Sienna squinted at my fingers, then shook her head.
“I guess I’m not as lucky as Barbie,” I sighed. “But maybe someday!”
It was a lame sidestep, but it didn’t force me to lie to a child.
“But Noah said something about being a mommy?”
I forced myself to laugh. “I accidentally called my teacher mom once. It wassofunny. Has that ever happened to you?”
She shook her head. Damn it, why was I being forced to gaslight a six-year-old?
“We need to hurry and finish cleaning this up,” I reminded her as I pointed to the rest of the mess. “Everyone else is beating us.”
Being last was a grave sin with this crew, so Sienna dropped her inquisition and got back to work.
I breathed a sigh of relief and hoped we’d make it through the day without another mention of weddings, rings, or marriage licenses.
But when I saw Noah watching me from across the room with a dreamy smile, I knew we were in for trouble.
12
LOGAN
We’d made it to the final night in one piece, thankfully.
Nearly everything on the maiden voyage had gone smoothly, accidental marriage not included. The news from my home team about customer feedback and media reports had been overwhelmingly positive, so I could breathe again. I was due to make a brief speech at the farewell champagne toast for the adults after the family dinner, thanking everyone for joining us on this extraordinary voyage and putting in a subtle plug for the rest of our cruise lines. After all, these young families with children also had older parents who might enjoy our more staid voyages. Not to mention, we had a whole array of packages of other destinations for the kid-friendly program.
Once everyone was gathered around me with stemware in hand, I grabbed the microphone and spoke from my heart about my love for ocean travel and my great joy of getting to share it with the group. I raised my glass to hearty cheers. Dinner had been pretty wine-soaked, so everyone was feeling extra festive.
“And cheers toyou,” a woman called out from the crowd. “Congratulations! What a wonderful surprise.”
“Thank you,” I smiled as I spoke. “This voyage has been wonderful in so many ways.”
I wished I could lock eyes with Nina because thanks to her, Noah had really turned a corner. But of course, she was with the rest of the kids hosting a farewell movie party in the activity center.
“No,” the woman laughed. “Not the trip, even though it was amazing. I’m talking about your marriage to Miss Nina! My daughter said your son Noah was talking about it this morning.”
I froze as a wave of overloud applause rippled through the group.
There wasnoway…
“Oh, I, that’s not,” I stuttered. I forced a smile on my face because I saw raised cameras pointed at me. I finally tipped my head to the crowd. “Thank you.”
“We love Miss Nina,” someone shouted out, and everyone laughed.
“She’s uh…she’s quite a woman,” I managed with a small nod, still wearing a fake grin.
I needed to get the hell out of the ballroom and into triage modeimmediately.
I thought we’d be able to keep our little mistake under wraps until it could be annulled, but thanks to my son, I was now facing a PR nightmare.
Fuck.
I managed to pull it together to shake hands and small talk my way out of the room, but it was hard to keep from grimacing when I was also forced to accept hugs of congratulations for my “big news.”
There was no hiding it now. It was out and recorded for all the world to see. Time for major damage control.
I stormed down to the theater formulating a plan that made zero sense, but at the same time seemed to be the only way out of the mess.
