"Chad," Aubrey said, her nose wrinkling with disgust.
Grace made a gagging noise. "That guy was the worst."
"He was convinced that Aubrey wanted to date him but she just didn't realize it yet," Benjamin said.
"Meanwhile our girl was already balancing at least three guys at a time," Kendall filled in. "There was no way she'd have time for a loser like Chad."
Now that he could picture. Aubrey definitely had the up-for-anything vibe. "No settling down for you?"
She shrugged. "Super serious relationships really aren't my thing."
"What is?" The question slipped out, violating his usual rule not to dig into people's private lives. With his own so completely under a paparazzi microscope, he'd learned to give others more space than the public allotted him.
If she was taken aback by the question, Aubrey didn't show it. She just tucked a few strands of her honey blonde hair behind an ear, revealing a line of piercings that went all the way up her earlobe.
"Sleeping in, chocolate covered cherries, and driving by pastures and saying ‘look, horses’ even if I'm by myself." She raised an eyebrow in challenge. "How about you?"
Fuck. He shouldn't respond to that tossed down gauntlet. But sitting this close to her in this half circle booth table, he couldn't help it. Sometimes when he was reading a script, he could tell by the end of the first scene if there was something special about it—a gut feeling that he couldn't explain or name. That feeling was buzzing through him as he sat in the middle of the crowded dining room and under the watchful gaze of Aubrey's friends. Fuck. If he didn't watch it, he'd forget the real point of being on this cruise—the one that had to do with the next stage of his career and not the next pair of legs he was getting between.
Still, instead of shutting it all down and deflecting back to her wild college days, he answered with the truth. "Watching the sunrise, fresh baked whole grain bread, and riding horses."
Across the table, Liv cleared her throat. "If only you two weren't eye-fucking each other over mini croissants and coffee we'd all be convinced you two aren't attracted to each other at all."
Startled, he flinched back, putting some space between him and Aubrey. Shit. How had they gotten that close together that his thigh was plastered against hers? That wasn't good. He had to keep his wits about him if he was going to make it through this cruise with his real identity under wraps.
Aubrey snorted and started fidgeting with the corner of her napkin. "He's friends with my brother and I'm not looking."
"So why are you on a singles cruise?" And why do you keep asking questions, Hayes?
She lifted her coffee mug and toasted the other people at their table. "To hang out with four of my favorite people in the world who I rarely get to see anymore." She turned back to him, her gaze going a little hazy when the move brought their legs back into contact. "Why are you here?"
"Get a feel for what life is like away from the soybean fields and Buckeyes." That was the line he'd practiced repeatedly when he'd come up with this plan.
"So you're not looking for happily ever after?"
He shrugged. "My career is the only thing I'm concerned about having a happy ending."
And if he didn't stay at the top of his game, he wouldn't have one much longer. No place loved to spit out talent like Hollywood where there was always someone new waiting to take the lead. That's why this transition mattered so much. It was difference between a short stint as a superhero or a lifetime career. There was no in between.
"The workaholic and the rule breaker," Benjamin said before turning to face Kendall, Liv, and Grace. "Are we laying down odds yet for this?"
"That's a sucker bet," Liv said. "There's no way our girl has changed into the settled down, up early, in bed by ten life of domesticity."
"Well, I hate to suck all the joy out of y'all giving me shit," Aubrey said with a good-natured chuckle. "But Carter here has agreed to be my platonic plus one during the cruise." She snuggled in against him. "So I'll be nothing but good. Y'all will be the bad ones this time."
Liv lifted an eyebrow. "Now that really will be a first."
"Come on, ladies," Benjamin said, standing up. "We have a group massage scheduled followed by poolside piña coladas."
At the mention of massages and pools (translation: wearing only a towel or bikini), Carter's brain immediately took a sharp left turn to replay his Aubrey's naked fantasy from last night and getting up from the booth so she could slide out and join her friends became a little more fraught. Shit. Maybe he had been paying too much attention to work lately and not enough play. Having sex with someone under a false identity, though, wasn’t something he was gonna do.
Of course, not everyone on board was in the dark about who he really was. He watched Aubrey as she strutted out of the dining room, his mind already spinning the possibilities that he most definitely shouldn’t follow up on.
Five
There was nothing like giggles with her friends while drinking piña coladas by the pool to sand off the edges of the lingering reality of Aubrey's day-to-day life. Muscles loose, brain at ease, she walked out onto the balcony of her room to take in the breeze and the great wide swath of blue ocean that seemed to go on forever. A woman could get used to this life.
She sat down in the cushioned chair, extended her legs, and rested her feet on the railing. With opaque barriers that blocked off her balcony from the ones on either side of her, it was like having the ocean all to herself. Too high up to feel any splash from the water, it was still pretty indulgent in a way that getting up at three in the morning to make the donuts wasn't.