by K. C. Falls
"So, Mr. Wolf, are we finished here? I mean . . . do we understand each other?"
"If you're asking me whether I will abide by your deal, then yes. But understand each other? Not even close." He shook his head at me and arched his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of disappointment. "And I really would appreciate it if you'd call me Morgan. Every time you say 'Mr. Wolf, this nasty image of my father pops into my head."
I was curious about the negative references to the senior Mr. Wolf. Both Richard and Morgan had given me a clear picture that they held the man in low regard. I squashed my interest. It was a bad time to get into a conversation about anything as intimate as his family relationships. I needed to back the hell off inside my head and in our interaction.
"Okay, Morgan." I loved the name and wished I didn't. It was different. Old-fashioned. Classy. Sexy. It was the kind of name that felt warm, round and tasty when I said it.
I headed for the elevator. To my relief he didn't stop me but I felt the sear of his eyes on my back. It made the few short steps I took seem like a mile. When I turned around to press the button he was leaning against the rail, corded arms crossed over his broad chest and a wistful trace of a smile on his face. The glass doors closed and our eyes stayed locked until I rose out of sight.
I was grateful for the sanctuary of my room behind the galley. I was even more grateful when I looked out the porthole and saw that the two naked girls were gone.
We'd been underway for almost three hours and the Atlantic was like glass. I didn't know how long it would take to get to Paradise Island. I hoped it would be soon. I wanted to get off the boat and take a walk. I needed a little time to think away from the aura of Morgan that filled every corner of El Lobo. In spite of the 'deal' we'd struck, part of me was still considering bailing on the job. Strangely, I found that I trusted him far more than I trusted myself. He did things to me that were hard to ignore.
When I opened my Facebook page, I saw that Rachel was on too. I suppose I could have called her, but there was no phone in my room. I didn't even know where the phone was on the boat or if it would be complicated to use it. I wanted to talk not type. But I settled.
Lara Lamb U there?
Rachel Caldwell Smmmmoooocccchhh. I miss you already. WU?
Lara Lamb Usual. Somebody shoot me.
Rachel Caldwell Uh-oh. 411?
Lara Lamb Long story. Got time?
Rachel Caldwell Y.
Lara Lamb Hot ass boss had 2 babes nekked on deck. Wuz outside my window. Caught me watching.
Rachel Caldwell TF.
Lara Lamb Not funny. Messed up. I escaped to the control room so I wouldn't have to watch.
Rachel Caldwell LOL. Who forced you?
Lara Lamb You had to be there.
Rachel Caldwell I wish.
Lara Lamb Perv. Anyway, he caught up with me L8R. Teased me about it. Then he wanted to know what I thought of him.
Rachel Caldwell Did you tell him you thought he was hawt?
Lara Lamb MOF, I did. But I also ripped him a new a-hole for being a stuck on himself spoiled dick and a player.
Rachel Caldwell RU insane?
Lara Lamb I'm beginning to think so.
Rachel Caldwell Did he fire you?
Lara Lamb No, he kissed me.
Rachel Caldwell WTF?????
Lara Lamb Then I shoved him away. Hard. Threatened to quit. Threatened to sue him.
Rachel Caldwell OMG. You really R insane.
Lara Lamb It was a mess. He said I was giving him 'signals'. I swear, unless he's a mind reader I never gave any signals. It brought all that crap with Nathan back to my head. I felt a little violated. I mean, he just assumed I’d be okay with it.
Rachel Caldwell Nathan was a creep. He practically raped you.
Lara Lamb No, he just did what I thought I wanted him to do. And what he thought I wanted him to do. It was my fault.
Rachel Caldwell It was not your fault! No means no. It doesn't matter when you say it. Your 'fault' if you want to take the blame was staying with him afterwards.
Lara Lamb UR right, as usual. Then I thought about Chef A-hole. All my bad choices. So I pushed him away. Told him I'd stay if he backed off.
Rachel Caldwell But you hope he won't?
Lara Lamb I'm confused.
Rachel Caldwell You’re confused? Let me call the Miami Herald. That's a headline.
