Chapter 10

We all have that one friend you need to say ‘be nice’ to before you introduce them to someone. I’m that friend.

-Audrey’s secret thoughts

Audrey

I clenched my eyes shut in horror as the driver took a turn at thirty miles an hour…on the wrong side of the road.

I was going to die.

I was literally going to die, and I hadn’t even told the man currently occupying the front seat how much he meant to me.

“Doesn’t Honduras have any traffic laws?”

The laziness in Tobias’ voice would’ve fooled most people, but with the amount of time I’d been spending with him lately, I wasn’t fooled.

Tobias was about to freak the fuck out.

Being with the Alabama Highway Patrol, he’d seen a lot, and he had responded to quite a few wrecks in his career. Likely he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the seemingly inevitable accident that was waiting to happen.

“Oh, yeah!” The woman on my left, the tour guide for today’s excursion into the world of Honduras, nodded her head. “Lots of laws.”

I was seated on a bench seat directly behind Tobias, with the tour guide directly beside me. To my left

“Are they enforced?”

I bit my lip at his question, hearing the tightness in his voice.

He sounded relaxed, yes, but with the captain chair he was sitting on, it enabled me to see his right leg. His thigh tensed each and every time the driver veered off the normal side of the road.

I gasped when I saw potholes the size of a small Texas town taking up not just one side of the road, but both.

Wondering if he was going to slow down, and it didn’t appear that he was going to do so, I nearly screamed when he drove off the road and up onto the curb. He then proceeded to drive in the grass, coming right up behind some school-aged girls before they casually dodged out of the way as if they did this every day.

Which, if the ease of their movements was any indication, they probably did.

I looked behind us, past the other dazed passengers who’d been unlucky enough to get onto the same bus as us, and saw three busses behind us taking the same path our driver had blazed.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the front and listened to the woman explain.

“Speeding, they’ll cite you,” she said in thickly accented English. “And driving without a license is a pretty serious offense, too.”

“What about driving on the wrong side of the road?”

I looked at the woman that was sitting on the tour guide’s other side. She was in her mid-thirties, and she’d been staring at Tobias with longing in her eyes since we’d gotten into the van.

I’d been introduced to her earlier. She was a Sheriff who was in the same county as Tobias, and I wanted to gouge her eyes out with my mascara wand the moment she started talking to him like an old friend.

They’d been talking about work for the majority of the trip, and between squeezing my eyes shut and cursing her in my head, I was on the verge of a headache.

“The potholes are really bad,” our tour guide shrugged. “But, we are used to it.”

I rolled my eyes to the seat in front of me.

The handle on the seat in front of me was well used. I could see the creases in the leather where many hands had grasped it much the same way I was doing now.

When the driver of this twenty-five-passenger bus passed a slower car that was obviously occupied by a tourist couple, I realized that I might very well have made the wrong decision in choosing this particular excursion.

I leaned forward and placed my arm through the gap between the mini-bus’s wall and Tobias large, muscular shoulder, and wrapped my arm around his chest.

“I think, if we survive this trip, we should walk back,” I whispered into his ear.

He started to chuckle quietly, his hand coming up to link with mine.

“I chose one tomorrow that we have to drive for over an hour and a half. Let’s just hope they don’t all drive like assholes.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

Though the handle on the back of Tobias’ seat was digging uncomfortably into my chest, I stayed where I was, my forehead resting on Tobias’ shoulder between the wall of the bus and the seat, and spoke quietly with him for the remainder of the time it took to get to our destination, which was a beach on the ‘Crystal Beach Coast’ where the tourists were taken.

And I could see why.

Every single stretch of sandy ocean frontage that we’d passed was littered with trash, and there was no way in hell I’d get in that water if they took me there.

Luckily, from what our tour guide had explained, the beach we were headed to was a private one, and only the tourists who booked this particular adventure were allowed to use it.

The ride itself took thirty harrowing minutes, and by the time we’d arrived, I was the first one off the bus.

Technically, the tour guide was supposed to tell us where to go, but my stomach was in knots, and I was about thirty seconds away from puking.

The minute I was on solid ground, I bent forward, hands on my waist, and breathed deep.

