Jaine Austen 8 - Killer Cruise (8 page)

Finally, the waiter trotted off, leaving our jolly party to converse with each other. Which was about as easy as that Sisyphus guy trying to roll a boulder up a hill.

What can I say? Conversation did not sparkle. Not with Nesbitt and Kyle in full-tilt snit mode.

Emily, however, seemed oblivious to the tension crackling in the air and chattered gaily about the day’s activities.

“Graham and I won second prize in Scattegories! We had so much fun, didn’t we, Gray?”

“So what exactly is it that you do for a living?” Kyle asked, clearly not interested in their Scattegories victory.

“Graham’s a retired corporate executive!” Emily beamed.

“Fortunately,” Graham said, “I was lucky with a few investments so I was able to retire young and pursue my love of cruising.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Emily beamed. “Gray loves cruising just as much as I do!”

“How nice,” Maggie said, darting an anxious glance at her husband’s rapidly draining martini glass.

“Where exactly did you work?” Kyle asked, not to be deterred from his cross-examination.

“The British Petroleum Corporation,” Graham replied, with a cool smile. “For almost twenty years. I’ll be happy to fax you my resume if you like.”

“Touché, Graham,” Robbie said, a twinkle in his eye.

To which Kyle muttered what I was certain was a hearty curse.

Thank heavens the waiter showed up just then with our appetizers. But alas, he eventually abandoned us to our own company, and the rest of the dinner slogged by under a thundercloud of tension, with Kyle and Ms. Nesbitt radiating hostility and poor Maggie watching helplessly as her husband downed one martini after another.

I, meanwhile, was trying desperately not to reach over and cut myself a hunk of Emily’s Steak Mexicana. I was also busy trying to avoid eye contact with Robbie, who kept looking at me with that disconcerting grin of his.

But what bothered me the most, more than the tension, more than the lure of the forbidden Steak Mexicana and Robbie’s lopsided grin, was the way Graham was cozying up to Emily, gazing deeply into her eyes and brushing her hand with the tips of his fingers.

He sure wasn’t acting like a guy who had a fiancée waiting in the wings.

“Ready to take another spin on the dance floor?” Robbie whispered as we filed out of the dining room.

Just say no
, I warned myself.
Do not get involved with a bad-boy heartbreaker. He walked out on you last night. He’ll walk out on you again.

“Please say yes,” he said, sensing my hesitation. “If you don’t, I’ll have to dance with the battle-axe.” He glanced over at Ms. Nesbitt, who was discreetly popping a Tums into her mouth.

I steeled myself against temptation, but all it took was one sniff of his baby powder, and the next thing I knew I was in his arms on the dance floor.

Obviously I missed class the day they passed out backbones.

Graham and Emily were dancing alongside us, Emily happily ensconced in Graham’s arms. For a woman of her advanced years, she bore an uncanny resemblance to a high school teenager, batting her eyes and giggling at her date’s bon mots.

Graham had his charm turned on full blast, earning every cent of what they paid him to keep the single ladies amused.

Cookie was up on the bandstand, still radiant from her earlier tryst, belting out old standards. Every once in a while Graham caught her eye and winked at her over Emily’s shoulder.

What an operator.

Meanwhile, out in the audience, Kyle and Nesbitt were glaring at the happy couple, Kyle guzzling enough gin to open his own distillery.

“We’re going to take a break now,” the band-leader announced after Cookie wrapped up a lovely rendition of “Blue Moon.” “But we’ll be back in ten.”

I started off the dance floor but Robbie pulled me back.

“Oh, let’s not join the Gloomies,” he said, eyeing Kyle and Nesbitt. “What do you say we take a walk out on deck?”

This time Sensible Me didn’t even put up a fight.

“Sure,” I managed to sigh.

It was a beautiful night, the kind you see in cruise-line commercials—mild and balmy with gazillions of stars in the skies. When you live with L.A.’s perpetual overhead gunk, you tend to forget how many of those twinkling babies actually exist.

We strolled along the deck, the moon glittering like diamonds on the water below. Talk about your Kodak moments.

What next, I wondered? Would Robbie turn to me and tell me how he’d always yearned to meet a freelance writer with generous thighs, and then take me in his arms and wrap me in a torrid embrace?

