Chapter Sixteen Lucky
Chapter Sixteen
Lucky
I couldn’t read Hunter’s expression. He seemed more serious than usual. He had put his arm on the back of my chair and it was almost like he was touching me.
Georgia stood suddenly and grabbed me by the arm. “We’re going to the loo.”
Before I could protest she was pulling me behind her, forcing me to follow.
“What are you doing?” I asked when we got to the bathroom and she practically pushed me inside. The room was tiny with a couple of stalls, which were both occupied.
“Tell me what is going on with the hottie yachtie. Who saw who naked?” she asked.
“What?” I asked, alarmed.
“There is this level of awkwardness with you two and I’m assuming that one of you walked in on the other while changing.”
I could feel my cheeks flushing, a fact that didn’t escape Georgia’s notice.
She crowed, “I knew it! Who was it?”
“I saw ...” I let my words trail off.
“You saw him in all his naked glory? You haven’t shared any of this with me yet and you call yourself my friend? Spill, now. I want every sordid detail.”
This wasn’t any of her business, especially when I knew she was interested in him. I wasn’t going to fuel her imagination. “There aren’t any sordid details because I’ve only seen him without his shirt on a couple of times. It’s no big deal.”
Even though it had been the biggest of deals.
She gave me a disbelieving look, and rightfully so. “You like him.”
“Of course I like him. He is a nice person and a good bunkmate.” Was I being casual enough?
Apparently not. She shook her head. “You’re a terrible liar. Are you at least kissing him?”
“No. Captain Carl was very clear about that.”
“Well, you already know what I think about his rule.” She opened her clutch and pulled out her lip gloss, reapplying it in the dingy mirror. “I’m not kissing him and neither is Emilie.”
That filled me with a relief that I hoped wasn’t evident on my face. It must not have been, because she kept talking.
“If none of us are kissing him, that means Hunter isn’t kissing anybody and that seems like a crime that should be punishable by the Hague.”
“I think he’ll survive a few months of not making out with his coworkers,” I shot back, more sarcastic than I intended.
She finished up and put the lip gloss back into her bag. She pulled out her phone and began scrolling through it. “Somebody should be getting some action. The closest I’ve come to it so far was Francois asking me earlier if I wanted to be the mother of his second child.”
“Gross,” I said with a frown. “What did you say back?”
“I said given that I hadn’t had a full-frontal lobotomy, the answer was no.” She paused whatever she was doing and said, “This one has potential,” before swiping right.
“Are you on a dating app right now?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.
“Yes. And they should come with a drop-down menu so that you can indicate how desperate you are.” She looked up at me. “I’m assuming desperation is part of your problem. I know you are a Goody Two-shoes who loves rules more than she loves anything else, but you’ve been without Vitamin D for so long that you’re going to implode if you don’t at least make out with somebody soon.”
It took me a second to figure out what she’d meant by “Vitamin D,” but given that it was Georgia, it didn’t take long.
And she might have had a point. “I think it has been too long since I kissed someone.” There was a reason for that. One Georgia didn’t know about.
“Yes, you bloody dag,” she said affectionately.
I’d heard her call people dags before and knew it meant that she was questioning my intelligence.
“And you like Hunter,” she added, expecting me to confirm it.
I couldn’t help but do just that. Although there had to be a rational explanation for why I liked him. “Maybe it’s like that Florence Nightingale effect. He helped me during a medical crisis, so now I’m attracted to him.” I’d told her all about my first encounter with Hunter.
I could have sworn I heard her repeat bloody dag under her breath, but she said, “Go on and tell yourself whatever lies you need to in order to sleep through the night. Which also seems like a shame, by the way. That you share a room with that scorching spunk and you spend your time sleeping. I would—”
I cut her off. “I know what you would do.”
Talking to Georgia about this situation had made me feel worse, not better. I had openly admitted to another person that I found Hunter attractive. Which made me feel like my defenses were weakening.
Erasing my boundary lines.
He was making me want to forget all about my past and take a chance on someone new. As if this relationship would somehow be the only one that didn’t end in despair and heartbreak. I hadn’t told Georgia about the losses I’d suffered because I didn’t think she’d understand. She might want me to get over it and use Hunter to do so.
I changed the subject. “Speaking of people not seeing what’s right in front of them, if you’re not going to date him, you should put poor Pieter out of his misery.”
“You want me to shoot him?”
“No,” I said with a laugh. “I personally think you should give the man a chance, but if you’re not into it, let him know.”
A bunch of women entered the bathroom at once, crowding us. It made me want to get out of this place.
“Maybe I should go back to the boat,” I said, also worried about what might happen if I prolonged my exposure to Hunter in a more laid-back environment without the distraction of work.
“If you do, make Hunter take you back. We’re in a country full of Francoises.” She pulled the bathroom door open and I followed her back to the table.
And it seemed like Hunter’s whole face lit up when he saw me. That was a dangerous sight.
Georgia and I retook our seats and he returned his arm to the back of my chair. If it had been anybody else, it would have seemed like a possessive move. As if he were telling the other men in the pub to back off.
I was not going to read into things.
Starting now .
Pieter leaned across the table to talk to Georgia. It sounded like he was asking her to go on an official date. I felt bad for him that he liked her so much and she wasn’t going to give him a chance. He was cute and nice. She wasn’t holding herself to the captain’s rules, so that wasn’t the reason.
But from the stories she had shared with me, it seemed that she preferred men who treated her badly and I wasn’t sure why. She was an amazing, fun, witty, warm person and deserved to be with a man who recognized that and appreciated her.
“I don’t think you and I are a good idea,” Georgia said in the nicest way possible.
