Page 41 of Falling Overboard

“Here.” Hunter offered me his forearm so that I could balance more easily.

“Thanks,” I said, ignoring how warm his skin was, how strong he felt.

After I had my shoes firmly on, I accidentally let my hand linger on his arm for a beat too long.

That was exactly the kind of thing I had to stop doing.

And I found myself making inane conversation. “The taxi has probably been waiting for a while. We’re late, so we should get going.”

Ugh. I internally grimaced.

“Boat-ter late than never,” he responded just as Emilie walked up and looped her arm through his.

This is none of your business,I told myself. I marched toward the van, determined. I was going to behave. That would probably mean limiting my intake. I couldn’t overdrink because when intoxicated, I had a tendency to become very friendly with men I was attracted to. I would probably be the only one being careful—the rest of the crew would be on a mission to drink enough to drown an elephant, like the world would end if they didn’t consume all the alcohol in France tonight.

Hunter could sit with Emilie and flirt with her to his heart’s content. I didn’t care.

I couldn’t let myself care.

I climbed in and went to the back row.

To my surprise, Hunter entered the vehicle a second later and, despite the fact that every row was empty, ended up sitting right next to me.

It made me entirely too happy.

Chapter Fifteen

Hunter

This wasn’t the best idea, choosing to sit so close to Lucky. If I’d been smart, I would have gone into one of the other seats, but I was just naturally drawn to her. Today I had made a superyacht hit a dock because I’d been thinking about her and the way that she had smiled at me over her shoulder, tossing her hair to one side ... it was like something out of a toothpaste commercial and too cheesy to ever admit to, but one second I had a fender in my hand and the next I had cut my inheritance in half.

The captain had chewed me out, as he should have, and so I told myself to put some distance between me and Lucky. I’d already screwed up royally—I didn’t need to do it again.

But then she’d held on to my arm while putting on those strappy little shoes and here I was, choosing the seat next to her.

And pressing myself close to her side to make room for everyone else.

She smiled up at me and said, “If you sit any closer to me, you’re going to have to buy me dinner.”

The air felt thick and heavy. My chest constricted too tightly for a moment and I found myself responding, “I’ll buy you dinner anytime you’d like.”

I was trying to sound casual and suspected that I’d failed miserably.

Thankfully the rest of the crew got into the van, including the chef and his parrot, who was making a ringtone noise. I wondered if the bird ever tried to escape. I wanted to joke with Lucky about it but everything felt too serious at the moment. I did want to take her to dinner.

And then back to our cabin.

I stifled a groan. I had to think about something else or things were going to get very embarrassing very quickly.

One of the stews got in the van—I was pretty sure it was Georgia—and so I turned to Lucky and said, “Georgia mentioned that you don’t usually join in on these outings.”

I wanted to know why. I wanted to understand everything about her.

“I’m worried about spending too much money because cocktails can get expensive. Living on the yacht, we get a definite taste of the high life, and suddenly purses from Walmart aren’t good enough and you want a designer bag, like the ones you see every day. And it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, you’ve got plenty of money, but then next thing you know you’re broke and you’ve got to sign up for another year to try and earn it back. It’s a vicious cycle. I’m trying really hard to save up as much money as I can.”

There was a reason. “Why—”

A bunch of hollering and whistles cut me off. I turned to see the guy from New Zealand kissing the other stew. Emma. Emilie. Something like that. They were going at it, and it annoyed me for two reasons.

---