Page 111 of Ten Years and Then…
“I wish I’d thought of that,” Daniel said. It would have been a nice little extra surprise for Leanne. “They’ve definitely got the right idea.”
“So do we,” Leanne said. “Maybe if they’re lucky, they’ll have as good a time as we’re going to have.”
He took her hand and led her the rest of the way to the elevators. “There,” he said, pointing at the map of the ship. “The sickbay is on deck one. Looks like the only thing that’s there.” That, and all the machinery and everything else needed to keep the passengers comfortable for ten days.
“We don’t need to go down there, I just wanted to know. Just in case.”
As she said that, Daniel thought he was hearing something in her voice now. Just a tiny hint of—what? Maybe just fatigue. Or hunger—they hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and it was almost four o’clock now. That was probably all it was.
“Makes sense,” he agreed. “I think I heard someone say they’ve got a little café up in the Solarium. You want to go up there, sit out on a beach chair and have a little something? Dinner isn’t for another three hours.”
“Sure,” she said, and was she forcing more certainty into her voice than she felt? Or was he just hearing things? “The elevator is right here, let’s go.”
Up they went. Maybe some cookies, or a sandwich or whatever they had for snacks would sort her out. If there even was anything to sort out.
Nora, two hours later
“We can’t eat now, we’ll spoil our dinner,” Greg said.
He was right. Nora knew he was, but she didn’t care.
“Dinner isn’t until seven-thirty. I’m hungry now. Let’s go up to the Solarium. Keith said they’ve got snacks there all day long.”
Greg shook his head. “Nora, dinner is at the steakhouse tonight. We’re going to be eating the whole world.”
He was just being reasonable. Rational. Maybe some other words starting with “R.” That’s all it was. There was no call to tell him that whether she ate herself out of fitting into her bathing suit was her problem, not his; or that she was the one paying for the steak dinner. That would be hostile, and hateful and probably some other words starting with “H.”
“I know. Just a little snack to tide me over. And the spa is up there, too, we can check out what they’re offering. Maybe there’ll be a sale, too—you know, two massages for the price of one, something like that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re the one who told me to ignore them trying to sell us something everywhere we go on the ship.” Then he paused, collected himself. “I don’t need any of that, Nora. I just want to spend time with you. That’s what this trip is about for me, not where we eat, or what kind of massages we can get or anything.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He responded, leaning into her, but only for a moment, then he pulled back. “I’m glad you feel the same way,” he said, panting a bit. “But let’s save that sort of thing for our cabin. There must be a hundred people here watching us.”
She didn’t care. He shouldn’t, either. All they were doing was kissing—people did that all the time in public. What did it matter who saw them?
No—that wasn’t fair, was it? He was entitled to his feelings, and if he was uncomfortable doing anything more than holding hands in public, then that’s all they’d do outside of their cabin.
“I understand,” she said. “I was just—it really meant a lot to me, what you said. I wanted to make sure you knew.” That was the third thought she had.
The first one had been, I guess we can’t ever get married, if you can’t kiss me in front of a crowd.
The second, much worse one, was, Daniel wouldn’t have cared if everybody on the ship, and the Captain, was watching. He probably would’ve taken a bow afterwards.
Daniel, around seven o’clock
They walked down the stairs to the floor of the Main Dining Room, and Daniel had three thoughts.
The first, and best one, was that Leanne looked absolutely stunning in her shimmery blue dress that perfectly set off her eyes, and with her long blonde hair pinned up just so.
The second, and sort of disturbing one, was that walking down the staircase made him think of the scene from the trailer for Titanic that they played before Event Horizon when he’d gone to see it back in September. There’d been a shot of a grand, ornate staircase flooding as the ship sank, and that was definitely not something he wanted to think about now. Not that there were likely to be any icebergs in the Caribbean, so really it was just a stupid thought rather than a legitimately worrying one.
The third, and by far the worst, was that the last time he’d been with a beautiful woman in a dress—not counting dancing with Bianca at cousin Frank’s wedding last year—was with Nora at the Valentine’s Day dance back in 1989.
Maybe it was the necklace. He still wore it, every day. How could Nora not keep pushing her way into his thoughts when there was a constant physical reminder of her right above his heart?
He hadn’t even taken it off the first time he and Leanne had made love, back in July. They’d had a long weekend planned. They were going to rent a cabin on the shore of Lake Norman, half an hour north of Charlotte. July 4th had been a Friday, and she was supposed to have four days off.
She never showed up at his condo on Friday morning; it wasn’t until the afternoon that she left an apologetic voicemail—it sounded as though she’d been in tears, telling him that the whole weekend was shot, there was a crisis at the hospital and she’d be working all day Friday, and also Sunday and Monday.
