Beauty Queens (28 page)

“Tiara, don’t scare the nice pirates away,” Petra whispered.

The pirate pushed up onto his elbows. “How do you think mermaids pee? I always wondered ’cause they have those tails and stuff?”

“I know!” Tiara nodded wildly.

Petra rolled her eyes. “A match made in heaven.”

“Ahoy, mates!” someone yelled from the surf. “Our captain is down!”

Several pirates staggered to their feet to meet the others, and they carried the body of a tall, well-built guy. He wore black breeches tucked into tall black boots and a full white shirt. He was soaked through and through.

“Put him down over here,” Nicole instructed, and they brought him to her doctor’s hut. The girls crowded around. “I need to examine him, make sure he doesn’t have any injuries.”

Miss Ohio’s hand went up. “I’ll help!”

A chorus of “me, too!” rang out.

One of the guys stepped forward. A cool phoenix design had been etched into his close-cropped hair, and he wore a silver hoop earring in his right ear. He shook Nicole’s hand. “Ahmed. I got some basic training in the army. Happy to help.”

“Great. You can start by getting everybody out of here,” Nicole said.

The girls responded with
awwws
and pouts, but Nicole was resolute and Ahmed flashed a bright smile and promised everything would be just fine before shutting the thatched door.

Mary Lou rushed over to the other girls. “Do you know who these guys are?”

“Who?” Adina asked.

Mary Lou’s eyes were huge. “We’ve just rescued the cast of
Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser!”

“You through with the razor?” Miss Ohio asked Miss Montana.

The girls had lined up at the swimming hole. They’d pulped a coconut, which they were using for shaving cream.

“Ordinarily, double-dipping on a razor would skeeve me out completely,” Miss Ohio explained. “But I am not hanging out with a boatload of fine pirates looking like a yeti.”

“You in line?” Miss New Mexico asked Adina.

“No, I’m not.” Adina stepped back and let her go ahead. “And you should worry more about fixing their ship and being rescued than shaving your pits.”

“I can do both. I’m a multitasker.”

“This is going to make such a great story: How I nursed a pirate back to health and my love saved him,” Miss Ohio said with a contented sigh. “And then we can have our own reality show about our relationship.”

“Good luck with that.”

Petra grinned at Adina.

“What — you don’t believe in true love?” Petra asked. “The kind that can then be parlayed into awesome merchandising opportunities?”

“Isn’t it exciting?” Tiara said, grinning. “TV pirates!”

Brittani pouted. “I was still hoping for a vampire rescue.”

“I’m just interested in their ship and getting off the island, not some fantasy fed by a gazillion romance novels and stupid rom-coms
starring Jessica Everett,” Adina snarked.
³⁹

“What’s your problem?” Miss Ohio said.

“Hey!” Nicole waved to them from down on the beach. “The captain’s finally awake!”

Captain Sinjin St. Sinjin had, indeed, awakened. He was a broad-chested guy of twenty with long, black, wavy hair, devilish sideburns, and a wicked smile that had charmed its way through many a port. The knuckles of his left hand had been tattooed with the word
sexxy
and his right with
beast.
He wore tight breeches tucked into tall boots and a puffy white pirate’s shirt unbuttoned to his navel. The other pirates sat near him. The girls hovered like satellites.

“Hello, mates. Feeling all right, yeah?” he called in an accent straight out of a posh London boarding school by way of the Eastside. “Say, could one of you lovelies get me something to quench my thirst?”

Four girls turned to go and Adina said, “You seem able-bodied to me.”

Captain Sinjin put a hand to his chest. “We’ve been through a shipwreck, luv. We’re exhausted and need to lie about.”

“Oh, I know how you feel,” Tiara said. “When our plane crashed here, and we had to bury the dead and deal with really bad wounds and Miss New Mexico got that tray stuck in her head —”

“Hi!” Miss New Mexico waved.

