Page 32 of Love on Deck

“Irony is never nice.”

That surprised me. She thought I was calling her Sunshine sarcastically?

“What’s the other nickname?” she asked.

I brought my lips closer to her ear, so close I could feel the shell of it as I spoke. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Lauren gave a shudder. Yes. I was the champion of this round. But she’d gotten a few hits in, too.

I pulled back enough to see her hazel eyes and froze; the way they watched me so bright and clear in the sunlight was arresting.

“I would, actually.”

Would what? I was lost. It was annoying that this was happening with Lauren, of all people, but I had actually, legitimately gotten lost in her eyes. I stepped away. She couldn’t know how much she’d shaken me. This relationship was fake. It was getting to my head a little, making me feel things for Lauren she would never allow.

It was important to remember that she did not like me in any way. “Where’s the spa?”

“This way.” Lauren stepped past me. I watched her walk for a minute before she glanced at me over her shoulder, her expression asking if I was going to follow her.

I was. But right now, I was wondering if it was a good idea, and if all this was still worth keeping Sydney off my back.

* * *

The robes were plush, the room was quiet except for soft music playing from speakers I couldn’t see, and Lauren was silent. Maybe I had gone too far with my little experiment next to the railing. Maybe I pushed her too much.

“Come back here,” Amelia said, peeking from the next room over. “They have four beds so we can be together.”

“Oh, great!” Lauren’s enthusiasm was ridiculously fake. Amelia didn’t seem to notice, though.

“We can do anything if we do it together,” I said quietly with mock solemnity.

Lauren’s lips quirked. The woman was fighting a smile! She pulled the large white bathrobe tighter and followed her sister into the next room. It was awkward getting beneath the sheets with Amelia and Kevin in the room, but we all managed to do it while staying modestly covered. It helped that we’d been told we could keep our underwear on, too. Our massage therapists entered the room and the soothing music was turned up a little.

My massage therapist started by rubbing oil into the skin on my back. Oh man, that felt good.

“If you relax, madam, you will feel better,” someone said beside me. I lifted my head, unsurprised to see it was the woman engaged to help Lauren.

“I’m relaxed,” she lied. Her voice had gone tense. On a scale of one to panic, she sounded like she had just been asked to meet a client without any prep notes.

The woman got back to work, rubbing lotion into Lauren’s back.

“Return your face to the center, please,” my guy asked me. I did as he bid.

“I’m so glad y’all are getting along,” Amelia said a few beds down, her voice muffled by the towel and the chair. “Now there are so many things we can do together. This is like the best-case scenario.”

“Yeah,” Kevin added. “You’re so much better than the last guy. No more putting up with that—”

“Watch it,” Amelia said. “That was months ago.”

“Derek?” Lauren asked, breathless. Why was she still breathless? “I thought y’all liked Derek.”

My stomach clenched. Who was this guy?

“I like my hammer, but that doesn’t mean I want to hang out with it.”

Was that Kevin’s way of calling Derek a tool? “Who’s Derek?”

“No one,” Lauren said loudly.

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