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“So now your hubby is back here looking for you?” Laura asked with a half-shocked, half-intrigued smile, and got up to get the coffeepot. She came back to the table and poured a warmer in Hannah’s mug. Laura’s light pink robe swayed around her legs, and her blonde hair was up in a messy ponytail. It reminded Hannah of when they’d had sleepovers in high school. Woke up early to talk about boys and gossip.
Only now, Hannah didn’t need to gossip about boys—she needed to get rid of one.
Is that why he was in between your legs last night? Because you were so ready to get rid of him?
She cursed her own mind to shut up.
“Ugh, don’t call him my hubby. And yes, he is back here looking for me. Well . . . he found me. So now he’s just trying to convince me to stay married.”
“That’s romantic!” Laura said, her prom-queen optimism coming out.
Hannah scowled. “No, it’s not. I got caught up six months ago, and I didn’t think I’d see him again. So if anything, he’s kind of stalkerish.” Now Hannah was really grasping at straws, and judging by the look on Laura’s face, she wasn’t buying it, either.
“He’s a man coming to see his wife. Because you married him,” Laura said.
“Yeah,” Hannah said, not taking her eyes off her coffee.
“On a cruise ship?”
“Yeah.”
“In the Caribbean.”
Hannah huffed an annoyed breath. “I get that you’re counting facts, but we’re not on Sesame Street. I made a mistake.”
“Do you really think you made a mistake?” Laura asked.
“Of course I did. It was impulsive and dumb and . . .”
“And you’ve never done anything like that. Which means maybe he really is something special.”
Hannah opened her mouth to say, “No fucking way is that possible,” only nicer . . . but no words came. Laura’s words were wiggling around in her brain, and the longer they stayed, the heavier they felt. Her temples pounded the word special over and over until it made her skull ache.
Special.
Grant is special.
What we have is special.
“No,” Hannah said out loud, both to her friend and for her own peace of mind. Literally. “There’s nothing special, and Laura, you’re not helping. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. I just . . . maybe if you tell me how this even started?”
“What do you mean, how? We met, he was hot”—still is—“and I spent two weeks in a sex-induced lust coma cruising the ocean.”
“Well, I’m going to need to hear all the details now!” Laura said, leaning over the table with excitement. “Start from the beginning. How did you meet?”
Hannah let out a loud breath and thought of the first time she’d met Grant Laythem . . .
“This has to be the reverse of what the Titanic going down felt like,” Hannah mumbled to herself. She shoved the strap of her large woven bag up on her shoulder and followed the long line of people getting registered and onto the cruise ship.
It was her first—likely only—vacation.
She’d gotten the ticket from Roberta, an older woman back home who’d been planning to go on this Caribbean cruise as a single-woman getaway, but then she’d started dating, so she gave her ticket to Hannah. All she had to do was cover the flight from Oregon to Florida. Which was where the cruise started and stopped.
There Hannah was.
Single, alone, on a cruise ship.
