Three
Avery
Another day, another blue sky, another superyacht. As I reached the main deck of the Athena, carrying a glass of champagne and a glass of orange juice, I glanced across at the Saint Tropez marina in the distance and took a deep breath to calm myself. I was usually well rested for the first charter of the season, and May was usually a beautiful month in the Med, but I still carried the exhaustion of the previous season with me. On top of fatigue, the lack of information that we’d been given about the first eight-week charter meant I was unprepared for this guest and it made me more than nervous.
We arranged ourselves into the welcome line. Captain Moss first, me next to him, Eric the bosun, then Chef Neill and the rest of the crew, excluding the engineers who disappeared back to the engine room rather than meet our guest.
The tinny sound of the tender grew louder from behind us, and from the corner of my eye I caught my stewardess, August, craning her neck to look. “Eyes forward,” I said. I hated riding my crew’s ass. Some of the chief stewardesses I’d worked under enjoyed wielding their power, but that wasn’t me. I just wanted the job done, the guests delighted and the tips huge.
The sound of footsteps headed up the stairs toward us. I plastered on a smile, careful to keep the tray I was holding steady.
As our guest appeared, I drew in a breath. He was young—around thirty, no more than thirty-five—and handsome with dark brown hair and wide shoulders. This guy wasn’t anything like the normal charter guest. But then this was nothing like a normal charter. He was tall—well over six feet. Sharp cheekbones framed his face and led down to a perfectly smooth, square jaw. His eyes were dark and serious. If his nose hadn’t been a little crooked, as if it had been broken at some point in his past, I might have even described him as pretty, but the unevenness tipped him toward handsome. It suggested there was a little rough beneath the oh-so-smooth.
I swallowed. I’d never found a guest attractive before. Not even a little bit. But then again, we never had charter guests who looked like this guy. When I first got into yachting, I’d expected to be surrounded by rich, beautiful people all the time. And while there was plenty of wealth, the attractive guests tended to be women. Although I was pretty flexible about a lot of stuff, I was strictly dickly when it came to my fantasies.
He strode toward Captain Moss and they shook hands. “Good to meet you,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice that seemed to make my whole body vibrate.
“Good to have you on board,” Captain Moss replied.
“I’m Hayden Wolf,” he said, turning to pin me with a stare so intense it was as if he were getting some sort of psychic reading. “Avery, right?”
How did he know my name? Maybe the background check had given him a photograph. And the way he said it—my name shouldn’t sound that different in a British accent, but the way he enunciated every syllable, coupled with the deep timbre, somehow made it sound important. “Yes, sir,” I replied.
He nodded and smiled. My nipples tightened. Fuck. Thank God I was wearing a t-shirt bra.
The first rule in yachting was never cross the line between personal and professional. Some crew found it difficult, especially when the guests were laid back and wanted the staff to join in the fun. Sometimes the lines got blurred, but never for me—it was the easiest way to get fired. I’d never seen a guest as anything other than the person responsible for my tip and the reason why I could send money home to my family.
But Hayden Wolf?
There was something about him that erased the line completely, and all of a sudden I was imagining him naked and sweaty. Shut it down, I told myself.
“May I offer you a glass of champagne or orange juice?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, thank you.”
My heart, which had been skipping in my chest, suddenly sank to the floor.
Please God, tell me he drinks.
A sober charter guest was the worst. I’d take someone who demanded all his sheets flown over from Italy and his whiskey from a distillery in the remote islands of Scotland over a guest who didn’t drink.
“You’ve disabled the Wi-Fi?” Hayden turned to ask Captain Moss.
“As you requested,” Captain Moss confirmed.
The Wi-Fi was disabled? Usually it was the other way around. Guests were always asking for a better connection, failing to understand that when you were afloat, there were things beyond our control—like the freaking ocean.
“Okay, I’m going to need everyone’s mobile devices,” Hayden announced. “Phones, tablets, laptops.”
No one moved and I glanced across at Captain Moss, but he wore his normal impassive expression. Were they being checked for something?