by Ally Blake
Feeling messy in the head, a sensation he didn’t like, Kane rubbed a hand over his face then pressed out of his chair. He slapped his cap back on his head, locked his office and took the stairs up five decks. By the time he hit fresh air his thigh ached. Good. Steady reminders of what he’d gone through were a good thing.
He eased back, stretching out the tight skin.
“Kane,” Hazel called from a deck chair as he passed.
Kane kept moving, walking backwards to say, “Hazel. Are you coming to Pilates?”
She lifted her cocktail. “Can I bring this?”
“Not an ideal combination.”
“Then, here I shall remain.”
Kane made to move on when Hazel said, “Oh, by the way, have you seen JJ?”
So this was Juliana’s fairy godmother. “Was there something you’d like me to pass on to her if I do?”
“No. Nothing in particular. I like her, though. Cute as a button and feisty with it, don’t you think?”
With a Cheshire cat grin she waved him away. He offered a bow before taking off, thinking the last word he’d use to describe Juliana Jones was cute.
She was a firecracker. All contained energy and flashes of heat. And it was only a matter of time before she went off.
If things kept moving the way they were, the time was nearing for him decide if he wanted to be there when she did.
With all her questions about onboard dating, she’d managed to skirt around the only question either of them had on the forefront of their minds. She’d not asked what the rules were when it came to guests and staff hooking up.
If she had he’d have been forced to tell her it wasn’t on. In fact, it was written out in black and white. A firing offense. Not that it had ever been a real concern for him.
Until now, the familiar voice in his head pointed out with its usual lack of bullshit.
It wasn’t as if he needed the job. He’d done well for himself in footy, and while Aidan hadn’t been born with the same physical attributes his big brother had, he’d had a brain like a computer. Kane’s investments would keep him in good stead the rest of his natural life.
But he liked this job. And more importantly it had saved him. Jeopardizing it would take away his sanctuary. The place he’d been allowed to hide, and heal.
“Kane. Dear boy. Stay,” a bevy of septuagenarian beauties in an eye-popping array of Lycra cooed as he arrived at the Pilates class.
Kane grabbed a mat and set it up at the front. “Thought you first-timers might like to see how this Pilates thing is really done.”
His second in charge, a stocky ex-shot-putter named Zara—who’d been there as long as he, knew what he’d been through, and that he was here for the class as much as the show—gave him a wink then got to it.
Chapter 12
Lunch was Hawaiian-themed.
Lines of guests decked out in head-to-toe tropical prints and leis stretched around the pools leading to massive buffet tables. On the balcony, a band played timpani and the dancers—including nubile Jane—hula-ed. Though not with hoops.
JJ sat hunched over a glass of congealing tomato juice on the edge of the cutest pool onboard—a flower-shaped wonder—trying not to fall asleep behind her sunglasses, as she waited for Hazel’s return.
Curls formed at her temples as the sun beat down upon her back, her neck felt scratchy where she’d not put on enough sunscreen, and the couple sitting next to her kept up a consistent trickle of smooch talk, clearly not realizing how loud they were going about it.
While JJ wondered if she might just have entered the seventh circle of hell.
The clackety-clack of kitten heels was followed a swirl of multi-colored chiffon with suggestively positioned hydrangeas as Hazel settled herself onto the deck chair she’d insisted JJ save on her behalf. Over the top of her plate piled precariously high with lunch, her eagle eyes spotted JJ’s drink. “What are you having, dear?”
“Virgin Mary.”
“More like a Bloody Shame.” Hazel tilted her glittery-blue eyelids towards the sun as if checking if it was high enough overhead for cocktails. Anything after midday was apparently fine. She motioned to a waiter, ordered something with specific levels of half a dozen spirits. Then, without warning, said, “So JJ, I hear you’re not getting any.”
JJ hunched further over her awful drink. “Was it Bernie or Myrtle?”
