Jack had perfected the art of solitude. His boat, his rules, his quiet. He'd traded sterile operating rooms and hospital politics for the predictable rhythm of the ocean. The last woman who'd tried to change that--an executive who'd chosen profit over ethics, over him--had taught him a valuable lesson: letting someone else chart your course came at too high a price.
The Wandering Tide--a Hinckley Sou'wester 42--was his home. Weathered but sturdy, her teak deck gleamed from years of salt and sun, warm beneath his feet in the morning light. Below deck, the air was cooler, tinged with aged wood and salt-scrubbed fabric. He ran his calloused palm along the teak railing, each groove a reminder of his escape from his old life.
He'd just left Key West, heading for the Marquesas, then the Dry Tortugas--a remote cluster of islands about seventy miles west. After a lazy week at sea, he'd return to the Keys. No passport required. No small talk expected. No ethical compromises demanded. Just open water and blessed quiet.
At least, that was the plan.
Which is why the thump below needed to be addressed immediately.
Something had shifted--probably his own damn fault. It happened occasionally, though admitting it felt like confessing to a cardinal sin. A can of beans escaped its designated spot, a rope slipped its hook.
When he yanked open the locker, coconut shampoo hit him before he registered the bright blue eyes grinning back at him. Jack's fingers tightened on the handle, his head spinning.
"Hi," the girl said, waving cheerfully like she was greeting him at a coffee shop. "Your canned goods are super organized, by the way." She tilted her head.
Jack shut the cabinet door. Hard.
"Uh, that's not really solving anything," came the muffled voice, tinged with amusement. "Do you always handle surprises by pretending they don't exist?"
He reopened it. Still there. Still grinning. Her dirty blonde hair tumbled around her shoulders, wild and sun-kissed, like she'd bottled up a piece of summer. Her freckles were dusted across her nose, giving her an air of mischief that matched the glint in her eyes. She radiated the kind of confidence that didn't belong in a cabinet--or on his boat. She was maybe twenty-two, definitely trouble.
"Who the hell are you?" he managed. Every instinct screamed to turn around, head straight back to Key West. But something in her eyes--a shadow behind the mischief--made him hesitate.
"Cassie." She grinned wider, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "And before you have an aneurysm--which, judging by that vein in your forehead, is about thirty seconds away--you should know I'm very resourceful. Also, technically, you were going to leave anyway, so I didn't actually disrupt your schedule. I'm thoughtful like that."
She unfolded herself from the cabinet with surprising grace, all long legs and fluid movement. She stretched like a cat waking from a nap, muscles flexing. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, damp and slightly tangled. The movement revealed a small tattoo on her inner forearm--delicate music notes wrapped around what looked like lyrics.
"You're not turning around, are you? That would be super inconvenient. Mostly for me." Her tone said she already knew the answer.
"Start talking," he said finally, proud that his voice stayed steady. "And make it good."
Cassie beamed; her smile radiated mischief. "Oh, I'm a fantastic storyteller. You're gonna love this." She leaned forward conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a playful murmur. "Want me to start with how I snuck past you at the marina, or should we skip to the good stuff?"
Jack had one rule when he set sail: No passengers. Period. He wasn't running a damn ferry service. He didn't need anyone cluttering his meticulously organized space or disrupting his carefully crafted peace.
Yet here she was--a young, blonde, way-too-smug stowaway currently treating his boat like her personal adventure cruise. Jack exhaled, running a hand down his face. "What the hell are you doing on my boat?"
Cassie sighed dramatically, flopping back on the salon's cushioned bench. The perfectly arranged throw pillows he'd positioned at precise angles scattered beneath her like his rapidly deteriorating sanity. "Look, I get it. You're mad. I'd be mad too. But in my defense, I didn't think you'd notice so quickly. You seemed like the type to brood at the helm for at least a day. You know, staring moodily at the horizon, probably composing sea shanties about solitude or whatever."
Jack's jaw tightened - a reflex from his previous life when surprises usually meant trouble. He'd left that world behind, but the need to control his environment was harder to shake.
"That's not the point," he managed, fighting the urge to immediately restore order to the salon. His calloused fingers--so different from the smooth, meticulously maintained hands of his surgical days--curled against his palm. "You can't just invade someone's space and expect them to adjust their plans because you batted your eyelashes."
Jack stared at her, incredulous. The way she sprawled across the salon's bench, all casual confidence and lean limbs, was doing nothing for his focus. "So, your master plan was to stow away and hope I... what? Found you halfway to Cuba?"
"Well," she tilted her head thoughtfully, a strand of blonde hair falling across her face, "I wouldn't have picked Cuba, but yeah, that was the general idea. Though, I did have a backup plan." Her eyes held a glint of pure trouble. "Several, actually. I'm very thorough when it comes to causing trouble."
"Unbelievable." Jack responded as calmly as possible.
"Hey," she arched her back, the fabric of her tank top straining in ways that made focusing impossible, "you're the one who left the hatch unlocked. For someone so obsessed with organization, that seems like a pretty basic oversight. Just saying."
Jack resisted the urge to strangle something. Preferably himself, because he was clearly losing his mind. "That's because I didn't think I needed to worry about a damn stowaway." Or about how distracting said stowaway would be.
