Chapter Eleven

As the curtain lifted in the Pacific Empress’s theater, Michaela gave herself a secret hug. She loved to watch Dylan dance.

The gold curtain rose, and she inhaled along with the rest of the audience, as if she, too, were seeing the set and this theatrical world for the first time. Her breath was shortened even further by thoughts of Dylan. The picture of him coming to her after this performance warmed every part of her body, and she waited, her hands poised to clap for his opening number.

It never came. Michaela watched all of the male dancers—the two from their previous cruise and another she recognized from his contract on the ship several months ago. There was no Dylan.

Sorry. The word on her phone had seemed cryptic at the time she received it, but she’d been too busy with the new passengers to worry much about it. With no Dylan performing in the show running in front of her, Michaela understood the text’s meaning very well. Dylan was sorry for not bothering to tell her in person. Sorry he was leaving early, and he wasn’t coming back.

Michaela watched the rest of the show in a daze, her head a mess of questions. Why hadn’t he called? Where had he gone? Who had he gone with? Why, why, why?

As the curtain descended, she stumbled backstage, head down, avoiding the eyes of everyone.

“I’m sorry, darling,” George offered when she found him. “I thought they’d already called you. Head office got me on my mobile and said your Dylan had done a bunk. I guess they figured they’d already sorted it, so they left me to pass on the news. Thank God Richard was in town! He already knew all the numbers for tonight’s show, so it was a perfect solution.”

“What do you mean, ‘done a bunk’?” Michaela still refused to believe it.

“He rang them, darling. Said something had come up with his family, and he was going to have to break his contract. He’ll lose out on the rest of his pay, but apparently he didn’t seem to care about that.”

“Nice for some,” one of the other dancers said. “Maybe he’s actually a billionaire, like a stockbroker or something. I bet he’s loaded.”

Michaela bit her lip.

“That is not helping,” George hissed, looking warily at Michaela.

“Oh, well,” she said, forcing herself to be cheerful in front of her team. “I’m sure it will work out for the best. Thanks for stepping in at such late notice, Richard. I have every confidence you’ll be able to fill in for Dylan. Oh, and you’ll need to pick up his activities tomorrow. That won’t be a problem, will it? You’ve done it all before. Your roster is in the office, if you could collect it at seven tomorrow.” Without even waiting for an answer, she turned and left before her tears could overflow.

In her stateroom, she couldn’t hold the sobs back any more. Oh, God. How could he have done this to her? It was worse than the end of her relationship with the captain. At least that time, she’d thought no one knew about it and she could lick her wounds in private.

She sniffed. This is not worse than the time with the captain. You knew what you were getting into this time. Three months, remember? It was going to end soon anyway. At least Dylan had the courtesy to be up front about that.

Get it together, Michaela. You still have your career.

Her career. Sydney. She’d followed through on her promise to leave onboard life before she became hollow and hardened by all the hard work, but her time with Dylan had shown her the possibilities of a life where she could have everything—the job and the man. Now he had ended their relationship without giving her a chance to tell him about her new job. They might have been able to…what? He only said he was sometimes in Sydney. He was probably hardly ever there.

Doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better. I won’t be distracted. I’ve always wanted to live in Sydney.

It was true that she had once thought of living in Australia’s entertainment capital, but she’d also thought of living in New York, Paris, Berlin… She’d wanted the world at her feet.

Michaela straightened. It still was. At least with a job in head office, she had a chance to move up an actual corporate ladder. She might even be able to move sideways into an entirely different industry with the managerial skills she would learn. “This is just the beginning of a whole new life,” she told herself. “A new job, better pay, a real move upward and onward. I’m not going to think about Dylan anymore.”

By the time she’d finished her pep talk, she was calm, it was late, and she managed to fall asleep without Dylan Johns on her mind.

…

Surprisingly, the last cruises progressed quickly. In every second Michaela could spare, she went up to the top deck to watch out over the passing ocean, delighting in its immense blueness. Nothing could replicate the feeling of being alone in the middle of all that water. The weight of the sea, fathoms deep below, seemed to connect with her own watery body on a much deeper level than it had before.

“We’re so small,” she whispered to the wide blue ocean, and she fancied it whispered back with promises of hidden beauty and emerald treasure. “Thank you,” she said, throwing her thoughts out as far as she could make them travel.

