbing in the post-storm surf.

Lani stood on the pier, staring skeptically at the bucking airplane. “You sure it’s safe to fly like this?” She said the last phrase
la’dis
.

“Like what?” Casey untied the plane and stepped easily from the dock to the float of the pitching aircraft.

She gestured to the choppy water. “I wouldn’t take a boat out in this. Too rough.”

“It’s now or wait till morning. The storm’s broke, but it may not stay that way. Do I like it? No. Am I worried? Not much.” He yelled the last phrase from the cockpit.

“‘Not much’? Is that supposed to comfort me?” Lani timed her step from the dock to the plane, but hadn’t banked on a swell knocking the plane upward.

She found herself balanced with one foot on the float of the seaplane, fighting for stability. Her lifetime of surfing was all that kept her from ending up in the black brine, and as another wave sent the plane bobbing even further, she knew she wouldn’t last much longer. She was too far back to be able to grab the sides of the plane, and her foot was slipping on the slick edge of the float.
 

A hot, hard, huge hand grabbed her wrist and tugged her forward. Before she had time to react, she was crushed against a massive, rock-solid chest, the scent of sweat and cigarettes and engine oil and sea salt filling her nose. His hand was spread across her back, spanning from between her shoulder blades down nearly to the small of her back.
 

It was only a split-second, but Lani felt in that instant as if she had been caught by a riptide of sensation, pulled out and sucked under and tumbled until disoriented by the tide of his scent and his miles and miles of muscle and his billowing heat.
 

Reality hit her like a rogue wave.
 

“Get off me.” She pushed away, harder than necessary.

Casey didn’t respond, but she felt his eyes and the unspoken questions. She’d nearly succumbed to his embrace. A random stranger in an airplane. A freaking giant nearly two feet taller than she was.
 

She set her backpack down and took the seat next to Casey, who was pushing buttons and flicking switches. She fitted the earphones to her ears and adjusted the mic. After a moment, the engine sputtered, coughed into deafening life, and Lani felt the rumbling buzz in her belly and her bones.
 

She refused to look at him, the huge man folded into the tiny cockpit, his head brushing the ceiling, knees splayed sideways, bear-paw hands on the wheel. She refused to look, but she couldn’t help seeing him, feeling his enormous presence. A stolen glance out of the corner of her eye showed him to have reddish sandy-blond hair cropped close to his scalp, rough and craggy features that managed to be somehow handsome in a ferociously masculine way. His shoulders were thick and round, straining against the plain gray T-shirt, and his arms were nearly as big around as her waist. Under the dim glow of the cockpit lights, his skin was fair and freckled and weather-beaten.

He caught her looking and grinned. “I’m six-seven.”

“What?” Lani flushed and glanced out the window, seeing little but dark water and thick gray-black clouds.

“I’m not a thousand feet tall. I’m six-foot-seven. Just sayin’.”

“Oh. Well…you’re still a freaking gorilla.”

“I’m more of a bear than a gorilla, if you’re comparing me to animals.” He let his gaze rake over her body. “And you’re a—”

“If you call me a midget, I’ll stab you in the throat with your own pen.”

Casey lifted his hands briefly in a gesture of innocence. “Not what I was going say. I’m friends with a little person, as matter of fact, so I wouldn’t say nothing like that.” He adjusted the throttle, and the engine picked up tone.
 
“I was going to say you’re a pixie.”

“Excuse me?” Lani twisted in her seat to glare at him. “A what?”

He flashed a grin at her. “A pixie, like an elf or a fairy or something.” He eased the plane away from the dock and twisted it into position toward the open water. “Tiny…and magical.”

Lani wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I’m not
that
tiny. I’m over five feet.”

“Barely.”

“Shut up. I’m five-one, I’ll have you know.” Lani hated how that had come out but couldn’t take it back.
 

