Chapter Twelve CASEY
Chapter Twelve
CASEY
I’m so happy; it’s like someone has filled me with stuffed animal fluff. I can’t stop smiling. I woke up thinking of last night, and I smiled and rolled over to shove my face into my pillow, which is absolutely ridiculous considering I was the only person in my bedroom. Who do I think I am hiding from? I didn’t expect to feel this way. No guilt, no shame. I might be a one-night stand kind of girl. I mean, last night was ... something else .
Quickly, I roll back over and hold up my covers to give myself a once-over. No bruises, no teeth marks, nothing to prove I did what I did, but there is an exquisite little ache there . I laugh again, blush again .
Phillip did this to me.
I should thank him when I see him.
Though no, that’s not possible.
We’ll have to keep things professional. I don’t want word spreading on the cruise that I’ve, well ... spread my legs for the boss on board. How cliché. How perfectly expected for the lowly reporter to go to bed with the powerful businessman who holds her future in the palm of his hand. Only Phillip made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to be furthering my career in any way, and I was okay with that. I am. Last night was wholly separate from my assignment with Bon Voyage . It was just a passionate night of fun. A perfect one-night stand. I highly recommend it!
Today, when I speak to Phillip, it’ll be like we’ve reverted back to before—I still need an interview; he doesn’t want to give it to me ... and so the world turns.
I suppose it would be okay if I told Sienna about last night. I mean, I have to tell someone . I can’t just keep this fluff inside me. I’m liable to explode from happiness.
I get out of bed with plans to brew two coffees and take them over to Sienna’s suite, right after I check my email. Old habit. I know you’re supposed to start your day with meditation and lemon water and some kind of self-help tome titled Forty Easy Ways to Improve Your Life , but well, I like what I like, and lemon water ain’t it. I enjoy shoving an electronic screen in front of my still mostly closed eyeballs while huddling under the warmth of my bedding. Now that’s living.
There’s the usual junk mail, an inquiry from a leasing agent about an apartment I’m definitely not taking, and then an unexpected email from Phillip with a subject line that reads Interview Questions .
I’m stunned, to say the least. I click it, expecting to read a droll paragraph filled with bullet points where he reiterates for the umpteenth time that he is definitely not, under no circumstances, giving me an interview, just in case I got things twisted last night. No big deal. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with in the last three days. Instead, I find absolutely nothing in the body of the email, just an attachment at the bottom. I download the Word document and open it, with my thumbnail between my teeth and my stomach in knots. There are paragraphs upon paragraphs, answers to questions that he’s organized himself. I’m shocked beyond belief to see that he’s taken the time to do this—the one thing he said he’d never do.
He’s given me an interview, of sorts.
Why?
Because of last night?
I’m relieved to have it. Of course I am. My career hinges on this interview, and now that he’s given me these answers, that’s one less thing on my to-do list. However—and this is a big however—there’s also a large part of me that’s annoyed this email was sent on the heels of our one-night stand. Whether he intended to or not, he’s tainted last night. Does he think I expected this? That deep down, I was in his suite on the off chance something like this could happen? I wasn’t. I’m not all that cunning. Need I remind anyone of my very bad middle school quiz-bowl sabotage plan that involved a pair of safety scissors?
I don’t have what it takes for seduction on that scale. I barely had what it took for the one-night stand, and I thought I pulled it off pretty beautifully. I mean, we really went for it. That session by the couch, another in the shower, god ... when he took me on his bed, I saw stars. I left rather than sleep beside him because it just felt right. Easier that way. I got to wake up in my own bed; there was no bumbling or confusion, no send-offs that would have made it all seem boring and awkward.
This changes everything.
All that fluff? It’s lumpy and deflated now.
I don’t scurry off to Sienna’s room with news of last night. I make a single cup of coffee and take it to my desk so I can get to work. I haven’t even looked outside, but I know we’re in Turks and Caicos now after cruising all day yesterday. I want to be outside, enjoying paradise, but instead, I’m stuck at my desk for the better part of the morning while I rework Phillip’s answers into something that resembles a proper sit-down interview. In the end, he’s given me nearly three thousand words. By my count, that’s three thousand more words than anyone else has about him.
