Page 35 of Love Overboard
Althea glared at her before she squeezed her eyelids shut with a groan.
Abby cast a panicked glance at Emily and Daisy. “Can one of you get the doctor? I’ll stay here with her.”
Emily tapped her foot. It had been long enough. They shouldn’t make Lacey too mad. Emily knew there’d be a reckoning when the pair escaped the closet.
“Althea, I doubt it’s your gallbladder. It’s probably the salmon you ate for dinner. You know fish doesn’t agree with you.”
Althea’s eyes popped open. “You think so?” She sat up and held out a hand. “Help me, Gerry. I’ll muster the strength to stand.”
Gerry grabbed one elbow and Abby the other. Together, they hauled the patient to her feet. She dusted off her rear end and fixed her hair.
Emily motioned with both hands. “Come on, Althea. We’ll take you to your cabin.”
“I’m gonna get me a hug right quick.” The tiny Abby disappeared as Althea’s arms engulfed her. “Thanks for looking out for me, baby.”
Daisy hovered behind them. “I apologize for the bother we caused, Abigail. Come and find me tomorrow, and I’ll treat you to a cup of tea.”
Althea let go and entered the waiting elevator. The other Shippers followed.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Abby stood outside the car, her brow puckered.
Emily pressed the button for their floor. “Right as rain. Go ahead and do what you need to do. Don’t mind us.”
The doors closed, and the Shippers let out a collective sigh of relief. Daisy and Althea started to giggle, and Gerry pulled her notebook from her pocket.
“Nice work, team,” said Emily.
She hoped the frazzled Abby remembered to let Lacey and Jon out of the lost and found. A still small voice deep down in her soul warned her they’d gone too far, but she batted it away. When she was younger, Emily had almost made the mistake of living a life without love, and she refused to let Lacey choose that lonely path. All the plotting and prevarication would be worth it in the end, when Lacey and Jon realized they were meant for each other.
CHAPTER 15
LACEY RUBBED HER EYES ASthe glare from the endless white walls stretched in front of her. After Abby had rescued them from the lost and found, sleep had been impossible. She lay awake until sunrise, then put in a good eight hours at the front desk. It was better than reimagining Jon’s soft breath against her lips.
Again.
She plodded down the long corridor that spanned the length of the ship. Only accessible to staff, the plain-Jane hallway was dubbed Route 66 since it stayed busy twenty-four hours a day. Lacey took a right into the staff mess. The red vinyl booths, chrome tables and chairs, and checkered floor tiles resembled those of an old fifties diner. Her coworkers’ conversations buzzed like bees in a hive. Faces turned her way as she grabbed a salad from the buffet and wound through the diners to an empty table in the corner. It appeared the scuttlebutt of last night’s escapade had already made its way around.
She didn’t blame Abby. Her roommate had woken the head steward, Mr. Gozar, to borrow the lost-and-found keys, and he’d wanted to know the reason they were required at three-thirty in the morning. A logical question. But even her roommate’s short explanation was ample fodder for the rumor mill. Why did the keeper of the keys have to be the biggest gossip on the ship?
Lacey clunked her plate on the table and sat with her back to the room. The Argentinian housemaids congregated to her left, and their words tumbled over each other as the women talked in their native language. With three years of high school Spanish and four years’ interacting with international coworkers on a cruise ship, Lacey understood most of it. Salacious suppositions about why she and Jon had been in a closet in the middle of the night. She leaned on one elbow and picked at her uninspiring but healthy lunch, poking the wilted lettuce with her fork.
“It is not good?” asked a deep voice with a thick, charming accent.
She looked up into the sparkling regard of Ricardo Montoya, the pastry chef on the MSBuckingham. His curly black hair spilled over his forehead, giving him a boyish, innocent quality. He sat down across from her with his food.
His hand motioned to the dish in front of her. “The salad is not good?”
Lacey shrugged a shoulder. “Not as good as your cherry tarts.”
He beamed and sucked in a breath, his chest expanding. “I will save some for you.”
Ricardo made the motion of the cross and said a silent prayer. When he finished, he cut into his ground sirloin, took a bite, and gagged. “The person who made your salad also made my steak.”
She pushed her plate away. “Someone in the kitchen was having a bad day.”
“It is an epidemic. The head chef bit on my head this morning.”
Lacey tried not to chuckle at his unusual twist on the old cliché. “Why?”
