teased as I came up behind him.
Choking back his laughter, he fumbled to dump his cell phone in his pocket, dropping it on the floor instead.
“Balls,” he said under his breath.
“I’ll get it.”
“No!”
But I’d already bent down and snatched it up. “Easy, George. It didn’t break. In fact, I don’t see as much as a scra—” I turned it over to check the screen. “Yikes.”
He tucked in his lip and lowered his little bald head.
I stared at the screen, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God. Is this from Nana?”
He nodded as best he could with his chin perched on his chest.
“She sexted you from jail?”
He nodded again.
The photo was an extreme close-up of flesh that was soft, and plump, and resembled a Brown ’n Serve roll before the baking process. I knew it belonged to Nana, but that’s all I knew. I rotated it a hundred and eighty degrees. “Okay, I give up. Big toe?”
He raised his chin. “What?”
“Elbow?”
He leaned toward me and smiled affectionately as he mooned over the screen. “She probably shouldn’t have zoomed in quite so close, but the macro setting on our camera’s a real good one.”
“Chin?” Though I wasn’t sure which one of the three.
“It’s her earlobe.” He let out a tender sigh. “Your grandmother’s lobes are so perfect, Emily. They’re like little pillows. All soft and white and floppy. Sometimes when she’s feeling frisky, I—”
“STOP.” I stiff-armed his phone back at him and winced. “Too much information. Is the signal still up?”
“For now.”
I pulled my phone out of the side pocket of my shoulder bag and powered it on. “If Etienne hasn’t turned his phone off, maybe I can—”
“Come on, you two.” Margi gasped out the words as she collapsed against the display table. “They’re letting us board early because of the weather … and Wally’s already handed out all the tickets … except yours.”
“Margi?” I scraped her off the table and propped her back up on her feet. “Why didn’t you let one of the Dicks come find us?”
“Couldn’t.” She sucked in a deep breath. “They don’t know what the indecent exposure laws are in Scotland … so they’re trying to lay low. I mean, there’s kids in line.”
I drilled a look at George. “Do you have the motion sickness pills?”
He shook his head. “All they have is breath mints.”
Which would be fine if the aim is to prevent halitosis, but not so fine if the aim is to prevent yourself from hurling on the passengers sitting around you.
I quickly paid for my scarves and chased behind George and Margi as they headed for the boat. Wally handed me my ticket at the gangplank.
“You’re welcome to sit inside or out, but I don’t recommend ‘out’, unless you’ve become seriously unhinged.”
I grinned. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
The main passenger cabin was a large room with windows on all sides, a snack bar astern, and rows of permanently attached chairs all facing in one direction—kinda like a movie theatre, only without the movie. Dick Stolee intercepted me as I entered, his expression suggesting that something was terribly awry, and it was serious. “Can I talk to you?” he said in a gruff voice. “In private?”
Please don’t make it about erectile dysfunction. Please don’t make it about erectile dysfunction. “Sure, Dick.”
As passengers lined up at the snack bar, we skirted around them, pausing near the last row of seats. “What’s up?”
“It’s about the cable programming back at the hotel. If there’s a fee added to my bill for that adult entertainment network, I’m not payin’ it. There was no prompt warning me that the program I was about to view was X-rated, and not only was it in Russian, it didn’t even have subtitles. So … I’m not payin’.” He crossed his arms, punctuating his tirade with an emphatic nod.
“Okay.”
He dropped his arms. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“Hot damn.” He scrubbed his hands in anticipation as he scanned the room. “Wait’ll I tell Dick.” He paused. “Same thing applies to him, right?”
“You got it.”
“Hey, Dick! Hubba-hubba, baby!”
I hoped the hot news announcer slipped into something revealing tonight to make their viewing worthwhile.
I pulled my phone out of my bag again. Yes! The signal was still up.
“I understand why you changed the contest,” Mom said as she came up behind me, “so I just wanted to tell you that in spite of the fact that you kept me in the dark, annihilated the rules, nullified my time charts, rendered my graphs useless, and altered the entire focus of the trip, I’ll