A Royal Christmas Cruise: Stonewall Investigations Miami Read online

  “I saw this movie last night,” I barreled on, feeling as if I had to explain myself, “and it gave me the idea. We don’t have to do any of the real boyfriend stuff. We’ll set rules. No sex and you know, other stuff…”

  Nick cocked his head to the side. “What kind of other stuff?”

  “Oh, so that part you want to ask about?”

  His smile flashed before it went out like a broken Christmas light. “A fake boyfriend?” he asked again, as if he couldn’t hear me over the roaring sound of closed books.

  “Yes…” Should I be backtracking? Nick’s smile, his kiss, his eyes, they all fried my brain, turning my thoughts into scrambled eggs. Maybe I’d had a temporary moment of dick-sanity. Maybe I should be telling him it was all a mistake…

  But what if he agreed to my crazy plan?

  He bit his bottom lip, his eyes casting down at the floor. This wasn’t the expression of a man who was about to agree to be my fake boyfriend for a few weeks.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at my Apple Watch and quickly read the text message from Jada: We’re all on the ship, in the atrium! Where r u?

  I’m currently making a damn fool of myself, is where I am.

  Nick looked back up from the floor, his blue-gold eyes reflecting enough light that he could easily cosplay as a lighthouse. A sexy lighthouse.

  Now that would be a good Halloween costume.

  “Shy, being your fake boyfriend actually sounds like exactly what I need on this trip.”

  So then why was I sensing a “but” just around the corner—and not the good kind of butts, the ones I liked to squeeze.

  “Pero…”

  Ah, the Spanish “but,” one of my favorite kinds. I opened my mouth to tell him forget about it. Nick cut me off.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I knew it was coming, and yet still, it felt like a fresh slap from a jellyfish. In the span of fifteen seconds, I had made myself over-the-moon excited at the idea of even being fake boyfriends with this handsome Prince Charming. It felt like the perfect way to stick it to Mason, while having fun on my vacation and avoiding any awkward convos at the same time.

  “Right, I get it,” I said, having a hard time getting it. We clearly had chemistry, and sure I didn’t even know his last name, but wasn’t that all part of the fun? The discovery of it all?

  His beautiful (ugh, I mean annoying) lips turned down into a frown. “I don’t mean it as in I wouldn’t like being your boyfriend. Fake or otherwise. It’s just… complicated. Very fucking complicated.”

  I nodded, trying to keep it as chill as I could. “It was a dumb idea,” I said, throwing dirt on the dying fire between us.

  “No, it wasn’t dumb at all.”

  I wanted to ask him why couldn’t he just say yes then, but the last thing I wanted to do was push on an already dead idea. Whatever, I’d just go meet up with my friends and have a good time on this cruise, even if I did end up being the seventh wheel.

  A sound from the aisle over made us both perk up. For some reason, being with Nick in this private corner made it feel as if we had taken a rocket ship up into orbit, where no one else could bother us, where no one could see me making a complete fool of myself.

  I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. “All right, well, we should get going. I think they’re boarding the ship.”

  “Right, we should…”

  “What?”

  He licked his lips. I knew what was coming next, and I didn’t fight it in the slightest. Nick reached up, both hands on either side of my face, and he kissed me. It must have been meant as a “goodbye” kiss, a “one last time” kiss.

  So why did it feel like a “just beginning” kiss?

  I walked out of the bookshop wiping at my lips. I didn’t want to be smiling, considering how I had just had my hopes dashed, and yet my lips wouldn’t stop curling. I still felt like a flustered mess, though, as I made my way through the big warehouse waiting area and onto the ship. The entire way there, I kept mentally reprimanding myself, reliving the moment I had lost all sense and blurted out a question that would surely haunt me for the rest of my life. Like the ghost of embarrassing Christmas past, coming at me in the middle of the night, rattling chains and whispering the words “boyfriend, fake, please” over and over again.

