I want You Deeper

Renee pulled steaks from the freezer and began the thawing process. She wasn’t even sure how chefs thawed meat. She was using her own personal thawing method, which involved setting it

in a plastic bag in a sink full of cold water. At this point, she wasn’t sure she even cared if she was busted.

She had a secret. A big secret. And it was doing a number on her.

“All laundered.”

Those two words announced April’s arrival with a handful of cloth napkins. Renee let out a long breath, feeling the pent-up tension dissipate. It was just nice to have a distraction from her thoughts right now.

“Thank you. Do you need help with the laundry?”

“I thought I’d help you,” April said. “Let’s make crab dip.”

There was frozen crab meat in the freezer. Probably not ideal, but they were down to mostly frozen foods at this point, they’d been on the water for so long. She and April had been talking about what they could make with that crab meat for four days.

“Perfect!” Renee clapped her hands and started gathering ingredients to make the dip. She was grateful for something to keep her busy, whatever it was. But mostly she just wanted company right now-someone else to distract her from her thoughts.

“I wish you weren’t leaving us.” April sighed, busy unwrapping the cream cheese while Renee worked on defrosting the crab meat. Two types of meat to defrost at once. She definitely missed the earlier days of this trip, when she’d been able to pull something out of the fridge and make it, rather than having to go through this extra defrost step.

“I’m definitely going to miss you.” Renee smiled at her. “We work well together.”

“It’s not too late to change your mind. Just say the word and you’re head chef on the next leg.”

“You’re going to some islands, huh? I’m a little envious.”

Renee tried to keep her tone lighthearted. Envious was an understatement. She’d already started her story on Derek, and she was excited to turn it in. It reminded her why she was doing this. Also pushing her were the comments people were tossing at her on social media. She’d been tagged in dozens of discussions speculating why she’d been fired. It was like watching a train wreck. But after the initial few phone checks, where she’d felt down on herself and sad after reading the comments, they’d begun to fire her up to prove them all wrong.

There was no other choice. She had to finish the story, turn it in, and fly back home to start her job search.

While the crab meat joined the steaks in the thawing process, Renee pulled the other ingredients out of the refrigerator. “I’m not really a traveler.

I like to sleep in the same bed every night.”

“You sleep in the same bed every night here.”

Renee flashed her a look. “You know what I mean. How would you have a family? Don’t you want kids?”

“Not really. Not right now. And if I do someday, why couldn’t I have a family while still doing this?”

“That’s what Derek said. I don’t know if he really thought it through.”

“Who’s Derek?”Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

April’s question caused Renee to pause, cream cheese half-unwrapped in her right hand. She backtracked to the words that had just come out of her mouth and wished she could stuff them back in. She’d referred to Derek as Derek, not David. Big mistake.

“A friend of mine back home,” Renee said with a shrug. “We were messaging about it. I told him you were planning to stay on.”

There. That was a pretty decent cover. She just had to hope April didn’t mention Renee’s friend named Derek in front of Derek. He might not buy that she had a friend back home who just happened to have the name he was hiding from them.

“I may retire from the sea by then.” April grabbed the pita chips from the pantry and a big plate, then started setting them around the decorative bowl that would eventually hold the crab dip. “Maybe I’ll come work in your restaurant. When you franchise out, I could run one of your locations.”

Guilt shot through Renee at the realization that she’d totally deceived not only Derek but April, as well. And she really liked April. She liked Derek even more.

“That sounds fun.” Her voice caught in her throat a little as the words came out, and she just hoped April didn’t pick up on it. It actually did sound fun. That was the weird part. She could see working alongside April just like this, day after day, creating delicious meals.

“I saw something in the seasoning cabinet that’s perfect for this.” Renee grabbed the seafood spice container from the cabinet and set it next to the bowl.

“That’s the sign of a good chef,” April said. “You don’t need recipes.

You know instinctively what tastes good together.”

At first, she planned to refute that, saying that she very much relied on recipes. But she realized something as she looked down at all the ingredients she’d laid out. This time, she hadn’t even glanced at a recipe. She’d thought about the crab dip she’d enjoyed the last time she went to the beach and recreated the ingredients in her head.

“My mom said I had a talent for that,” Renee admitted while she worked. “Kind of like musicians who can play by ear. From the time I was a teenager, I’d taste something and name the ingredients that were in it. It was like a fun game I played.”

“And that’s how you knew you were born to be a chef.”

Renee paused, staring at April. Again, she was reminded that growing up, she’d had more of a love for cooking than writing or interrogating people. Weren’t reporters naturally curious people or something? Shouldn’t she have been like Harriet in Harriet the Spy, running around with a notepad, writing down people’s secrets?

No, instead, she’d grown up to be a secret-exposing adult. She was, after all, currently on a yacht with the primary purpose of learning all of Derek’s secrets and exposing them to the world. And there was no thrill at all in doing that. The only thrill she could summon was in being able to prove wrong all the people who said she was horrible at her reporting job.

“Cooking already?”

