Page 6 of Love on Deck

“It’s okay, you know.” She slid her laptop into its case and proceeded to put it away. “We don’t have to do this.”

Do this? Do what, exactly? Fight or try to make up?

“I’ll see you in Florida.” She stood, muttering, “Unfortunately.” She shot me a brief smile before walking away. I watched her buy a water bottle in the mini mart across from our gate—DFW really needed to get with the times and provide water bottle refill stations—and snag a bag of Chex Mix.

She chomped away at her snack while waiting in line to board and ended up sitting about five rows ahead of me on the plane.

No, I wasn’t a creep. I didn’t know why I couldn’t help clocking her movements after the solid rejection she’d delivered. Something in me was ignited by her. Was it the challenge? Or just the fact that her dislike rubbed me wrong? It felt so unjustified.

Not everyone has to like you, Jack. Which was true, but also, usually they had a good reason. Lauren, from what I could tell, didn’t have any. Oh well. I had eight days with the woman and a new goal: she was going to be my friend by the end of it.

CHAPTER THREE

LAUREN

The entire flight between DFW and Miami was taken up with scheming to fill the empty slot created by Fantasy Con pulling out of our hotel, but still I got nowhere. Major conferences were booked out months, sometimes years, in advance, and I didn’t know what I could pull in to make up for the loss of the fantasy nerds. There were a lot of them, and they showed up in droves to meet their favorite authors and actors.

Brainstorming was made more difficult by the knowledge that my nemesis was somewhere behind me on the plane, but I refused to turn around and see where he’d sat. Jack was best left off my mind.

He had clearly picked up the message, too, because I didn’t see him after landing. Not at the baggage claim, or waiting in the humid heat for my Uber, or at the hotel check-in desk.

It was like Jack never got off the plane in Florida...which was just too good to be true.

My employee discount with the Hunnam Group had gotten us a good set of rooms for tonight, and I reached the suite before anyone else. The whole bridal party was already in town, but they had gone to dinner while I snacked on pistachios and set up for Amelia’s bachelorette party. It wasn’t that I was antisocial, exactly. It was that I didn’t quite vibe with Amelia and Kevin’s friends. They were all sorority girls and frat guys who were still stuck in that Greek mentality three years after leaving college. We just didn’t enjoy the same things.

Except for pampering. Everyone loved to be pampered.

Chocolate-covered strawberries, drinks, and an empty ice bucket sat on the little table next to an array of nail polishes, buffer blocks, face masks, lotions, and creams. I’d called to see about a massage therapist, but Amelia vetoed it quickly and told me she and Kevin had a couple’s massage booked on the cruise already.

When everything was set up, I cued up The Proposal on my phone and connected the Bluetooth to the TV, tuning into the beginning to make sure it would work. Loud, feminine voices carried down the hall outside my door, and a tightness in my stomach proved exactly how eager I was for the party to descend on me. I liked Cara, my sister’s college roommate, but she could get a little loud and sloppy, and we just didn’t mesh super well.

For being sisters who looked almost identical despite the four-year age gap between us, Amelia and I could not be more opposite—including our choice in friends. But I could endure anything for my sister. It had only been me and Amelia for so long anyway. We were each other’s rocks, our family, and our sole support system.

Amelia must have picked up her key from the front desk, because there was a beep and the door swung open to the sound of many girls hollering their excitement.

When I said many girls, I meant three, but it was one girl more than I’d expected, and the new addition had the pipes of four hyped-up cheerleaders. Sydney Browne—Amelia’s longtime friend and bane of my existence—followed Cara into the room, dying from exaggerated laughter. I immediately wanted to ram a chocolate strawberry into each ear.

Amelia waved at me but turned back to talk to Kevin at the door for a minute. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they both stopped to listen to someone hanging back in the hallway. Even from this distance I would recognize that terrible, low, smooth-like-a-chocolate-fountain voice anywhere. Jack freaking Fletcher. Again. It wasn’t enough that he’d had to pounce on me at the airport. He was going to be here the entire trip.

My body had an involuntary physical reaction to the man. It clenched and screamed to flee while outwardly I froze and suppressed my unreasonable reactions. I had been warned, and still I reacted like this every time he was around. I’d had the entire plane ride to come to terms with the fact that the man I most despised would now be part of this wedding weekend. And I was determined to pretend he didn’t bother me. So why couldn’t I get a grip on myself?

Before I could get another glimpse of my nemesis, though, Amelia closed the door and pivoted to face me, throwing up her arms in the air and squealing until she had me in her tight grip. “Sissy!”

Oh gosh, how I hated that term. “Ames!” I said, squeezing her tightly. “And then there were four!”

“Oh, yeah.” Amelia stepped back, squeezing my upper arms. “We called the cruise line and they let us add Sydney to Cara’s room! Isn’t that great news?”

“Fantastic!” Maybe I had this sorority girl thing down. I just had to say everything enthusiastically and smile extra brightly, even when I wanted to rip my hair out, right? Immediately my brain started working around the dilemma of adding a fourth woman to festivities that were carefully planned for three. We could each squeeze a bit of our face mask out for the fourth. Everyone would sacrifice a little, but there would be enough to go around, surely.

Fifteen strawberries didn’t divide evenly into fours, but I could have three and the other girls could each have four.

Everything would work out. It just required a bit of math.

Cara tossed her bag onto the foot of one of the beds and unzipped it. “I don’t know what to wear tonight! I should save my best dresses for the ship, right? I feel like it’s a better investment to look good then. We’ll be seeing the same people for seven days.”

“You can wear one of them twice though,” Sydney said. “The only people who will see you in it twice are the guys.”

I sat on the edge of the other bed, reworking the evening while adding an extra woman to our plans, but my head popped up at this. “The guys?”

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