As Tory read on, she discovered there were more benefits to her wearing the pendant than just being the recipient of good luck in love. Apparently crew members would single her out for special treats and discounts when they noticed her with the pendant, giving her the experience of being a VIP on board. And, of course, she had to hand the pendant back at the end of the cruise in order for the next passenger to play the game all over again.
Tory studied the pendant for a few minutes. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in love, let alone true love. She’d been on the planet twenty-nine years and had never really been in love with anyone. Not enough that she had imagined a shared future, babies, the whole shooting match. Maybe she was just going to be one of those women who poured her passion into her work.
It was a peculiarly depressing thought.
Feeling very self-conscious and stupid, she put the necklace on. The pendant slid down her chest to rest heavily at the very top of her cleavage. Switching the light off, Tory rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes.
Probably she would hand the pendant back to Patti first thing tomorrow.
But maybe she wouldn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
“OKAY, PEOPLE, THAT’S enough,” Janice called. “We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.”
Like the other dancers around her, Tracy let her shoulders drop and her stomach pop out. Sweat made her leotard stick to her back and chest, and her knee ached from all the high kicks Janice had made them do, over and over. Even though they all knew the routine backward, forward, inside out, their tyrannical leader and choreographer was a stickler for rehearsal and she ensured that they all went over the evening’s routines each day before releasing them for their other onboard duties.
“You’re not on vacation,” Janice said at least once a day to some member or other of the entertainment crew.
Tracy always wanted to respond with a smart-ass quip. They were floating in the middle of the Caribbean on an enormous cruise ship, they lived in crowded crew quarters up to eight berths per cabin and they worked almost constantly. It was highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how optimistic, could kid themselves that this was anything like a vacation. But she never said a word, smart or otherwise. She needed this job. More than ever, she needed this job.
She sighed heavily as she remembered the phone call she’d had from Salvatore last night. He’d let her talk to their son Franco for just a few minutes before getting back on the line.
“He’s fine,” he’d said in his flat, cold voice. His business voice. They were just business to him now, her and Franco. “Do your job. Find the pendant—and get it right this time. Then this’ll all be over and you’ll never see me again.”
Amen to that.
Grabbing a hand towel from her bag, Tracy mopped at her shiny face as she made her way to the elevator and down to the administration level of the Dream, determined to “get it right” this time, as Salvatore had so charmingly put it.
She’d done everything she could to snatch his damned necklace on the cruise before Christmas, but fate or luck or whatever it was that decided these things had been against her.
This time it would be different, she promised herself. This time she would find the pendant and get Sal out of her life once and for all. She was convinced the pendant was the only reason he still had any contact with her and Franco. He’d been absent from their lives for months before he’d suddenly turned up out of nowhere and explained he’d scored an audition for her on Alexandra’s Dream. Straightaway she’d known he wasn’t doing her a favor out of the kindness of his heart; he’d wanted her on the ship very badly for his own reasons. She’d soon learned what they were—one of Sal’s gambling customers, some guy called Giorgio, had run up an enormous debt with Sal’s people and planned to pay it off with a precious antique necklace he’d smuggled on board the ship prior to handing it over to Sal. Great plan, except Giorgio had gotten himself arrested for involvement in the high-level smuggling ring that had been busted on the Dream during its Mediterranean run. Sal had been left holding the debt, and the only chance of satisfying his bosses and securing his own financial future was to grab the pendant off the cruise ship himself. Which was where Tracy was supposed to come in.
Tracy smiled grimly to herself as she remembered Sal’s fury when he’d learned that the pendant had fallen into the hands of the cruise director and the ship’s librarian and promptly been turned into a promotional gimmick for passengers. She’d never heard him swear so much or in so many different languages.
The really great thing was that she was the one stuck with the task of unraveling this mess—or risk losing her boy forever.
It was a depressing thought, and Tracy couldn’t even muster her plastic polite smile for the male passengers she passed who tried to catch her eye, clearly liking the look of her tight leotard and workout leggings. She’d never been falsely modest about her looks. Men liked her, always had. She had long legs, good boobs, long dark hair—and, best of all, she was a dancer, a former Vegas showgirl who could shake it with the best of them. For some men, she was a fantasy brought to life.
But she never encouraged any of them, no matter how built or wealthy-looking. More likely than not, they were married. And even if they weren’t, she wasn’t interested. Being interested was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the administration offices, smiling at the receptionist and wandering idly over to the notice board that covered one wall. To her left was the doorway to Patti Kennedy’s office. It was slightly open, and Tracy stood staring at the notice board, trying to come up with some excuse to talk to Patti. The cruise director would know where the pendant had been hidden this trip, and if it had been found already. Patti had helped come up with the scheme to use the pendant as part of the onboard entertainment, and she took a personal interest in the person who found it. Tracy just had to get her talking about the damned thing and surely she’d let slip who had it. But as Tracy read the same staff memo over and over, her mind remained resolutely blank as she tried to come up with an opening gambit. Closing her eyes, she swore at herself. This was why she’d left school early—she’d never been good under pressure, and her end-of-year exams had always been a disaster. Her mother used to say her brains were in her feet. Maybe she’d been right, after all.
Checking her watch again, she saw that she’d chewed up ten minutes of her lunch break already. To hell with it—she’d just wing it, pretend she’d come down to ask about the weather or something. Patti would think she was a moron, but no one expected ex-showgirls to be rocket scientists after all.
She almost had a heart attack when she whirled around, all ready to barge into Patti’s office, only to find the other woman standing right behind her.
“Oh!” Tracy gasped stupidly, slapping a hand to her chest.
Patti’s eyebrows lifted in bemusement. “Sorry, Tracy, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” Tracy said automatically.
Patti’s eyebrows arched even higher, and Tracy shrugged ruefully.
“I mean, yeah you did, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Were you looking for me?” Patti asked pleasantly.
“Um, yeah, I was just talking with the other girls about the special deal we’ve got going on with the teardrop pendant,” Tracy said, her brain just barely keeping two words ahead of her mouth. “We were thinking that it might be cute to kind of incorporate whoever found it this cruise into the end of our routine. You know, pull them out of the audience and make a fuss of them, tell everyone about the