Chapter Eight Lucky
Chapter Eight
Lucky
Our guests came on board, led by the primaries, Robert and Donna Carmine. The captain shook hands with them, introducing himself and welcoming them.
“What are their names again?” Hunter asked me.
If he had been anyone else, if we had been anywhere else, I would have assumed that he was coming up with things to ask me so that we would keep talking. But in this instance I knew it was that he really didn’t remember.
“The Carmines and their friends.” I told him each individual’s name but recognized that he might struggle with it. “I think it’ll be good enough if you remember the primaries’ names, and ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carmine’ will work. My sister uses visual images to recall stuff like this. So think of a car and mine. The kind you find in the ground.”
“Like a bomb?” he asked while the Carmines greeted Francois.
“Yes, but a mine. Please don’t call them the Carbombs.”
“I’ll do my best but I make no promises,” he said with a wink and my knees might have wobbled slightly.
Why, why, why was he so sexy?
Maybe it was the forbidden-fruit angle. I might not have been so attracted to him if I could have acted on it.
That wasn’t true. He would still be this hot even if I could have declared open season on him.
“Why are they all so wrinkled? Have they never heard of Botox?” Emilie muttered.
“Have you never heard of people being in their seventies?” I retorted and then told her to be quiet. The last thing we needed was one of our guests overhearing.
“Do you think she meant ‘boat-tox’?” Hunter asked me.
“That’s not funny.”
“Beg to differ.”
My mood shifted from vexed with Emilie to wanting to laugh. I’d only known him for a short time but he made my soul feel lighter.
This was concerning.
Then the Carmines were introducing themselves to Hunter, and Mrs. Carmine said, “Aren’t you a handsome one! I suppose you could rescue us if we sink.”
He really did have that I’ll-save-your-life vibe going on. It was probably the muscles.
“Absolutely,” he agreed, shaking her hand. “I hope your husband won’t mind, but I’ll be sure to rescue you first.”
Mrs. Carmine’s cheeks turned faintly pink and it reminded me that I didn’t know Hunter very well. A part of me had hoped that I was the only one he was saying possibly flirtatious things to but it turned out not to be true.
Nellie Fitzgerald, standing behind Mrs. Carmine, asked in an anxious voice, “Does that happen often? Yachts sinking?”
“It’s usually just the once,” Hunter quipped, and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyebrows shot up her forehead.
“He’s kidding!” I reassured her. “He’s such a jokester.” As if he and I were old colleagues who had done a thousand charters together. “I’m Lucky and I’m the chief stew. I will take you on a tour of the boat and the deckhands will bring your luggage on board for you.”
Then I would have to send Georgia and Emilie to unpack those suitcases and get the guests’ clothing put away, pressing and cleaning whatever needed to be taken care of. The Carmines and their friends would be with us for a week, and we would give them the highest level of service possible.
After I’d shown them the entire ship, I offered to take them back to the sundeck and get them some cocktails while they watched the Mio Tesoro pull away from the dock. The captain and the exterior crew got underway and headed toward the ocean. Our trip would end at Saint-Tropez with lots of stops along the way.
When I got into the main salon, I noticed that Emilie hadn’t done the pillows the way I’d asked her to. I stopped to fluff the throw pillows and put them in the correct position.
“What are you doing?” Hunter asked.
I glanced up at him. He was holding two suitcases, obviously on his way to deliver them to one of the guest cabins.
“They need to be evenly fluffed and the zippers have to be face down and placed at the correct angle.”
He lowered the suitcases to the lush carpet. “And what happens if the pillows aren’t done that way?”
That had me pausing for a second. “Nothing happens. This is just how things are done.” It was how Marika had taught me, how her chief stew had most likely taught her, and so on.
“More rules?”
“More rules,” I confirmed.
“It doesn’t allow for a lot of spontaneity.”
I finished my task and went over to the bar and started grabbing bottles of alcohol and crystal tumblers. “Spontaneity is overrated.”
He came over and leaned against the bar like he was a cowboy in the Old West. “Romance comes from spontaneity.”
I uncorked the rosé that Mrs. Carmine had asked for and tried to ignore the effect his words had on me. “It’s important on a yacht for things to be orderly and precise.”
“The basket of junk you keep in the cabinet under the sink says otherwise.”
“My personal space is a different story,” I said as I finished pouring. I had a lot of products, like moisturizers and serums and cleansers and toners, and not quite enough space to keep them organized.
Not that I would keep them organized, but it seemed like a convenient excuse.
“I noticed.”
Why had he noticed? I’d never had a man make any kind of remark about my slovenly ways. To be fair, I’d never shared living space with a man before.
It didn’t seem to bother him—he said it more like he thought it was adorable that I was a neat freak in public while being a private slob.
While I reminded myself that I wasn’t allowed to have that fluttery feeling I was currently experiencing, my body was making a very convincing counterargument about why some rules should be ignored.
It’s not just that he’s hot. Which he is. Like, surface-of-the-sun hot, my body said. He’s funny and nice and you know that usually the universe doesn’t give with both hands.
Which was true. Thinking of Hunter being nice reminded me of our first interaction. I reached into my skort pocket and got his handkerchief and handed it to him.
“Here. And thank you.”
He took it from me and put it into the pocket of his shorts. “You could have just left this in our cabin.”
I should not have had a thrill that he called the cabin ours. It was ours. That was just a statement of fact.
But when Hunter said it? It made me feel like I was a part of something with him. “I don’t get why you have a handkerchief. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” he said. “And you?”
“Twenty-four. And we are both too young to be carrying something like that around.”
He grinned at me. “It’s a good thing to do because you never know when a beautiful woman might need one.”
I nearly knocked over the wineglasses I had just set on the serving tray.
Thomas entered the main salon and his gaze immediately landed on Hunter. “There you are. Stop chatting up Lucky and get those suitcases downstairs. The captain will make anchor and I’ll need your help assembling the floating deck.”
“Sure thing,” Hunter said and went back over to the luggage. Thomas stepped out onto the deck and my brain was still scrambling as it tried to parse out precisely what Hunter may or may not have meant with his statement. Did that mean he thought I was beautiful? Or did he mean he might need it for a future encounter with an unknown beautiful woman?
And I couldn’t even go and talk to Georgia about it because I knew she was interested in him. Would she see it as a betrayal? Friends weren’t always easy to come by on superyachts. She was the first friend I’d made over the last year and I didn’t want to lose her.
She already knows you’re attracted to him, that insistent voice inside me said. She would probably back off if you told her that you were interested.
But what would be the point?
Captain Carl strode through the main salon and nodded to me before passing into the dining room on his way to the bridge. I put a hand over my stomach. What if he’d been in here just a couple minutes earlier? If he had seen Hunter and me together, what would he have thought? Would he have disciplined us?
It was like a cosmic reminder that nothing could happen with Hunter even if we both wanted it.
Which was still debatable.
I knew how things would go and so I had to find a way to stuff down my raging hormones or I was going to lose my job.