Chapter Eleven Lucky
Chapter Eleven
Lucky
The rest of the party went well. The guests danced and laughed and the entire crew came up to sing “Happy Birthday” to Mrs. Carmine. I tried not to make eye contact with Hunter, as I figured that was the safer choice.
Especially with Captain Carl here, singing loudly and off-key.
I had come so close to doing something totally embarrassing before Hunter had left to do dishes. It had felt so good to be close to him and I’d craved more. If he hadn’t gone when he did ... I didn’t know what might have happened.
After they ate the cake, Mrs. Carmine opened her present from her husband, which was a tennis bracelet with diamonds so big you could see where the Titanic had hit them. The guests drank another round of champagne in honor of the birthday girl and then finally called it a night.
Mrs. Carmine thanked me again. “This was so lovely. Thank you.”
She was an extremely wealthy woman. She had probably had birthday parties lavish enough to rival most people’s weddings, but I appreciated her gratitude. “It was my pleasure.”
And it really had been.
Georgia was on lates, meaning she would stay up to finish the cleaning and be available in case one of the guests needed her. She would also need to get everything ready for breakfast the following morning.
I could have gone to bed but I felt too keyed up to return to my cabin. Especially if Hunter was there in some state of undress. I didn’t have enough control over my rebellious hormones yet. Work would help.
Georgia and I took down the decorations while Emilie carried the dishes and silverware down to the galley to be washed.
Probably by Hunter. I wondered if someone else had shown him how to wash the dishes. It was self-explanatory but I imagined that Georgia might have taken advantage of the situation and found a way to wrap her arms around him to demonstrate the exact strokes he should make when scrubbing the china.
Trying to think about something else, I noticed that my second stew seemed grumpy, which wasn’t like her. “Are you okay?”
“It is so annoying cleaning up after people so old their birth certificates are probably expired.”
“Georgia!” I said, looking around to make sure that no one had overheard her.
“What?”
“It’s bad enough that I’ve got Emilie doing that. Don’t you start.”
She frowned. “It’s not my fault Mrs. Carmine went to her prom with Abraham Lincoln.”
I tugged at a streamer and it fluttered down to the deck. “They are so nice. Stop it.”
After a moment’s hesitation she let out a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. They are nice. I think it’s just a defense mechanism that kicks in when I’m tired and hungry. It makes things easier if I can be angry with the charter guests. They’re usually so awful that if I make fun of them in my head it makes the work not seem so bad.”
In a way that made a strange sort of sense to me. “That’s fine but keep it in your head and not coming out of your mouth.”
“That’s never really been my strong suit,” she said. “You know that I say exactly what I’m thinking.”
“I do know,” I agreed, gathering up the streamers to put them into the trash bag she had brought up to the deck.
“And as an example of always speaking my mind, what is going on with you and Hunter?”
I hadn’t been expecting that. I froze, gripping the edges of the trash bag tightly, wishing I could disappear. For a moment I couldn’t speak, my throat closed off. Then I finally managed to sputter, “Nothing. Nothing is going on with me and Hunter. Why would you ask me that?”
Was I being that completely obvious? Did the captain know?
No, he couldn’t possibly be aware of my crush or he would have said something about it to me already.
“I saw the two of you dancing and I’ve seen love scenes in movies with less heat.”
My eyes widened, my anxiety making my heart throb. Had the rest of the crew seen us? “The Carmines requested that we dance together.” My voice was practically a whisper, I was so worried.
“Did they?” She said it like she didn’t believe me.
“Yes,” I said, forcing the word out. “Why else would I have danced with him?”
“Because he’s God’s gift to women and you would have been a fool of the highest degree to miss the chance to dance with him?”
She wasn’t wrong. He had been so strong and warm and dreamy and ... I shoved the streamers into the trash bag with more force than was necessary. “It only happened because the guests asked us to.”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t believe me and I didn’t blame her because I didn’t believe me, either. “I think you’re trying to earn points.”
I had to refrain from rolling my eyes hard enough to capsize the yacht. “I’m not participating in that nonsense you and Emilie have going on, and I think you should take that list down and knock it off. If the captain found out ...”
“He won’t,” she interjected. “You worry too much. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“My mom, my grandparents, and every man I’ve ever dated,” I said.
“Add me to that list.”
“No more lists!” I said and she laughed.
“You know, it would be very easy for you to hook up with Hunter,” she said as she deflated another balloon. “With you two sharing a cabin and all. No one would know.”
She pointed up at the camera that was facing the sundeck. There were cameras all over the ship, and the viewing screens were in the bridge and the crew mess. It was a way for the crew to keep tabs on the guests and their needs when we took breaks.
It also meant that the captain could see us most of the time. The only private places without cameras were the guest and crew cabins.
“I would know,” I told her.
“Why do the new owners have a rule about not having a root and then put a man and a woman in a cabin together? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Having a root? It must have been Australian for hooking up. Most of Georgia’s slang words were about sex. “Probably because they think we can control ourselves.” I was perilously close to that statement not being true but Georgia did not need the encouragement.
Emilie came back onto the deck at that moment with a spray bottle and washcloths and had apparently caught the tail end of our conversation. “I’ll trade rooms with you, Lucky.”
