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  Swept Away

  First Digital Edition, November 2014

  Copyright 2014 Jennifer Haymore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author.

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  Swept Away

  Volume 3

  J. Haymore

  Table of Contents

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  About This Book

  Also by J. Haymore

  Connect with J.

  Swept Away, Volume 3

  It's yet another bomb. The past week has been full of them, exploding when least suspected. This one, though…this one shatters me. Like all the other bombs have combined into one nuclear missile, and Ethan has just rammed it into my chest.

  Survival was what should've been foremost on my mind. But Ethan's lies consumed me instead. I trusted him, and the devastation of his betrayal cut so deep, I was surprised I wasn't bleeding.

  Warning: Swept Away is a 4-part serial. This story is messy and twisted and very, very sexy. It is not for people under 18.

  Connect with J.

  Sign Up For J’s Newsletter

  Website: jenniferhaymore.com

  Twitter: @jenniferhaymore

  Facebook: jenniferhaymore-author

  Goodreads

  Also by J. Haymore

  Coming Soon:

  Swept Away, Volume 4 (December)

  Now Available:

  Swept Away, Volume 1

  Swept Away, Volume 2

  Never Let Me Go

  Sugar Cay

  The Remix

  The Reunion

  Highland Knights

  A Highlander's Heart

  The House of Trent

  The Duchess Hunt

  The Rogue's Proposal

  The Scoundrel's Seduction

  The House of Trent Novellas

  Devil's Pearl

  His For Christmas

  One Night with an Earl

  The Donovan Sisters

  Confessions of an Improper Bride

  Once Upon a Wicked Night (a short story)

  Secrets of an Accidental Duchess

  Pleasures of a Tempted Lady

  The James Series

  A Hint of Wicked

  A Touch of Scandal

  A Season of Seduction

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  Chapter Twenty

  Ethan has been lying to me for three weeks now. Pretending he didn’t know me, or my sister, when he knew just about everything about both of us.

  Last night, there was an explosion on the catamaran we were sailing to Hawaii. My best friend in the world might have drowned when the boat sank, or he might’ve been killed by the explosion. We haven’t seen a sign of him, or of Nalani, our captain.

  Ethan and I are alone now. We drift aimlessly in the Pacific current, the orange rubber lifeboat dipping and rising atop the rolling waves. The ocean reflects the gray, sullen sky, oppressive and bleak.

  The man I’ve fallen head over heels for sits across from me. He let me believe that I was a complete stranger to him when we met three weeks ago.

  But he just told me he knew my sister before the accident that killed her a year and a half ago. That she asked him to watch over me.

  And he’s been…what? Stalking me? For over a year and a half?

  It’s yet another bomb. The past week has been full of them, exploding when least suspected. This one, though…this one shatters me. Like all the other bombs have combined into one nuclear missile, and Ethan has just rammed it into my chest.

  The depth of his betrayal cuts so deep, it’s surprising blood isn’t pouring out of me.

  He has pretended he didn’t know Emily. He’s asked me questions about her, about my life, as if he knew nothing. But he’s a liar. He knew Emily. He knew me.

  I trusted him implicitly. I opened myself up to him, body, heart, and soul, and he’s lied to me.

  When I speak, the words emerge calm and even. “When did Emily ask you to watch me?”

  His expression is so full of pain, my first instinct is to comfort. To go to him and put my arms around him. But the betrayal slices through me, hot, sharp knives that make moving impossible. I push my back up against the wall of the life raft, the farthest I can get from where he’s sitting on the opposite side, dripping wet with his knees drawn up into his bare, scarred, bloody chest.

  “She asked me to watch over you on the night she died,” he rasps out.

  The words slam into me like yet another blow, and I recoil farther backward, my spine smashed against the rubber.

  “How?” I bite out.

  His expression is so bleak, it pushes in on my chest from all sides. He’s reliving that night. The memories of it flicker over his face.

  I can’t go there. No. Because I’ll have a panic attack, and that can’t happen. Not now.

  “The two of you were heading to my house in Malibu,” he says quietly. “I got a phone call from the paramedics. I don’t know how they found my number—on her phone, maybe—but they called me first. I rushed to the hospital, fucking sped down PCH like it was on fire, and I made it to the hospital just after you and Emily arrived. They were wheeling her in to surgery, and she was…” He threads his hands into his hair on either side of his head and laces them together around the back of his skull, his eyes squeezing shut. “She was conscious. In a lot of pain but lucid. She asked if you were okay, and I said yes. I had no fucking idea how you were, truthfully, but I lied to her because she needed hope. She was… I could tell she was bad.”

  I haven’t run out of tears after all. Great choking sobs well in my throat.