  I shook off a chill but couldn’t shake off the feeling of regret that followed me as I swam my way through the growing crowd, going up the ramp and stepping onto the ship for the first time, being greeted by a smiling worker who let me know where my cabin would be. I walked straight ahead, the corridor having been transformed into a holiday wonderland, with fake snow crunching under my feet, the red floor underneath popping through the track marks left behind by the rolling suitcases. There was a wooden signpost at the end of the hall, pointing the way to the food court, the atrium, the pool, and the North Pole.

  I went left, toward the atrium, through a curving gold-and-white-striped walkway. There were large sticks of cinnamon resting in tall, clear vases, filling the air with their scent, making it feel like I was walking through a busy bakery, their display cases filled with warm holiday treats.

  The ship’s atrium could only be described as grand, made even more so by the elegant touch of Christmas decorations set throughout. The atrium was all about subtlety. There were wreaths made of tinsel and red ribbon-covered garland hanging on the gold-trimmed oak walls. A scattering of hand-sized snowflakes had been dusted on the glass walls of the elevator, and the curving staircase had its banister wrapped in garland. The centerpiece of the room was the twelve-foot-tall pine tree, the branches full and thick with pine needles, a string of white lights placed perfectly in spiraling rows up its entire length. There were ornaments glittering against the white lights, gold and silver and royal blue. A mixture of balls and stars and icicles. At the very top, the tree was crowned with a large star radiating light, bright enough to shine even through the sunlight that streamed in through the glass ceiling.

  I looked around the crowd, feeling my near-deadly case of embarrassment and self-inflicted dumbassery begin to wane. The shame was being replaced by a buzzing excitement that started off low and blasted right to the sky the second I spotted my friends.

  Jada and I made eye contact first. Her squeal alerted the rest, the two of them whipping around and breaking out into wide smiles.

  I ran over to them, my heart already feeling full to the brim.

  “You guys!” I shouted as the group all came in for hugs, shouts and squeals of excitement filling the air. It felt so good hugging my friends again, after having been apart for years. Like I had just walked into my mom’s kitchen after having spent months away at college, smelling her cooking for the first time, the spices and warmth reminding me of easier times.

  I put my hands on Lou’s shoulders, shaking him, surprised at how big he looked. He used to be as frail as a twig and now looked just as muscular as me. Jada had an arm looped around my waist, her head on my shoulder, her soft brown curls smelling like coconut, just like they had on the days we’d all run off to the beach and lie out, gossiping and laughing and listening to music for the entire day.

  Ace clapped his hands and bounced up and down on his heels next to me, his smile lighting up his youthful face. If the three of us had all changed in some way or another, Ace had remained the same, his face somehow being preserved as if he’d just popped out of a time capsule after being frozen in time. He still had his one dimple and his almost perfectly placed beauty marks dotting his unwrinkled face.

  Damn him. Damn him to youthful hell.

  “This is insane, you guys,” Ace said, looking around at the group. “How long has it been since we’ve all been together?”

  “Like four years now. Since we graduated college and got scattered in the postgrad wind,” Jada said, her hair brushing my ear as she separated from me.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, we’ve got to promise never to go that long again.” Being around my crew felt good. I real
ized I had gone a good three minutes without thinking about Nick and my crazy-ass proposal. My cheeks flushed with warmth.

  Well, three minutes is a record at least.

  “We’ve got to introduce the significant others,” Ace cheerily said and turned to the smiling man behind him. He was taller than Ace by a good foot, by my guess, and he seemed older, too, with smile lines that crinkled the space next to his big green eyes, which popped against the pastel-yellow shirt he was wearing. “This is Rex.”

  Because of course the most innocent appearing one of us would go out and find a man named Rex who looked like he could split him in half with a look alone.

  I had to remember to have a secret toast with Ace—he’d done well.

  “And this is Ken.” It was Jada’s turn, who reached for Ken’s hand, their fingers locking in what appeared to be a vise grip. I could almost see Ken’s dark skin go pale at the force.

  “He’s an EMT. We met on the field.”

