"Gillian, what is it?" Cora came over to stand beside her. "Is something missing?"
"I put my passport in this drawer." She started throwing the underwear out on the floor. "I know I did."
"Maybe it's in the other drawer. Sometimes I'm sure I've put something somewhere, and it turns up somewhere else."
"God, I hope you're right." She emptied the drawer and opened the other one. When she'd emptied that one, too, and she was surrounded by piles of her clothes, she tried to think. Had she moved it somewhere else?
But even if she had, that didn't explain the state of the drawers, which had been ransacked.
Her throat dry, she stood on shaky legs. "Cora, I hate to say this, but somebody's been in here. And I..." She swallowed. "I think they took my passport."
Fourteen
STEWING IN HIS FRUSTRATION, LEX HAD TROUBLE realizing that the noise he was hearing was his walkie-talkie. He grabbed it from the dresser where he'd tossed it when he'd stalked into the room.
If it was Gillian wanting to make up, he shouldn't do it. What he'd told Dante was absolutely right. Getting involved with a client was a mistake, and he should have that tattooed on his butt. Better yet, he should have it tattooed on a body part that he was more likely to see every day. Like the body part that had gotten him into this fix in the first place.
He clicked the button on the walkie-talkie. "This is Lex."
Gillian didn't sound like she wanted to make up. Instead she sounded petrified. "Someone's been in the room. I think they stole my passport. Uh ... over."
"I'll be right there. Over." Lex clicked off the walkie-talkie. Then he switched to Dante's frequency and headed for the door as he waited for Dante to answer. Lex was in the hall by the time Dante responded. "Someone's been in Gillian's room" he said. "Get down here. Over." "I'll be right there. Over."
The metallic taste of fear sat bitterly on Lex's tongue. Someone had penetrated the Marilyn disguise. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Embarrassing as it was to admit, he'd been trying to convince himself that nobody on board this ship was a threat to Gillian. He'd wanted her to make a clean getaway via this cruise ship, but that had been unrealistic. Phil Adamo had a reputation for a reason. Obviously he didn't want his stepson to go to prison, and the only way to guarantee that was to eliminate the witness.
Lex knocked on Gillian's door once, and she flung it open immediately. Dante came running down the hall, and they both crowded into the room and locked the door behind them.
"Locks don't mean anything." Gillian was breathing hard. "They were in here. We noticed some other things— makeup moved, shoes out of place in the closet, clothes on hangers shoved to one side. I've messed up my two drawers, but Cora hasn't touched hers and they're in the same condition."
Lex took a look in the closet and opened a couple of dresser drawers. There was no doubt someone had been going through Gillian and Cora's stuff.
"Not very subtle, were they?" Dante said.
"That's what worries me," Lex said. "If they got in that easily, they could have looked for what they wanted without disturbing anything. It's as if they want us to know they were here."
"Why?" Gillian was wide-eyed, obviously fighting terror.
"I don't know." Lex couldn't make any sense of it. If Adamo had a man on the cruise who was assigned to get rid of Gillian, maybe even Hector Michelangelo, he'd have no emotional investment in the job. He'd be efficient, careful. He wouldn't ransack someone's room and steal things.
'This is sort of creepy," Dante said.
Lex agreed, but saying so wasn't going to help Gillian any. He turned to her, and all he wanted to do was take her in his arms, but that wouldn't accomplish much at the moment. "Are you sure the passport is missing?"
"I don't know where it could be if it's not in one of those drawers. You're welcome to double-check. I dumped everything back in the drawers, and I didn't find it, but maybe I'm too upset to see what's in front of my eyes."
"I'll look," Dante said.
Lex shouldered him aside. "I'll do it." He had the same aversion to Dante's going through Gillian's underwear that he'd had earlier today. Was it only this morning that he'd gone shopping at Victoria's Secret?
"I'll check my suitcase and my purse." Gillian hauled her rolling bag out from under the bed while Lex went down on his knees in front of the dresser.
