Chapter 64 Daniel
Chapter 64
Daniel
Daniel spent the entire day counting down the minutes until he could see Ore again. Usually he relished his time alone in the wheelhouse, just him and the sea and the sky, but he was eager to recount his conversation with Carlos. In fact, he found that these days he wanted to get her perspective on everything.
Finally, Dudley knocked softly at the door. He looked tired. ‘All right, Captain?’ he mumbled as he took his seat.
‘Yes thank you, Dudley, how are you?’ It wasn’t just pleasantries, to his surprise Daniel actually wanted to know.
Dudley seemed to sense the sincerity, because he turned and sighed and answered candidly. ‘Honestly, not great – no reflection on you at all, but I miss Annie. Sorry I mean Captain Harleston.’
‘It’s OK, Dudley, you don’t have to use her titles. We’re just … chatting.’ Daniel cringed at himself. He wasn’t adept at this whole heart-to-heart thing. Dudley looked a little uncomfortable at the prospect as well, though he persevered.
‘As I was saying, I miss Annie, and I keep trying to get in touch and waiting to hear back, but nothing.’ Daniel worried he’d pushed the topic too far when he spotted the glisten of tears. Luckily for them both, Dudley held it together ‘Maybe I misinterpreted things.’ He gave Daniel a wary look; staff fraternisation was generally frowned upon. Although it was endemic, most captains operated with a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy – Daniel included.
But on this occasion he nodded encouragingly. ‘You and Annie, were you an item?’
Dudley blushed. ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever – we were together, or something, I don’t know now. I haven’t spoken to her since she left.’
Daniel felt a horrible sense of foreboding. This could be him soon enough. What if Ore left and he just never heard from her again? He forced the thought to the back of his mind, and willed himself back into the present. This was about Dudley, and what’s more, Daniel knew why Annie hadn’t been in touch. How had he ended up in this position? The gossip-averse, keep-the-crew-at-a-sensible-distance captain turned the holder of so many secrets.
He looked over his shoulder, an ingrained habit he seemed to now share with everyone on board. ‘I’m going to tell you exactly why she hasn’t been in touch, Dudley, but you cannot ask me how I know this information.’
Dudley’s eyes grew wide with a mix of hope and dread. He nodded eagerly.
‘Annie was forced to sign an NDA when she left the boat. I don’t know what the terms were but I assume she cannot discuss any details of … what happened, which is probably a hard thing to do if she speaks to you.’
Dudley looked relieved, and then angry, and then desperately sad. When he eventually spoke, his voice was very quiet. ‘Thanks for letting me know, Captain, much appreciated.’ He turned back to the navigation screen and Daniel took it as his cue to leave.
Daniel made his way back to his cabin. The time was 8.30 p.m. Ore would be coming over soon. He was giddy as he took off his uniform, showered and then doused himself in aftershave.
Looking in the mirror he found himself admiring his own face. Vanity was not something that came naturally to him, but it was as though he was seeing himself through Ore’s eyes. And he had to admit, it wasn’t a bad sight.
Despite his anticipation, the knock on the door still made him jump. He tried to calm his breathing. He was reluctant to let her see this effect she had on him, the way she reduced him to an excitable schoolboy. He smoothed the fabric of his T-shirt and counted to five before opening the door.
She was dressed in a colour he wanted to call purple, but that wasn’t quite right. It was the same colour as the crests of the clouds when they meet an orange sunset. It was the mist of dawn, the blue of sky mixed with the soft pink of nascent sunlight.
‘You look beautiful,’ he gushed, the words falling from his lips before his brain could catch up.
‘Thanks, handsome.’ She winked. ‘Now let me in before anyone spots us. This place is full of spies … I have a lot to catch you up on.’ She slipped under his outstretched arm and into the room. Before he could get his bearings she was off.
‘I don’t even know where to start. Like after you left all sorts of crazy stuff just started happening …’ She told him about the perfume bottle, the envelope of damning documents, the call with Henry and the conversation with Agatha in the kitchen. He was having trouble keeping up, as she recounted it all breathlessly.
‘Wait, so it was Agatha that left the documents?’ He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, as Ore paced back and forth in front of him.
‘Yes … which makes me think she’d not as soulless as I first suspected. Oh and I didn’t even mention that her whole posh thing, it’s totally an act. She grew up, in her words, “very poor”.’
Daniel wasn’t sure what the relevance of that really was, then he remembered how obsessed English people were with class.
‘And she’s like a class warrior now. I don’t know but she seems to hate Chuck?’ Ore was musing.
‘Well yeah I mean he treats her pretty badly, like she’s massively overworked and probably way too qualified to be his PA,’ Daniel added. Ore gave him a quizzical look.
He felt a flush of embarrassment at the thought of how he’d come across those revelations. ‘We were having a bit of a heart-to-heart, you know before she tried to … kiss me,’
‘Urgh, don’t remind me.’ Ore rolled her eyes.
Daniel smiled. ‘Are you jealous?’ he teased. The thought that Ore might have to worry about his attraction to someone else seemed absurd to him, and a little flattering.
‘No!’ She swatted at his arm playfully, and he pulled her into him. They fell back on the bed, gazing at each other for a moment in mutual wonder. When their lips met, the rest of the room melted into static. Daniel couldn’t fathom that anything other than Ore existed. One hand slipped into the curve of her back and the other cupped her cheek. She pulled away, giggling softly, and stood up again.
‘Daniel, please, we have work to do. There’ll be plenty of time for all that once I get to the end of what Agatha said to me.’ He must have looked disappointed because she came over to him, stood between his knees and took his face in her hands. ‘You’re my sounding board, and I couldn’t make sense of any of this without you, so please, hear me out?’
