With Every Breath (Sea Swept #2) (6 page)

Yasmin turned out to be a good sport about the Kippy suit after all. I’d figured she’d whine about it, especially considering those heels, but even though she was limping when we finished, she never complained.
 

Through the glass door, I catch sight of her on the dance floor. Her body moves with athletic abandon, her red top riding up to reveal the curve of her waist. The sight makes my mouth go dry. I bet her skin is soft. I bet if I licked the curve of her breast, I’d taste salt. I bet …

I bet she’d slap me if she knew what I was thinking. Shaking my head, I toss back the rest of my drink and go inside, through the bar and into the crew corridors. It’s not even midnight, but I’m exhausted, and if I don’t get some sleep I’ll never be able to drag my ass out of bed in time for the dawn.

I make my way through the maze of hallways and stairwells to my cabin. Department heads, thankfully, have single rooms, and a full-sized bed instead of those God-awful bunks. I check my camera, undress, and am asleep almost before my head hits the pillow.

~ ~ ~

When I wake up, I’m not alone.
 

In the darkness, I dimly make out a shadow at the foot of my bed, sinking onto the bed. I sit up straight, about to jump off my mattress to tackle the numbskull who has broken into my room when the shadow laughs. A woman’s husky laugh.
 

Yasmin? My boxers get tight instantly at the thought, but then my intruder talks.
 

“You left the party without me.” Camelia slides over and brushes a cool hand across my bare pecs. “So I came to say good night.” Her voice is teasing and fluid. My sleep-hazed mind flits between disappointment and confusion and arousal as I sink back onto my elbows.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“Shh.” She places a finger on my lips. “Did I scare you? I did not mean to scare you.”
 

She laughs again, and I can smell the rum on her breath. She’s drunk. Squinting at my alarm clock, I see that it’s 2:12 in the morning.
 

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say tiredly. “How did you get into my cabin, anyway?”
 

“The door was open. Just a little bit.” She bends her head down and gives me a rum-flavored kiss. “So I came in.”
 

I must’ve been so exhausted that I didn’t check to make sure the door latched. Camelia obviously took it as an invitation.
 

“Look,“ I say. I’m about to push her off and escort her back to her cabin when she pulls off her silver dress, revealing nothing but a pair of lacey black panties underneath. Her long hair tumbles over her shoulders and naked breasts. Before I can move, she positions herself over my boxer-briefs, straddling me. I groan, because it feels great and she looks amazing, but she’s drunk, and I’m her boss. “Camelia, you—”

“Enough talking,” she says, and places my hands on her full breasts while she grinds on top of me. “You want this. I know you do.”
 

I grunt in return. My body
does
want this. I told Charlie the truth earlier—I haven’t been with anyone since Letta left two months ago. Now with Camelia here, ready and willing, I realize how starved I am.

My eyes shut. God, a one-night stand wouldn’t be so bad … except instead of Camelia, my thoughts drift to someone else. A dark, tousled ponytail. Sexy legs in impractical heels. The curve of her waist as she danced …

“You like this?” Camelia whispers, her words slightly slurred.
 

My eyes snap open. Damn it, what the hell is the matter with me?
 

I grab Camelia’s hand to stop her.
 

“We’re not doing this,” I say, despite the protests of my body. Maybe I’ll regret not letting this happen, but even I’m not enough of an ass as to sleep with a drunk girl while fantasizing about her roommate.

“But I—” Then Camelia breaks off, and in the glow of the alarm clock I see her expression turn. She mutters something in Romanian, lurches off me and flees into the bathroom. I hear her retch into the toilet.

I get dressed, and when Camelia’s done, though she insists she’s fine, I help her put her dress back on and walk her back to her cabin. She rarely seems to remember drunken antics the morning after, so hopefully we’ll just be able to pretend this never happened.

“You have your room key?” I ask when we reach her cabin. She gives me a sultry smirk, marred only slightly by her rumpled hair.

“It’s in my dress somewhere,” she says challengingly. “Try to find it.”

I sigh, reaching past her to knock on the cabin door. Camelia pouts, then tilts sideways, and I put an arm around her shoulders to keep her upright. I’m about to knock on the door again when it opens.

