Chapter Two
PRE-PRODUCTION CONFESSIONAL
CLOSE QUARTERS
FINN PEARSON: HEAD CHEF
PRODUCER
Tell us a little about yourself.
FINN
I’m Finn Pearson. I’m twenty-eight years old from Dublin, Ireland, and I’m a chef.
PRODUCER
Can you expand on that? Tell us a little about your experience.
FINN
Ever since I was a kid, cooking has been my love language.
In fact, I don’t think there’s a better way to show you love someone than by cooking for them.
When I graduated secondary school, I boarded the first flight to the Netherlands to enroll in a culinary arts program.
From there, I found myself in Switzerland, Italy, France…
I was just traveling and soaking up every bit of knowledge I could from some of the best chefs in the world.
One day, I got a job offer for a yacht in the Mediterranean.
It’s damn hard being a yacht chef. You’re the only one in the kitchen, for starters, which means you do it all — the planning, the food prep, the cooking, and most of the cleanup, too. But feck, it’s fun — can I curse?
PRODUCER
It will be censored, but yes.
FINN
It’s fecking fun, being on a boat in an exotic corner of the world. The hours are long, but the money is deadly. I was hooked from the first charter.
PRODUCER
You’ve taken a break from yachting for a couple of years, is that correct? This will be your first season in a while?
Finn drinks water, adjusts in seat.
FINN
That’s correct.
PRODUCER
What were you doing in the time you took off?
Finn laughs.
FINN
Doing what every idiotic, dream-delusional chef does, of course — trying to open me own restaurant.
PRODUCER
What made you come back to yachting?
Long pause. Finn cracks his neck, smiles.
FINN
Masochism, I suppose.
Blink.
I needed to blink.
I needed to blink, to smile, to fucking breathe.
I was all too aware of the cameras trained on us, trained on me as Finn waited for me to respond. But the nickname I never thought I’d hear again had sent an unwelcome warmth down my spine that had apparently seared my nerves and rendered me immobile.
This can’t be happening.
He can’t be real.
But he was. I knew it even as my brain tried to convince me otherwise. No defense mechanism was going to save me from the reality that Finn Pearson was in the crew quarters with me.
Two years had aged him, but only in ways that made him somehow even more attractive than he was the first time I met him in Greece. We’d worked the same charter there together for four months.
They’d been some of the happiest months of my life.
Until the memory of them became a repetitive heartbreak.
Finn and I had said goodbye at the end of the charter, and it wasn’t a pretty goodbye.
His boyish eyes were older now, more mature, the edges of them crinkling a bit as he threw that signature smirk of his at me.
God, how that smile made me weak. Even still. Even after he left me broken on the floor.
My knees buckled as I grappled, reaching through the depths of my emotions for anger but coming up blank. It seemed I was going to settle firmly with shock and disbelief, instead.
I found safety in cataloguing all the ways he’d changed, so I let myself focus on that while my brain scrambled to catch up and make words again.
His chestnut brown hair was longer than the last time I’d seen him, the locks messy and curling a bit over the edges of his ears.
It somehow looked styled and like he’d just rolled out of bed all at once.
I finally managed to blink, but with that came a flash of a memory long ago — my fingers tangled in that hair, gripping, pulling…
Stubble lined his jaw and upper lip, framing his stupidly perfect heart-shaped face. There were shocks of white in that dark beard that should have been reserved for a man twice his age. That somehow made him hotter.
The bastard.
And amid all that dark hair, sitting right above that cocky tilt of his lips were the eyes that had once been my downfall.
They were the color of the sea; green and blue with flecks of gold.
And they were just as dangerous as the waves they emulated.
“Finn,” I finally said, though it was more of a breath of disbelief than a name.
The sound of his name from my lips made the corner of his quirk higher.
“What—” I cleared my throat, turning my attention back to the provisions list on my laptop screen. Was I really about to ask what he was doing here? It was pretty damn obvious, wasn’t it?
He was here for the season, for the show — just like I was.
Suddenly, I wanted to throttle the producers I had thought were so cute and pleasant, their smiles all wide and beaming every time I spoke to them.
