by Avery Flynn
As soon as Aubrey’s friends left, everything turned weird and Carter couldn’t figure out why. She barely made eye contact and had left enough space for several of her friends to sit between them if they came back. Something had gone wrong between getting to the dining room and her friends leaving. What? He had no fucking clue.
So as he took another bite of his omelet, he fell back on one of the exercises he’d learned in acting class. Scanning the room, he spotted a woman in a neon T-shirt with what had to be a Bloody Mary winding her way across the dining room.
“See the lady in the lime green shirt?” He nodded his chin toward the woman. “You might think it’s a bit early for a drink, but that’s not an ordinary Bloody Mary. It’s filled with a topical poison and she’s about to spill it on the guy with the pineapple shirt and he won’t realize he’s going to die until it’s too late.”
“What are you tal—“ Aubrey stopped mid bite, her eyes going wide and a then her mouth curved into a huge smile as she focused her attention on the man in the fruit shirt. “I see. But what neon shirt doesn’t realize is that the old lady isn’t pineapple man’s mother, she’s his bodyguard.”
He kept his face turned toward the women in neon but was really watching Aubrey out of his peripheral. “She’s obviously with the badass grannies motorcycle gang.”
Aubrey nodded, her posture relaxing as she got into the game. “They are fearsome.”
“Granny and pineapple man are on the lam.” He moved over on the bench seat of the semi-circular booth until they were hip to hip. “They offed neon shirt’s sugar daddy after a round of underground cockroach racing.”
She snagged a slice of bacon from his plate and used it to point at the woman in the neon shirt as she stood in line at the waffle station behind pineapple man. “So it’s revenge.”
“Nope, a double cross.” He grabbed his bacon back and bit it in half, giving her the remainder. “They were supposed to wait until he’d made neon shirt his sole beneficiary. They jumped the gun. Now they’re all out ten million dollars.”
Aubrey shook her head and let out a tsk-tsk. “Sometimes murder doesn’t pay.”
“That’s definitely the title of the true crime book written about it—Sometimes Murder Doesn’t Pay.”
She ate the bacon. “Which, of course, becomes an international best seller inspiring its own secret cosplay groups of people who reenact that fateful day when pineapple man was poisoned.”
“So the question is...” He pivoted in his seat, dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “What if we somehow entered a time warp and these are not the actual participants but the cosplay version?”
She threw back her head and let out a laugh. “Oh that was a great twist. I’d buy a ticket to that movie.”
Carter sank back against the seat, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth behind her close enough that he wound the end of her soft blonde hair around his fingers. Aubrey leaned into his side, her hand dropping to his thigh not nearly as high on it as he would have preferred but this was the ship’s main dining room and drawing attention for getting a public hand job probably wasn’t the best idea. Of course, being around Aubrey made all sorts of bad ideas sound good. She had that effect on him.
“You got plans for later?” Because he definitely had plans for her and all of them involved getting naked.
She looked up at him with that same ornery twinkle in her eyes she’d had when he’d caught her rooting around Grace’s suitcase for her pants. “Are you up for having your ass handed to you in shuffleboard?”
Little known fact. He brought a foosball table with him to every movie set and held a tournament open to crew and actors alike for a championship. It had come down to him and the cinematographer on the last Admiral location. He’d won after a quadruple overtime. Competitive? Him? Fuck yes. He’d never played shuffleboard a day in his life but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t win.
“You don’t think I can hang?”
Aubrey lifted an eyebrow, nothing but challenge in her as she slid out of the booth and stared back at him, one hip cocked out in defiance. “I am the Hog Wild shuffleboard champion three years running.”
“Oh we’ve got a badass here, huh?” He followed her out of the booth. “Thinking of joining the granny gang when you’re older?”
“Joining?” She snorted. “I’m going to run it.”