As they powered into port, she stood on deck at each tropical location and tried to absorb the view from the towering height of the ship. The forest trees of Vanuatu she let settle on her skin, but she brushed off any memory of them reflected in Dylan’s eyes. Tropical islands, golden beaches, aqua water—she let these worlds inside to provide strength and food and focus for her new life. This was what she had given to thousands of people—these views, these memories, and hundreds of hours of fun activity. Now she was moving on to provide entertainment for even more people and to book acts and coordinate the entire entertainment program of a fleet of ships, not just this one. It was a good move, a real step up, and if Dylan had decided to stick around—if he’d told her he was planning to stay on the Pacific Empress beyond his three months, as she’d fantasized he would in her weaker moments, rather than run off before his contract was even up—she might have turned it down. He’d done her a favor by disappearing. She held on to that thought as if it were a warm coat on a cold day. It helped keep the tears at bay.

I’ll be fine. I always have been before.

Her imminent departure meant she had to bring her deputy up to speed to take over her position, and this made her busier than ever before. She’d been worried about how he’d take her leaving, how the rest of the crew would take it, but rather than being upset and disappointed, everyone seemed excited for her, and her deputy made no secret of the fact that it meant a significant promotion for him—one he’d been coveting for some time.

There were tears when she said a final goodbye to Felicity, but they were short-lived. She’d made a real friend, and the two women promised to keep in touch.

The captain provided no such warmth. “Surprised you’re leaving after such a short time onboard. Guess it’s a hard life for a woman, long hours and the like. Probably better suited to a stronger body.”

She took a breath in and dug deep for her remaining reserves of courage. “You realize I’m only leaving because I’ve gotten a promotion?”

“Sure. Head office. I guess some people could call it a promotion.”

Michaela sighed. Was there really any point? The chauvinistic little man—what had she ever seen in him?

Just then, one of the dancing twins walked by, and Michaela saw the captain give her an unabashed up-and-down appraisal. “Think she’s a bit out of your league,” Michaela said. “It’s great that you’ve been able to withstand the rigors of life onboard so well—as a man, of course. But all these years at sea are starting to take their toll.”

Captain Atkinson’s face fell.

A young staffer came up at just that moment, and Michaela walked away, her smile building. After all this time, not only was she well and truly over the captain, but she’d got the last word. She gave herself a little hug. She was actually leaving, and she’d just proved she was ready to take on the world.

But later, alone in the room she’d called home for so long, she wondered again whether she was doing the right thing.

“Yes,” she said with a firm jaw. “Yes, I am, and anyway it’s too late now.” Much too late. The next cruise was planned, the staff contracted, and she’d just burned her bridges with the captain. There was no room for her here anymore.

It’s what you wanted, she reminded herself. And despite her sadness at leaving, a sense of anticipation was starting to build in her stomach.

…

Her journey from Auckland to Sydney was a thrill. Travel on planes was no great novelty in itself, but the view over the ocean from so high up offered a sharp contrast to what she was used to, and the team from head office had made sure she was well looked after.

But once she reached the open-plan office, which stretched over the entire tenth floor of an inner-city Sydney high-rise, she hit the ground running. Michaela was immediately shown to a desk, and Helen, who turned out to be a bright, chirpy woman, went through her duties and responsibilities. “I guess I’m your new boss, so I’ll need you to sign this,” she said, putting a contract in front of Michaela. In a daze, Michaela signed.

By the end of the day, she was thoroughly exhausted. Not only had she had to work her way through piles of bookings forms and hundreds of e-mails, but she was also in some sort of no-man’s-land time zone where it should have been much earlier than it was in Sydney. She couldn’t work out if it was Fiji time, Vanuatu time, or something completely different.

“Hi.” Helen came to sit on the edge of Michaela’s desk. “How’s your day been?”

“Oh, hi,” Michaela replied. ”I think I’m getting there.”

“Sorry to throw you in like this. Now perhaps you understand why we were so desperate for you to accept the job. We had a candidate start a while ago, but he just had no idea about the actual business of the ships. Then we interviewed a bunch of people, but none of them really got it. Everyone here knows about you, and we decided to try and poach you.”

“Everyone knows about me?”

“Heck, yes, the only woman cruise director in the whole fleet? Able to leap stupid captains in a single bound.”

“That’s very flattering, but…”

“Glad you think so. It’s great to have another awesome woman join the team.”

Michaela looked around and for the first time registered that it was almost an entirely woman-staffed operation. Nice.

“Anyways, the last guy leaving means there’s a backlog. I’ve been trying to get to it, but it’s just been impossible with my job as well. I’m sure you’ll pick it up in no time, though.”

Michaela wasn’t so sure. Sitting at the desk all day had made her back ache, and the seasickness feeling wasn’t dissipating.