Lara Lamb VF. Not. He said things that made me weak. Mushy all over.
Rachel Caldwell What did he say?
Lara Lamb He asked me if he could make me laugh, make me sigh. He asked me if he could make me beg him to do all the things a man can do to a woman.
Rachel Caldwell. Oh. My. That's mush-worthy.
Lara Lamb I really don't want to make a fool of myself. I don't want to be used. But there's something about him that's different. Like what I'm seeing isn't all there is.
Rachel Caldwell Advice?
Lara Lamb As usual. Shoot.
Rachel Caldwell Play it cool. Don't mention any of it—the chicks, the pass—nothing. Do your job and see how things develop. You aren't afraid of him, are you? Like do you think he'd force himself on you?
Lara Lamb No, a guy like him doesn't need to force anything. He doesn’t seem the cave man type. But I'm a little afraid of how interested I am in him.
Rachel Caldwell Where's the harm in being interested? Just don't go all nutzoid. Most of the drama in your life takes place right between your ears.
Lara Lamb My own worst enemy? Thanks, Mom.
Rachel Caldwell Chill. Have fun. Enjoy your new job. Don't over think. Mountains & molehills, remember? Just fuggetaboutit.
Lara Lamb You're right, as usual. When we dock, I'm going to take a long walk and enjoy the sunshine.
Rachel Caldwell Good. You could use some rays.
Lara Lamb TTYL.
Rachel Caldwell LYL
Lara Lamb Oh forgot. We're on our way to London. LYLB
Rachel Caldwell Way cool. TTYL
As usual, Rachel's low-key calm eased my nerves. She was right about the mountains and the molehills. My BFF had a way of making me put on my big girl pants and get on with things. I couldn't count the number of times she'd brought me back to reality when my imagination started working overtime.
I looked out the porthole and saw that Paradise Island wasn't far away. The sand colored buildings of the Atlantis Hotel rose from an impossibly crystalline ocean. Soon Richard was maneuvering El Lobo into a slip and we were docked.
I studied the resort and came to a quick conclusion that it was like a Disney World for adults. Everything was spotlessly clean and in perfect order. Very pretty in a man-made way. Growing up in the continuous urban sprawl that was Florida's Gold Coast had nurtured a longing in me to experience a more natural world. Paradise Island was just a luxurious extension of the glitz of the mainland we just left.
Had I opted for college, I could have easily won an academic scholarship to any number of rural universities and satisfied my lust for the outdoors. As it was, my choice of culinary school meant finding the best alternative near home. There were occasional scholarships at culinary school but the few awarded went to underprivileged kids with restaurant experience not to solidly middle class geeks like me.
When I made the decision to try for a job on a boat one of the most appealing aspects was the promise of days at sea. As a child, turning east and knowing a vast ocean lay waiting there was a comforting thought. As dreary as the flat unbroken concrete of South Florida was, the ocean gave it an open side. I'd often wondered how much more stifling it would feel to live in a landlocked city.
Minutes after we docked I saw Morgan and his three guests walking toward the marina complex. A steward trailed behind them with the girls' bags. From the number of suitcases it looked like they intended to stay a while.
Morgan looked good with the ladies. He looked like he belonged with three lovelies surrounding him. His dark masculine looks made their fair beauty more appealin
g; their lithe bodies more feminine because they were gathered around his muscled frame.
I sighed and pulled my eyes away from the sight. Like all 'ordinary' looking chicks, I often wondered what it would be like to look so mouth-wateringly perfect. What would it feel like to walk into a room and know that every set of eyes in the room was looking you over and giving you a ‘10’?
My brain has always been the only area where I felt the least bit above average. I'm pretty sure that I've never been as proud of my smarts as my parents were and thought I should be. In culinary school I worked real hard to hide that part of me. Aspiring chefs aren't the most intellectual bunch in the world. I learned to exchange 'fucking awesome' for words like 'exquisite' or 'ethereal' when I wanted to praise a worthy taste. I forced myself to join the others in butchering French culinary terms. I never admitted to knowing quite a bit about Escoffier and that I had actually read Zola's Le Ventre de Paris. My classmates' familiarity with Les Halles, if they had any, was limited to knowing it was Anthony Bourdain's famous shop in New York. It was nearly impossible for me to keep from cringing when someone said 'Less Halls'. It became second nature to me to dumb down my speech patterns and rough up my language.
