Authors: Tawna Fenske
Juli stood blinking in the sunlight, trying to make sense of things. A gull was squawking nearby. The ground was lurching beneath her feet. The ocean was hissing and slurping all around her.
And the phenomenally hot guy she’d faked marriage to and then almost slept with a mere sixteen hours ago had just marched her out of bed and now stood glaring at her in a very unhusbandly fashion.
Alex folded his arms over his chest and nodded at her. “Care to explain what you’re doing here?”
Juli squinted, trying to bring his features into focus. Her head throbbed, and she wanted to go lie down in her private stateroom again. She cleared her throat, feeling something like sandpaper scraping her windpipe.
“I told you last night,” she said. “I signed up for this boat tour so I could spread my uncle’s ashes at sea.”
Alex stared at her. He didn’t speak or even blink, and Juli was tempted to poke him in the chest to see if he was still breathing. Her mind veered a little at the thought of touching his chest again, running her fingers over that hard expanse of muscle, and any additional words of explanation fled her brain.
Alex’s icy tone brought her crashing back to reality. “A boat tour?”
“Right. Only I didn’t know you were the captain when I paid for it. You could have told me last night.”
Alex seemed to be considering his next words carefully. Juli saw a little nerve twitching on the side of his left eyebrow and watched his jaw working.
“You shouldn’t grind your teeth like that,” she told him. “I had a cousin with bruxism—that’s the medical term for teeth grinding—and he wore the enamel right off his—”
“So you think this is your charter boat,” Alex interrupted.
“Well duh.
Spank Me
, right?”
Alex looked alarmed. Juli flushed and put a hand to her left butt cheek, where she felt the crinkle of paper in her pocket.
The receipt!
Triumphant, she pulled it out and handed it to him.
“Look, I paid in full,” she said, jabbing a finger at the words. “Boarding at 10:00 a.m., it says right here. Okay, I mean I got on a little early because of the drugs and I’m not really sure how long I’ve been asleep, but I paid for a private room at the front of the boat, so I don’t see why that’s a problem.”
“Drugs?”
“Seasick medication. I think maybe I had a bad reaction to it.”
Alex gave her a blank look. He cleared his throat, glancing at the other passengers behind her. It was the first time Juli had actually noticed them, and she was surprised to see two men and a woman regarding her with thinly veiled hostility.
So much for making new friends.
“So let me get this straight,” Alex said slowly. “You staggered down to the dock in a drug-induced haze, broke into a strange boat, and fell asleep in my bed?”
“
My
bed, actually,” piped the steely-looking blonde regarding Juli like a dog who’d just made doody on the floor. “You found her sleeping in the smaller stateroom up front, right? When we drew straws earlier, I said that was the room that I wanted—”
“But I paid for a private room,” Juli insisted, holding up her receipt. “It says so right here. The guy even told me it was at the front of the boat.”
She shook the receipt so all of them could see it. No one snatched it from her hand. In fact, no one moved at all. The blonde glowered. The big meaty-looking guy in the apron looked confused. The sweaty bald guy who was manning the controls kept trying to catch Alex’s eye. Alex just stared at Juli, unblinking.
Juli put the receipt back in her pocket. “Okay, admittedly my reasoning skills are a little fuzzy right now, but I’m getting the sense that I’m not on the right boat.”
The other passengers exchanged looks Juli couldn’t read. Well, everyone except Alex. He just kept watching her, as though he hoped at any moment she might disappear in a poof of smoke, to be replaced with something slightly more desirable. Like a leper.
It was the big guy who spoke first.
“Who does your highlights? Those are fabulous.”
Juli drew a hand to her hair. “Um, thanks. They’re actually natural.”
“Really? Wow, that’s amazing. Even this little section right here?”
“Well, sometimes in the summer I put a little lemon in my hair and sit out in the sun for an hour or so and then—”
“We should throw her overboard.”
This from the heavyset bald guy. Juli shut her mouth, suddenly less interested in the merits of citrus for hair care.
“You think?” mused the blonde prison warden. “I mean, we’re one hundred miles offshore, but still, a body could wash up somewhere.”
“Well we’d give her a life vest, Phyllis. Geez, we’re not murderers.”
“Um, what
are
you, exactly?” Juli interrupted.
