Alex’s Atonement by Carmen DeSousa

Alex Belgarde has carried the guilt of his father’s death for more than ten years. Every year, as his family’s company falls deeper into debt, the guilt eats away more of his soul until there’s only one answer. Prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to save his father’s legacy, Alex takes off on a frigid winter day with no radio and very little fuel in his seaplane. He’s using up the last of his reserve tank, preparing to drop from the sky, when he sees plane wreckage below.

Irene Rose has spent her life running away and chasing her dream. But after a possible terminal diagnosis, she realizes how lonely her life has become and is ready to forgive her sister and beg for her family’s forgiveness. Instead of arriving on the island of her birth, Irene finds herself stranded on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska. Unbeknownst to her, the pilot of the plane she chartered was a drug runner, so he didn’t alert authorities as they crashed.

While Alex’s illogical idea to save his father’s company is thwarted because of his compulsion to help, he finds purpose in offering aid to the beautiful and intelligent Irene. The attraction is mutual until Irene persuades Alex to tell her the real reason he can’t merely fly them to safety or call for help. Now the two castaways will have to fight the harsh winter elements, as well as the drug smugglers who lost their cargo in the wreck, if they want to make it home alive. Not easy tasks when Irene refuses to trust Alex to get her home safely. She simply can’t get over the fact that as talented, tough, and tantalizing as he is, he was going to throw his life away. Especially when her life will probably be cut short.

For the first time in his life, Alex will have to face his demons instead of running from them to win the girl and prove to himself that he’s a real hero…