Page 2 of Smartasses
“You know Aubrey, she’s always up to something,” Benjamin said. “She’s probably already spotted her man of the cruise and is putting him under her spell.”
Oh yeah, she wanted only one guy to do her bidding right now, and that was the Boy Scout. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him down the hall. “Come on. We have to hustle.”
Okay, he had more bulk to him than she’d expected, going by his I-iron-my-underwear appearance, and she had no doubt she was only getting him down the hall by force of personality and not any actual muscles on her part.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Where? Crap. That was a great question. She glanced over at the number of the rooms as they fast-walked without looking like they were getting the fuck out of there and realized they were only ten rooms shy of hers. All wasn’t lost. They could make it.
“We’re going to my room.”
He stopped dead. “I’m not sure that’s—»
“Wait, is that her?” Grace asked before calling out, “Aubrey, I know that’s you.”
Fuck.
She didn’t turn, and she didn’t slow down. She tightened her grip on the Boy Scout’s not-of-this-earth solid bicep under the obnoxious Hawaiian shirt decorated with wiener dogs in grass skirts and kept moving—or at least she tried to. He kept his feet planted where they were, and short of using a Mack truck to shove him forward, she would not be able to move him.
“Are those your friends?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
The first hint of a sexy smirk transformed him from saint to sinner. “So I could blow this thing right now?”
She gave him a sideways glare and prayed her panties didn’t go up in flames. “Don’t even.”
“Aubrey Dean,” Grace said from only a few feet behind them. “What are you up to?”
Okay, she knew that tone from Grace. There was no getting out of this. Stopping, she whispered, “Stuff them down your shirt.”
His blue eyes widened behind his Clark Kent glasses. “Why would I do that?”
Good gravy. Did he not understand the time pressure they were under?
“Because if you don’t, she’s going to know they’re missing, and she can’t know that yet,” she said. “Grace knows what I look like, so I can’t put them down my shirt. However, she doesn’t know you, so it will just look like you’ve got a gut. Come on.” She gave up on the sweet smile and went straight for damsel-in-distress desperation. “Do me a solid, please.”
Beyond a doubt, this was the weirdest experience Carter Hayes had ever had, and he’d once spent six hours on a green screen sound stage wearing a CGI suit and pretending to fight a one-eyed zombie giant with poisonous farts.
When he’d turned the corner and found the cute blonde giggling to herself as she pulled one pair of pants after another out of a suitcase, he thought she might be a little touched, as his grandmother used to say. When she held one pair up in the air and declared she was freeing Grace’s sexy thighs, he figured she was drunk already. And just when he thought it couldn’t get more bizarre, she managed to pull him in as an accessory to pants theft, and now she wanted him to shove four pairs of pants down his shirt?
This was a mistake. He would only draw attention to himself when he was supposed to be observing others, not be observed. The last thing he needed was for anyone to realize that he wasn’t the mild-mannered dental laboratory technician Carter Van Stettle from Iowa. This cruise was his opportunity to prove to indie-darling director Allyson Hernandez that he could disappear into a part, that moviegoers could look up at the big screen and see him as anyone other than The Admiral.
He was all ready to return the pants to their rightful owner and be on his way. It was the smart thing to do. Then the thief beside him said please, and well, one could only play the most debonair superhero to ever top the box office for so long before some of the character stuck to them. He stuffed the stupid pants up his shirt and tucked the hem of it into his shorts to keep them from falling out. The special effects team on his last movie would have laughed their asses off, but the paunch effect of the pants was actually pretty good.
“Grace,” Aubrey said, turning to face her friends. “I didn’t hear you.”
Her friend didn’t bother to hide her skepticism. Behind her, a man and two women were trying not to grin and failing.
He held out his hand. “Carter Van Steetle from Iowa.”
“Grace Kim.” She shook his hand.
By then, her other friends had gotten control over themselves—obviously, they’d been in on the stealing pants prank—and everyone introduced themselves.
“So what are you two up to?” Liv asked.
“Poor Carter got lost.” Aubrey gave him a poor puppy look and hooked her arm through his. “Can you believe he’s never been outside of Iowa? This is all pretty overwhelming for him.”
