Man Overboard. Karen Leabo
last thing you need is to be taking care of sick people on your vacation. But maybe...” She batted her eyelashes at Harrison. “Would you mind, Harrison, seeing that my niece makes it safely back to her cabin? We’re on the Marlin Deck.”
“Sure, I’d be happy to.” Happier than he’d like to admit. He was supposed to be romancing Aurora, but that was a damned impossible task with her daughter sitting across the table. Now that Paige was out of the way he should lay it on thick. But all he could think about was running after her to find out what the problem was.
Well, Aurora had asked him to do it, he reasoned. And he wanted to please her, right?
“I’ll be back.” He gave her what he hoped was a charming smile as he stood and turned to make his escape.
Harrison had no trouble catching up to Paige. She had paused at the buffet table to sample some Brie cheese on a cracker.
“Must be some headache,” he said from behind her.
She made a startled little noise and whirled around, her face turning pink. “Oh, it’s you. I thought maybe some cheese and crackers would help the headache,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. “Protein and carbohydrate to increase the blood sugar, you know. Besides, Aurora signed us up for the late dinner seating, and I haven’t eaten all day except for those few strawberries.”
He remembered the strawberries. He’d hardly been able to keep his eyes off her as she’d delicately nibbled the juicy red morsels.
“In that case, try some of this Swiss cheese.” He stabbed a small yellow cube with a toothpick and held the tidbit in front of her mouth.
After giving him a suspicious look, she reluctantly parted her moist lips and plucked the cheese cube from the toothpick, then chewed it thoughtfully. “Mmm, you’re right, it is good,” she conceded.
“How about some white cheddar on a wheat cracker?” He cut a generous slice of the thick, white cheese, set it on a cracker and handed it to her. He’d almost held it in front of her mouth again, just for the sensual pleasure of feeding her, but he figured that would be pushing his luck. While she munched on the treat, he popped a slice into his own mouth.
“Headache any better?” he asked.
“I guess I don’t really have a headache,” she admitted. “I just get annoyed watching Mo—Aurora flirt so shamelessly.”
“Why does it annoy you? Flirtation is a dying art, and she’s very good at it. Besides, it’s fun. You ought to try it.”
“No, thanks,” Paige said with a haughty frown. “I’d rather be a bump on a log. I’m very good at that.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were a bump. In fact, you don’t resemble any part of a log.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Are you flirting with me? Hedging your bets in case Aurora doesn’t take your bait?”
He didn’t answer. She’d caught him. But he couldn’t help himself. Paige Stovall begged to be cajoled into a smile, and he wanted to be the one to do it.
He’d better cut it out, he decided, or he would alienate both women. A man who set his sights on a mother and daughter—or an aunt and her niece, as he was supposed to believe them to be—could only be labeled a jerk.
“Well, I suppose it’s none of my business if you want to throw yourself at Aurora,” Paige said. “But I should warn you, her flirtations are anything but innocent. She’s been married four times.”
Harrison was careful to show the appropriate degree of surprise. “Really?”
“And I’d be leery if I were you. She might have you selected as husband number five.”
“I think you’re exaggerating. We were just enjoying a conversation. But would it bother you terribly if she had set her sights on me?”
“Damn right, it would! She’s old enough to be your...well, your much older sister.”
“I don’t see that age is so important. In fact, I’d guess the age difference between Aurora and me isn’t as great as the one between me and you.” Actually, he was about ten years older than Paige and more than twenty years Aurora’s junior. But he wasn’t supposed to know that.
“The age difference between us isn’t the issue.” She shrugged, though she didn’t appear as unaffected as she pretended. “Think what you like. But I warn you, I won’t let Aurora have her head turned by another handsome younger man, who has nothing in common—”
“You think I’m handsome?”
She blushed again. “What I think about you isn’t important.” She turned away, clearly dismissing him, and left the buffet table.
Harrison wasn’t finished with this conversation. Paige’s concerns about her mother fascinated him. Had she come on this cruise solely to protect Aurora from male predators like the cad she thought him to be?
He followed Paige to the railing, where she paused to look out over the inky blue water. Taking up a position beside her, he said, “If you’re trying to prevent your aunt from marrying another loser, you have nothing to fear from me. I find her charming, but I have no intention of marrying anyone, not in this century.”
Paige tilted her head and looked at him skeptically through slitted green eyes. “So you’d rather use her and drop her? Oh, that’s reassuring.”
“What makes you so sure I intend to ‘use her,’ as you so delicately put it? Couldn’t I just enjoy her company?”
“If that’s all you’re after, you would be an unusual man indeed, certainly for Aurora,” Paige said. Her head was lowered, her face hidden from view by the wide brim of her ridiculous hat.
Wanting to see her face, and those incredible green eyes, he impulsively pulled the hat off her head. She looked up suddenly, surprise and confusion warring on her expressive face.
“Who gave you such a low opinion of men, Paige Stovall?” he asked. When she looked away, refusing to meet his gaze, he touched her chin and gently drew her face toward him again.
“I’m just a realist,” she countered. “When a man approaches a woman, he has one of only two things on his mind.”
“Is that so? Which do I have on my mind right now?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with surprise, and for a moment he worried that she really could read the less-than-pure thoughts in his head.
“I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” she finally answered, grabbing her hat from him and jamming it on her head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my room.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said affably, despite the withering dismissal she’d just given him.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But I promised Aurora I’d see you safely back to your cabin. She was worried about you. Umm, the elevators are this way,” he added when Paige took a wrong turn.
“How do you already know so much about the ship?” she asked, accepting his company for the moment, the way someone accepts taxes and junk mail. “I thought this was your first cruise.”
“The Mermaid people invited me aboard a day early, so I could observe the cruise preparations. It seems to be a very efficient operation.”
“Then why do they need your money?” Paige asked as she and Harrison stepped aboard the elevator.
“Expansion takes capital. Mermaid wants to build a new ship. I’m looking for a way to shelter some of my income for the next couple of years.” He hoped she didn’t delve any deeper than that into his supposed background. His knowledge of the world of high finance was abstract at best.
Besides, he really hated lying, even if lying was