Chapter 2
2
Ari woke several hours later to pitch black. Momentarily disorientated, the slight fuzziness behind his eyes reminded him of his migraine and the rest came flooding back.
Kelsey. The wallet. The kiss…
Groping for the light switch, he flicked it on, shutting his eyes against the intrusion even though it was still only the dim glow from earlier. Opening his eyes, he let his vision adjust before rolling his head to the side, his gaze falling on the yellow cocktail umbrella sitting next to his wallet.
He’d grabbed it up on his way back to bed and placed it on the bedside table, its paper canopy open wide and almost transparent. He picked it up again now, twirling it slowly, smiling as he remembered Kelsey.
Normally, he’d see something like this and think of Talia. But not now. He wasn’t thinking about his dead wife right now; he was thinking about the woman who had decorated both his whisky glass and his teacup with a bright bit of kitsch, her green eyes dancing.
And that felt all kinds of wrong. The umbrella was a ridiculous piece of… whimsy, and it shouldn’t be making him smile. He’d kissed another woman – that should be making him ill. The first woman since his wife had died.
Well, technically not the first.
He had picked up a woman in the bar of his Edinburgh conference hotel and gone back to her room two months after Talia’s death. But that had been a desperate attempt to think about something – anything – other than his crushing loss, and he hadn’t exactly crowned himself in glory.
Despite wanting – needing – to forget about Talia for just a little while, he hadn’t been able to go through with it. She hadn’t smelled the same or felt the same and Ari had realised he wasn’t forgetting, he was pretending , and that wasn’t fair to the poor woman who’d put herself out there. He’d left the room, disgusted with himself, and checked out of the hotel immediately.
But what had happened with Kelsey earlier was worse. Because he hadn’t really wanted the woman in Edinburgh, but he had wanted Kelsey.
And that was like a hot fist to his gut.
Maybe this was that moment people – the therapist he’d seen for a while and well-meaning friends and family – talked about. The ‘time heals all wounds’ moment. Because he hadn’t thought once about Talia. Not when he’d invited Kelsey into the room, not when she’d sat on the bed beside him, not when the urge to kiss her had come over him.
Not when he had kissed her.
Ari twirled the umbrella absently as he relived the moment again. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her.
Even now, he couldn’t say what had come over him, but his pulse had rushed through his ears and his chest had filled with the burning need to taste her mouth, and suddenly his lips were landing on hers and it had been such a shock he’d been too stunned to move.
He hadn’t ever thought this moment would come. The moment he’d desire another woman. He hadn’t sought it or expected it. In fact, he’d been just fine without that aspect in his life.
He’d been content knowing he’d had his one great love.
But here it was – desire – and Ari didn’t know what to do with it. How could something he didn’t need or want feel so good? How had the physical pain he’d felt sitting at the bar over his unexpected reaction to Kelsey’s perky friendliness have melted away so easily when they were sitting on his bed?
Because it had been… easy. So easy.
Ari’s heart seized in his chest at the thought, and he tossed the umbrella in the bedside bin as if it had suddenly turned into a live snake. He wasn’t ready for that – to move on. He still felt… married. Logically, he knew he wasn’t being unfaithful to Talia, but he wasn’t ready to replace her, either.
Theo would be over the moon if he knew – not that Ari would ever disclose what had happened. But his family had been shoving women at him for the last two years, hoping they’d be some kind of antidote to his grief.
Ari understood they were worried about him, concerned about his reclusiveness and fretting about how he’d withdrawn into his job, how he’d buried himself in numbers and spreadsheets instead of facing life . But they’d been his salvation during his blackest, bleakest days.
Being productive, taking over the reigns as the ōceanós Line CFO to drag the family’s ailing cruise ship enterprise back into the black, had given him a reason to get up every morning.
A purpose.
Speaking of which, Ari checked his phone for the time. Almost seven o’clock. It wasn’t surprising he’d slept for so long. Enduring a migraine was a physically exhausting experience for which sleep was the best cure.
And he was on holiday.
Well, officially , anyway. Unofficially, despite cocktail umbrellas and mind-bending kisses, Ari was here to do a job. He was on the Hellenic Spirit undercover to investigate why the ship that had once been the pride of the fleet was not only losing paying passengers and therefore money but also having difficulty retaining staff.
He’d suggested this scenario at the board meeting two weeks ago, assuming the company would employ someone to undertake the comprehensive clandestine assessment. After all, secret passengers, like secret shoppers, were tactics they’d employed before to assess passenger experience and keep crew on their toes.
