Chapter Thirty Lucky
Chapter Thirty
Lucky
“Hunter told you we were dating?” I shrieked. “We’re not!”
Everything was taking on a surreal sheen. I knew what the truth was, but her assuredness was making me question myself.
Now Georgia looked alarmed. “Don’t get upset. I believe you! You guys are not dating.”
I knew why she was concerned. I usually kept my freak-outs private.
You don’t keep them from Hunter.
That was a problem for another time. Right now I had to worry about the fact that she had either misunderstood him or was drunker than either one of us realized and had made it up.
“Hunter told you, used the actual words, that he and I are together?”
She nodded.
Did the rest of the crew know about this?
More importantly, did the captain know?
“I distinctly remember that he said you two were ... ‘involved.’ That was the word he used.” She nodded, pleased with herself.
“Why would he do that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why he would tell all of us but not you.”
If he thought we were dating, I probably should have been the first person he told.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she added.
It did not. Although it did explain why Emilie was being so openly hostile toward me. She must have thought I was trying to get the highest-point guy on the sCrew List for myself.
Then another thought occurred to me. “What if Emilie tells her uncle?”
“I don’t think she will. It would draw too much attention to what she and I are doing. We’re all better off if he doesn’t know that anyone is hooking up.”
But she couldn’t be certain. Why would Hunter potentially put both of our jobs in jeopardy? “I don’t understand why he did this.”
“Maybe he wanted me and Emilie to back off,” she said. That was a reasonable explanation. Neither one of them had been very shy in their attempts to land him.
While I was considering this, she said, “Have you seen those rom-coms where couples pretend to date? They call it ... fake-dating. That could be what’s happening.”
“I don’t know if it can be fake-dating if only one person is aware of it.” I was going to have to get to the bottom of this.
“You know what happens whenever people fake-date in the movies, don’t you? They always fall in love.” She had a dreamy look on her face.
Nobody was going to fall in love. That I might have already fallen was beside the point. I had to protect my heart and I knew what a danger Hunter would be to it. “Everyone knows?” I didn’t know why I was asking a question she’d already answered.
It was like I just needed to hear it all more than once so that I knew it was real.
“Oh yes. Whenever the two of you sneak off to your cabin instead of hanging out with us, everyone assumes that you two are ... what is a nice way of putting this ... expressing yourselves through the physical act of love.”
“I . . . we . . . that’s not . . . I . . .”
“It’s called a complete sentence, Lucky. You should try it.”
Oh, I had a complete sentence, all right. “I’m going to make him set everyone straight.”
She took another sip of her champagne. “I figure that there’s only one way to resolve this. Kiss the sexy man you live with.”
That was so far from where my mind was at that it threw me off. “How is that a resolution?”
“You need to see if there’s a spark there. If you aren’t attracted to each other, then you’re just stressing about nothing.”
That was so not an issue on my end. “Stressing about nothing is kind of my specialty. And kissing him won’t solve anything.”
“Disagree. If nothing else, you can tell me about it and answer the burning questions that I have regarding whether or not he’s a good kisser.”
I had no doubts on that front. The fact that I was ready to combust every time he got close to me said that if we did kiss, I would probably just dissolve into a million tiny pieces and scatter all over the ocean.
I did still have that tiny fear of mine. That he was such a nice guy, wanted so much to be of service to others, that he might kiss me because he could tell that I wanted it. “Hunter wouldn’t kiss me just to be nice, right? Like, what if he kissed me just because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings?”
She shot me an incredulous expression. “Have you met men before? They don’t do that.”
We couldn’t continue our conversation because Thomas and Pieter suddenly splashed into the tub, getting water all over the deck.
“We’ll clean that up later,” the bosun mumbled before he reached for Georgia’s champagne bottle and drank directly from it. She smacked him on the arm and told him he was gross.
A few seconds later the rest of the crew showed up, including Hunter, and everyone climbed into the hot tub.
I felt very strange—I was both angry with him for lying to the crew and yet still had the urge to plaster my mouth over his.
Maybe Georgia was right and the only way to work things out was to kiss him.
But I needed a bit of time to process what she had told me before he and I had our inevitable confrontation.
Because he was going to explain why he had done it.
And why he hadn’t seen fit to clue me in.
Emilie slid down into the hot tub so that she was right next to Hunter. She was wearing what looked like dental floss with a couple of lace doilies to cover her bits. My black tankini made me feel like a nun in comparison.
And even though I was mad at him, I did wonder what Hunter would think if I wore a swimsuit like hers.
Despite my inadvertent modesty, his eyes were constantly on me. I felt his gaze even when I was speaking to someone else. I had to remind myself of his lie because I was melting from his intensity.
Everybody was getting progressively drunker and wilder. Francois had put some music on and the thumping bass seemed to shake the entire ship. The crew were dancing and kissing and it was quickly headed in an out-of-control direction. Sometimes they made me feel like I was a passenger on a floating brothel.
