Page 10 of The Second Chance in the Mediterranean
“I wasn’t.”
I should leave.
Seb dropped the brush and the hose, muffledthunkssounding as each hit the carpeted deck.
I really need to leave.
Gripping the rails on either side of him, Seb leaned back. Muscles jumped in his chest, his biceps stretched, and I was glad my sunglasses hid my eyes.
But he smirked anyway and my feet remained rooted to the floor.
“Marcella?” Cat’s voice jerked me out of my frozen state and I spun around. Her gaze vacillated between me and Seb for a moment and I imagined her eyes bouncing back and forth behind her sunglasses. Seb and I were both incriminatingly quiet. I didn’t know what to say—one day in and I’d already been caught ogling him.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked me. Catarina, or Cat, as she had introduced herself, was the chief stew. While I handled only my team of Roy, she had five stews who worked under her. Yesterday she’d been brief but friendly. It had been much appreciated. As chief stew, she was the crew member I’d work with most aside from Roy, and with that pressure and proximity, chefs and chief stews tended to butt heads.
Cat tilted her head toward the bottom of the gangway, where Dom, Edie, and Gio waited. “We’re all ready,” she said.
I tossed a brief glance back at Seb, who frowned at me. Was he upset we were caught? Or upset I was leaving?
I shook thoughts of Seb off and smiled at Cat. “Ready.”
We took the ramp down together, and blissfully, she didn’t bring up Seb. “Are you all settled into your cabin?”
“Yes, thanks, all squared away. It’s nice to have my own room again.”
“You were sharing a cabin before?”
I greeted the group on the dock and we walked toward the city center along the wharf. “I was actually on a private sailboat before this, a seventeen-meter sailboat as casual crew. I shared a crew cabin with another woman.”
“Oh goodness. Was this a job or... ?”
I chuckled. “More of an adventure. I was at a bit of a dead-end job in the Caribbean and they offered me a chance to sail through some of the Caribbean islands and out through the Pacific.”
“Ah, that’s amazing. Didn’t you just love it? I was a stew on a yacht in Fiji a few years ago, but it was just temp work.”
“I didn’t get that far, unfortunately, just around French Polynesia. But what I did see was amazing.”
We compared notes over the islands as we trailed behind the rest of the group. Cat had an eastern European accent and a keen eye for details. And she had a great memory for things that had happened years previously.
Dom stepped aside to a small café with outdoor seating and we were led to one of the tables under an umbrella.
Menus were distributed and drink orders placed. I quickly picked out my lunch and put my menu back down. “Dom, when we first met, you were helping the Boyds shop. How did you end up picking outThemis?”
“Ah yeah. Natasha had her heart set on something big and really tech driven. She acquired most of her wealth through investing in various technologies, including some carbon fiber projects, so she was very attracted toThemisfor its innovation.Beyond that, we just had pure luck that the ship came up for sale at the time.”
“When was that purchase made?”
“About six months ago. Not that long after our dinner onOdyssey.The Wrights were a bit put out when Nat and Justin didn’t listen to their advice on superyachts, I suppose. Doesn’t help that the Boyds one-upped them.”
Sweeping my fingers around the table, I asked the rest of the crew, “When did everyone join on?”
Cat waggled her fingers. “I’d worked with Dom before, so he snatched me up right away. Gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
I shifted my attention to Edie, who closed her menu. “I came withThemis;I’ve been on board for a little over a year now.”
“Ah, it’s good to have an engineer who knows the boat so well, then.”
She grinned at me. “Every nook and cranny.”
