She turned to the couple. “Is there any way we can convince you to take us to shore?”
“We can pay,” Mason said.
Gemma cut him a look. Of course they’d pay, but leading with that could be insulting. For Mason, though, it was his first response because, well, it usually worked.
“We will reimburse you, of course,” Gemma said. “We just need to get to shore.”
“Your boat?” the woman said.
“Screw the boat,” Mason muttered.
Gemma shot him another look, but she swore the woman’s lips twitched.
“We can deal with that later,” Gemma said. “We urgently need to get home today. It’s an emergency. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have left the island. Please. I know this is an inconvenience.”
The two spoke rapidly, but it seemed more like a conversation than a debate. Was that a good sign? Please let it be a good sign.
“Okay,” the woman said. “We can take you as far as the marina. But you will need to pay for our gas.”
“Absolutely,” Gemma said. “Thank you.”
And with that, she could finally breathe again.
MASON
The couple took them to the boat first, to get their belongings. Then they delivered them to the marina. Mason paid them enough that they protested, but it must have been clear how grateful he was, because they finally accepted it and wished them well.
When they walked up the marina steps, it felt like setting foot inVancouver, their journey at an end. Of course it was not at an end. It was only starting.
Mason had been on his phone the moment they got service. The vacation planner would tell the owners about the boat, and any charges could be passed on to the company that had stranded them. Mason didn’t care who paid for what. He cared about getting home.
Gemma had jumped into the ocean and swum to strangers for him. Now it was up to him to make sure that hadn’t been for nothing. And he wasn’t relying on the vacation planners for that. Oh, he told them they’d damn well better get him home after this latest fuckup, but what he didn’t tell them was that he’d also be making his own plans.
He went straight to the local airport and started asking around, and he’d managed to snag seats on a private charter to Los Angeles just before the planners called to say they could get him one leaving two hours later… paired with a late-night flight to Vancouver. Yeah, that wouldn’t work. He still let them arrange it, as a backup.
The charter flight he’d gotten them spots on would arrive in LA just past one. That seemed like plenty of time, but the only flight with available seats would get them into Vancouver just before six. Cutting it extremely close, but he would make the game, and that was all that mattered.
The other passengers on the LA flight were a bunch of guys who reminded Mason of his teammates when they went on vacation… well, if his teammates were rich tech bros instead of pro hockey players. The vibe was the same, a bunch of loud guys who’d already been drinking and had offered the seats to Mason when one of them—a former Calgarian and longtime hockey fan—recognizedMason. So it was more about having a sports celebrity on their plane than helping two stranded passengers, but whatever. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The problem with catching a flight with guys like him and his buddies? They wereexactlylike him and his buddies. Entitled assholes with zero respect for the charter company’s schedule. Two of their party were delayed, apparently by a late breakfast and a goodbye to some “local senoritas” as their friends winked and guffawed. Okay, Mason stood corrected. These guys were worse than him and his teammates.
By the time the others arrived, they were thirty minutes behind schedule. Still time to catch their flight to Vancouver… until the late departure meant they missed their takeoff window and they were delayed another thirty minutes.
Mason and Gemma arrived in LA over an hour late, which gave them… Fuck, he didn’t want to calculate how much time they had. Luckily they had only carry-ons and they had downloaded their boarding passes. They went straight into the security queue, where he may have made the rich-asshole move of handing out twenties to shift them up the line. Eventually, of course, someone decided they were not taking that twenty bucks, but by then they were close enough.
While in line, Gemma mapped out the fastest route to the gate. Once through, they were off and running—literally. They made it to the gate as people were still boarding.
Gemma flung herself into his arms, and he caught her up, laughing.
“We did it,” she whispered, smiling at him.
“Youdid it. You swam after that boat.”
“But you figured out the rest.” She hugged him. “We make a pretty good team.”
He hugged her back. “We do.”
They joined the line. Being a Vancouver-bound flight meant people turned and looked at him and whispered. Back to being recognized, which was fine. Oh hell, who was he kidding. He liked being recognized. It sometimes made life tougher but—as with those tech bros letting them on their flight—it usually made things easier.