I email Gwen an in-depth outline and barely manage to push back from the desk when I hear a knock at my door.
“Yoo-hoo! That’s enough work in there. Come on now, we’re about to go out on a hike, and I’m not going by myself.”
I laugh as I walk over to fling open the door.
Sienna’s dressed and ready to go, looking like Hiker Barbie. She has her hair pulled back in two French braids, a subtle bit of makeup. She’s wearing a coordinating set of yoga pants and a tank top, as well as a little backpack filled with water and snacks.
“And plasters; well, you call them Band-Aids,” she tells me proudly. “In case these boots give me a blister. I meant to break them in, but where the hell am I going to go on a hike in the middle of London? Anyway, come on, get dressed; you can’t stay cooped up in here all day, even under the guise of work.”
“I really was working.” I toss the words over my shoulder as I walk into my bedroom to get dressed. I brought plenty of workout clothes with me, so I rifle through them in the closet until I find a pale-blue tank top, sports bra, and running shorts.
“Oh yes?” she calls from the other room. “And what about in the middle of the night when I heard you banging around in the hallway, trying to find your key card? Were you working then too?”
I yank my pajama top off over my head. “I didn’t think I was being that loud.”
“A herd of wildebeests would have been quieter! So tell me, where were you?”
“Can’t say!” I walk into the bathroom to brush my teeth and apply some tinted sunscreen and ChapStick.
I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling coy. Though I haven’t known her long, I know in my gut that I can trust Sienna. It’s not about that. I just feel suddenly protective about my night with Phillip. Putting words to those feelings will only decay the fragile magic at play.
“ Ooh la la , now I have to know. Actually, it’s funny. I saw you leave the observation lounge last night right alongside Phillip, and then it was the weirdest thing ... neither one of you reappeared the rest of the night! Coincidence?”
“Purely!”
I take a cue from Sienna and braid my hair off my face.
When I walk back into the living room, ready to go, I find Sienna wearing a gloating little smile. “You, my dear, aren’t fooling anyone. Spill the beans and spill them fast because we’re due down for this hike in five minutes, and I doubt you’ll chatter on about it in front of other people.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say with a shrug.
She groans in agony. “Don’t be this way! I thought we were real mates.”
“We are,” I say, getting my phone and essentials so I can stow them in a little backpack. I grab a bottled water from the minifridge and turn to see that Sienna hasn’t dropped the issue, not even a little bit.
“Fine.”
I tell her everything—well, the CliffsNotes version of everything—in record time.
“He was that good?”
“Phenomenal.”
Her brows shoot up and her jaw drops. “Best you’ve ever had?”
I chew on my bottom lip before admitting, a little sadly, “Yes.”
“Blimey. I wasn’t sure he had it in him. Sometimes, the real handsome ones are so lazy about it, like they don’t even need to work all that hard. You -should-be-glad-to-be-with- them sort of thing.”
“No,” I chuckle, recalling a few of the highlights. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“ Well, well, well ... and so now?” Her eyes alight with the possibilities. “Are you going to meet up again today for another clandestine boning session?”
A laugh bursts out of me. “Now, nothing .”
“ Nothing ?”
I head for my door, and she’s forced to follow me, otherwise we’ll be late for this hike.
I shrug. “We agreed it was a one-night thing.”
She groans. “Ugh. And so? That was probably before you both realized how good it would be. What’s the harm in extending the tryst a little bit, you know, just finishing out the cruise?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Just seems complicated.”
“God, are you always this sensible?”
Am I sensible?
Or a coward?
To me, it feels like the safer option to leave last night in the past, especially after his email this morning. I wish I knew his motives. I can’t believe he didn’t include anything along with the attachment, no hint or clue as to how he’s feeling. I hope he’s not regretting last night.
I’d like to see him face to face this morning. That would help me understand where things stand between us. It’s wishful thinking that he’d join the hike—he’s a busy man—but I’m still slightly disappointed when we meet up with the group and I find he’s not among the dozen people ready and willing to trek through a forest.