“Oh darling heart, I’ve been told six separate times today by people who didn’t hear it firsthand. Hearing aids today are amazing things. Frank’s can pick up a mouse fart three rooms over.”
Frank, on the next deck chair, nodded as he muttered about having to peel his own prawns.
“So what are we going to do about it?” Hazel asked.
No way was Hazel talking about the prawns. JJ said, “We aren’t going to do anything.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because she’s stuck on a cruise filled with wrinkly old marrieds,” Frank said between prawns. “Leave the poor girl alone.”
JJ decided right then and there that Frank was her new favorite.
“He’s a keeper, Hazel.”
“Here’s hoping,” Hazel said, but her eyes went all gooey a moment before she blinked it away and went back to simply being fabulous.
Frank sighed and fiddled with said hearing aid so that he wasn’t forced to listen to whatever was coming next.
“How do you do it?” JJ sighed, then licked tomato juice off the piece of celery bobbing within her mocktail. “I mean . . . marriage. How do you make being with someone look so easy?”
Hazel gave JJ a smile that bordered on understanding. Then she reached over and cupped JJs face. All hands and long nails and sincerity way inside her personal space. “What happened to you, my love?”
“What do you mean?” JJ’s words came out all squished and so Hazel let her go.
“You sound like an old married woman who’s left behind a husband and five kids.” Hazel’s eyes narrowed before they settled on JJ’s belly as if deciphering whether she had popped out five kids.
JJ sat up straight and sucked in her belly. “No kids. My marriage was over before we even saved up enough to take a honeymoon.”
“What went wrong?”
That question seemed to be a recurring theme of her holiday. And something she’d not dwelt on all that much between then and now. Maybe because she was surrounded by hundreds of couples who’d actually made it, or the fact that she’d never even had a honeymoon period—much less a honeymoon—that kept taking her back there.
“He . . . I . . .” What? She asked herself. Honestly, what was the final straw? “It turned out that he wasn’t the man for me.”
It seemed a simplification, but saying the words out loud it felt . . . true.
Her ex had been a sweetheart. His parents loved one another, and gave him the faith that life could turn out just as blissfully for him. But JJ knew that was a rare thing. Her own father treated her mother like nothing more than a beautiful possession, something to be showed off then put away when he wasn’t in need of her. JJ had never heard her mother complain, even while she faded a little every day until she became a mere silhouette of who JJ remembered her being.
No wonder JJ had always wanted more.
“Maybe this is your second chance,” said Hazel, green gaze intently staring at something across the way. “To have that honeymoon you missed out on after all.”
JJ laughed. “How romantic. A pacific paradise honeymoon all on my own.”
Hazel looked at her with pity, then cocked her head toward the other side of the pool. Suckered in, JJ’s gaze followed.
Kane was talking to a few other staff, directing, making notes on a smart phone before sliding it into the back pocket of his shorts. It was only a matter of seconds before his eyes found hers.
His eyes were hidden beneath his cap, and yet JJ could feel the touch of their cool interest as if he was an inch away. Making her wonder if he’d been watching her before s
he even knew he was there.
“No need to be alone, sweetheart,” Hazel said. “Not if you don’t want to be. There never is.”
“But he’s staff,” JJ said, realizing belatedly how much she’d just given away.
“Honey, he’s hotter than the hood of a Holden on a forty-plus day. What else matters?”
Frank harrumphed. Then looked up to see who they were mooning over and after a moment shrugged as if he agreed.
JJ blinked to find Kane was no longer surrounded by lackies. He was all alone, watching her watching him. And even from that distance, with the gaggle of well-fed flower-bedecked guests filling the space between them, she could feel the pull of the man like he’d roped her with a lasso.
She’d never been a sitter or a waiter. She was a leaper into life. Just because life hadn’t been benevolent enough to stay static until she landed quite right most of the time, that couldn’t and shouldn’t stop her from leaping.
