Chapter 14
JORDAN
"Captain. You ready to hand over?"
"I was thinking I'd take another two hours," Jordan said, leaning back in her chair.
"Why?" Zoe blinked at her, the coffee pausing halfway to her mouth. "I've just had five hours of sleep. I'm fresh, it makes no sense."
"Just want to keep an eye on conditions a bit longer."
"Conditions are fine, Captain." Zoe hesitated. "With all due respect, get some rest. You know I'm perfectly capable."
She was right; the weather forecast was perfect. Jordan had been willing the wind to pick up so she'd have a reason to stay there until Dani had gone to sleep. Another two hours and she could slip into the cabin in the dark.
"I know," Jordan said, pushing up out of the chair. "She's all yours. Course is laid in, autopilot's engaged, weather's holding. Call me if anything changes."
"Will do. Goodnight, Captain."
Jordan took the corridor slowly, rehearsing the conversation she'd been rehearsing all day.
Dani was sitting cross-legged on the pull-out bed, hair damp from the shower, in a soft cotton crop top the color of seafoam and a pair of shorts that should have been classified as a maritime hazard. The reading lamp was on and she was scrolling through her phone.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi. How was your day?" Jordan closed the door behind her. Her hands needed somewhere to be so she shoved them into her pockets.
"It was good." Dani set her phone aside. "Lunch went well. Patricia cried when she saw the setup."
"Lindsay's food?"
"Excellent as always."
"And the family at Staniel?"
"Sunburned. Tyler caught a barracuda and Bea is convinced she saw a mermaid. You?"
"Quiet day." Jordan could see the soft outline of her breasts under her top, the small shadow where the fabric pulled. She wasn't wearing a bra and she was unselfconscious in a way that was doing Jordan no favors.
They'd run out of small talk and arrived there faster than Jordan had expected. After a few seconds she cleared her throat because somebody had to speak. "Dani."
"Yeah."
"About last night."
She closed her eyes briefly. "Yeah. About that."
"It shouldn't have happened," Jordan said. "And it was my fault."
She frowned. "How was it your fault?"
"I'm your boss, Dani."
She tilted her head. "Jordan, you didn't do anything wrong. You had a difficult night and I offered to stay. You said yes. That's it. Nothing else happened."
"I should have maintained boundaries."
Dani shook her head. "There were two of us and nobody did anything wrong. I don't regret it so please don't worry about me."
Jordan sat down on the edge of her own berth. The dream was still in her body and some traitorous part of her was overlaying it onto the woman in front of her—the one who was talking about consent and boundaries while her unconscious was busy reconstructing what she'd felt like under her hands.
"I'm your superior," she tried. "There's a power dynamic. You may have felt pressure, or some sense of obligation, or—"
"Did I look like I was under pressure?"
"That's not the point." Jordan was trying not to think of the fact that Dani had been pressed against the entire length of her last night. Her hand on her stomach, her hair against her throat. The slow rise and fall of her breathing in the dark.
"Please listen," Dani said. "I made a choice when I asked to share the bed.
I made another choice when I let you put your arm around me.
If you're worried I felt I couldn't say no, please be very clear that I could have said no at every point and I didn't, because I didn't want to. " She paused. "It was nice, right?"
It was nice. Jordan shook her head because it was a lot more than just nice. Whatever she'd rehearsed had gone. She could feel the pull of Dani—there was no other word for it—and she didn't trust herself to last this conversation if she let herself feel it.
Anything she said now committed her. To honesty or to a lie. Even if she didn't reply, the answer was everywhere—in her hands that were now resting in her lap, trembling, in her breathing, in the way she hadn't been able to stop looking at Dani since she'd walked through the door.
"Yes, it was nice."
Silence.
Jordan shook her head and took off her captain's hat, regretting her admission.
Dani shrugged. The smallest possible movement of her shoulder, but it landed as something close to relief—as if she had been bracing for Jordan to say something else.
"I've been thinking about it all day," she said, her eyes steady on Jordan's. "And I want you to know," she continued, "that you have my permission to do whatever you want to do tonight. No rank. Just you and me. I won't say no and I won't tell anyone."