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A slow grin spread across his face as she mentally slapped a hand over her mouth. Nicknames implied camaraderie. Nicknames implied fun. And there was no way she’d be foolish enough to ever contemplate having fun with him.
“Figure of speech.” She pleated her napkin, folding it over and over with origami-like precision until he reached over and stilled her hand, setting her pulse rocketing as she tried not to flinch from his touch.
“What if I said I like you?”
Taking a great gulp of air to ease her constricted lungs, she frowned. “You’re still trying to wind me up and you’re good, I’ll give you that.”
She extracted her hand on the pretext of picking up her wine glass, trying to come up with a way to end this conversation before she blurted exactly how wound up she was by his teasing. The nape of her neck prickled like a colony of ants had taken up residence under her skin and her blood flowed thick and sluggish, heating her from the inside out. Logically, it was merely a physiological response, a simple chemical reaction to the first guy to enter her personal space in a long time.
But logic wouldn’t untie her tongue or stop the rising blush making her feel more gauche and awkward than ever in a social situation like this.
Smiling, he picked up his wine glass and raised it in her direction. “You do intrigue me. And I’m not trying to wind you up. Well, not much.” His smile widened. “For some inexplicable reason, I’ve taken an instant liking to you despite your somewhat prickly exterior, and I’ve got two weeks to prove it to you.”
Prickly? The cheeky son of a—
He chuckled and she knew he was winding her up again, trying to gain a reaction.
She bit her tongue, mulling over what he’d said. He’d taken an instant liking to her, huh? As if. If she believed that she’d believe the ship would sail into the horizon and drop off the end of a square earth.
He leaned forward to murmur in her ear. “I can promise it will be two very interesting weeks.”
She stiffened, unable to think when he was this close. What was the best response? Ignore him? Berate him? Wait the requisite ten minutes it would take to think up a scathing comeback and put him firmly back in his place?
“What? Nothing to say? Surprising, from a woman with such strong opinions about me.”
Sitting back, he fixed her with a smug smile, a smile that said he knew how flustered he made her and how she was struggling to come up with a suitable response.
She should’ve ignored him, pleaded a headache, and left the table. She would’ve done it usually, slinking away from an uncomfortable situation then rueing her shyness. But his self-satisfied smile was too much, goading her to matching wits with him. He assumed she couldn’t come up with a quick answer? She’d show him.
So rather than pushing back her chair and making a run for it, blood surged to her cheeks and her head snapped up as she fixed him with a scathing glare.
“Go ahead then, sailor boy. Prove it.”
ChapterTwo
Lana’s eyelids creaked open at the crack of dawn the next morning. A converted gym junkie, she usually bounced out of bed early and hit the gym at six when the fitness fanatics liked to sweat through their first aerobics class of the day.
She’d never graced a gym let alone tried an aerobics class until eighteen months ago, all part of Operation Obliterate: obliterate her memories of Jax, obliterate the embarrassment of how he’d used her, obliterate the fact her first love had seen her as nothing more than a fling.
Ironically, not only had she become hooked on exercise, she’d become a qualified aerobics instructor for the fun of it. Madness, probably, but for the hour she jumped around every morning she was just like the rest of the sweaty women around her, when no makeup and casual clothes weren’t a big deal.
After a quick shower, she donned her favourite Capri pants in urgent need of replacing considering the frayed cuffs, and a plain white T-shirt—she had a ton of the things as they went with everything—and slipped her feet into a pair of well-worn sling-backs.
Beth had shuddered when she’d seen Lana’s casual outfits but she’d always been a comfort-over-style girl. Besides, she didn’t adhere to the old ‘dress to impress’ motto. She used her brain to get people to notice her; discounting last night when her intellect had gone AWOL.
Prove it, she’d dared Zac, when he’d promised they’d have an interesting two weeks together. All very brave in the heat of the moment when she’d fired off a retort without rationalizing, but now, in the clear light of a perfect summer’s day, her resolve wavered.
It was one thing to aim to build confidence by trying new things completely out of character, but challenging a pro like Zac to flirt with her could only end in disaster.
He’d pushed her, taunted her, until she’d snapped. He couldn’t have known she’d react that way, because she still couldn’t comprehend she’d done it herself. And while she now regretted her outburst, a small part of her was proud of her unusual flash of bravado.
Interestingly, the old, sensible, conservative Lana would’ve ducked her head, pushed her ancient glasses up her nose, and ignored him. She’d done it with co-workers at the museum before: scuffed her well-worn sneakers under the table, tugged on the hem of her favorite shapeless sweatshirt, and made a quick escape.
She’d always taken the safe route, always done the right thing, always focused on her career and nothing else. She was the diligent employee, the dependable colleague, the model girlfriend, the reliable cousin. And where had it got her?
She’d been dumped, then overlooked for a brilliant opportunity at work, and had come on this cruise for one reason and one reason only: to gain confidence socially and ensure she was never passed over at work again. If she couldn’t rely on her job, the one thing in this world she knew she was good at, what hope did she have?
Maybe standing up to brash sailors and proving she wasn’t a pushover fell into the category of confidence-building?
