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One
Aubrey Dean was a pants thief and she had no regrets.
Now, she wasn't taking just anyone's pants or using the five finger discount in a store. No, she was digging through a suitcase in the hallway of a cruise ship. And it wasn't some stranger's suitcase. The unassuming black suitcase without a snag or a scratch or a speck of dirt on it belonged to one of Aubrey's besties from college.
Grace—said suitcase's corporate-down-to-her-sensible-shoes owner—was smart, amazing, and in desperate need of letting her thighs air out.
When Grace let slip to Aubrey, Kendall, Benjamin, and Liv as they were boarding that she hadn't packed any shorts because of her not-fit-for-public thighs, Aubrey knew exactly what needed to happen. One quick communication spree via knowing looks between friends later and the rest of her old college crew were buying Grace another cocktail while Aubrey went sprinting toward Grace's room. Luckily, she hadn't gotten down to her room yet and her suitcases were still in the hall right outside her door where the porters had placed them.
Really, Aubrey was doing the Lord's work here and freeing Grace's thighs, which had remained covered for pretty much her entire life after her mom had told her they were not the kind of thighs that should ever be seen in public. Yeah, Grace's mom was a judgy bitch. Grace had great thighs—and even if she didn't it didn't matter, no one should spend a seven-day cruise to the Bahamas sweating it out because her thighs were covered the entire time. An intervention was necessary.
Which is exactly why she was giving Grace a friendly little nudge in the be-yourself-and-tell-whoever-doesn't-like-it-to-fuck-off direction. Stealing every pair of pants Grace had brought with her for the cruise was the perfect solution. Okay, maybe not perfect but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Aubrey swiped a pair of pants from the open suitcase and extended her arm up in the air. "Free Grace's sexy thighs!"
She was The Thigh Avenger and it felt good.
For the first time in a year, Aubrey was free from the stifling confines of small town life where everyone knew everyone and everything about each other. Even if she was popping motion sickness pills like candy and chasing them down with overpriced tropical drinks, she was going to enjoy every single second of this cruise with her besties from college.
Kendall, Grace, Benjamin, and Liv were the people who knew her as Aubrey Dean: Wild Woman. In small town Salvation, she was deceased Ashley's poor daughter and Marie's troublesome granddaughter.
Her friends expected to see her in crop tops and shorts, leading the party. Back home everyone in town knew to find her behind the counter at the family bakery covered in flour after another failed attempt at making anything edible.
Here, on board, she could be fun, flirty, and fabulous. In her one-stop-light town, she would always be a never-reached-her-potential disappointment.
Damn, she missed being the woman her friends knew. Small town living had sucked all of it out of her, though—especially when she was reminded almost daily of the Grand Canyon-sized chasm between how she'd planned for her life to turn out and how it actually had. If it hadn't been for her countdown to this cruise and her anonymous Insta account documenting the many, many beautiful photos of Carter Hayes (AKA America's favorite movie superhero The Admiral), she wasn't sure if she'd still be even kinda close to sane.
"Do you need help getting your bag into your room?"
Aubrey started at the man's voice, practically jumping up from her squatting position next to the opened suitcase. "It's not mine."
Way to go, Dean. You're a fucking genius pants thief.
And that was most definitely the wrong thing to say judging by the guy's Boy Scout appearance with his tightly cropped blond hair, square-framed glasses, clean-shaven square jaw, crisp khaki shorts, and totally unwrinkled Hawaiian shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck. Under different circumstances all she would be thinking about was how to dirty him up, but this wasn't the time for that. Later? Oh yeah, she'd be having thoughts, all sorts of naughty thoughts.
"So you're stealing," he paused looking over the small pile next to her, "pants?"
Okay, he hadn't used an old-fashioned police whistle or made a citizen's arrest, she could still get out of this. She pasted on her sweetest, most innocent smile that usually fooled .2 percent of the population. What could she say, she'd always had a trouble streak and it had always shown through.
"Yes, but I have a good reason." She leaned in close, hoping to make him feel as if he was in her circle of trust. "They're my friend's."
His eyes—a startling shade of blue that seemed way too familiar—narrowed. "It's a prank?"
"Sorta, yeah, let's go with that." Really it was a mission from the higher sexy thighs power but explaining that to the Boy Scout would probably break his sweet little brain.
He crossed his arms over his chest, the move making the seams of his shirt sleeves practically cry out in pain they were straining so hard not to rip under the strain of some seriously drool-worthy biceps. "I don't—"
"Why are you walking so slowly, Liv?” Grace's voice carried down the hall. "Are you sure you feel okay?"
Shit.
In a move quick enough to qualify for the running-from-killer-clowns levels of fast, Aubrey bent down and picked up the pile of pants and shoved them into the Boy Scout's arms. "Hold these."
Adrenaline spiking, she squatted back down and zipped the suitcase closed and sat it up again like it had been before.
"Why am I the only one worried about Aubrey taking off?" Grace asked, well-deserved suspicion in her tone. "What are you guys up to?"
"Nothing," Liv said, not giving away even a hint that shenanigans were afoot.
"You know Aubrey, she's always up to something," Benjamin said. "She's probably already spotted her man of the cruise and is putting him under her spell."
Oh yeah, there was only one guy she wanted to do her bidding right now and that was the Boy Scout. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him down the hall. "Come on. We have to hustle."
Okay, there was more bulk to him than she'd expected, going by his I-iron-my-underwear appearance, and she had no doubt she was only getting him down the hall by force of personality and not any actual muscles on her part.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