Sienna’s disappointed, too, because Javier is not here either. She’s frowning as we load onto the bus that’s going to transport us from the cruise ship to the national park.
Javier has apparently signed up for a cooking class with Aurelia ’s head chef.
“I invited him to join us, but he didn’t want to swap out his itinerary last minute. Said it would look unprofessional, like anyone would care.”
We sit together in a row of seats near the back, and then I lean in to ask, “Are things heating up between you two?”
She very nearly blushes, something I didn’t think I’d ever see from Sienna. “He kissed me last night. Just a quick peck outside my suite when he walked me back, but it was quite nice. He’s nice. I think that’s our problem. He might look like the type that’s real suave ... the kind of guy who’d pull you into dark corners and have his wicked way with you, but he says he wants to take things slow! Hello , we’ve only got the rest of the cruise to get something going, and then he’s flying back to Espa?a, and I’m going back to Bristol for my gran’s eightieth birthday—not like I can skip that! I love her, and well, she’d probably cut me out of the will if I flaked. She’s spiteful like that, the witch.”
I can’t help but smile at Sienna’s colorful assessment.
“Well, why don’t you make a move?”
She rears back in her seat. “ Me ?”
She acts like it’s physically impossible.
“Yes.” I laugh, knocking my shoulder into hers. “ You figure something out. Some way to push things forward.”
“That’s—”
“Brilliant. You’re welcome.”
She feigns annoyance. “Fine. Okay. Let’s strategize on the hike.”
We end up not strategizing at all. The hike is so strenuous and intense that we manage very little conversation outside of a lot of huffing and puffing.
“I’m in shape!” Sienna swears.
I thought I was too. I mean, I’m not one of those people who’s constantly training for some half marathon where you have to crawl your way through mud and dodge barbed wire, but I get out a lot; I bike and jog and generally stay active.
Our issue is that the first half of the hike is all uphill, and the path is steep and muddy. Also the tour guide must be trying to wrap up his workday early or something because his pace is brutal. Sienna asks to stop for a water break, and he tells her no! “The view is really better if we stop up ahead.”
Up ahead means going another two miles!
We trail behind the others by a lot, so much so that the group has to stop a few times to ensure we haven’t collapsed out of sheer exhaustion. No one’s happy with us. We hear the grumbles.
“I thought we were going to take a leisurely walk through the forest,” I admit to Sienna quietly so the others can’t hear.
“I bought these boots mostly for show!” Sienna admits.
Our route is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. The forest is lush and overflowing with tropical plants and flowers. We catch breathtaking views of the surrounding water and islands, but those views last all of thirty seconds as we’re constantly ordered to “Keep up!” and “Pick up the pace, girls!”
I have half a mind to pop a squat and let them go on without me, but I’m worried I’d be lost here forever. The route isn’t completely intuitive. A few times, the tour guide has had to quite literally hack through overgrowth with a machete. I mean, we’re really off the beaten path here, folks. I try to think of how I’ll word my review of this hike for my write-up and mostly come away with three simple words: Don’t do it .
We can do nothing but groan in exhaustion by the time we make it back onto the bus.
We’re barely sitting up. Sienna’s splayed out like a starfish, airing out all her bits and bobs, she says.
“I’m so knackered I might never get up again,” she groans.
“Why did we do this to ourselves?”
“We should have booked another spa day! I could be lazing with cucumbers over my eyes! Listening to Enya!”
Turns out, it was our own fault. Neither of us read the fine print before we signed up for the extreme cardio hike specifically not for amateurs . If I have one rule in life, it’s that extreme and cardio should never belong in the same sentence. The group waiting outside the bus in the morning, sporting spandex and toned butts, should have been a dead giveaway that we were out of our element, but I just thought people were really getting into the hiking spirit! They might as well have been Navy SEALs sporting CamelBak hydration packs, marathon jerseys, and sweat bandannas. I thought my practical Nikes—the pair classified under walking shoes online—would cut it. They’re so muddy that you can barely see the logo anymore.