But then Theo had suggested Ari be the one. Ari had protested – all those fucking people – but, as Theo had been quick to point out, no one would do a more thorough, more targeted assessment than Ari because nobody knew the business better or took more pride in the ships and their profitability than Ari.
Also, being the other Callisthenes son, the younger one – the one who didn’t appear every other week on the cover of a tabloid magazine or revel in being an international playboy – he could blend in without being recognised.
Plus, you need a fucking holiday .
The board – which consisted entirely of family members from his grandfather to his parents and assorted uncles, aunts and cousins – had nodded their heads at Theo’s irritable proclamation.
Ordinarily, Ari would have told Theo to go screw himself, board meeting or not, but his brother had known just the right strings to pull. The Hellenic Spirit ’s continued problems were a matter of personal pride for Ari. It was the only ship that hadn’t shown improvement since the measures he’d put in place across the entire fleet when he’d become the CFO.
Staff turnover was high, customer satisfaction surveys were subpar and three out of the last dozen cruises had seen outbreaks of gastro bugs. Not to mention the steady decline in numbers, this voyage being no exception.
The Hellenic Spirit ’s capacity was four thousand people – two thousand three hundred passengers and seventeen hundred crew. There were currently fifteen hundred passengers on board. That was a shortfall of eight hundred guests, which was, in the long run, unsustainable.
And he – or Ari George, anyway – was here to uncover why.
Ari roused himself, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He needed to get dressed for his seven thirty dinner sitting and then he was going to spend a few hours checking out the casino.
His gaze fell on the cocktail umbrella sitting in the bottom of the bin, and an image of Kelsey rose unbidden. A slug of grief, dark and visceral, hit him square in the middle of his sternum and he scrambled for his mental cache of Talia images. The one on their wedding day with her smiling up at him like he’d hung the goddamn moon offered itself up, and he grabbed on, refusing to relinquish it as he pulled his gaze from the bin.
Spotting his wallet, he reached for it, suddenly remembering he’d yet to check the contents. He’d deliberately left it behind to see if it was returned to him and if so, if anything was taken. He’d put in enough money to be tempting but not raise questions about his level of wealth.
He was supposed to be an ordinary Joe, after all – not a multi-millionaire heir to a Greek shipping line.
Ari counted the money . Twice. Two hundred euros. He counted it again. There was twenty missing. A feeling of dread sunk to the pit of his stomach and his throat went tight.
His guilt intensified.
Had Kelsey taken it? Had she come here, smiled at him, sat with him, brought a fucking cocktail umbrella with her all while his twenty burnt a hole in her pocket?
No. He couldn’t believe she’d steal, that she was some kind of player. Ari was usually a very good judge of character and Kelsey had struck him as genuine right from the get-go. He couldn’t believe it was her.
Which left a different scenario. A light-fingered passenger? The guy who’d been working the bar with her? Or another explanation? Ari made a note to check the CCTV footage at the end of the cruise. He’d left the wallet in plain sight so it should be easy to see who picked it up.
He just prayed like hell it wasn’t Kelsey.
He’d looked up her staff record when he’d returned to the cabin. She was an excellent employee, with a clean record and a rapid career trajectory. The kind of staff they’d had difficulty retaining on this ship. They needed more Kelseys.
* * *
It was just after eleven when Kelsey made it back to the staff cabins. She’d worked the dining room from six until nine and the Aphrodite Lounge on deck fourteen for the last two hours. All she wanted was a shower and to hit the sack until she had to be up at five thirty for the 6a.m. breakfast shift.
And a little alone time to think about her earlier transgression. With a passenger ! God… what had she been thinking? Going into his cabin. Sitting on his bed.
Letting him kiss her.
But there was, as usual, a ‘shoving off’ party going on in the mess – a tradition for the first night of a cruise. Not that any of this lot needed an excuse to party. Put a thousand-plus mostly twenty-somethings in a room with cheap booze and it was always five o’clock.
‘Kels!’
Tiffany, her best friend, waved at her from across the room. Also from Australia, they’d both been recruited to the ōceanós family in the same intake and had largely worked the same Mediterranean cruises. But where Kelsey had grown up in a city, loved the beach and saw her job as a means to an end, Tiffany had grown up on a cattle property in the middle of nowhere and saw cruising as a grand adventure far, far away from the heat, dust and flies.