Even when that large, familiar hand spanned the width of my back, I still didn’t stand up.

“You gonna live?”

There was no humor in his voice.

We’d both just lived through the most terrifying ride we’d ever experienced, where neither one of us had any control over the situation. For two people who liked control, that was a big problem. Tobias was a man, an officer of the law, and men like him just didn’t give up control. But I needed control in order to function through my daily activities.

“I could probably walk back and make it to the ship on time if I start now,” I muttered darkly, standing up finally.

“Amen to that,” a man at my back grumbled.

I looked at the man and smiled.

“Hello, Amos,” I grinned. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

My eyes started to wander around the area.

We were in a long driveway of sorts, lined by trees, that led to a path that would take us to the beach. The path was shaded by more trees and went down a hill around and around a bunch of Tiki-hut-type buildings where they sold souvenirs and food.

He shrugged. “Came on some fuckin’ monkey adventure Asher wanted to go on,” he said. “What are y’all doing?”

“Snorkeling,” Tobias answered, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into his body. “Were you on the same bus as us?”

He shook his head. “Fuck no. But it sounds like your experience was much the same as ours. Had I not been in the front, I’m fairly sure I’d have had the bus pull over so I could lose that shitty breakfast I ate this morning.”

I grinned. “What was wrong with your breakfast?”

“What wasn’t wrong with breakfast?”

Tobias grunted. “We didn’t think the buffet was all that bad. Did you eat in the dining room or the buffet?”

“Dining room,” he answered. “The pancakes tasted like they popped them from a frozen package and nuked them thirty seconds too long in the microwave. I’d have had more enjoyment out of eating thawed out Eggos than the shit that I had.”

Tobias’ eyes went somewhere behind where Amos was standing, and Amos, in an instinctual reaction, shifted his body so that he could see as well while continuing to keep eye contact with me and hold down a conversation.

“I thought that cruises were supposed to have superb food,” I mused. “What are y’all looking at?”

I’d now lost both men’s attention.

They were looking at something that I couldn’t see over the short, spiky little bush in front of me, and they were glaring.

“Tobias?”

I shook him for emphasis, and he didn’t look at me. Not for a full thirty seconds.

It was to the point where I was about to walk around both men to see what the problem was when Tobias finally grinned.

“Thought that was gonna go different,” he muttered.

“Thought what was gonna go different?”

I was getting impatient now, and both men realized it seconds after the question had left my mouth.

“That bus just parallel parked in between two other buses, but I didn’t think he had enough room to do it.”

“But he did,” Amos said. “Shit, that’s me,” he said when he heard a young woman with a thick accent call out for ‘group twenty-six.’ “Y’all have fun. Good luck getting back.”

Tobias flipped him off, and I just shook my head as Amos chuckled and returned the gesture.

I started forward, wanting to see the ocean, but came to a sudden halt when a woman with her long, decorated fingernails shook her finger at me. “No! Wait for your guide!”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Yes, ma’am.”

The woman started to say something more, but she was stopped by the man at my back when he put his arm back around me. Only this time, his strong, muscular forearm went around my waist and pulled me back against his chest.

“She didn’t mean to,” Tobias replied sweetly.

His thick, Southern accent was syrupy sweet, and I wanted to roll my eyes at the woman who started to melt into a puddle of goo right in front of him. “It okay. You go look.”

Tobias grinned. “That’s okay. We’ll wait. Thank you, though.”

Before I could argue, Tobias swept me sideways and started to pull me into a tangle of palm trees that was hiding the rest of the group from where we were now standing.

“What…”

He kissed me, laid a long, hot, wet one right on my lips, and then pulled away.

I followed him, my lips seeking his, and he chuckled before giving them to me once more.

When he finally came up for air long moments later, I was standing there, panting, with my knees weak.

“What was that?” I gasped.

“Thought I was going to fuckin’ die on the drive over here. The thought of never doing that again was enough to make me want to remind myself how good it was…just in case he literally kills us on the way back.”

I grinned.

“Group seventeen!”

“That’s us,” I said, grabbing hold of his hand. “Let’s go.”