“Do you know what time …” Yasmin trails off, blinking at us.
 

She’s wearing silky pajama pants and a tank top that leaves her shoulders bare. The fabric falls lovingly across her curves, and when I see the hint of a nipple I silently curse, because I’m getting hard again.
 

Yasmin’s eyes narrow.
 

“You’re not the kind of guy who lets his conquests stay the night?” she mutters. “Why am I not surprised?”

My jaw drops, but as Camelia nuzzles me I realize what this must look like. “Hey, she was the one who—” I start, but Yasmin cuts me off.

“None of my business. Thanks for bringing her home, at least.” She slips out of her room, slides an arm around Camelia’s waist, and maneuvers her through the door. “I’ll take it from here,” she calls, and nudges the door shut with her foot.

I stare at their room number, annoyance washing over me. For some reason it bugs me that Yasmin thinks I hooked up with Camelia and then kicked her out. It shouldn’t—why should I care about my new hire’s opinion?
 

Turning, I stalk back to my stateroom. I make sure that my door is closed, and
locked
, before I fall back onto bed.
 

Jesus, what a night.
 

I stare up at the blank ceiling, wishing for sleep to overtake me, but now I’m wide awake. It also doesn’t help that I’m still as hard as a rock. Rolling onto my side, I run over my agenda for tomorrow and think about on how much we need to bring in at Formal Night. Soon enough, I start to relax. The numbers are like an antidote against the heat pulsing through me. Numbers make sense, unlike women. They’re predictable, unlike car accidents.
 

Numbers are cold. Calculating. Unemotional.
 

Tonight, that’s exactly what I need.

Chapter 6

West

“You need to fire someone,” I hear behind me as I lower my camera.

I turn to see Randall Cunningham, the ship’s Hotel Director, sitting on a bench twenty feet away. He’s wearing a crisp suit and his graying hair has been neatly parted to one side.

Checking my watch, I realize it’s still pretty early. I never did get back to sleep last night. I tossed and turned until five, then gave up and went to the gym. After a shower, I grabbed my camera bag and came up to the Lido Deck before another busy workday began. I hadn’t expected to see anyone else out here this early, especially not Randall.
 

Did he just say I had to fire someone?
 

“Good morning, sir,” I say, hoping I heard him wrong.

“I know we were scheduled to meet at nine, but I was making my rounds and figured you’d be here,” Randall says with a smile. He knows I like to photograph the dawn. I’m glad he held off talking to me until the sun freed itself from the horizon. The small windows of time in which I can take my own personal photos are what keep me sane on this ship.

And dawn is one of my favorites. I love the fresh breeze, the emptiness of the ship since everyone’s still asleep. The moment when the rays of the sun first break over the open sea, filling the world with light. My mother loved painting the dawn, and I love to capture it on film. Well, digital film. Sometimes the sky is hazy and I can’t get a good photo, but today it’s clear. Clouds dot the horizon, though. That makes for stunning shots, the clouds drenched in shades of scarlet and pink, but doesn’t bode well for later today.

Randall nods to the clouds. “Red sky in the morning,” he says.

“Sailors take warning,” I finish glumly.
 

“Captain De Luca is going to try and route us around the storm, but it looks like we’ll still get the edges of it,” Randall says. He gestures for me to join him on the bench, and we watch the sun rise higher in the sky.

“Sir, did you say—”

“You need to fire someone,” he repeats, and my stomach sinks.

“It’s going to be difficult to meet our photo and sales marks without all ten of us working,” I say. I’ve learned that I have to phrase things in business-speak for Randall to hear me. “My photographers are assets, and each has met the minimum requirements set by—”

“We need to cut spending to fit next year’s budget, and every department has to do its share.” Randall’s expression is sympathetic but firm. “Pick someone. Find a reason. You’ve got some time, but I want a name by the end of August.”

That’s six weeks away. And it makes no sense—they just gave me Yasmin to fill out the ranks and now they want me to fire someone? How are the rest of us expected to meet ever-higher sales marks with fewer resources?