Tiffany was dark haired and curvy – big boned, as she like to call herself – and worked in the casino. At the blackjack table she was quiet and dignified, her hair pulled back into a sleek bun, her uniform fitting her like a glove. She was the whole Casino-Royale -elegant-sophisticated-croupier wet dream.
But out of her uniform and away from the tables, she held no airs and graces. She was just a sheila from the cattle station who could muster cows, fix a fence, string a bunch of swear words together that would make a cowboy blush and drink an SAS officer under the table. She also, genuinely, didn’t give one fuck what people thought about her.
Kelsey loved her. Everybody loved her.
‘Grab a beer,’ Tiffany said, the quiet demure voice she used at the tables nowhere in sight. ‘Join us.’
Kelsey nodded, resigning herself to one beer, and headed towards the bar. ‘Hey, Sivat.’ She greeted the Malaysian bartender warmly. He’d manned the staff bar on every one of her cruises. ‘A beer please.’
‘You look tired,’ he said as he poured her drink. ‘I thought you were quitting this crazy lifestyle?’
Kelsey laughed. ‘One more year, Sivat, and I’m outta here.’
She’d have recouped enough of the money her ratfink ex had stolen – an inheritance from her grandmother – by then. Enough to put a deposit on the Pelican Cove beach cottage she and her mother had been coveting for what felt like a million years.
As Sivat handed the drink over, Andy sidled up and greeted her with a flirty smile.
‘Hey,’ Kelsey said.
‘Returned the wallet, Ms Goody Goody?’ he teased as he motioned to Sivat for a beer.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘And was he grateful?’
Kelsey’s mind strayed to the kiss even though she knew it hadn’t been about the wallet. ‘Yes. He was.’
‘See.’ Andy reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-euro note. ‘I told you he wouldn’t miss it.’
Kelsey stared at the note, dumbfounded for a moment, a hot cloud of what-the-fuck mushrooming in her chest. Her face flushed as her blood pressure rose. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’ She snatched the money out of his hand.
‘Hey,’ Andy protested.
‘Are you out of your mind? I took his wallet to him personally,’ she hissed. ‘He’s going to think I stole it.’
‘All right, all right, don’t get your panties in a tangle.’
Her blood pressure spiked. ‘God, you can be such a jerk. You pull this shit again, I’m reporting you.’ She thunked her undrunk beer down on the bar and stalked away.
* * *
Kelsey, who too often cursed the ridiculous enormity of cruise ships, was exceedingly thankful for the size of the ship tonight. She needed the time to cool down.
Did Ari know the money was missing? Had he noticed? And if so, had he reported it? Christ, she could lose her job over this! After seven years of hard graft and being away from home, she could lose it all over someone else’s greed.
Sure, visiting a passenger’s cabin, kissing a passenger, was also forbidden, but Kelsey wasn’t really worried about the possibility of that coming out. Stealing from said passenger, though? That was a one-way ticket to the unemployment queue.
Fuck you very much, Andy!
Her pulse beat like a drum in sync with her step as she entered deck seven, the twenty in her hand hot and sweaty. And heavy. Like she was about to hand a guy she barely knew, who could shoot her career in the foot, a loaded gun.
Christ – what must he think of her?
She’d caught a glimpse of him tonight across the dining room as he’d been seated. He’d been hot as fuck in a suit and their eyes had locked and, for an awful second, Kelsey had realised the enormity of what she’d done. Of the line she’d crossed when she’d gone to his cabin and how vulnerable she’d made herself to consequences. She’d never felt as exposed as she had right there in the middle of that massive, elegant, two-level dining room.
And this from someone who’d been duped by a guy she’d loved who’d stolen all her inheritance money.
But then he’d glanced quickly away as if nothing had happened between them and, even as that felt kind of sickening, his pretence was far less of a risk to her job than his attention.
Thankfully, the passageway was deserted but the spectacular first night show in the Adelphi Theatre would be finished soon and the passageway would be full of people retiring to their cabins. Putting on a spurt of speed, she hurried to his door, her brain grappling with the looming conversation.
She’d been so ticked at Andy, she hadn’t given any thought to what she’d say when he opened the door. If he opened the door. There were plenty of entertainment options on a ship this size which he could easily be out enjoying. A good-looking man like Ari would no doubt find easy companionship at any of the ship’s venues.
