by Ally Blake
Reminding her of the moment a man pulled a piece of green curly ribbon from the hair of a woman he’d just met. And with that memory a light switched on inside of her ’til JJ felt like she could she could see the whole world.
All her life she’d known what she didn’t want—which was to be stuck in a loveless marriage in a small town with no way out. Only she’d been so frantic wanting more, everything, now, and running from what she didn’t want she’d never precisely pinned down what would make her happy.
But looking over the walls of photos she knew . . .
She wanted not thrills so much as the aftereffect; the kind of delight that lasted.
She wanted to be in a place where she not only fit, but where she mattered.
And she wanted warmth; not just on holidays but every day.
She wanted Kane.
Letting him into her life, and her heart, she had brightened her own life. And could continue to do so, but only if she got over herself and went out and got him.
By the time she hit the lobby she was running. For the first time in her life it wasn’t away from something but towards it.
She only hoped she wasn’t too late.
Chapter 26
By the time JJ’s plan had come together in her head, her heart knocked so hard against her ribs she knew one or the other would be bruised by morning. Only when she got to the casino, it was to find the doors were shut.
Dammit.
She knocked on the smoky glass until a shape formed behind it, the lock was unlocked and a man holding a vacuum cleaner opened up.
“Sorry lady, we are nearing Australian waters. Casino closed.”
She looked past him to the blackboard that was set up in the corner, covered in so many changes it was more smudge than odds. Filled with a level of need and want that put everything else she’d ever wanted in the shade she ducked under the man’s arm.
At his, “Hey!” she took off at a run, swerving around tables as if the devil was on her heels. She was a runner after all.
Once she reached her goal she grabbed a handful of chalk stubs, tucked the blackboard under her arm and was gone.
*
JJ paced from one end of her bed to the other, waiting for security to come knocking, while also stopping every five seconds to listen at her wall for the sound of Carol and Samuel, hoping they hadn’t made it back to their room without her noticing and that the next sounds she heard would be them arriving and not . . . you know.
It was near two in the morning when she finally heard Samuel’s deep voice.
Leaping off her bed she ducked out her door and knocked on the room next to hers, Samuel answered wearing a red silk robe and black boxer shorts.
Ignoring his attire for her own sanity, JJ said, “I need your help.”
When she plonked the short end of the blackboard on the ground, his eyes lit up.
“Carol,” he called, rubbing his hands together, “we’re back on, baby.”
Chapter 27
Head pounding, leg-aching, patience balanced on a knife’s edge, all Kane could think was thank god he wasn’t driving this thing.
That, and that he needed to find JJ.
Every time he’d tried to in the last thirty-six hours he’d been stymied.
During the ball, a couple had tried to get up to no good in one of the life boats when the man had had a touch of angina and they’d needed Kane’s brute strength—bad leg aside—to get the guy out.
The final day of cruising he’d been stopped at every turn for goodbyes, photos with guests, turning away tips from good-natured retirees, suggesting they pass any stipends onto their pursers and waiters most of whom had families back home who needed the funds way more than he ever would.
Late the night before as he’d headed back to his room Frank had cornered him and wouldn’t let up until Kane shared a scotch—or ten—with his cronies. Drank him under the table, they did.
Now, with an hour until disembarkation he was like a bear with a sore tooth.
He decided to try the lobby to see what he could do to help the early birds, but mostly in the hopes he’d find the frustrating woman he couldn’t get out of his head.
A fling? At first, fine. But it had become more than that faster than either of them could keep up. And he wasn’t done convincing her as much.
If she had a new job, good for her. He’d follow. Take her to dinner in whatever Podunk town she ended up in. And he’d get to know her in real life. In fact he couldn’t wait. He wanted to know about every scraped her knee. Every time she’d had her heart broken. Every disastrous job. Every trip and fall. Every rousing triumph. And more, he wanted to be there every time she experienced any of that and more forevermore.
It wasn’t yet five in the morning and yet the place was humming with couples hoping to be first off the boat. In fact a veritable crowd had gathered in a corner of the lobby with a few purple shirts and even the captain’s hat poking through. Curious despite the pounding in his head he headed that way.
Taller than everyone else on board by a good couple of inches, over their heads he saw Samuel’s blackboard from the casino leaning against a pylon. The slew of crazy bets had been cleaned away leaving only one. A new one. It read:
JJ loves KP
The odds?
In possession of inside information, the house will not take this bet.
And dangling over the corner was a long thin curl of green paper ribbon from a popper.
Kane’s heart ran riot, like a wild animal in a trap.
He must have made a noise, as the crowd turned as one to look up at him. He was met with a bunch of huge smiles and even a few pairs of wet eyes. Including several staff who began to clap and cheer. Even the captain gave him a smile tinged with inevitability.
“Whose idea was this?” Kane asked, his voice as raw as if he’d swallowed a bucket of sand.
“Who do you think?”
Kane followed the sound.
