Chapter Three Lucky
Chapter Three
Lucky
Multiple loads of laundry were running and I grabbed the ironing board, plugging in the iron. I’d always found pressing the guests’ bedsheets had a calming effect on me, with its relaxing, repetitive motion. The feeling of accomplishment I got when the lines went smooth.
It gave me too much time to think, though.
I had told Hunter something I hadn’t shared with anyone else on board, not even Georgia. I’d told him about my mother’s passing. I didn’t know why I had done that—what it was about him that made me want to tell him things.
I needed to figure it out, though. Because we were going to share a space that was approximately the same size as two telephone booths. Sleeping. Changing our clothes.
Showering.
The universe had apparently decided to test my willpower, because I wouldn’t be allowed to kiss or date him. Then I decided it was ridiculous that my mind was even going there—he hadn’t done anything to indicate he might be attracted to me. He definitely gave off a girl-in-every-port kind of vibe. So even if he was attracted to me, would it matter? I wouldn’t want to date someone like that.
Georgia came into the laundry room. She was the kind of woman who had to fight men off with a stick. Poor Pieter was so desperately in love with her he practically swooned every time she walked by. She was petite, gorgeous, with light brown eyes and long blond hair that hung in waves. I had dark brown eyes and had inherited my nonna’s thick, dark hair.
She was the kind of girl Hunter would most likely be interested in. They would be a matched set—like a real-life Malibu Barbie and Ken.
I found myself relieved that she couldn’t hook up with him.
Like she’d intuited what I was thinking about, she said, “Who is the new yachtie hottie? To quote Popeye the Sailor, blow me down.”
I should have known Georgia’s man radar would ping and that she had managed to catch sight of him already.
“His name is Hunter. He’s a deckhand.” I was now officially pre-annoyed because I knew where this was about to go.
“Hunter,” she repeated, musing. “What does he hunt? I would happily lie down in front of him and let him catch me.”
So would I. I pushed the steamer button on the iron and pressed down harder.
She kept talking. “I should take him on a tour of the ship. Do you think he’d let me show him the bow thruster? Or the cockpit? I’d let him lash me to the mast.”
“I’ve already given him the tour,” I said, my tone a bit sharper than I’d intended.
“I’ll bet you did,” she said with a grin and hopped up onto the counter. As the new chief stew, I probably should have told her to get to work but I didn’t. Giving directions to the stews, who were now officially under me, felt uncomfortable.
“He’s so tall and big,” she added with a sigh. “What size shoe does he wear?”
Her question caught me off guard. “I don’t know. Why would I know that?”
“Don’t you have to order his uniform from the provisioner?”
I did. I had completely forgotten.
“You know what they say about men with large feet,” she said while waggling her eyebrows at me.
That annoyance surged again while I tried to tamp it down. “He’s nice, too.”
“So? Why would that matter?”
“I’m glad you’re respectfully objectifying him,” I responded.
“I try,” she said with a shrug. “Do you think he’d let me respectfully objectify him later tonight?”
“What?” I asked in shock.
She started swinging her legs. “If he was my bunkmate, neither one of us would sleep until the season ended. Do you want to trade?”
While it might have been better for my peace of mind to have Hunter in a different cabin, I did not trust Georgia with him. Perhaps it was because he’d been kind to me but I felt like I owed him now.
Or maybe I was just jealous and didn’t want Georgia to have him.
I decided the first reason sounded nobler and so settled on that one and then tried to change the subject. “I thought you were interested in Thomas.”
She made a pshaw sound. “If that man ever had an original thought, it would die of loneliness.”
Georgia wasn’t wrong. Thomas was a hard worker and good at his job but he’d never struck me as particularly bright.
“You know how sea goggles work,” she went on. “Men who are a four on land are a nine at sea because there’s no other options. At least there weren’t any until Hunter showed up. That man’s a ten everywhere.”
A ten? He was more like a twenty.
“Plus, Thomas doesn’t know what to do with a woman once he has her. Hunter looks like he majored in it and graduated with honors.”
Again, I wanted to fervently agree until I remembered where we were. Given the kind of luck I was having today, the captain was going to stroll by while Georgia was making inappropriate comments and we’d both get fired. I went over to close the door.
She jumped off the counter when she realized what I was doing. “No, wait!”
Then I saw the reason she was trying to stop me. There was a piece of paper taped to the back of the door. “What’s this?”
At the top in Georgia’s handwriting: The sCrew List , oh so cleverly combining the words screw and crew . Just below that she had written the number 100 and circled it.
She didn’t have to tell me what it was because it was self-explanatory. All the male crewmembers were listed with numbers next to them. “Are these points?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How could you have this up already?” The crew meeting had only happened a little while ago.
Georgia didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “I work fast when I’m motivated.”
“Did you not hear Captain Carl and the new rule?”
At that her eyes narrowed and I recognized that look. “I heard him fine.” She hated being told what to do and had a very loose relationship with following rules.
Unlike me, who lived for them.
