I bit at her neck and she moved toward me, asking for more. “I’m not sure romance is what you want,” I growled.
She tucked her hand to the back of my neck where it fit so perfectly and stroked her thumb along my jaw. This. I could stay like this forever. It wasn’t fucking. It wasn’t talking. It was intimacy and something I wasn’t sure I’d ever had before.
“I don’t have any answers. You and me beyond the Athena seems impossible. My life is split between three places—Sacramento, the Med and the Caribbean. You’re in London. I have my family to provide for and you have a business to run.” She squeezed her eyes shut and I pressed my mouth to her forehead. “I don’t see how it can work.”
“We’ll make it work,” I said. “I can fly down to the Med between charters if I have to.”
She sighed. “You can’t do that. And what happens when I’m three thousand miles away?”
“I can do that. We’ll figure it out.”
“You seem so sure, but I just don’t see a way,” she said, looking at me as though she wanted a solution right then and there.
“Maybe I’ll buy an insurer based in Florida, so I can work out of the States. Perhaps you’ll get a job in London. We’ll make it work.”
“I don’t know.” She sighed.
Surely she couldn’t doubt how I felt? I’d laid myself bare to her more than I’d ever done in my life. “You don’t realize how special you are to me. I’ll find a way,” I whispered. “I promise. Trust me.” I didn’t want to agree with her, but our situation wasn’t an easy fix. I could give her the money she needed to care for her family or offer to employ her at Wolf Enterprises, but I knew her pride wouldn’t let her take either of those options. And short of becoming a deckhand, how was I supposed to spend time with her if she continued working on yachts? Would I have to accept I only saw her for days here and there during the season? I couldn’t imagine that would work in the long term. Along with closing the Phoenix deal and finding out who the leak was, I now had to figure out how I made sure I didn’t lose Avery. And the clock was ticking. I didn’t have long left.
Twenty-Nine
Hayden
I was so close to the finish line with Phoenix, I could almost taste it. At the last minute they’d asked for an increase in price. I couldn’t get hold of the CEO and no one could explain why the change at the eleventh hour. I had a gun to my head—pay more or have wasted the last two months on an aborted deal. I couldn’t agree to the increase without my investors being on board and they were determined to torture me by going through some of the financials with a fine-toothed comb. When I’d arrived on the Athena, buying Phoenix had seemed like an almost-impossible task, and now I was within touching distance. It was torture. All I could do was wait and while I did, hopefully I could find out who was the leak at Wolf Enterprises. When Phoenix closed I couldn’t continue to do all my business from a superyacht. I dialed Landon’s number.
“Looks like Cannon are spending a lot of time and effort on you,” Landon said before I’d even said hello. “They’ve got to one of the crew members.”
“On the Athena?” My pulse began to throb in my neck.
“As opposed to which other crew members?”
“But nothing’s leaked. I’m just waiting for my investors. We’re nearly done.” Shit. I couldn’t lose things this late on, could I? Was this the reason Phoenix had asked for money? Had they had a better offer from Cannon?
Mentally I scanned through which crew member it could be. The only one I’d anything to do with other than Avery was Skylar. Was it possible someone was sneaking about among my things when they thought I was sleeping or on the main deck?
“Do you have the name of the crew member you think is compromised?” I asked.
Taps on keyboards echoed down the phone. “Avery Walker. She’s the chief stewardess, right?”
I tried to swallow but my throat constricted and I coughed. “No, it won’t be Avery. You’ve got it confused. Do you have a photo? Is it a woman? Does she have white-blonde hair?”
“No, brown hair. It’s in a ponytail in one shot. Down in another.”
My heart stammered in my chest, as if it were knocking at my ribcage, trying to get out. “No, there must have been a mistake.”
“Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Yeah, but Avery wouldn’t betray me. And like I said, Cannon haven’t managed to disrupt this and steal this company from under me.” Not yet anyway.