We did it, though. We made it to the end of the hike and took photos in front of the waterfall while I propped myself on Sienna for support and she held gauze to her scraped knee.
I think we sweat out most of the liquid in our bodies, but that doesn’t matter now. We’re finished, and we’re gloating and delusional, riding high on endorphins and a little bit of dehydration psychosis.
“Was it really that hard?”
“You know what? Looking back, it wasn’t so bad. I could have gone a bit longer.”
“I’d totally do it again!”
We’re still doing it now while we walk into the dining hall for dinner. Of course Sienna has a slight limp from a strained muscle in her thigh and a bandage on her knee, and I’m still wincing with every step I take—but we damn well deserve to brag!
I’m a full-fledged hiking aficionado, thank you very much.
Is there a special section where we should sit with the other ultrafit people eager to tear into a high-protein, low-carb dinner?
Sienna and I are laughing about this—poking fun at ourselves—when I glance across the dining hall and see Phillip. He’s sitting at a table with Arthur Burton and Tyson. I’m a half step behind Sienna, and she doesn’t notice that I freeze in place. I was looking for Phillip, though the moment I see him, I short-circuit as if surprised I actually succeeded.
He kills the laughter on my lips. The sight of him is a physical reminder of everything that happened last night—tangling together, naked in his sheets. I was going to pretend and act as if nothing all that serious even happened. It was just sex, and it was supposed to be casual, but then nothing about Phillip is casual. I should have known it wasn’t possible to keep him at a distance.
He looks up, and our gazes clash. I feel his eyes on me like a caress. I look away quickly—flushed with embarrassment—then realizing how silly that is, I glance back up and smile. We can be cordial to each other, friendly even, can’t we? He’s still looking at me, the ghost of a smile playing across his handsome face. Suddenly it all seems so intimate. Those lips were pressed between my thighs last night. Oh my god. A thousand riotous butterflies take flight in my stomach, a complication I wasn’t expecting. I had hoped I sated something last night. Though as my heart thunders in my chest and a tantalizing warmth spreads over me, a sinking feeling starts to creep up inside me—a worry I was hoping to avoid. There’s been a shift, and we both notice it. Something feels markedly different between us, like the air is tinged with secret longing. I realize now that last night doesn’t exist in the past; it lives here and now, a breathing thing that grows between us.
Sienna says my name. She’s wondering if I like the table she picked.
“It’s great,” I say, barely looking at it. “Could I sit on this side?”
Before she’s even responded, I tug out the chair that puts my back to Phillip. I feel relieved the moment he’s behind me, out of sight.
Sienna takes the seat across from me, looks up, and smiles. “Oh, now I see. Playing hard to get? I doubt there’s any need. He’s still looking this way, you know ...” Her expression shifts as she catches his eye and offers a little wave.
I want to hiss at her to stop, but why? She can wave to Phillip, and I can peruse my menu as if I’m not even bothered.
“I wish I’d thought ahead and let you borrow something from my closet.” She frowns at my blue flowy sundress like it doesn’t live up to her exacting standards. “I have this little black number that would have him swallowing his tongue.”
“I don’t want that, remember? It’s over.” I concentrate on the menu, willing myself to believe my own words as I read over the entrées. Hmm. Pasta or steak tonight? I’m starving after our hike.
“ Pfft . It’s over ?” She leans in close. “So if he cornered you and asked for one more night, another little romp in his suite, you’d say no?”
I nod forcefully before pointing at the top corner of the menu. “This seafood pasta sounds good.”
“Oh,” Sienna says, and I realize she’s not responding to my comment; she’s looking over at Phillip’s table still, her brow furrowed in confusion—or is it annoyance?
I can’t help but follow my curiosity. I glance over my shoulder and see that two of the bloggers Sienna warned me about on my first day—Jenna and Avery—have come to join Phillip and his friends at his table. In fact, Avery takes the empty seat directly beside Phillip; then she leans in and touches his shoulder, speaking low and saying something with a playful smile. She might as well be waving a neon sign that reads PICK ME! PICK ME!
