Page 24 of The Bombshell and the Bodyguard
I looked around at the distinctly un-cosmopolitan area. “And you keep ithere?”
“Sometimes. I’ve taken it all over the world. It’s a stroke of luck that it happened to be here now.” Wilder climbed up to its rear deck and bent down, extending a hand. “Welcome aboard.”
Once we were away from the beach and in open water, I asked, “Nowcan you tell me where we’re going? Or at least where we are? I don’t even know what ocean I’m on.”
“It’s the South China Sea. We’re in Indonesia. The plane landed in Jakarta, and we drove to the southwest coast. That village back there is Bagedur. Now we’re going to an island in the waters between Indonesia and Vietnam.”
“An island? Which one?”
“It doesn’t have a name. It’s a private island,” he said. “Indonesia is comprised of around eighteen thousand islands. Lots of the smaller ones are unnamed. Only six thousand of them are even inhabited.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that. And who inhabits this one?”
“For the next few days or weeks... we do.”
“Just us?” I asked.
“Just us.”
At the thought of spending several weeks alone on an island with Wilder, my stomach did a little flip. He was clearly less excited by the prospect than I was, if his grim expression was any indication.
I stopped asking questions and stayed quiet for the rest of the boat trip.
Last night’s broken sleep aboard the jet was catching up with me, and I napped out on the white-cushioned sundeck, lulled by the warm sun and cool breeze and the steady rhythm of the yacht as it cut through the ocean.
When I felt the boat slowing, I sat up and looked around. We were idling toward a wooden dock off to one side of a blinding white beach. A path led away from it into lush jungle foliage. Uphill from the beach, over the tops of the green tropical trees, loomed the roof of a large modern-looking structure.
I pointed to it. “Is that a house?”
“It is. The only one on the island.”
“This is beautiful,” I said, taking in the beach and the clear turquoise bay surrounding it. The scene was like a postcard. It seemed impossible a beach this idyllic was the playground of a sole resident.
“Wait till you see the view from up there.” Wilder jumped onto the dock and secured the boat then came back on board and grabbed the heavy bags, leaving me with only my overnight bag and a light duffle to carry.
We disembarked and took the foot path up to the house. When it came fully into view, I gasped. “Wow. It’s spectacular. Who lives here?”
“No one. It’s a vacation home. But it’s fully stocked with food and water. It’s powered by solar, so electricity, heating, and cooling won’t be an issue. There are fruit trees and a small vegetable garden. The bay is full of fish. You could survive the apocalypse out here.”
Wilder looked and sounded tense as he let me into the home and showed me around. Surely he wasn’t worried about a stalker finding mehere? This place was about as off-the-grid as it got.
As we moved from room to room, I couldn’t keep from oohing and aahing. Each one was more beautiful than the last. Huge windows let in the natural light and views of the ocean as well as the flowering shrubs and trees that surrounded the house.
Indoors, more flowering plants and potted trees anchored each room, filling the air with a fresh, natural scent and blurring the lines between indoors and out.
“You know, I never considered buying an island before,” I said. “But maybe I should—or maybe I’ll just rent this place whenever I need a private getaway.”
“You really like it huh?” Wilder asked.
“Like it? I love it. It’s perfect. Who owns it?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Well, whoever they are, they have impeccable taste—or at least taste that was made exactly for me. I literally wouldn’t change a single thing.”
Wilder seemed inordinately pleased. “I’ll pass it along. Want to see where you’ll be sleeping?”
He led me down a hallway and opened a set of double doors to a gorgeous master suite decorated in cream and taupe and rich browns.
