by Ally Blake
In order to ease the strain creaking at the table, JJ dove in. “I’m Juliana, but you can call me JJ. I’m . . . between jobs. Sydneysider. I’m not married, so you’re one up on me. Though I was. Once. Divorced actually. It was all over less than a day after the wedding.”
So much for clearing the strain hanging over the dinner table. JJ sat back in her chair blaming all the honeymoon talk.
“A day?” Myrtle asked, hand to her throat.
“What anniversary would that be, do you think?” Bernie asked into the silence.
“One year is paper,” quiet Carol added helpfully.
“Shredded paper, then?” Hazel added.
JJ coughed out a laugh.
“Bark,” Bernie said, then bit back a smile. “From the tree used to make the paper.”
“Wood shavings,” Frank added without looking up.
“Wood shavings,” Hazel said proudly, as if the case was now closed. “There it is folks.”
While JJ laughed along with the rest of them, enough that she had to hold her belly, she couldn’t help thinking that they’d not gone back far enough. Dust, she thought. The dust left on the air when the tree is cut down. It floats off into nothing, becoming nothing, disappearing as if it had never really been there at all.
Sometimes, sitting alone in her dingy apartment she wondered if she was that dust, all that remained of the dauntless girl she’d once been.
“To the paths that brought us here and the journey ahead,” Myrtle said, lifting her glass and beaming at Bernie’s words.
She nodded at the glass in front of JJ which Hazel was filing to the brim with something red and shiny and delicious-looking.
“To getting up to no good,” Hazel joined in, clinking JJ’s glass before placing it in her hand.
With vigor, and intent, feeling less like dust than she had in a long time, JJ lifted her glass high. “To adventure.”
With a rousing cheer the table yelled, “Here, here!”
Chapter 7
JJ was feeling copacetic. The fact that her waiter had proudly brought her some odd concoction of steamed vegetables when everyone else had returned to the table with plates piled high with pink meats and glossy sauces aside.
Her cheeks ached from laughing and pinked from her ample glass of mulled wine, and the soft dip and sway of the floor beneath her feet helped make the world a wonderful place.
“False hip!” Myrtle said with a flush to her cheeks.
And three hands shot into the air in the dinner table’s latest round of Operation Bingo.
Myrtle deflated at being pipped, though with a happy smile and another sip of her post-dinner sherry.
“Shoulder reconstruction,” Samuel admitted when pressed, rolling his right arm, the elbow patch of his suit jacket poking out from under his Arthurian cloak.
“Two!” Myrtle said, pointing at her own shoulders, proving it in that her hands could no longer reach all the way round.
Hazel cleared her throat. When she had the attention of the table, used a finger to lift each brow, tugged back the hair at her temples, and then tapped under her chin.
“Really?” Myrtle asked, leaning in looking for telltale scars. “Look Bernie, you can’t even tell.”
“Marvelous,” Bernie agreed.
“Okay,” JJ said, lifting a hand, ready to peel down a finger per injury. “You’ve all had your fun. But now it’s time for the pros. I broke my tibia falling out of an elm tree when I was seven. Fractured my right wrist when I was eleven, racing across mossy stones mid-creek. Dent in my forehead . . .” They all leaned it to have a good look at the small flat indentation above JJ’s right eye. “ . . . riding my bike, no hands, down a mountain track, sixteen and a half.”
Her audience leaned back into their chairs with an appreciative murmur. As they should. Despite the outcomes, each of those moments had been banner ones in her childhood. Moments of freedom and spirit. How long had it been since she’d felt so uninhibited?
“It seems we have a wild girl at our table, ladies and gents,” said Hazel with a twinkle in her eye.
“Evening folks.”
JJ’s glowing trip down memory lane snapped taut at the sound of the deep voice behind her.
Before she even turned she knew it belonged to Kane Phillips, Fitness Director. So much testosterone poured off the guy it was a wonder he’d been able to sneak up on her without setting off all her womanly bells and whistles.
