Chapter Thirteen Lucky
Chapter Thirteen
Lucky
After my close encounter of the potentially catastrophic kind with Hunter, I knew my best bet would be to steer clear of him. The next morning I got up quietly, got ready, and then went into the galley, desperate for coffee.
I grabbed a couple of muffins and filled a disposable cup, intending to go watch the sun rise. Deciding to be nice, I filled an extra cup for Emilie and added three sugars and some cream, the way she liked it.
But as I was walking by my cabin, I heard Hunter’s alarm going off. Maybe he was in the bathroom and couldn’t reach it.
I went inside and he was lying on his bunk, unmoving.
Setting down the coffee and muffins, I walked over and nudged him, making sure not to let my hands linger. “Hunter, your alarm is going off.”
He groaned into his pillow and the sound did strange things to my abdomen. “Tired,” he grumbled.
“Here.” I held out the extra coffee. I’d get Emilie another one. He pried one eye open and then pushed himself up on his elbow to take it from me. He had been wearing a shirt when we watched the movie, but he must have removed it before he’d gone to sleep. Bare chested. Again. I smothered a sigh and instead said, “A little starter fluid for the morning impaired.”
“Plank you very much,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at him, but I did smile.
“This is a little sugary,” he said.
“That’s probably because I didn’t make it for you. It’s how Emilie likes it.” When he raised both of his eyebrows in surprise, as if he didn’t think I should be getting coffee for my junior stew, I rushed to add, “My job is to anticipate the needs of people around me, including the crew.”
I handed him one of my blueberry muffins. He gave me a weird look that I didn’t know how to interpret initially, but then I started putting two and two together.
“You’re not one of those guys who doesn’t eat sugar, are you? I don’t understand why people are so against it. Who was there for you when things went bad in your life? Comforted you? It wasn’t kale.”
He gave me a sleepy grin and took a sip. “I like to eat sweet things.”
Air solidified inside my lungs. I very much wanted to be devoured by him.
“I’m a little surprised you eat muffins,” he added.
“Of course I do,” I said, trying to ignore the way my heart had jumped into my throat and was fluttering wildly. “Eating muffins is a way to basically have cake for breakfast without people asking you if you’re okay.”
That earned me a lazy laugh from him. “The last woman I dated wouldn’t eat carbs at all.”
My feelings very quickly shifted from excitement to not knowing how to respond. What did that have to do with anything? Obviously his last girlfriend and I were not in the same category. To quote Sesame Street , one of these things was not like the other.
He had to have meant it as a general observation that he was applying to all women. Not to women he wanted to date. Because he and I were friends. Bunkmates.
Nothing more.
“That’s sad,” I finally said, my brain still parsing through all the possible interpretations of what he’d just said, regardless of how improbable my conclusions might be.
Hunter had another sip of his coffee. “She was obsessed with being a size zero.”
That was one thing I had going in my favor. I did not care about my size or whether I was too fat or too skinny for someone else. I was just me.
I had my nonna to thank for that. “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”
Another chuckle from him. “Why do we have to get up this early again?”
“We need to be ready to go before the guests wake up.”
“Why don’t they sleep in? Aren’t they on vacation?”
An excellent question. “Even if they sleep in, we still have to get up early just in case.”
He took a couple of bites of his blueberry muffin and then placed it and his coffee on the built-in shelf behind him. He turned onto his back, putting his hands behind his head. His blanket caught and was pulled down as he moved, the top resting on his hips.
I had to tear my eyes away from his chest. That had felt deliberate. Like he’d done it on purpose just to torment me.
He said, “Despite the ungodly hour, this day is starting out pretty well. A movie date last night, her bringing me breakfast in bed this morning.”
“That wasn’t a date,” I quickly countered, ignoring the way my heart seemed to be skipping beats.
“We watched a movie together and then wound up back at my place. I’d consider that a successful date.”
I knew he was teasing me but I couldn’t return his banter. It felt like if I went along with his joke, he might think I was pathetic enough to hope that it had been a real date.
After a beat, like he had been waiting for my response, he turned on his side and reached for a medicine bottle and his water container. He took a couple of pills out and swallowed them, chasing it down with water.
“Adderall,” he offered. “For my ADHD.”
“Did you disclose your medications to the captain?” Maritime law required that he do so. It was absolutely none of my business, and he would have been well within his rights to say as much to me.
He didn’t.
“Yes, I told the captain.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to be fired.”
Now he hit me with the full, blinding glare of his perfect smile. “Is that your way of saying that you would miss me if I was gone?”
I hadn’t known him for very long but I realized that I absolutely would miss him if he was let go. He had somehow found a way to sneak into my heart and steal a tiny piece of it for himself. He had made himself matter to me.
I liked him.
But it would be ridiculous to say as much.
“You should get up,” was what I settled on.
He grinned again, with that look of his, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking even if I didn’t speak the words. “I will.”
Nodding, I grabbed my breakfast and coffee and turned to go.
When I opened the door, he said, “Can we watch another movie together tonight?”
I would love that more than anything in the whole world.
“Sure.” Feeling the need to protect my too-easily-swayed heart, I added, “But it’s not a date.”
“Whatever you say, Lucky.”
I was looking forward to establishing a new routine with Hunter, going back to our cabin at the end of the night to watch a musical together.
