Chapter 32 Cross Winds
Cross Winds
Things were actually feeling normal today.
Most of the guests camped out near the pool with umbrella drinks and oversized sun hats.
Complaints were minimal—the usual gripes about beach umbrellas and the exact hue of linen napkins—and Lena had almost convinced herself that Monday’s almost meltdown had been nothing more than an over-caffeinated spiral of anxiety.
A phantom of stress, nothing more. She’d handled it. She always handled it.
Well, handled might be generous.
Her whole body ached from a week of training sessions with Zach.
Every morning at 0630 since the note in her office, she’d met him behind the mansion on a yoga mat that had become her personal battlefield.
Forty-five minutes of getting her ass handed to her.
Over and over. Breaking a wrist grab (still inconsistent), eye gouges (theoretical, but improving), and how to drive her knee into someone’s groin with enough force to make them reconsider their life choices (she’d stopped pulling back on day three… mostly).
Zach had been patient. Too patient. The kind reserved for toddlers learning to tie their shoes.
“You’re thinking too much,” he caught her arm mid-swing that morning. “Your body knows what to do. You just have to let it.”
Except her body didn’t know what to do. Her body knew how to fold napkins into swans and smile through passive-aggressive complaints about thread counts. Her body knew how to stand for twelve hours in heels that made her feet scream.
It did not know how to fight.
Her thoughts drifted unbidden to David.
He’d looked like hell this morning. Gray-tinged and hollow-eyed, like he’d been awake for a thousand years.
She’d run into him in the business center at dawn, surrounded by empty coffee cups and crumpled printouts, his tablet casting a sickly blue glow across his face. He hadn’t glanced up when she came in.
“Did you sleep at all?” she’d asked.
“Define sleep,” he’d muttered, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Guilt had twisted in her gut then. Still twisted now. He was doing this for her—burning himself down to ash and fumes because someone was trying to hurt her, and she didn’t know who or why. She wanted to tell him to stop. To rest. To let someone else carry this weight.
But she also wanted him to find whoever was behind this and gut them with a dull spoon.
The contradiction sat uneasily in her mind.
She rounded the corner of the tennis court shed and barely stopped short of hitting a wall of flesh and towels. Marcus laughed as he juggled the stack of rolled beach towels in his arms.
“Whoa, hey! You okay, boss? Didn’t mean to run you over!”
“Sorry, yes. My fault. I was just—thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.” He grinned, but there was genuine concern in his eyes.
Marcus was good people. Mid-thirties, perpetually sunburned, with a natural charm that made guests love him and staff trust him.
“I was actually coming to find you. The beach cabanas are running low on towels. Mrs. Chen decided she needed seven. For one lounge chair.”
Lena snorted. “Of course she did.”
“I was about to run a fresh batch down there—” His radio crackled to life, a burst of static followed by an urgent voice. “Marcus, we need you at the marina. Now. We’ve got a situation with the sunset cruise boat.”
He grimaced, thumb hovering over the radio. “Copy that. On my way.” Then to Lena: “I’m so sorry. Can you—”
“Go.” She waved him off. “I’ve got it.”
“You sure? I can get someone else—”
“Marcus. Go save the sunset cruise. I’ll handle the towels.”
Relief flooded his face. “You’re the best. My cart’s right there—already loaded up.”
Lena shook her head, gesturing to her own golf cart parked near his. The one with her name on a little placard zip-tied to the frame—a gag gift from Emma before she left. Lena Harris: Fixer of All Things.
“Let’s move them to mine,” she said. “You might need yours at the marina.”
Together, they transferred the stack of fluffy white towels from his cart to hers, Marcus moving with hurried efficiency while his radio continued to squawk. He thanked her three more times as he jogged backward toward his cart, before disappearing down the path in a cloud of dust and urgency.
Still smiling, Lena hopped in and headed in the opposite direction, toward the beach. She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel, loosening the residual soreness from training. Maybe tomorrow she’d be less useless. She snorted a laugh. Right.
Her thoughts drifted back to David. Again.
She’d hurt him by pulling back. Of course she had.
He hadn’t called her out on it—wouldn’t call her out on it.
He was too much of a gentleman. But her withdrawal must have confused him, and he probably blamed himself for bungling human interactions.
