She finally opened her eyes and looked at me.
“But I don’t hateyou,” she finished quietly. “I feel a lot of things when it comes to you, but not a single one of those things is hatred. Or dislike. Or anything close to it.”
I thought back to earlier today, to how Krysta seemed like an entirely different person during our shore excursion, how her bad mood came on as the waves got rockier and rockier. I guessed it made sense...
“But why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, half skeptical, half honestly curious. “I’m not a monster, Krysta. I would have let you take some time off.”
Displeasure cooled her expression. “Bodyguards shouldn’t need time off, especially not for motion sickness. And what could you have done anyway? Let me stay bedridden for eight days? The whole time I’m supposed to be working?”
“You know, for a former stuntwoman, you’re not so great at emergency problem-solving,” I told her, my mood gradually but definitely lightening.
I feel a lot of things when it comes to you.
She gave me a miffed look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Smiling, I held out my hand. She took it with some suspicion.
“I have a better solution than being bedridden for a week. It’s an antiemetic, and it will change your life.”
An hour later, Krysta and I were back from the ship’s infirmary and sitting on the sofa on the upper story of the suite. Krysta’s mouth had grown softer and softer, and so had her eyes, and now she was staring at me like I was the person who invented ranch dressing.
“Drugs are great,” Krysta said wonderingly. “I feel like a human being again.”
“Mm-hmm.” I tried not to be too smug, but really. When would people learn that I had an answer for everything?
“I am sorry,” Krysta said now. Our shoulders were pressed together, and the cuddle factor was increasing by orders of magnitude. The wet-panties factor was also increasing, because I could feel the firm warmth of Krysta’s hip and thigh against myown, the pert swell of her breast against my arm. But I wasn’t so far gone that I would shake down a nausea patient for sex.
Yet.
“Sorry for what?”
“Being an asshole. For not telling you why I was being an asshole.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry too—I should have made sure you were doing okay. And I probably shouldn’t have... well, in the cabana. I knew we were breaking your rules, and I did it anyway.”
Krysta didn’t answer for a moment. And then she sighed. “It’s not your fault. I wanted to break them.”
I didn’t dare look up at her as I asked, “Do you still want to break them?”
Her voice was husky. “Yes.”
I moved my hand—just to touch her knee, just to run my palm up her thigh—and she caught my wrist. “It’s a terrible idea, Addison.”
“But why?”
“It never works out well, a bodyguard and a principal. It’s asking for mess and distraction, and I refuse to compromise your work or your security.”
I groaned. “Forget about my work! I’ll remember it enough for the both of us! Just break the rules with me!”
She laughed a little at my melodrama, and her laugh was a deep, gorgeous alto. I wanted to hear it again. And again.
“Is it not enough to have a long and happy cruise with me?”
“Don’t understand why ‘long and happy’ precludes sex,” I said with a long yawn. I rested my head against her shoulder and drank in the sharp, woodsy scent of her. “You made those rules. Can’t you unmake them?”
“They’re there for a reason.” She paused. “My first client after I left stunt work was an heiress turned influencer turned model.She didn’t want anyone to know she had diabetes, including me, and she also had a penchant for sneaking out. And then one night I woke up in my hotel room to a call that she’d been found in a park, hypoglycemic and nearly hypothermic. She’d slipped out of her hotel room to party, gotten disoriented after drinking too much, which meant her liver had fucked off making glucose, and then she’d stumbled off into the night. And when I got to the ER, I didn’tknowshe had diabetes and it cost them crucial minutes to figure it out. She almost died because I didn’t have all of the information. She almost died because she wanted to go off on her own. I couldn’t keep her safe if she wouldn’t let me keep her safe, and that’s when I knew I needed the rules. I needed to trust that my clientunderstoodthe rules, because it meant they understood me too.”
Guilt was like an itchy blanket over me, and it was getting harder and harder to rationalize not telling Krysta about the threatening notes. About going off to meet my potential stalker. But surely Krysta only meant she needed to know about the things that someone couldn’t handle on their own? Like a life-threatening illness or a chronic inability to charge a phone. Not something a client had completely and totally under control (probably).
