Blissful Summer: Make You Mine AgainUnraveled

by Cheris Hodges

  Now he was ready to cut his losses, ease his burdens and show Kate that the son she’d repeatedly rejected but assumed she could trust above all others was a man you didn’t want to cross.

  John Alison Stewart, her father’s friend, might have his name tied to the company, but decades ago Kate had assumed sole ownership. Quiet as kept, Riker owned his father’s bar, and had more interest in lying on a bed of hot coals than managing a damn cruise line.

  Especially this ship.

  Erotic-themed ships with every wild luxury from private butlers to champagne-filled pools to confetti made of shredded one-hundred-dollar bills weren’t his style, and The Lure would be the first to feel the axe.

  Kate had dodged him, likely predicted he’d be running on home to his blue-collar bar—so he bent it to his advantage. Without her in his way, he’d gotten himself a cabin on The Lure and knew what he’d do. Gather intel. Strengthen his case. Show his mother that not only had she made a mistake in ignoring him all his life, but she’d been dead-wrong to set her company in his hands.

  Expression closed, stride relaxed, Riker wandered the lower level. He had no real destination. The crowds had thickened, and among them a fleet of Pennsylvania private school brats. God help ’em—they’d be turned out before the ship reached the Bahamas.

  Even Ona had a war raging between her inhibitions and her inner freak. So nervous. So awkward. Yet in this very hallway she’d shown off her butt and had watched him open her dress in Sirens’ Song.

  All right, so Riker wouldn’t pursue her. But if she came to him ready and eager, he’d take her any way she let him.

  As he passed two women, his instincts sharpened. The tiara one of them wore jogged his memory, and he recognized her from the bar. She’d served Ona vodka.

  Riker edged toward a water feature that spit streams resembling the double helix. Vigilant, he listened.

  “...an impressive drink.” Pausing, the waitress waited for passersby to move along. “Raved. She positively raved about it, oh, until she, uh, sort of dumped it on her dress—”

  “Oh, damn—”

  “No, no, it’s fine. A refill and a referral to dry cleaning, and she was good. It was her mistake.”

  “This time.” The other woman, wearing a silver guest services badge, did a discreet 360-degree turn. “Okay, we need to keep the courtesies coming.”

  “What about the others in her group?”

  “Of course we’ll accommodate any extras their gratuities can afford, but don’t worry too much about them. Ms. Tracy’s assumed responsibility, and we won’t take that away from her.”

  “Accounting will go crazy.”

  “Guest Services can work out a way to explain the expenditures. The managers are having a meeting tomorrow, early am. Until further word, the staff should strive to satisfy Ms. Tracy.”

  The waitress snorted. “Isn’t this level of damage control extreme? A negative review on a travel site’s hardly a blemish. It’d be buried in all those religious zealots’ complaints that this ship’s a prostitution hotspot.”

  “Ona Tracy’s complaint would matter.”

  “How? She’s not high-profile—doesn’t know which end’s up on a glass of Diamond V.”

  “The school footing the bill is high-profile. Important people grease that place’s wheels. As a cohesive unit, our staff can satisfy Ms. Tracy. Satisfy her, and we see the following results—she won’t be digging for answers, Stewart-Russ won’t have some private school on its ass, and our employees stay employed. Keep her busy, keep her happy and management’s hands are clean.”

  “Too bad for her. All those people blaming her?”

  “Yes, too bad for her.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Good. So, I hear there’ll be dancing on the crew deck tonight...”

  Riker eased around the border of the fountain, and striding away he brought Ona Tracy’s predicament into laser-sharp focus.

  Keep the courtesies coming. She won’t be digging for answers.

  Well.

  Ona hadn’t messed up her classmates’ vacation—she’d just been made to believe she had.

  Mismanagement of Stewart-Russ Cruise Line’s eight-figure ship? Setting up a nice private school babe to take the blame?

  Okay, Ona Tracy wasn’t that nice—thank the sweet Lord. But Stewart-Russ’s incompetence was the reason her glee club buddies were on a sex-themed ship. The error had made his mission easier than a ten-dollar hooker, but as he saw things, he had two choices.

