Page 56 of Ruining His Smirk

Today, though, every chair had been claimed, and several crew members stood along the walls with mugs in hand, speaking in low murmurs.

Captain Birch stood near the head of the table. Nate was speaking with him. He wore a pale green sweater today that made his eyes look extra magical under the lighting. He glanced at me across the table while nodding at something the captain was saying.

I ducked my head, avoiding his gaze and feeling nervous and stupid. Memories of last night were fresh in my mind. I groaned internally, remembering how I had apparently fallen asleep immediately after coming inside of him.

Fucking hell.

I never did that. I prided myself on taking care of my partners and cleaning them and making sure they were not hurt. How did I just fall asleep like that? And with my dick still inside him, too?

To make it worse, I slept all through the night like a sack of rocks and probably would still be asleep had he not woken me up with a shake and a kiss to my temple.

Nate had slipped out of my room without any complaints about my behavior. In fact, he had smiled shyly and said something about my snores being “cute.” My face heated up just thinking about his words and the way he had teased me. That smirk of his. Instead of being annoyed, I’d felt like I’d been handed a winning trophy.

I wanted to bang my head against the wall. I wanted to jump off the ship again. I wanted to take him into my arms and kiss him again.

“Mr. Landry,” the captain’s voice snapped me out of my brooding.

“Sir?”

The captain had walked up to me at some point while I had been zoning out. He had a big smile on his face. “Tell me what sort of conference you’ve arranged aboard my vessel. I think every team member except for the bridge crew is here.”

“It’s just a consultation, Captain.”

“Just.”

I hastened to explain. “The design’s finished. I wanted some eyes on it before we start building anything.”

Captain Birch nodded. “Excellent.”

On the wall, screens lit up one by one as one face after another appeared as connections opened across time zones. A crew member was helping with the technology so I didn’t have to monitor the connections.

Captain Birch turned toward the wall of screens as another face appeared, followed by another.

“That’s a lot of people for a consultation. A lot of countries, too.”

Something in the way he said it made my stomach tighten.

Had I missed some rule?

Back at Waypoint, I led projects all the time without asking the station chief for permission every step of the way. A ship might be different, though. Though I had made sure to speak to the communications officer before sending out the invitations. That much I knew I had done right.

In Antarctica, you did not assume you could pull bandwidth out of thin air, especially not enough for a call spanning several countries and time zones. At Waypoint, anything that required this much data had to be approved first.

I’d made sure to check with the ship’s communications officer because the meeting had to be timed for when the communications satellite crossed the sky above the ship, giving us the strongest connection and enough bandwidth to supportall the calls at once. Down here in this remotest part of the world, ordinary cellular and internet service did not exist.

I looked back at the captain. “Is something the problem, Captain?”

He turned at once and shook his head. “No, no, Mr. Landry. Nothing of the kind.”

I waited.

“I’m merely impressed.” He glanced toward the screens again, where faces now filled nearly every panel. “You appear to have assembled an extraordinary range of international experts with very little lead time.”

“Oh.”

“These sorts of conferences are usually arranged months in advance.” He looked at me for a second, then gave one sharp clap of his hands. “You must be very well respected in your circles.”

I blinked, and my gaze darted to Nate without my permission. He was looking at me like I had indeed pulled off something extraordinary. Heat crept up the back of my neck.