Spin she did, looking up and up and up to find she was right. And that he looked even better out of the purple polo and cargo shorts than in them.
Not that he was naked. Not that that made her think about how he might look naked. Not naked, he looked fine in a black jacket that emphasized the breadth of his massive shoulders, his black shirt stark and sexy against his tan. Mighty fine.
As her gaze meandered happily past all the fine to land on his face, it was to find he was looking at her legs. Her short skirt with its cheeky split had ridden up her thighs ’til there was nowhere else for it to ride without giving away all her secrets. Heart kicking up its pace until she felt her pulse behind her ears, the backs of her knees, all over, she resisted the urge to tug it down.
“Our own resident superstar, looking dashing as ever,” Hazel cooed, batting her lashes and shifting ever so slightly so that her cleavage seemed to spill from the confines of her “lady’s” dress.
Kane shook his head as if coming to, his smile—dimple and all—landing on JJ a beat before taking in the whole table. “Evening, Hazel. Don’t you make a lovely lady-in-waiting? Arthur himself would have been proud. And hard-pressed to find himself a more beauteous court.”
Hazel’s smile grew. Myrtle sighed. Even quiet Carol boasted a little pink in her cheeks.
“Crusher,” said Frank, finally deigning to join in. He lifted from his seat to thrust a hand across the table, and actually made eye contact with something other than food for the first time the entire meal. “Frank Giraldi. Honor.”
Kane moved in beside JJ to reach over and grab Frank’s outstretched hand, his jacket swishing open, his shirt clinging to a flat stomach, and leaving her eye-high to his backside. It was tight, round, and right there.
JJ’s mouth began to water and she wondered how many times Hazel had managed to refill her wine glass without her noticing.
“Join us,” Frank insisted, glancing around the table as if expecting one to spring out of the way so that “Crusher” could take his rightful seat.
“Thanks, mate,” said Kane, stepping back and placing his hand on the back of JJ’s chair. “But I can only stay for a second. From the other side of the room, it looked like you’re all having a ripper of a time. Table to be on, I’d say.”
As Bernie filled Kane in on their I’ve-Had-More-Operations-Than-You game, JJ wondered how long he’d been watching from the other side of the room. There was also the small matter of the man’s fingers mere inches from her neck, drumming against the back of her chair, the reverberations humming through the frame, hitting the backs of her bare thighs. Ddddrrrroom, ddddrrrroom, ddddrrrroom . . .
She swallowed. Was mid-swallow, in fact, when Kane crouched down to talk to Carol. Something about a Pilates class with a focus on bad backs he’d rustled up for the morning.
JJ looked ahead at nothing in particular, while all she could feel was the heat of the man beside her, the sleeve of his jacket bumping her arm once, twice, the scent of him, earthy and cool, catching on the very last moment of every breath.
Bored with not being the center of attention, Hazel leaned over, with about as much subtlety as the woman could muster, and said loud enough for anyone to hear, “JJ, honey, if you’re truly looking to get up to no good this week, I know someone who could blow those ancient wood shavings out of your system once and for all.”
“Sorry?” JJ balked, even while she’d been thinking the exact same thing.
But Hazel was already back in her chair, running her long fingernails through Frank’s thick silv
er hair while he tried to listen in on Kane’s conversation. Hazel wasn’t having that though, she leaned over, gave her new husband the benefit of the view down her dress and hooked him soon enough.
Meaning when Kane turned to face JJ, his words were for her alone.
“Hi,” he said, still crouching, hand having slid down the side of her chair until his thumb was level with her hip. His mouth close enough she felt the brush of his breath against her neck.
“Hi,” she said, voice far breathier than normal.
The heat in his smile told her he knew it too. Not that it meant anything. He was staff. And she was . . . a walking disco ball.
“No costume?” she asked, her eyes dipping to take in his open collar where she got a hint of strong manly chest before dragging her gaze back to his eyes.
“Wouldn’t want to outdo the guests.”
“Which of course you’d do, due to the no doubt stunning array of fancy dress-ups in your room.”