But the person who snags the corporate position will be the person who gets the job done without complaining, not the guy who cringes at a hard decision, so I nod grimly.

“Yes, sir,” I tell him, like the good worker bee I’ve forced myself to become.

Randall claps me on the shoulder.

“It’s tough to fire someone, West. I know that better than anyone. But you need to put the good of the company first. Plus, this will be excellent practice for your future.”

At that I sit up straighter. Does he mean I’m still his pick for the position? The Hotel Director of each Star Heart Cruises ship will recommend one of his or her people for the corporate job, so Randall is the guy I need on my side if I’m to have even a chance.

“I won’t let you down, sir,” I say.

He studies me, then stands. I stand with him.

“See that you don’t.” He heads off to finish his rounds.

I stare at the ocean, at the sun rising in the sky the way I want to rise in this company. Maybe that’s why my mom liked the dawn, because it is the time of day most full of possibility. Even when we lived in Section 8 housing and had to give plasma to earn enough money for ramen noodles, she always felt the dawn held promise. The promise that today would be better.

It never wound up fulfilling that promise for her. Each dawn she’d hope that she’d sell a painting, and maybe she would, but she never made it into the big leagues, and never sold consistently enough to get us off of food stamps. My dad wasn’t much help; he had a janitorial job at a local school, so we always had a roof over his head, but not much more than that. Certainly not a car with working brakes.
 

There’s an ache in my chest, but it’s time to get to the photo room and meet with the team. I stare at the dawn a moment longer, then set my jaw and head inside.

~ ~ ~

The second night of the cruise is Formal Night. Since we’re at sea, it’s a way for the Cruise Director, who’s in charge of entertainment, to keep passengers smiling instead of bored. They dress in gowns and suits, and pretend they’re high society or something. It’s kind of silly, but people seem to have fun. It’s also our best time for photographs, because everyone wants pictures of themselves dressed to the nines.

“Each photographer has a station,” I tell Yasmin. “You can pick where you want to set up, but it’s your job to make the background something a passenger gets excited about.”

“Camelia told me her station is by the aquarium in the atrium, and that if I try to move in on it she’d murder me in my sleep,” Yasmin says, not meeting my eyes. She hasn’t really looked at me all day. “She’s joking, right?”

I tense at the mention of Camelia but manage to shrug. “Most of the team feels that way about their spots. Some places are more popular than others. Charlie has an angle on the promenade that gets the grand chandelier right behind the passengers. They love that.”

“So what are we doing here?” She surveys the hallway that leads to the Abalone Dining Room. “There’s nothing cool here.”

“That’s why we have our canvas backgrounds. This is the last time to snag people before dinner, since they all funnel through this hallway. You mentioned that you’d done studio set-ups, right?”

A flash of something I can’t interpret crosses Yasmin’s face before she ducks her head. “Yeah,” she says softly.

I wonder what that look in her eye means, but bite my tongue instead of asking. We don’t have much time to prep, and besides, after last night I doubt she wants to chat with the guy she thinks used and discarded her roommate. It still irks me that she assumed the worst, but even starting that conversation is too awkward to consider.

“Let’s set up over here,” I say, and we get to work.

Despite my initial impression of her yesterday, Yasmin did pretty well today. She showed up on time this morning, and though she looked tired, her dark eyes were clear as I’d explained our routine. There’s always a team of photographers in the sales room helping passengers pick out photographs and buy packages; the others rove the ship, filling a photo quota of smiling pool-goers and mini golfers.
 

The ship lurches slightly, listing to starboard, and my stomach turns. The edges of the storm caught up to us mid-afternoon, and it’s been rough seas ever since. Even my trusty seasickness patch is starting to fail me. But Formal Nights are big for the photography team, so I ignore my nausea the best I can.
 

Yasmin drops one of the poles holding up the canvas, and I mutter a curse as I help her right it. “Careful,” I say. “That equipment costs more than we get paid in a month.” And if she breaks it, my revenue gets clobbered by expenses, and my dreams of the corporate job on land, where the ground doesn’t freaking move beneath me, get shredded.