So if her choices were to save deck chairs for Hazel for the next six days, or take this holiday by the reins, there was only one choice.
She passed her drink to the nearest waiter and stood, wiping the condensation from her palms on her short denim cut-offs, before she set off around the pool.
“Go get him, kiddo!” Hazel shouted. Her fairy godmother, folks, the kind who’d have given Cinderella a nip from her hip flask before sending her off in a crazy pumpkin coach.
Chapter 13
JJ approached right as Samuel and Carol—the quiet couple from her dinner table—stepped in front of Kane.
She turned on her heel only to find herself hemmed in, stuck in the little circle as Carol asked about dinner and Samuel hemmed and hawed about whether they might enjoy sunset quoits. Kane listened calmly, looking like he came with his own personal air-conditioner. Until JJ lifted a hand to twirl her hair off her hot neck, and his eyes shot to her belly, where her t-shirt had lifted to expose an inch of skin. Then things weren’t so cool in Kane-land.
“We’re in international waters for sure now, right?” Samuel asked.
Kane blinked, his cool eyes dark, intense. “I believe so. Why?”
Samuel glanced from Kane to JJ and back again, said, “No reason,” then, heads together, he and Carol sped off with more vigor than JJ had seen from the pair yet.
“What was that all about?” Kane asked, moving in beside her.
“I have no idea.”
A group made to pass by and Kane tucked his hand along her back and moved her out of the way. He didn’t let go as another group approached to ask him about some other sporty-fitnessy thing. JJ hadn’t a clue what they were blabbering on about, as all the blood had rushed to the spot where his hand rested on her back, his little finger stroking the beltline of her shorts.
“Got a second?” he asked when he got the first chance.
“Mm-hmm.”
A drop of his eyes to her mouth, then, “Walk with me?”
What was a girl to say but, “Sure.”
“No luck on the room change as yet,” Kane said, as he edged through the crowd of starving septuagenarians, smiling at everyone who caught his eye, remembering more of their names than was in any way natural.
“Thanks for trying,” she said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “But I was actually hoping you might tell me more about the job you had in mind.”
Okay, so she wasn’t. She didn’t give a hoot about the job. Her every nerve ending screamed at her to get a move on, to hold his hand, to touch his face, to kiss him ’til her lips turned numb. But as much as she leapt into life, she wasn’t about to come straight out and just tell him she wanted him. Of all the parts of her life, men had been the trickiest. She’d heard that whistle of a falling piano too many times not to know when to keep an ear perked.
“Job?”
“When you came looking for me in the bar last night. Asking for a favor.”
“Right,” he said, shaking his head, giving her a little buzz at the thought that he might have made it up as an excuse to talk to her. “Well, we’ve got the dance off. Bingo.”
He checked his watch. Then pressed her faster.
“Couples quiz. Talent night.”
He slowed, reached across her body, his arm brushing her shirt over her stomach as he opened up a door and hustled her inside.
When the door shut the room was quiet. The sounds of their breaths bouncing off the walls. Kane’s gaze traveled over her face, grazing her cheek, her neck, landing on her lips. Where it stayed.
She could have asked where they were and what the heck they were doing there. That would have been the smart move. Instead she said, “I’ll do it.”
“What?” he asked, his voice ocean deep.
With a shrug she said, “Whatever.”
Who cared? All that mattered was that they seemed to have taken a step over some invisible line. She figured she may as well take another. And she did, towards him. Her hand lifted to rest against his chest. Beneath the thick purple cotton it was as hard as it looked. So hard and warm.
She might have moaned. If the flicker of his cheek was anything to go by she most certainly had.
His hand lifted. She waited for it to slide into her hair.
But his hands instead closed over hers, stopping her.
And panic edged in. Not camera-swirling proportions, but on its way.
How did she keep getting this stuff so wrong? Dismissing the ones who loved her. Liking the ones who hurt her. Craving attention from those who didn’t give a flying hoot.
