Page 67 of Falling Overboard

“Unfortunately, we have to care. I’ll hand-wash it and figure out how to get the red wine out without ruining the dress.” I might haveseen this as a fun challenge and not just aggravating if the dress had belonged to anyone else.

“You can radio me when you’re finished with it and I’ll bring it to her.”

Nope. “Let me handle this,” I said.

He gave me a half smile. “Are you still in white-knight mode?”

I nodded. I was. He deserved to be protected from the ravenous horde upstairs. “Unless you want to go back out there and see what they have in store for you,” I said.

The look of panic on his face made me laugh. “No, thank you.”

“All those wealthy women? Does this mean you aren’t a fortune Hunter?”

“Lucky! That was puntastic.”

We couldn’t just stand here grinning at each other. This dress needed to be cleaned and I needed to stop awkwardly flirting, so I headed to the laundry room. Instead of going back to whatever he’d been doing before, he followed me. When we arrived I started pulling supplies to clean the dress and get the stain out.

There was a crashing sound and Thomas calmly called out, “Lucky? The guests have gone aggro and are slapping each other around. They’ve knocked the centerpieces off the table.”

Had they broken anything? I hoped not. “Georgia?”

“On it!” she called back.

She would be able to sort this out and maybe even convince them to go to their cabins and sleep it off. Cabins that I hoped Emilie had finally finished cleaning.

“Can you imagine spending a quarter of a million dollars just to fight with your best friends for a week straight?” I asked.

“I cannot,” Hunter said, jumping up onto the counter and watching me work. The buttons on his polo shirt strained, as if they could barely contain the muscles underneath. “So what else is going on? Besides the guests being terrible? It seems like something is bothering you.”

Other than the fact that I wanted him to shut the laundry room door, throw me up onto the counter, and kiss me senseless? I had to rack my brain for a second to remember the other reasons why I was in a not-great mood. “Oh. Emilie is up to her old tricks again. Spending all her time on her phone and not cleaning the guest cabins.”

“I’ve seen how much extra time you’ve had to spend following behind her to make sure things are done right.”

He paid close enough attention to me to realize that? I wasn’t sure how to take what he’d said.

“You shouldn’t have to be doing practically everything by yourself,” he added. “You should be able to delegate. I know you don’t like doing that because of how independent you are.”

That was true. “Georgia’s been a big help.”

“Do you have the power to fire Emilie?”

I briefly let myself fantasize about what it would be like if I did. “Only the captain can fire people. Chief stews can make recommendations but he has all the authority. They’re family, so I can’t replace her. I’m supposed to be helping rehabilitate her.”

“She doesn’t seem to want to be rehabilitated.” Then, with a shake of his head, he said, “I don’t like it when people take advantage of you.”

I wouldn’t mind if you took advantage of me.I pressed my lips together so that those words wouldn’t come out accidentally.

Despite the fact that all the washing machines and dryers were running, we heard yelling in the hallway. I stuck my head out of the laundry room and heard the guests screaming at each other. Thomas and Kai had gone upstairs to deal with it. Hopefully they’d escort everyone to their cabins.

Good. Maybe they’d finally fall asleep. Just as I was headed back into the room, Hunter came bounding out to see what was going on and I nearly smacked into him.

He had to put his hands on my shoulders to steady me. “Careful!”

But his touch didn’t help my balancing situation. If anything it left me even more off-kilter. We stood there for several beats, staring at each other, my pulse ricocheting around inside my wrists.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Just a bit . . . lightheaded.”

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