Page 29 of Captain's Orders
"Anyway." Dani straightened, fingers trailing down Jordan's arm before her hand came away. "I have a deck to prep for dinner, so I'll let you get back to whatever important captainly things you do here."
"Captainly things are very important indeed," Jordan said. "They involve charts and weather and not thinking about my Hospitality Lead."
"Mm-hm." Dani gave her a slow once-over. The woman was a relentless tease. "How's that going for you?"
"Badly."
"Good." She bent down to Jordan's ear. "I'll see you later, Captain," she murmured. Then she straightened and walked out.
19
DANI
Dinner was over and the upper deck had emptied into the salon for after-dinner drinks. Patricia and Gerald were drinking cognac. Caroline and David were deep in some conversation about a friend's divorce. Sarah was on the couch with a glass of port and, of course, her phone. Mark had fallen asleep upright on the other sofa, and Tyler, Olivia, and Noah were watching a movie.
While Netty and Elsa took care of the salon, the aft deck under the awning was Dani's domain, and Lindsay had set her up with everything she needed. A long cloth across the table. A platter of plain cupcakes—vanilla and chocolate, twelve of each, more than they could possibly need. Five piping bags of buttercream—white, pale pink, sky blue, yellow, and red—lay beside small bowls of sprinkles, edible glitter, mini marshmallows, M&Ms, sugar pearls. There was also a plate of marine-inspired sugar shapes—starfish, dolphins, mermaids, anchors, and pufferfish with a smiling face—and a dish of edible flowers. And, most importantly, a saucer of edible googly eyes.
The sun had lowered over the water and the wind had dropped to almost nothing when Bea, Jack, and Emma arrived in formation, with Grace behind them.
"Whoa," Jack breathed.
"It's a CUPCAKE FACTORY!" Bea announced, at a volume that probably reached the bridge.
"Two cupcakes each," Dani said, before they all started grabbing. "Otherwise we'll be cleaning up icing for the rest of the night."
"Two each!" Bea repeated firmly to Jack, in case he was thinking of trying for three.
They scrambled onto the cushioned benches and Bea reached immediately for a mermaid. Jack picked up the saucer of googly eyes.
"Dani," Bea said. "You have to make one too."
Jack and Emma looked up from their projects.
"Yeah," Jack said around a fistful of marshmallow he wasn't supposed to be eating. "You have to."
Grace chose a vanilla cupcake and started a small spiral of blue. "I think you've been outvoted."
Dani laughed and grabbed a cupcake while the kids started their projects. Bea was constructing an underwater scene—pink icing in soft mounded waves, the mermaid standing in the middle, and now what she had just announced was going to be the mermaid's hair. She squeezed the pink piping bag in long unsteady ribbons that flowed off the cupcake, down the side, and onto the plate.
"That's a lot of hair, Bea," Grace said.
"Mermaids have LONG hair." Bea was concentrating fiercely on producing more of it. "It's how you can tell they're mermaids."
Grace nodded, accepting the logic.
Jack was building a tower from a thick base of blue icing. Three mini marshmallows stacked. More blue icing mounded on top of the marshmallows. Then he picked up the saucer of googly eyes and started pressing them in.
"What are you making?" Dani asked.
"A monster. He’s called Steve."
Emma snorted. "Steve's going to fall over." She applied a circle of pink icing and placed edible flowers around the rim. A single mermaid fondant stood at the center of her flower garden, surveying the scene.
Dani looked down at her own vanilla cupcake, noting she was feeling far from vanilla today. She was counting down the hours until she was back in bed with Jordan. Until then, she might as well entertain herself, so she picked up the blue piping bag, applied a dome of icing, and pressed a white anchor into the center. The anchor looked vaguely like a nose. The horizontal bar at the bottom looked vaguely like a mouth. She pressed two googly eyes into the icing, one on each side of the anchor, and now the cupcake had a face.
"Dani, your cupcake is funny," Bea said.
"Thank you, Bea." Dani rolled a small piece of white fondant between her fingers until it softened, pressed it flat, and cut an oval and a smaller crescent. She stacked the crescent on top of the oval and pinched the front to give it a peaked edge. It was, by any reasonable measure, a captain's hat. She set it on top of the cupcake, just above the googly eyes.
