Bad Cruz(18)

I called my mother, then my father, then Bear. I was waiting for Bear to pick up when I heard Cruz’s mother’s voice blasting through his phone’s speaker.

“Cruz? Where are you, darling?”

“Upper deck. Waterpark bar. We’re looking for you.”

I whipped my head to catch him video-chatting his mother, pacing from side to side. I wasn’t the only one who was staring. The entire female population of the cruise ship was ogling this piece of prime meat. Some of the men, too.

Stupid pride filled my chest. Everyone could look, but he was with me. But then I was also filled with dread, because not only were we NOT together, he was literally trying his hardest to get away from me.

“Yes. We’re at the lounge, which is right at the back. You’ll see the beautiful chandelier, made of empty vintage liquor bottles. So very pretty. I’m wearing an ivory dress and a straw hat, and Donna is wearing…oh, I don’t know what she is wearing, darling. These people wouldn’t recognize a good fashion choice if it whacked them across the tush.”

Welp.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear that.

I had no doubt I was lumped together with these people. The blue-collared folks of Fairhope.

Cruz had the decency to shoot me an apologetic glance before hurrying to the back of the waterpark’s bar.

“I can’t see the lounge. Are you sure you’re at the waterpark?”

“By the waterpark.”

“Yeah, I don’t see any chandeliers, either. Just a bar that looks like a yellow submarine.”

A panicky feeling began buzzing in the pit of my stomach. The ship’s horn sounded, drowning out my heartbeats.

“How about we meet somewhere else? I can wait for you by the spa center on the nineteenth deck.”

“The decks only go to eighteen, Mom.”

“Nonsense, Cruzy. You’d think a man who finished med school would know how to count.”

The panic in my abdomen slithered up, up, up toward my sternum, making it almost impossible to breathe.

Cruz stopped pacing, rubbing at his face tiredly and shaking his head.

“It’s right in the brochure, Mom. The Elation has eighteen decks. Look it up.”

“The Ecstasy has nineteen decks. Check for yourself—why are we even having this conversation?”

The panic ball inside me was now blocking my throat.

I couldn’t draw a breath.

Nausea washed over me.

Pluck, pluck, pluck.

Cruz slowly turned toward me, his bottomless ocean eyes flaring with accusation. Meanwhile, the Elation chose this exact moment to begin sailing, leaving the port while hundreds of vacationers lazed against the bannisters, watching as it drifted farther from land.

“The Ecstasy?” he repeated, for my ears, not hers.

“Yes, darling. Why? Wait, what ship are you on?” There was a little, nervous, what-are-the-chances laughter at the end of the sentence.

“The Elation,” he said point-blank, his gaze not leaving mine, growing hotter, darker, scarier.

I want my mommy.

“Why on earth would you be on the Elation?” his mother exploded.

Around her, our families had begun conversing hotly. The words “why?” and “not again” and “her fault” were thrown in the air.

“That’s a very good question, Mother. Why don’t you let me get back to you with the answer after I find out for myself?”

With that, he killed the call and turned fully to me. My only consolation was that we were in front of a lot of people, so it was unlikely he was going to throw me overboard.

Yet.

“The Elation,” he said simply. His voice rough and dead and so chilly, a shudder rolled down my spine.

I bit my lower lip. “I remembered something with an E.”

“You remembered.” He strode toward me, cool as a cucumber, but also formidable as Michael Myers. “But you didn’t think to, oh, I don’t know, double-check?”

I stepped backward, retreating toward a raised ramp on which a wet t-shirt contest was taking place, trying to avoid his wrath.

More than stupid, I felt hopeless, because I knew everyone was currently discussing how useless I was. How it was probably a miracle I could even hold a tray and take a pancake order.

“Perfectly capable of booking two tickets to a cruise,” Cruz mimicked my voice and did a good job of it, as he took another step in my direction, like a predator zeroing in on his prey. “That’s what you said at the diner. Should I have specified that I meant OUR FAMILIES’ CRUISE?”

“I…I…I…”

But the excuses died in my throat.

There was no justifying what had happened.

I’d been drunk, flustered with Rob’s return, and made a huge mistake. I’d confused the Elation with the Ecstasy, and now I remembered why: as soon as my parents had told me the Costellos were booking us a cruise, I’d begun researching the different cruise ships.

The Elation was the one I’d kept coming back to, because it seemed the nicest and came highly recommended. Though it didn’t do me much good now that I was sharing it with a man who wanted to drown me.

“Can I have the nice and phony Cruz back?”

I winced when he was so close, I could practically smell him. The tantalizing scent of sandalwood with leather on a moneyed man, and the sharp, potent musk of male.