She crossed her arms over her chest and refused to be embarrassed. Casey just chuckled under his breath and shoved the throttle to full. Speech was impossible after that, the plane jouncing and jarring over the waves. She let herself glance at Casey and noticed that, despite his teasing moments before, his mouth was now set in a hard line and his granite-slab shoulders were tensed forward. The bounces became longer and higher, and Lani’s stomach began to rise into her throat as they touched water once more, then lifted off. She couldn’t quite stifle a shriek of panic when a white-capped wave sliced beneath them, big enough to have done damage had it hit them. Casey blew out a soft, barely perceptible breath of his own.

“That was close,” Lani said.

“Yep.”

“Would that have made us crash?”
 

Casey shrugged. “Wouldn’t have been good.”

A long silence ensued then, as the seaplane rose into the air. After a while, Lani couldn’t take the silence. She’d never been good at silence. “Where’d you learn to fly?”

“Army.” Casey didn’t even look at her.

“You were a pilot in the army? Where were you stationed?”

He glanced at her finally, as if debating how much to say. “All over. Japan, Germany, Philippines, Guam, Okinawa, Korea, Ireland. Wasn’t regular Army.”

“What were you, then?”

“Army Rangers. I was a Ranger, but I preferred flying to being in the thick of it.”

She peered through the windscreen, seeing nothing and wondering how he knew where they were going. “So you can fly a lot of different kinds of things, then, I bet, right?”

He grunted in answer as a gust of wind buffeted them. “Yeah, I can fly everything from C-17s to these little pond-hoppers, choppers, gliders, you name it. If it goes in the air, I can fly it. ’Cept fighter jets, of course. Though I could, and did once, in a pinch. Hated it. Scary as shit.”

“Is this scary for you? Flying in this weather?” Lani felt the aircraft jolt and dip, heard rain blatting against it.

“This ain’t weather. It’s a bit of rain. And no.”

Lani couldn’t seem to stop the questions, since they kept her own nerves at bay. She hated flying. “So what would scare you?”

“You ask a lot of questions. I flew a C-130 through the edge of a hurricane once. That was some scary shit. We got caught and didn’t have enough fuel to go around it. It just hit us out of nowhere. Rain going sideways, blown so hard it sounded like bullets hitting the walls. We’d drop a thousand feet in about ten seconds, just
whoomp
, so fast you didn’t have time to get sick. Then we’d pick up altitude again, only to be blown this way and that and tossed around. I nearly shit myself, I think. Did pee a little, if I remember right.” He said the last with a grin.

“That sounds horrifying.” She couldn’t stop her own grin from spreading at the idea of this massive man peeing his pans.

“It wasn’t fun. Made it through intact, though. We ran out of fuel as we were taxiing off the runway.” He glanced at Lani, clearly seeing her hands white-knuckled on the armrests. “This ain’t nothin’ to be worried about. We’ll be fine.”

She didn’t want him to think she was a coward, for reasons she didn’t care to examine too closely. “My uncle was a pilot. He used to fly me and my sister around all the time, in a tiny little plane just like this. Once, it was just me and Uncle Jimmy. We were halfway to the Big Island when a storm hit us. We were out over open water and, like you said, it just hit. No warning. We crashed. Uncle Jimmy died getting me out of the wreckage. Flying has been difficult ever since. Especially in planes like this.”

“Shit, Kailani. Sorry for your loss. I can promise you we won’t crash today, though. You’ll be all right.”

A gust of wind buffeted them sideways, and Lani clutched the armrest with clawed fingers. When they had evened out, Lani glanced at Casey, who was lighting a cigarette and pinching it between his teeth as he slipped the plastic Bic lighter back in his hip pocket.

“You’re smoking? Now?” Lani hated how her voice turned into a squeak at the end.

Casey just grinned, spewing smoke from his nose. “Keeps me calm. This ain’t even a storm, Kailani. We’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“Call me Lani.” She didn’t address his “trust me” comment. Trusting a man wasn’t possible, not for Lani, not then.

Another gust of wind knocked them, tipping to the side, and Lani heard a whimper scrape past her teeth.
 

“This is a storm. I don’t give a shit what you say, Mr. Army Ranger.” Lani was proud of how steady her voice was.