It didn’t require much imagination to figure out how that would end up. “I think we’ll keep things the way they are now.”
She looked very disappointed.
I said, “Emilie, why don’t you go ahead and head down for the night. I’ll see you at six tomorrow morning.” She immediately set down her cleaning supplies and hurried downstairs.
A few seconds later Francois ran past us, saying something into his walkie-talkie, looking frantic.
“What was that about?” Georgia asked and I shrugged. No idea.
When Thomas emerged from the main salon, she went over and blocked his path. “What’s happening?”
“Some of the stabilizers stopped functioning. The engineers are working on it. It will be fine. I’m sure they’ll get it fixed quickly.”
Would they really get fixed soon or was he trying to reassure us? The seas weren’t too choppy and the skies were clear, but I did notice that the boat was rocking a bit more than normal. I’d been so busy chatting with Georgia about Hunter that I hadn’t realized it.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked and I nodded.
I lifted my wrists. “I’ve got my bands on.” I always wore them.
“You should go take your meds before it gets worse.”
She was right. It was fairly late and I knew I should go to bed, given that I’d also have to be up at six o’clock. I had wanted to use this time apart from Hunter to regain my composure, to remember myself and my position and what I was doing all of this for.
“You’ve got this?” I asked.
“I do. Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The rocking on the boat became stronger as I headed down to my cabin. I again debated over whether I should knock but decided that Hunter and I were going to have to figure out a way to coexist in our space and not treat it like we were guests in our own cabin. He might not even be in there. With the stabilizers malfunctioning they might have needed him in the engine room to help.
I went inside and shut the cabin door behind me. I let out a sigh of relief when I realized the room was empty. I reached for the bathroom door but it swung open on its own.
There stood Hunter, a towel slung low on his hips, just out of the shower.
I could only gape as my heart exploded against my rib cage. My mouth went utterly dry.
Water dripped from his wet hair, his chest and arms still damp with drops creating tiny streams on his skin.
If someone had asked me if he could have somehow become even sexier, I would have said no. Such a thing didn’t seem possible.
But just-out-of-the-shower Hunter was proving me completely wrong.
There were so many things I wanted to do at once—I wanted to run my fingers across his wet skin, lick those drops away, drag my lips across his muscles.
Why was the cabin so hot? Was it always this hot?
He seemed utterly unaware of the fact that he had disconnected my limbs from my spinal column. “Hey, Lucky. What are you doing?”
Thinking of ways to ravage you.
I had to swallow twice before I could form words. “I was, uh, that is to say, um ...”
Why had I come down here? And why was he standing there like he didn’t have a care in the world? Did he not know how he looked and the effect he had on mortal women?
And if he made one wrong move, that towel would slip off completely and then ...
“Medicine!” I practically shrieked the word. “I came down here to get medicine. My medicine. For ... medicinal purposes.”
He gave me a slight smile and stepped into the cabin, letting me into the bathroom.
I hesitated, though, because I didn’t trust myself to walk by him without doing something that most likely would alarm him.
My hormones were chanting do it! while reminding me of all the flirtatious things he’d said to me. That he seemed like he might be interested in me if not for the rules.
Which felt ridiculous because I was not the kind of girl men gravitated toward. I wasn’t a troll or anything, but I knew I wasn’t as pretty as Georgia and Emilie. I’d had a couple of boyfriends, I’d dated, but I wasn’t the woman who walked into a party and made heads turn.
Men with torsos that would make Greek gods weep in envy dated women like that. The prettiest girls in the room.
Right now you are the prettiest girl in the room, my body whispered, and it was hard to argue with that logic.
He took a step forward, clearing the path for me. He was probably misinterpreting my reluctance as something else and was doing the gentlemanly thing and moving as far out of the way as he could.
Then the boat pitched hard to the right, and given how little control I currently had over my body, I realized that I was about to hit my head hard on something.
But then Hunter was there, grabbing me and bracing us against the wall, holding me in place so that I wouldn’t fall. Saving me again. He easily matched his balance to the movement of the ship while I would have been unconscious on the floor if not for him.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome.” He was finally pressed against me and I felt his words rumbling up from his very bare, still wet chest. It was the most incredible feeling in the world and everything I had hoped it would be.
His nose barely grazed the tip of mine, sending my pulse into overdrive. That had to have been an accident. It had only happened because we were so close, with him pinning me up against the wall so that I wouldn’t fall down.
What was that scent? He used the same soap and shampoo as the rest of us. He must have brought some kind of expensive-smelling cologne with him. Something masculine and delicious. I wanted to bury my face in his strong neck and get a good whiff.
Blood rushed through my ears and I knew I was breathing faster and harder than normal. My core tightened, my nerve endings exploding with excitement and anticipation.
I couldn’t help but glance down in hope that his towel had perhaps slipped farther or fallen off completely but it was firmly in place. He must have superglued that thing on. I tamped down my ridiculous disappointment.
It was then that I noticed that, just as I’d feared, my fingers were flat against his abdomen muscles and I didn’t remember putting them there.
I jerked my fingers away, as if he’d scalded me, and let my hands drop down to my sides. “Sorry.”
He gave me a slow, sexy smile that made butterflies take wing in my stomach. “Don’t be.”