Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (5 page)

My frisson of admiration for his stormy grey
eyes is tempered only by my misgivings.

I sigh. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

I hesitate, and then I tell him.

I tell him everything that happened between
Kurt Taylor and me and Adeline Frost.

KURT

Another day, another chore.

This time, I am required to wipe the
portholes – from the inside and out, whichever can be reached, of
course. This is a painstaking task which I have never performed
before, and which I’m willing to bet a lot of people have never
performed it before either. Hell, I have never even wiped windows
before, so I am finding this task particularly arduous.

I am outside the third deck or thereabouts,
polishing a peculiarly resistant piece of smudge which has gotten
on one porthole, when a shadow obstructs my light.

“Hi,” says a female voice.

I turn. “Hi.”

She is a brightly dressed teenager. Flouncing
blonde hair, nice teeth, freckles and she is wearing a pair of
those colorful Adidas sneakers with the rainbow laces. Her tank top
is neon pink and her tight cut-off pants are a bright blue. Talk
about color overkill.

Teenagers are a rarity on a cruise ship
filled with senior denizens, and I have been besieged by two who
recognize me already.

“You are Kurt Taylor,” she says breathlessly.
“I read about you. Can I have your autograph?”

She is carrying nothing but an iPod Mini
which is hooked on her belt. It is connected to her ears by a pair
of headphones.

“Sure, but you don’t have something I can
autograph.”

“Oh, I do.” She smiles and peels down the
neckline of her halter top. Her pert little breasts jut out.

I get a good look at her cleavage.

“Uh, you want me to sign where?”

“Here, right here.” She points at the swell
of her breasts. Then she giggles ecstatically. “I want someone to
take a picture of you signing my tits. I can’t want to Tweet
it.”

Oh gawd.

“I don’t have a pen,” I say, stalling.

“That’s OK. I’ll ask this nice lady here.
Hey, lady!” The teen turns to a fifty-something-year-old woman who
is jogging on the deck. “Do you have a pen so that Kurt Taylor here
can sign my tits?”

I wish the deck would open up a hole to bury
me.

The lady stops. Her expression is severe. She
appears very fit in her track suit and she is barely winded.

“How old are you, young lady?” she says
imperiously. Then she favors me with a glare reserved for
pedophiles and pederasts. “And just what do you think you are
doing, young man?”

Before I can reply, the clack of heels on the
deck comes closer. Rebecca Hall approaches us, a funny look on her
face that is more apparent when she loom up. It is as though she
has eaten something bad from the buffet at breakfast and she is
trying to hold in her runs.

Fuck.

There is nowhere for me to run.

Or is there? There is always the ocean. I’m a
good swimmer. I can swim to shore. I think.

“Good morning,” Rebecca says pleasantly. Her
voice comes out funny too – kind of half-strangled. She nods at the
lady jogger and the teenager. “Good morning.”

Huh? She directed at least one ‘Good morning’
to me? She hasn’t said ‘Good morning’ to me in years. Decades.
Eons.

Rebecca turns to me again and goes on in that
strangled voice of hers, “Uh, may I speak with you?”

“Hey, lady.” The teenager pouts. “I was
asking him to autograph my tits. Get in line.”

Before Rebecca can turn a funny mottled
color, I quickly say, “I wasn’t going to autograph your tits. I
really wasn’t.”

Talk about being between a rock and a hard
place. I am surrounded by three females, all in varying states of
agitation. And their angst seems to be directed at me.

“I could report you,” threatens the jogger.
“I know who you are. You are that rocker who molested that bunch of
sailors.”

Huh?

Even the teenager’s eyes go round with
that?

“I did?” I say, perplexed.

“You did?” the teenager says, equally
perplexed.

Rebecca’s mouth is a funny twist of
half-contained mirth and apoplexy. (I suspect she gets a blood clot
just looking at me.)

“Kurt Taylor,” she says, “you are wanted at
the Captain’s office.”

“I am?”

What did I do this time?

“Come with me,” Rebecca says in a firm tone
that brooks no discussion.

