Page 103 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

“No. I mean come on the cruise with me.”

My jaw drops. “Oh. You mean from Christchurch?”

“Yeah. It’s only two days. We’d get there on Friday. We could try and find Maureen. Then maybe stay the night there and get a flight back on Saturday.”

My brain’s turned to mush. “But… the cruise must be fully booked, surely. They’re unlikely to have any spare cabins.”

He rolls his eyes. “Or you could share with me.”

My face immediately heats like a furnace.

He laughs. “Why are you blushing?”

“I don’t know. Don’t tease me.”

“I’m totally going to tease you about it. After what we did last night? And again this morning? And probably later on today?”

“Linc!”

He smiles. “Come with me. Spend another couple of nights with me. Let’s see if we can find the ring. And maybe by then we’ll be sick of each other, and we’ll be ready to say goodbye.”

His eyes are bright green in the dappled sunlight. He doesn’t say it, but suddenly I’m sure he’s thinking, as I am, That’s not going to happen.

I feel a little frisson of something run down my back. A little sparkle, as if I’m on an excavation, brushing away the earth, and I spot a glimmer of gold beneath the surface.

I push it away, though. I can’t afford to be romantic about this. Even if we’re fond of each other, he’s definitely leaving the country on the fifth, and I have to prepare for that.

But I can still enjoy him while I have him.

“Okay,” I say.

His eyebrows rise. “Oh. I was expecting more resistance.”

“Sorry. Am I being over eager?”

He grins. “No.”

“The only fly in the ointment is that I’ll have to ask Fraser for the time off.”

“Ah.”

“He’s been begging me to take a vacation for months, but I can’t imagine he’s going to be overjoyed if it turns out to be with you.”

Linc’s eyes gleam. “Want me to talk to him?”

“No… I can handle him. But if I run into trouble, you can go and beat him up.”

He snorts. “That’d be like watching Pooh Bear wrestle Tigger.”

I giggle, leaning back as the waitress comes out with our breakfasts. “That’d be a sight to see.” I smile at her as she places my plate before me. It contains a sausage, a fried egg, a pile of crispy bacon, a hash brown, mushrooms, baked beans, a tomato, and toast. “Wow.”

“Eat up,” Linc says as the waitress retreats. “You need to keep your strength up.”

I give him a wry look. “Behave.”

He laughs and tucks into the breakfast. “Not much chance of that.”

I smile, cutting into the sausage and dipping it into the egg yolk. I love that although he’s obviously grown up and changed a lot from the boy I knew, inside he’s still the naughty fourteen-year-old I met outside my father’s study.

---