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eyes wide open, searching for a sign of Chloe.
    Nothing!  
    In a panic, he dove again and again, searching left and right for the woman he’d just saved from the jungle only to deliver her to her watery grave. Then, suddenly, just when he was about to plunge in again, he heard it.
    “Yoo-hoo!”
    As if stung, he whipped his head around. The sound had come from the beach—the only place he hadn’t cared to look.
    “Yoo-hoo! Josh!”
    And then he saw it—saw her. She was languidly relaxing on the beach, catching some rays, and giving him a big smile.
    “When you’re done playing around, could we go back to the house? All this sun and surf has given me an appetite!”
    With an animal cry, he launched himself for the beach, and when he finally emerged, all wet and bothered, it was all he could do not to give her a good thrashing before dumping her ass back into the ocean.
    “Didn’t you hear me call your name?” he cried, standing before her like a wide-legged colossus.
    “I did, but you seemed to be having so much fun I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she offered, coyly gazing up at him.
    With a disgusted snort, he tore his eyes away from her and started up the beach in the direction of the tree line.
    “Hey! Wait up!” she yelled, and he could hear her trudge after him.
    Without deigning her another look, he marched on. This woman was going to be the death of him.
    “I’m sorry, Josh,” she panted, trying to match his long strides with her own short ones. “I guess I was mad at you for being such a dick to me earlier.”
    He merely grunted something under his breath and kept on walking.
    Trotting beside him like a hobbit trying to keep up with a giant, she argued, “You have to admit you were being a dick. Though saving my life from those horrible spiders did much to make up for your behavior. You’ve redeemed yourself. A little. Just a little bit.”
    “Grmph,” he grumbled, eyes straight ahead, arms and legs pumping.
    She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Thank you, Josh, for saving my life. And I apologize for slapping you. All right? Better?”
    He turned to her, furious. “I can’t work like this, Chloe. I’m supposed to be writing and with all your… drama —” He threw up his hands. “—I just can’t focus!”
    “Look who’s talking,” she countered. “This was supposed to be a quiet getaway, and instead I’ve landed myself in some version of world war three!”
    He controlled a strong urge to grab her by the shoulders. “We have to find a way to get along. For both our sakes.”
    “I couldn’t agree more.”
    “So I suggest that from now on we stay as far away from each other as humanly possible.”
    “Fine!” She tilted her chin defiantly. “If that’s what you want.”
    “That’s exactly what I want.”
    She flapped her arms like a chicken trying to take flight. “Then that’s what we’ll do. From now on, you won’t see me. I’ll be a ghost to you. Each time you wonder, Where’s Chloe? you won’t find me. I’ll be invisible. I’ll be the shadow on the wall. I’ll be the whisper on the wind. I’ll be—”
    “Stop babbling!” he hollered, raising his face to the sky.
    She looked up, confused, then seemed to realize he was talking about her and gave him a defiant glare. “From now on, you’re dead to me.”
    He gritted his teeth in exasperation. “Great. That’s all I ever wanted.”
    And with those words, he strode off, leaving her to stew in her own juice.

CHAPTER 10

    Chloe looked out across the pool. She’d been lounging on the deck chair for the better part of the morning, keeping well in the shade cast by a large parasol and furiously nibbling on her pencil as if somehow hoping to draw inspiration from it. On the side table next to her lay her notebook with the ideas she’d been scribbling for the past fortnight. It wasn’t that she didn’t have ideas for her next novel. She had plenty. It was that she didn’t know which ones to choose from. She