“Are you sure I don’t meet your koala-fications?” Pieter asked playfully, but to his dismay, she leaned across the table and ruffled his hair like he was her pet.
“You’re sweet,” she said.
Hunter let out a small groan. “That’s the death knell.”
“Was that your influence?” I asked. “The koala thing?”
“While you two were in the bathroom, he asked me the best way to flirt with women.”
“And your advice was puns? That was bad advice.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It works.”
I wanted to argue with him, but truth be told, it was working on me. I thought it was adorable.
Our food arrived and I dug in, suddenly starving. But to my disappointment it was only okay. I’d had much better.
“You look bummed,” he observed.
Like he was always paying close attention to me. “I can’t wait until we have a charter that gives us a night off in Italy. I’m in a committed relationship with pasta.”
“You’re saying my rival is spaghetti?”
“Better hope not, because you’d lose.”
He was about to reply when a girl at the bar lost her balance and tumbled to the ground from her stool. He immediately got up and went over to help her.
I shouldn’t have been impressed by this—it was just a decent, human thing to do—but none of the rest of the crew had even noticed.
After he made sure that she was okay, he came back over and sat down.
“You are so nice,” I said, unable to help myself. “That’s so unfair. Nobody should be nice and hot and have two ways to get free stuff.”
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes dancing. “You think I’m hot?”
Realizing what I’d just admitted to, I immediately tried to downplay my admission. “Relax. You, of all people, do not need to go fishing for compliments.”
“Would you let me catch one if I was?”
“You are not the kind of man who needs to be complimented.” He had a mirror. He knew how he looked.
“Everyone needs that, Lucky. Like you should know that you have one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen.”
I was simply going to ignore the way my heart was currently flopping around wildly inside my chest, like a gasping fish on land. I couldn’t acknowledge him saying kind things to me. I knew where we would end up. “Georgia says that constant compliments turn guys into raving egomaniacs.”
“Do you think that about me?”
“No, which is why I said the nice thing.”
The waitress brought our check and Pieter grabbed for it. I guessed he was trying to impress Georgia but she didn’t even notice.
With dinner done I knew exactly how the rest of the evening would go.
“Let’s go to a club!” Emilie said.
Right on cue.
Everybody was standing up and I got my purse and followed the group out. I hung back, creating some distance between myself and the others.
Hunter noticed and slowed down to walk alongside me. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the ship,” I said. I registered that he was the only one who’d figured out what I was up to. Nobody else seemed to have even realized that I was gone.
“Can I walk with you?”
“I’m a big girl. I don’t need you to watch over me.” Then I remembered Georgia’s advice that this was a country full of Francoises and took his offer. “But if you need to go back, we can walk together.”
“I have to get to bed,” he said. “I’ve got a hike in the morning.”
That made me smile and I saw that had been his intent. “Okay. But it’s not a hike. Just a walk in nature that will end up back in the main part of town.”
“You don’t want to say goodbye to anybody?” He nodded toward our crewmembers, who were getting farther and farther away.
“I already told Georgia earlier that I was going to duck out.” We took a left at the corner, walking toward the docks.
“So you’re a fan of the Irish goodbye and the Irish hello.”
I blinked in confusion. I knew what an Irish goodbye was—leaving a party without saying anything. “What’s an Irish hello?”
“That’s where you don’t even go to the party.”
I laughed. “You’re right, I am a fan of that. I’ve always been a bit of a homebody, and currently the yacht is my home. Plus, I know how this night will end up for the rest of the crew.”
“Oh?”
“Dinner and drinks, then off to a club to drink the place dry, and then stumbling back to the yacht, where they will finish off that champagne in the hot tub while playing drinking and kissing games. Like they’re still in middle school.”
It had never held any appeal for me, and even less so now that Hunter would be in the mix. Even if I couldn’t date him, I also didn’t want to watch him make out with Georgia or Emilie because someone had dared him to do it.
Not only because my newfound jealousy might prompt me to do something possibly felonious but also because I didn’t want to be party to the crew so flagrantly breaking the rules. I had no desire to be in a position where I would have to lie to the captain if he ever asked me about it. It was better for me not to know.
Hunter turned the conversation to more neutral subjects—asking my opinion on the pub, what was (or wasn’t) happening between Pieter and Georgia, about past charter experiences that I’d had.
And when he closed the cabin door behind him, and despite the fact that this thought should have occurred to me before, I realized that I wasn’t going to be alone tonight. He wouldn’t have anchor watch because we were docked. I was used to him not being here in the evenings.
“What’s the plan now?” he asked.
I did not have a plan. I had end goals. Like staying away from tempting boys and keeping my job. “I, uh, was going to watch a movie.”
“Which one?”
“I was thinking Guys and Dolls .” There was an awkward silence and I felt obligated to invite him to join me. “Do you want to watch it with me?”
“Yeah. But I’m going to shower first. Walking around in that heat ...” He let his voice trail off as his gaze flicked over me. He took a step toward me and there was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before.
It was . . . smoldering.
He pointed his thumb toward the bathroom. “Do you want to—”
And suddenly I was terrified of what he was going to say next. My anxiety wrapped itself around my throat like a giant snake. I couldn’t find out how he intended to finish that sentence.
“I’m going to get snacks!” I announced and left the cabin as quickly as I could.
As I went into the crew mess and started gathering up chips and popcorn, I wanted to kick myself. I had totally overreacted in that moment. He had probably meant to ask me if I wanted to use the bathroom first.
But a part of me was absolutely convinced he’d been about to ask me if I wanted to join him.
And I didn’t know what my answer would have been.