Veritas (5 page)

The air between them
seemed to crackle with electricity as they held each other’s gaze, and Grey finally felt herself released from the magnetic pull of Lauren’s stare when the redhead turned to watch an energetic blur in Spiderman pajamas bolt through the salon for the back deck. The loss of visual contact was enough to spur Grey into motion, and she shook her head as she headed for deck. It was all she could do to not run, as her heart raced and her body all but trembled with the need to escape, to find some kind of space that would give her time to try and understand what had just happened.

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 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 she needed. 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 mutte
red 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 it into 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 the
Veritas
?” Lauren’s eyes grew wide as she looked around the salon of the seventy-five-foot catamaran. She had no idea how much a boat like this would cost, but she knew that it had to be
at least
a 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?”

“She’s the general manager for Kipling Resorts here in the islands
.”

“
Oh. I see,” Lauren drawled as she resumed cleaning. “I was wondering why, when I spoke with her on the phone, she asked me if I had ever considered heading a hotel kitchen.”

Grey laughed
and leaned back in her chair. “She’s always looking for new talent, and she was quite impressed with your résumé. So, anyways, back to the point: where in the Midwest are you from?”

Lauren
rinsed the soap from the saucepan and turned off the water. “Um, the Minneapolis area,” she answered as she picked up a dishtowel and began drying the pan. “How about you?”

“Newport, Rhode Island.” Grey sipped at her coffee as they fell into a slightly uncomfortable silence now that the easy get-to-know-you type questions had been exhausted.
She watched as Lauren finished drying the cookware and put it away, and then leaned back against the counter with her coffee mug in her hands. Grey’s eyes traced Lauren’s long fingers that were wrapped lightly around the red and blue ceramic mug she was holding, and she shook her head as she forced herself to look away. “So, um,” she started, trying to find another avenue of conversation to follow, “do you have a boyfriend back in New York?”

“I haven’t had a boyfriend since I was in the ninth grade.” Lauren smiled as she watched understanding dawn in Grey’s eyes
. “Not really my thing, ya know?”

Grey nodded slowly
, hating the way her heart seemed to leap into her throat at what Lauren had just revealed. “I, uh…” She looked down at her nearly empty mug and then at the sky outside that was still too dark for her to safely hit the water, and sighed. She needed space. “I should go shower and stuff before the Muellers get up,” she muttered, forcing herself to smile at Lauren as she slid off of her barstool.

“Yeah,” Lauren murmured, her brow furrowing with confusion as she watched Grey leave. The sound of Grey’s cabin door clicking shut echoed quietly throug
h the salon, and Lauren frowned as she turned to look out the window, unable to help but wonder why her being gay would make Grey so flustered.

Grey knew that
she needed to apologize to Lauren for running out on her. Not just because it was the second time she had done so in a relatively short amount of time, but because she had done it right after Lauren had come out to her. She of all people understood how badly her reaction could be taken, and she hated the idea of Lauren thinking that she was neither safe nor welcome aboard the
Veritas
because of who she was.

No matter how much Grey knew that she needed to apologize,
Fate seemed determined to keep her from doing so. She had intended to do it when she returned to the salon after showering, but Kim was already awake and chatting amiably with Lauren in the galley, and the day just got busier from there. Breakfast was followed by a quick sail to Leinster Bay for a morning of snorkeling where the boys spent more time running around the boat and jumping off the side into the water than they actually spent in the water itself. Lunch, followed by another short sail, and then clearing-in with British customs took up the middle of the afternoon, and as soon as their paperwork was in order she was back at the helm, sailing toward White Bay to tie-up for the night. Between dinner prep and playing hostess, she never had more than a minute or two alone with Lauren, and she knew that it was going to take more than a rushed “I’m sorry” to smooth things over.

It
was not until much later that night, when the dessert dishes had been cleared and put away and the Muellers were huddled around the port-side deck table playing a spirited game of Go Fish before the boys went to bed, that Grey finally had the opportunity to track Lauren down. Never truly being alone with Lauren should have made it easier for her to deal with the confusing mix of attraction and guilt that bubbled inside her, but for some reason it only left her feeling anxious. It was irrational and completely unexplainable, but the professionally polite distance they had maintained when dealing with each other all day just felt
wrong
.

She eventually found Lauren sitting on the trampolines at the bow of the boat, and she
took a deep breath to steel her resolve before she called out to her. “I’m sorry.”

The words were soft, the voice unmistakable, and Lauren’s gaze was cautious as she looked up at Grey, who was holding a tumbler of a sable-colored alcohol out for her. It was clearly
meant to be an olive branch, and she sighed as she reached out and took it. She was no closer to understanding why Grey had run out on her earlier, but if Grey was willing to try and talk about it, she was more than willing to listen. “Thanks. What is it?”

Grey lowered herself on
to the trampoline beside Lauren, and sighed as she lifted her eyes to the stars that shone brightly against the inky backdrop of the night sky. “Scotch. This is definitely a scotch kind of conversation.”

Lauren
sipped at her drink. It was smooth, with an unmistakable toffee flavor that was layered with citrus, cinnamon, and something else Lauren couldn’t quite identify, and she hummed approvingly as she swallowed. “What’s the label on this?”

“Auchentoshan,
Three Wood. It’s a distillery in the Scottish lowlands.” Grey took a generous swallow, not bothering to savor the taste of the alcohol, just using it as a numbing balm for the wounds she was about to rip open. “I’m sorry.”