He checked the bottom drawer first, and there was no passport lurking in the midst of her nightgowns, bathing suits, shorts, and T-shirts. Then he tackled the next drawer. Ah, that underwear. He'd agonized over what to buy, and here it was, ready to cradle her voluptuous body.
He had much more knowledge of that body, now, and touching her bras and panties brought back the pleasure of making love to her up on deck under cover of darkness and a very boring astronomy lecture. None of that mattered now. Everyone would be much happier if he could find her passport tucked somewhere in the midst of all this colorful silk and lace. He needed to concentrate on that.
But there was no passport. He closed the underwear drawer. "Sorry. It's not in there."
"It's not in the suitcase or my purse, either." Her color wasn't good.
"We need to check the floor," Cora said.
"Right" Lex started with his quadrant. "Cora, you don't have to do this."
'Thank you for the special consideration, Alexander, but I can still get on my hands and knees."
"Okay, then let's each take a quarter of the room. Look under both beds."
For a couple of minutes, there was no sound in the room other than the scuff of knees and hands over the carpet. They kept bumping heads and fannies in the process.
"I would hate for this to end up on America's Funniest Home Videos," Dante said. "Four people crawling around on the floor of a place this size is not cool."
Gillian sat back on her heels, and her voice quivered. "We're not going to find anything."
"I don't think we are, either," Cora said. "And I'm happy to report that my back didn't go out."
"Glad to hear that, at least," Lex said. "Dante?"
He got to his feet. "I think we have to face the fact that the passport's gone."
"So do I," Lex said. "We've scoured the place. Assuming someone was in the room, it seems likely they took the passport."
"They could have had anything in here." Gillian twisted her hands in front of her. "Why that?"
Lex grasped at anything that might calm her. "I suppose it could be a crew member who is into identity theft."
"That wouldn't explain the stuff tossed around," Dante said. "Someone who wants to steal her identity wouldn't want her to discover that the passport was missing right away. They might even plan to return it after they'd scanned in all the info. So they'd want to be very careful and not leave a mess like this."
Cora stood and smoothed her dress. "So they intended for us to know they were here. What now?"
"Ordinarily we would notify ship security," Lex said. "But if we draw extra attention to the situation, the crew will be watching Gillian like a hawk and it'll be harder for her to disappear once we dock in Mexico."
Gillian swallowed hard, loud enough so that everyone could hear her. "Or m-maybe I'll disappear s-sooner than that. Maybe soon I'll be swimming with the f-fishes."
Lex glanced at her and could tell she was about to lose it. She was blinking fast, but the tears gathering in her eyes would start falling any second. "Here, take my handkerchief." He reached into his pocket and pulled out... her panties.
For one awful moment, everyone stood staring at the red Victoria's Secret item dangling from Lex's hand. There was no retracting what he'd done. Each person in the room knew exactly what he'd pulled out of his pocket.
"Wow," he said. "This is awkward."
Dante coughed. "What I have to know is whether you had them in your pocket before you came in the room just now, or whether you filched them from Gillian's underwear drawer while you were looking for her passport."
"Um, well, I—"
Lex snuck a peek at Gillian. She looked on the verge of something. She was sort of red in the face, but he couldn't tell if she was about to laugh or cry.
"Take your time, buddy," Dante said. "If it's answer A, then okay. You're a stud and I have to give you credit. If it's answer B, then there are some things you and I need to talk about, you being my partner and all. I mean, you did insist on shopping for that stuff, and I didn't think too much about it at the time, but—"
"Before," Gillian said. "He had them in his pocket before." Then she burst out laughing and snatched the panties from Lex's hand.
At least Lex hoped she was laughing. It sounded like it, but tears were streaming down her face at the same time. He dug deeper in his pocket, and this time he came out with an actual handkerchief. "Here," he said. "And I'm sorry."
"Personally, I'm relieved," Dante said. "I'm all for alternate lifestyles, so long as somebody else is leading them. I might have been able to work through discovering that my best friend was into women's underwear, but I'm not saying it would have been an easy transition for me. We go back a long way, and I—"
"Dante," Cora said. "Shut up."
"Yes, ma'am." Dante sat down on Cora's bed.
