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I do as he suggested, laying down a respectable distance away from him (despite a very strong urge to straddle his lap). Feeling the heat of the sun on my skin, I tell myself to relax, even though I know the chances of that are slim to none.
“What would you be doing, if you weren’t here?” I ask him.
“It’s what? Tuesday morning?”
“That sounds about right.”
“I’d be at the office in a meeting. Or answering emails. I get roughly three hundred a day, and those are just the ones that Donna, my assistant, passes through to me. She deals with all the unimportant ones.”
“Wow. Three hundred?”
He nods. “It’ll be a lot more right now though because of losing Richard. More meetings too. I’m going to be swamped when I get back, trying to reassure our largest clients that it’ll be business as usual. And then there’s the shareholders. I had a Zoom call with them the morning we left for Peru, but a lot of the bigger ones will want to see me face-to-face. And then there’s our new COO, Anika. She’s amazing, but she’s going to need my help as she fully steps into the role. Our accounting and legal teams will have stacks of paperwork for me to go over and sign as well.”
“Sounds … overwhelming.”
“It can be, but it’s what I wanted so I’m not going to start complaining now that I’ve got it,” he says. “What about you? What would you be doing?”
“I’d be in the radio room monitoring dozens of screens for any activity they might pick up.”
“Sounds…” He trails off, so I finish his sentence for him.
“Boring?”
He chuckles. “I didn’t want to say it.”
“No, I get it. Most people would find it boring, and it can be. I actually knit while I’m in there because it’s something you can do with your hands and you don’t have to look down very often.”
“You knit?” he asks, looking amused. “What kind of things do you make?”
“Oh, the usual—scarves, beanies, blankets. Right now, I’m working on a blanket for my bed at my new house. I’ve been working on it for months.”
He narrows his eyebrows and I can tell he looks worried about something, but I have no idea what it could be. “That sounds like a good use of your time.”
Huh, a good use of my time. I’m tempted to ask him if that’s as opposed to my actual job, but I don’t want to. I’m too tired to debate right now, and I really don’t want to spoil the moment. “Do you think they’ll find us soon?” I ask.
“Do you want me to be honest or do you want me to make you feel better?”
“Honest, always.”
“All right then, no, I don’t,” he says. “I’d actually be surprised if they come back today at all.”
“Really?” I ask, turning my head to face him.
He looks over at me. “Richard said we’d be out on the river until close to dark, so the way I figure it, they’re going to spend that entire day assuming we’re a few minutes behind them. By the time they figure out we’re not coming, it’ll be nightfall. Then they’ll need to get a motor boat because they’ll have to go up-current to get here. Either that, or they’ll have to get a hold of someone upstream to come find us.”
I chew my lip while I let the reality set in. We’re alone in the jungle. Well, technically we’re surrounded by all sorts of things that could kill us, which means we’re not really alone. But there aren’t other humans around. I should be panicking. I should be coming up with some sort of plan to get us out of here. But I’m not. Instead, I’m lying here thinking about what it would feel like to kiss Ty Sterling.
“You okay?” he asks, rolling onto his side and propping his head up on his hand.
“Yes, fine. You?”
He nods. “We’re both intelligent, capable people. I have every faith we can figure this out.”
“Huh, imagine that—Ty Sterling, world’s biggest skeptic, having faith in something.”
“Don’t get too excited,” he tells me. “I could be just saying that so you don’t start to panic.”
I grin at him for a second, then say, “Nope. You have faith in us.”