A new smile stretched across his face, sudden, honest, stunning, like a poison dart meant to paralyze his prey before he attacked. “You’re funny, Wild Girl.”
Her heart whumped so loud in her ears it’d be a miracle if everyone at the table couldn’t hear it. “You heard that?”
A rise of an eyebrow that told her he had heard, and that he wouldn’t forget. “I like your costume, by the way. It’s . . . sparkly.”
“I look like I’ve landed here from the future. I’m a space-aged disco ball. In a bun.”
He laughed, the deep notes lodging in JJ’s ribs like grappling hooks, like all the man had to do was tug and she’d topple off the chair into his lap.
A few beats passed between them, Kane’s warm smile and cool eyes confusing her synapses ’til they began to misfire all over the place, making her imagine wrapping her fingers around his collar, dragging him closer, having a taste.
Reaching for her wine glass instead, she held it between them, her version of a crusader’s shield, asked, “Off duty?”
“Not yet.”
The words were loaded with promise. Or maybe it was the wine. Or wishful thinking. Or Hazel’s sudden nudge with a sharp high heel.
In the end it didn’t matter, as that was the moment the lights went down.
And the squeals of the surprised crowd quickly turned into cries of delight as the waiters made a procession from the kitchen with bombe Alaska—hardly conventional Arthurian fare, but impressive all the same—flames flying high from their glinting silver trays.
And when JJ looked back toward Kane, he was gone.
Chapter 8
Dinner done, Carol and Samuel headed to the casino. Hazel dragged Frank to a late show. Bernie and Myrtle went hand in hand back to their room.
While JJ finally found a bar.
It was two decks below her room and was as elegant and shiny and as well stocked as the pictures had professed. Smooth jazz played from hidden speakers and less than half the tables were filled with quiet-voiced couples.
Her feet propelled her toward the dark bar where she sat with all the lovey-dovey stuff at her back. She ordered a fabulous-looking cocktail from the menu, one with flamingo swizzle stick, lots of crushed ice, and a maraschino cherry floating on top.
The first sip was gorgeous. The second hit the glass of mulled wine in her belly and her stomach gave a little warning lurch. By the third the buzz turned fuzzy and she knew that no matter how hard she tried to tell herself that this was exactly what she’d been waiting for, drinking alone in a dark bar wasn’t her idea of adventure.
She curled her hands around the tall glass, staring through the layers of liquid as her thoughts seemed to swirl within its depths.
She’d left Dainty Hill in search of a substantial life. And ended up with a bits and pieces existence that didn’t nourish her on any level. She’d told herself on many a lonely night that at least she hadn’t ended up like her own mother, married to a man who wasn’t good for her in any way. But was what she had any more satisfying?
Maybe because when it came down to it, she had no idea what she wanted. No idea what her idea of adventure even was. She’d probably been looking in all the wrong places for fulfillment all this time. The wrong gender even. Maybe the time had come to see what the feminine mystique was all about. She had a total girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence after all.
Midway through wondering, a long tall figure slid onto the barstool beside hers. Something deep and warm flickered inside her belly as she turned to find Kane ditching his jacket over the back of the stool next to hers, and made contemplating batting for the other team seem as likely an alternative as dating a Martian.
“Juliana Jones,” said Kane.
Nobody called her Juliana, not since she’d left her old self behind in Dainty Hill, but it didn’t occur to her to tell him so. He said it so well.
“Kane Phillips,” she shot back, and—liquid courage infusing her—added, “are you following me?”
A smile lit his eyes as rolled up his shirtsleeves an inch at a time revealing nut-brown forearms roped with glorious veins. “All the way to the middle of the Pacific and back again.”
It was a joke. Of course it was a joke. Except it didn’t feel like a joke. It felt nice. All squidgy and warm. Especially in the wake of her recent lonely thoughts.