Little weasels knew exactly what they were doing.
“It’s been a while,” I finally said instead, hoping my smile looked at least twenty percent less forced than it felt as I glanced at him and then back at my screen. “How have you been?”
Finn sort of chuckled, taking a step toward me before adjusting the duffle bag on his shoulder.
He was dressed in white shorts and a sky-blue button-up tucked into one side, the sleeves of it shoved up to his elbows and a brown belt hugging his hips.
He looked more like he was paying for a charter than like he was about to work one.
“So formal,” he mused, and his hand inched forward, up — as if he were about to tuck the rogue strands of my hair that had fallen out of my ponytail behind my ear the way he used to. Instead, he shoved that hand into his pocket and nodded his chin toward my left ear. “Those are new.”
I let my fingers ghost over the dainty jewelry that had caught his eye, the industrial and tragus piercings I’d had done just weeks after the last time I’d seen him.
My neck heated when I remembered that he knew better than anyone that piercings and micro tattoos were my way of avoiding, of giving myself another softer form of pain to focus on when my heart was splitting in two.
“I like them,” he said when I stayed silent.
The way my chest ached in that moment had me ready to double over, and I nearly did when my eyes met his again, when I saw his smile slip. There were a million words left unsaid flashing in those green irises, like ghosts trapped in glass and begging to escape.
He swallowed, his brows folding together and lips parting like he was ready to set them free. Before he could, what sounded like a herd of horses barreled down the stairs behind him.
“Ah, so this is where they hide all the beautiful people!”
Finn flinched as a large hand clamped down on his shoulder and squeezed, shaking him a bit from behind. That hand was attached to a very tan, very muscular arm — and a man with a smile so bright it was blinding.
He had long, dark blond hair with streaks that the sun had turned a brassy gold, and where Finn was sharp and put together, this kid wore a t-shirt that had been ripped into a tank top, the arm holes of it gaping so much his entire rib cage was visible beneath it.
That “shirt,” if you could call it that, was paired with board shorts that looked so worn they were practically see through.
“I’m Elijah,” he said, still grinning ear to ear as he took his hand off Finn’s shoulder and held it out to shake his hand and then mine. “But you can call me Eli.”
“Hi, Eli,” I beamed right back, thankful for the distraction from the man standing next to him. “I’m Ember.”
“Finn.” Finn introduced himself.
“Right on. You the bosun?” Eli asked.
“Chef.”
“Cheffy!” Eli grabbed his shoulders and shook them cheerily. “You’ll be my favorite member of the crew, then.” He patted his belly as if he had a big gut. In reality, it was a stone wall of ridiculous muscle. “Eli loves to eat.”
I smirked at his reference to himself in the third person. I liked this kid already.
“I’m a deckhand, by the way. This is my first boat of this size, though. I fear I’m a bit green. And you?” he asked me next.
“Chief Stew.”
My chest swelled with pride at that title and introduction, and I swore I felt Finn’s eyes boring into the side of my head when I said it. He knew how much I’d wanted this, how long I’d worked for it…
How I’d chosen it over everything.
“Of course, you are.” Eli saluted me with mock seriousness before picking up the bag he’d slung off when he’d barreled into the crew mess. “American?”
I nodded.
“Irish,” he said, dragging his finger to Finn.
“Indeed.”
“South African,” Eli added, pointing to himself. “With captain up in the bridge, we’ve got half the world here.”
He was so smiley and goofy it was hard not to smile right back, and I knew without a doubt he would be the biggest partier of the crew.
He’d probably also be the biggest flirt.
I didn’t mind that, either.
“Right,” he said, nodding his chin toward me. “Where should I set up, Queen Ember?”
Yep — I officially wanted to kiss that giant, muscular, smiley sonofabitch, because now I had something to focus on other than the anxiety bubbling in my stomach over the fact that the producers had surprised me with my ex on board.
“I’ve got you down here,” I said, pointing to my right. “Back starboard cabin. You’ll be with one of the other deck hands.”
“Lekker,” Eli said, and then he saluted me with a wink as he passed.
