“Manning.”
“Manning.” Michael pumped his arm. “Don’t recall meeting your people.”
“That’s because I don’t have people,” Jake said coolly.
“This is my fiancée, Mia—well, this week, anyway.” Mia was so busy staring daggers at Michael that she couldn’t be bothered to get up from the dining room chair she had melted into, and lifted a lazy finger in greeting.
“And you know Evan,” Robin said.
Evan strolled forward, looking at Jake quizzically. “Jake, right? The handyman.”
Indignation surged through Jake, but he clamped his jaw shut to keep from saying something he knew he would really, really regret.
Robin stepped between him and Evan to get her purse. “If we’re going to go, let’s go.”
Mia and Michael were already out the door, an argument apparently underway. That was followed by a brief, polite little argument between Robin and Evan over which vehicle they would take. Robin marched to her Mercedes, jerked the door open, threw her purse in the back, and got behind the wheel. Evan slipped into the front passenger seat without even looking at Jake.
Against his better judgment—and in fact, ignoring a voice that told him to get the hell out of there while he could—Jake got in the back and tried to arrange himself where his knees didn’t gouge his eyes. He finally gave in and sat crooked in the seat, feeling one step removed from moron.
The boat, as it turned out, was a yacht.
At first, Jake thought Evan’s boat was one of those small commercial outfits they used for dinner cruises, but as Evan went striding up the gangplank, he realized that he had, once again, severely miscalculated the orbit of Robin’s planet. As Mia went slinking up the gangplank after Evan on Michael’s arm—their argument, apparently, put aside for the moment—Jake grabbed Robin’s wrist. “What are we doing?” he asked quietly, so as not to be overheard by the others.
“Oh! Evan—he likes to have these dinners catered on his boat.”
“Robin, this isn’t a boat, it’s a yacht.”
“Boat, yacht, whatever.”
“I thought we were going to go get a burger. Something really simple, something easy. I didn’t anticipate sailing to Mexico.”
“We’re not sailing to Mexico,” she said patiently. “We won’t even leave the dock, which is really what’s so absurd about it. He buys a boat with his bonus and doesn’t even know how to operate it. Look, I know we were going for burgers, but Evan was really irritating me, and I said okay without thinking,” she said, glancing up the gangplank. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it. We’ll just eat and go, okay?”
“I don’t know why you want to have dinner with someone who is irritating you,” Jake said, a little irritably himself. “I damn sure don’t want to dine with these people.”
“Come on, it’s not such a big deal. We’ll just grab a bite to eat and get out of here, okay?” she asked and came up on her tiptoes, kissed the corner of his mouth. Jake frowned down at her; she lifted her hand in Boy Scouts’ honor fashion. “Promise. One hour, no more.”
Slick was waiting for them by the time they made their way up the little gangplank, a martini in his hand. Robin walked past him, into the main cabin, but Slick caught Jake with a clamp of his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “You ever been on a yacht before, Jack?”
“It’s Jake. And no, I haven’t.”
“Well, then this ought to be quite an experience for you,” he said, and patted Jake’s shoulder before preceding him into the main cabin.
Robin met him at the door, handed him a beer. He gratefully accepted it, but noticed that he was the only one with a beer bottle. Michael and Mia looked to be drinking martinis, presumably made by the guy standing behind the bar in a white shirt and black bow tie. Robin had a glass of wine in her hand.
Slick sat down on a bar stool, sipped his martini. “Come on in, Jake. Don’t be shy.”
Oh yeah, he was really beginning to dislike ol’ Slick, a lot. And really, what self-respecting guy wore pants like that? Jake walked into the room, casually sipped his beer, and tried to take it all in without gawking like some low-rent tourist. The cabin was a huge room, lined with benches covered in thick cushions, the walls in mahogany and brass fixtures. In the center of the room was a rectangular table, covered with a tablecloth, sporting two vases of fresh-cut roses and a six-point candelabra. The table was set with gold-rimmed china, crystal wine goblets, heavy silverware. Each place setting— only four of them, thank you very much—had three plates, five forks, two knives and three spoons. It was enough to intimidate the most cultivated of souls.