Veritas (38 page)

Jen arched a brow in surprise, though she really was not all that surprised. She had known this day was coming ever since Lauren came back into the kitchen after wishing Grey a happy New Year, looking like she had been kicked in the gut because she did not get to ring it in with a kiss. “You turned him down?”

“I know, Jen.” Lauren interrupted her with a smile. “I do.” She took a deep breath and smiled as, for the first time since she landed back in New York, she finally had a clear idea of what she wanted. “Believe me, I know what I just did. I just…” She shrugged. “I don’t want this anymore.”

“Well, fuck,” Jen muttered, smiling as she shook her head. “So what are you going to do?”

“I dunno.”

Jen chuckled. “Bullshit. You’ve made up your mind. I can see it in your eyes. Say it, Lo.”

“I want Grey.” Just saying it out loud made Lauren feel lighter than she had since she returned to New York, and she threw her head back and laughed. “I want Grey. I want to spend my days sailing around the Caribbean with her. I want to wake up in her arms every morning, listening to the sound of the ocean slapping against the hull of the boat.”

Jen nodded and pulled Lauren into a quick hug. “I’m glad you’ve finally figured it out.”

“I have,” Lauren whispered.

“So…what now?” Jen asked as she backed out of the hug and started walking toward the subway entrance at the end of the street.

Lauren sighed and shook her head as she fell into step beside her. “I don’t know. I’ll need to find somebody to take Jenks because he can’t go with me…”

“You know I’ll take him. I love that little bastard like he’s my own. Besides, he wrapped Ben around his finger when we watched him for you while you were gone. So, don’t worry about him. Jenks will be fine. Assuming, of course, that he stays away from old Mrs. Schwartz’s terrier. Your apartment?”

“I’ll have to sell it or find a renter. What do you think?”

“If you can rent it out for the price of your mortgage, I’d do that. You know real estate around here is only going to get more expensive. And, besides… I’m not saying things between you and Grey won’t work out, but if they don’t, you would have something to come back to.”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, though.”

“Me neither, to be honest. But it’s good to have a backup plan, just in case. And, you know, investments and grown-up shit like that. So, are you going to tell her when she comes up next week?” Jen asked as she swiped her MetroCard through the scanner and pushed through the turnstile.

Lauren chewed her lip thoughtfully as she followed her onto the other side. They had made it this long already so another nine days would not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but she also did not want to wait. “I don’t know. I kinda want to just go down there now and find her and tell her.”

“Well, in that case,” Jen said with a smile. “Let’s see what we can do about making that happen. You’ll have to quit Clarke’s.”

“And pack.”

“A get your place on the market. You going to try rent it furnished?”

“I think I’ll just put everything in storage. Can always sell it later on, or have my brother come pick it up to take to the cabin or something. Do you still have your realtor’s number from when you and Ben bought last summer?”

Jen nodded. “Yep. You want her number?”

“Is it in your phone?” Lauren asked, and when Jen nodded, she just smiled and held out her hand. “Gimme.”

“Impatient little thing, aren’t you,” Jen teased as she handed it over.

Lauren winked and lifted Jen’s phone to her ear. “Maybe just a little.”

Once Lauren had made up her mind about what to do, it was almost too easy to set it all into motion. By Thursday evening she had arranged to get her apartment up on the market and given notice at Clarke’s. She offered them one week, and had been pleasantly surprised when Sam Clarke, the restaurant’s owner, told her that he would be happy if she just worked through the weekend. She had, of course, jumped at the offer. Sunday afternoon she took Jenks and all of his things over to Jen and Ben’s apartment, and she was proud of herself for managing to not sob her eyes out until she was in the elevator afterwards. A moving company was scheduled to come the following week to box up her things and move them into storage, and all that was left was for her to pack her clothes and the few things she could not leave behind.

The hardest part out of all of it had been not letting on to Grey what was happening during their daily calls. Jen had thrown the idea of her surprising Grey out as a joke—a ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you…’ kind of thing—but Lauren immediately fell in love with the idea and had run with it.

It was just after noon when Lauren’s plane touched down in Charlotte Amalie the following Monday, and she jogged through the terminal to baggage claim to pick up the one large suitcase she had brought with her. She slowed to a walk as she entered the baggage area, and waved when she spotted a familiar face in the crowd. While she had not told Grey that she was coming back, she had called Kelly Kipling because she knew that would need her help. The blonde had access to resources Lauren could only dream of having, and she smiled as she walked up to her. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Kelly drawled, her lips curled in a warm, welcoming smile. “How was your flight?”

“Long,” Lauren admitted with a small laugh. She had barely slept the night before due to her excitement about seeing Grey again, and that anticipation had intensified with every mile her plane had covered.

Kelly chuckled and nodded. Lauren’s eyes were twinkling, her smile wide, and it was clear that she could not wait to surprise Grey. “You’re adorable. Let’s get your bag and get going. Peter Island, right?”

“Yeah.” Lauren nodded. “She said her guests were going to be spending the day at the resort, and that they would leave there for Tortola tomorrow.”

Kelly looked at the luggage carousel, which had just jolted into motion. “She is going to flip her shit when she sees you.”

“I sure hope so,” Lauren murmured.

“She will.” Kelly wrapped an arm around Lauren’s
waist and pulled her into a light hug. “Trust me.”

Lauren nodded and pointed at a silver hard shell suitcase that had just spilled down the conveyor to the carousel. “That’s me.”

“Well, grab it, and let’s go,” Kelly said. “Lots of things to do still.”

Once Lauren had her bag, Kelly led the way out of the airport to where she had parked her car, and they then headed to a smaller private airfield where the Kipling helicopter was waiting for them. The green and white Bell 206 was sitting empty on a pad outside a large hangar, and Lauren whistled as Kelly rolled to a stop in front of it. “Wow.”