That thought made Kelsey unaccountably twitchy, so her brain skipped to another possibility. What if he was asleep? And she was waking him to tell him what exactly? That her dickhead bartender partner had thought it’d be funny to steal from Ari?
Yeah… not that. Definitely not that.
Maybe she’d found it tonight around the back of the bar and thought it might be his? That could work.
Okay, so she’d knock lightly and if he didn’t answer she’d hightail it out of here and try again tomorrow. Via a phone call. It was too risky coming to his cabin – again.
Kelsey knocked. It was quiet but would definitely be audible from inside the cabin. Hell, he could probably hear her heart knocking against her ribs from inside the cabin!
Inside…
How was it going to feel seeing him again in the same intimate surrounds as before? Especially given the last time she was here he’d kissed her and she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. About how close she’d come to surrendering and crossing a line she’d never crossed before.
Never been tempted to cross.
Oh God – a sudden thought occurred to her. What if he thought she was presenting for round two?
Alarmed, Kelsey turned to leave, but it was too late as the door opened abruptly. The lines she’d been rehearsing died on her lips at the sight of his naked chest. For the love of all that was holy – again? Did the man just strip off and walk around in his towel the second he got into his room?
His eyes widened a little as his gaze settled on her, his stance turning stiff. It reminded her of that brief, impersonal eye lock he’d spared her in the dining room. ‘Oh. Hi.’ His lips were kinda stiff too, drawing attention to his mouth and the dark shadow of his whiskers.
Crap . Not exactly pleased to see her. ‘Hi,’ she said and swallowed against the rapid thickening in her throat.
She heard voices from further down the passageway and quickly scanned over her shoulder to find a group of six elderly passengers all laughing and chatting, obviously on the way to their cabins. Shit. They couldn’t see her face and they weren’t paying her any heed, but she had zero desire to be recognised.
‘Could I come in for a moment?’
If possible, he stiffened some more and the knuckles wrapped around the door handle blanched white. Jesus, did he really think she wanted to expose herself to any more potential reputational damage by being in his cabin? With him barely dressed again and given what had happened in there earlier?
But she was not going to have the money conversation with Ari standing in the passageway in her uniform.
‘Please.’
Reluctantly, Ari fell back to make way for her and Kelsey stepped inside, brushing past him, noting the low glow from the bedside lamp was the only light in the cabin. As she drew to a halt at the foot of the bed, the door clicked shut and she turned to face him. His eyes met hers before they travelled down her body, heat building in his gaze as it took in her formal uniform of red button-up blouse and dark grey pencil skirt.
The air zinged suddenly as heat morphed to a raw kind of hunger. His body may have been putting out keep out signals, but his eyes were telling a different story. Her gaze zeroed in on the knot of that towel, and she blinked as a surge of lust flooded her pelvis.
Oh no. Down, girl – down! She was not here for this. It would not be sensible or practical and she was nothing if not sensible and practical.
Kelsey briefly shut her eyes to block the temptation of him. Get your shit together, woman! Opening her eyes, she held up the twenty-euro note in her hand. ‘I found this?—’
She stopped and cleared her throat. Her voice had gone all helium on her again, which sounded guilty as fuck. She had not taken the money and she would be damned if a wobbly voice said otherwise.
‘In the bar tonight. It was on the floor out the back near where I’d looked through your wallet when I was trying to find who it belonged to.’
Kelsey fought against the urge to swallow – another sign of guilt – despite her throat being dry as day-old croutons. ‘It must have fallen out and I didn’t realise.’
He didn’t say anything for the longest time, just looked at her, a frown creasing his brow as his gaze flicked from the money then back to her, his gaze probing. Assessing.
‘Thank you.’ He stepped closer until he was able to reach for the note, which he took out of her hand. ‘I thought I’d had more money in my wallet but…’ He shrugged. ‘A migraine can often make me fuzzy about facts.’
So he had noticed. Was that why he’d been so stiff and unwelcoming just now? Why he hadn’t acknowledged her at dinner tonight? Had he suspected her of taking it? And if so, why hadn’t he reported it or made a complaint?
‘I appreciate you returning it.’
‘Of course,’ she said, dismissing the gesture as a no-brainer with a quick shake of her head.
He stepped around her, the warm bulk of his bicep brushing hers. An army of goosebumps marched up her arm, across her chest and puckered her nipples. She caught a whiff of maple syrup again as he crossed to the bedside table, picked up his wallet and replaced the note.