“The only people who ever shut the laundry room door are the stews. No one else is going to see it,” she said, as if that made it better.
“Was this your idea?”
“Emilie and I came up with it together.”
I should have known that it was both of them. I was pretty sure that cannibals were less man hungry than those two.
And Emilie and Georgia made some bad decisions when left to their own devices.
Like posting a list with points for sleeping with crewmembers.
“This is why two blondes don’t make a right,” I muttered and she just grinned at me. Then I noticed the name on the bottom. “You have Captain Carl on here.”
“Yeah, I do. He is a sexy, sexy man. Anybody who can single-handedly control a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot superyacht deserves to be on this list, and I’m sorry you can’t see it.”
“The captain is married and has a son the same age as you.”
Another shrug. “What can I say? I have daddy issues. But you’ll see that we gave him fifty points because of the unlikelihood of it happening. Especially with his new rule.”
I sighed. “Francois has a negative number next to his name.”
“We should lose points if we sleep with him. Too easy and gross.”
She wasn’t wrong. That guy was a three-time gold medalist in the Jerk Olympics. “This list is going to get you fired.”
“Only if I get caught, which I won’t.”
Such an unwise thing to do, but both she and Emilie were adults and could make their own truly terrible decisions.
Georgia moved around me and added Hunter’s name to the bottom of the list and gave him twenty-five points.
There was a strange surge in my gut that felt a bit like jealousy and I immediately pushed it down. I couldn’t afford to get fired, so there was no chance that anything could happen between Hunter and me.
“What do you get if you reach a hundred points?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Besides the physical satisfaction that I’m assuming I’ll personally receive? Probably an indeterminate prize of very little value. We haven’t decided yet.”
I could feel my anxiety welling up inside me at what she and Emilie were planning on doing, what they were risking for nothing. I reminded my swirling stomach that this wasn’t my issue.
“You could join us,” she said.
I let out a short bark of laughter. “You know that’s not me. I don’t break rules and I don’t hook up with people. I’ve only had like, two boyfriends.”
“This week?”
“No, ever.”
A look of pure horror crossed her features. “I’ve had a million! The key is to lower your standards. The lower your standards, the higher your average. Although that might not work with you. Someone told me once that the smarter a woman is, the harder it is for her to find a man.”
“That’s sexist.” After a beat I added, “And I must be a genius.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “You don’t see your own value, Lucky. As your name suggests, every man on this ship would be lucky to be with you.”
I tried not to roll my eyes and instead just shook my head.
“What?” she demanded.
“With all your plotting and rule-breaking, I’m just wondering how you sleep at night.”
“Hopefully not alone,” she teased. “But usually some combination of wine and sleeping pills.”
I was glad the door was shut. I knew she was joking but somebody else might not realize it.
She slid the pen back into her skort pocket and said, “I have some dust to vanquish in the primary cabin.”
“I would say ‘have fun,’ but we both know neither one of us will.” Being a stew on a yacht was exhausting, backbreaking work, but the money made up for it.
When she was gone I found myself thinking that her and Emilie’s plan to hook up with as many crewmembers as possible was something Marika was going to have to deal with until the moment I remembered that I was the new Marika. It was my responsibility.
My anxiety flared up again because I didn’t know how to tell my friend to knock it off. I had the worried feeling that this might become an issue and hoped that none of this would blow back on me.
Speaking of responsibilities, Hunter needed a uniform.
When I returned to our cabin, I didn’t know if I should knock or just enter. It was also my room, but would it be more appropriate to give him some sort of heads-up?
Before I could decide, the door opened and Hunter stood there. My heart sped up and I didn’t know if it was my concern over Georgia’s game plan or being near him again. “Lucky, you’re back!”
I told myself to ignore his gorgeous smile and piercing eyes and be calm and collected and treat him like every other person on board. “I need your shoe size,” I blurted out.
Wow. Great job.
Given his quizzical expression I quickly offered an explanation. “I need to order your uniform.”
He said he wore a slim extra large and size fourteen in shoes.
Georgia was going to pass out.
I sent a text to the provisioner and she immediately responded that she’d have it sent over the next morning. I told him as much.
The next thing I knew, Hunter was taking my phone from my hands. I was so surprised that I initially didn’t react.
Finally I managed to say, “What are you doing?”
He finished up and gave it back to me. “You said I could ask you if I needed anything, and I thought it’d be easier if I could text you instead of traipsing around the ship trying to find you.”
While that logically made sense, the only thing I could think was that I had Hunter’s number and that already-crushing teen girl inside me was giddy.
“I should go find ... Thomas, right?” he asked.
“Yes. Down the hall, up the stairs, and you’ll see the deck from there.”
“I remember how to get there. Directions I’m good with. It’s just names that give me some difficulty, Lucky Salerno.” He winked at me and every bone in my body dissolved. I had to lean against the wall for support.
Georgia and Emilie were wrong.
Hunter Smith was worth a lot more than twenty-five points.