“You’re down that way, too,” I told Finn, muttering a curse word internally when I saw his name on my clipboard. How had I not put the pieces together? Probably because there were plenty of men in the world named Finn, and I certainly never expected to ever be reunited with this particular one.
Especially on a yacht — since he was supposed to be in Dublin running his own restaurant.
That gave me pause, stomach somersaulting as I wondered what happened to that dream of his.
It was that dream that had sent us crashing into the cold hard Earth two years ago.
Because he’d neglected to tell me about it until we were leaving, until I assumed we’d be leaving together and found out I was woefully wrong.
I would be continuing my career in yachting while he went back to Dublin to open his own restaurant.
Part of me wanted to go with him, but unless I wanted to get into sailing, there was no yacht season in the Irish Sea.
Besides, Dublin was cold and wet. It wasn’t for me.
No matter how much I thought Finn was.
I wondered how he’d ended up back in this world.
Did he want to be here, or was he here out of necessity?
I resisted the urge to look at him, knowing I couldn’t get those answers just by staring into his eyes, and I definitely wasn’t ready to ask the questions out loud.
I kept my focus on the task at hand, picking up my phone to text a few additions to the provisioner and ignoring the way my body heated and raised to full alert as Finn squeezed past me and made his way back to his room.
Time passed quickly after that, the afternoon a blur of cleaning, prepping the boat, unloading provisions, and welcoming each new crew member as they came on board.
My stews were the first to arrive, Leah and Bernard, both young and eager and, of course, attractive.
I wondered if that was a stipulation for the show — to be hot.
Leah was a pale, voluptuous, and perky blonde from Alabama with the kind of smile that dazzled like diamonds, and Bernard was a chiseled, cheeky Brit with warm brown skin and charisma in spades.
Palmer was the bosun, a biracial god-like creature from South Florida with short, black, curly hair and a physique so lean I was surprised to witness him lifting heavy provision boxes full of wine like they were nothing.
The second deckhand I met was Cameron, a Scottish dreamboat with dark ginger hair and freckles like constellations from his cheeks to his calves.
And finally, as I was inspecting where all the silverware and dishes were stored on the boat, our last crew member came aboard: a deck stew named Gisella.
“Hi!” I greeted as she made her way through the main salon, her wide brown eyes taking in the scenery.
She was gorgeous, the kind of beauty you saw on magazines and television screens. Her long, rich brown hair was pin straight and shining like silk, her skin a tawny brown, and she was petite — maybe five foot three with a lean, athletic build.
“Hola,” she greeted in return, smile gleaming. “I’m Gisella,” she said, and as we shook hands, I noted the lilt in her accent, a dead giveaway that she was Spanish.
“Ember,” I said. “I’m the chief stew.”
“I’m a deck stew!” she exclaimed. “I think I’m working mostly with the deck team for this season, but if you ever need help on the interior, I’m your girl.”
“Be careful what you offer. I might be calling you down to laundry.”
“Laundry is my meditation,” she said with a wink. “Where are you from?”
“Fort Lauderdale. You?”
“Barcelona.”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Barcelona,” I exclaimed, squeezing her arm. “It seems so beautiful.”
“Even more so than you can imagine. Y la comida…” Gisella made a chef’s kiss gesture with her fingers pinched together. “Uf, es para morirse. When you come, I’ll take you on a tasting tour.”
“I love that we’ve only known each other two minutes and we’re already planning dates.”
“Ah, but don’t get too excited. I don’t put out until at least the third one,” she said, wrinkling her nose with the jest.
I loved my new roommate already.
“Where should I…?”
She gestured to her luggage, and I clapped my hands together. “Oh! You’ll be with me, actually, if you don’t mind? I thought it would be best to let my stews room together so they can bitch about me in private.”
“And what if I want to bitch about you?”
“Save it for crew night out,” I said, and we shared a smile as I helped her get her luggage downstairs to the crew mess. Once I showed her to our room, I excused myself, giving her space to settle in.
And like Gisella had said, work did feel meditative, the flow of things making it so I almost forgot I was on the same ship with my ex.
Until Captain Gary’s voice crackled over my radio.
“All crew, all crew, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard. Meet me in the main salon in ten minutes for our first team meeting.”