“We have mutual friends,” I say, eyeing him as closely as he’s eyeing me.
“I didn’t realize that,” JP says. “I wonder why she didn’t mention you know each other?”
“Know each other is a stretch,” I tell him with a humorless grin. “Like I said, we have mutual friends. One of my teammates is married to her cousin. We’ve met a few times before.”
“She’s here somewhere,” JP says, scanning the deck.
Considering that at the Christmas party, she basically fled the scene as soon as she realized I was there, I wouldn’t lay odds on actually getting to speak to her. She’ll probably jump overboard. Knowing she’s here, though, shouldn’t make me feel this way. I barely know the woman. Correction. I do not know the woman, and she has made it clear she doesn’t want to know me. Amanda wants to know me. Bridget claims to want me back. I could find a dozen, no, more, women tonight who want me.
And perversely, I’m drawn to the one who doesn’t.
“I’ll find her,” JP interrupts my inner monologue, “and call her over.”
“That’s not necessary.” I say it half-heartedly because I don’t plan to stop him.
“Yari,” JP calls across the deck. “Where’s Lo?”
An attractive Latina woman—maybe Puerto Rican, Dominican—turns her head from the person she’s talking to. Her eyes drift from JP to me and back again.
“Upper deck maybe?” Yari answers with a shrug.
“Be a doll,” JP says drolly, “and go get her for me?”
She says something to the person standing with her and then disappears up a set of stairs.
JP, Chase, and Amanda continue talking, moving on in the conversation. I’m tuned into the discussion with half an ear and a quarter of my attention. I’m starting to believe Lotus really did abandon ship rather than see me when her friend Yari returns.
And Lotus follows.
Somehow she looks different every time I see her, but there is something about her that never seems to change. I’ve seen her with platinum braids and hair cut so short it framed her face, but I should have known better than to think I could predict her.
The petite woman who descends the stairs is another incarnation of the one who fascinated me from the first look we shared in a hospital room two years ago. August, my teammate, her cousin Iris’s husband, had a concussion. She came to visit while I was there, and it felt like a horse kicked me in the stomach when she walked in. It knocked the air out of me, out of the room. Such a small woman completely commanded a space doing no more than stepping through the door.
She does that again now, but this time there are no braids. Her hair isn’t cropped, nor is it platinum. It’s a halo of textured curls, her natural hair, layered in shades of honey and wheat and gold, contrasting with her skin. She’s a little darker than the last time I saw her, like she caught the summer sun and trapped its warmth inside her skin until she glowed. Her wide mouth, though unsmiling, is still soft; the curves lush and tempting. There’s something feline about Lotus. The careless grace of her movements. The heart-shaped face with its pointed chin, flared cheekbones, and tipped-up eyes. She pushes her hair back, and I see a trail of gold studs dotting the fragile shell of her ear. In the other ear she wears one oversized gold hoop. A sleeveless blood orange sundress flows over her slim curves like fire and water. She looks like a sun-kissed gypsy.
She doesn’t look away. I’ve been rude as hell when we’ve met in the past, staring at her like I had no home training. Most women would clear their throats, roll their eyes, snap their fingers in my face. Something to indicate what the hell, man, but not Lotus. She’s stared back every time. Not like she was studying me as closely as I studied her, but more like she was allowing me to look my fill.