The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (2 page)

“Do your best. I mean, I’m paying five million dollars here.”

Mike sighs. “And there it is. Again.”

“Hey, we still have nine minutes left,” Grant says cheerfully.

“Eight. Speaking of that five million dollars, how exactly am I going to get paid?”

“Cashier’s check, of course.”

Mike gives him a mad-dog look. “I am going to turn this plane around – ”

“Calm down. Jesus, nobody can take a joke anymore. Eve’ll set up a private account for you at the Bank of Seychelles. What’s your full name?”

“Michael Ramsey. R – A – M – S – E – Y.”

“Mention me – Grant Carlson – and use ‘Connor’ as a password when you contact the bank. But give us a couple of days, we’re going to be busy,” Grant deadpans.

Mike gives a short, mirthless laugh. “I probably will be, too.”

“Can you get out of France alright?” I ask.

“I trained in enemy evasion and survival in the Air Force. I’ll be fine.”

“Why don’t you just call Connor once you get to shore?” Grant asks, confused. “He’ll get you out right away.”

Mike looks around like
You spoiled it.
“I was trying to make it sound a little more impressive.”

“Ah. And here I thought you’d want to get back as fast as possible to your five million dollars.”

“There you go again,” Mike says, shaking his head. “What about you two? Should I send Connor in after you, too?”

“No,” Grant says decisively. “We’re going to Paris. We came for a reason – it’s just we didn’t disembark where I thought we would.”

“Not my fault,” Mike says.

“Didn’t say it was,” Grant yells over his shoulder as he heads back towards the parachutes.

I watch nervously as Grant puts the backpack, with the 45 grand and the laptop inside, on backwards so it’s hanging off his front.

“You might as well leave the laptop,” I tell him. “Once it gets in water, it’s going to be good for a doorstop and nothing else.”

“You never know, we might luck out and hit land instead.” Then he straps one of the parachutes onto his back.

“So you’ve done this before, right?” I ask.

“Nope,” he says. Like I’d just asked him if he’s ever been to Boise, Idaho.

“WHAT?!”

He shrugs. “How hard can it be?”

Just as I’m about to have a stroke, he breaks into a huge grin. “I’m kidding. Of course I’ve parachuted before.”

I hit him several times on the chest with my fists. “STOP –
DOING
– THAT!”

He laughs. “What?”

“Bullshitting every time someone asks you a question!”

“You ever heard the expression, ‘Laugh to keep from crying’?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I can either joke around and keep it light, or I can be serious and we can all be miserable and afraid and then panic and lose focus and die. Which is it gonna be?”

“Why don’t you try being
serious
so I can know exactly what we’re up against, and then I can respond appropriately and we can all live.”

“Okay. Fine. I
have
trained in parachuting. Fifty solo jumps, in fact. But only over land, and only day flights. Never over water, and never in the dark. Feel better now?”

I feel pretty queasy, actually. “I’m… fine…”

“Well, allow me to continue.” He puts his hand on another package: an orange inflatable raft, one of those industrial-size ones you see in movies. “I’m pulling the ‘inflate’ cord on this sucker as soon as we pop the chute. I’m hoping we’ll either hit the beach or shallow water. Hopefully if we hit the beach, we won’t break any bones. Shallow water would be best. But if we hit deep water, we’ll need to get on the raft almost immediately to survive. We’ll have to get out of the parachute harnesses quick or we’ll get tangled up and drown. And if we’re far enough out, our chances of making it to shore in waterlogged clothes go down drastically without the raft.”

I’m going to puke, I just know it. I must be green by now.

“You don’t look so good,” he says. He’s teasing me, the bastard.

“I don’t
feel
so good.”

“What, don’t you think you’re ‘responding appropriately’ and that everything’s going to be okay?”

“Not really…”

“Okay, then, maybe you’ll trust me to handle things my own way in the future.”

I want to hate him, but I’m too damn depressed. “If we even
have
a future beyond the next five minutes…”

“See? There you go again. Incessant negativity.”

He starts to strap a parachute on me.

“WAIT – WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“I’m putting a parachute on you. What does it look like?”

