I picked up my cup of coffee. “Yeah, that’s why I hired. . .” I set it back down.
My brained short-circuited and the world seemed to stand still even though the yacht was gliding across the ocean at thirty-five knots.
Her name was in block letters on the page divider, followed by her photo in the top left corner.
Lucinda Simmons.
“What?” Steven stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“Ho…” I inhaled and exhaled deeply to calm my racing heart. “Where did this name come from?”
If her beautiful face with those dark brown eyes and perfect pink lips weren’t smiling up at me, I would think the world was playing an ironic joke.
“Who are you talking about?” Steven shifted to look over my shoulder. “Oh, yeah, Lucinda. She’s super cute.” He sat on the chair next to me. “She’s a house submissive at Club Cowboy in Austin. Super sweet, too. She was recommended to Carol by…” He looked up to the sky. “Robert Standish.”
“Standish.”
“Yeah, you know him?” Steven plucked a grape from my plate. “You’d think with a name like Standish, he’d be English, but no, he’s Texan through and through.”
I glared at him.
He stood and returned to his side of the ship. “Is there a problem with her?”
I flipped through her file, confirming what Steven mentioned. I might have been concerned about the amount of information he had on her from memory, but he knew all the guests just as well.
“From her recommendation, she was a great sub.” He tapped on his phone. “Worked at Cowboy to put herself through UT. Popular among other house subs and mem…”
His voice faded as I studied her photo. It was a posed head shot, but she managed to inject some personality into it from the tilt of her head to the barely there smile. I’d seen that smile before. It meant she was having the time of her life. I’d spent months talking myself out of calling her or going to see her. Her father would have never known. I still had a copy of her last voicemail to me before I shut it down and switched phones. She told me it was my last chance, but if I knew Lucinda like I thought I did, she would have kept calling. Holding out hope. I imagined with an aching nausea in my gut the final call she made and how heartbroken she must have felt. I abandoned her because of my feelings for her. It wasn’t appropriate for a thirty-five-year-old to lust after an eighteen-year-old girl. And my best friend’s daughter at that.
If I was being honest with myself, she had been my favorite person in the world since the first moment she recognized me when I came back after being away for a while. I’d never expected to have kids, and when my best friend knocked up his high school sweetheart, I stuck around a lot in the first couple of years. Then when he got sole custody of her because his sweetheart turned out not to be so sweet, I had to support my friend.
He embraced fatherhood and I was happy being the best uncle in the world, but around the time she started talking about boys, an unexplainable jealousy took up residence in my chest. At sixteen, she developed these curves much too soon and by the time she turned eighteen, she was exquisite in my eyes. Her curly hair she wore in ringlets down her back had red highlights when she spent too much time in the sun. Her light-brown skin pinked up when she blushed. Her carefree style and her warmth made people want to be around her. Of course, she was popular and funny and outgoing. She led and her friends followed.
But, with me, she was sweet and sassy and submissive. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who got to see that side of her these days.
Most popular sub in her club. I rubbed my chest and sighed.
“We have a curated waitlist if you want to repl?—”
I wasn’t ready to see her, deal with what I’d done to her. I was a coward for leaving her the way I did. Steven was giving me an out. I should take it. This week was too important to me. I had too much at stake and no need to complicate it with a surprise reunion with the love of my life.
I held up my hand.
“Don’t do anything.” I stood and headed inside. “I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Michael is in your stateroom ready to show you some stuff.”
I waved and made my way down the narrow corridor and up a few stairs. My stateroom sat in the front of the ship, just below the captain’s perch. I stepped through the open door and skirted around the king-sized bed into the seating area in an alcove off the main room.
“Mr. Webber.”
I set the guest book on my desk. “Michael, how have you been?” I greeted him with an outstretched hand.
“Well, my friend.” He released my hand and went back to fiddling with his gadgets on the glass coffee table. “Excited to show you what I got. Some fun stuff to make your week more tantalizing.” He cackled.
Every surface was covered with samples of any and all kinky toys the ship could possibly need. I’d picked out some essentials to have available in each scene room and a gift of kinky toys for each guest for their staterooms. But these were some extras made especially for me.
“Before we get into it…” I sat on the end of the couch. “We’ve double-tested the cameras around the ship and in the scene rooms?”
