Wilder

“Okay, then let’s go.” Victory! I rose to my feet and moved toward where she stood tugging on that long braid she had running along the side of her face. Her eyes drifted down the line of my chest, following my tattoos to my abs, and then she squeezed her eyes shut. I could have crowed with satisfaction that she’d been looking and, by her reaction, liked what she saw. “Problem?”

“Nope. Just do the world a favor and put on a shirt.” She spun, leaving me alone in my room.

“Chicken,” I muttered under my breath, but I knew the truth. She was simply stronger than I was. There was zero chance I’d be able to back away if she was half dressed.

Twenty minutes later, after showing Leah the VIP disembarkation point on the ship, we barely made it to our excursion. There looked to be about sixty of us corralled together like cattle in front of two passenger buses.

“You owe me,” I whispered to the top of her head.

Her smile was gorgeous. “You’ll thank me later.”

As we were ready to load the cattle cars—uh, buses—I heard my name called and turned to see Bobby and a cameraman sprinting toward us.

Shit. We’d almost made it without Big Brother tagging along. The see-everything cameras were getting old, and it was only our first port.

Two extras and a cranky professor later, we were off. “Aren’t you going to be hot?” I asked Leah as she adjusted, looking for a seat belt.

She looked at her leggings and tilted her head. “Probably.”

I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t, and I didn’t push. I glanced around at the other girls on the bus, none of whom were in anything longer than their knees. Huh. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Leah in anything but pants.

About thirty minutes later, we parked and all filed out of the bus. “Where are we?”

“St. Peter’s Church,” Leah answered, leading me up the stone steps to the bright chapel with green shutters. “It’s the oldest Christian church in the western hemisphere.”

We listened as the professor gave us the history of the church—from the front, which had been brought with the settlers, to the graveyards that had been segregated between the white Christians and African slaves. Then he turned us loose to explore.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” Leah asked, running her fingers across the dark wood of the boxed church pews. “Think of everything that’s happened here. All the people who have been through these doors.”

“Think of all the sins confessed,” I whispered.

She smacked my stomach with her notebook. “No appreciation of history.”

I shrugged. “I like history. I’d just rather be making it than observing it.”

“There’s something exquisite about this, though,” she said, taking in every detail of the church. “Hurricanes came and went, and they simply rebuilt. They didn’t tear it down and start new. They fixed what was broken because it meant something to them. It’s beautiful.”

Doesn’t our marriage mean anything to you?

You can’t fix what’s irreparable.

I blinked. Where the hell had that come from? I hadn’t thought about that fight—the one where I finally realized my parents were going to divorce—in the last ten years.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked, looking up at me with bright, honest eyes. How long had it been since I’d been around a girl who didn’t have an agenda? Who wasn’t looking for five minutes in the spotlight, or to say she’d fucked me?

But Leah, she was none of that. Hell, she barely wanted to be around me as it was. Instead, the tables had been flipped, and I was the one constantly angling for a minute of her time.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

She pointed to a white van in the parking lot. “That’s our ride this time.”

“We’re not going back to the ship?” I asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I needed to inspect those rigs, make sure that nothing went wrong tomorrow.

“Not yet. Don’t worry, Cinderella, I’ll get you home by midnight.” She led me over to the van and gave our names to the driver.

“Where are we going?”

She laughed, scooting over so I could sit next to her as another half-dozen students filed in behind us. “Didn’t you bother to look at your itinerary?”

“Nope. I saw your excursion list and had the registrar match it.”

“You’re entirely too trusting.”

If you only knew the truth. “I didn’t do it until after I’d met you. I decided you weren’t half bad to be around and, given that you’d agreed to stay on as my tutor, you had good taste.”

“Unbelievable.”

The van started to roll, and when I looked in the rearview mirror, I started to laugh.

“What?”

I pointed behind us. “Bobby didn’t make it.”

She turned to see and then she giggled. Fucking giggled. It was the most entrancing sound I’d ever heard, light, playful, and sexy as hell.

“Oh my God, now he’s running.” She laughed full-out, and I joined her, watching him try his best to catch the van. “Want to stop for him?” She arched an eyebrow, and I recognized the challenge when I saw it.

“Nope. It’s just you, me, and these other fine seagoers.”

Her smile was well worth what I knew would be a shitstorm later. Wherever we were going, it had to be somewhere worthwhile, and I’d cut out the documentary team. Too damn bad.