“— and the chaperones were all charred in the wreckage and it was really gross and scary and there was nothing to eat and no shelter and we had to build all that stuff and deal with giant snakes and bug bites and we barely survived a giant wave and mudslides and hallucinogenic plants and stuff, we were so, so tired.”

Captain Sinjin blinked. “Yes, luv, but we’re pirates. So it’s much worse for us.”

“Are you really the pirates from
Captains Bodacious IV?”
Miss Ohio asked. She lowered the neckline on her dress a tiny bit more.

“Absolutely!” Sinjin said. “You familiar with the show, luv?”

“Teen prep school guys in a British boarding school witness a murder by the mob and then they’re forced to hide out at sea on a stolen ship. Along the way, they become pirates and fight crime and act like rock stars with girls in every port,” Mary Lou recounted by heart. “I’ve never missed an episode.”

“Possibly the stupidest show ever,” Adina muttered.

“Pirate rock stars? Please, that’s like the
heroin
of television,” Petra said.

“I always wanted to be a pirate,” Mary Lou said softly. “All that freedom.”

“So what happened? How did you end up here?” Shanti asked.

The pirates exchanged nervous glances. Sinjin forced a smile and stroked a finger across Shanti’s cheek. “My, you are lovely.”

Shanti removed his hand. “How did you get here?”

“Right.” Sinjin lay back on his elbows. He was a big guy and he took up a lot of sand. “Well, we were getting ready to start filming the new season from a secret tropical location, and after a little too much rum, the boys and I said, ‘Hey, who wants to take the ship out for a little spin, eh?’ Am I right?”

“Right!” the pirates responded.

“And, eh, we took the boat out to sea, except we’d only had six weeks of sailor camp.”

“I can tie all my knots, though,” a football player–size pirate with a bleached-white faux-hawk said.

“I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue,” Miss Ohio said and licked her lips.

“Right, you I like,” Captain Sinjin said. “Anyway, we blew off course while we were sleeping it off, if you know what I mean. Woke up and hadn’t any idea where we were. You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is. There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They
don’t bloody tell you that. And the rocking. I didn’t stop puking for three days straight. Plus the world’s in a barmy spot what with the threat of war and terrorism and all. But we kept on. Because we’re men.”

“Men!” the pirates shouted.

Sinjin cupped Petra’s chin in his hand. “And it’s girls like you who give us something to keep fighting for, luv.”

Adina snorted. “For the record, you’re not soldiers. You’re pirates. And not even
real
pirates. You’re
reality TV
pirates.”

“Don’t harsh my moment, Adina,” Petra sang under her breath.

“There’s a reality in reality TV,” Captain Sinjin said. “I mean, once you get past the manufactured drama for the ratings and the product placement, the knowledge that there are cameras on you at all times and that you want to seem natural while still making sure that your abs look fantastic — once you get past that, it is absolutely genuine.”
⁴⁰

“They gave me this cool haircut,” said the pirate with the faux-hawk. “I’m George.”

“Jennifer gave me a cool haircut, too. With a machete,” Tiara said.

“Awesome,” said George the Pirate. He stared at Tiara as if she were a kitten he hoped to take home.

“So why not just radio for help and get us all off this island?” Shanti asked.

Again, the pirates averted their eyes.

“W-well,” Sinjin said, “the radio’s not working.”

“Not at all,” blurted a pirate with a perfectly shaggy haircut and a blue bandanna wrapped around his head. “I’m Chu, by the way. Nice place you’ve got here. Cheers!”

“I might be able to fix your radio,” Jennifer said. “I’m pretty mechanical. Got ours up and running. For a minute anyway.”

“Sorry. Erm, it’s not just broken. It’s smashed to bits. Drunken revelry,” Sinjin explained. “Arrrrgggghhhh!”

Mary Lou sank into the sand. “So … you don’t have any way of calling in for help? You’re stuck here?”

“ ’Fraid so,” Ahmed, the ship’s boatswain, said.

Adina appealed to the sky. “We asked for rescue and you sent us incompetent rock-star pirates with a broken ship and perfect abs?”

