Chapter Forty Hunter
Chapter Forty
Hunter
We woke up the next morning completely intertwined. Her back was against my front and I held her tightly. I took advantage of my position to kiss the back of her neck in that spot that drove her wild.
When she started to squirm, I whispered, “Good morning,” over her sensitive skin. She let out a sigh of pleasure that made my body tighten. I didn’t know if I’d be able to calm down while I held her. Especially not when she pressed back against me like that.
So unfair.
It had been a long time since things had stopped at a vigorous make-out session. It made me feel a little like I was back in high school.
Except Lucky was not a girl and was very much a woman.
She rolled over to face me. “Good morning to you.”
I really was the luckiest man who had ever lived. I reached up to trace the curves of her face. “How are you this beautiful this early?”
She flushed in the most attractive way. She really was gorgeous. She might not have believed it yet, but I believed it enough for the both of us.
Something had shifted between us last night. Things were different now. “I like waking up next to you,” I said.
“Me too.”
“I like kissing you even more.”
“Also me too,” she said. “And you ... you’re so ...”
Silly woman. “Pick a word, any word. We could list my incredible qualities in alphabetical order if that would be easier for you. Awesome. Bold. Charismatic. Dashing. Energetic. Funny. Gregarious—”
“Handsome,” she interrupted me. That wasn’t something she’d ever really said to me. “Not that you need the encouragement, given that you have an alphabetical list of how incredible you are ready to go.”
I couldn’t help but laugh and be utterly charmed by her. “I knew you thought I was hot.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled teasingly.
I didn’t know how I was going to resist her. Not able to help myself, I leaned in to kiss her softly and it had the effect of making my stomach quiver.
She needed to know how I felt. How important she was to me.
The most important person in my life.
No more waiting.
It was time.
“Lucky, there’s something I want to tell you. I wanted to say it last night but I didn’t want you to think that I was only saying it because of the situation.”
She gulped. As if she knew exactly what I was about to say.
Then the words that I had thought would be hard to say felt entirely natural. Like I should have been saying it the whole time. “I’m in love with you.”
A thousand different emotions crossed her face. Disbelief, concern, excitement, desire, worry, resolution.
And then I saw what I most hoped for.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Her words lit me up like stadium lights. My heart grew three sizes and I wanted to run around the entire city shouting that she loved me. That couldn’t have been easy for her. My girl was so unbelievably amazing and brave. I was beyond thrilled.
“That’s good. Otherwise this would have been really embarrassing for me. ‘Up a creek without a paddle’ kind of situation,” I said. I was teasing but I hoped she knew how happy she had just made me.
This had to change things. We weren’t in some disposable situation where we would move on from each other and cause problems among the crew. This was real. This was serious.
We were in love.
My dad wouldn’t have to worry about liability. She and I would find a way to make things okay.
We belonged to each other.
“I’ve never said that to anyone before,” I confessed.
“Neither have I. I’ve been so busy protecting my heart, worried about people leaving, that I ...” She took a deep breath. “That I’ve been too afraid to be open and vulnerable. Too scared to care about someone so much that I gave them the power to hurt me.”
I felt so honored by the gift she’d just given me. I kissed her again. “Thank you for trusting me. I would never hurt you that way.”
“I know.” She sighed and nestled in closer to me. “We should get up and go. The Mascarellis are expecting us this morning.”
“Are you sure I can’t stay here with you like this?”
“There’s nothing I’d love more, but we have to go.”
It was difficult to leave this room, this safe bubble she and I had created, but we did have a schedule.
We made our way back over to Il Pane and were enthusiastically greeted by just as many family members as we had been yesterday. Giovanna waited for Lucky in the kitchen and had already taken the dough out of the fridge. Maria translated as they moved through the next steps.
When everything was completed, Giovanna took the sfogliatelle out of the oven and handed one to Lucky to eat. She bit into it.
Tears immediately sprang to her eyes and she began to cry. “It tastes just like my nonna’s.”
I wrapped her up in my arms while she cried happy tears. I was going to order her an entire mountain of Italian flour for her bakery.
My parents were planning on returning by dinner, so we had to head back to the ship. It took a long time to say goodbye, with all the kissing and hugging and promising to keep in touch. They’d adopted us both as part of their extended family. Maria and Lucky exchanged emails and cell numbers, and Lucky promised to contact them as soon as she made her first batch of sfogliatelle.
Giovanna loaded us up with bags of baked goods to take with us, insisting that we were both too skinny and needed to eat more.
When we finally exited the bakery, Lucky surprised me by pulling me into a long, deep kiss that made both of us breathless. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
I didn’t need her thanks. Just her love.
When we got back to the ship, everything felt different. I told my mom to leave Lucky alone. She didn’t ask for an explanation and I didn’t offer one. When things were settled in a few months, I would proudly bring her home and let my mom ask her every question she had.
Not yet.
There was work to be done on the ship, so Lucky and I had to settle for stealing glances and exchanging secret smiles.
I loved watching her with my parents. She soaked up the stories they told her about me and my sisters. Hadley and Harlow teased her and each other and they all laughed. Lucky fit in so well.
She needed more family.
And I realized as I watched her that someday my family would be hers. They would love her just as much as I did. I was glad that I would be able to give that to her.
I couldn’t hang out with them, though. They would be relentless and they would figure out how head over heels I was for Lucky, and I wasn’t going to be the reason that either one of us got fired. I asked Pieter to switch shifts with me so that I would be put back on anchor watch, awake when my family was sleeping.
Lucky’s disappointment nearly made me reconsider. I told her, “My family will expect me to hang out with them and I have a job to do.”
It made it so that I went to bed as she was getting up for the day. I missed her terribly and settled for kissing her good night / good morning.
I was ready for this charter to be over so that I could have her all to myself again.
And a few days later, it was finally drop-off day and we were leaving my family in Monte Carlo.
They hugged me and kissed me and said they couldn’t wait to see me again. I told them I loved them, too. My dad had to pull my mom away so that she would stop hugging me. I glanced over at Lucky. I knew I was fortunate to have this.
I was glad that my parents had set such a good example for me of what a relationship looked like. So that I would know when I’d found the right person.
And I had.
When we got back to our cabin, Lucky seemed more upset that they’d left than I did. “Are you sad about your family leaving?”
“I’ll miss them, but I’ll be seeing them soon enough. Plus, I have you and you make it hard to think about anybody else,” I told her, pulling her in for a kiss that very quickly got heated.
Thomas radioing me finally broke us apart. I’d been down in our cabin for too long.
“I better go,” I said regretfully. “Are we going out with the crew tonight?”
“We probably should.”
And despite wanting to talk her out of it, I knew it would be better for us to go out. Hours and hours of unchaperoned time could be tricky.
My parents had specifically requested that we be given the night off, despite the fact that we had a charter the next day. They had also offered to cover the cost of our drinks and dinner at a nearby upscale casino.
My dad had been hoping to get a new sports car and I was pretty sure the crew was about to drink him out of it.
So instead I said, “Until tonight, then. You’ll be getting my A game. I hope you’ll be able to keep your clothes on.”
I kissed her one last time and then went to see what Thomas needed.
And despite telling her that I wouldn’t lie to her anymore, I just had.
Because I very much hoped Lucky wouldn’t be able to keep her clothes on.