  Concentrate on his agenda and watch her catch hell she didn’t deserve.

  Or make it right.

  * * *

  The next day, loneliness made Ona feel claustrophobic in her perfectly bright, spacious stateroom. The cabin had a formal living area, a balcony, marble floors, a minibar and kisses of Greek-influenced decor throughout. There was premium porn accessible on each of the two flat-screen televisions, content she’d innocently stumbled upon while channel browsing for a music station to cheer her on as she heat-straightened her curly hair back into submission. Still she felt tense.

  Part of her was hungry for another hit of Riker Ewan’s company, but that wasn’t the reason she needed to find him.

  She had a message for him. He was wrong about her.

  Cross over this, he’d said. You deserve to mourn your friend.

  Ona didn’t deserve to mourn Matty. She’d been a lousy friend while he was alive, and was an awful grieving friend now.

  Yesterday, after changing out of the vodka-soaked dress and playing Miss Do-It-All for her classmates, she’d thought she could cry. She had set the high school yearbook she’d brought along and a box of Kleenex tissues on the bed, sat down with her smartphone and tapped in keywords from Matthew Grillo obituary Juneau to Alaska bush pilot dead, finding news stories describing his plane crash.

  But she hadn’t cried. Not a tear. The mental games she relied on to trigger emotions for the stage had rendered no results. Feeling cold, she’d tucked away the yearbook and tissues, put on her tightest dress over her raciest lingerie and spent a late night in a VIP room of the ship’s casino, swallowing shots and trying to earn Nicholas Callaghan’s attention.

  When she’d been just tipsy enough to consider inviting Nicholas to her cabin, because maybe—just maybe—he wouldn’t degrade her in private the way he unconsciously had in front of the others, she caught herself and returned to her room alone.

  Make that a lousy friend and a sorry excuse for a seductress. Any competent actor could pretend to cry or flirt. It sickened her more than her early-morning hangover to fake grief over someone she genuinely loved and lost. And after what Riker Ewan had said in Sirens’ Song yesterday, she was beginning to resent that she had to earn Nicholas’s attention.

  Casual looks over blackjack and craps tables weren’t rewards. A stroke down her hair as he pressed behind her and helped her yank an old-timey slot machine arm wasn’t a declaration of desire. Pulling her onto his lap while he drank liquor, played his poker hand and cavalierly ignored her conversation was hurtful.

  As some unspoken rule of last night, she was the only woman welcome at Nicholas’s table, and her role was to sit—not speak. Anyone who’d noticed Ona decorating his lap and that he scarcely acknowledged her hadn’t said anything aloud, and somehow that made Ona regret what she was chasing.

  Ona Tracy, Nicholas Callaghan’s personal skeeze. If it were true, then she could manage the sting of it. But the reality was she’d absorb the whispers and shaming looks but would have none of the advantages of being linked to him. At the casino Nicholas hadn’t seen Ona, not actually. No stares, no smiles, no gesture to assure that he saw her as more than an object in a skintight dress to keep his lap warm while he spent more money on liquor than he won in cards. Ona hankered for something concrete, something she
could trust. She wanted to be seen, heard, understood. And yes, damn it, she wanted to be wanted.

  Day two of their cruise was half over, and all she’d learned was that Nicholas couldn’t gamble his way out of a paper bag. It was sort of endearing, the way he accepted his high-dollar-amount losses with laughter and mock threats to the others.

  Scrolling back to last night, as she lazed on her cabin’s balcony and dined on a typical I-drank-too-much-the-night-before-now-I-need-carbs brunch of French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon and a whipped-cream-topped fruit medley, Ona supposed she was overly sensitive to how no one had reflected on the sad fact that one of their own was gone.

  There was an empty space where Matty should be. At least, in Ona’s heart there was. Last night she’d filled that hole in the worst way—drinking a series of shots she didn’t remember and allowing a man she admired to treat her in a way that made her uncomfortable with herself.