And three games of shuffleboard later, he was pretty sure she’d run the gang like she ran his ass on the painted deck. He hadn’t just lost, he’d been destroyed. Now, deep into the fifth game he wasn’t playing to win anymore, he was using his ineptitude as an excuse to be close to Aubrey.
Was it pathetic of him to have sweet talked her into teaching him how to play so that she’d stand behind him and wrap her arms around him to teach him proper form? Most definitely. He was okay with that.
“How did you learn to do this?” He took a step back so he could get the amazing full view of her in those shorts as she lined up her shot.
Creeper? Him? When it came to Aubrey it seemed so.
“There’s not exactly a whole lot to do in Salvation.” She did this shimmy thing with her hips and slid her puck forward with just enough speed to bang into his and knock it off the board. “It was either go play shuffleboard at Hog Wild, our local honky tonk, or traipse out into the woods to help Ruby Sue with her moonshine operation. I went with the one that wouldn’t end with me in jail.”
“Is that where Ruby Sue is?” he asked as he walked over to the wall near a support divider.
It was a spot he’d already noticed was shielded from the view of people walking the other way on the deck and the ping pong table around the corner. He put his shuffleboard stick into the holder attached to the wall and sat down on the single lounge chair, daring her without saying a word to come over.
“Are you kidding?” Aubrey laughed and strutted her way to him. “She’s got to be in her seventies at least and is the only one who knows the secret ingredient in her pecan pie recipe so no one else could make it if she got locked up. I pity the sheriff if he ever tried to lock up Ruby Sue.” She put her stick next to his and sat down on the chair between his legs, leaning back against his chest. “The town of Salvation would turn on him before the single light on Main Street turned from green to red.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as they both looked out onto the horizon. “What’s your life like when you’re not kicking ass at shuffleboard?”
“Not the way I expected it to be that’s for sure,” she said with a chuckle.
Aubrey might be trying to keep it light but there was no missing the tension stringing her tight. For the first time since they’d met it felt like he was getting to see more of the person she was rather than just the image she presented to the world. If he was someone else he may not have realized, but there was no one more equipped to understand perception versus reality than a guy who’d spent the past decade in Hollywood. Life had taught him that there were always layers.
“I went back to help my gran out at her bakery thinking that I could sell some donuts and write on the side,” she continued. “That was my plan anyway. But then Gran had a stroke. She recovered fully—thank God—but she can’t take care of things like before and I’m all she has left so I’m not going to leave her.”
He could picture that. Watching her interact with her friends—even when she was stealing one of their pants—showed just how much they all cared about each other.
“What do you want to write?” he asked, genuinely curious about what else she was hiding behind all that impulsive extrovert exterior.
“Narrative non-fiction about people like Andrée Borrel who was the first female paratrooper who was recruited to parachute into occupied France to train the resistance, or Gertrude Benham who circumnavigated the globe seven times before she died in 1938.” The words came out in a rush of excitement, as if they’d been building inside her for a lifetime, leaving a heavy silence after they were
all said as if she needed a minute to box all those hopes and dreams back up. “Instead, I’m up at o’dark hundred making donuts and running the bakery. It’s hard to travel for research if you have to fill the Long Johns or refill the coffees of the old men in town who spend their mornings gossiping over crullers before handling the accounts, putting in the supply orders, and everything else involved in running a business.”
“So you’re doing what you need to do but not what you want. I can understand that.”
“No offense,” she said, sitting up and twisting around at the waist to give him a look of disbelief. “But are you serious? You know what that’s like, Mr. Movie Star?”
Not surprised by her reaction, he shrugged. “I want more than to be The Admiral.” He paused, waiting for the lightning strike from the fates or the super fan with the IG to pop around the corner, phone at the ready to snap video of his confession. He’d never said that out loud to anyone except his brother. He hadn’t planned on saying it out loud to Aubrey. It just sort of happened. It seemed confessions to virtual strangers who a person never saw again wasn’t just a thing that happened in the movies. “That’s not to say I don’t appreciate everything that’s happened. I do. I know a lot of people don’t get the chances that I have. Still, I feel hemmed in sometimes or like I betrayed the person who I was going to be.”
