Page 36 of Hold On to Me
She’s Cerulean Royale’s young and starry-eyed masseuse. He’s the dangerous billionaire who owns the entire cruise ship...and her.
ARTEM ALMAZOV DOESN’Tsmile, doesn’t explain, and doesn’t do a single thing to make Star Thornton fall for him.
But every Thursday at eight, her hands find his scars, and his body tells her things his mouth never will.
Just when she’s ready to give him her heart, the billionaire cancels her sessions, reassigns her, and walks away like she never touched him at all.
Caressed
Star
THE THIRD BUTTON WON'Tclose.
My fingers are slippery with cocoa butter, which I slather on every morning because Madame Gilles drilled it into me during training (keeps the skin soft, clients don't feel calluses, your hands are your instrument, Étoile, treat them accordingly), and this tiny mother-of-pearl button keeps sliding right out of the loop like it's personally offended by my existence. I pin it with my thumbnail.Try again. Nope. Again.The fabric is white, stiff with newness, and it smells like industrial starch and someone else's idea of professionalism.
The trousers are half an inch too long. I've rolled them at the waist where nobody can see.
Note to self: hem trousers. Priority level: medium. Okay, low. Okay, I probably won't do it and I'll be rolling these at the waist until I die, but at least I'm aware of the problem, which is basically the same as solving it.
I don't belong here.
I know this the way I know the small, practical things that have kept me going for twenty years: the exact pressure it takes to release a trigger point in the trapezius, the price of the bus from Nice-Ville to the airport, the number of euros left in my account after last month's rent. Forty-two. I don't belong on a ship like the Cerulean Royale because everything on it, from the brass fittings on the staff corridor doors to the thread count of thisuniform I can't even button properly, was designed for people who have never counted bus fare in centimes.
And I touch things for a living.
The corridor is narrow, low-ceilinged, lit by strips of warm LED that turn the cream walls amber. Staff deck. Below the waterline. The carpet's thin here, nothing like the plush silence of the guest levels I glimpsed during orientation yesterday, where the floors swallowed footsteps whole and the air smelled like gardenia and cold marble. Down here it's laundry steam and the metallic bite of the ventilation system and, faintly, from somewhere aft, frying oil.
I finally wrestle the button through. Smooth down the front of the tunic. Check my reflection in the small mirror bolted inside my locker door.
Dark hair pulled back. No makeup, because Mr. Green was specific about that. The spa's aesthetic is "natural radiance," which is corporate-speak for: we want the therapists to look wholesome enough that wealthy clients feel comfortable being undressed around us.
I look wholesome. I look twelve.
Fantastic. Really inspiring start, Thornton. Highlight this, self: you are a qualified professional. You have a certificate. You have Madame Gilles's recommendation. You have hands that can find a trigger point through three layers of muscle. The fact that you also have the face of a child who should be asking for extra bread at a cafeteria is irrelevant.
I shut the locker.
MR. KOBE GREEN IS WAITINGat the spa reception on Deck 7, and the spa is...
Okay. I need a second.
Because the spa isn't anything like the cramped studio in Nice where I trained, with its vinyl tables and dodgy overhead light and the landlord's cat that kept sneaking in during sessions. The spa isn't anything like anywhere I've ever been in my entire life, and I'm standing in the doorway trying very hard to present as a professional who belongs here instead of a girl from Nice who wants to spin around in a circle with her mouth open.
The reception area alone is the size of my apartment. Teak floors, pale stone walls, a long curved desk in white quartz with a single orchid in a glass cylinder. Behind the desk, a wall of water. Real water, running down a panel of grey slate in a continuous sheet that catches the recessed lighting and throws soft, moving patterns across the ceiling. The air is cool, faintly sweet, eucalyptus and something underneath it, cedarwood maybe, warm and grounding.
My shoulders drop an inch without my permission.
Mr. Green notices, because of course he does. He's a tall man, early fifties, British-Jamaican, with close-cropped grey hair and the posture of someone who considers slouching a personal failing. His uniform is identical to mine except that his buttons, I can't help noticing, are all fastened correctly.
"Thornton. Good. On time." He checks his watch, an actual watch, not a phone, leather strap. "The tour takes forty minutes. Keep up, take notes mentally, don't touch the art."
"Yes, sir."
"It's Mr. Green."
"Yes, Mr. Green."
He regards me for a moment. Those dark brown eyes have clearly assessed a hundred new hires and already know which ones will last.