A cook's world is still mostly a man's world. Morgan was absolutely right in expecting to have hired a different sort of female chef. Most of the women who occupied the female minority in my school were decidedly batting for the other team. I had almost as many passes made at me by women as by men.
I got to thinking about the two girls doing each other on deck. I'd never so much as kissed another girl on the lips. The two women seemed happy to share Morgan and each other. I felt naïve—unworldly—watching them. It was a fuckfest of pleasure. I wondered if he did that often. I knew having two girls was a big turn on for guys. I hadn't expected that watching it would be such a turn on for me.
Chapter 12—Morgan
"Ladies, I hope you have a wonderful time at Atlantis." I had safely delivered my cousin and her pals to the lobby of the hotel. My duty done, I was anxious to shove off.
"Aren't you going to have dinner with us?"
"No, Phebes, we're going to get going early in the morning. I don't need to add a hangover and empty pockets to my morning."
"But Morgan, we wanted you to be our lucky charm at the tables tonight. I'm going to lose my shirt." Shelly threw me a sweet little pouty-face that I was supposed to find convincing.
"And I know you'll look great without it." I shot back. My mind wasn't on the girls. It was back on El Lobo. With Lara. Trying to undo the damage I'd done by being an idiot. A jerk. Let's face it: a real dick.
I walked back to the boat slowly. The midsummer sun was just dipping toward the horizon when I popped into a waterside bar for a drink. I've always been happiest in the long days of summer. My mother had fewer excuses to keep me out of the sunshine when the hot Florida rays beat down for nearly fifteen hours a day. She could hardly have claimed I'd 'catch a chill' when the air was topping ninety degrees.
I sat down facing the docks and ordered my usual. Richard gave me grief all the time over drinking the expensive vodka. He said it was purely a status symbol and that I couldn't pick out the Grey in a blind taste against the cheapest Polish swill out there. I proved him wrong one night when we both got shit-faced but he claimed it was just dumb luck.
The breeze picked up a little as the sun set. I nursed my drink slowly as I thought about the best approach to take with Lara. She was tougher than I first thought. She was certainly not overwhelmed by the 'hotness' she claimed to see in me, that's for damn sure. Kissing her had been a big mistake. I felt her body stiffen with something like fear or maybe just revulsion. But I wasn't threatening her. And, dammit, I did see something in her eyes and I did feel something between us. Then I screwed it up and she threw a brick wall right where the something had been.
Midway through my second drink I had made up my mind to break the barrier by letting her know a little bit more about the whole 'rich playboy' act. I'd been playing the game for so long that it seemed I was too convincing. The realest part of me was a fisherman and a boat keeper. El Lobo was more of a job than a luxury. She wasn't a big business, but she needed all kinds of care, staff and maintenance and took a lot of time. It was a job I did in exchange for time on the water plus room and board. It was a cop-out; an excuse for not facing the real world challenges of a job. I wasn't proud of it. I wasn't proud of me.
Wandering back to the dock, I made up my mind to leave Lara alone until there were plenty of miles between us, the Bahamas and the memory of my bad behavior. El Lobo had her night lights on and rocked like a pretty girl's firm ass under the new stars. As I got closer, I could see the outline of two people sitting on the lounges of the foredeck.
Richard had told me he was going to spend the night gambling. Apparently another game was more interesting. I could make out the bells of her laughter as they talked. Richard was a charming man. The quintessential nice guy. It took all of my will not to break their little party up before I went to bed. Richard had been warned and Lara was wary. Nothing much to see, Morgan, move along.
I checked on Mrs. D. who gave me a sleepy nod and curled back into her bed as I softly shut the door. I peeled my clothes off and hit the shower. The sheets were cool, my head was hot and the Goose did the job of sending me off to a dreamless sleep.
