GREY HAD NOT slept so badly in years. It took her what felt like forever to get comfortable, and once she finally did fall asleep she had been immersed in dreams that broke her heart all over again, leaving her gasping for air when she bolted awake. After the third time it happened, she gave up on trying to get any sort of rest. She swore under her breath as she ran her hands through her hair, and shook her head as she slid out of bed.
The sky outside the salon windows was still muddled in the charcoal hues of night when Grey wandered up the stairs to the main cabin, and her step faltered when she spotted Lauren in the galley preparing breakfast.
Fucking hell, she thought as she reached out to steady herself against the side of the refrigerator. She had just been hoping to grab a cup of coffee to while away the minutes before the sun began to rise and it would be safe for her to hit the water for a punishing swim that would burn off the anxiousness that had settled in her muscles over the last twenty-four hours.
Lauren was barefoot, with her hair pulled back in a messy twist of a bun, wearing a pair of short blue boardshorts and a pale gray Henley whose sleeves were shoved halfway to her elbows. Grey’s eyes slid slowly over Lauren’s legs, noting the subtle play of muscles as Lauren shifted her stance to reach for something sheneeded. Her gaze lingered on Lauren’s ass, which was barely covered by her shorts before sweeping higher, taking in the way Lauren’s shoulders curved into her neck and her ridiculously sexy hair.
Grey hated the way her heart beat faster when she looked at Lauren. Hated the way her stomach flipped whenever their eyes met. She did not want to find Lauren attractive, but she did.
God help her, she did.
Though the voice of self-preservation in the back of her mind screamed for her to slink back down the stairs to her cabin, Grey instead stepped forward into the galley, figuring that she may as well try and deal with her unwelcome attraction toward her temporary chef. She did not miss the way Lauren tensed when she realized that she was no longer alone, and Grey offered Lauren a small smile as she pulled her favorite mug and a pod of her favorite roast from the cupboard above the coffee machine. “Good morning.”
Lauren looked up from what she was doing and smiled hesitantly at Grey, unsure of where things between them stood after the way Grey had run out on her the night before. “Good morning. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up yet.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Grey muttered as she glanced at the glass baking dish in front of Lauren. “Whatcha making?”
“Crème brûlée french toast.”
“Looks good. You want some more coffee?” Grey tipped her head at Lauren’s empty cup. She could hear the tenseness in her tone, but she was relieved to see that Lauren did not seem to notice it.
“That would be great, thanks,” Lauren murmured, smiling as she handed her mug to Grey.
Grey took the plain red mug without a word and set it down on the counter as her mug finished filling. While she waited, she watched Lauren cover the glass dish with a sheet of foil and set itinto the fridge beside a second dish that she had already prepared. She glanced at her watch to double-check that it was, in fact, stupid-early o’clock, and arched a brow questioningly at Lauren as she switched out the mugs and put a fresh coffee pod into the machine. “How long have you been awake?”
“A while,” Lauren confessed with a shy smile, not wanting to admit that she had lain awake for most of the night trying to figure out what she had done to make Grey so uneasy around her. She started rinsing out the dishes she had used to prepare breakfast and asked, “So, how long have you been doing this?”
“The charter thing?” The machine beside Grey stopped spitting coffee into Lauren’s mug, and she set it down beside the sink. “Eleven years.”
Lauren looked up in surprise. “Really? What’d you do, start doing this right out of college?”
“Pretty much. I came down here when I was twenty-three,” Grey said as she walked out of the U-shaped galley and sat down at one of the barstools on the opposite side of the peninsula. The physical barrier helped her feel more at ease, and her pulse slowed to a more regular tempo as she watched Lauren over the rim of her mug.
“Wow.” Lauren pursed her lips thoughtfully as she debated which question she could ask next that wouldn’t have Grey shutting down on her and running from the room. “And what made you want to captain a charter yacht?”
Grey looked out the glass doors to her left, her eyes tracing the contours of the mountains surrounding the bay that stood in dark contrast to the slate blue sky. “I sailed around by myself for a year, but that got boring pretty fast, so I figured it was the easiest way to do what I loved and not be totally alone.”
“You own theVeritas?” Lauren’s eyes grew wide as she looked around the salon of the seventy-five-foot catamaran. Shehad no idea how much a boat like this would cost, but she knew that it had to beat leasta few million.
“Yep,” Grey said, a proud smile quirking her lips as she looked around her boat. She caught the look of disbelief Lauren was giving her and shrugged. “I was a computer science major at UCSD back before it was cool to be a computer science major, and wrote a couple algorithms that streamlined internet searches, effectively weeding out irrelevant data to return more accurate results, and was able to sell them for a tidy profit.”
“Holy shit. You invented Google?”
Grey laughed and shook her head. “No. I just wrote a couple programs that made sites like Google work better.”
“Damn,” Lauren drawled as she started washing the things she had used to prepare breakfast.
Grey chuckled. “Anyways, I grew up racing two-man cats with my dad, so coming down here and buying a boat seemed like a no-brainer. And the rest, as they say, is history.” She took another sip of her coffee and watched Lauren thoughtfully dry a glass mixing bowl. “What about you? What made you decide to go to culinary school?”
“I just always loved cooking.” Lauren rolled her eyes as she set the bowl aside and reached for the dirty saucepan that was sitting on the stove. “And, well, New York seemed like a great adventure after growing up in the Midwest.”
Pleased that they were managing to have an actual, albeit simple, conversation, Grey asked, “Where in the Midwest?”
Lauren’s brow dropped as she stopped scrubbing the saucepan she had been cleaning. “Didn’t you look at my résumé before you hired me?”
“Nope.” Grey shook her head. “Kelly Kipling is a good friend of mine, and I trusted her to find me a chef because I usually just steal hers for charters.”
“Her chefs?”