Thomas inadvertently put an end to that.
As the greenest deckhand, Hunter was assigned to the late-night anchor watch. I could have given myself that same shift but Emilie still needed supervision around guests and for someone to make sure that she was actually working.
Georgia did not supervise Emilie when the two of them worked together. So it had to be me.
Hunter and I were, for lack of a better term, two ships passing in the night. He would have been so proud.
Over the rest of the week, I found myself often wondering whether or not Hunter and Georgia were taking advantage of all those quiet late nights together. Those thoughts caused a pang of jealousy so deep and so sharp that it surprised me. In former relationships I’d never been the jealous type, even when I’d had reason to be.
Which was a pretty big indication to me that this new schedule was for the best. I had dreams, a plan, and I needed to be working toward that. To help get us the biggest tip possible.
I shouldn’t have been thinking about Hunter.
He didn’t help matters, though. He made an effort to find me and spend time with me during my dinner breaks. Those breaks were never consistent—my routine was based entirely on the guests’ wants and needs—but every time I had the chance to grab myself a bite to eat, he was there. Asking me about my day, how things were going, telling me what he had been working on. He always sat next to me and pretty much ignored the rest of the crew.
Our conversations were superficial, surface level, but I still enjoyed talking to him. The puns he’d throw my way. The way he would tease me.
I told myself it was a coincidence that we ate dinner at the same time, but deep down I knew it couldn’t be.
Then I went and broke the superficial rule. “What do you and Georgia do when you’re up late together?” I found myself asking.
“Work.”
“What kind of work?”
“The kind on the lists that you and Thomas leave for us to do.” He studied me for a moment and then asked, “Lucky Salerno, are you jealous?”
“What?” I quickly responded, hoping my cheeks weren’t currently betraying me. “No! Why would you think that?”
“My mom always says if it walks and quacks, it’s a duck.”
I was very much a duck but didn’t tell him that.
And if the dinner conversations weren’t distracting enough, I found that him just existing was enough to send me into overdrive. I would wake up early in the morning, hurrying to turn off my alarm so that it wouldn’t bother him. When I stood up I always stole a glance at him. His hair tousled, his face relaxed, his marvelous torso on display, and more times than I could count I had taken a very cold shower and stood in the stream until my heart calmed back down. The shock of that water on my heated skin was the best solution I’d found so far.
Hunter Smith was the very definition of the word temptation .
Drop-off day came quickly. We were heading to the harbor at Saint-Tropez. During our midmorning snack half of the crew decided to go out that night to Paddy’s Pub on the marina. We wouldn’t pick up another charter for a couple of days, so this was their chance to party.
I intended to celebrate the end of this charter by staying in my cabin and eating chocolate while watching a movie.
Captain Carl came in the room and we all fell silent, but he’d obviously overheard us. “You’re intending to go out tonight as a group?”
Kai was the one who nodded and answered, “We are.”
“Good, good. Crew unity is important. It’s something I used to always tell Marika. You should be looking for ways to bring the crew together.” Now the captain was pointing his remarks specifically at me. I remembered Marika complaining about it on more than one occasion, but she’d never done anything to fulfill his request.
“I clean the boat and wait hand and foot on his guests. I don’t need to be the cruise director for the crew, too,” she had grumbled.
I straightened my shoulders, ready to do as he’d asked. I would find a way to make us more united. Organize some kind of team-building activity. Maybe tomorrow.
But it meant I would have to go out with the group tonight. I couldn’t make them run some obstacle course or climb a mountain if I wasn’t willing to go to a bar with them.
Hunter wasn’t there so I decided to find him and let him know about our plans. In part because I knew I’d be more likely to go if he was going, too.
That probably should have concerned me.
I could have called him over the radio but didn’t. I wanted to see him.
And I got my wish. He was in the garage with the water toys, shirt off, doing pull-ups on an overhead bar. It was a glorious sight, all those powerful muscles contracting and tightening. I could have set up a booth and sold tickets and raised all the money I needed for my bakery in a single day.
Realizing that I was currently bordering on stalkerish, I cleared my throat to let him know that I was there.
He hopped down and grabbed his shirt, putting it back on. “I know, I know. Shirts on during charter.”
That suddenly seemed like a stupid rule.
“I just like exercising,” he added.
My unthinking response was, “I can tell.”
This was what happened when I let my body run the show. We said bonkers things.
“Do you like exercising?” he asked.
I liked watching him exercise. Did that count? “I do crunches sometimes. Cap’n in the morning, Nestlé at night.”
He laughed and came over to me. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“The crew is going out tonight and I came to invite you along.”
“Lucky Salerno, are you asking me out on another date? I don’t know, things seem to be moving pretty quickly between us.”
I would not be baited. He loved tormenting me. “Ha ha. Everyone is going. Not just me.”
“You say everyone is going, I say it sounds like a date.”
“Not a date. We’re leaving at nine o’clock, where we’ll then go out and drink our body weights in alcohol.”
“I’ll be there, ready to dock and roll.”
“No puns,” I reminded him.
“There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m already giving you the best that I’ve yacht.”
I let out a little groan while he laughed. “Nine o’clock,” I reminded him.
“Nine o’clock,” he repeated. “For our date.”
I shook my head and left the garage. Despite me repeatedly assuring him this wasn’t a date, my heart was currently beating like it was.