Apparently not.

“That was the dinner from hell,” he said, not breaking stride.

Oh, well. It was all for the best he didn’t make a pass at me. The last thing I wanted was to rush into things. (Who am I kidding? At that moment I wanted nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and plunge headlong into a frantic lip-lock.)

“I thought Nesbitt would have a cow when Aunt Em asked her to change seats.”

“She was steamed, all right.”

“Good for Aunt Em,” he said. “I’m glad she’s having fun. Poor thing’s led a pretty sheltered life.”

“She never married?”

“No. She had some big romance when she was very young, but it didn’t pan out.”

“I just hope she’s not falling too hard for Graham. You know, he already has a girlfriend.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Underneath her ditsy ways, Aunt Em’s pretty sensible. She’s been on enough cruises to know that Graham is one of those men hired to dance with the single women. Surely she can’t think anything serious is going to happen between them.”

Obviously he hadn’t Clue One about the self-deluding inner workings of a woman in love.

We stopped now and leaned against the rail, looking down at the moonlit waters below.

“Besides,” Robbie said, “it’s not Aunt Emily’s love life I’m concerned about. It’s yours.”

“Mine?” I flushed.

“What’s with you and that ice sculptor anyway?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I assured him. “Nothing at all.”

“I just thought from the way you two have been together…”

“No, Anton and I are definitely not an item.”

“Any significant other back home?” he asked.

Play hard to get
, I told myself.
Let him think he has some competition. Make up some guy you’re seeing occasionally.

“Aside from my cat, no.”

Way to go, Jaine.

“Well, that’s a relief.” He inched just a tad closer. “So tell me about yourself. What do you do when you’re not sailing the high seas?”

I told him about my career as a freelance writer, and my fondness for fine literature and crossword puzzles, carefully omitting my penchant for Chunky Monkey,
Cosmo
quizzes, and daytime TV.

“You go in for water sports?” he asked. “Sailing, scuba, that sort of stuff?”

And then the most outrageous lie popped out of my mouth.

“Oh, yes. I love it all.”

Was I nuts? The only water sport I enjoyed on a regular basis was soaking in the tub.

“Really? Somehow I didn’t think you were the type.”

“Oh, but I am,” I said, digging myself in even deeper. “I’m a real water nut.”

Would somebody please shut me up?

And it looked like Robbie was about to do exactly that. Because just then he reached out and ran his finger along my cheek. I felt a jolt of excitement I hadn’t felt in many a moon.

Much to my delight, he leaned in to kiss me. With any luck I would not be doing any talking for the next twenty minutes or so. Our lips were just about to meet when I heard:

“Hey, Jaine! I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Phooey. It was Anton, hustling over to us.

“Look what I made you, babe!”

He held out a plate, and there in the center was a bright red jiggly blob.

“It’s a rose carved out of Jell-O!”

“How nice,” I managed to say.

“A precious flower for my precious flower.”

Oh, puke.

“Hey, babe,” he said, wedging his way between me and Robbie, “did I ever tell you about the time I carved the Eiffel Tower out of egg salad? Man, that was some tough job. I mean, you’ve got to get the egg salad really cold and not use too much mayo; otherwise it’s too runny.”

He proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes giving a blow-by-blow description of the construction of his egg salad Eiffel Tower, his back to Robbie the entire time.

“What a fascinating story,” Robbie said when he finally wound down.

“That’s nothing. Wanna hear about the time I carved Moses out of chopped liver?”

“Some other time, Anton,” I said. “I think I’ll turn in now.”

“Me too,” Robbie chimed in.

With that, he grabbed my elbow and hustled me inside the ship, where we sprinted along the corridors, certain that Anton would soon be hot on our heels.

“In here,” Robbie said, pulling me into the ship’s game room, a wood-paneled enclave whose shelves were lined with board games and video rentals. Over at one of the tables, a bunch of kids were playing Uno.

We cowered in a corner, and seconds later we saw Anton rushing by.

“That guy is a human bloodhound,” Robbie sighed.

So there we were in the game room, me holding a Jell-O rose, the kids at the table shrieking “Uno!” at the top of their lungs. No moonlight. No twinkling stars. No balmy breezes. The spell had definitely been broken.