Gillian used Lex's handkerchief to mop her eyes and blow her nose. "Thanks." She held the handkerchief in one hand and her panties in the other. "I've never known the etiquette of this."
Cora cleared her throat. "I don't believe Emily Post ever envisioned something along these lines, darling. If you gave the panties to Lex and you want him to keep them as a souvenir, then I suggest you return them now. We'll all pretend this never happened."
"You can pretend if you want," Dante said. "But I'm here to say I'll never forget it. The look on the Lexter's face when he pulled those undies out of his pocket... now there's a moment for America's Funniest Home Videos'"
"Dante . . ." Cora sent him a warning glance.
Gillian hiccupped. "I wasn't talking about the panties. I meant Lex's handkerchief. Do I give it back to him now, or what?"
"Full of snot?" Dante made a face. "I should hope you wouldn't. See, this is why tissues were invented, although if Lex had been a tissue kind of guy, we wouldn't be sharing this special moment."
"You can give me the handkerchief," Lex said.
"Well, now." Cora glanced at Gillian. "I would say that's a very romantic gesture."
Dante wrinkled his nose. "You would? Then let me pass that on to Little Ben. We'll see if he has any used hankies around. Maybe he could make a little bouquet of them."
"Honestly." Cora put her hands on her hips. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
"I know. I'm the comic relief around here, although the Lexter's giving me a run for my money with his panties-in-the-pocket routine. Hey, there's an idea. How about Gillian keeps the hankie and Lex keeps the panties?"
"I'll keep both things," Gillian said. She smiled at Lex. "And thanks for making me laugh so hard. I feel much better, now."
"That's a plus," Cora said. "But we still don't have a course of action."
Lex had been thinking about that, once Gillian had let him off the hook about the panties. Until she'd been ready to admit how he'd come by those panties, he'd been prepared to look like a deviant to save her reputation. It warmed his heart to know that she'd sacrifice that reputation for his sake, even though they'd had that dumb argument about astrology.
Considering that recent argument, he wasn't sure if she'd go for his plan, but it was the only one he could think of. "With all due respect, Cora, I don't feel good about leaving Gillian alone in this room with only you as protection."
Cora sighed. "I knew I should have taken that tae kwon do class when I had the chance."
Gillian studied Lex with interest. "So what do you have in mind?"
"We need to switch roommates."
NEIL HAD ACCEPTED THE FACT HE'D HAVE TO SLEEP in his wig, but fortunately it fit him perfectly. He'd become good at giving himself a buzz cut that acted like Velcro to hold it on. Someone could yank it off, but he wasn't about to let that happen.
He wasn't crazy about sleeping with his privates taped, though, especially after he'd made himself feel so good in the shower. And he loved the way his jade silk pajamas felt against his quite happy dick. Wearing a padded bra was necessary to make the top look right, but the bottoms were roomy and should cover the situation adequately, especially if he stayed in bed while BJ roamed around the room.
By the time BJ's key clicked in the lock, Neil was freshly shaved with a light dusting of makeup on. He'd propped himself up in bed with the covers drawn to his waist as he read the issue of People he'd thrown in his suitcase at the last minute.
Instead of coming right in, BJ called through the door. "Nance? You decent?"
Almost never, sweetie. "Sure!" He wondered if she was really that modest that she didn't want to chance walking in on him when he was undressing. That could be a good thing.
"Can I bring someone in?"
Hm. This was unexpected. "Male or female?"
"Female, of course. I wouldn't dream of having a guy in our room at this time of night."
What she didn't know. He put down the magazine, arranging it over his lap for good measure. "Then come on in!"
"Great." BJ appeared looking a little mussed, followed by a young woman with wire-rimmed glasses and her blond hair in ...
Braids? Neil didn't think anybody over the age of ten wore braids these days. Between the braids and being on the skinny side, this girl looked about as alluring as a lamppost.
"Nance, this is Dorothy Sexton," BJ said. "This afternoon we shared a cab ride to the dock and then sort of lost track of each other. She saw me tonight with Dante, and—"
"That's working out, then?" Neil figured the mussed look was a good indication.