In her hotel bed that night, Michaela ran through the changes her life had undertaken in these past months. Dylan had swept her off her feet and then just as swiftly disappeared, she’d left the only place she’d known as home for years to come to a strange city, and now she was living in an opulent hotel suite three times the size of her old stateroom. It even had a bathtub.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she promised aloud. “I’m going to be the best entertainment bookings manager they’ve ever had.”

The sigh that followed shouldn’t have been allowed, but it escaped anyway as her hand brushed over the empty side of her large bed. An emptiness somewhere behind her ribs nagged at her.

You just ticked off a job on your wish list, Michaela Western. You’re happy. You’re grateful. Move on.

But even with her pep talk in her mind, Michaela feel asleep thinking of Dylan and spent the night chasing him through her dreams.

…

Her first week on the job, she charged into her work and was astonished at just how much she could plow through. Needing to be able to change things at the last minute and having to work with incredibly short deadlines onboard really had made her into a perfect candidate for this position. In no time at all, she had learned the systems and gotten rid of the backlog. She also loved her new position more than she’d anticipated.

“Oh my God. You’re amazing,” Helen said.

“I aim to please,” Michaela replied, smiling. “I think I could probably make this process even more efficient if there was some way for the ship’s cruise directors to log in directly to our intranet when they got into port.”

“Don’t let me get in your way,” Helen said. “I’ll set you up a meeting with the IT team tomorrow.”

Michaela sat back in her chair with a smile of satisfaction. She was going to have to be careful—at this rate she’d make herself redundant, or at the very least the position wouldn’t provide enough work to keep her on full-time.

Well, they did hire me to make the position more efficient. I’m sure if I do that, they’ll just want me to work on their other systems to make them better, too.

Keeping busy was important, not just so she could prove herself in her new job but also to keep her mind off the memories that swept into her dreams and tugged at the cords she’d tied around her heart.

The memories of life at sea pulled at her physically, too, and every now and then a wash of nausea would still hit her as if she’d just left the boat.

After a week, she had to finally admit her seasickness wasn’t going away—and that it might be something else. Something much worse. She made a lunchtime appointment with a doctor near the office.

“So, you’re not feeling well? Tell me what’s not right,” the doctor said, flicking her long hair out of the way of her note pad.

“I’ve just come off working on a ship for six years,” Michaela began.

“Wow, that must be a big change.”

“Well, yeah, but I just don’t feel right. It’s been well over a week. I should have gotten over any issues with seasickness by now, shouldn’t I? I mean, I’ve had a few bouts with my land legs deserting me in the past, but it’s never lasted more than a day or two.”

“Hmm, yes. I would have thought you’d be feeling better by now,” the doctor said as she nodded her head.

“I’m just a bit nervous that I’ve picked up some weird tropical bug. We were always warned about it on board, and there was hand cleanser everywhere to try and stop the spread of any type of germs. You can imagine what it’s like if a stomach bug hits a ship of three thousand people with nowhere to go.”

“I hate to think. Tell me more about your symptoms.”

Michaela detailed the jet lag feelings, the nausea, and her general dislocation. But when she’d finished the doctor didn’t look at all perturbed—quite the opposite. She gave Michaela a gentle smile. “I can’t rule out the tropical bug possibility unless we do some tests, but there might be a more simple issue. When was your last cycle?”

“Cycle?”

“Your period. When did you last have one?”

“I don’t know,” Michaela said, growing more worried. This couldn’t be… Swallowing hard, she bit her lip. “I’ve been pretty irregular lately. But I don’t see what—”

“Could you be pregnant?”

The words that should have come out of Michaela’s mouth remained stuck, hard pellets of hope and fear and wonder in her throat. Could she be pregnant? The answer was one she didn’t really want to contemplate. But Dylan’s face in their Vanuatu hideaway flashed into her mind. They’d been caught up in the moment at first, but…

“No, I’ve always used protection.”

“Always?”

“Pretty much,” she said.

“Given that wasn’t an emphatic ‘yes,’ I think it would be simplest if we ruled out pregnancy first before we start doing any more complicated tests for a tropical parasite. Do you think you could pop along the hall and get a sample? Then we’ll do a test. I imagine you know what I mean.” The doctor opened a drawer and held out a small cup along with a thin package, its transparent strip revealing a slender plastic stick with a pink tip. Michaela paled.

“I, um, do you really think? Perhaps I could do it at home.”

“I think you should take a test now. If you’ve been feeling this way for a while and you are pregnant, we’ll want to check how far along you are.”

“I can’t be pregnant.”

“Then all we’ll get is a negative result. Nothing to worry about.”

Michaela bit a nail. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe if she closed her eyes…

When she opened them, the doctor gave her a concerned smile. “It’s best to find out one way or the other.”