“You know,” Robbie said, “I think I really will turn in. I’m sort of tired.”

“Me too,” I lied.

What did I tell you? Dumped again.

I was dying to make a pit stop at the buffet, but I couldn’t risk running into Anton. So I trudged back down to the Dungeon Deck with nothing more exciting to snack on than a Jell-O rose. Which I wasn’t about to eat. Not after Anton had touched it.

Back in my cabin, Prozac sniffed at Anton’s artwork disdainfully.

This is your idea of a midnight snack?

For once we were on the same wavelength.

With a weary sigh I got in my jammies and plopped into bed.

It was then that I noticed that Samoa had not brought me the pillow I’d requested. Most annoying. There were, after all, two beds in the cabin. There had to be another pillow for the second bed.

I made a mental note to have a stern talk with my steward-cum-novelist in the morning.

In the meanwhile, Prozac was perched on our one and only lumpy specimen. After copious pleading and belly rubbing I finally convinced her to relinquish her throne and lie on my tummy. Then I turned on the TV—believe it or not, my cabin actually had one—and zapped around until I found
Sleepless in Seattle
on the ship’s movie channel.

Prozac and I spent the next hour and a half watching Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks fall in love. Rather, I watched. Prozac was snoring five minutes after the opening credits. I don’t think she likes Meg Ryan. She doesn’t like anybody as cute as she is.

Afterward I sat through a highly educational spiel on the many fun and exciting tourist attractions in Puerto Vallarta. None of which I could afford.

At about one-thirty, I turned off the light.

But sleep would not come. Visions of brownies danced in my head.

I could resist the lure of the buffet no longer. Surely Anton wasn’t still roaming around looking for me. I threw on my raincoat, rolling up my pajama bottoms so they wouldn’t show, and set out in search of empty calories.

The buffet was surprisingly busy. Apparently I wasn’t the only late-night snacker on board. I scanned the room on Anton Alert, but much to my relief he wasn’t there.

Five minutes later I was trotting back to my cabin with a brownie for me and roast turkey for Prozac. I’d just approached my cabin door when I caught a glimpse of Cookie slipping into Graham’s cabin, a bright chartreuse sweater over her nightgown.

First Tom and Meg. Now Cookie and Graham. Love was all around me. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the way Robbie had cut the evening short. True, the spell had been broken, but if he were really interested in me, would he have called it a night so quickly? I didn’t think so.

Oh, well. I refused to let it get me down. We Austens are made of sterner stuff. Throughout the generations our motto has always been:
When the going gets tough, the tough get chocolate. With nuts, if possible.

It worked for me.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL

To: Jaineausten
From: Shoptillyoudrop
Subject: Off to Universal Studios!

Good morning, honey! It’s a beautiful day here in sunny Los Angeles, and Daddy and I are off to the Universal Studios tour. I hear they take you on the street from
Desperate Housewives
. I just love that show. All the housewives are so cute. Especially Felicity Parker Longoria!

Oops. Daddy’s yelling for me to hurry. Must dash.

Lots of love from,

Mom

To: Jaineausten
From: Shoptillyoudrop
Subject: Desperate Housewife

We’re back from Universal. What a fiasco! I never got to see any of the desperate housewives. Or street they live on.

Would you believe Daddy tried to smoke his pipe on the tram?? The tour guide, a lovely young girl named Kimberly, told him as nice as you please that there was no smoking allowed. Which he should have realized since there was a big No Smoking sign at the front of the tram. But did Daddy cooperate? Of course not. He kept saying that the No Smoking sign didn’t apply to pipes, especially one that was once owned by Basil Rathbone.

Kimberly tried to reason with him, but would he listen? Nooo! So before you could say,
Elementary, my dear Watson
, we were kicked off the tram! Right in front of the
Jaws
exhibit. Honestly, I felt like tossing your dad to the shark.

All the passengers sat there and gawked as two guards hauled us off in a security cart. Some Japanese people even took our picture! I think they thought we were part of the show. The guards dropped us off at the main entrance and warned us to never come back to Universal Studios or any of its affiliates for as long as we live.