“Well, that was tacky,” she murmured.
“Tacky?”
“The way she practically drooled on you.”
“Ah,” Nick said, flashing a quick grin at her as he opened his right hand—the hand the brunette had shaken and clung to. A cabin key card rested in the center of his palm and the number P230 was scrawled across the top in ink. “So I’m guessing this makes it even tackier.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jenna snapped, wanting to spin around and shoot a few daggers at the brunette with no class. “I was with you. For all she knew I was your girlfriend.”
His pale blue eyes sparkled and his grin widened enough that the dimple in his left cheek was a deep cleft. “Jealous?”
She tried to pull her hand free of the crook of his arm, but he held her tight. Frowning, she said, “No. Not jealous. Just irritated.”
“By her? Or by me?”
“A little of both.” She tipped her head back to look up at him. “Why didn’t you give the key back to her?”
He looked genuinely surprised at the suggestion. “Why would I embarrass her in front of her friends?”
Jenna snorted indelicately. “I’m guessing it’s next to impossible to embarrass a woman like that.”
“This really bothers you.”
It always had, she thought. When she first went to work for Falcon Cruise Lines, she’d heard all the stories. About how on every cruise there were women lining up to take their place in Nick’s bed. He was a player, no doubt. But for some reason, Jenna had allowed herself to be swept up in the magic of the moment. She’d somehow convinced herself that what they’d had together was different from what he found with countless other women.
Apparently, she’d been wrong about a few things.
“One question,” she said, keeping her voice low enough that no one they passed could possibly overhear.
“Okay.”
“Are you planning on using that key?”
He only looked at her for a long moment or two, then sighing, he stopped a waiter, handed over the key card and whispered something Jenna didn’t quite catch. Then he turned to her. “That answer your question?”
“Depends,” she said. “What did you tell him?”
“To return the card to the brunette with my thanks and my regrets.”
A small puddle of warmth settled in Jenna’s chest and even though she knew it was foolish, she couldn’t quite seem to quash it. “Thank you.”
He dipped his head in a faint mockery of a bow. “I find there’s only one woman I’m interested in talking to at the moment.”
“Nick…”
“Here we are,” he said, interrupting whatever she would have said as he seated her in the navy blue leather booth that was kept reserved for him. “Jenna, let’s have some dinner and get started on that talk you wanted.”
Jenna slid behind the linen-draped table and watched him as he moved around to take a seat beside her. “All right, Nick. First let me ask you something, though.”
“What?”
“All the people you talked to as we came through the restaurant…all the women you flirted with…” Jenna shook her head as she looked at him. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
His features tightened as he looked at her, and in the flickering light of the single candle in the middle of their table, his eyes looked just a little dangerous. “Oh, I’ve changed some,” he told her softly, and the tone of his voice rippled across her skin like someone had spilled a glass of ice water on her. “These days I’m a little more careful who I spend time with. I don’t take a woman’s word for it anymore when she tells me who she is. Now I check her out. Don’t want to run across another liar, after all.”
Jenna flushed. She felt the heat of it stain her skin and she was grateful for the dim lighting in the restaurant. Folding her hands together in her lap, she looked at the snowy expanse of the table linen and said, “Okay, I’m going to say this again. I didn’t set out to lie to you back then, Nick.”
“So it just happened?”
“Well,” she said, lifting her gaze reluctantly to his, “yes.”
“Right.” He nodded, gave her a smirk that came nowhere near being a real smile and added, “Couldn’t figure out a way to tell me that you actually worked for me, so you just let it slide. Let me think you were a passenger.”
Yes, she had. She’d been swept away by the moonlight and the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life. “I never said I was. You assumed I was a passenger.”
“And you said nothing to clear that up.”
True. All true. If she’d simply told the truth, then their week together never would have happened. She never would have known what it was like to be in his arms. Never would have imagined a future of some kind between them. Never would have gotten pregnant. Never would have given birth to the two little boys she couldn’t imagine living without.
Because of that, it was hard to feel guilty about what she’d done.
“Nick, let’s not rehash the past, all right? I said I was sorry at the time. I can’t change anything. And you know, you didn’t exactly act like Prince Charming at the time, either.”
“You’re blaming me?”
“You wouldn’t even talk to me,” she reminded him. “You found out the truth and shut me out and down so fast I was half surprised you didn’t have me thrown overboard to swim home.”
He shifted uncomfortably, worked his jaw as if words were clamoring to get out and he was fighting the impulse to shout them. “What did you expect me to do?”
“All I wanted was to explain myself.”
“There was nothing you could have said.”
“Well,” she said softly, “we’ll never know for sure, will we?” Then she sighed and said, “We’re not solving anything here, so let’s just let the past go, okay? What happened, happened. Now we need to talk about what is.”
“Right.” He signaled to a waiter, then looked at her again. “So let’s talk. Tell me about your sons.”
“Your sons,” she corrected, lifting her chin a little as if readying to fight.
“That’s yet to be proved to me.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Hmm. Interesting question,” he said. “I could say you’ve lied before, but then we’ve already agreed not to talk about the past.”
Jenna wasn’t sure if she wanted to sigh in frustration or kick him hard under the table. This was so much more difficult than she’d thought it would be. Somehow, Jenna had convinced herself that Nick would believe her. That he would look at the pictures of the babies and somehow know instinctively that these were his sons. She should have known better.
All around them the clink of fine crystal and the muted conversations of the other diners provided a background swell of sound that was more white noise than anything else. Through the windows lining one side of the restaurant, the night was black and the sea endless. The shimmer of colored lights hanging from the edges of the deck looked almost like a rainbow that only shone at night.
And beside her, the man who’d haunted her dreams and forged a new life for her