“Let’s play Truth or Dare!” Emilie said as she looked at Hunter. Now that she’d gotten him into the hot tub, she obviously planned on taking advantage of it.
“We’re not eleven,” I said to Georgia. “And if Captain Carl comes out, he’s going to fire all of us.”
“That’s part of what makes it so fun,” she said. “The thrill of possibly getting caught.”
“I’ll go first!” Kai said, and although I wasn’t sure, he looked a little annoyed about the way Emilie was watching Hunter. He dared Thomas to go down and run naked back and forth on the passerelle.
The bosun didn’t need to be asked twice and ran down the stairs, nearly slipping and falling twice, but ran the short length with his trunks completely off, to the delight of the crew.
When he returned, trunks back on, he made Francois twerk in Andre’s face, something neither one of them seemed to enjoy. Francois asked Emilie, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
That seemed out of character.
“Who do you fancy on the ship?”
“Hunter.” Her answer was immediate. No hesitation. That green-eyed monster inside me bared its teeth.
“Somebody should get that girl a thirst aid kit,” Georgia stage-whispered to me. I wondered if her pun was a result of Hunter’s influence, and I also wholeheartedly agreed with her assessment.
Emilie either didn’t hear Georgia or didn’t care. She said, “Hunter, truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
I winced. Bad choice. Given her answer, she was obviously going to dare him to make out with her or something equally terrible. I was going to have to scour my retinas after. Maybe it was time to make a break for it. I didn’t know how committed he would be to following through with a dare. He might have been the kind of guy who would do whatever the other person said, or he might blow her off. I could not sit here while they kissed.
I wasn’t interested in ending my night in a French prison.
Then she did something surprising. She turned toward me and said, “I dare you to kiss Lucky.”
There was a combination of protests and cheers. I heard Pieter say, “That doesn’t count! They’re already dating!”
Hunter looked alarmed, and I wanted to say, “Yeah, the jig is up,” and make him explain. But so many other people were talking that I just pretended like I hadn’t heard.
Emilie’s expression was sharp, calculating. She’d made this dare as some kind of test. Maybe if we were awkward about it, like we were sure to be, given that we’d never done it before, it would be confirmation that we weren’t together.
Or she might have wanted to see our reactions to her demand. She obviously suspected something was up and was using this as a way to test her theory.
“Choose something else,” he said, sounding casual.
And like he thought her request was ridiculous.
Rejection, humiliation, burned me from the inside out. He told everyone we were dating and then he didn’t even want to kiss me?
None of this made any kind of sense, and now my anger was easily outweighing my lust.
“Kill the music!” Georgia suddenly called. Francois switched it off and she told everyone to shut up.
We all went silent and listened and there was definitely the sound of a door opening.
“The captain! Scatter!” she said, and everybody scrambled to get away. We all headed out in different directions to return to our cabins. I ran through the main salon with Hunter right behind me.
We got to our cabin and he slammed the door shut. We both leaned against it, listening, breathing hard.
I was struck with a desire to laugh until I caught sight of his expression.
And despite the fact that he’d just publicly said “No, thanks” to kissing me, he looked like he was now seriously considering it.
“Alone yacht last,” he said. He wasn’t going to charm his way out of this situation. I didn’t care how beautiful he was or how cute his puns were.
I was keenly aware of how little clothing we were wearing, how warm he was, how much skin we were both showing, and the way his chest was currently glistening from the still-evaporating water. I would not let myself get distracted by his shiny body.
Would. Not.
“Lucky.” He said my name so softly, and I told my nerve endings to stop exploding with excitement. “We didn’t get to do our dare.”
Yes, because he hadn’t wanted to and had let everyone on this ship know that he wasn’t even a tiny bit interested in me and that kissing me was the worst thing in the entire world.
“I know how much you love to follow rules, and the rules of that game say that we have to ...” His voice trailed off, his eyes moving down to my mouth.
His head moved toward mine. He was definitely going to kiss me.
Because of a game?
I deserved better than that.
And I deserved to be kissed by someone who wanted to kiss me, not by someone who felt socially obligated.
I didn’t trust myself to put my hand on his chest to stop him, so instead I took a step back. “Are you drunk?”
He looked confused, like he didn’t understand why I would ask that. “Not even a little. Why?”
“Because I want to make sure that you’re sober enough to understand how mad I am at you.”
“Mad? Why would you be mad at me?”
Did he really not know? Although to be fair, now there was more than one reason to be upset.
I backed up against the bunks to put some space between us. It didn’t help much because this room was too small. I needed distance because my body and lips were making a very convincing argument as to why I should ignore everything that had happened before and take Georgia’s advice and just kiss him.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a spark there and then we could just be friends. It might help me to get over this crush I had on him and move on.
But I needed him to explain first.
“What’s this I hear about you and me dating?”