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She snorted. “I was lucky. I went to St. Catherine’s, remember? All girls, and no female alphas, thank goodness. Dad made sure the one male alpha teacher was reassigned so I could finish my last two years.” She smiled wistfully. “And then he forced Harvard to allow me to do remote learning.”
“And you used your degree. You graduated, then helped Dad with marketing campaigns for our business.”
“From home,” she qualified. “I wasn’t allowed to go to any meetings, remember? Omegas in a meeting room, influencing all those poor, weak alphas and betas with my magical pheromones?” When I frowned, she rolled her eyes. “It’s literally illegal for an omega to appear on the witness stand, G. Apparently, we can sway juries with our scent.”
I ground my teeth, wondering why I hadn’t cared about this before now. Before Soleil. “But even before that, before you met Simon, you helped Mom’s friend with her flower shop.”
“That was a stroke of luck,” she said. “Working in a florist—if you can get permission from a parent or guardian to do so—is one of the few jobs omegas can do without endangering themselves.” She tapped her chin. “Though I would imagine one could be a perfume seller or something like that. In a place where there are constant, competing scents—”
I interrupted, “But when we were young, you always said you dreamed of running the company with Dad. Fuck, you made better grades in college than I did. If you weren't an omega, you’d be running it all, wouldn’t you?”
Her tone was half humor, half condescension when she finally answered, “Probably not. Just being a woman makes it twice as hard to get recognition and the paycheck to go along with it. Dad is not the worst, but he’s still a chauvinist at heart. Being an omega? Only made that dream impossible. Plenty of state laws declare us permanent minors until we marry. Even after that, the general stereotypes make it so we… Well, I didn’t end up running Duchess Cruises for a lot of reasons. I don’t regret it, though. If I hadn’t been working in that flower shop, I wouldn’t have met Simon. Or had Sylvia.” We drank in silence.
“She really likes that betasitter you hired,” Lore said eventually, as we watched the bartender polishing the glasses and hanging them. The ship was rocking enough to make them swing like a strange chandelier.
“Yes,” I replied, as she slid off her bar stool. “Soleil is special.”
“Just… keep her away from Alphonse,” she murmured as she left. But for some reason, her tone wasn’t threatening.
It was concerned.
* * *
The next morning, it was pouring rain, the ship pitching enough that I had to hold a handrail on my way out of my room. My steward greeted me outside my private conference room, but instead of my usual routine of drinking coffee while I caught up on the overnight trading markets, I headed for the dining room.
It was mayhem. Steel drum music was playing from the speakers at a ridiculous volume, but even louder were the sounds of laughter and shouting.
The smaller tables along the walls had been left empty, but all the seats at the larger tables were filled, and the surfaces piled high with various breakfast foods.
One table featured an enormous stack of steaming Belgian waffles and three separate pitchers of maple syrup, surrounded by bowls of every topping imaginable, from chocolate chips to fresh berries to whipped cream. The occupants of that table were hooting and cheering as a young boy used toothpicks to create some sort of leaning tower of waffles on a platter.
The other tables were every bit as wild. One had omelets being made into abstract art as the diners used real paintbrushes to cover the egg canvases with what looked like liquified vegetable purees. For some reason, the people sitting there were speaking in terrible French accents, pretending to be omelet art critics, it sounded like.
Another table had towers of pancakes, all the individual plates decorated with various sizes and shapes of snowpeople. Sylvia stood on a chair, holding a sifter of powdered sugar that she was shaking over the entire table, while shouting, “It’s snowing!” Her black clothing was completely covered with bright sugar, and her face held the widest smile I’d seen since before her father died.“Uncle G!” she called out. “Come sit with me!”
The waiters in the room all froze like frightened deer. Every eye turned to me, and the noise dropped off, except the music.
At that exact moment, the omega who I knew was responsible for this debacle backed out of the kitchen, shaking her ass.An ass that was almost completely visible, since the rainbow-patterned shorts she wore had obviously been created for a toddler, not a grown woman with curves.When she turned around, singing off-tune, “Every little bitty thing… is gonna be okeydoke now,” I got a glimpse of the front of her. Which was worse than the back. Tighter, if at all possible.
“Grumpy!” she shouted, a smile covering her face. Like a sound effect from a movie, the music went silent. “Sorry, I meant Mr. Grantham,” she said, her face already turning red. She held a platter of sausages that had been stuck together with toothpicks to look like people. “What are you doing here?”
“I was under the impression this was my yacht,” I drawled, reading the slogan on her midriff-baring white t-shirt, which readKnot Interestedin bold black letters with a winking happy face in place of the letter O. “But it can’t be mine. This scene resembles one of our competitors’ tacky cruise lines.”
“You really are grumpy in the mornings, aren’t you?” she commented with a fake pout. Her pink lower lip jutting out made me want to bite it. “Coffee for Mr. Grantham?” she called out toward the kitchen, then held up the tray. “Have a sausage, sir.”
“Do I look like I need a sausage?” I demanded. She stifled a giggle, her eyes dropping below my waist. “I meant…” What the hell had I meant? “No, thank you.” I shifted, crossing my hands over the front of my trousers.
She danced right up to my side and whispered in my ear, her breath making every hair on my arms stand tall, “How silly of me. It looks like you already have a good-sized sausage there, Grumpy. How about taking a seat?”
“Brat,” I snarled, and slid into the closest seat, since her coconut scent was making the situation harder and there were children all around. She winked and carried the sausage tray over to the other tables, chatting with everyone as she went.
I took it all in silently. I knew most of the eighty guests on board. I’d socialized with them at events all over the world, but I’d never seen any of them like this. Normally, the adults ordered coffee in their cabins. But this wild feast was a collection of children, au pairs, parents, and… I almost choked. Some of the guests who didn’t even have children were here.
“Croissants!” a tall, model-thin au pair called out from the kitchen as she carried out a tray.
“Croissants!” all the children echoed for some reason, in exaggerated French accents.
Soleil ran over to the woman, pulled one croissant off the platter with a pair of tongs, and raced back to my table so fast I couldn’t believe she didn’t trip. Especially wearing two different shoes. Why the hell did she have on one gold sandal and one silver one? Was this a trend with young people? To look like they got dressed in the dark?