“I thought we were jumping out together!”

“We are. I’ll tie you to me so we go tandem. This is only if we get separated – or my chute fails for some reason.”

I start to hyperventilate.

“Hey, you were the one who wanted the straight facts,” he chides me.

“You can go back to the joking.”

“Finally, she sees the light.”

“Five minutes!” Mike yells.

Grant strides over to the cockpit. “Alright, are you going to open the door, or is that something we do from – ”

“You can’t go out the door,” Mike interrupts.

Grant and I both stare at him, stunned. “…what?”

“You could get sucked into the engine if you go out the door. Or smash your head against the wing, or the vertical stabilizer on the tail.”

“What the hell good are parachutes if we can’t go out the door?” Grant fumes.

“There’s a baggage area under the left engine nacelle. You can access the baggage area from the rear of the cabin. Look for a panel on the left side with a bunch of bolts in it. There should be a tool bag in the same compartment where you found the parachutes.”

“Problem solved,” Grant mutters as he hurries back to the rear of the cabin.

I run after him. My terror feels like cold, slushy ice rising slowly through my body. “Grant, this is getting worse every second.”

“Relax,” Grant says as he fishes out a small canvas bag from the same place we found the parachutes. “Found the tools, and – yup, there’s the panel.”

“No, Grant, seriously – ”

He kneels down and begins unscrewing the bolts. “Relax, this is nothing. Hell, we jumped out of a skyscraper with nothing but a bunch of rope.”

“Yeah, exactly – we already cheated death once.”

“Once, twice… what’s the difference?” he says as he pulls the bolts out of the panel, one by one.

“One hundred percent.”

“What?”

“Twice is one hundred percent more than cheating death once.”

He grins. “Very funny.”

“It’s not funny at
all.
”

“Just look at it as 100%
more
cheating death. That’s a good thing.”

“I don’t think death likes to be cheated that much.”

“Years ago, I got drunk with a Hollywood stunt man in a bar,” Grant says cheerfully.

I stare at him. Partially because of the weird non sequitur, partially because I just can’t comprehend how this can be relevant in any way, shape, or form.

“He told me that when they do high jumps into water – you know, like from a cliff into a lake – the number one problem they have is that they hit the water so hard, sometimes it goes up their ass. So you have to wear rubber underwear, otherwise you could get an all-natural enema.”

I shake my head in disbelief that I am even hearing these words right now. “And
why
are you telling me this?”

“Don’t worry about
death.
Worry about an accidental enema.”

“This is not making me feel better!”

“Wasn’t supposed to make you feel better, just distract you.”

He pulls off the panel. Behind it is a dark chamber. I shiver when I realize we’re going to have to crawl into it.

Emanating from the baggage compartment is the moaning of the wind outside the metal walls of the plane. It sounds like a ghost from a horror film.

“Two minutes!” Mike shouts from the cockpit.

Oh God…

We’re back in the cockpit, where Mike is giving us last-minute instructions.

“Once you crawl in there, tie yourself to each other. When you’re ready, yell, because I’m going to open the door. That’s your cue to jump. You ready?”

“No,” I say. I’m literally shaking.

“Oh well,” Grant says good-naturedly, and takes me by the hand. “Thanks again, Mike.”

“For five million, you’re welcome.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

Then Grant drags me into the cabin towards the Black Hole of Doom.

“Oh God, oh God…” I moan.

Jumping out of the skyscraper was bad enough. It was horrible, actually. But the time span from when I found out we were jumping to when we actually jumped was one minute, maybe two at most.

I’ve known we’re going to parachute for ten minutes now, and that ten minutes is the killer. My dread has built up so much that I literally feel like I could puke any second.

I’m terrified. In fact, given the choice, I might just go down with the plane.

Grant’s not giving me that choice, though.

He throws the inflatable raft package into the cargo bay. Then he scampers inside and holds his hand towards me. “Come on!”

Ignoring my fear, I take his hand and crawl into the hole after him.

Once inside, it’s cramped and cold and loud. He holds a flashlight from the tool kit and cinches our parachute harnesses together. “If we get separated – ”

“Why would we get separated?!” I ask, terrified.