  Peculiar thing was, she realized as she wrapped a chunk of French toast around a spear of cantaloupe, she’d been even bolder and bawdier with Riker but hadn’t come away with heavy regrets.

  With Riker, an average guy who paid the bills with bartending tips and had some nasty scars under his average-guy clothes, she’d felt daring and naughty. With Nicholas, a man of prestige and privilege and power, she’d felt scuzzy and sleazy. For Riker, she’d bared her body. For Nicholas, she’d sat on his lap and held his glass as he gambled volumes of cash while he talked investments.

  She didn’t know Riker...so why did Nicholas seem like a stranger?

  “Stop, Ona,” she said over the rush of propellers and ocean beyond her balcony, picking up a strip of bacon. “Big girls stick to their plans. Taking a chance on Nick is the plan.”

  She bit into the crispy perfection as a knock reverberated out the open balcony doors to her table-for-one. Bacon in hand, she hurried inside and opened the door to the last person she expected to see.

  “Regan Waltz. How did you find my room?” Damn it. “I mean, what can I do for you?”

  “You wear glasses?”

  “Guilty,” Ona said slowly, touching the frames.

  Regan’s amber gaze peered over the tops of tortoise sunglasses and moved to Ona’s hand. “Bacon? You’re eating greasy, fattening, artery-clogging bacon?”

  Ona chomped into it. “I was eating it. But since you said all that, I think I might make love to it.”

  “I meant no offense, Ona.” Regan swayed in her flimsy baby-doll cover-up, turning halfway to reveal sandals that boasted six-inch diamond heels. “It’s just that, for your welfare, I’m thinking that someone with your physique shouldn’t be such a fatty-food junkie. If you were careful, you might not feel the necessity to hide in your cabin while everyone else is on the deck.”

  “Which deck?”

  “The lower one. I refuse to try the upper deck. I’m liable to sit on a chaise and end up pregnant.”

  Ona smirked. “Was that your attempt at a joke, Regan?”

  The woman’s mouth began to soften, but she jerked back as though catching herself before she tumbled off the edge of a cliff. “The predicament you put PAAC and your classmates in isn’t a joke. I bought disinfectant and hand sanitizer to protect myself.”

  Chewing, Ona leaned against the doorjamb. “If you’re looking to protect yourself from getting pregnant on this ship, you’re going to need more than disinfectant and hand sanitizer. Might I suggest something latex?”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Ona? This isn’t a laughing matter. Nothing good can come out of this vacation and you’re to blame. Single-handedly, you’re damaging our school’s reputation as well as mine.”

  “PAAC won’t be singing my praises, I’m already prepared for that.” She wasn’t, but she hoped she would be. “You’re a grown woman and have a right to engage in any consensual and legal act you’d like to on this ship. That includes eating copious amounts of crispy bacon.”

  “Oh? Does it also include going to a sex machine demonstration?”

  “A what?”

  “You heard me! Jane Charley and I had a shopping date this morning but she blew me off, and I found out the reason why. There’s a sex machine in one of those roped-off VIP rooms and this morning people were invited in for a demonstration.”

  “I’m sorry—a what? I’m thinking of a James Brown song.”

  “Perhaps all the bacon fat’s going to your brain.” Regan took the last chunk from Ona’s hand and ate it, and she looked to be enjoying it a little too much. “A sex machine is an actual mechanical thingamajig. I asked a ship staff member, and let’s simply say that the words dildo and nipple shocks didn’t leave many blanks to fill in. And Jane Charley was there.”

  Jane was only member of the club Ona had run into after graduation. They’d both been Equity, participating in an actors’ studio workshop in New York, and had sworn to stay friends. But somewhere between Ona being cast in Chicago and bowing out, and Jane snagging the role of Christine in Phantom of the Opera, which had led her to making an opera house her home, they’d lost touch.

  “Okay,” Ona said, shrugging. “So it was thoughtful of Jane to not ask you to come along. Sex machines aren’t for everyone, but good for her for finding something that’ll probably really help her hit that high E.”

