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Fuck! People. So many damn people . Happy, smiling, selfie-clicking people. Loud T-shirts and flip-flop people. Floral swimsuits and Speedos people.
Too much cleavage. Way too much c ock age.
And not even the nearby tray full of frothy drinks with bright red cherries could make up for the fact that Aristotle Callisthenes – or Ari George for the next week, anyway – was stuck with three thousand people for the next seven days and nights.
On a boat. In the middle of the Mediterranean. Where his ability to get away was severely hampered.
Dull pain from an encroaching headache gnawed at his temples. Ari didn’t do people. Sure, most days of his life he had to interact with them, but it just wasn’t his forte. Give him numbers and spreadsheets any time!
Only seven more days… Christe!
He plonked his ass on the bar seat. ‘Whisky,’ he said, barely looking at the approaching waitress as he slid his hand over the wood grain checking for stickiness. ‘Neat.’
‘That’s a pretty serious drink for not even half past eleven in the morning.’
Ari glanced up to find a pair of pale green eyes sparkling at him above a little snub nose and a wide mouth turned upwards at the corners. The top lip was dominated by a fascinating Cupid’s bow. The kind that invited licking. The kind he might have found irresistible once upon a time.
In a galaxy far, far away.
Her blonde hair was caught back in some kind of side ponytail thingy, leaving her long bangs loose around her oval face. He judged her to be in her mid to late twenties and, in the bright red of her Hellenic Spirit polo shirt, she looked the quintessential girl next door.
His gaze dropped to her nametag. Kelsey . Yep. She looked like a Kelsey. All sunny and bright and impossibly perky and it had nothing to do with her cup size, although, curiously, he had noticed the V of her cleavage.
The gnaw in his temples upsized to a throb.
Ari wanted to say, That’s me, Mr Serious . But he didn’t. Smile. Flirt. Be friendly. Don’t scare the fucking staff. His brother’s strict instructions rang in his ears. Theo always had been a pain in the ass.
Have some goddamn fun for a change.
Ari shrugged and forced a smile. The muscles of his cheeks, unused to the exercise, protested the movement. ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?’
Kelsey laughed as she poured the whisky and Ari blinked at the sexy vibrato as it fluttered around him like confetti. It’d been a long time since any kind of laughter had penetrated the thick hide of his self-imposed isolation.
Kelsey looked like she knew how to have fun.
‘It’s 9p.m. in Sydney.’ She placed the glass on the bar. ‘So it definitely needs one of these.’
She opened a blue paper cocktail umbrella and inserted it at a jaunty angle into his drink. She leaned back, admiring her handiwork, and laughed again, louder this time. Whisky with a cocktail umbrella looked utterly ridiculous but Ari found himself smiling despite the absurdity.
A different throb this time sliced between his ribs. Quickly, he picked up the glass, tossed the umbrella aside and threw the contents down. Placing the tumbler back on the bar, he said, ‘Hit me, again.’
Whisky was the worst possible thing he could be ingesting in the face of his threatening migraine. But that was why God had invented pharmaceutical companies.
The blonde quirked an eyebrow slightly before pouring a second helping. Ari drained the glass and set it down. Kelsey lifted the bottle but he shook his head.
The ship horn sounded and people whooped and cheered and headed for the railings as the oldest ship in the ōceanós cruise line pulled out of Civitavecchia. Beyond the reaches of the harbour, April sunshine threw diamonds at the sapphire blue of the Med.
Out there, the Greek Islands beckoned. Venice beckoned.
Ari glanced at his watch. Eleven thirty on the dot. ‘You’re Australian?’
‘Good guess.’
Ari shrugged. He’d been born in Athens, raised in France, holidayed all over Europe and schooled in England. Accents were second nature. ‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘I am indeed.’
‘How long have you worked on cruise ships?’
‘Seven years.’
‘You like it?’
She smiled and tipped her chin at the view. ‘I’m in the Mediterranean. What’s not to like?’
Which was a good response, but didn’t really answer the question, and if the need to medicate himself wasn’t becoming increasingly urgent, he might have stuck around to probe some more. He pulled out his wallet. ‘How much do I owe?’
‘Oh, no, sir.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll just swipe the card you were given on check-in.’
‘Oh yes, right.’ Ari removed the card and deliberately placed his wallet on the bar top. ‘Sorry. I forgot.’