We were out of sight of land by the time I came out of my stateroom. Mrs. D. gave me an earful of chatter for leaving her by herself until late morning. She shot up my body to her perch on my shoulder and bit me gently on the ear.
"Pissed off this morning, Mrs. D?" I stroked her little body and she cooed her forgiveness. "Let's have a little walk-about. Maybe we'll find a den of gummi-bears somewhere." She knew that word alright, and broke into her she-devil smile.
Until Mrs. D. came along, I had never had a pet. My mother wouldn't allow anything that produced 'dander' within fifty feet of Clari and me. So I never knew the joy of loving and being loved by an animal. The capuchin was my first experience with unconditional love.
Through the window on the kitchen door I watched Lara as she worked on a huge pile of vegetables. She had impressive skill. My mind couldn't help but take those skilled hands elsewhere—to my body. Would they be work-roughened? Would they be strong or gentle?
Shake it off, jerk-wad. It's a new day, I reminded myself. Donning what I hoped was a sunny and completely non-threatening smile; I pushed through the swinging door.
"Good morning, Lara." The knife slipped from her hand and landed with a jarring clang at her feet.
"Oh . . . you surprised me. Good morning to you."
"I guess I need to announce myself better. I seem to constantly catch you off guard. I wouldn't want to cause an accident."
"I can make you something to eat. I fed the crew a long time ago."
"I slept in."
"Late night?"
"The usual."
"Did you get lucky?"
I answered that with a questioning look. Was she asking me if I got laid?
"I mean," she stammered, "did you score big? No. Oh shit. Did you win at gambling?"
"You turn the most amazing shade of red I've ever seen on a person, did you know that?"
"It's because I'm so pale to begin with." She picked the knife up from the floor and got a new one from the rack.
"A little color does you good. You're cute when you blush." Lara busied herself with a couple of peppers that were nearly the color of her face. "Am I allowed to say that? Cute, I mean. Is that a violation of our agreement—sexual harassment and all that?"
The look she gave me said 'not funny' loud and clear.
"Because, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what the rules are." I had just warned myself not to pressure her and I was doing exactly that. Thick headed much?
"Give me a break, will ya?" Lara asked and wouldn't meet my eyes. The peppers that she had been chopping without even looking at them moments before suddenly became worthy
of her total focus.
"Seriously. I want to know if telling you that you're cute falls into the 'smexy whorehound' category. I don't want to risk offending you."
"You didn't offend me."
"Funny, you sound like you'd like to use that knife on my balls right now. Of course, at this point in our journey, it would be hard for you to walk away. Unless you are a Guinness record-worthy swimmer . . ."
"I can hold my own in the water. I grew up in Florida, you know."
"In that case, can I talk you into a swim after you get done with lunch?"
"I really don't think I'll have time to swim."
"Bull. It can't possibly take you all afternoon to do dinner."
"Yes, it can."
"Well then, I request a bowl of granola and some yogurt for my dinner. That should shave some time off your prep work."
"The crew . . ."
"Will be satisfied with poison sandwiches for lunch and something equally appalling for dinner."
"I was making fajitas. Grass fed beef, organic veggies, whole wheat tacos. Everything wholesome."
"And I can see you're already done chopping most of what you'll need. I'll have my granola for lunch, then and see you on deck at two. I'll bring the sunscreen." I expected more arguments but she calmly put the knife down and fetched a bowl, a bag of raisin-nut granola and a carton of Greek yogurt from the walk-in.
She poured the bowl full and dumped the yogurt on top. Without a word she went out to the dining table and plopped the bowl at my place at the head of the table. She banged a spoon down beside the mess in the bowl.
"Would you care for some juice? Or maybe something for the monkey?"
Mrs. D. had been so silent and still on my shoulder I had forgotten that she was even there. When she heard the word 'monkey' she beamed her monkey charm at Lara and I saw my pretty chef stifle a grin.
"You don't have to take it out on Mrs. D, you know."
"Take what out?"
"Your distaste for me. She's just a monkey. She hasn't got a dime to her name and it isn't her fault I've spoiled her. Cut her some slack."