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That's when she heard the knock. It wasn't coming from the other side of her door but farther inside the small cabin. There was a door connecting her room to the one next door. Bingo. The Boy Scout was her new favorite person for realizing it was there. She unlocked the door from her side and yanked it open.
"You. Are. Brilliant," she said. "I can't believe I forgot to get the pants."
He grinned, showing off a dimple in his right cheek deep enough for someone to get lost in. "No worries."
While she was still getting all lusty about a dimple, Carter pulled the hem of his shirt that had been tucked into the waistband of his shorts up. The move revealed a slice of abs as hard as his biceps and a very unusual wine-colored birthmark shaped like an A.
Aubrey's sorta-undercover-scoping-out gaze jerked to a stop on that birthmark. Suddenly her face was ten-thousand degrees and her palms were sweaty. She knew that A—not like personally or anything but she'd spent plenty staring at it on the screen in a dark theater because The Admiral movies were always about the fan service when it came to showcasing America's favorite superhero without his shirt on. And she knew from the many pics she'd posted on her Insta that the A birthmark wasn't movie magic, Carter Hayes had been born with it.
OH! MY! GOD!
He—Carter motherfucking Hayes—was still talking but she couldn't hear any of it over the roar of oh-my-fucking-God in her ears. How had she missed it? Sure, he'd bleached his usual dark hair (cutting it short enough that he could be mistaken for a Marine recruit), had on a dorky outfit, and was wearing a pair of glasses that her cousin in the military had called birth control glasses but still, she was a real fan. If any of her half a million Insta followers knew that she'd been fooled by this disguise she would never hear the end of it.
"Aubrey, are you okay?" He cocked his head to the side and shot her a questioning look. "You kinda glazed over a little bit there."
"I'm fine." A slightly hysterical giggle started working its way up from her belly. "More than fine." She clamped her jaw shut in hopes of not letting the unhinged laughter out and said through her teeth, "Never been better."
She took the stack of pants he was holding out to her.
"So, I guess I'll be seeing you around?" he asked.
Clutching the pants to her chest, she nodded like a bobblehead glued to the dashboard of a car doing a hundred down a pothole-filled road. "Most definitely."
Okay, her ability to talk while freaking out was nowhere near the level she'd hoped it would be if this day ever happened, but who in their right mind would ever think they'd run into one of the biggest movie stars on the planet on a singles cruise. He wasn't even in the fancy suites. He didn't have a handler or people to, like, go fetch his coffee or anything. Maybe she was wrong. It wasn’t like she'd gotten a great look at the birthmark. Maybe it was a common birthmark. Maybe there was a whole Facebook group dedicated to people who had birthmarks shaped like letters. Or maybe she was standing in front of Carter Hayes and her little brain had just broken in half. Yep. That definitely seemed like the most likely option.
"Don't worry, I won't use this door again." He held up his hands palms forward in the universal sign of I'm-not-a-serial-killer-intent-on-wearing-you-like-a-skin-suit. "I just noticed your friends were still out in the hall. Sorry for forgetting to give you the pants that you stole."
She nodded because her mouth had forgotten how to make word-sounding noises.
"Well, bye." Face screwed up in a look of half concern and half WTF, Carter reached past her, grabbed the doorknob, and closed it between them.
A second later the click of the deadbolt being engaged on his side sounded.
That had gone about as well as eating one of the rock-hard bear claws she'd made back when she'd moved home to Salvation after her gran had first gotten sick. Her donuts were basically lethal weapons. Sorta like The Admiral's shield and trident. OMG. The Admiral!
Adrenaline making her hands shaky, she yanked her phone out of her crossbody purse and prayed for the little bars showing she still had signal.
"Yes!"
A few minutes later she had the perfect image—a GIF from Carter's latest movie showing him as The Admiral in disguise, strutting near the water, bonus points as it showed his amazing ass—and caption posted up on her Insta account.
Spotted on board? Still awaiting confirmation, but all signs point to The Admiral being in disguise on a singles cruise making its way down to the Bahamas. Tell me, what would you do if you spotted the very sexy Carter Hayes on your cruise? Thirsty me wants to know!
She closed the app and flopped down spread eagle on the bed, a little bit of guilt scratching at her conscious. Her anonymous super fan Insta had been her lifeline since she'd moved back to Salvation. Posting pics of The Admiral, chatting with fellow fans, and being generally a total dork about her totally-never-gonna-meet-him-so-it-doesn't-matter crush had been the one fun and silly thing she still did that reminded her of the fun person she used to be. Part stress relief, part hobby, it was a harmless escape from the three in the morning alarm waking her up in time to get the bakery open, the fear that the cough her gran hadn't been able to kick was something more serious the older woman refused to go to the doctor about, and the realization that everyone who'd told her that getting her degree in feminist history so she could write amazing non-fiction books sharing the real stories of women who'd done extraordinary things was a pipe dream was probably right. It was just for fun. It couldn't hurt anyone—especially not someone like Carter Hayes.
Still…she couldn't ignore that guilty-feeling. She opened up Insta on her phone to delete the post, but all of the signal bars were gone.
"Fucking A." Her groan was bone-deep and of the why-do-you-always-do-this variety.
Now she was going to have to go pay the GDP of a small country to get an hour of cruise ship internet so she could delete this post. And this is what she got for acting on impulse. Again. When would she ever learn to think before she acted and actually listen to her head and not just her gut?
"Way to be a total creeper, Carter. What woman wouldn't freak out when a strange man knocked on the door connecting their rooms—all while they were trapped on a cruise ship together for the next seven days?" He rubbed his palm over the spiked-fuzz of his short hair that he still wasn't used to. "And please for the love of good beer and better women, do not start answering yourself."
Yeah, because he wasn't already treading that total weirdo line as it was. If she heard him mumbling to himself—and answering—that would be the thing to really drive Aubrey into avoiding him.
"Whatever you say, buddy."
Carter had spent almost every day since he started noticing women around the most beautiful of them in the world. His parents were Hollywood royalty and that meant that everyone who was anyone, or who wanted to be, ended up at their champagne-drenched and cocaine-powered parties. Sometimes those folks took an extra interest in him. In the beginning, he'd thought it was genuine. He'd been an idiot. Of course, it wasn't. That wasn't the Hollywood way where every relationship was transactional and the best ones were those that either vaulted the other person from the B to the A list. That culture was so ingrained that everyone just assumed that the success he'd had on the screen was because of his parents. Now, Carter would be the first to admit that he had opportunities that others hadn't because of his parents, but no one placed the mantle of a billion-dollar movie franchise on a person because of who their parents are. Producers loved their money way too much for that.