Kelsey watched the shift and play of muscles beneath the burnished barrier of his skin, the clench of his ass beneath the towel. He turned and Kelsey quickly skittered her gaze to the left, although she was pretty damn sure he’d caught her perving.
‘I—’ She swallowed, her mouth far from dry now thanks to an excess of saliva, as she met his gaze. ‘Better go.’
Two ink-black eyes drifted over her mouth, down her throat, to the open V of her blouse and the way it strained a little across her chest before returning to her face. The husky rattle of Kelsey’s breathing seemed loud in the deafening silence of the cabin. Outside, more and more people were walking past, but inside it was eerily quiet – like a cocoon in the middle of a beehive.
‘Did you want to wait for a bit until the number of passengers returning to their cabins lessens?’
The offer was a little stiff even if it did seem genuine enough, and it made perfect sense to wait. But still, she was too conscious of him as a man. It felt too… intimate.
‘I think I’ve already interrupted your evening enough,’ she said, waving her hand at his towel, her cheeks heating as she tried not to remember how aroused he’d been beneath that towel earlier.
‘It’s fine,’ he assured. ‘They shouldn’t be too long and I can shower when you’ve gone. I’ll just—’ He indicated the wardrobe as he headed back her way. ‘Put something else on.’
Kelsey nodded. Him not being in a towel would help.
He gestured to the chair at the small round corner coffee table. ‘Take a seat. I’ll be right back.’
Crossing to the chair, Kelsey sat as Ari disappeared into the bathroom and what sounded like a herd of people passed by outside. He was back in under a minute in track pants and a T-shirt.
‘I’m having a whisky,’ he said as he left the bathroom. ‘Will you join me?’
Kelsey didn’t think adding drinking with a passenger in his cabin to her list of transgressions was particularly wise, and whisky wasn’t her favourite tipple, but they had to do something. ‘Yes, thank you.’
He crossed to the open shelving above the in-built drawers and poured a shot of whisky into two glasses. He handed one to her then sat on the end of the bed. ‘To the Hellenic Spirit , may she go well,’ he said, raising his glass.
Kelsey raised hers. ‘To the Hellenic Spirit .’
Despite the urge to slam the whole thing back, Kelsey sipped at the drink. So did Ari. ‘Your headache is gone now?’ she asked politely, fixing her gaze on his face and not the soft fall of his shirt against broad shoulders.
‘Yes. I slept for a few hours before dinner and it was gone when I woke.’
‘You looked good at dinner,’ she agreed, and then her cheeks flushed as the full import of what she’d said dawned. ‘I mean… you looked…’ She groped around for a word that didn’t involve the words sexy, hot or fuckabl e. ‘Recovered.’
He gave her a small smile, like he knew exactly what she’d meant but that he’d found her slip of the tongue amusing. ‘Thank you.’
‘And how was your first evening meal on your first ever cruise?’
They passed ten minutes with inane chatter about the dining room and his trip to the casino like they hadn’t kissed in this very room a handful of hours ago. In fact, between trying not to think about that and her ears straining for noises in the passageway, she barely took in a word he said.
The second it fell quiet outside, Kelsey stood, placing her barely touched shot of whisky down. ‘I think it’s all clear now.’
Manoeuvring around the table, she headed for the door, aware that Ari had also stood and was following close behind. Heat radiated from his body and her heart fluttered as it surrounded her, her legs turning to rubber. She reached for the doorknob the same time he did and their fingers connected.
A spark flared at his touch and it took all her willpower not to turn around and find out where that spark might lead because she’d already broken enough rules for one day.
She pulled at the doorknob. It didn’t budge. ‘Wait,’ he said, his hold tightening around her hand. More voices became audible. They were further down but they’d no doubt see her if she tried to leave now.
Her heart beating like wings in her chest, she stood, straining her ears, praying for whoever it was to move on quickly as the heat from Ari’s body both warmed and intoxicated in her in equal measure.
There was probably a foot between them but he might as well have been jammed against her. She could smell maple syrup and hear the unsteady timbre of his breathing.
Or maybe that was hers.
‘I really am very sorry about the kiss,’ he said, his voice low and husky, as the voices outside drew closer.
Kelsey shut her eyes. God , that kiss. It had been crazy. Sweet and simple. Innocent, almost. But it had lit her up. Just like she was lit up now.
She could only imagine how a not innocent kiss could be between them. How a full-on open-mouthed, head-rocking, lip-crushing kiss could be.
She wished she didn’t want to know. But she did.
She really did.