I don’t really want to go anywhere with
Rebecca Hall. I suspect she will arrange a convenient ‘accident’
for me sometime between here and the Captain’s office. But I find
myself picking up my cleaning kit anyway and tailing after. The
teenager whips out her cellphone and takes a picture of our
retreating backs. Great, that photo will be all over the Internet
by sundown.

I wonder what the Captain wants with me. And
why he sent Rebecca to fetch me, of all people. I still haven’t
fingered what Rebecca’s job on this ship is. Cruise director? At
her age? Tour guide? People terrorizer?

As we walk briskly away – she surging ahead,
me trailing with my cleaning paraphernalia – I can’t help admiring
the way her red curls tumble behind her back, caught by the wind. I
am reminded of that redhead in the SoHo club that I fucked.

No.

Mustn’t think of Rebecca and fucking in the
same sentence.

Once we are out of sight from the jogger and
the teenager, Rebecca whirls on me.

“Let’s get one thing straight. The Captain is
making me do this,” she says.

“Huh?”

I am brought up short. I almost bump into
her. Luckily, I manage to put the brakes on myself in time.
Wouldn’t do to have any body contact with Rebecca Hall.

She twists her mouth into a funny but cute
thin line. “I mean . . . dinner tonight.”

“What dinner tonight?”

So far, I have been having all my dinners by
myself. It’s too awkward to mix with the rest of the crew. Too many
questions. So I have been packing my meals and eating them by
myself in my cabin.

She stands there awkwardly, and then decides
to fold her arms, kind of like a barrier between us.

“I mean . . . I’m supposed to invite you to
dinner tonight.”

“With the Captain?”

She rolls her eyes exasperatedly. “No, silly.
With
me
.”

I am thunderstruck.

“Why would you want to have dinner with me?”
I ask. And then I correct myself. “Why would I want to have dinner
with you?”

She scrunches up her face and lifts her chin.
“Well, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to have dinner with you
either. But – ”

She pauses.

“But?” I inquire.

“The Captain thought I should apologize to
you.” This came out as if I were pulling teeth from her.

“Apologize?” I raise my eyebrows.
“
You
?”

She clenches her teeth.

“Look, don’t make this harder on both of us
than it really is. I apologize, OK?”

“For what?”

A couple passes us. The woman turns to stare
at me.

Uh oh. I don’t want to be recognized again.
Rebecca realizes this and jerks her hand towards the shade. She
doesn’t touch me as we troop there. I know I must have cooties to
her or something, but I’ll admit I don’t have the same avoidance
reaction to her touching me.

I should have, but I don’t.

She turns on me again. Her face is flushed
from all the exertion.

“I apologize for throwing water all over you.
It was wrong of me, OK?”

“Yes, it was.”

“You don’t have to rub it in.”

“Splash it in would be the more appropriate
word.”

She bridles. Her nostrils flare. She is quite
magnificent when she is angry.

“So is my apology accepted?”

“For throwing water all over me? Yes.”

“Good. Then we don’t have to have dinner
together.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She is astonished. “You want to have dinner
with me?”

“I want you to apologize for treating me like
the dog’s dinner all those years ago.”

Her vivid green eyes flash. “Never!”

“Then I retract my acceptance of your
apology.”

She looks desperate. “Look, the Captain wants
us to make up, or he is going to tell my manager at the retirement
home that I did what I did to you, and that will be a black mark
against me.”

“Fine.” It’s my turn to fold my arms. “Then
you apologize for what you said to me all those years ago.”

The vein on her temple starts to bulge.

“No,” she splutters, and then seems to
swallow her words.

“Dinner tonight at the Clarion,” I press on.
“You can apologize then. Be there at seven thirty sharp.”

I pick up my cleaning kit, shoot her a glare,
and walk off. I can feel the heat of Rebecca’s stare burn into my
back.

REBECCA

The last person I want to have dinner with is
Kurt Taylor.

But I have to.

I have to because it’s the right thing to do.
I promised the Captain I would make things right with Kurt, and I
always keep my promises.

Whatever possessed me to promise the Captain
something like that? What on Earth made me say the words? It wasn’t
the unspoken threat of him telling my superiors that I screwed up
in my quest to be a psychologist specializing in the elderly. It
certainly wasn’t the Captain’s smoldering grey eyes. I have
resisted men far more attractive than he.