‘No worries.’ She gave a teasing laugh. ‘Your first time?’
It wasn’t. Ari had been seven the day his grandfather had smashed a bottle of champagne against the bow of this very ship, launching it on its maiden voyage. He’d lost count of the number of cruise ships he’d travelled on since.
Smile. Flirt. Be friendly.
‘Yep. Cruise virgin I’m afraid.’
The lie slipped smoothly from his tongue. He had a job to do and zero problem with pretending to be someone else to get it done. But her eyes lit playfully and Ari’s heart skipped a beat.
‘In that case,’ she said, handing back his card, ‘we’ll be gentle with you, sir.’
She laughed at her joke and it was infectious, a smile spreading across Ari’s face before he even registered what was happening.
He wondered if his cheek muscles were as confused as he was about the situation.
But it was hard not to smile, not to respond to her easy laughter and her light, flirty chatter.
The kind of flirty chatter he suspected she used with everyone regardless of age or sex. It obviously came as naturally as breathing and he envied her that lightness of spirit.
Ari suddenly felt ancient at the grand age of thirty-two.
Smile. Flirt. Be friendly .
But he couldn’t. His temples throbbed, the pain in his ribs was back, his breath was short. His smile faded and he stood to go, and instead of saying something like Don’t be gentle on my account , which was something the old Ari might have said, he bade her goodbye.
Then he left, dodging all the fucking people and not stopping until he reached the dark, private cocoon of his inside cabin.
* * *
‘Well, hello there. This is my lucky day.’
Kelsey glanced up from the drink she was pouring to find Andy, her fellow bartender, brandishing a wallet. She recognised it immediately as belonging to Whisky Dude.
She handed the drink over to her customer as Andy strode around the corner, out of sight.
Hurriedly, she scanned the passenger’s card and was grateful that people were still absorbed with getting underway.
In a few minutes they’d be slammed by passengers wanting booze to celebrate their departure, but for now, she could go and check on her partner.
Kelsey had mixed feelings about Andy. She’d worked with him on and off the last two years and had even fooled around with him once at a party in the staff quarters on their first cruise together.
He was English, four years younger than her twenty-seven years and a good kisser.
But his moral code was a bit on the lax side.
A fact confirmed when she found him rifling through the wallet.
‘Two condoms and two hundred and twenty euros.’ He waved the notes in the air. ‘A tip for me and you,’ he said with a wink. Kelsey was sure he was joking but she wasn’t laughing.
‘Very funny.’ She snatched the wallet and held out her other hand. ‘Give it back.’
‘Oh, come on, Kels, he won’t miss a couple of twenties. He probably won’t even know.’
Silently, she stared Andy down. A couple of hundred euros was hardly a fortune – but she’d know if some of it was missing.
She’d bet Whisky Dude would, too.
Those dark eyes of his had been steady and intense, appraising her face with an attention to detail that had caused a little flutter in her chest. She doubted he missed a single goddamn thing. Not to mention, as the senior staff member, it’d be her ass if the passenger made a complaint.
God knew she couldn’t afford to lose her job. Not now. Not when she was just one more year from her goal.
‘ I’ll know.’
He sighed as he handed over the cash. ‘You are a spoilsport, Kelsey Armitage.’
She nodded. ‘Atta boy.’
* * *
Four hours later, her shift over, Kelsey made her way to Ari George’s room on deck seven, his wallet in her hand.
A couple of keystrokes of the register and she’d been able to access his name and room number from the card he’d given her to swipe.
And other information. Like there being no Mrs George.
Or any other companion…
No wedding band either, she’d noticed. Or a telltale white line where one would be if he was that kind of scumbag.
Of course, none of those things meant he wasn’t in a relationship. But it was rare to see an attached man going solo on a cruise. Most men either travelled with their partners or they were a younger crowd travelling in groups looking to get drunk and laid.
She should just have handed the wallet to guest services – it was protocol, after all. But she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the man at her bar drinking whisky at eleven in the morning.
Or his brooding good looks.
The intensity of his obsidian stare, the thickness of his lashes, the squareness of his ruthlessly shaved jaw line, the perfect straightness of his nose, the hollows beneath the twin rails of his cheekbones, the firm line of his mouth.
The deep, lurking… sadness in his eyes.