BJ's face turned pink. "Yeah, it is. Thanks to you."
Damn straight. But he didn't want to seem arrogant. "It might be the makeover that caught his eye, but after that, it was all up to you."
"It doesn't hurt that I'm a Gemini and he's a Libra. We found that out tonight at the lecture. You didn't come to that, did you?"
"No, no. I felt like a bubble bath and a good book."
"But we only have a shower."
Neil laughed. "A bubble shower then. I just know there were bubbles involved." And some jollies. He had to be the world's best masturbator, hands down. Or hands up and down, more like it.
"Fragrant bubbles," BJ said. "The room smells terrific."
"Why, thank you." Nancy did love her sweet-smelling lotions and potions.
"I see you're all ready for bed, and everything," Dorothy said. "We shouldn't be bothering you."
Neil stretched and yawned. "Well, I am a little bit tired." He had a good idea what this was all about, and it would require him getting out of bed and taking a chance his main man would create an unexplainable bulge in his silk pajamas.
"Then never mind." Dorothy started for the door.
"No, wait," BJ said. "Let Nance at least give you a few pointers before you go. You want to be ready for Hector in the morning, right?"
"Who's Hector?" Neil asked.
"This guy Dorothy met at dinner. Hector Michelangelo. Dorothy thinks he's really cute, but he's not paying attention to any of the women, out of shyness, probably."
"Probably." Dorothy nodded, which made her braids bob up and down. "And I'm shy, too, which makes things difficult."
"See, I told Dorothy that getting some pointers on my appearance made it easier for me to talk to Dante. And now look what's happened. We spent the whole lecture together and went for a walk afterward." BJ sent Neil a pleading look. "Could you give Dorothy a little bit of time? Maybe five minutes?"
Neil wanted to seem like a good egg. The more BJ liked him, the better this roommate situation would go.
A good egg would help Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road of feminine attractiveness.
"Take down your braids." He eased back the covers and climbed carefully out
of bed. So Pygmalion would ride again. Neil thought a haircut was in order, and he might have to loan out his spare tube of hair gel. His wig didn't require much styling, fortunately.
"What gorgeous pajamas! Is that silk?" BJ reached out, looking for all the world as if she intended to grab a handful of Neil's pajama bottoms.
"Yep." He dodged away and lost his balance. Somehow he managed to fall facedown across BJ's bed instead of faceup. No telling how the silk would have arranged itself.
"Nance, I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay." Neil eased himself off the bed and made sure his pajama bottoms were draped to effectively hide his pride and joy. "I'm just very, very ticklish."
"Oh! I'll have to remember that," BJ said. "Everywhere?"
"Absolutely everywhere. Even my ears are ticklish." Neil couldn't be sure, but he thought Dorothy was eyeing him with some suspicion.
If he did indeed give her a haircut, he'd have to be damned careful not to accidentally nudge her with his crotch. Behind those wire-rimmed glasses were the eyes of an intelligent lass. Neil didn't want to push his luck.
Fifteen
GILLIAN WASN'T PARTICULARLY SURPRISED BY LEX'S announcement that they needed to switch roommates. She didn't feel all that safe with only Cora in the room, either. She had a good idea how Lex intended this switch to go, too.
Now that she knew he was an Aries, she could see right through him. He had her safety in mind, no doubt, but he had a few other things in mind, too. If he slept in the same room with her, that would relieve him of the need to be romantic to get what he wanted. Or so he might reason out.
She had other ideas on the matter. She would start with pretending to misunderstand. "You want Dante to move in with me?"
"Well, no. I thought—"
"Hey," Dante said. "If that's the way it has to go, I'll live with it. I realize my personal life shouldn't play any part in this. But I don't know how I'll explain it to BJ."
"Nonsense," Cora said. "You're not going to have to explain anything to BJ. Having you move in with Gillian would be ridiculous. Everyone has seen that Lex and Gillian are pairing up. If you and I arrange it so they can share a cabin, BJ will think you're a hero. She's not going to be worried about you sleeping with an eighty-two-year-old woman."
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