Kieran Kramer - Cloudy with a Chance of Marriage

Since well before she’d married the odious Hector.

She took the captain’s arm and prayed she’d continue to believe he wasn’t charming or intelligent in the least. She didn’t need a neighbor who would make her wish she wasn’t trapped in a bad marriage to an awful man. And she most definitely didn’t want a neighbor who would uncover her secret—

That she was a runaway wife hiding from her husband.

“Here is your seat of honor, Miss Jones,” Stephen said as he guided her to a faded armchair in the parlor where the theatrics were to be held. He handed her a glass of punch. Their fingers tangled, and she flinched ever so slightly.

“It’s quite mild,” he assured her, pretending not to notice her reaction to his touch. It was a good sign, even if she did think she abhorred him. “I’m directing this piece, so I shall leave you two to be our audience. We invited Lady Duchamp and several other neighbors, as well, but no one responded.”

“Then they are fools, Captain,” Otis said. “This is a lovely home. It’s large and rambling—quite lopsided, in fact—but it’s full of people with spirit, passion, and style.”

“Do you agree, Miss Jones?” Stephen couldn’t resist asking her.

“I suppose I must,” said Miss Jones tartly, “if the compliment will hasten you back to your duties as stage director.”

He chuckled. “You’re rather a spitfire, aren’t you?”

“I’m nothing of the sort,” she said, and tossed her head.

He exchanged a look with Otis, who rolled his eyes, and left them. But from his position behind a potted palm near the front of the room, he watched Miss Jones focus on the stage. She was as guarded as ever, a vertical line on her brow. She took a tentative sip of the punch, and then several more.

No wonder. It was a delicious punch, Stephen’s own recipe.

Miss Jones’s eyes widened when he drew the curtain back and the actors appeared. His friends were dressed as women with coconut breasts, grass skirts, and awful wigs (all of which Stephen had accrued in various ports).

Miss Jones leaned forward in her chair and watched the players avidly. Her eyes sparkled at their witty repartee, which Stephen had written on a piece of foolscap that same morning. And then she laughed—a big, light, airy laugh—and clapped her hands madly at the conclusion.

Much to Stephen’s surprise, she’d turned out to be the type of audience member any playwright or actor would yearn for. In appreciation for her enthusiasm, the actors, led by Lumley, drew her up on their makeshift stage, which was really nothing more than an area of the drawing room emptied of furniture and rugs and flanked by standing candelabra. She immediately fell into the part they desired her to play, Queen of the Coconut Girls.

Otis begged to be allowed onstage as well, hopping up and down in his seat, so Lumley called him up and urged him to play the King of the Fire Dance.

Then someone began playing a set of small, primitive drums Stephen had purchased in the islands.

It was at that point, when Miss Jones began a lively dance, a wreath of flowers sliding off her head, that he realized his prudish neighbor was a bit tipsy. Of course, he’d planned for that. He’d had designs on her since he’d first seen her, but now—

Now he wasn’t so sure he should pursue them, at least that evening, not when she was in her cups.

Timing was everything. He knew that from the war. And now Miss Jones was pushing him out of the way to get to the window on the second floor so she could drop a bag of water on the target painted on the pavement outside 34 Dreare Street.

He was surprised he hadn’t noticed earlier that she had vivid black eyebrows made for drama. And glossy black hair done up in a tight knot begging to be unraveled. Her eyes, the startling violet-blue color of pansies, stared up into Stephen’s own with obvious pleasure.

“Watch this, Captain!” she cried lustily, and leaned out the window with her paper bag of water. The sun was just setting behind the massive holly bushes at the top of the street.

Plop.

“Bull’s-eye!” She yelled her delight then drew her head back in the window. “Another! Get me another!”

Lumley and his cohorts raced to get her another bag while Otis clapped madly.

Stephen yanked Lumley to a stop. “What in bloody hell did you put in the rum punch?”

Lumley shrugged. “The usual.”

“The usual? For a lady ? I said to make it strong but not that strong. Just enough to make her somewhat malleable to the suggestion that she’s out of order expecting us to be as goody-goody as she.”

Lumley had the grace to blush. “Well, you can’t taste the rum. Not with all that delicious coconut milk and bits of orange in it,” he said defensively and paused. “I like your Miss Jones. She’s the most sporting female I’ve ever met. You should do everything you can to stop being such a vast annoyance to her.”

Stephen glowered at him, but Lumley didn’t seem to notice. His impatient, determined expression suggested he had more important things on his mind, such as filling paper bags with water. He moved on to do Miss Jones’s bidding.

“I think it’s time you went home, Miss Jones,” Stephen said in his best captain’s voice.

She frowned. “Whatever for? We’ve all night. Stand aside, Captain, and let the true merrymakers have their way.”

She looked at him as if he were the dullest man on earth.

Stephen wasn’t used to being considered dull. In fact, the assessment quite wounded him.

And he also wasn’t accustomed to insubordination. He hadn’t tolerated it on board navy ships, and he certainly wouldn’t in his own house.

“Your store,” he said to Miss Jones. “It needs tending.”

“What do you know about it?” she said, flagrantly defying him. “ I’m the proprietress of Hodgepodge. I make all the decisions there.”

Well, then .

He turned a steely eye to Otis. “Doesn’t the store need attention, Otis?”

“Surely not, Captain.” Otis was wide-eyed. “It’s closed for the day.” And he turned his back on him and went skipping off to assist Miss Jones.

Good God. What was happening here? Whatever it was, Stephen didn’t like it. He didn’t like it the way a sailor doesn’t like a red sky in the morning, which signaled squalls ahead.

He maneuvered himself closer to his two guests, which involved squeezing in between them at the window.

“It is a late hour,” he lied. Somehow without elbowing anyone in the ribs, he managed to take his watch out and observe the face in an obvious manner. “And I’ve got an early-morning meeting. Do go home now, Miss Jones. You’ll escort her, Otis?”

About an inch from Stephen’s face, Otis gave a sloppy salute. “Demmed right, Cap’n.”

That was better. Sort of.

Stephen gradually moved out his elbows so neither one had any room left and waited for the two of them to figure out his silent message. Somehow, they never did—Miss Jones almost hit him in the eye with her own elbow—but after three more plops, she’d had enough and decided to go home.

“Not to tend to Hodgepodge,” she said, eyeing him askance when she rose from her perch. “But because I’m tired.”

She took Otis’s arm, and he patted her hand. “I am as well. I think.”

Stephen watched the two of them walk ahead of him toward the stairs. But Otis’s shoe, adorned with gaudy rubies and pearls no doubt made of paste, had lost a heel, a fact its owner hadn’t noticed until now. He was so busy looking for it, he knocked over a small table, whereupon a tumbler of punch fell and hit him on the head.