Page 5 of Lair

“Yes,” she says, in a vague accent that hints at European origins. “We like to keep it dim in here. The heat. It’s ghastly, isn’t it?”

Ghastly.

What an odd word. An old word.

But her antiquated formality extends further. She bows slightly, holding out one hand in a queer gesture of hospice. There’s an office back there.

“Please,” Renata Sproule says in that indefinable accent. “The captain will be with you shortly.”

TWO

I sit in a hard mahogany chair in the dim office and wait as the captain studies my résumé. He’s wearing a white epaulette shirt that shows he’s still powerfully built for a man in his fifties, his silver hair swept back from the broad, glowering forehead of a man who has seen everything, and found it lacking. Including my résumé.

I’m not good at waiting.

Sure, I fit the image of a yachtie to a T. But after hearing of Lair Yachting, Inc. (and that shadowy run-in with the receptionist), my throat has gone dry.

Perhaps the captain knows this yachting thing isn’t just an adventure for me—it’s a crisis. How many girls has he seen running from broken homes or broken men, hoping to reinvent themselves on the high seas? Too many, it would seem. His eyes glide over me with practiced precision, lingering on the fading bruise on my cheek I was not wholly successful in hiding with concealer. I lift my chin and force myself to meet his eyes.

Captain Redfearn opens his mouth and speaks. “You have freckles.”

I blink, feeling my ears grow hot. “Uh, yeah,” I stammer. “I do.”

The captain frowns. “He doesn’t like freckles,” he mutters, and as my thoughts spiral at that he adds, eyeing my hair, “Would you mind changing your appearance? If requested?”

I feel a coldness seep into me. “Uh, sure. I mean, no. I wouldn’t mind.”

The captain absently nods and glances back down at my résumé. I don’t know what for. There’s nothing there but a few basic training courses I crammed into the last couple of weeks: the STCW, a smattering of classes on stewardess competency, and an ENG1 or seafarer medical certificate. A glorified crash course on maritime survival and how to be a slave to the fabulously wealthy.

“Bartending experience is good,” Captain Redfearn ventures. “How many years as a manager?”

“Three.”

A nod. That’s a win. “And is that the sum total of your service experience?”

My ears grow hot again. I consider mentioning teaching a children’s yoga class at the local Y back in Oregon and decide against it. “There... weren’t exactly a lot of options where I lived. I was basically out in cow country.”

This, I immediately know, is a mistake. Captain Redfearn’s eyes flick at me over the top of the paper. “You do know that in this industry, the expectation is for the best service in the world, right? Forget your quotidian CEOs, forget royalty. Yachting is for people who shit in gold toilets and have never seen a cow in their life, and they always—always—expect perfection. Can you give them that?”

My throat has suddenly contracted. “Yes,” I squeak.

The captain leans back in his chair and examines me with hard gray eyes. “If a guest got a bloodstain on their twenty thousand-dollar silk blouse, how would you get it out?”

“Um...”

“Who do you serve first, a guest or his wife?”

I bite my lip.

The captain sighs, a huff of cool disappointment. “Mr. Voper does not care for unsophisticated country girls.”

The old-world name sends a shiver down my spine. “Look, I’m a fast learner—”

But the captain is standing. “You’re not what we’re looking for—”

“Please!” He freezes, and we both stare at my hand that’s flown on top of his. I remove it. “Please,” I say again, more quietly. “I can’t—go back. To where I came from.” My voice begins to quiver as I get a flash of a familiar, sneering face—You think you’re better than me?—and I fight it, continuing in steely composure, “I have nothing. I spent everything I had to get here. If I don’t get this, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Perhaps it’s the raw urgency in my voice, or simply the blatant desperation—but he settles back in his seat, cocks his head and folds his hands. “All right, then,” he says. “Stand up. Let’s get a look at you.”

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