“I’m sure he didn’t invite them to sit,” Sienna assures me, and I hate that she’s trying to protect my feelings. “They’re the type of women who feel as though they belong anywhere. Especially Avery. God, look at those extensions in her hair. Who does she think she’s fooling? That’s like four times the amount of hair on a normal human head.”
I desperately want to rise above it all, to compartmentalize last night from the here and now. Acid churns in my stomach, though, that painful bite of jealousy. I have such a tenuous grasp on Phillip. He owes me nothing in the same way I owe him nothing. The interview he sent is proof of that. If he chooses to spend his evening entertaining those two women, I have no say in it. I can only control myself, and I absolutely refuse to sit here wallowing over something that’s not that big of a deal. So what, they’re eating dinner together? Why should I care?
I flag down a passing waiter. “Two champagnes please.”
“Heavy pours,” Sienna adds, gesturing for emphasis.
When he leaves, I lean across the table toward Sienna. “Listen, our night out in Key West got curtailed because of the jellyfish sting ... let’s go out tonight instead! I bet there’s a ton of nightlife around here.”
“They said we have to be back on board by ten p.m.”
“ So ? It’s only a little after seven. Let’s eat fast and then go live a little. We’ll be back, no problem.”
Sienna’s lips split into a wide smile. “All right. You’re on.”
The waiter brings around our champagne, and I order the seafood pasta.
“Same for me,” Sienna adds.
After scarfing down our food, I don’t give Phillip another glance as we hurry out of the dining hall. We end up walking off the ship directly into a shopping and dining district full of bars and clubs crammed along a street, one after another. There’s not much real dancing happening yet since it’s still early, but the places are packed, and Sienna and I are just happy to be a small part of it.
The first bar has two open stools for us, and we strike up a conversation with a couple nearby who live on Grand Turk full time. Though they’re wearing loose linen and flip-flops, their accent gives them away as being nonislanders, at least by birth. When I ask about it, they explain they retired early and left their lives in Canada in favor of operating a surf shop on the island. They proudly proclaim that they could never go back to the brutal winters now that they’ve fully acclimated to life on the island.
They end up buying Sienna and me each a beer, probably thinking they owe it to us for listening while they droned on, but I would have chatted with them all night, quite happy to pick their brains about such a huge life change. How did you know it was right, and weren’t you scared about the future? Of all the ways you could fail?
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask them, but then Sienna hears music blaring one bar over, and she pulls me off my stool, forcing me to keep up with her as she dashes out the door.
Inside, her eyes go wide with wonder. “I knew this place would be a riot. Oh, look, it’s packed to the gills, and some of these men are absolutely divine. Let’s have a look, shall we? Just a quick loop around the room, and if someone catches our eye, well ... we’re both single, aren’t we?”
I laugh as she shimmies to the music. “What about Javier?”
“What about him?” she says with a tone of haughty indifference, though she’s not fooling anybody. “He could have me if he wanted, but he’s nowhere to be found, is he?”
“So then we find Javier 2.0.”
She grins. “Precisely.”
There’s a coconut drink at this bar that everyone’s ordering. A kitschy cocktail with a little paper umbrella and enough liquor to knock out a horse. It’s so sweet I can barely down the first few sips. Sienna pulls a face and winces.
“It’s pure sugar!”
Not to brag, but as we drink and dance and join forces with other little clusters of travelers, I don’t bring up Phillip even once . Oh sure, I think about him nearly every second we’re out on the town. I torture myself with thoughts of what he could be doing with Avery. Bending her over that same couch? Showing her that lovely little trick in the shower? Inspecting her hip for little grandmother-inspired sun tattoos?
Well, good riddance.
Sienna commends me for letting my hair down and having fun. She doesn’t bring up Javier either, and we’re both good sports about understanding that it’s vital—this front we’re putting on cannot be questioned or else it might collapse like a poorly constructed house of cards. We are playing two carefree girls out on the town, dammit.