He nodded. It made his chest ache with pride to know that she needed him.
‘So where was I? Oh yes, so Agatha was going on about how Chuck controls everyone with his money and then she revealed that Chuck and Henry know each other, well that Henry is on Chuck’s payroll somehow as well!’
‘Henry, your editor?’ Daniel swallowed down a creep of dread. He didn’t like the idea of Chuck’s influence over Ore extending further than this boat.
‘The very one – something about my whole staff job contract being funded by Chuck, through this fellowship programme.’ Daniel could tell that Ore was trying to put on a brave face. Her enthusiasm for ‘getting to the truth’ was waning in the face of this particular realisation.
‘So, I guess I can stop worrying about pleasing Henry now. I’m obviously not taking that job.’ The tone of defiance barely stretched to the end of the sentence.
Daniel pulled her back into his arms. ‘You’ll find another, better, job, I promise,’ he whispered into her ear. He felt the heave of a sigh against him, and then she was restored, pushing back against his shoulder and standing again.
‘Yes, well, that’s a problem for future Ore, but for right now, do you have anything to report?’
‘Well actually …’ He paused, repositioning his hands behind him and leaning back, building the suspense. It had the desired effect. She giggled again, crossing her arms and arranging those luscious lips into a pronounced pout.
‘Such a tease! Tell me!’ she demanded.
‘OK, fine, seeing as you asked so nicely …’ Despite everything, he was enjoying himself. What they were discussing was serious, bordering on dark, but with Ore, in the cocoon of his cabin, he felt like they could take on the world, and laugh raucously while doing it.
‘I came across Chuck telling off Carlos today,’ Daniel started.
‘Not Carlos! How could he!’ Ore’s outrage was touching. It mirrored his own at the time.
‘I know, he’s a lovely man, but Chuck was scolding him for taking food to Mel’s room because apparently that was the reason she wasn’t coming to sit at the table with Chuck and all his investors …’
‘Yes, as though it’s Carlos’ fault that Chuck finds parenting so much less exciting than dodgy business deals,’ Ore cut in again.
‘Exactly, and anyway afterwards I went to check if Carlos was all right …’
‘Was he?’
‘Yes, he was.’ Daniel wondered if he would ever get to the end of the story. ‘And he was telling me a similar thing to what Agatha told you: that Chuck pays all his employees to spy on each other …’ Daniel realised too late what he’d walked into.
‘Did he … pay you?’ Ore wouldn’t look at him as she asked the question.
‘No, although it’s probably worse that I did it for free.’ Daniel was ashamed of himself but he had to remember that he hadn’t known Ore at all then, as crazy as it was that that was only about a week ago. ‘I do think that that is what that $75,000 cheque was for though.’
‘Well I only got offered fifty, well 50,000 and a dollar to be precise, and I really wanted to take it … maybe you should have taken it, Daniel …’
He pulled her chin up so they were face to face. ‘That money was my reward for betraying your trust, Ore. I could never have taken it.’
‘That’s very romantic, Daniel, but not very financially savvy.’ She was teasing him now.
‘Also, if you had taken it, you would have to sign a document to actually get the money … I’ll give you one guess …’
‘An NDA,’ Ore said immediately. ‘Well that would have been my piece dead in the water … .’. She paused, as though her brain was just catching up with what she’d just heard ‘and of course, that’s why no one will talk to me.’ Ore had still been standing in front of him; now she went back to pacing. Daniel watched her intently.
‘So does the fact that you are speaking to me mean you haven’t signed anything?’ Ore was once again not looking at him as she spoke, trying to sound nonchalant, and the dread returned. He knew what she was going to ask him next. ‘Would you be a named source in my story?’
His stomach dropped. He would do anything for this amazing, beautiful, curious, fascinating, intelligent woman in front of him. Well, almost anything. Even if he’d somehow managed to get out of signing the NDA, would he have had the courage to publicly go up against Chuck? As it stood, if he agreed to be named, he would lose the only other thing he would do anything for – his job, and with it his whole life, his plan. Who was Daniel Wilsons without his captain’s uniform? There was no doubt in his mind that Chuck would blacklist him. One call to the Hartfords with a bad reference and he was done. Not to mention the financial ruin that would come with being sued by America’s second richest man.
Ore knew his answer before he finally voiced it.
‘I can’t, I had to sign the NDA to get onto the boat like the rest of the crew, although I did push back on some of the more severe clauses, that’s why I can at least talk to you, unlike the others’ he said plainly, after a beat he added, almost as an afterthought ‘although Carlos doesn’t seem to have read his very thoroughly.’
‘I understand,’ but she looked disappointed as she walked back over to him. ‘I don’t know how possible it’ll be to get the story published with no names on the record, but maybe there’s an editor out there willing to take that kind of risk.’
His heart ached to see her resigned to failure. Without thinking he whispered, ‘Can I think about it?’
In an instant the hope returned to Ore’s face. Daniel basked in the glow, pushing away for a moment the weight of pragmatism weighing down on him. He would think about it, but deep down he already knew that the conclusion would be the same: career suicide for a woman he’d known for eight days; even the delusional haze of Ore’s presence couldn’t obscure the madness of that.
‘Can you let me know what you’ve decided on my last day? That way we can just enjoy the time we have left.’ Ore leant in and kissed him. Another jolt from his aching heart, this time at the thought of what was to come after that time. Another thing to push to the back of his mind.
For now he gave into the oblivion of her, burrowing his face into her neck to hide from the future. She was his right now, and he’d never been more on board with ‘living in the moment’.
On any other night he might have struggled to get to sleep, but after they had spent themselves, diving in and out of their own and then each other’s pleasure, with the warmth of her breath dancing over his bare chest, he slipped into his dreams with ease.