All four of them gave her a blank look.
“Cartographers,” Alex answered quickly.
“Cartographers?” Juli asked. “You mean you make maps?”
“Right.”
“I see,” Juli said, glancing at each of them in turn. “I wasn’t aware that cartographers generally killed people at sea.”
“It’s been a rough week.”
“You don’t say.”
Juli thought she saw a faint smile tug at the corner of Alex’s mouth.
“We shouldn’t throw her overboard,” argued the big guy who liked her hair. “Can’t we just turn around and take her back?”
“We’re six hours out to sea, Cody,” Alex told him.
“Cookie.”
Alex looked pained. “Cookie,” he repeated. “That’s twelve hours of travel round-trip, not to mention fuel. You know how precise we had to be when we plotted our course.”
“Well, okay,” Cody said. “But we shouldn’t throw her overboard. She’s pretty. Maybe we should keep her.”
“Jesus, Cody—
Cookie
—” the blonde sputtered. “Like a pet?”
“No, not like a pet. Like a prisoner.”
Alex quirked an eyebrow at him. “You want to tie her up?”
Again, Juli caught a hint of a smile. She folded her arms over her chest and leveled a look at Alex.
“Well if you’d suggested bondage a little earlier in the marriage, I might not have rated you a four in the bedroom.”
The others looked confused, but Alex was definitely fighting a grin now. He nodded at her. “Can you excuse us for a moment, Juli? Maybe go back to your stateroom for a minute and—”
“
My
stateroom,” the blonde insisted. “It’s not negotiable. Cody and Jake both said they snore, and you drew the straw for the master stateroom, Alex. I just want to make sure—”
“We’ll figure it out, Phyllis.”
Juli turned, ready to make her exit. Spotting the urn in the big guy’s hands, she reached for it. “May I have my Uncle Frank back?”
“Your what?”
“That’s my Uncle Frank. We’re traveling together.”
He handed the urn over, looking perplexed, and Juli hugged it tightly to her chest. “Okay, so I’ll just go back to my room.”
“It was nice to meet you, Juli,” the big guy—Cookie?—called after her.
Juli smiled over her shoulder. “Um, thanks. Aside from the threats on my life, it’s been a pleasure.”
***
As soon as Juli was out of earshot, the shouting began. Alex resisted the urge to cover his ears and hide under a deck chair.
“How is this possible?” Jake yelled. “We’ve got a stowaway on our top-secret pirate mission?”
“I don’t understand,” Cody said. “Why didn’t you see her in your room, Phyllis?”
“Because I didn’t get a chance to go
in
my room yet, Cookie! I dropped all my stuff in the salon after you nimrods yelled at me to come help put the groceries away.”
“Did you say you knew her, Alex?” Jake asked.
Alex didn’t hear the question at first. He was thinking about the way Juli’s hair ruffled in the breeze, the sleepy warmth in those big blue eyes, the way her fingers had felt stroking his stomach last night, the taste of her skin as he’d—
“Alex?”
His attention snapped back to Phyllis. “What?”
“Why did you say that our prisoner is your wife?”
“Oh. I met her at a bar last night. There was this stupid game, and we pretended we were married for a few minutes.”
Jake grinned and punched Alex in the shoulder. “Only a few minutes, huh? Well, as a man gets older, sometimes it gets a little tougher to—”
“No, really,” Alex protested, not sure how the conversation had gone so quickly from the demise of their mission to the downfall of his sexual stamina. “Nothing happened. I mean, not exactly. It was just a game in a bar. I don’t even know her last name.”
Cody looked confused. “Bradshaw, right? If she took your last name when you got married, I mean.”
Alex sighed.
“Seriously, find out her last name,” Jake said. “We can do a search online, figure out who the hell she really is. Probably a spy with the CIA or something.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “And you’re going to find this in the online public database of CIA spies?”
“I think she looks familiar,” Phyllis said. “Like maybe I’ve seen her on TV before.”
“You think she’s a celebrity?” Cody asked hopefully.
“Not a celebrity,” Jake muttered. “But Phyllis is right—there’s something familiar about her.”
“Do you think she’s a cop?” Phyllis asked.
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “What if Portelli sent her? Like maybe she’s a spy for him?”
