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There were tears when she said a final goodbye to Felicity, but they were short-lived. She’d made a real friend, and the two women promised to keep in touch.
The captain provided no such warmth. “Surprised you’re leaving after such a short time onboard. Guess it’s a hard life for a woman, long hours and the like. Probably better suited to a stronger body.”
She took a breath in and dug deep for her remaining reserves of courage. “You realize I’m only leaving because I’ve gotten a promotion?”
“Sure. Head office. I guess some people could call it a promotion.”
Michaela sighed. Was there really any point? The chauvinistic little man—what had she ever seen in him?
Just then, one of the dancing twins walked by, and Michaela saw the captain give her an unabashed up-and-down appraisal. “Think she’s a bit out of your league,” Michaela said. “It’s great that you’ve been able to withstand the rigors of life onboard so well—as a man, of course. But all these years at sea are starting to take their toll.”
Captain Atkinson’s face fell.
A young staffer came up at just that moment, and Michaela walked away, her smile building. After all this time, not only was she well and truly over the captain, but she’d got the last word. She gave herself a little hug. She was actually leaving, and she’d just proved she was ready to take on the world.
But later, alone in the room she’d called home for so long, she wondered again whether she was doing the right thing.
“Yes,” she said with a firm jaw. “Yes, I am, and anyway it’s too late now.” Much too late. The next cruise was planned, the staff contracted, and she’d just burned her bridges with the captain. There was no room for her here anymore.
It’s what you wanted, she reminded herself. And despite her sadness at leaving, a sense of anticipation was starting to build in her stomach.
…
Her journey from Auckland to Sydney was a thrill. Travel on planes was no great novelty in itself, but the view over the ocean from so high up offered a sharp contrast to what she was used to, and the team from head office had made sure she was well looked after.
But once she reached the open-plan office, which stretched over the entire tenth floor of an inner-city Sydney high-rise, she hit the ground running. Michaela was immediately shown to a desk, and Helen, who turned out to be a bright, chirpy woman, went through her duties and responsibilities. “I guess I’m your new boss, so I’ll need you to sign this,” she said, putting a contract in front of Michaela. In a daze, Michaela signed.
By the end of the day, she was thoroughly exhausted. Not only had she had to work her way through piles of bookings forms and hundreds of e-mails, but she was also in some sort of no-man’s-land time zone where it should have been much earlier than it was in Sydney. She couldn’t work out if it was Fiji time, Vanuatu time, or something completely different.
“Hi.” Helen came to sit on the edge of Michaela’s desk. “How’s your day been?”
“Oh, hi,” Michaela replied. ”I think I’m getting there.”
“Sorry to throw you in like this. Now perhaps you understand why we were so desperate for you to accept the job. We had a candidate start a while ago, but he just had no idea about the actual business of the ships. Then we interviewed a bunch of people, but none of them really got it. Everyone here knows about you, and we decided to try and poach you.”
“Everyone knows about me?”
“Heck, yes, the only woman cruise director in the whole fleet? Able to leap stupid captains in a single bound.”
“That’s very flattering, but…”
“Glad you think so. It’s great to have another awesome woman join the team.”
Michaela looked around and for the first time registered that it was almost an entirely woman-staffed operation. Nice.
“Anyways, the last guy leaving means there’s a backlog. I’ve been trying to get to it, but it’s just been impossible with my job as well. I’m sure you’ll pick it up in no time, though.”
Michaela wasn’t so sure. Sitting at the desk all day had made her back ache, and the seasickness feeling wasn’t dissipating.
In her hotel bed that night, Michaela ran through the changes her life had undertaken in these past months. Dylan had swept her off her feet and then just as swiftly disappeared, she’d left the only place she’d known as home for years to come to a strange city, and now she was living in an opulent hotel suite three times the size of her old stateroom. It even had a bathtub.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” she promised aloud. “I’m going to be the best entertainment bookings manager they’ve ever had.”
The sigh that followed shouldn’t have been allowed, but it escaped anyway as her hand brushed over the empty side of her large bed. An emptiness somewhere behind her ribs nagged at her.
You just ticked off a job on your wish list, Michaela Western. You’re happy. You’re grateful. Move on.
But even with her pep talk in her mind, Michaela feel asleep thinking of Dylan and spent the night chasing him through her dreams.
…
Her first week on the job, she charged into her work and was astonished at just how much she could plow through. Needing to be able to change things at the last minute and having to work with incredibly short deadlines onboard really had made her into a perfect candidate for this position. In no time at all, she had learned the systems and gotten rid of the backlog. She also loved her new position more than she’d anticipated.
“Oh my God. You’re amazing,” Helen said.
“I aim to please,” Michaela replied, smiling. “I think I could probably make this process even more efficient if there was some way for the ship’s cruise directors to log in directly to our intranet when they got into port.”
“Don’t let me get in your way,” Helen said. “I’ll set you up a meeting with the IT team tomorrow.”
Michaela sat back in her chair with a smile of satisfaction. She was going to have to be careful—at this rate she’d make herself redundant, or at the very least the position wouldn’t provide enough work to keep her on full-time.
Well, they did hire me to make the position more efficient. I’m sure if I do that, they’ll just want me to work on their other systems to make them better, too.
Keeping busy was important, not just so she could prove herself in her new job but also to keep her mind off the memories that swept into her dreams and tugged at the cords she’d tied around her heart.