“That I feel.” Aubrey relaxed back against him, letting out a long sigh. “I love my gran but I miss that person I was in college. She was fun and had all sorts of plans and dreams.”
“Is that what this week is about for you, getting some of that back?”
“At least for a little while, yeah I guess it is.” She sat up, her ornery sparkle glinting again in her eyes. “Speaking of which, how about we play one last time and loser buys ice cream?”
The quick conversation change nearly gave him whiplash but he understood. There was giving someone a peek at the soft underbelly and then there was throwing everything wide and letting someone really take a long eye full. He wasn’t into that either.
“I feel like I’ve been hustled,” he teased. “Don’t think it went unnoticed that you really were telling the truth about being a champion shuffleboard player. I thought it was hyperbole. Are you keeping any other secrets that I should know about?”
Her cheeks turned pink and she hurried off the chair, all but skipping a few steps away in her rush. “Forget the game, let’s just go grab ice cream. My treat.”
Seriously, he was going to need to get a neck brace if she kept switching things around so quickly. Not that there was any question of him not going with it. Ice cream and Aubrey were a pretty damn good combination.
“You footing the bill would help my damaged male ego,” he said, playing it up with a melodramatic sigh that would have gotten him fired from a regional theater group.
“Heaven forbid that take a beating.” She rolled her eyes, not buying it for an instant. “Come on, there are waffle cones with our names on them.”
He hadn’t planned to hold her hand as they walked to the ice cream stand near the pool, but it just came naturally—sort of like how he’d trusted Aubrey with the truth about his career. If anyone got ahold of that story it could ruin any goodwill the public had for him, but he could trust her. He just knew it in his gut the same way he knew within the first few pages of a script if it was a winner. Aubrey wouldn’t do him wrong.
Seven
Belly filled with ice cream and the taste of hot fudge still on her tongue, Aubrey didn’t understand the sudden on-set shyness as she stood next to Carter in front of her stateroom door.
“Thanks for the ice cream.” He rubbed his palm across the back of his head hard enough that it would have messed up his hair if it had been even half an inch longer. “I haven’t had a double scoop forever.”
“They keep the ice cream freezer under lock and key?” she asked, teasing.
“I can’t complain too hard. I have it a lot easier than the women in Hollywood do. Still, all it takes is a couple of unflattering pictures posted on some fan Instagram account to make casting directors think I may be losing my appeal.”
Maybe like her Admiral thirst trap account? Guilt sent her sugar rush crashing as she glanced down at the gaudy hall carpet and away from the man she’d been ogling in public but had never imagined would ever appear in her life. Lusting after him had been like dreaming in detail about how she’d spend every penny of her Lotto winnings even though she never bought a ticket.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He crossed his arms and leaned one shoulder against this door. “What for?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle and let out a deep breath. “I might have been one of those people who posted pics.” Not a lie but definitely not the whole truth. Damn. Why was this so hard?
Lifting an eyebrow, he gave her a cocky grin. “Might have, huh?”
Despite knowing she should keep this moment serious, she giggled. What was it about Carter that made her feel like that person she’d been in college? The one who did dumb things occasionally but things always worked out. It was like being around him made her forget the clock-in, clock-out boring sameness her life had become.
“So,” he went on, pretending to be shocked, “all this flirty banter hasn’t been only because you’re interested in my super-hot, big brain?”
Falling into old habits, she went with the moment, sliding into the safety of old, sassy, always up to something Aubrey. “Your butt might be kinda nice.”
“Kind of?” He let out an exaggerated gasp, really going all in on the biting Hollywood egomaniac thing. “You know I was one of People’s Sexiest People Alive.”
“But you weren’t named the sexiest.”
He chuckled. “Only the best for you, huh?”