Every half hour or so, one of us suddenly panics and asks for the time.
“Oh, thank god, it’s only eight thirty ...”
“Relax, it’s only nine fifteen.”
By the time we really do need to book it back to the boat, we don’t want to leave.
“The party’s only just getting going. I could tell that place was going to get wild,” Sienna says as we’re walking back on the dock. “Could you see them pushing the tables to the side of the room and clearing the floor in front of the speakers? Ugh . I wanted to dance so badly.” She sweeps her hair up. “Just lose myself in music!”
“I’ll put music on in my suite and order us up a bottle, how’s that?”
She gasps and reaches over to grab my arm with both of her hands. “Brilliant! Yes ! I am a first-rate DJ. Ask any of my flatmates from uni.”
She shakes me like I might not believe her. “Okay, all right.” I laugh. “You can prove it once we get there. Now if only we could find the boat ...”
We’ve been on the dock for the better part of ten minutes. We walked straight here from the bar, and I thought we took the same route as earlier. Down past the restaurant with the huge marlin on the front door, past a little conch shack, that man on the corner playing drums, and voilà, the ship should have appeared before my very eyes.
There are boats at the dock—other cruise ships, even—just not ours.
“That’s not funny,” she warns.
“I’m not trying to be funny. Was our ship docked there?” I point over to the left. “I could have sworn it was.” I’m starting to get a little worried. I don’t want to have to explain to Gwen why I had to expense a plane ticket from Grand Turk to Puerto Plata because I missed boarding and had to fly to meet up with the cruise ship. “What time do you have?”
I don’t even really have alcohol to blame for the fact that we’re lost. I could barely down more than a few sips of the coconut cocktail at the bar, and the nice couple bought me that beer close to two hours ago. I’m mostly sober now. Sober and lo—
“Do you two need help?”
“Oh!” Sienna squeals and whirls around, her hand clutching her chest. “Lord, you scared the bejesus out of me!”
It’s dark out, sure, but the dock is well lit. It’s not that eerie, especially with how many people are out walking around. Sienna’s reaction was a little over the top, and it makes the men chuckle. The sound makes my spine stiffen.
I hardly want to turn around, but it would be extremely weird to totally ignore him. I don’t let my cowardice win out. I turn around to face Tyson and Phillip with a confident smile in place.
I hate that I check behind them to confirm they’re alone—sans Avery and Jenna—and I blatantly ignore the surge of triumphant relief when I see it’s just the two of them.
“Help, you said?” Sienna says, coming to her senses first. “Please. Yes. God. You two are like angels. We’re absolutely smashingly lost. Have we got the right dock? It is this one, isn’t it?”
Tyson laughs and points behind us. “Right dock. Just need to go down a few more yards.”
Phillip and I haven’t said a word yet, though we have acknowledged each other in that private way, his eyes on me, seemingly full of questions.
Where have you been, and who’ve you been with, and why haven’t I seen you all day?
I tip my head and study him. He’s so handsome in his blue button-down, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his tanned forearms. Blue is his color, though I could say that about any color, really. I love the way he looks in black and brown, gray, white ...
Tonight, he’s swapped out his suit pants and slacks for charcoal gray shorts. He’s still dressed nicely—you know how you can just tell sometimes when clothes are well made and tailored? But the overall takeaway is still casual and sexy. I like that his hair is slightly mussed up from the breeze. Not that perfectly combed look he so clearly prefers. And it’s nice to see a bit of his chest too.
“We’re happy to walk you two back to the ship,” Tyson says, interrupting my in-depth perusal of Phillip. It’s like I was trying to catalog every inch of him for scientific purposes. Maybe I had more of that coconut drink than I thought ...
“No need—” I say at the same time that Sienna cuts in effusively.
“That would be wonderful! Thank you .”
Then she smoothly takes her position beside Tyson, and they walk along so that Phillip and I are left behind them, stuck with no other option than to acknowledge each other out loud. To speak.
“Ahem.”
He mimics me with a throat clearing of his own. Our eyes meet, we laugh, look away.
