"I hope your date wasn't too upset that you had to cancel."
He shrugged. "It was a first date. My buddy set us up. It's hard to argue with being detained by a hurricane." He glanced up at me with a teasing look that reminded me of the first time we met.
I smiled, remembering how fun he was when he was bar guy. "As far as excuses go, it doesn't sound a bit like the dog ate my homework?" I finished my fourth glass of wine. I was feeling buzzed and bold.
"It's hard to argue with facts. The storm has hit the main islands, too," he said.
I told myself to stop drinking. I might have to swim for my life soon. And I could be a bitchy drunk. "I imagine you left out the part about being marooned in a luxury cabin with a beautiful woman." If he wasn't going to sing my praises, I was just going to have to joke about them myself.
He smiled for the first time, really, since I'd met him. "I may have left that part out."
We fell into silence again.
I couldn't stand it. Why were things so strained and difficult between us? "Are you sure you don't want to talk about business?"
"No."
I narrowed my eyes. "Oh, come on! You're no fun. It has to be better than listening to the wind howl."
"Need I reiterate? I'm on vacation—"
"And you have a strict no-business policy," I finished for him. "What kind of an entrepreneur are you? Why don't you think about business constantly, like the rest of your peers?"
"Because I'm the kind who likes to enjoy life from time to time."
"You have an odd sense of what's enjoyable," I said. "Remind me to invite you to the next natural disaster I host. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be the only one to RSVP yes."
He almost laughed. But not quite. He was a hard nut to crack up.
"This is all my fault." I sighed.
He arched an eyebrow. "You control the weather? I want a piece of that action."
I laughed. I thought I could have liked him. I thought I did once. For an evening, anyway. "I've been dreaming of having you as a captive audience for weeks."
He nodded. "I see."
"But the dream's no fun if I can't talk business."
He shook his head. "Remind me to invite you to my next business meeting. You'll be the life of the party."
I raised my glass to him. "To low blows."
We finished dinner and cleaned up the dishes while the storm built and I kept hoping its crescendo was in sight. At first, I thought it was my imagination, but Eli seemed to grow tenser and tenser. And quieter and quieter. He set his jaw and put on a game face. He studied the ceiling and the way the walls shook. I finally realized he was too quiet.
Something thumped against the house, reverberating with the force of an explosion. We jumped. I screamed.
"Shit!" He grabbed my hand with one hand and the basket of food sitting on the counter with the other. "I should have thought of this sooner. We need to go below." He pulled me toward the stairs.
I stumbled, but not because I was drunk. However, I laughed because I was drunk. This definitely wasn't funny.
He pulled me onto the stairs to the below-sea level, flipped on the lights, and shoved the food basket into my arms. I watched as he struggled to pull closed a huge metal door at the top of the stairs. He reached up to check something.
"What are you doing?" I almost laughed again. Suddenly everything was scarily funny.
"Checking the seal." He was dead serious. "This door is air-and watertight. If the upper floors blow off, we'll be safe down here."
"Until the oxygen's depleted," I said as he checked vents to make sure they were sealed, too. This was definitely not the vacation I'd imagined.
"There are emergency tanks. We shouldn't need them as long as the generator keeps working."
He took my hand again and led me downstairs into one of the most spectacular and unique rooms I'd ever seen. The entire lower floor of the house was one sumptuous master suite with an adjoining bathroom. It was all completely underwater, and truly, like being in a reverse aquarium—one filled with air and surrounded by water. The joke was on us. We were the pets now.
One wall was floor-to-ceiling domed glass that blended into the ceiling in a kind of alcove. A platform bed was tucked beneath it, facing the glass and the ocean outside, braced against a pillowed wall that doubled as a headboard. The bed was covered with snowy sheets and blankets and the thickest, plushest mattress pad I'd ever seen. Nightstands with modern design lamps flanked it. The floors were polished bamboo, strewn with thick carpets. There was a spa tub in one corner. A curved big-screen TV was mounted on another half wall off to the side of the bed, with two chairs for viewing either TV or ocean.
It was the kind of fantasy room made for love.
Beneath the sea, it was almost eerily quiet, the sounds of the storm cut off by the sealed door. But the ocean was dark and roiling. Angry and agitated.