Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) Read Free Page B

Captain is seated behind his oak-paneled
desk, which has been polished to gleam. Various paraphernalia sit
on this table – a tiny ship’s model, a complicated compass system,
documents, pens, assorted bric-bracs. The walls are filled with
more navigation equipment and charts. There are several books on
the shelves, but I can see that these are behind locked glass
cabinets so as not to allow anything to fall off while the ship
lists.
    Captain Victor Krazycek is as handsome as I
remember him, though he’s a little too old for my tastes. He looks
to be in his early forties, with black hair and stormy grey eyes
which make me think of the ocean during a tempest – only that I
have never been in a tempest. (OK, he’s not old old by most
people’s standards, but I’m only twenty-three and he’s certainly
old enough to be my father if he had me when he was twenty.)
    I can well imagine a man who looks and
carries himself the way he does to have garnered and to continue to
garner a lot of female attention. I can also well imagine him
sowing his wild oats at every port he calls. Probably a lot of
children around the world can lay claim to Captain Victor being
their father, and more probably my imagination is being carried
away by the majesty of this man before me.
    I clear my throat. He looks up at me intently
with his piercing grey eyes that seem to look right through me. I
almost have to take a step back with the impact.
    “Captain, uh, Victor . . . you asked to see
me?”
    “Yes. You must be Ms. Hall.”
    “Please call me Rebecca.” I say in a gush.
Not for flirtation purposes, mind you, but it makes me
uncomfortable to be addressed as Ms. Hall. That was what my most
hated professor, Mr. Thurston, used to call me.
    How nice of you to join us today, Ms. Hall.
I trust you’ve had a good nap on your desk just now.
    The Captain gestures to one of the two chairs
before his desk.
    “Please, sit down.”
    I seat myself with a scrape of the chair. My
pulse is racing. I suspect I am about to be admonished.
    “Ms. Hall.”
    “Rebecca.”
    “Rebecca.” The Captain pauses to appraise me.
I know I look a little sweaty and disheveled running around in the
summer heat, and so I’m not at my best. “There has been a complaint
about you from one of my crew members.”
    Yes. I was expecting this.
    “I can explain,” I say. “I – ”
    “How can you explain something when you don’t
even know what it is?” he chides.
    Right. I must appear quite contrite, because
he chuckles.
    “You’re a feisty young woman, Rebecca. Now,
on to the complaint. One of my crew members has made a complaint
about you as to what happened this morning.”
    My cheeks flush. “Captain, it was very wrong
of me to lose my temper like that, I admit. But your crew member
and I go a long way back, and he did something very terrible back
then. Something I never forgave him for.”
    His grey eyes dance. “So you knew Mr. Kartik
before this?”
    I am nonplussed.
    “Mr. Kartik?”
    “Yes. Mr. Kartik was my crew member who made
the complaint about you.”
    “Oh.” I guess I was expecting him to say ‘Mr.
Taylor’.
    “So . . . do you know Mr. Kartik?”
    “Uh, no, I don’t.”
    He smiles. He must think I’m an impetuous
dope.
    He says, “Mr. Kartik observed you throwing a
pail of water at Kurt Taylor, who is a guest of the state of New
York.”
    “Huh?”
    “You did throw water at Kurt Taylor, did you
not, Rebecca?”
    “Yes, I did. And I do know who Kurt Taylor
is. I just don’t understand the part about the ‘guest’.”
    He gives me a quizzical expression. “Do you
know what happened to Kurt Taylor, Rebecca?”
    I frown. “No, I don’t.”
    He raises his eyebrows as if to say: “Don’t
you follow the news?”

KURT
     
    After Rebecca Hall dumped the pail of dirty
water on me, I stare at her retreating form for a whole minute,
stunned.
    Until the little tyke reminds me, “Hey,
aren’t you gonna get changed? You’re dripping all over