  “Not over something gruesome, I hope?” Lou asked, his girlfriend standing next to him but lost in something on her phone.

  “Oh no,” Ken said, waving a hand in the air. “It was one of the most benign calls I’d ever gotten actually. We thought it was an actual emergency at first, but we get to the house and it’s Edith Windham asking for us to open her jar of Nutella. So I credit Nutella for a lot of my happiness,” Ken said, laughing.

  “So do I,” Jada echoed.

  “Can I credit Nutella for my happiness, too?” I chimed in.

  Ken definitely complemented Jada, standing only a little taller than her and having similar curly brown hair, except his curls were much tighter than Jada’s. He had a genuine smile that made me trust him right away. I felt like I had a good sense of character, especially after working the past year at Stonewall Investigations, and Ken struck me as a good guy.

  “Speaking of your happiness,” Ace said, crossing his hands, “where’s Mason?”

  “Eh, right. Mason.”

  Shit… crap.

  I should have just been honest with them from the start. I should have texted the group chat and said Mason and I were done. It was made especially difficult because we all knew Mason. He wasn’t someone I’d just be introducing to the group. Mason had gone to school with us and had always been around in some capacity or another. It just so happened that a couple of years ago, we each had a bottle of wine and ended up divulging a lot of mutually shared and mutually repressed feelings for the other. We started dating and had a decent go of it.

  And now, here I was, standing as the lone ranger, having to stumble my way into a “we broke up” speech and potentially dampen the holiday reunion.

  A finger tapped me on my shoulder. I silently said a “thank god” and turned, quickly following it up with a silent “what the fuck?”

  Nick stood there, a friendly smile on his handsome, unobscured face, his cap flipped so that a tuft of jet-black hair fell out, catching the sunlight that fell from the glass ceiling in waves. He held out something in his hand, and it took me a moment to realize he meant for me to grab it.

  “Here, you dropped this back there, Shy.”

  I grabbed the ChapStick, placing it in the pocket where my ChapStick already was. “Thank you,” I said, confused as all hell.

  “These your friends?”

  “Um, yeah,” I said, thinking quick. “Everyone, this is Ni—”

  “Neal. And I’m Shy’s bo—”

  “He’s my friend,” I jumped back in. “Mainly Mason’s friend. He couldn’t make it, so Mason sent Neal in his place. Didn’t want to waste his ticket.”

  This had ratcheted up to a new level of odd. Why was Nick changing his mind, and name, for that matter? I was fine playing this game, but I had to clarify the friend part, because I wasn’t about to jump back into the fake-boyfriend thing when I wasn’t even sure of this guy’s real name. Fake friends would be fine for now.

  “All right,” I said, looking around at the group, a Mariah Carey holiday classic playing over the speakers. “Let’s drop off our things and explore the ship. Everyone meet on the dick in—”

  “Did you… just say dick?” Ace asked in a singsong voice, eyes wider than normal.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did,” Nick-Neal said in a cocky tone, with a smirk I wanted to kiss right off his face.

  “I think I’d know if I said dick instead of deck… damn it. I said dick, didn’t I?”

  The group started to laugh. Even with the addition of a complete (and devastatingly handsome) stranger, for some reason, maybe because it was the Christmas season, I felt like I was suddenly surrounded by immediate family. A warmth filled my heart, tingling its way through me. I still wondered why the hell I had two ChapSticks in my pocket and a new fake friend who had just shared a mind-blowing and secret kiss with me, a kiss I would replay in every one of my fantasies for the foreseeable and discernable future.

  Well, this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of year…

  5 Nicholas Silva

  I had left my suitcase in my suite and freshened up before heading to the deck. Or dick, as Shy liked to refer to it as.

  I found myself excited to see him, even though we’d just separated something like fifteen minutes ago. He was entertaining in all kinds of ways. Not just in the fact that he was more than easy to look at, but he was also quick-witted and fun to talk with. I could tell he’d be fun to toy with, too.