  “She kept asking about you. She kept rambling about her baby sister, how I needed to make sure you were okay, and I could barely understand what she was saying. And then she grabbed my hand and made me vow to take care of you and watch out for you. She made me promise, Tara. She died, and I made a promise.”

  I stare at him through my tears. “The convenience store?”

  “I came the second I heard that you left your building. I’d been tracking your phone, and—”

  “You…tracked my phone?” I gasp. Oh God. I am on a life raft with a crazy person. A crazy stalker. I wrap my arms around me, trying to contain these horrendous, body-racking sobs.

  “Yes.” He gazes down at his knees. “It wasn’t very long after the accident, and it was a big deal for you, going out the first time like that. I got to the convenience store a few minutes after you arrived. Right away it became clear that something was going down, and…” He swallows hard, and his face goes so pale th
ere’s a yellow cast to it under the dull orange of the canopy tent overhead. “I couldn’t break my promise to Emily. So…”

  “So you jumped in front of me and got shot?” The words sound ugly through my sobs, but I don’t care.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “And…the Temptation. That’s why you came on the Temptation, wasn’t it? Because I was there.”

  “Yes. I could protect you from a distance, usually. But I couldn’t do that if you were out at sea. So I befriended Nalani and joined the crew.”

  I stare at him through my tears. “Do you know how fucking crazy that is? How insane that sounds, Ethan?”

  He shrugs. “I made a promise.”

  I shake my head vigorously. “No…you… That’s going overboard. Off the deep end. All of it. That’s taking it about a thousand steps too far.”

  “No. It wasn’t. I needed to protect you, Tara. And look at all the shit that’s happened. I…I almost lost you.”

  And there it is again, that cracking fear in his tone, like if he lost me it would be the worst thing he’s ever had to endure. I think about our relationship over the past few weeks, a whirlwind of hot and cold, and then heat…so much heat.

  But his coldness at the beginning makes more sense now. He never intended to be with me, because he never wanted to reveal this to me. Or maybe…he intended it all along.

  “Is that why you’ve pretended to be attracted to me?” I ask. “Because you have some kind of sick obsession about some promise you made my sister?”

  “No!” He growls out the word. “That came as a goddamn surprise, and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t,” I bite out. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  That’s it—I’ve lost the last remaining vestiges of my innocence. The world seems gritty and dark now. There is danger at every turn, lies and deceit wherever I go.

  And then something hits me, and sickness begins to twist in my gut.

  I speak slowly, as if through a mouthful of cotton. “You said we were going to your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “We were going to Em’s new boyfriend’s house that night.”

  He gazes at me soberly. And then…he nods.

  “You’re the fantastically wonderful man she wanted to show off to me,” I say in a flat tone.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Were you sleeping with my sister?”

  A moment of silence. Then, “Yes. I was.”

  The nausea rises so fast and so hard, I don’t have time to lean over the edge of the raft. I start gagging and bend at the waist. My stomach is empty, so only the water I drank comes up, and I dry heave for a few moments. Ethan crawls up beside me and pulls my hair away from my face, but I rear back from his grip, feeling some of my hair yanked out by the roots. It hurts, but I don’t care.

  “Get away from me,” I spit out at him, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth and glaring at him through eyes that feel like they’re bleeding venom. “I hate you. Once we leave this…this raft, I never want to see you again, do you understand? Get out of my life, you sick fucking bastard.”

  He exhales harshly. His lips go flat, his eyes narrow, and his expression hardens. But I don’t care. I don’t care if he’s angry or hurt or jumping for joy. I hate him. I hate him.

  “If that’s what you want,” he pushes out.

  “It is.”

  “Don’t you get it? I didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

  I make a scoffing noise. “Really? You didn’t want to compare how well Emily and I performed in bed? There’s no need, Ethan. You could have just asked me. She was better than I’ll ever be.”

  “That’s not fair,” he says quietly. He touches my shoulder, but I jerk it back. “Look at me.”

  I refuse.

  He sighs. “I fell for you, Tara. It blindsided me. I didn’t expect it, but I fell for you. It had nothing to do with Emily.”

  “Right,” I say sarcastically. “You just followed me around for over a year like a creepy stalker, saw me face-to-face, and boom! Magical attraction. Magical creepy-weird-fake stalker attraction.”

  “No. It wasn’t like that.” He speaks so calmly, so reasonably, that I want to slap him.

  “I don’t care what it was like,” I snap. “You lied to me. You slept with my sister. You put some kind of tracking device on my phone. What other creepy shit have you done that you haven’t told me about?”

  He sighs. “I had a new security system installed in your apartment building.”

