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“Sorry,” he whispered as he sent her the same word in a text.
Chapter Eleven
As the curtain lifted in the Pacific Empress’s theater, Michaela gave herself a secret hug. She loved to watch Dylan dance.
The gold curtain rose, and she inhaled along with the rest of the audience, as if she, too, were seeing the set and this theatrical world for the first time. Her breath was shortened even further by thoughts of Dylan. The picture of him coming to her after this performance warmed every part of her body, and she waited, her hands poised to clap for his opening number.
It never came. Michaela watched all of the male dancers—the two from their previous cruise and another she recognized from his contract on the ship several months ago. There was no Dylan.
Sorry. The word on her phone had seemed cryptic at the time she received it, but she’d been too busy with the new passengers to worry much about it. With no Dylan performing in the show running in front of her, Michaela understood the text’s meaning very well. Dylan was sorry for not bothering to tell her in person. Sorry he was leaving early, and he wasn’t coming back.
Michaela watched the rest of the show in a daze, her head a mess of questions. Why hadn’t he called? Where had he gone? Who had he gone with? Why, why, why?
As the curtain descended, she stumbled backstage, head down, avoiding the eyes of everyone.
“I’m sorry, darling,” George offered when she found him. “I thought they’d already called you. Head office got me on my mobile and said your Dylan had done a bunk. I guess they figured they’d already sorted it, so they left me to pass on the news. Thank God Richard was in town! He already knew all the numbers for tonight’s show, so it was a perfect solution.”
“What do you mean, ‘done a bunk’?” Michaela still refused to believe it.
“He rang them, darling. Said something had come up with his family, and he was going to have to break his contract. He’ll lose out on the rest of his pay, but apparently he didn’t seem to care about that.”
“Nice for some,” one of the other dancers said. “Maybe he’s actually a billionaire, like a stockbroker or something. I bet he’s loaded.”
Michaela bit her lip.
“That is not helping,” George hissed, looking warily at Michaela.
“Oh, well,” she said, forcing herself to be cheerful in front of her team. “I’m sure it will work out for the best. Thanks for stepping in at such late notice, Richard. I have every confidence you’ll be able to fill in for Dylan. Oh, and you’ll need to pick up his activities tomorrow. That won’t be a problem, will it? You’ve done it all before. Your roster is in the office, if you could collect it at seven tomorrow.” Without even waiting for an answer, she turned and left before her tears could overflow.
In her stateroom, she couldn’t hold the sobs back any more. Oh, God. How could he have done this to her? It was worse than the end of her relationship with the captain. At least that time, she’d thought no one knew about it and she could lick her wounds in private.
She sniffed. This is not worse than the time with the captain. You knew what you were getting into this time. Three months, remember? It was going to end soon anyway. At least Dylan had the courtesy to be up front about that.
Get it together, Michaela. You still have your career.
Her career. Sydney. She’d followed through on her promise to leave onboard life before she became hollow and hardened by all the hard work, but her time with Dylan had shown her the possibilities of a life where she could have everything—the job and the man. Now he had ended their relationship without giving her a chance to tell him about her new job. They might have been able to…what? He only said he was sometimes in Sydney. He was probably hardly ever there.
Doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better. I won’t be distracted. I’ve always wanted to live in Sydney.
It was true that she had once thought of living in Australia’s entertainment capital, but she’d also thought of living in New York, Paris, Berlin… She’d wanted the world at her feet.
Michaela straightened. It still was. At least with a job in head office, she had a chance to move up an actual corporate ladder. She might even be able to move sideways into an entirely different industry with the managerial skills she would learn. “This is just the beginning of a whole new life,” she told herself. “A new job, better pay, a real move upward and onward. I’m not going to think about Dylan anymore.”
By the time she’d finished her pep talk, she was calm, it was late, and she managed to fall asleep without Dylan Johns on her mind.
…
Surprisingly, the last cruises progressed quickly. In every second Michaela could spare, she went up to the top deck to watch out over the passing ocean, delighting in its immense blueness. Nothing could replicate the feeling of being alone in the middle of all that water. The weight of the sea, fathoms deep below, seemed to connect with her own watery body on a much deeper level than it had before.
“We’re so small,” she whispered to the wide blue ocean, and she fancied it whispered back with promises of hidden beauty and emerald treasure. “Thank you,” she said, throwing her thoughts out as far as she could make them travel.
As they powered into port, she stood on deck at each tropical location and tried to absorb the view from the towering height of the ship. The forest trees of Vanuatu she let settle on her skin, but she brushed off any memory of them reflected in Dylan’s eyes. Tropical islands, golden beaches, aqua water—she let these worlds inside to provide strength and food and focus for her new life. This was what she had given to thousands of people—these views, these memories, and hundreds of hours of fun activity. Now she was moving on to provide entertainment for even more people and to book acts and coordinate the entire entertainment program of a fleet of ships, not just this one. It was a good move, a real step up, and if Dylan had decided to stick around—if he’d told her he was planning to stay on the Pacific Empress beyond his three months, as she’d fantasized he would in her weaker moments, rather than run off before his contract was even up—she might have turned it down. He’d done her a favor by disappearing. She held on to that thought as if it were a warm coat on a cold day. It helped keep the tears at bay.
I’ll be fine. I always have been before.
Her imminent departure meant she had to bring her deputy up to speed to take over her position, and this made her busier than ever before. She’d been worried about how he’d take her leaving, how the rest of the crew would take it, but rather than being upset and disappointed, everyone seemed excited for her, and her deputy made no secret of the fact that it meant a significant promotion for him—one he’d been coveting for some time.
