by Holly Rayner
ready; but even though she’d tried to steel herself as much as possible against any feelings she might have towards the man, the sight of a bouquet of flowers in his hand shocked her so much that she nearly began to cry.
“Are you okay? Are these bad flowers?” Mansour looked stricken. “They’re my sister’s favorite—I know I probably should have asked you what you like, but I wanted them to be a surprise.”
Riley quickly shook her head, accepting the bouquet and hurrying to leave the apartment as quickly as possible; she still wasn’t sure whether or not Alex had managed to bug her space.
After hastily putting the fragrant lilies in some water in her apartment, Riley did her best to regain her composure as they headed down to the lobby. By the time Mansour opened the passenger side door to his car, holding it to let her in, Riley almost felt back to normal—almost as though she might be able to get through the date after all.
As Mansour walked around the front of the car, Riley took a moment to notice that he was dressed a little more smartly than he’d been for their first date; he was wearing a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt, though it looked more comfortable on him than any piece of business attire had any right to.
Mansour had given her no hint of what their second date together would be, and Riley had assumed that it was another dinner-date. As he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road, Riley let herself relax enough to make small talk.
“I feel sometimes like I got in on the wrong side of the business,” Riley observed. “It seems like all of the production crew are busier than I am on any given day.”
Mansour laughed. “Why would you want to be busier than you are?”
“I hate to say it—I know I definitely shouldn’t say it to the big boss on set—but sometimes I do get bored, sitting around waiting for my scenes to come up,” Riley admitted. “Especially after all that time sitting in a makeup chair, it seems like a waste.”
“Well, production has it’s own pitfalls,” Mansour pointed out. “There’s a lot of waiting around on our end, too.”
“So basically we’re agreed that making a film is alternating moments of bliss and absolute tedium,” Riley said with a grin.
“Oh definitely,” Mansour said. “One of my friends from Yale went on to become a musician; apparently it’s the same in his business.”
“Every once in a while, I feel like I probably should have at least tried college before running off to LA,” Riley told Mansour. “At least then if my career never takes off, I’d have a fallback option.”
“Fallback options are kind of…” Mansour pursed his lips in thought. “If you have something to fall back on, you don’t have as much incentive to just throw yourself into whatever you’re trying to do.”
“That’s a good point,” Riley said. After a few more minutes, she realized that they were heading through downtown and towards the highway. “So where are we going for this magical second date?”
Mansour glanced at her and grinned. “It’s a surprise,” he told her.
Riley’s heart started beating faster, her throat tightening in instinctive fear. Oh God. Oh God, what if he knows? What if he’s taking me to—the cops or something? Had Alex interpreted her lack of information as trying to call his bluff, trying to pull out of their agreement? Had he already passed along the recording to Mansour?
“A surprise?” Riley struggled to keep her voice even, her manner light. “Come on, Mansour, you can tell me what it is. I promise I’ll still act surprised when I see it.”
“You’re a fine actress,” Mansour said, grinning again. “But I would rather see real surprise.”
“Well,” Riley said, trying to think of a way to convince him. “What if—what if the place you’re taking me has something I’m allergic to?”
“Are you allergic to anything?”
Riley blushed. “Penicillin,” she replied dryly, and Mansour chuckled.
“Okay; I will tell you—to settle your mind—that where we are going, no one is going to try and give you penicillin.”
Riley snorted, chuckling in spite of her nervousness. “Am I even dressed appropriately for where we’re going?”
Mansour glanced at her, taking in her outfit. “Absolutely,” he said with a nod.
Riley groaned, leaning against the back of the seat in exaggerated frustration. The sundress she’d picked out would be suitable for almost anywhere.
“Oh—how about this: what if it’s something I’m terrified of?”
Mansour pressed his lips together, and Riley saw the conflict in his expression between doubt and amusement. “If we get there and you hate it, then I can come up with alternate plans right then,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand in his. The contact sent a pleasant, electric tingle through Riley’s body, and she felt herself warming up all over.
She continued trying to get him to divulge some detail of where they were going as Mansour drove for around thirty minutes. He finally got off of the highway in Santa Monica, and Riley tried to figure out for herself—from the very, very limited hints at her disposal—what his plan might be.
She had almost forgotten her instinctive fear that Mansour was taking her somewhere to pay for her betrayal, but the thought leapt to the fore of her mind once more as he pulled into the Santa Monica Pier. Most of the boats were either moored or out at sea, but as Mansour navigated the space, she spotted a small speedboat waiting in the distance, clearly ready to make way in a matter of moments.
A sudden, panicked idea flashed into Riley’s mind: Mansour was more than wealthy—he had the kind of money that led some people to think they could get away with anything. What if he had decided to take her out to see, tie her up, and dump her there to drown? He seems so nice, so sweet—but how many men in the industry aren’t absolutely ruthless at the core?
Mansour parked in a spot next to the waiting boat, and Riley tried to decide how she could get out of the date; should she try to flee? Would he just send someone after her? Riley got out of the car when Mansour opened the passenger-side door, numb and cold all over with dread; but the next moment she spotted a waiter standing on the dock next to the boat, holding a tray with champagne. People don’t give champagne to people they’re going to dump in the middle of the ocean, Riley thought .
“Is this where we’re having dinner?” she gestured to the boat.
Mansour grinned, taking her hand and leading her towards the vessel. “Not quite,” he said. “That boat’s just a shuttle to the yacht.”