  “Of course you did.” I remember how they said they were “upgrading” the security system just after I moved in. “What else?” I demand.

  “I hired men—guards—to watch you discreetly when you were at school. To make sure you were all right.”

  “Oh good God.”

  “I vetted the company you used to hire drivers,” he continues, “and I hired the driver who was sent to you whenever you called.”

  “Juan.”

  “Yes.”

  I can’t move. I stare at him, frozen. “What else?”

  “I employed the super at your complex to monitor your safety, and I extended the sophisticated security system to the inside of your apartment.” He pauses. “And I was there when you were in Cabo San Lucas in January. Just…making sure everything was okay.”

  I gape at him for a long moment, then whisper, “Do you even realize how crazy this is? What an invasion of privacy all this is?”

  “I did it to keep you safe.” His jaw is tight, his expression stubbornly unapologetic.

  “You’re completely insane.” I shove my wet, tangled hair off my face, crowding my body against the side of the raft. “And you slept with my sister.” I think of the times we’ve been intimate, and they all feel disgusting and dirty to me now. He touched Emily with his hands, with his lips. My sister touched him, probably gave him blowjobs, let him penetrate her…

  A wave of nausea rises again, but I forcibly swallow it down. I can’t think these thoughts. I need to blot them from my mind, but I don’t know how.

  “You’re disgusting,” I whisper. And then I say it again: “I hate you.”

  I hear something from outside the raft, a low rumbling, and my gaze jerks to the opening. Ethan makes it there before I do, and I stay back as he leans out. After a second, he turns back to me.

  “It’s a Coast Guard cutter.” Relief is evident on his face, even though he guaranteed me earlier that they’d show up. Like everything else he’s said to me, I’d taken it at face value. Naïve stupid idiot that I am.

  The next hour is a blur of sights and sounds that compete with my swirling emotions. I’m so swamped by all of it that my limbs move numbly, and my face feels frozen into a neutral mask.

  I just want Kyle right now. But Kyle could be dead.

  The Coast Guard ship comes alongside us, and we’re lifted onto the deck. We’re taken to an office, where a medic quickly checks us over and a pair of officers throws questions at us about what happened last night. Tears crest in my bottom lids and quietly stream down my face before I wipe them away, but no one seems to notice. I don’t speak directly to Ethan this entire time. Don’t glance at him at all. I’m afraid I’ll be sick again if I do.

  Finally, a woman officer with kind eyes leads us to a room laid out like a studio apartment, with a small kitchen and living area.

  When she opens the door, the first thing I see is a blond man sitting on the edge of a sofa, his body hunched over, his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. But I’d know him anywhere.

  It’s Kyle.

  I stop in my tracks, forcing Ethan to jerk to a halt behind me. Kyle. He’s alive. He’s okay. Joy bursts in my chest, burning with the sweetness of sunlight.

  He looks up, slow recognition dawning on his face, and I sprint to him. I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around him and burying my head in his thick, salty blond hair. “Oh my God, Ky. I thought you… I thought you were…”

  He squeezes t
he air out of my lungs. “I thought you were too. Jesus Christ, T.” He presses his lips to the side of my head. “Seeing your face in that doorway… Are you... Are you real?”

  We speak in breathy half sentences. His eyes are bloodshot, and there are puffy gray circles underneath them. I tell him about almost drowning and how Ethan and I ended up on the life raft. He tells me about how he held on to a piece of debris from my cabin to stay afloat through the night. Finally, I pull back a little. “Nalani?”

  Pursing his lips, he shakes his head. I wrap my arms around my body.

  “They…they can’t find her,” he whispers raggedly.

  Nalani could be dead. I roll that around in my mind, and it seems surreal. Impossible.

  The Coast Guard woman who escorted us to the room, Lieutenant Grinelli, approaches the couch and asks us not to talk about the incident unless we’re questioned by a person of authority. Kyle, Ethan, and I are not to discuss specifics to one another. After that, people come in and out, but there’s always someone in the room watching us.

  Officers pull us out one at a time and ask questions: “What happened last night?” “What did you do?” “Who were you with?” “What did you do after you discovered your crew member missing?”

  Doctors take us out to be examined one at a time. Ethan’s gone for some time while they stitch up the gash I ignored after he started throwing all those horrible revelations at me. He returns in a Coast Guard T-shirt. I turn away when he reenters the room, but not before I notice that his fingers are also bandaged—the fingers he tore up trying to pull the hatch open to save me.

  The doctor cleans and bandages my scrapes, then tells me that otherwise I appear to be in perfect health despite all my body’s been through in the past couple of days: the anaphylactic reaction, the temporary deafness caused by the explosion, the near drowning.