Stranded by My Island Billionaire Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Second Trip
The helicopter takes the safe first and promises a second trip for Lena and the baby; her husband's friend says wait for dawn, and the caretaker says someone wanted her on the island when the cyclone hit.
At ten that morning, my husband told a ballroom full of shipping executives that he would be home by dark.
I watched it on my phone, propped against the flour tin in the island kitchen, with our daughter asleep on my shoulder.
The livestream had forty thousand viewers, and every one of them could see the cyclone map on the screen behind him.
Cyclone Ines had been a category two on Tuesday.
At dawn it had turned and was heading straight for Sorrel Island.
"My wife and daughter are on the island," Rhys said into the microphone, and the room went quiet. "I'm not signing anything else until they're out."
Then he looked straight into the camera.
"Lena. I told you once that when it mattered, I'd come. It matters. Stay where Abel tells you."
I felt it in my chest, the way I had on our wedding night when he first said it.
Veda Lorne stood at his elbow with a tablet, nodding.
She had brought me soup the week Junie was born, and a hospital bag she'd packed herself, down to the lip balm.
She leaned in and said something into his ear, and he nodded and left the stage.
My phone rang eight minutes later.
"Lena, it's Veda. Rhys is on his jet, but it can't land in this, so he's sent the helicopter from Cairns."
"How long?"
"Forty minutes. Pack for the baby and nothing else. You and Junie go first."
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it.
"Don't thank me. Just be on the pad."
I ran through the house with Junie on my hip.
The shutters were already banging against the stone, and the palms along the drive had begun to lean.
I stuffed the baby bag with diapers, spare clothes and the little blue blanket.
Before any of it, I knelt at the bottom drawer of the dresser and took out the flat grey waterproof folder I'd kept there since before we married.
Rhys had never once opened that drawer.
I zipped the folder into the lining of the bag and slid the strap across my chest.
Abel Tanner was waiting on the veranda in his oilskin, one hand pressed to his bad knee.
He had looked after Sorrel Island for thirty years and had never once looked afraid.
He looked afraid now.
"Chopper's on the horizon," he said. "Pad's clear. Let's go."
The helicopter came in low and loud over a sea that had gone the color of slate.
It landed hard.
The pilot jumped out in a helmet and visor and didn't come toward us.
He went straight past me to the study window and shouted over the rotors, "Where's the safe?"
"What?"
"Mr. Vandeleur wants the safe out first. Weight's tight, we can only do one load. The study safe, then you and the baby on the second trip."
I stared at him.
"There's a baby standing here," I said.
"I know, ma'am. Second trip, twenty minutes. Orders."
Abel looked at me, then at the pilot, and his jaw set.
The pilot and Abel carried the safe out between them, grunting, and the pilot strapped it into the seat where I should have been.
It was a gray steel box the size of a small oven.
Rhys kept the deed to the island in it, the one he'd given me as a wedding present, along with papers I had never read.
"Twenty minutes," the pilot said again, and lifted off.
I stood on the pad with the wind pulling at my hair and watched the lights go.
My phone buzzed with a text from Veda.
*Don't worry. Rhys asked for the safe because of the trust documents. The second trip is already fueling. Wait in the house.*
I called Rhys.
It went to voicemail.
I called Veda.
"He's asleep," she said, and her voice was low and kind. "He took something for his nerves on the jet, Lena. He's been awake for two days. Stay put, and the second trip comes at dawn."
"Dawn? You said twenty minutes."
"Weather is weather. Is Abel with you?"
"Yes."
"Then you're fine. Stay in the house. I'll call you."
She hung up.
The wind had changed.
It no longer came in gusts; it came as one long push, and the first rain hit the pad.
I looked at the sky to the east.
The cloud wall there was black from the sea to the top of the world.
"Abel," I said. "She told me dawn."
"Aye," he said. "I heard."
"The pilot said twenty minutes."
He didn't answer.
So I did the only thing left to do.
I wrapped Junie in the blue blanket, tucked her inside my jacket against my skin, and told Abel to lead the way to the old stone cellar behind the house.
He took the lantern and the first aid kit and went ahead of me, limping, into the wind.
Halfway across the yard, he stopped, and I almost ran into him.
"Lena," he said, very quietly, so the baby wouldn't hear.
"What?"
"No pilot flies back into this. Not for love or for money." He lifted the lantern and looked at me. "Someone wanted you here when it hit."
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