He came willingly, but when I would’ve let go of his hand, he held strong, refusing to allow me to take my hand back.

And I couldn’t say that it upset me.

Exactly eighteen minutes later, I was standing in my one-piece black bathing suit with my mask on, my snorkel in my mouth and my flippers on my feet.

“Who here has never snorkeled before?” the large man called out.

I didn’t raise my hand. I’d snorkeled a lot, but mostly in the swimming pool and the local lakes that surrounded our old home in Louisiana.

Tobias, however, did raise his hand.

“Do you know how to swim?”

Tobias’ mouth twitched. “I do. But I wasn’t raising my hand because I haven’t snorkeled before. I was raising my hand to ask you if it’d be possible to get another mask. This one is a piece of junk.”

My brows rose.

His mask looked exactly like mine and everyone else’s who was going on this adventure with us.

The man, Santiago, shook his head. “No, sir. That’s all we have.”

His thick accent held amusement as he said this, and Tobias sighed.

“I had a feeling you would say that,” Tobias grumbled. “Please, don’t let me interrupt your instructions.”

Santiago started to expound on what to do when you got water in your snorkel when Tobias reached for me and grabbed something that was lying flat against my leg.

“This needs to go through your legs,” he said, indicating a black strap that was dangling from the back of my life vest all the way to the ground.

I picked it up and threaded it through my legs as I looked pointedly at the one he was wearing.

“What about yours?” I countered, wiggling slightly when his hand skimmed the outside of my hip.

“Mine doesn’t have one,” he showed me. “You’re smaller, and apparently, they feel that bigger guys like me can keep our own life vest on without any additional help.”

I snorted. “We’ll just see about that.”

He did, however, fasten the buckle between my legs, copping a feel as he did it.

***

There are things in this life that I will remember forever.

One was the look on Mina’s face the moment she married my brother.

The second was the days that both of my nieces were born.

The third was the day that I saw my father go down for life.

But the newest memory permanently seared into my soul was the look of happiness on Tobias’ face as he snorkeled around in the ocean, pointing out things to me.

And he really did swim like a damn fish.

In fact, he was so good at it, that I would go to him if I was having an emergency instead of the instructor.

Though the instructor looked competent, Tobias was just magnetizing.

When I’d first backed my way into the ocean with Tobias at my side, I hadn’t thought anything about it.

But the further we sank into the ocean, the more excited Tobias seemed to get. As if this place allowed him the freedom to swim and play.

“Ready, Freddy?” I asked him when the water came up to my cheek.

He nodded and started to drop down, but before I could say anything, he was gone.

Moving my mask into place, I pressed them tightly to my face to create a seal, and followed the man down.

When I was immersed in the water, I looked around for Tobias only to find him over a dozen yards away—nowhere near where I’d seen him disappear.

How had he gotten over there so fast?

Forty-five minutes into this, I realized that the ocean was like a goddamn playground to him.

Originally, I’d intended to stay close to him, but the further we got from the shore, the more he swam. He was all over the place.

It was five minutes until the time that the instructor had told us to head back in when I realized that Tobias didn’t even have any freakin’ flippers on!

The moment we got back to shore, I pulled my goggles off, and nearly laughed when he gestured me over to look into his bulging pockets.

“Is there something in your pocket?” I teased.

He winked, and then I looked down to see that there were multiple sand dollars in them.

My brows rose and I looked up at him.

“Pretty sure it’s illegal as fuck to take those from here,” I told him.

He shrugged. “I take them from everywhere. If get in a body of water and see one, I take it. I have a collection at home.”

The fact that this big, badass man had a collection of freaking sand dollars was enough to make me grin wildly.

“You’ll have to show me that collection some time,” I teased.

“All right, everybody. Did you have fun?” the man who had guided us around asked, his voice raising to be heard over the pulsing ocean.

“Yes,” I said, answering him honestly. “We did.”

Tobias’ hand curled around my hip, and he pulled me into him as we started to walk back to the Tiki-hut that also was an equipment shed of sorts.

“Now we’re going to do the glass bottom kayaking portion of the excursion,” the guide called out. “Drop your things into the tub over there, and head down to the opposite side of the beach from where we were.”