He still checked on her, but not as often, burying himself more and more in his systems.
The golf cart whipped along the winding path, steering smooth under her hand.
Humid wind teased her ponytail, lifting strands and dancing across her cheeks.
Her new linen blouse clung to her back, and the salty tang of the sea brushed her lips.
She hummed to herself—something silly but catchy from a vacation commercial—pushing back the emotional upheaval that thoughts of David always brought and focused on the glorious day around her.
She was only heading to the beach cabanas. A ten-minute check-in, tops. No drama. No ghosts of angry guests past. Just sun, cabanas, and fresh towels. A fabulous opportunity to recharge.
She turned the corner, and the path dropped sharply away, angling down to the beach.
Automatically, she pressed the brake with the sole of her sandal—but the pedal sank to the floor with a horrific, fluttering ease.
Nothing. No give. No bite. No resistance.
Lena’s smile died on her face. Her heart flipped.
“What the hell?” she slammed her foot down on the brake again, praying for any friction, anything—but the cart only surged forward, picking up speed on the steep descent.
Heat soaked into her limbs, adrenaline slamming into her bloodstream like a shockwave. The wind whistled in her ears.
“Stop—come on, stop,” she begged whoever was listening, panic tightening across her chest.
Everything Zach taught her evaporated. All those careful instructions about staying calm, about breathing through panic, about trusting her body—gone. Her muscles screamed in terror. Her hands clenched the wheel in a death grip, knuckles bone-white, and her brain held nothing but static and terror.
Too fast.
The tires pitched on bouncing gravel as the cart careened downhill, untethered. Sand sprayed from the edges. Trees whipped past on either side, blurring. She saw a palm. Another. Too close. Then another, right in front of her.
She yanked the wheel hard to the right to avoid the palm.
The front tires jerked violently, skidding toward the shallow drainage ditch at the side of the path. A moment later, the cart struck the embankment with a crunch, a metallic groan that melted into the surreal sound of everything going sideways. Literally sideways.
The cart tipped. The world spun.
She landed with a thud of dirt, metal, and jangled nerve endings.
Half-pinned under the cart, dirt in her mouth, ears ringing.
A dull, stabbing pain flared in her elbow.
Her thigh burned with the sting of a scrape—she smelled her own blood: copper and salt and fear.
The engine coughed beside her, whining low. Dying.
Okay. Okay, she was breathing. That counted for something, right?
A wave of fury broke through the mind-numbing shock.
This was no accident. The mother-effing cart tried to kill her.
She gritted her teeth against the pain in her leg and tried to wiggle free. Her leg twisted the wrong way beneath her, but the more she fought to move, dragging herself through the gritty sand and weeds, the more mobility she found. A groan escaped her lips—part ache, part war cry.
“LENA!” Someone was shouting her name. No—not someone. David.
She barely heard his footsteps over the rush in her ears, but his voice cut through it all—sharp, frantic, filled with something she never expected to hear from a man made of logic and wired to code: fear.
And then, he was there. Charging through the sea grass like a wild creature let loose, dark hair wind-whipped, eyes wild and burning with intensity.
She was halfway out when he dropped to his knees beside her.
His chest heaved. There were tiny sweat beads on his temple that made him look terrifyingly human.
He didn’t touch her right away—his hands hovered in the air, palms flexing—before he gripped the roof of the overturned cart with both hands and lifted, muscles taut, releasing her legs. She rolled free with a gasp, every joint and nerve crying out, her ankle screaming in agony.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice thin. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” He skimmed her face, her arms, her legs. “Jesus, Lena. That could’ve—”
She didn’t let him finish. If he said it out loud, it would become real. And she couldn’t handle hearing the word that would follow. Not yet.
So she reached for him instead.
She fell forward and pressed herself into his chest, burying her face into the soft cotton of his shirt that smelled of lemongrass and warmth and him. His arms wrapped around her a beat later—tight, full-body, like he didn’t care who noticed. Right now, she didn’t.
Tears threatened behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Her limbs trembled too hard to stop. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. His heartbeat pounded against her cheek, solid and fast and grounding.
“I’m here,” he murmured into her hair, shaking with held-back rage or relief—she didn’t know. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
And for the first time in hours, in days, Lena let herself believe it.