It was Hazel, leaning against another pylon away from the crowd.
Several big strides and he was at her side. “She did this?”
Hazel merely smiled. Did the woman not know how to be a fairy godmother?
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He couldn’t think. He wished he could go back in time twelve hours prior when Frank kept buying and talking about the good old days and he could stick to soda water.
But he couldn’t go back. He knew that all too well.
While the crowd around him smudged into a blur, and the ground beneath his feet tipped and swayed, he pressed his thumb to his temple, closed his eyes and condensed his focus to one thing.
JJ. And the small amount of time he had to find her before she was gone for good.
Kane’s right leg screamed at him to ease up as he ran the length and breadth of the ship, not stopping to talk to the hundreds of people trying to say goodbye. He wasn’t stopping for anything.
He checked all the likely places—her room, the pool, each and every bar.
Until a voice in his head, a warm familiar voice, told him to head up. As high as he could go.
Which was how three and a half of the longest minutes of his life later he found her, in The Attic, the cleaners working around her as her forearms leaned along the railing much as they had that day in the little church on Lifou, and she tipped her face to the sun.
He saw the moment she knew he was there, the tightening of her shoulders, the way her heels lifted off the floor as if his presence made her toes curl. He knew that feeling. Like he wanted to hold every feeling as close as he possibly could.
Years spent keeping those deeper feelings from overwhelming him brought on the urge to put his hands in his pockets. But he fought against it, stretched his fingers and reached out to her instead.
Sliding his hands to JJ’s lean hips, pressing his body against hers, sinking his face into her sweet neck, breathing her in—her keen restlessness, her fracture
d sweetness, the way she opened up for him with a sigh—until all the empty places inside of him filled and he was made whole.
She turned, her hands falling to land on his chest, her small body pressing against him even as she looked cautiously into his eyes. She didn’t trust easily, this woman, but by some lucky twist of fate, she trusted him. More, it seemed, than she trusted herself.
He lifted a hand to brush her hair from her face, first one side then the next, leaving her open to him as he asked, “Any chance you’ve seen the blackboard this morning?”
“Blackboard?” those whiskey eyes flashed, wide and bright and indomitable.
“It seems our odds have changed.”
“Really?” she said, and when her fingers curled into his shirt, her nails scraping cotton against skin, he realized that the itch he’d been feeling right there, all week, was gone.
“Mm-hmm,” he said, tugging her closer. “They’re good. Our odds.”
“How good?”
“As good as we both want them to be.”
She breathed in deep, her chest rising and falling fast.
“You know what I want, Juliana.” Her mouth kicked at one corner at his use of her full name. He’d never get over that. For as long as he lived. “How about you tell me what you want and then we can go down there and put all those rooting for us out of their misery.”
She nodded, her gaze dropping to the button of his shirt before sliding up his neck, his cheek, his nose, and to his eyes. And the trust, hope, emotion he saw swirling within made him certain he’d never love anyone more.
“Kane,” she said, her voice shaky, even as her touch was sure, running over his chest, up the back of his neck, curling into his hair in a way that made him think if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear soon, she’d show him.
“I didn’t come on this cruise looking for you,” she began. “I thought I came here to run away. I do that. When things get hard. But if I’m honest I really came here for some quiet. Time definitely, to figure out why I kept making the same mistakes over and over again. And then I found you, and in you, I found all the answers I was looking for. You’re a good man, Kane. Honorable and real.”
He lifted an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes. Even as he felt her sink closer, her knee sliding between his, her hands making tracks through his hair that felt so frickin’ good it was all he could do not to groan.
But hearing what she had to say felt even better.
“Okay, so you’re big, and hard, and hot, and you taste like sunshine and your hands, so rough and warm and the things you do . . .” She shivered and her eyes fluttered closed.
And the images invading Kane’s head were a million miles from honorable.
Rolling out her shoulders, JJ said, “I’ve never met a man like you, and I realized I need to stop questioning why and just grab on tight and never let you go.”
“Never?”
She pressed her whole body along his, imprinting herself on him as if she hadn’t already done so the second he saw her leaning against the wall, so flinty and vulnerable, making his heart stutter back to life.
“If that’s okay with you,” she said.
“I’m in love with you, Juliana. Forever sounds pretty fucking perfect.”
Her eyes glinted, but she held firm, his stoic little thing. “I love you too. I can’t believe it, but I do. I am. In love. With you.”
“And thank the gods for that.”
She laughed, shook her head. Then lifted onto her toes to kiss him. So tender, barely more than a breath between them, yet it rocked Kane’s world.
Eons later he pulled away, kissed the tip of her nose, the edge of her cheekbone, the corner of her beautiful mouth. Then slid both hands into her hair, basking under the adoring glow of her whiskey eyes.
“Juliana Jones,” he said as he leaned in to kiss her again. “Wild Girl.”
“Kane Phillips,” she whispered against his mouth. “Fitness Director.”