Casey grinned at her again. “Nah. This is just a little squall. Ain’t nothin’. But you’re entitled to your fear. Not saying you’re not.” He rummaged in a backpack between their seats and pulled out a flask, handed it to Lani. “A bit of liquid courage might help.”

Lani’s stomach turned, but she took the metal flask and swallowed a slug of burning whiskey. “Oh, god. I think I might be sick now.”

Casey frowned at her. “Not in my plane, please. I hate cleaning up puke.”

Lani shook her head. “I won’t. Just nauseous.”

After a few minutes, Lani felt the plane dipping and lowering gradually, and then there was a soft, wet thump and the liquid scraping of water past the floats, and they were down. Lights gleamed yellow-orange in the distance, and Lani felt a soft flutter of hope.

Hope for what, she wasn’t sure.

“Welcome to Seeker’s Island,” Casey said.
 
He shut off the engine, unbuckled his safety belt, and unfolded his enormous frame from the seat.
 

Lani just sat for a moment, staring at the soft glow of the lights, feeling the plane rock and bob gently. Casey shoved the door open, and Lani was assaulted by the smell of rain and ocean, and underneath that the scent of jungle and wet sand. She heard the homey sound of waves sloshing against shore, the gentle drift of rain, the chuck of water on the dock pilings.
 

He stepped out and extended his hand to Lani. Hesitating in the doorway, Lani stared at his proffered palm. Casey narrowed his eyes at her hesitation, then leaned forward and wrapped his arm around her waist, lifting her bodily from the plane with one arm. He pulled her against his body, held her there for a long moment. His heart thudded against her ribcage, and his thick arm coiled around her waist like a serpent, hard, strong, and unmoving. She found herself unable to look away from him, his pale, sky-blue eyes captivating her attention. Suddenly, she was all too aware of this man, of his scent: engine oil, alcohol, cigarettes, faint cologne.
 

Something tensed in her, her heart clenching, her body becoming wired and attuned and sensitive. Her palms were flat on his chest, her arms barred vertically between them.
 

She was also aware that her feet were suspended nearly a foot off the ground.
 

“Put me down…please,” she whispered.

His hands were on her hips then, and she was lowered slowly to the ground, sliding down the length of his body. For a reason she didn’t want to think about, she didn’t step back from him right away. His heat radiated against her and his eyes held her in place, his mammoth frame blocking out the world and her thoughts and her fears and her past and everything except this ridiculous moment of mesmerized captivation.

Then a breeze swept over them, bringing the tang of brine and the sweet musk of fresh rain, and Lani was shaken awake, brought out of her hypnotized state. She forced herself to step past him and stalk down the dock, cursing herself under her breath.

“Lani.” His voice stopped her.

She turned to glance over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
 

He held her backpack in one huge hand. “Might need this.”

She crossed the space between them, hating how her heartbeat ratcheted up as she drew nearer to him. She took the backpack from him, careful not to brush his hand with hers.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, and turned away once more.

He let her get off the dock before he called out again. “Know where you’re going?”

She stopped, hung her head, and cursed out loud. “Toward the lights?” She sounded petulant.
 

He chuckled, and she heard the seaplane’s door close, and the brief rustle of a rope around a piling. Then he was creaking across the dock and in the sand beside her. Sand sloughed away beneath his feet, covering hers.
 

“Wouldn’t make it too far. Jungle gets thick if you miss the path.”

“I grew up on Hawaii. I think I’d be okay in the jungle.” She still sounded petulant, damn it.

His chuckle was another deep rumble, and then his fingers curled around her elbow. His touch was like sandpaper on her skin. She flinched at his touch, refusing to acknowledge the fact that her breath was caught in her throat.

“You sure are twitchy. I ain’t gonna hurt you, darlin’.” He pulled her into a walk as he talked, and he seemed to know exactly where he was going, even though she couldn’t see her feet in front of her.
 

She wasn’t twitchy — she just didn’t like and didn’t understand why her body kept reacting so strongly to this bear of a man. He made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since leaving Rafael, and even with him, it had been a while since she felt such strong feelings, such powerful physical reactions to a simple thing like a hand on her elbow.