“I just…I really have to get back to work.” Flustered, she looked down at her wrist before remembering she hadn’t worn a watch. Idiot.

The doctor sighed. “If I give you a test to take home, do you promise to take it?”

Michaela nodded.

“Okay. If you’re sure you have to go now.”

“I do.”

Michaela took the test and stuffed the package and its intimidating pink-tipped contents into her bag quickly before the woman changed her mind.

“Here, you better take a couple in case one isn’t clear.”

Michaela nodded, lost for words. After she’d accepted the tests, she left the doctor’s surgery at a near run.

Pregnant?

She couldn’t be. Not when she had only just started this job and her supervisors were so happy with her progress. Not when she hardly knew anyone in this town.

And definitely not without Dylan, a tiny voice in her head said.

What were the chances of that moment of overwhelming desire leading to a baby? Practically nonexistent. Infinitesimal.

Impossible.

They’d used a condom when it counted.

“I’m not pregnant,” she reassured herself. “It’s just my land legs taking longer to come back. I was at sea for a long time. I’ll be fine soon.”

Once decided, Michaela relegated the very possibility of a baby firmly to the bottom of her bag along with the pregnancy tests. They had used protection, after all.

They had, they had, they had. She repeated the mantra over and over under her breath on her walk back to the office.

By the time she got there, she believed it.

That afternoon she’d planned to tidy up the old files on her computer desktop. Each folder had around a hundred files in it, and Michaela was immersed for hours, working out what each file related to and undoing the complicated muddle of other people’s thoughts to make a proper system. Then she clicked on a file marked “dance team,” and without warning the words Dylan Johns jumped out at her. Her heart picked up its tempo. Putting her hands on her desk, Michaela pushed herself away from the computer and stood up. She walked away from the name on her screen and tried to calm the thud of her blood.

You were going to read something about him sooner or later. You probably have the personnel files of every dancer who ever worked for Adventurer Cruises on your computer.

That didn’t mean she had to look at them.

Moving through the simple act of making a cup of peppermint tea, Michaela took long breaths in and out. Breathe in, breathe out, you’re in control, you’re in charge.

But back at her desk, Dylan’s name stood out as if it were typed in bold, italicized, and underlined. Just for a moment, Michaela let the name bring back a wash of memory…

Dylan looking down at her as they stood together bathed in a tropical sunset. Dylan bursting out of the water, a giant clamshell in his hand and a brilliant smile on his face. Dylan’s sated green eyes looking down at her as they lay under the gossamer white drapes of their Vanuatu resort bed.

Enough. She moved the file into the appropriate folder, determined to block any more thoughts of Dylan from her mind. Every time his face flickered into her brain, she replaced it with the image of a bowl of ice-cream. She was in control, she was in charge, she was going to have to stop by the store on the way home for a tub of cookies and cream.

The day ended with no more mishaps, and Michaela walked back to her hotel happy with what she had achieved. It was only as she drifted off to sleep that the rest of the day’s activities began to play across her mind.

The dream she fell into was real. Entirely real. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a pregnancy test and handed it to Dylan. The thin line showed a positive result, and Dylan’s green eyes sparkled as he took it from her. But she realized his eyes weren’t sparkling with joy, they were sparkling with malice. She watched, helpless, as Dylan snapped the test stick in half and snarled at her with an angry wolf’s face. Centimeters from her nose, his long teeth glinted, and he opened his mouth—but instead of devouring her, he whispered, “You’re dreaming.”

Michaela woke in a sweat a full hour before her alarm was due to go off. As her heart rate calmed, the only emotion she allowed herself was relief that it hadn’t been real. Crazy, she hardly ever had dreams like that.

Maybe it’s because you’re pregnant, a small voice said.

“No.” The word came out louder than she intended.

Maybe it’s because you miss Dylan?

She sighed. It wouldn’t do her any good to yearn for Dylan. He was a lone wolf. He’d practically said so himself.

A wolf. He might have run off at the last, but he wasn’t vicious. She shook her head, determined not to think about Dylan or the possibility that she might be pregnant. Scared of falling back into the nightmare, Michaela got up and scanned through the apartment notices in the daily paper the hotel staff had pushed under her door. It was time she got on with her life and moved out of this hotel. The company had paid for her first week, but the hotel fees were now starting to eat into her pocketbook.

She circled a few possible apartments and decided she’d go and have a look over her lunch break. “Onward and upward,” she said as she walked out the door to the office.

At work, however, she found her fingers moving the mouse pointer to hover over the file containing Dylan’s details. I’ll just have a quick look to put it to rest so I don’t have any more of those nightmares.