I contribute by offering, “Nice night, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah. The weather has been great.”
It’s like we’re both in on the same inside joke—the hilarity of our situation is not lost on either of us.
“Been wandering around?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation going. I finally see Aurelia up ahead. We really weren’t that far off. I think we could have found it eventually .
Phillip angles his head back up the path. “Just popped into my favorite bar on the island. Had to visit it while we were here for the day. I live in fear that it’ll change. New owners and all that ...”
“Was it like you remembered?”
He smiles and looks sidelong at me. “Exactly the same, down to the signed dollar bills pinned on the wall. What about you?” he asks, his eyes lighting on my dress.
It’s the same one I’ve had on all night, and I recall the way Sienna dismissed it at dinner, but it seems Phillip likes it well enough. I see the way his gaze stalls on my legs. The dress is a little short.
“Sounds like we had similar nights. Our place was packed to the gills. One of those restaurants that turns into a dance club at the stroke of nine. It was only just starting to get really loud and fun. I didn’t want to leave, but I was worried we’d miss the boat.”
He checks his watch, the one I teased him about my second morning on board. “You still have ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes of aimless wandering if you and Tyson hadn’t come along.”
“I would have stalled them if you hadn’t shown up,” he says like it’s a solemn swear.
I puff out a disbelieving breath. “Uh-huh. I’ll bet.”
“Our manifest is updated electronically every time a guest boards or disembarks the ship. If you weren’t accounted for, there’s no way I would have gone on without you.”
I lay a hand over my heart like I’m really touched. “So that’s my special treatment after last night? Along with the interview questions, I guess. Why’d you do that, by the way? I told you that’s not why I was there. There was no angle. No secret hope. I expected to be back at square one with you.”
He drags a hand through his hair, his brow furrowing for a moment before he shakes his head. “I know your intentions were the same as mine. Pure, that is. Well, as pure as your intentions can be when there’s a woman like you draped across the back of my couch ...”
“ Phillip !”
He grins like he enjoys teasing me before he goes on. “I just ... it felt like the right thing to do.”
That doesn’t quite answer my question. I should drop it. We seem to have somehow eased through the worst of the awkwardness and come out the other side.
But ... I just can’t help myself.
“Do you regret it?” I ask quietly, almost immediately wishing I hadn’t. What made me say it? I’m not at all prepared for the consequences if he does regret it. Oh my god, I’ll need therapy! Years of it!
“Not at all.”
His answer is swift and clear. His stern determination is extremely appreciated.
“Good. Neither do I. I enjoyed myself. There’s nothing more to it.”
“Exactly.”
“God, look at us behaving like adults.” I bump my shoulder against his—or at least I attempt to. My timing is slightly off. I lean over as he’s taking a step, so that I miss him and lose my footing. His reflexes are fast, though, and he has his hands on my shoulders, righting me before I take a tumble.
He chuckles as he asks if I’m okay.
I don’t reply.
My reaction to his touch is immediate and overpowering. I go still as his hands squeeze my biceps, and then he slowly drags his palms down my arms. It’s so gentle, and in another circumstance, it could be misconstrued as mere politeness—him just wanting to make sure I’m secure on my own two feet again—but then ever so quickly, his fingers lace with mine. He tightens his grip, holding me as our eyes lock. A fissure of want slices through me. Another kiss, another night. I’m desperate for them.
And then he drops my hands and steps back, cleaving the moment. The distance is important. Necessary. I take his lead and go so far as to hurry up and catch Sienna so that the four of us can walk together. It’s safer that way. No confusion over intentions. No need to feel embarrassed if he maybe saw one emotion too many on my face.
I almost believe I’ve gotten away with it. Succeeded in enjoying a one-night stand with a handsome man and fulfilling my work assignment, but this idea comes crashing down when I see the email from Gwen Levis waiting for me back in my suite.
This is not nearly enough. It’s stale. Where’s the commentary? The personal touch? I feel like I could find these answers with a simple Google search. Did you sit down with him? Go through your interview notes again. Delve deeper, Casey.
This won’t do.