Page 73 of Revenge Honeymoon

“Fix what?” Ruby rolled on her side and focused her full attention on Emily.

“The secret photos he took of you.” She paced in front of the bed as she explained her plan. “If no photos exist, no more pressure to sign the release form, and the whole thing goes away.”

“How are you going to make the photos disappear?”

Emily paused. Her muscles twitched. “I’m going to access his laptop and delete them.” She held a hand to her mouth and stared at her friend.

“How are you going to—?” She blinked a few times, and then ran a hand through her luxurious auburn hair. “No, Emily, I would never expect you to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Well, pretend to like him—”

“It’s not really pretend.” Yeah, no way were her feelings for Max pretend. They were very, very real. Like one hundred thousand percent real.

“—so you can find an opportunity to dump the photos.” As Emily’s response sank in, Ruby gave her an incredulous stare. “Wait. You actually like this guy? Even after what he did?”

Whoops.

She shouldn’t have let that slip. This date was all about helping Ruby have the best revenge cruise a woman could have. “Let’s forget about what I feel for this guy.”

“No, that’s a very important part of this conversation.” Ruby pulled herself up into a seated position on the mattress. “You like Max. You think he’s cute. But you’re going to go out on a date with him to help me out?” She touched her hand to her chest. “Wow. That’s pretty selfless, Em. I don’t know if I could do that.”

“You couldn’t?”

“Maybe I could.” Ruby tapped her chin with a finger. “I don’t know. But if you think you can do that for me—? Wow. I’d be really grateful. I just want to be left alone. I already know half the ship probably heard the story about my wedding, and why we’re on the cruise. So I suppose me thinking I could blend in with a ship full of newlyweds and heal in private really wasn’t possible. Was it?”

“No, probably not.” Emily’s shoulders slumped.

“But this idea about me being a model for some cruise line? Seems ridiculous.” Ruby feigned a Vogue pose and then laughed.

“Mmm.”

“So you have my blessing, Em. If you can get rid of those photos, that would be fantastic.” She smiled. “But don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“I can do it, and I won’t—do anything stupid, I mean.” But in the back of her mind she worried about how she would accomplish it. Max wouldn’t show up for dinner with his laptop in tow. It would be in his cabin. And the only way Emily could think of getting inside Max’s cabin would be...well.

Her body flushed hot and cold at the thought. Would Max even be interested in taking her back to his cabin? Hard to believe the Most Gorgeous Male Specimen on Earth would be interested in regular old Emily in that way. But he’d asked her out, hadn’t he? And when she’d landed on top of him in the raft...

A wild idea smacked her in the face. “Ruby, can I borrow something from you?”

“Name it.”

Emily headed to the small closet near the bathroom door, grabbed Ruby’s hot pink halter mini-dress with a daringly cut keyhole neckline in a super stretchy fabric, and held it up to her body. “What do you think?”

* * *

Emily tugged on the dress she’d borrowed. She never would’ve picked something so revealing. This was Ruby’s wardrobe on an Emily figure. Did it work?

“Wow, you look amazing.” Ruby perched on the edge of the bed and eyed Emily as she looked in the mirror and adjusted the pink stretch fabric that molded to her curves like plastic wrap on a bowl of leftovers. “That dress looks totally different on you.”

Emily plucked at the keyhole neckline. “Totally different – bad? Or totally different – good?” She’d never worn something so boob-revealing before. Because most of the time she thought her breasts were a distraction and too much for the eyes. Well, her mother had sort of told her that once.

On her first day of high school when she had descended the stairs in a tight tank top and a miniskirt, Emily’s flat-chested, built-like-a-marathon-runner mother, who thought God had smote her daughter with the curse of a mega chest, had gawked and said, “You can’t wear that to school. It’s obscene.”

Emily’s face must’ve turned ten shades of red, because her older brother had burst around the corner from the kitchen and laughed at the sight of his sister. “You look ridiculous.”

After those two comments, Emily had turned around, headed up the stairs to her room, put on a pair of her favorite jeans and picked out a hoodie to pull on over her tank top. Problem solved. And that birthed her customary high school outfit for the next four years.

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