Believe me, I have.

So why am I dressing up for my forced dinner
with Kurt Taylor?

I gaze at my reflection in the mirror. I am
still in my cabin, wondering if I should layer on a red bead
necklace above my green dress, which brings out the color of my
eyes. My hair is impeccably swept up in a chignon, and my ears are
decked with sparkly turquoise drops.

Why am I doing this?

My cabin mate, Natasha, comes out of our
bathroom. She is clad in a bath towel and her black hair is
wet.

“Woah,” she says, taking a step back in
surprise.

Natasha is a bathroom hogger. She spends an
inordinate amount of time doing anything bathroom related, or maybe
she’s just doing it to piss me off. Natasha is a tour guide, though
she has nothing more to do onboard than make sure all her charges
are fed and put to bed. Her real work begins in the Bahamas, so it
seems.

“You dress up good,” she says admiringly.
“Hot date tonight?”

“Not really.”

“Come on, dish. We’re roomies. Roomies know
everything about each other.” She sprawls herself down on her bunk
and picks up the nail clipper. She proceeds to clip off her
fingernails. I hate it when she does that because her nail
clippings get under my feet and embedded into my skin.

“Natasha, how many times have I told you not
to do that?” I grab the wastebasket from a corner of the little
cabin and plunk it beside the bed.

“Tosh,” she says. “So now tell me, who are
you going out with?” She gives me a sly grin. “Don’t tell me it’s
that hunky captain. Is that why he called you his office? To ask
you out?”

Gad. Does everyone on this ship know about
that?

“No, it’s not the Captain.” And it’s none of
anyone’s business, I want to tell her. But I’m too polite to.

The night is young, however. There’s plenty
of time for me to explode.

The ship lurches a little, and we can feel
the deck move beneath our feet.

“Woah,” Natasha says. ‘Woah’ seems to be her
favorite word. “There’s a storm coming. A big one too. You better
not go out on the sun deck.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I return to the vanity table
mirror to check my look. I don’t intend to go anywhere near the two
sun decks tonight. I am going to be ensconced in the Clarion, which
is the best restaurant in the entire ship. And I’m going to be
paying that pretty penny for dinner.

I hope I’ll get seasick and throw up all over
Kurt Taylor’s plate. That is . . . assuming he actually shows
up.

What if he doesn’t show up?

He just might pull off a stunt like that, you
know. Get me all riled up and apologetic and then conveniently not
show up. That is just the sort of thing he would do.

Damn him.

“Anyway, I hear you had a tangle with another
hot guy,” Natasha says, curling her toes. She throws herself back
on the bed, wet hair and all. Ewww, I wonder how people can do
that.

“Who?”

“Kurt Taylor.” She giggles. “Isn’t it
exciting that he’s on this ship with us? I’ve seen him, and I can
well imagine him out of those overalls. So I hear you have some
sort of history with him. Come on, girlfriend, spill.”

Girlfriend? I hardly have known her for three
days and she’s already calling me ‘girlfriend’?

“He’s just someone I knew in school,” I say
shortly.

“Really? Was he as gorgeous in school as he
is today?”

I’m ready to go and dispense with all this
gossipy chit-chat. I know Natasha. Her eyes are bright and eager
and she’s squirming in her bed, all juiced up. If I tell her
anything, she would only spread it around like wildfire and it will
be the talk of this cruise ship by dawn tomorrow.

“He was OK. I have to go now. Bye.”

I purposefully make a show of walking out of
the door.

“Tell me everything when you get back!” she
calls after me gleefully.

As if.

*

I arrive at the Clarion at seven thirty
sharp. Now let’s see Kurt Taylor show up.

The Clarion is a posh restaurant – all
gleaming cherry wood and polished timbers and swaying ornate brass
lamps. Or at least, the lamps are swaying because the ship is being
buffered by waves higher than normal. I don’t know how high they
are – I don’t intend to go out on deck to see them.

There are not many diners here tonight. Maybe
the shaky floorboards are putting them off. But then, the Clarion
is a reservation only sort of place with a dinner jacket required
for the men. Needless to say, you are not allowed to wear swimsuits
and flip flops into it.