Page 77 of All I Want For Christmas

She saw various types of birds, and as the waterway narrowed and the trees and banks came closer, she could see logs with turtles on them.

But none of it distracted her from her thoughts.

And she had an entire night ahead of her. Alone. With no way to leave. What if she got sick? What if she got hungry? What if she did run into an alligator? This could be dangerous!

She put a hand to her chest and made herself breathe. She wasn’t going to get sick. And she wasn’t going to get hungry. Theo wouldn’t leave her out here with no food, and no matter what she could survive untiltomorrow,for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t like she was going to have to stay out here for a week.

The alligators… well, that was probably the most likely threat, actually, but she really didn’t think Theo would take her somewhere that she had a greater than two percent chance of losing a limb or getting eaten. She’d donesomehomework. She knew they built the cabins on the bayou up several feet because of varying water levels and because of wildlife. Her chances of having an alligator get into the cabin with her were very slim.

That didn’t mean she wasn’tstuckout here, though, with no way to get back to civilization by herself. She was totally dependent on Theo.

She did not fucking like that.

Not just because it was Theo. She didn’t like being dependent onanyone.

But yes, that it was Theo Taggart and that she was stuck out herebecause of himwas not making her any happier.

She crossed her arms and glared at the trees that kept closing in on either side.

Crap. She was all up in her head now.

She’d planned to take a bath, go to bed early with a really sexy book and her vibrator, andnotspend her time thinking about being stranded. She’d had a plan to distract herself from that.

And from what happened if she didn’t pull this project off.

But now, because of these stupid loud boats, she was unable to do anythingbutthink.

If she didn’t show Mr. McDonald that she was creative and could think outside the box, and was enthusiastic about taking this job and making it even bigger and better, he wasnotgoing to send her around the country to find new properties and oversee projects for him, and she was going to have to find another way to travel the country, try new places, and keep challenging her comfort zone.

She could possibly go work for a hotel chain and travel to various properties. But she didn’t want big cities. At least not all the time. She loved the bed and breakfasts because they tended to be in smaller towns that gave her a real taste of the area she was in. When she went to the mountains or ranch country or wine country, she wanted to experience what that place was really like. Like she did when she was in Autre.

But Autre already had a bed and breakfast. A really great one that was run by Savannah ’s best friend’s future mother-in-law. So Autre wasn’t a realistic spot for Steve McDonald to develop a new property.

Unless they did something different. Not a typical bed and breakfast. Something that captured something else special about the area.

Like the bayou.

Savannah looked around. She noted that the water was narrowing even further and that the cypress trees draped with Spanish moss were so close she could almost reach out and touch them. Theo had also slowed the boat to maneuver through the thicker grasses and weeds, and around the trees and logs.

And…fuck.

Theo was right.

She didn’t know what she was doing out here. But her heart rate sped up slightly at the realization. This was new. Different. Exciting.

When she’d come out on swamp boat tours, the Landry boys kept to the wide waterways where they could really open the boats up, giving the tourists on board the thrill of practically flying over the water. They could show their passengers a variety of trees and plants, birds, and animals. They’d head down some smaller branches and kill the engine, coax alligators close to the boats, and tell stories that were part educational, part history lesson, and part tall tales. But they didn’t get too deep in the trees, and tried to stay out of the thicker grasses because it was easy to get stuck out here.

That had happened once when Savannah had been on board with just family and friends. Owen Landry, one of the tour company owners, had taken them down some less traveled paths. And they’d ended up all having to get into the waist-deep water to push the damn boat out.

Her heart started pounding harder as the boat slowed even more, and they bumped against a log on one side, then hit a huge patch of lily pad-like plants, and Theo had to turn up the fan to push them through.

Savannah grabbed the seat and squeezed.

She was actually on her way to spend the night in a cabin that could only be accessed by boat. She had no idea how to even start one of these boats, not to mention actually maneuvering it through the bayou. She did know that airboats didn’t have brakes. And even if she did figure all ofthatout, she didn’t know what direction to point it to get back to town.

She was excited to be going somewhere new, but holy shit, she hated the idea of being someplace she couldn’t leave.

Her stomach knotted, and she worked on evening out her breathing. If she puked over the side of this boat, she’d never hear the end of it from Theo.

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