Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(93)

Fine, he has range, but he’s a jerk—and by jerk, Tilda means a lot of other things she’s too polite to say.

She closes her eyes and does her own meditating. It was a mistake to date Dunk. Everyone could see that but her. But she’s young, and Tilda is at least self-aware enough to admit failure, pick herself up, and dust herself off. She needs to apologize, big-time, to Swan Seeley. She will do that—but right now, there’s a hurricane bearing down.

There’s another person to whom she owes an apology, and this one can’t wait.

She calls Cash.





Huck


A hurricane watch is issued for the U.S. Virgin Islands. The clock starts ticking; they have forty-eight hours.

Cash calls Huck. “I need a favor.”

Huck closes his eyes and summons every bit of patience he has as Cash talks. Cash would like a ride over to Lovango Cay because he’s going to wait out the hurricane in a cottage on a cliff overlooking Congo Cay and Jost Van Dyke with…Tilda Payne, the girl who left him for the guy who bought Lovango.

“I have no other way to get over there,” Cash says.

Huck and Irene swing down to the Happy Hibiscus so Huck can pick up Cash and drop off Irene. They find Cash and Baker talking in Baker’s driveway. Cash throws his duffel in the back of Huck’s truck.

“Are you sure about this?” Huck says. “I can take you there, but once I do, that’s it. I won’t be able to get you until after the storm passes.”

“It’s a terrible idea, bro,” Baker says. “We should all stay here at the Hibiscus. Together. Besides, Tilda screwed you over, and the second she crooks her finger, you run back to her? Seems a little weak.”

Huck’s glad Baker is the one who said this.

“She’s all by herself,” Cash says. “Dunk left her. He’s flying to Vegas with one of the guys in his so-called band.”

What a douche-canoe, Huck thinks.

“She made her bed,” Baker says. “You should not get back together with her. And besides, I thought you liked Wendy.”

“She lives in Houston,” Cash says.

“What about Bonny, then?”

Huck can see Cash’s neck growing flushed. “Bonny’s fine. I went on one date with her, she’s nice, but it wasn’t a love connection. Tilda means something to me.”

“She let you stay with her for weeks,” Irene says. “Do you feel like you have to repay the favor?”

“I want to be there for her,” Cash says. “She can’t stay over there alone.” He appeals again to Huck. “Can we go?”

“We can go,” Huck says.



First they stop at St. John Market, which has both registers open and ten people in each line, including—Huck gathers from eavesdropping—two couples who have only just arrived for a week’s vacation at the Westin and who are provisioning with things like Doritos and mango-flavored Cruzan rum. Huck wants to tell these people that their time would be better spent trying to book a flight back to where they came from. For years, there’ve been false alarms—cat 1 or 2 hurricanes that fell apart and made landfall as nothing more than forty-mile-per-hour winds and two inches of rain—but this storm is picking up power like a snowball rolling down a mountain. This isn’t going to be a “Let’s get drunk, play gin rummy, and listen to that Scorpion song on repeat” kind of hurricane.

Cash buys two cases of water, two loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, crackers, Cheez Whiz, pickles, a bag of apples, a carton of pineapple juice, and two bottles of Cruzan aged rum. He wants beer as well but Huck steers him toward toilet paper, candles, batteries, bug spray.

From their spot way back in line, Huck texts Irene. Fill the gas cans first, then get to the store. This place is packed already.



Huck drops Cash off at the Lovango dock; Tilda is waiting at the end in a John Deere Gator. The construction site seems to have been secured but there’s a trailer sitting on concrete blocks and all Huck can imagine is this bitch Inga picking it up like a toddler with a toy and tossing it into the sea.

“That’s not where you’re staying, is it?” Huck asks Tilda.

“No,” Tilda says. “There’s a cottage on the other side.” She and Cash load the provisions into the Gator. “Thank you for bringing him.”

“You two be smart,” Huck says. “Charge your phones. Do you have a generator?”

“Yes,” Tilda says. “And plenty of gas.”

“Your place is shuttered?”

“It is,” Tilda says.

Huck doesn’t like leaving Cash and Tilda all alone on an island, not one bit, but he realizes he doesn’t have any say in the situation and he needs to get out of there.

“Be safe,” Huck says.



Huck is taking his boat to Hurricane Hole, where he will secure it with three anchors, strip it of all valuable electronics, then hope for the best. When he pulls into the Hole, he sees Captains Stephen and Kelly of the Singing Dog heading out.

Where are they going? he wonders.

He sees a few boats prepping in the Hole but not nearly as many as he thought he would. He putters over to What a Catch! “Where is everyone?” he asks Captain Chris.

“Hurricane watch just turned to warning,” Chris says. “And they’re advising everyone to pull their boats. This storm is going to be a monster, worse than anything we’ve seen. Sustained winds of one fifty or higher.”