“Yes.” She nodded, playing her part. “I have very discriminating tastes when it comes to Hollywood hotties pretending to be a local yokel from Iowa.”
“I understand.” He grinned at her as he opened his door. “See you at dinner?”
“You bet.”
She was still doing that goofy-smile-happy-sigh thing when the closed the door and then ducked into the bathroom to grab her dress for dinner. She’d hung it up before her shower in hopes the lazy-person’s iron would get rid of the wrinkles that her just-stuff-it-in-the-suitcase-and-go packing style had created. Survey said—she held up the blue dress with spaghetti straps and a suck-in-your-gut-and-pray zipper—yeah, close enough.
One tight-space strip down later and she was in the dress, zipper half down but a woman needed more room than was allotted in a teeny-tiny ship’s bathroom to do the reach-behind-grow-her-arms-three-inches-to-reach-it-all maneuvers necessary to finish the job.
Her phone on the desk caught her eye as she walked back out into her room. Since they departed, it had been a glorified alarm clock radio but they were docked in Orlando, which meant she had signal. Finally! She could delete the post that started it all. Heart doing the thunka-thunka rhumba at twice the normal speed, Aubrey tossed her old clothes on the bed, picked up her phone, clicked on Insta, and instantly regretted the double scoop of hot fudge.
The notifications had gone wild. There were so many comments on her could-Carter-Hayes-be-on-a-singles-cruise post that it was like they’d made their own little comment babies. People were describing in all sorts of way too much detail exactly what they’d do if they discovered Carter was on their cruise. Wow. Folks were creative. She would have just been thinking bang him, but some of the commenters had gotten way more creative about the how, the when, the where, and the what exactly. If it wasn’t sorta weird because she knew him, she would have been impressed by their creativity. But she did. He wasn’t just The Admiral anymore. He was Carter.
Not needing any time to second guess herself, she hit delete on the post. Too late? Most definitely. But it was all she could do without a time machine. Too bad that didn’t make the situation any better.
She dropped her phone on the bed and groan
ed. “You are such an asshole, Aubrey Dean.”
“Did you poison my ice cream?” Carter asked.
She did a surprised squeak whirl around thing, her palm pressed to her chest above her wildly beating heart. He stood in the door that, like a dork, she’d forgotten they’d left open. He was in slacks and a button-up shirt that hung open, his to-die-for abs on display, but that’s what she noticed last. The first? The way all of the jittery, anxiousness twisting her up inside melted away at the sight of him.
Oh this was bad. This was so bad. This wasn’t just hanging out for a cover story, not for her anymore, this was so much, “Worse.”
“Did you poison all the ice cream?” he asked.
This was when she told him. She just let it all hang out there, knowing he’d realize who she really was and that would be that. He’d close the connecting door and never talk to her again. Well, it was amazing while it lasted. And not because he was Carter Hayes, movie star and all-around eye candy. It was because he was Carter Hayes, the guy not from Iowa who made her laugh and gave her the maybe-this-could-be-more feelings.
Straightening her shoulders, she looked him square in the eyes and— “I can’t zip up my dress.”
No. That was not the words that were supposed to come out. They. Were. Not.
“I can help with that,” he said, walking into her room. “Turn around.”
God help her, she did. She was weak. And he was—well, he had that rough edge to his voice that did things to her. His hands went to her hair first, twisting it around his hand into a tight ponytail that he tugged with just the right amount of force to make her nipples stiffen and her breath catch. She closed her eyes and took a moment of oh-my-fucking-God before he let go and her hair fell over one shoulder. He walked his fingertips down the back of her neck, following her spine lower, his touch a teasing promise of what could be. Temptation didn’t even begin to cover it. She had to get herself under control. She had to, oh—
He tugged at her zipper, lowering it. “This thing isn’t working right.” He dipped his head, brushing his lips across the nape of her neck. “I guess the only choice is to take it all the way down.”