a sneakered foot hastily withdrawn. “Ace!”
“Whoops,” Ace said with a guilty smile. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Ivan motioned him forward. “Your friend, I assume?”
The girl moved next to Ace. “We’re engaged. Hey, you’re a ship’s captain! You could marry us! Wouldn’t that be great, Ace? We could get married right now.”
Ace took his glasses off and looked at Ivan. “You couldn’t do that, could you?”
Ivan grabbed him by the shirt, marched him down the hallway, then yanked him into the captain’s quarters and closed the door. “You brought that girl on board and promised her you were going to marry her?”
“Not in the beginning. In the beginning I just promised her a sandwich. But then things got… involved, and I needed a better promise. Hell, I couldn’t help it. I’m a hotbed of teenage hormones.”
“How old is she? Do her parents know she’s with you?”
“She’s old. Twenty-three. She plays second guitar in a rock band, but their bus broke down in Rockland, and they had to cancel their tour.”
“You do this again, and I’m going to cancel your tour. I’m going to give you thirty seconds to apologize to that woman, then you’re confined to quarters for the rest of the night. And at the crack of dawn I want her set ashore. And I expect you to provide her with cab fare back to Rockland.”
Ace adjusted his glasses. “Do you think I could have a partial advance on my wages?”
Ivan reached into his pocket and, without thinking, pulled out the panties.
“I didn’t see that,” Ace said, accepting a twenty-dollar bill while Ivan stared at the dainty piece of lingerie dangling from his finger. “I swear, I didn’t see a thing,” he repeated. “And I won’t tell anybody about what I didn’t see. You can count on me,” he said, slipping out the door and gently closing it behind him.
Chapter 5
Stephanie braced herself against the counter and took a firm hold on her bread dough. According to Lucy, Wednesday was turkey dinner with all the trimmings. But Lucy didn’t know about the storm that was off the coast of Atlantic City and moving north. Lucy didn’t know the stowaway, Melody, would refuse to set foot in the yawl and would insist on helping out in the galley. Lucy didn’t know any of those things because Lucy had run off to get married. Stephanie shoved her fist into the dough. This was going to cost Lucy. This was not just a toilet. This was a whole new kitchen.
“Jeez,” Melody said, “that’s a lot of dough. And you put your hands in it. Gnarly.”
“It’s for crescent rolls. All we have to do is follow Lucy’s recipe.”
Melody studied the directions. “Looks like origami.”
“You know how to do origami?”
“No.”
Stephanie blew a wisp of hair from her forehead and grabbed the rolling pin. “I’ll do the first batch, and then once we get it figured out, you can take over.”
“Cool.”
The ship plowed through heavy seas, and Stephanie took time to wedge the coffeepots behind an iron bar to keep them from jiggling across the stove.
Mrs. Pease looked up from her solitaire game. “What was that creaking? The boat isn’t falling apart, is it? Do you think we’re going too fast? Is there a speed limit out here?”
Mr. Pease sipped his coffee and grinned. “Now this is what I call sailing.”
“Okay,” Stephanie said, returning to the dough, “it looks like we roll a lump of this flat, and then cut it into strips, then triangles.” She took one of the freshly cut triangles and made an attempt at shaping it into a rolled crescent. She looked at Melody. “What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look like the picture.”
Stephanie stared at it. “It sort of does. You have to use your imagination.” She wiped her hands on her jeans. “It’s all yours.”
Ivan ambled down the stairs and took a clean mug from a hook on the ceiling. “What a terrific day,” he said. “Fantastic wind.”
Stephanie glared at him. Easy for him to say, she thought. He was up there with his nose in the salt spray pretending to be a Viking. She was down here getting seasick, trying to keep Melody from slipping banned substances into the turkey dressing.
Ivan poured himself a cup of coffee and looked over Stephanie’s shoulder. “Haven’t seen you all day. You’re not avoiding me, are you?”
“I’ve been cooking!” The ship lurched, lanterns swung on their hinges, and coffee splattered and hissed on the hot stove. “I don’t know how much you’re paying