  But we’re just friends. Fake friends, for that matter.

  Which, honestly, would probably serve us both better. When I went up to him, I had been thinking with everything but my head. I followed what my heart shouted for—and my dick twitched for. I wanted Shiro—that kiss had left me with a craving I had to feed. So I spotted him in the crowd and approached him, ready to play the part of his fake boyfriend. If some kind of news leaked off the ship, then I’d deal with it then. For now, I was going to chase the object of my intense desire.

  We stood on the deck as it started to fill with more passengers, hanging out until the ship’s departure. The sun was high up in the sky, a curvy white cloud inching its way over, shading the cruise ship inch by inch. The pool, still closed, was in front of us, and a large polar bear sculpture stood on its two hind legs and appeared to be dipping its clawed toe into the pool. Shiro leaned an elbow on the standing tabletop we stood next to, resting his head on his fist as he looked out at Miami Bay.

  “You lied to them,” I said, wanting to talk before his friends joined us.

  “Yes, I know that.” He tilted his head, not moving it off his fist. The way the sunlight played with the yellow and gold in his eyes cast a spell on me. “Are you also responsible for steering this ship, Captain Obvious?”

  I arched a brow. Shiro had a spiciness to him. I liked it—I enjoyed batting a little with some back-and-forth.

  “If you’re a pathological liar, I’d like to know now before we really do go on with this fake friendship.”

  “Pathological liar? Then why’d you tell everyone your name was Neal when you told me it was Nick?”

  That lie had taken even me by surprise. I wasn’t set on lying to them, but the way one of them was looking at me—Ace I think his name was—I felt like he may have known something. Of course, I couldn’t tell any of this to Shiro, so I just had to dodge around it.

  “I use my middle name more often than my first.”

  “So what do I call you?” I could tell Shiro was trying to figure out whether he could trust me or not. His eyes bounced between mine. His tongue pushed at his upper lip.

  “You can call me Nick.”

  His face scrunched. “Fine, Nick. Here’s the thing. I don’t need your fake friendship. I just wanted to dodge the boyfriend question, and you came up at a convenient time. You’re technically my douchebag ex’s friend, so you can go do whatever you want. Spend your holidays judging someone else.”

  That shocked me. “I’m not judging anyone.” Did he really think that’s what I
was doing? The one who’d been scared of judgment his entire life. I knew the pain of having a magnifying lens tuned to every part of your existence, and I would never want to turn that magnifying glass against someone else.

  “I’m not judging you,” I said, a little more forcefully.

  He looked up at me with a pair of amber-brown eyes that almost knocked me right off the banister and into the water.

  “Well, either way.” He brought his reflective sunglasses down on his face, leaving me with a view of myself and hiding those liquid-gold orbs. “You don’t have to be my fake friend.”

  “All right, fine. Forget about the fake part.” I leaned back on the banister. The cool breeze whipped around us, lifting up a corner of Shiro’s loose white shirt. A flash of soft skin caught my attention before it was hidden back from my sight.

  “I don’t need more friends either. It’s fine, Nick. Thank you for letting me use you as a buffer for awkward questions right now. I’m sure I’ll get trashed and spill it all later, so it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have asked you to be my fake boyfriend either. I put you in a weird position. Sorry.”

  “Trust me, that wasn’t a weird position.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Not at all.” I winked at him. “I can show you a few weird positions.”

  Shiro chuckled at that. He leaned against the table, looking me up and down. I lifted my chin. There was something about Shiro that hooked me. Was it in that subtle smile he seemed to always wear, even when someone (me) was beginning to grate on his very last nerve? Or was it because I could see something else, glittering even brighter than his smile.

  Could it have been that kiss we shared? I had only kissed one man before Shiro, and that had been fueled by a night of tequila drinking and salsa dancing. I could barely remember how that night felt. How his lips had felt, how his tongue tasted.

  Not with Shiro. I could still feel his lips against mine, his tongue slipping past mine, his hard body fitting with mine.