  Regan pushed up her sunglasses. “You’ve surprised me, Ona.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you’re in rare form with so many, ooh, one-liners for someone who’s hiding in her room. Last night at the casino you were...popular.” Without asking permission, Regan used her petite size to her advantage, ducking and floating into the cabin. “And the drinks. You certainly drank a lot. I told Jane and the other ladies that if not for Nicholas Callaghan keeping you upright on his lap, you’d drink any of the men under the table.”

  A moment stretched taut before Ona suspected the hidden insult. “Hey—”

  “No offense. Never offense.” But the snap of fire in Regan’s eyes contradicted her words. “This isn’t high school, and besides how your actions reflect on our school, I don’t particularly care how you carry yourself. Cole Stanwyck mentioned you’re seeing someone on this ship. I thought I’d check up on you, to make sure your man didn’t take your old times’ sake flirting out of context. Where is he?”

  Oh, right. Ona had lied to Cole about being with another man, hadn’t she? “We aren’t sharing this cabin. He has his own.”

  “Why?”

  “Our relationship’s still new, and—” Keep the lie going strong. You can do it. “—and, um, we didn’t want to get bored with having sex in the same cabin the entire trip.”

  Regan’s lips made a faint smacking sound as her mouth dropped open. “Well, how much sex are you having if you need two cabins to do it in?”

  “Plenty,” Ona lied. Oh, she was lying so hard. She hadn’t had sex in a while, and the closest she’d come was stripping herself because a stranger with a sexy Boston accent and a phenomenal body had told her to. “Sex, sex, sex. It’s what we love, me and my...uh...sex man.”

  “Sex man.” Regan blinked. “What’s his name?”

  Ah, crap, she did have to give this figment of her lies a name. If he was giving her more sex than her cabin could handle, then he deserved a hell of a name. “How about I introduce you to him, later? He can tell you his name himself.” All that would do was give her enough time to build her fake sex man and create a compelling reason why neither Regan nor anyone else from PAAC would ever meet him. “Regan, look. I may have gotten us stuck on the wrong ship, but as reunion coordinator I’m committed to seeing to it that the group makes the best of this ‘predicament.’ You’re miserable.”

  “Precisely. Contrary to the swipe you took at me on the pier yesterday, I no longer use my assets to get things I want. I cleansed, eliminating toxins from all areas of my life. I have moral s
tandards.”

  “I’m glad you shared that with me. But not everyone’s going to adopt your moral standards. We’re all different. We agree on some issues, disagree on others. It makes for some cool debate. What I want to know is why you seem so empty. I can see it.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Spa visits are included in our reservations. Get a facial or a wrap or a rubdown or something. Or consider this. There hundreds of passengers onboard. Mingle. Meet someone. Take a breath and talk.”

  “Strange, you have some passionate romance cooking but you divert the conversation away from your man.”

  “This reunion is about PAAC. Not Riker.”

  Oh, no. Riker wasn’t her man. Why had she said that?

  “Riker?” said Regan, curious. “All right. I’ll look forward to shaking his hand.”

  “Sorry—no. He can’t stand the smell of hand sanitizer.” Extraordinarily immature, but how could Ona resist when the woman had swiped her bacon, barged into her cabin and slut-shamed her—the biggest strike being the bacon-swiping? “Never any offense.”

  Stiffly, Regan went to the door. “If you mean that, change out of those sweatpants and come with me to the pool. Everyone’s getting together there to catch up.”

  “I didn’t know everyone had set something up for the deck.” Slightly irked that she’d been clued in at the last minute yet again, Ona almost sighed in frustration. At least someone—Regan Waltz of all people—had included her. The olive branch might be poisonous, but it was a risk she’d take to forge a positive reconnection with her peers and have a chance of picking this reunion up off its butt. The casino hadn’t been the ideal venue for everyone to slow down and talk. Poolside conversation might do them all some benefit, and Ona craved knowing what ten years had done to a bunch of private school performers. She’d read everyone’s profiles, but to really know what time did to a person, you had to talk to them. “Give me ten and I’ll come with.”