Sara K. Parker - Undercurrent

She’d venture to guess Sam didn’t, either. He seemed determined to ignore his grandmother’s comment.

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes, but it was a battle to get him to practice. Whenever I was in charge of the kids, I’d have to stand over Sam or he would slip out of the house before I could catch him. And now look at us—he’s the one standing over me! The family sent him to babysit me, you know.”

Kat bit her lip to keep from laughing at the woman’s indignant expression.

“Grandma,” Sam said and sighed. “I think you should—”

“Kat!” someone shouted, and she knew without looking who it was.

Max.

Just about the last person in the world she wanted to see. She reigned in her irritation. A journalist for a regional magazine, Max had knocked on her cabin door their second day of cruising. He’d claimed his editor had assigned him a travel piece, but Kat didn’t buy it. He wrote for the entertainment department, not travel, and had never written anything else in the fourteen months they’d dated. The fact that his new assignment put him on ship with Kat seemed a little too coincidental.

“Kat!” he called again.

Much as she wanted to ignore him, she felt compelled to wait as he jogged toward her. He sidled up next to her, obvious concern in his blue eyes. Eyes that had once drawn her to him. They did have a way of appearing genuine. Even now, she found herself believing he was concerned for her, that he truly did care about her.

He’d proven the opposite, though, back in April when Kat had been in the hospital.

“What happened? Are you okay?” His gaze slid to Sam, who was watching the exchange intently, his gray eyes devoid of emotion. Alice watched, too, her red hat askew, her eyes flashing with interest.

“I’m fine.” Her answer was clipped, and she saw a look of hurt pass through Max’s eyes. She had never been good at rudeness, and she caved to the puppy-dog expression. “The chandelier above the piano fell in the atrium during my performance. It was a close call.”

“I should have been there,” he said, and Kat held back a sigh.

She, for one, was glad he hadn’t been. He’d sat in the front row of her other three performances on board. She found his presence odd and irritating, being that he’d never shown a huge interest in her career when they were dating. He was tone-deaf, his singing at church rivaling the mournful cry of a hungry calf, and he’d always preferred a loud ball game to a quiet concert. That should have been a red flag, but she’d somehow allowed herself to ignore it.

“Why?” she asked as Sam stopped in front of the door to her room.

“I could have made sure you were okay.” He glanced at Sam and frowned.

Kat wished she’d known Max had planned to purchase a ticket on the cruise. She would have made sure her room wasn’t on the same deck as his. Ever since the breakup, he’d been campaigning to win her back. But following her aboard the cruise had taken his efforts to a whole new level of obnoxious.

“She was okay, and she still is,” Sam cut in. “You should probably do what the captain said and return to your stateroom.”

“I’ll just make sure she gets settled in her room. Thanks for walking her here.” Max tried to dismiss Sam, but Sam wasn’t taking the hint. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, dark eyes steady on Kat.

“You want to go ahead and open the door?” he asked, and her cheeks heated.

“Right.” She reached for her purse, then realized she didn’t have it. “I don’t have my keycard. I left it with the concierge before the performance.”

“Come on down to my room, Kat,” Max suggested, and she almost laughed at his earnestness. As if he was her knight in shining armor instead of a cheating sleaze.

“No.” She didn’t add thank you , though the polite woman her parents had raised her to be demanded it. Morgan would have been proud.

Sam glanced at Max and back to Kat. “Are you traveling with someone who has another keycard?”

Kat shook her head. “No, but please don’t worry about me. I don’t mind waiting out the time upstairs.”

“Nonsense,” Alice said. “Come to my room. It’s no time to be alone.”

“Really, I can—”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Alice insisted. “All this drama has really shaken me.” She pressed her hand to her chest and heaved a deep sigh.

“Grandma,” Sam warned. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she responded, straightening her hat and brushing her hand down her bright red shorts.

“Act like you’re on death’s door to get Kathryn to go with you.”

“Who says I’m acting?” Alice said. “We’re all on death’s door. Now, come on. To my room. I need to journal everything before I forget it.” She grabbed Kat’s hand, and Kat didn’t have the heart to pull away.

Besides, it didn’t seem like the time to argue. Not when the captain had asked everyone to return to their staterooms and not when Kat’s legs still felt shaky with the remnants of her fear. And certainly not when Max was watching with the hangdog expression he’d been wearing every time she’d seen him since the cruise had begun.

He caught up with her again, his dark hair ruffled, fists clenched at his sides. It wasn’t a good look for him. He’d always been a laid-back kind of guy with a whatever-makes-you-happy attitude. It was one of the things she’d liked about him. But it had been their downfall in the end. He’d done what made him happy, and she couldn’t forget it.

“You can go back to your own room, Max.” She said the words quietly, trying not to make a scene.

He didn’t take the hint. “I’m worried about you, Kat. Let me just walk you to this kind lady’s room and—”

“I’m fine , Max.”

“I think what she means to say is that you’re not invited.” Sam speared Max with a warning look that stopped her ex in his tracks.

Max glared. She thought he might argue, but true to form, he turned from conflict. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

* * *

Sam didn’t know who Max was, but he didn’t like the guy. As a matter of fact, right at the moment, there were a lot of things he didn’t like. He didn’t like that Kathryn had almost been killed by a falling chandelier in the atrium. He didn’t like that his grandmother was on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where there had just been a significant fire. And he didn’t like the feeling of unease that had latched on to him right before the explosion and hadn’t let up since.

An image flashed through his memory. The man he’d seen hurrying out of the atrium and into the coffee shop. He’d let Security know about that. Maybe they could pull up footage and get an ID on the guy. Just to be safe.

He led the women to room 1237 and waited impatiently for his grandmother to open the door. He wanted to go back down to the atrium, talk to Security, see if they had any ideas about what had caused the explosion.

Finally, his grandmother managed to dig out her keycard from the oversize bag she was carrying and opened the door.

Kat hesitated at the doorway, and he nudged her forward. He didn’t want her wandering around the cruise ship any more than he wanted Grandma doing it. The safest place for both of them was exactly where they were.

THREE

“Well.” Alice crossed the room and dropped onto the bed. “I was looking for excitement when I signed up for this cruise, but a falling chandelier and a fire were not what I’d anticipated.” She took off her hat and tossed it on the nightstand beside her.

“I’d offer to call for some tea, but my hands are still shaking something fierce,” Grandma said.