Kissing Kendall

She started at him in Southern. “Bless your heart.”

Two incredible—and sadly separate—showers and about twenty minutes later, and they were walking into the dining room headed straight for the big round booth Liv, Kendall, Benjamin, and Grace seemed to have claimed. It wasn’t until they were tableside getting the full top knot to toes perusal that it hit Aubrey just how obvious it was what had happened between her and C

arter. Both of them still had damp hair, he definitely had a tiny bite mark at the base of his throat, and if anyone looked at the hem of her shorts they’d never miss the beard burn on the inside of her thigh.

Liv took one look and them both and said, “Imagine you two rolling in late together.”

“Our rooms are right next to each other.” The lie came out sounding exactly like what it was.

Benjamin covered his chuckle with the absolute worst impression of a sudden coughing fit ever as they all got up from the table. Liv got up and turned so she faced Aubrey and had her back to Carter then mouthed, “What are you doing?”

Really what was the point of lying. “Him,” she mouthed back before stepping closer and adding, “I’m in way over my head.”

Liv snorted. “Believe you me, you’re not the only one.”

Then she and the others started to walk away from the table.

“Wait, are y’all leaving already?” Aubrey asked, noticing that only the crumbs were left on everyone’s plates and their coffee mugs were all empty.

“We’ve been here long enough for firsts and seconds,” Grace said, shooting them a knowing grin. “Looks like it’s just the two of you.”

And they left. After all that calling and everything else, they took one look at her in her obviously just-been-fucked glory and walked away, leaving her alone with Carter. They really were the best friends ever—that was if she could figure out what to do now because the guilt eating away at her stomach lining for making that Insta post made acting like this was anything close to a normal situation impossible.

As soon as Aubrey’s friends left, everything turned weird and Carter couldn’t figure out why. She barely made eye contact and had left enough space for several of her friends to sit between them if they came back. Something had gone wrong between getting to the dining room and her friends leaving. What? He had no fucking clue.

So as he took another bite of his omelet, he fell back on one of the exercises he’d learned in acting class. Scanning the room, he spotted a woman in a neon T-shirt with what had to be a Bloody Mary winding her way across the dining room.

“See the lady in the lime green shirt?” He nodded his chin toward the woman. “You might think it’s a bit early for a drink, but that’s not an ordinary Bloody Mary. It’s filled with a topical poison and she’s about to spill it on the guy with the pineapple shirt and he won’t realize he’s going to die until it’s too late.”

“What are you tal—“ Aubrey stopped mid bite, her eyes going wide and a then her mouth curved into a huge smile as she focused her attention on the man in the fruit shirt. “I see. But what neon shirt doesn’t realize is that the old lady isn’t pineapple man’s mother, she’s his bodyguard.”

He kept his face turned toward the women in neon but was really watching Aubrey out of his peripheral. “She’s obviously with the badass grannies motorcycle gang.”

Aubrey nodded, her posture relaxing as she got into the game. “They are fearsome.”

“Granny and pineapple man are on the lam.” He moved over on the bench seat of the semi-circular booth until they were hip to hip. “They offed neon shirt’s sugar daddy after a round of underground cockroach racing.”

She snagged a slice of bacon from his plate and used it to point at the woman in the neon shirt as she stood in line at the waffle station behind pineapple man. “So it’s revenge.”

“Nope, a double cross.” He grabbed his bacon back and bit it in half, giving her the remainder. “They were supposed to wait until he’d made neon shirt his sole beneficiary. They jumped the gun. Now they’re all out ten million dollars.”

Aubrey shook her head and let out a tsk-tsk. “Sometimes murder doesn’t pay.”

“That’s definitely the title of the true crime book written about it—Sometimes Murder Doesn’t Pay.”

She ate the bacon. “Which, of course, becomes an international best seller inspiring its own secret cosplay groups of people who reenact that fateful day when pineapple man was poisoned.”

“So the question is...” He pivoted in his seat, dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “What if we somehow entered a time warp and these are not the actual participants but the cosplay version?”

She threw back her head and let out a laugh. “Oh that was a great twist. I’d buy a ticket to that movie.”

Carter sank back against the seat, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth behind her close enough that he wound the end of her soft blonde hair around his fingers. Aubrey leaned into his side, her hand dropping to his thigh not nearly as high on it as he would have preferred but this was the ship’s main dining room and drawing attention for getting a public hand job probably wasn’t the best idea. Of course, being around Aubrey made all sorts of bad ideas sound good. She had that effect on him.

“You got plans for later?” Because he definitely had plans for her and all of them involved getting naked.

She looked up at him with that same ornery twinkle in her eyes she’d had when he’d caught her rooting around Grace’s suitcase for her pants. “Are you up for having your ass handed to you in shuffleboard?”

Little known fact. He brought a foosball table with him to every movie set and held a tournament open to crew and actors alike for a championship. It had come down to him and the cinematographer on the last Admiral location. He’d won after a quadruple overtime. Competitive? Him? Fuck yes. He’d never played shuffleboard a day in his life but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t win.