His eyes were smiling too. Blue, they were; she couldn’t remember if she’d noticed that. A soft, clear, pale blue. And lovely. Even if a little sad in that beguiling Peter O’Toole-y kind of way. His warm brown skin was speckled with stray freckles, his jaw could have been cut from granite, and his eye crinkles that made her feel kind of light and airy inside. But the stubble, that was the clincher. It made her skin tighten pleasurably, as if he’d leaned in and slid his cheek along hers.
When her eyes found his again it was to discover he was taking an equally leisurely trip over her own features; pausing for quite some time on her mouth. When his eyes found hers, the color had all melted together, and her neurons felt like they’d just met with a vibrator. No, wait, what was that thing . . . a defibrillator! What the hell; maybe both.
“Another?” he asked, motioning to the bartender who lifted a finger to say he’d be over in a moment.
“Water,” she shot back.
He glanced at fancy cocktail, half-drunk, mostly melted. “You sure?”
Oh yeah. She was sure. When she started thinking about vibrators while within touching distance of a man like this, she was done.
Not that she could blame the man for trying. She was the only guest onboard of Kane’s generation, naturally he was getting a little flirty. In her last office, she’d been the only one not married, hence her boss’s decision to have a crack. In fact, in the small town in which she’d grown up, she’d been the only girl who could ride a skateboard, which was how she and her ex had become friends in the first place.
Yet another unflattering pattern of her life, this time making a lot of sense of her relationships—right place, right time, wrong men.
The fact that she was in the wrong place this time didn’t change anything.
“Hey Crusher,” the barman said, leaning over to shake Kane’s hand.
Kane ordered her water and for himself a scotch, straight up.
“Are you allowed a drink, cruise boy?” JJ asked, sucking down half her iced water the moment it landed under her nose.
He turned on his seat and leaned an elbow on the polished mahogany and grinned. Like he knew how edgy he made her, and liked it. “I clocked off a half hour ago.”
“But are you ever really ever off duty on this thing? It’s on, all night long. Like Vegas, with a keel.”
He laughed. It was deep, throaty, and sexy as sin. Add the crinkling eyes and the stubble and he was pretty much perfection. “Between now and six am I can do as I please.” His gaze hit her mouth again before skewing away.
Then he shifted on his stool, his knee brushing hers, and her insides threatened to spontaneously combust.
“So,” she
said, regathering her breath, “I’ve survived day one, barely, but what about tomorrow. What is there to do on this boat for someone like me?”
“She’s a ship. Not a boat.” His mouth kicked up at one corner. “And what would you like to do?”
“I don’t know, something . . . fun.” She thought of Hazel’s toast—about getting up to no good and all the fun she used to have back when being wild and free meant fronting actual danger rather than deciding to move in with someone whose choice of bed was a coffin. “Paragliding off the back? Rappelling overboard? You’re in charge of the running and jumping, you tell me.”
His eyes traced her arm from her shoulder to her bony wrists. So she didn’t have an athletic build. But she was scrappy. And keen.
“Day after next you get your first island stop,” he said. “Noumea. There’s a marina. Markets. A little yellow train called the Tchou that can take you on a tour a tad faster than you could walk it.”
JJ blinked slowly. “Wow. You’ve really spent too much time onboard this thing if that’s your version of fun.”
A quick grin, a chuckle, and a flash of dimple. Oh, my heavenly stars.
“Sounds to me like you’re not looking for something to do so much as finding a way off the ship.”
“If you’d found yourself in my situation, wouldn’t you?”
He sat back, crossed his arms until the veins in his forearms near popped, a sprinkling of hair catching in the warm downlight. “I’ve worked this ship for near three years. There have been moments, I’ll admit, when guests have made things . . . interesting, but I’ve yet to feel the urge to rappel down her sides. You’re on a cruise ship, Juliana Jones, chugging across the Pacific Ocean, heading to destinations magnificent and unique. This should be one of the great weeks of your life.”
JJ let out a sigh. “Yeah. You’re right.” If only she hadn’t always struggled to see the good right under her nose. Wasn’t always too caught up in longing for something better.