Riley accepted the champagne hesitantly, stepped into the boat, and in moments the engine roared into life and their journey was underway. The boat sped across the water into the darkness, and Riley’s fears about Mansour having discovered her duplicity evaporated as she sipped her champagne.
“Have you ever been on a boat before?” Mansour’s arm brushed hers, and then he draped his arm around her waist.
“A boat, yes,” Riley said. “I mean, it was just someone’s speedboat, nothing as luxurious as a yacht. One of my friends had a rich uncle or something like that. He took us all out and we went tubing.”
“I should have asked you before but, do you get seasick?”
Riley chuckled. “Not to the best of my knowledge,” she told him. “But then again, I feel like a speedboat is probably a different experience from a yacht.”
“Very different; for one you don’t have a whole lot of space for a bedroom, or a dining room, or a dance floor,” Mansour said with a little grin.
“A dance floor? Your yacht has a dance floor?”
Mansour nodded. “It’s not a very big one, but it’s there alright.”
Riley shook her head, unable to quite believe the situation she had found herself in.
A few minutes later she saw the outline of the huge yacht in front of them, marked out from the gathering darkness by floodlights on the deck. Riley’s heart beat faster with excitement as they approached the behemoth; for a moment she wasn’t sure how they would ev
en get from one boat to another.
“How are we going to get up?”
Mansour gave her waist a squeeze. “There’s a ladder on the side—it’s really very sturdy.”
He showed her when the shuttle boat came to a stop next to the yacht, and although Riley felt nervous, she trusted him. She climbed up first, very aware of the fact that she was wearing a dress—possibly not the best choice, when she was climbing a ladder with Mansour standing under her.
The yacht was everything that Mansour promised and more; as he led her on a tour of the boat, he took her to the dance floor below deck. He plugged his phone into the sound system and called up a song: Arctic Monkeys’ “Hellcat Spangled Shalala.”
Riley grinned when Mansour hurried back to her, putting his hands on her waist and drawing her onto the dance floor. She tingled every time their bodies brushed against each other, her skin heating up everywhere, her heart beating fast but steadily in her chest.
“I never would have imagined there’d be a dance floor on your boat,” Riley said as the song came to an end and they pulled away from each other reluctantly.
Mansour grinned. “I’m glad to have finally had the opportunity to use it,”
He took her hand and led her on a tour through the rest of the yacht, showing off the cabins, the bridge, and surprisingly spacious kitchen where his personal chef was already hard at work. Riley had never given much thought to the level of staffing that a yacht would require; but as they moved from one section of the boat to another, she noticed that there were at least a dozen crew members moving about on one task or another.
“Where are we going to have dinner? I’m starting to get hungry,” Riley said.
Mansour grinned and led her out onto the deck; the boat was moving fast through the water, and the wind against her cheeks felt exhilarating.
“Right over here,” Mansour said. He gestured to a table—it was just big enough for two with room for dishes, with a white tablecloth and candles shielded from the wind by crystal shades.
He pulled one of the chairs out for her and Riley sat down, looking around in excitement and amazement at the view. She could see the moon starting to rise, the stars starting to show in the darkness; the ocean was a dark mirror flowing alongside the yacht, combers radiating out from alongside the boat in white and blue.
Unlike the rustic, home-cooked food from their first date, the plates Mansour’s stewards brought to the table were some of the most carefully-presented and delicate that Riley had seen, even at Le Roi. Each course came with an explanation of the components that went into it, and Riley listened intently, enjoying being served instead of serving. She devoured oysters with mignonette sauce, lobster with clarified butter, and steak so perfectly cooked that Riley thought it was just as well that there was only a small medallion of it—she would eat herself sick otherwise.
“You told me you’ve had all this kind of food before,” Mansour said as Riley exclaimed over the dishes, almost moaning with pleasure at the flavors and textures.
“It’s a totally different thing to eat it on a gorgeous yacht with a beautiful man,” Riley told him archly.
She sipped champagne, and still managed to find room to eat the dessert: sabayon over macerated berries with whipped cream. Even with the delicious food, she managed to keep up her end of the conversation, and in spite of her steadfast determination to shut her feelings of, to set them aside and treat her interactions with Mansour as nothing more than work, she found herself liking him more and more.
After dinner, Mansour suggested that they lie down for a while, and Riley followed him to what he called the “sun deck,” where one of the crewmembers had laid out a pallet of pillows and blankets. Another bottle of champagne rested in a bucket of ice, and a basket of long-stemmed strawberries waited for them.
“Oh God,” Riley said, spotting the basket. “I couldn’t possibly eat another bite. You’re going to make me explode from too much food.”
“Not right this moment,” Mansour reassured her, chuckling. “Right now I just want to lay down and look up at the stars.” He turned away from her and called out to one of the crewmembers to cut the deck lights. Velvety darkness enveloped them, and Riley wasn’t sure whether she was more apprehensive about her sudden inability to see, or more excited at what might happen between them next. “Kick off your shoes,” he suggested.
Riley kicked off her shoes, stepping onto the pallet and sinking down. Mansour found his way next to her in the darkness, moving a cushion under her neck and head and taking her hand.
For a while they stared up at the stars in silence; Riley was amazed at how many of them she could see. “I forget how beautiful the night sky is,” she said to Mansour. “I never really get to see it.”
“Too much light pollution in LA,” Mansour agreed.