Derek’s voice cut into the silence, jerking Renee from her thoughts. Just as when she’d taken him lunch earlier, guilt filled her at the sight of him. All she could think about was the secret she’d learned online that morning after breakfast. Something she could not keep from him and live with herself.

But telling him meant revealing she knew he really was David Humphreys…and Derek Hughes was a name he’d come up with. It wasn’t even legally registered as his name. It was like he was working under a pseudonym for some reason.

“Just a little snack,” April said. “We found this crab meat the other day, so Renee is working her magic.”

Derek came around to stand between the two of them, looking down at what they were creating. All of a sudden, Renee felt self-conscious about her concoction.

“The crab’s thawing.” Renee gestured toward the sink. Hopefully, he wouldn’t wonder if that was how experts thawed crab meat.

“We also found pita chips.” April combined that comment with the box she’d found in the pantry.

“Captain Jake requested those.” Derek took the box from April and looked at the back.

April winced. “Do you think he’ll mind that we broke into them?”

“He won’t care.” Derek set the box down. “Two days and we’re on land.”

“We were just discussing that,” April said. “You’ve been around yacht owners for a while now. Can a crew member get married and have a family while sailing, or do they have to give that up?”

Renee wondered if he’d mention that he and Renee had already talked about that-as a hypothetical, of course, not specific to the two of them. But instead, he walked to the sink and turned the faucet on to work on thawing out the crab meat. He spoke while he worked, which was odd, considering he wasn’t facing them.

“It could be done. But it wouldn’t be easy. I know there are plenty of married couples who live and work on the water full-time. With kids, it’s a little trickier. They can homeschool, but there are things they’d miss.” “Interaction with other kids, that sort of thing,” Renee added.

“But can you imagine how fun it would be to grow up traveling the world?” April’s eyes lit up as she spoke. “Visiting various islands, countries, seeing all the sights…”

“You haven’t been through a storm on this sucker yet.” Derek returned to them, handing the now-defrosted bag of crab to Renee. “With children on board?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine. I wouldn’t ever want my kids on a boat in some of the storms I’ve seen.”

“You just go ashore, right?” April asked. “That’s what you were doing when you met us.”

“If you’re close enough.” Derek pointed toward the window. “Right now, we’re two days out. If there were kids on board right now, I’d be a little freaked out that a storm is about to come through.”

Renee nodded. “I could see that. Safe on land is the only place I’d want to be if I had kids.”

She was pretty sure it was the only place she wanted to be right now, actually. She didn’t like his mention of a storm coming through.

April seemed to have latched onto that, as well. “Is it going to be bad? The storm?”

Seeing Renee struggling to open the bag of crab meat, Derek turned and grabbed the kitchen scissors for her. “I don’t think so, but if it is, this boat is built for it. It’s tough to plan a long trip like this one since you can’t predict the weather that far in advance. But I’ve mapped out the next three legs of this journey based on the weather, so we should be good.”

That was where Derek put his ruse at risk. Why was he mapping a journey if he was just going where his boss told him? Wouldn’t his boss be the one in charge of where this boat went? Renee decided she’d shift the subject in the hopes April wouldn’t spend too much time on the words that had just come out of his mouth.

“Wait-you get to plan your route?” April stopped setting chips out and stared at Derek.

Whoops. Too late.

Derek didn’t answer at first. He was no doubt going back over what he’d just said and having the same realization Renee had just had.

“I pretty much do my own thing these days,” Derek finally said. “As long as I keep making sales, my boss leaves me alone.”

“That’s amazing.” April set the chips down and placed both hands, palms down, on the table in front of her. “It’s like you get to play owner of whatever yacht you’re on. What happens if you sell this one? Do you get another?”

Oh. That was a really good question. Renee couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that loophole before. She looked over at Derek, wondering if he’d come up with an answer for all these questions ahead of time.

Derek picked up a spoon and stirred the dip as Renee gradually dropped crab meat into it. “I’d fly back and pick up another. Hopefully, my crew will choose to stay with me. I think you’ll find, the longer you’re in this business, that many professionals go from one team to another. You’ll change ships many times.”

That answer probably wasn’t getting the desired response from April. She was frowning now.

“You might want to stay with Captain Jake,” Renee jumped in to say. “If David flies back home to pick up another ship-”

“And there might not be another ship for a couple of weeks,” Derek interrupted.

Now April’s frown had changed to a more thoughtful expression. She was still frowning but slowly nodding as though considering what he’d just said. Renee knew what was going through her mind. April wasn’t worried about staying with Derek, whose real name she didn’t even know. She was worried about being split from Captain Jake at some point.

That was when Renee realized Derek didn’t have an April. He was, when all was said and done, alone out here on the water. Even he had said crew people would jump ship when a better opportunity came along. That kind of sucked for him.

It also made Renee want to be that person who stayed by his side. But she was the one person withholding very important information from him. Telling him would expose her own secret. But not telling him meant she was hurting him, without him even knowing it, far more than losing a crew person ever would.