Her heart beat so loud in her ears, mortification threatening to take her knees out from under her, she barely heard Kane as he said, “Juliana, I know you’ve got time to fill, but I’m not something you can tick off your to-do list.”
He said it like he meant it, but instead of peeling her hand from his chest, his fingers clutched tighter, his thumb running up and down hers.
“Really?” she managed. “Then why did you just take me into the storeroom?”
His jaw clenched before a wry smile lit him up. “Good point.”
Jeez, but the man was gorgeous. All pheromones and heat and delectability. The desire to reach up on her tippy-toes and lick the pulse beating in his neck was enough to make her dizzy. “Then what’s the problem?”
His eyes flickered between hers, as if there were so many problems he couldn’t settle on just one. She could hardly blame him there. She wasn’t easy, and she wasn’t sweet. While he had a wealth of stories in those eyes—dark, sad, wonderful stories, if she had the guts to hear them.
But the spark between them made the air crackle like nothing she’d ever felt before. Which was enough for her.
So she reinstated her grip on his shirt, lifted as high as she could go, and kissed him.
She expected resistance. Rejection wasn’t a new thing for her.
What she didn’t expect was the intense wave of heat that sluiced through her as he kissed her right on back.
And for the first time in her life, the man was . . . as advertised.
His mouth was warm and wonderful, his callused hand gentle as it traced her neck beneath her hair to cradle her head. And the heat of him burned.
When his tongue eased across the seam of her lips, she opened up for him, tilting to take him deeper. Pressing closer, his big foot sliding between hers, his arm curled around her back, hauling her tight.
Her hands tipped his cap from his head and made tracks through his thick hair. And after a beat he lifted her off her feet and carried her ’til her back met a wall.
So hot was she, so lit with anticipation, perspiration broke out all over, sending her nerves into meltdown. She curled a leg around his, about ready to climb inside his clothes if he’d let her, and his big hand slid down her side, curving over her hip, around her back, and into her shorts ’til he found skin.
The ridge of his erection pressed into her center, and it took her knees right out from under her. Lucky Kane was big, lucky Kane was strong, he held her,
wrapped up tight and kissed her until she saw stars.
And when, with a moan that started in his lungs and ended in her toes, his fingers caressed her backside, she had to drag her mouth away to gasp for air.
Relieved of duty, Kane dropped his head too, his arm sliding from her backside to her hip, but not letting her go.
Feeling all loose and wired, she let the back of her head hit the wall. That had been way better than a cocktail. Better than a really great run. Better than just about anything really. And she wanted to hang onto the rare feelings rushing through her as long as she possibly could.
When her top teeth scraped her bruised bottom lip, gathering the taste of him, hot and salty on her tongue, Kane reached out to tug his thumb over the spot, and murmured, “Hell, JJ.”
She laughed, the sound husky. First time he’d called her JJ. If he felt anything like her it was probably because he hadn’t the energy for more.
“It’s probably too late,” she said, wriggling her fingers to get some blood to her extremities before they got pins and needles from lack of blood, “but I should have asked if you’re single.”
A beat, as he lowered her to the floor, then, “Do you think that would have just happened if I wasn’t?”
She shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Another beat, then a gruff, “I’m not seeing anyone.”
“You’re not going to ask me?”
“You mean you haven’t been married a hundred years?”
She laughed, turned to lean her shoulder on the wall to find him doing the same. She had to crick her neck to meet his eyes, but it was worth it. His usual cool was lost in the swirl of heat still making its home therein.
“Come on,” she said. “You read my file.”
“Hard not to with you shoving it under my nose more than once. Mind you, it says you’re five inches tall. And that you were born in the 1890s which is probably why there was no red flag as to eligibility for this cruise.”
More laughter and the endorphins that came with it. “Does it say I’m divorced? Out of work? Broke?”
Kane blinked and in the dark quiet room she couldn’t be sure what he was thinking.