“Just you wait.” Kelly patted Lauren on the leg. “You’re going to be my copilot for this jump.”

Lauren’s eyebrows lifted over the frame of her sunglasses as she turned to look at Kelly. “You fly that thing?”

“Damn right I do.” Kelly shouldered her door open and flashed an expectant look over her shoulder at Lauren. “Well, do you want to go get your woman, or what? Let’s go!”

“Damn right I do,” Lauren muttered as she slipped out of the passenger seat and walked around the back of the Range Rover to retrieve her suitcase.

A middle-aged man with jet black hair in a pair of khaki shorts, blue polo shirt with the airfield’s logo stitched onto the right breast, and a pair of mirrored aviators drove up in an open Jeep just as her bag hit the pavement, and Lauren smiled gratefully to him when he took her suitcase and lifted it into the cabin. She stood back and watched as Kelly and the man went through the preflight checklist, double-checking everything to make sure the helicopter was ready to fly, and her heart leapt into her throat when Kelly turned and held a gleaming white helmet out to her.

“You’re sure about this?” Lauren asked as she inspected the helmet.

“Helmets are kind of required equipment.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant having me copilot.”

“I’m not going to make you fly it or anything, I just figured you’d rather sit up front with me. And the helmet has a com, so we’ll be able to talk on the way over.”

Lauren nodded and jammed the helmet onto her head. She looked up at Kelly, who was fastening her own chin strap, and grinned
, her excitement getting the better of her as she got one step closer to finally seeing Grey. “Thank you for doing this.”

“You keep Grey happy, and we’ll call it even,” Kelly said with a soft smile.

“I’ll do my best,” Lauren promised with a small nod. She took a deep breath and turned toward the helicopter. “Right. Well, shall we?”

“We most definitely shall.” Kelly walked around the nose of the helicopter to her preferred half of the cockpit and climbed inside. Once Lauren was buckled-in beside her, she turned on the engines and began easing the throttle forward to lift them off the ground.

Kelly spent the flight from Saint Thomas to Tortola explaining what she was doing and answering Lauren’s questions. She did not miss the way Lauren’s attention never wavered from the water beneath them, actively looking for the
Veritas
even as she held up her half of the conversation, and Kelly chuckled at the way Lauren sat up straighter when she announced that they were coming up on Peter Island.

Lauren’s pulse jumped as a populated bay came into view, and she could not contain the smile that lit her face when she spotted a familiar red and white catamaran tied up at the end of a T-shaped dock. “There it is.”

Kelly leaned forward to look, and nodded when she spotted the
Veritas
. “That it is. You ready?”

“Oh yeah,” Lauren muttered, nodding as she looked over at Kelly. “More than ready.”

“Let’s go get you your girl, then.”

Grey had the
Veritas
to herself for the afternoon because her guests and the chef she had hired for the trip were all off exploring Peter Island’s impressive amenities. It was a nice change of pace after two months of constant charters, and she took advantage of the calm to begin packing for her upcoming trip to New York. She was kneeling at the bow of the port-side hull with her head shoved in one of the storage areas looking for the bag of cold-weather clothes she kept for random trips back home to Newport but which rarely saw any use because her family preferred to visit her in the Caribbean during those months.

“There you are,” she muttered as she spotted the vacuum-sealed bag she was looking for, and she grunted as she leaned further into the hatch to grab it. She startled when the phone in her pocket began ringing, jolting upright and banging the back of her head on the edge of the hatch. She swore softly under her breath as she sat up and rubbed at the spot with her left hand while she used her other hand to pull her phone from her pocket. “What’s up, Kip?”

“Not much. Just checking in. How’s everything going?”

Kip’s tone was playful, and Grey sighed as she pushed herself  up to her feet. She picked up the bag of clothes she had injured herself retrieving, and flipped the hatch shut with her foot. “Everything’s fine. Guests are off doing the spa thing on Peter Island, and I’m just rummaging through the storage holds for the clothes I’ll need when I go visit Lauren in a few days. What’s going on?”

“Am I not allowed to just call and shoot the shit?”

“You are, but you never do,” Grey pointed out with a laugh as she worked her way down the hull toward the stern. The marina was calm, the water off to her right perfectly smooth as everybody moored in the lagoon for the day was off exploring the resort. She fisted the edge of the bag in her hand tighter so that it would not drop in the water, and shook her head. “Seriously, is everything okay?”

“Yep. Great, actually. Best day ever type of shit. Hey, do me a favor and go out onto the back deck…”

“I’m on my way there now. Kip, what’s going on?” Grey asked, but her question was answered the moment she jumped onto the back deck and saw a familiar
face with a riot of wild red curls standing on the dock just off the stern. The bag she had been so careful to not drop in the water slipped from her grasp, and she barely had the wherewithal to set her phone onto the table before it, too, tumbled to the deck. She opened and closed her mouth a couple times as she tried to find her voice, but her surprise had rendered her completely speechless.

Lauren laughed at Grey’s gobsmacked expression and waved. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

“You…” Grey hurried down to the starboard dive platform and jumped onto the dock. Her eyes danced over Lauren’s face as she stopped in front of her, and she shook her head as she pulled Lauren into her arms. “You’re really here.”

“I am.” Lauren smiled and pressed a soft kiss to Grey’s lips, and her eyes fluttered shut when Grey’s hands tightened around her waist to pull her in closer. Their kiss became deeper almost instantly, mouths slanting and lips parting as they lost themselves in the heady feeling of finally being back together. Lauren’s head spun from the passion in Grey’s kisses, and she swayed slightly on her feet when
they slowed to a string of lingering pecks. “My god…”