“Yeah.” Kat looked up at him, eyes wide. “It is! And…” The words were gone, her mind suddenly blank, and Kat realized that she could no longer think, much less plan or theorize, plot or scheme. “And I’m not leading you guys into almost certain chaos.” She shook her head. “Not again.”
Hale shrugged. “I for one like chaos. Chaos looks good on me.”
“You should get away from me. You should save yourselves before I make you pass out or catch the measles or spontaneously combust or something.” She looked at Hale for a long time, then shook her head. “I can’t make you do this. Any of you. I can’t—”
“Hey!” Hale crossed the small space between them in a flash. “No one makes me do anything. Not my family. Not your family…not even you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“If I wanted to go, I’d go. But if I’m here, then I’m here. All of me.” Kat felt his free hand brush her hair away from her face. “So what’s it gonna be, Kat?”
It’s a great curse of the con that you can look at anything and see a dozen angles. There are always loopholes, wormholes, cracks that you can slip through if only you know how to see them. And Kat was the kind of girl who had to see them. But right then, with Hale so close and the moon so bright, her mind was filled with nothing but fog.
“I think better when I’m alone, Hale. I’m better alone.”
“No.” Hale shook his head. “You really aren’t.”
“No one else is going to get hurt because of me!” Kat gave an involuntary glance at Gabrielle, who hobbled forward.
“You think sending me away is going to keep me from getting hurt?” her cousin asked. “Ha! I’m cursed, Kitty Kat. And the way I see it, my best bet at getting uncursed is to put that rock back where it belongs. So, sorry. You’re stuck with me.”
Kat looked at Simon, who took his place beside Gabrielle. “I’m not going back to those mosquitoes.”
She turned to Hale, who didn’t say a thing. He just pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to Gabrielle. “Make the call.”
Kat watched her cousin dial, heard her say, “Hey, Mom. Yeah, I don’t think I can make it to Paraguay. See, I met this duke…”
A few moments later, the phone was passed to Simon, who left a message for his father about a lecture he just had to hear at MIT.
Kat knew the argument was over. The job, however, was only just beginning, so she turned to Hale and asked, “Where’s the hotel?”
“Well, see, I thought hotel was really more of a suggestion and…” He turned and pointed to a long pier, a bobbing motorboat, and Marcus, who stood at attention, waiting.
“What’s that?” Kat asked.
“That’s our ride.”
CHAPTER 20
Katarina Bishop did not always land on her feet. She’d had a lot of identities, it was true, but she didn’t have nine lives. So it was with great amusement the next morning that Simon and Hale sat on the beautifully appointed deck furniture, staring at the clear blue water of the Mediterranean, and Simon said, “What do you mean, Kat’s afraid of water?”
“Terrified.” Hale sounded like someone who desperately wanted to be serious. But couldn’t.
Kat tried to protest, but that would have required stepping out onto the deck. And the deck had the rail. And if the rail failed, the deck also had a long drop to water and a longer swim to shore; so Kat was quite happy listening from inside, thank you very much.
Simon turned and yelled through the open sliding doors to where Kat stood, regretting that she’d ever gotten onto that boat or out of bed.
“Are you really that afraid of water?”
“I’m not afraid of water, Simon,” Kat yelled. “I’m afraid of drowning. There’s a difference.”
“I thought you knew how to swim,” Gabrielle said, stretching out on one of the chaise longues, handing Simon a bottle of suntan lotion, and rolling onto her stomach in the universal signal for Do my back.
“Of course I can swim. I can also remember a very unfortunate incident involving Uncle Louie, the Bagshaws, and a cruise ship off the coast of Belize.”
“You’re fine, Kitty Kat.” Gabrielle slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and the largest, floppiest hat that Kat had ever seen, and it occurred to her for one brief second how spoiled she really was. After all, there are worse things than spending the end of February on a private yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean with friends and family (especially, let’s face it, with friends who look like Hale).
She stole a glance at him. I kissed Hale. Then the boat listed gently, and Kat’s empty stomach swayed. She honestly thought she might be sick.