Page 3 of The Prince's Castaway Baby

And then it hits me. “Your yacht,” I say, turning my head to look at him.

“What?”

“Your yacht.”

“What about my yacht?”

“I want it.”

“What?”

“Stop saying that!”

“Start making sense!”

I shake my head and sit up. This is perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. “You want your life back, right? I want to hide, and you know I’m so grateful that you would let me stay here, but even you can’t keep me here forever. So, trust me, okay? This way you can still feel good for helping me out, and you can go about your normal business.”

There’s a pause during which George frowns, trying to catch up to what I’m saying. I put it in the simplest possible terms for him. “Let me take your yacht, yeah? The press will leave you alone once they realize I’m not here anymore.”

George presses his lips into a thin line. I can see I’m going to have to try harder to persuade him. “Just let me borrow your yacht for a few days. I’ll go out to sea. No one will be able to talk to me. And I’ll come back in a week or so when all this has blown over and they decide to start harassing someone else instead.”

“Jensen, it’s a two-man ship at least. You shouldn’t go alone.”

“It’ll be fine,” I say, waving his concerns away. “It’s not like I can take you away from your work, is it? And anyway, we’ve sailed it together before, just us. I basically know how it works. It’s all autopilot, right? Or whatever the equivalent is for boat. Auto-sail? Auto-drive? Whatever. My point is, it’s fancy. It does it all for you. I wouldn’t need another captain.”

“You only have one captain,” says George, giving me a withering look. “You would be the captain — period.”

“So that’s a yes?” I give him my best wide-eyed, persuasive look.

He sighs. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea. But I suppose you’re right. You’ve sailed aboard it before. And if you don’t go far, it can’t hurt.”

“Trust me,” I say, giving him my biggest winning grin. “What could possibly go wrong?”

I spend the rest of the day packing my bag and getting ready. George makes me review some of the safety material for the boat, and I pay maybe eighty percent attention. I know I should take it all in, but when he leaves the room, I start skimming the books, flicking through the pages and wondering why he even stillhaspaper books. Hasn’t he heard of the modern world?

You’d think that manuals and stuff would all be digital these days. What’s the point of wasting a tree for stuff no one ever reads?

As darkness starts to fall, we sneak out of the house, narrowly avoiding an incident with a dog walker whose tiny, yappy dog draws the entire state’s attention to us. Quickly, we hurry away and head down to the harbor.

The water looks murky in the half-light, and the sound of waves lapping against the dock makes everything feel eerily quiet and still. “We are meant to be here, aren’t we?” I whisper to George.

He throws me a look. “Yes, it’s fine. Stop worrying.”

Technically, you’re supposed to write a log about where you’re going and what your plan is and all that stuff, but George told me he’ll do it later and make it look like he was the one sailing. I trust him to know what he’s doing.

I’m not so sure I trust myself.

We hurry over to the yacht, shining blue in the low light. “You know how it works, right?” asks George.

“Yeah, promise,” I say. “Don’t leave the engine running when I’m not in the cockpit.”

“Good. Don’t cost me my license, okay?”

“Yes, skipper!” I salute, which makes George smile. He gives me a final hug before pushing me aboard.

As I scramble up to the cockpit, I feel him watching me. I turn the key and the yacht roars to life, the engine vibrating underneath me. The controls all look easy enough, and I’m not going to play with any of the complicated-looking ones. All I need is backwards and forwards and stop.

“Be safe out there!” George calls up to me.

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