“We won’t, but if we do, pull this,” he says, pointing out the ripcord on my parachute. “And here’s the buckles to take off the harness. Once you hit the water, make sure you – ”

I almost scream at him, “Would you stop giving me instructions like we’re going to get separated?!”

He’s trying not to laugh, and for a second, I want to slap him. “You ready, then?”

“No!”

Grant smiles, then leans toward the hole in the wall of the plane. “ALRIGHT, MIKE – GO FOR IT!”

There is a mechanical
CLACK
sound, and suddenly the wall to the side of us pops open. The small doorway is almost ripped off as the wind shrieks in around us, cold and violent.

“Ready to cheat death again?” Grant yells in my ear.

“OH GOD!” I scream, and shut my eyes as Grant grabs me and throws us out the hatch into the void.

Another not-nearly-as-horrible thing about the skyscraper: we were upright the whole time. At least I wasn’t tumbling head over ass, completely disoriented.

Which is exactly what’s happening now.

We spin through the air for several seconds, me screaming the entire way. I can feel the wind trying to rip me and Grant apart, and I panic even harder.

After a few seconds, though, we stop tumbling and more or less stabilize in an upright position. I think. At least we’re not somersaulting through the air, anyway.

“Hang on!” Grant shouts.

I feel a tremendous jerk that wrenches my body. I feel like I’m three years old and wearing overalls, and an adult has suddenly snatched me up by my Osh Kosh b’Gosh shoulder straps.

Then we’re not falling nearly as fast. Everything is a lot more peaceful, if you can call cold wind whistling past your ears ‘peaceful.’

I open my eyes. Below us I can see the ocean, the glint of the moon off the waves, and a few patches of light on the coast. Which is actually really close to us. We’re not that far from the beach.

Off to my left, I can see the flashing lights of an airplane, tiny in the distance. I realize it’s the jet we just jumped out of, and marvel that this all is working out.

“Easy peasy Japanesey!” Grant calls into my ear.

“There was
nothing
easy about this!” I shout back at him.

Off to our side, something big and orange plummets past.

“What was that?” I ask.

“The inflatable raft.”

“When did you inflate it?”

“Right after we jumped out.”

“I didn’t see you!”

“I was busy doing stuff while somebody else was screaming their head off,” he teases.

Yeah – with damn good reason,
I think.

We are edging closer and closer to land, though we’re still over water. Everything is rushing towards us at a faintly alarming speed.

I thought you softly drifted down like a snowflake when you parachuted.

Not so much. More like semi-controlled falling.

“When we hit, let your legs bend and crumple up underneath you!” Grant says.

“Even if we hit water?” I ask, because it looks like we’re going to hit the water.

“Especially if we hit the water!”

Shit, we’re going to hit the water.

The raft hits the water far below, about sixty feet to the right of us. I can make it out, a dark rectangular shape against the glittery moonlight sparkling beneath it. It’s only a hundred feet from shore.

“Should I swim for the raft or the shore?” I ask.

“The shore. We should be able to make it easily.”

The waves rush up towards us. The foam on the breakers looks silver in the moonlight.

Grant adds in a mischievous voice, “Get ready for the enema!”

Damn it – I’d totally forgotten.

I clench my ass cheeks as tight as I can as we zoom towards the ocean.

SPLASH!

The impact is hard, and we go under – and then my feet hit something.

Sand.

We rebound up to the surface, sputtering and coughing, and I realize I can stand – at least when the waves aren’t crashing over my head.

“You okay?” Grant asks.

“Yes!” I say, deliriously happy. “No enema!”

He laughs as we half-swim, half-stagger towards the shore. We’re still buckled together, after all, and it’s like the worst three-legged race you’ve ever run in your life.

Once we can fully stand on the sand and not get submerged by the waves, he unhooks both his parachute and mine, freeing us.

“You know I was totally kidding about the enema, right?” he says.

I look back in shock. “What?!”

“Well, I mean, it’s a real thing, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen to us. Using a parachute makes you fall too slow for it to happen.”