“What if we put her in the life raft with some food and water and
then
pushed her overboard?” Phyllis argued. “It wouldn’t be murder, and she wouldn’t screw up the pirate heist.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Jake argued. “We might need the life raft for ourselves later.”
Cody scratched his chin. “If she’s our prisoner, could we make her do the dishes and scrub the poop deck and stuff?”
“Do we have a poop deck?” Phyllis asked.
Alex closed his eyes, feeling his head begin to throb. He raised his hands to get their attention, feeling like a middle school gym teacher.
“No, we do not have a poop deck,” he said slowly. “No, we are not throwing this woman overboard, nor are we setting her adrift in the life raft. And we’re not turning around, either. We’ll miss our opportunity to meet up with Portelli’s ship if we deviate from our game plan.”
Phyllis threw her hands up in exasperation. “Well what are we going to do then?”
Alex stared out at the ocean, then looked back at the crew. “There’s that little island about 230 miles from here. The one we thought we could use if we had to make an emergency stop? We’ll just off-load her there, put out a distress call, and make sure someone comes to get her.”
Phyllis looked skeptical. “When will we reach the island?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, maybe early evening.”
“So we keep her,” Jake said, eyeing Alex with suspicion.
“Just until tomorrow evening.”
“What do we tell her we’re out here doing?”
“She already thinks we’re cartographers,” Alex said. “Let’s just stick with that.”
Phyllis frowned. “Cartographers? An hour ago, Cody was trying to figure out what NESW spelled on the compass.”
“Cookie,” he insisted.
“And just last week, Jake was reading the map upside down.”
“I was drunk, okay, Phyllis?” Jake retorted. “Pirates enjoy their rum from time to time.”
“Right, so we’re in agreement?” Alex said, hoping for some sign of group unity.
“We’re keeping the wench,” Jake said grudgingly.
Phyllis folded her arms over her chest. “If she thinks she’s getting my room, she can—”
“She can have my room,” Alex said. “Cody and Jake, you guys keep the bunks in the middle room. I’ll sleep on the flybridge. I like it better in the open air, anyway.”
“Okay then,” Phyllis said. “So we have our first prisoner.”
“A prisoner who’s staying in the luxury master suite on a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar powerboat,” Jake grumbled.
Phyllis shook her head. “I’m not sure we have this pirate thing down yet.”
Alex stepped back, turning toward the stairs. “I’m going to go talk to her. Let her know the plan to off-load her tomorrow. You good at the controls a little longer, Jake?”
Jake grunted in response, and Alex turned away. Behind him, Phyllis muttered something about skipping the honeymoon for now. Alex grimaced, glad they didn’t know just how close he’d come to consummating his mock marriage.
When Alex reached the guest stateroom, he hesitated a moment before knocking. What was the proper protocol for entering the bedroom of a phony wife turned botched one-night stand turned maritime prisoner?
“Come in,” Juli called from inside.
Alex stepped into the suite to see Juli bent over her knapsack, tossing out wisps of lacy underthings, several cosmetic products, and something that looked suspiciously like a magic eight ball. Alex ducked, narrowly missing the trajectory of a pink tank top.
“I can’t find my damn toothbrush—”
“Look, Juli,” he began, trying to keep his tone all-business. “I know you hadn’t planned to be at sea very long, but we won’t reach our first stopping point until tomorrow evening. We’re on a pretty tight timeline, and we can’t afford the extra half day it would take to turn around and take you back to St. John. Are you going to be okay traveling with us for another twenty-four hours or so until we get to a spot we can drop you off?”
“I know it’s in here somewhere,” she said, giving no indication of having heard him.
“Juli, we’re in a bit of a hurry here, so—”
She looked up at him, her expression quizzical. “Someone has an urgent need for maps?”
“What?”
“You’re cartographers, right?”
“Right,” Alex said, wishing like hell he’d said they were sightseers or venture capitalists or porn stars.
She stopped pawing through her knapsack for a moment and studied him. She gave him a funny half smile and held up a lacy black thong.
“For the record, I do wear panties on occasion.”
Alex swallowed hard and tried to think of something intelligent to say.
“Um—” was the best he could manage.
Juli grinned wider and stuffed the thong back in her knapsack. “Relax, Alex. I’m not going to say anything to your crew about last night, if that’s what you’re worried about.”