“Contact care of McCray’s Finance,” she read out loud. Odd.

Clicking through the city listings, she found that McCray’s was on a road parallel to the street she was in now.

At lunchtime, telling herself she was going to check out an apartment that was just a few blocks away, Michaela walked to McCray’s Finance. It was housed in an impressive building, the clean lines of glass reflecting the clear blue Sydney sky. People walked quickly in and out, all dressed in suits and talking on cell phones or sipping at take-out coffee, the picture of busy corporate life. In the foyer, she could see a beautiful artwork, the reds of the Australian outback contrasting against green. Emerald green.

“Oh, excuse me.” One of the workers crashed into her as she took a step back to get the large painting in perspective. She turned and looked up into oceans of green. Holy hell. The man could have been Dylan’s twin—the same eyes, the same dark hair—but this man wore a sharp suit, carried a briefcase, and had a harried look about him that wasn’t Dylan’s.

“Michaela?”

But it was his voice. Her blood froze, her whole being frozen to the spot in shock.

“Oh my God, it is you,” he said. “What are you doing here? I mean, sorry, how are you? I’m so sorry again for leaving like I did.”

A flicker of the old Dylan flourished in the man’s eyes, but Michaela couldn’t believe it was him. Conscious she was staring, she pulled herself together. “Dylan? I thought you said it was a little family business?” She gestured at the building. She’d pictured a mom-and-pop shop, eight, maybe ten people maximum. Not that he’d elucidated.

What an ass. He’d clearly kept her in the dark on purpose. She didn’t know this man at all.

He looked down. “I don’t think I ever said it was little. This is the family business.”

“This? This is all yours? But your last name… Johns?”

Dylan looked at the woman he’d been forced to abandon long before he was ready. His heart swelled. Oh, she was a beautiful sight for his sore eyes. But his delight was short-lived. She was angry, her mouth downturned and her forehead furrowed.

Fair enough. His guilt at leaving her without explanation still kept him up some nights.

He realized his pause was making her ever angrier. “My mother is the McCray. My father named the company after her when he started it years ago.”

When he’d decided not to return to the ship, Dylan had been in a state of shock. He had thought disappearing and letting Michaela get on with her life was the right thing to do—the only thing he could do, considering the circumstances. But in the dark morning hours, sitting beside his mother’s bedside, his mind had wandered through the alternatives. He’d been forced to leave the ship, there was no question of that, but leaving Michaela?

In the end, he’d settled on a truth that made the most sense to him. They’d agreed on three months. She wanted to focus on her career. He could never give her the family, the husband she wanted and deserved. Work took up too much of his time and energy.

It would only have gotten harder for her—harder for both of them—the longer they drew it out. A clean break was the best option.

Now, the result of that option was staring at him, and the wound he saw in Michaela’s expression was anything but clean. Oh, what a mistake he’d made. She had been in his thoughts often enough, but he’d hoped she hadn’t felt his disappearance as keenly as he’d felt the pain of walking away from her.

She pasted on a smile that made his chest ache. “The girls on the dance team all joked that you were a stockbroker after you didn’t seem to care about losing the rest of your pay, but I never thought…”

“I’m not a stockbroker, but they weren’t that far off. My family firm runs a funds management service. Well, we run several, actually.” He looked at her, checking that she wasn’t about to break down.

“So you are loaded.” Michaela drew herself up to her full height.

He managed not to smile. She was some woman—strong and brave even in the worst circumstances.

He searched for something more neutral to talk about. “And you? On a break?”

“I got promoted to head office,” she said.

Head office. That meant she was in Sydney. Full-time. Great that she’d got the step up she wanted. Great she was off the boat. Maybe they could—could what? All his calculations crumbled around him. Michaela was here in Sydney. Available? Dylan’s head hummed with the possibilities. “Great. Probably a perfect fit for you…”

His cell buzzed.

Work interrupting again. Maybe this was good. Give her time to digest who he really was. That he lived and worked close by. “Look, I have to go, but please let me explain.” He wanted nothing more than to tell her everything right here, right now, but this turn of events was overwhelming. For him, if not for her. He had to be able to tell her why he’d left, but only when they had time to talk properly. And when his cell wasn’t buzzing insistently.

Checking the diary on his phone, he saw a free spot. “We’ll have dinner tonight. I’ll send a car for you. No—” He stopped her as she opened her mouth to speak. “Please don’t refuse. We should talk. You’ll be picked up at six.”

And with that he ran off into the towering building, guilt and a flicker of hope coursing through him.