The Wrong Gentleman

I lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around me as I plunged back into her. She gasped, clinging to my shoulders as I drove into her, pressing her back against the wall. I slowed at the change in angle so I didn’t go off like a bomb.

“You’re so beautiful, Skylar.” I choked out my confession. It wasn’t what she looked like that made her attractive. It was everything I’d found out about her since I met her. All the effort she’d put into today. The fact that she’d shared such a special place with me. It was everything wrapped up in this perfect, blonde package that was pulling me closer and closer to the edge of something I’d never felt before.

She kissed me on the corner of my mouth and then trailed her tongue along the seam of my lips before kissing the other side. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear as she wrapped her arms around my neck. “Thank you so much.”

Her back arched, and she pushed against me as I crashed into her, our rhythms perfectly matched.

We both wanted the sa

me thing when we were together like this.

Pleasure.

Release.

Each other.

Twenty-Seven

Skylar

I flicked through the pages of the contract that Captain Brookes had presented me with—three more years on the Sapphire. It was good money, the basic salary more than I’d ever made and a guaranteed tip, which never happened. It meant security and certainty, and I should be more excited, yet I was anything but. All I could think about was my conversation with Landon on the beach and whether he’d been correct. Could passion, in the right circumstances, be a good thing?

August crashed out of the bathroom.

“Do you love yachting?” I asked her, glancing around at the cupboard that we called a bedroom. “Is it your passion?”

She fiddled with the towel wrapped tightly around her. “I feel passionately about the money. Does that count?”

I shrugged. I felt the same, but I couldn’t shake what Landon had said to me. I’d gone through my life avoiding passion. I associated passion with anger, rage, and violence—a lack of control. But I’d never heard Landon even raise his voice, and I bet he’d never lost control ever in his life. Yet he was passionate about the army. Even now I could see the devotion to his old career in his eyes when he spoke about it.

“If you could do anything, what would it be?” I asked. “I’m guessing, not a yacht stewardess.”

She pulled out a pair of panties from the drawer. “I have no idea,” she said. “What’s with all the questions?”

“I’ve just been thinking. I chose yachting out of necessity. Not because I wanted to see the world or that I loved cleaning and organizing.”

“You are good at it though.”

I smiled as August did her own version of an Irish jig to try to get her underwear on without dropping her towel. “Should I be doing a job I love instead of yachting? I’m not sure. I’m not the kind of person who needs to feel strongly about their job, am I? I’m not passionate.” I’d spent my entire adult life trying to avoid becoming my father. I’d never thought that maybe the pendulum had swung too far the other way.

“Of course you are,” August said.

I slouched back against the wall. All these years avoiding anything that was remotely passionate, trying to be Miss Slow and Steady, the tortoise and not the hare, but maybe there was something more.

“If you really don’t like yachting,” August said. “Why don’t you save this season’s tips and go and do something you do feel passionate about.”

I laughed. “As if.” I eyed the contract beside me. If I signed, which of course I would, the next three years of my life were planned out. My money was guaranteed. I’d have food and a roof over my head. That was all I wanted, wasn’t it? “What on earth would I do?” I wasn’t the sort of person who got to choose. I’d never been pulled toward something I wanted. I’d been running from what I didn’t.

“I think about it all the time,” August said, abandoning her towel and pulling on the rest of her clothes. “I just can’t come up with an answer. The day I figure it out is the day I hand in my notice.” She flicked back her wet hair and grabbed a comb. “Until then, I can cope with the good money and the beautiful weather.”

“You think you’d give it all up that easily?”

“If I found the thing I was meant to do. Or if I was to get pregnant—or even find a relationship that was worth it.”

Pregnant? I’d never considered that as a possibility. If I had a choice, would I choose children? A family? I didn’t think about any of this stuff. I reacted to things that happened around me. The only planning I did was to put away money. Every dollar that sat in my bank account was an insurance policy against the bad times. A salve. “Is Harvey worth it?”

August shrugged as she applied mascara. “I like him, but he lives in England and I’m between the Med and the Caribbean. It’s not like the stars are aligned.”