“Thank you, God,” Petra said.

“Don’t you worry, superfoxy babes,” Sinjin said, putting his arms around Petra and Miss Ohio. “I know it’s been rough. But we’re here now. Everything will be okay.”

“Actually,” Adina said. “We’re doing fine. See those huts, the irrigation system, fishing lines, the rain-catching tarp, and desalination still? We built all of that.”

“Really?”

Nicole crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah. Shocker.”

“Cool!” Captain Sinjin St. Sinjin inspected the huts, finally choosing to lie down on Tiara’s soft palm frond bed. He made himself comfortable. “Very nice. Can I get something to eat?”

Adina glared. “That’s Tiara’s bed.”

Tiara backed away. “Oh. It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“She doesn’t mind,” Captain Sinjin said. He winked at Tiara. “Thanks, luv! You’re gorgeous. Something to eat? Mangia? Yum-yums?”

“You didn’t even ask,” Adina said. “You just sat right down.”

Captain Sinjin took off his boots and tossed them in the sand.

“Can I get you something to drink, too?” Tiara asked. “We have rainwater or coconut milk.”

“Fantastic. I’ll take the coconut milk. Ta, luv.”

Tiara turned to leave. Adina stopped her. “Stay right here, Tiara. If he wants it, he can get it himself.”

“But …” Tiara seemed torn. “I don’t mind.”

“She doesn’t mind,” Captain Sinjin said. He batted his lashes at Adina.

Tiara looked from Adina to Sinjin and back again. She jogged in place like a kindergartner who needed a bathroom.

Finally, George raised his hand. “I’ll go with you to get it. I get him stuff all the time since he’s the captain.”

“Thanks!” Tiara beamed, and she and George walked hand-in-hand toward the coconut storage.

Adina threw up her hands. “Right. Just forget everything. Hey, maybe they have some laundry they need done, too,” she grumbled. “I’m going to go check the fishing lines.”

“Great idea, luv. I’m crazy about fish,” Captain Sinjin called after her.

“Unbelievable,” Adina muttered.

Good God! All you had to do was introduce the scent of testosterone and perfectly capable, together girls were reduced to giggling, lash-batting, hair-playing idiots. She hated it when girls did this. When they got all goo-goo-eyed over Y chromosome–carrying creatures instead of taking care of themselves. It’s what her mother had done her whole life, cater to some man instead of looking after herself. Or Adina.

She thought about this as she walked toward the lagoon to check the fishing lines. She was still thinking about it and muttering to herself as she bumped headlong into one of the pirates.

“You should watch where you’re going,” she snapped.

“I was,” he answered in a raspy voice that tickled her insides and made her look up. “I was afraid you’d miss me, though, so I had to maneuver at the last minute.”

He was grinning. He had the audacity to grin. It was a hell of a grin, too — slightly naughty, with teeth that were just crooked enough to give his mouth character. He was tall and lanky with a bronzed, sharp-boned face; his green eyes were twinkly, like he’d
just gotten a joke someone had told him earlier. Tawny, sun-streaked hair fell in waves to his tanned shoulders, which were bare and freckled. There was a small star tattoo on the left one.

Adina had the disconcerting feeling that the ground beneath her was not as solid as she imagined. “I-I have to check the fishing lines,” she said, squeezing past him.

“I’ll come with you,” he said and fell into step with her as she marched toward the lagoon.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.” He flashed her that grin, the one that made her borders feel unprotected. “I’m Duff, by the way. Duff McAvoy.”

Adina didn’t answer.

“This is usually the part where you tell me your name.”

“Why?”

He nodded, thinking it over. “Interesting name. Were your parents overly inquisitive people?”

“No. Why should I tell you my name?”

“You don’t have to.”

“Adina. Adina Greenberg.”

“Nice to meet you, Adina.” He stuck out his hand and Adina shook it warily before turning her attentions to the tangled fishing lines.