He grinned before taking her bottom lip between his teeth. Nipping the lush skin before soothing it with a swipe of his tongue. When she trembled, her eyes fluttering shut, he knew he was going to enjoy every second of whatever came next.
It might be demanding, it would be tempestuous, but he had no doubt he’d just boarded the ride of his life.
Epilogue
Erica sat at on the edge of the flower-shaped pool on the Royal Pacific, her lunch dates, the Silver Foxes; three men who’d lost their wives since booking the couples’ cruise. And she had them in rapturous stitches.
JJ waved across the deck, caught Erica’s wide eyes, and wondered which of the Silver Fox’s had taken Erica’s momentary lack of attention as the opportunity to make his affections known.
“Excuse me!” Erica squeaked as she near-levitated from her spot and—in a swirl of sheer harem pants and belly-revealing top for the Arabian Nights–themed day—hotfooted it to JJs side.
“Having fun?” JJ asked, shielding her eyes against the blinding sun glinting off the gold medallions around her friend’s neck.
Erica shook out her shoulders. “Apart from the occasional wandering hand, I actually am. I am going to become the absolute queen of booking these cruises at work, I tell you. One thing, though; why is it that that guys you want to see in Speedos prefer board shorts whereas this lot . . . the smaller the better?”
JJ patted Erica on the arm and sent her back to her penance.
Tablet tucked under her arm JJ checked in on the dancers who had spread themselves out among the guests, making the couples taking the latest Second Honeymoon Cruise feel extra special.
Turned out her particular assortment of temp jobs had made her perfect for a management position onboard and with good word from Kane, Raul, Danny, Zara, her waiter, and even gorgeous young Jane, the dancer who’d made a packet betting on her and Kane, she’d shooed it in.
Making her Kane’s boss. Until she found out that Kane had amassed a mind-boggling amount of shares in the company over the years which kind of made him her boss.
In the bedroom, they took turns.
Speak of the devil, she felt Kane coming before she heard his deep voice rumble, “No one has the right to look so adorable in purple.”
“Right back at you,” she sighed, turning to face him, knowing it would only make it harder to get back to work.
Staff relationships were okay, in fact the afterhours in this place was a veritable bed-hopping party. Still, in public they were careful to be discreet. Not that it made any difference. Their relationship and the one-off betting ring it had spawned had become legend amongst the over-sixties cruising crowd.
JJ reached up and pretended to flick some lint off Kane’s chest. When the muscles twitched under her touch she bit her lip so as not to kiss and touch and climb all up inside the man.
It must have been written all over her face as Kane took her by the hand and hustled her inside the ship, down the hall, and into what had become their storeroom.
As soon as the door was closed his mouth was on her neck, his hand sliding down her front as he pulled her against his. Her head dropped back, her limbs turning to mush at the touch of his rough hands, the sunshine that seemed to soak into his very skin melting her from the outside in.
“I take this job very seriously you know,” she said, even as she reached back to take a handful of athletic backside.
“Yeah,” he said, his breath at her ear wracking her with shivers. “Only too well.”
“I have a break in an hour,” she said. “Meet me in our room then.”
“Now sounds better.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Nah. Just mad about you.”
Heart growing another half size bigger, ’til it pretty much filled her entire chest, JJ sighed.
Though when he let go to spin her around, she grabbed for the door handle and burst out into the hall, feeling pink-cheeked, wild-eyed, her uniform askew, only to bang straight into a tiny little couple in their nineties,
the pair of them wearing golden cloaks and shoes with little bells on the toes.
When Kane grabbed her, no doubt to cover the evidence of what they’d been up to in the cupboard that still pressed against his shorts, JJ bit her lip to stop from laughing.
“Are you looking for the buffet?” she asked, tucking her hair back into her ponytail before pointing the way.
The man smiled as he passed, the woman’s voice floating back to them. “I wonder what class they run?” she asked, diving hungrily into her welcome pack.
“An hour,” JJ said, pulling away. But not before she looked up and down the hall and snuck in one last long lush kiss.
She felt Kane’s eyes on her as she headed back out into the sunshine. Knew he’d be thinking about her as she was about him, always.
She’d finally found her place in the world. Under the glow of the Pacific sun, every day was a bright new adventure and she was having the time of her life.
As for the man with the cool blue gaze and the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t dimple who in that moment was bracketed by a pair of purple-haired septuagenarians in hot pink turbans testing out his brawny biceps which he’d generously flexed for them? The quick smile he sent her way said she was the right woman for him.
And fifty-seven minutes later proved why he was so the right man for her.
The End
Honeymoon Series
If you enjoyed Second Chance Honeymoon, you’ll love the other Honeymoon novellas!
The Bride Who Wouldn’t by Carol Marinelli
Buy now!
Second Chance Honeymoon by Ally Blake
Buy now!
The Honeymoon Prize by Melissa McClone
Coming July 2014