For James and Jason, the annual trip was a chance to get away from the cold New York winters. But for Hannah, it was so much more. The weeklong cruise from Miami to St. Thomas and back was a place where she could be a kid, since her life in Real World was very different from that in Vacation World. For this one week she got to be . . . well, free. Happy. Plus, she considered the Webber brothers her two closest friends, trusting them more than anyone else.
“You’ve got this, Hannah Banana,” James said softly.
He might be the wildest, most adventurous person she knew, but he’d never put her in danger. So she drew a deep breath and stared down at the water one last time. She wanted to do this, wanted so much to show that she could be spontaneous and fun too, though she wasn’t. Were there sharks in the Caribbean Sea? There were, right? She swallowed hard. “I don’t think I can,” she whispered.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” His bigger, warmer hand slid into hers and squeezed. “But you know I’ve got you, though, right?”
She looked into his warm blue-green eyes, the same color as the sea below, and just like that, she believed. He always had her. Maybe all of the other people in her life had let her down, but never him. Not once.
So she gave a slow nod.
Smart enough not to give her another second to think about it, he simply jumped, tugging her with him into the balmy Caribbean air.
Chapter One
Four days before Christmas, present day
HANNAH STOOD on a dock in Miami in front of the ship aptly named The Therapist. The seventy-foot motor yacht, a good decade past its prime, was decorated for the holidays within an inch of its life. Staring at it with dread, she wished she hadn’t chosen this month to cut back on wine. Because she’d taken two planes, a train, and an automobile to get here, and worrying about blood pressure and heart disease was taking a backseat to what she was going to face on the ship.
Unfortunately, she was on a mission, and sucky as that mission was, she owed it to the man who’d raised her to do this in person, even if her palms were sweating.
And the backs of her knees.
The mission—tell her stepdad, Harry, that her mom wanted a divorce, and by the way, the papers were right here in her bag for him to sign. Oh, and Merry Christmas.
Easy peasy.
Except she loved Harry. He was the only dad she’d ever known. He’d brought fun and adventure and humor into her life when there’d been so little before him. She loved his slightly run-down but beloved yacht, the one she’d spent every Christmas on for as long as she could remember to escape winter by sailing through the Caribbean.
At least until six years ago.
“Ahoy, Smalls!” came Harry’s booming voice from the boat deck. He stood there in Bermuda shorts, a brightly flowered short-sleeved shirt, and a Santa hat on his Albert Einstein hair, looking like . . . home. “Come aboard,” he called out, “this baby ain’t going to sail herself.”
Knowing the truth of that, Hannah laughed, then opened her purse and pulled out a big red bow, setting it on top of her head as proof she’d come through on her word that this year, her holiday gift to him was her presence on The Therapist.
She headed up the passerelle, the platform from dock to ship, which in itself felt odd. For all the years she’d come here, she’d never once walked onboard. Nope, she’d flat-out run, racing to pick out her cabin in order to get the one she wanted—the one with the porthole—before it was snatched up by James and Jason.
But that was then. Things had changed.
In a big way.
At the end of the passerelle, she kicked off her boots and dropped them into the waiting shoe basket. As was traditional on boats like this, shoes weren’t allowed, and as she stood there in her bare feet, taking it all in, a pit grew in the bottom of her stomach. It’d been this very boat that had eventually caused the split between Harry and her mom, almost ten years ago now. Harry had been gone almost all the time on charters, and finally her mom had said, “It’s me or the boat.” Harry had chosen the boat.
By the time he’d realized his mistake, her mom had moved on.
Hannah had worked hard to not judge Harry for picking the boat over his family. Her mom was a difficult woman. Hannah got that. Well, mostly she got that.
Seen from the perspective of Hannah’s adult eyes, The Therapist was a little rough around the edges now, but was still pretty amazing, with its five-foot cockpit extension, huge teak-top deck half-covered and half-open to the warm Caribbean air, large galley, and four cabins besides the captain’s chambers.
She dropped her duffel bag just as Harry pulled her in for a big, warm hug. She sighed out some of her tension and held on tight as memories filled her—his teaching her to drive a boat before she could even ride a bike; his showing her fun and adventure for a week every Christmas, joy that’d had to last her the whole year . . .
Harry pulled back and grinned at her. “You’re the best Christmas present I’ve ever had. It’s been too long. The last time I saw you was this spring, when I was off for a week and we went fishing.” He looked past her to the busy port. “Where’s your mom?”
Hannah blinked. “Um . . . what?”
“You know, the woman who birthed you? She said she was coming this year and traveling with you.”
Thanks, Mom. “She . . .” Suddenly Hannah’s purse, the one that held the divorce papers for Harry, weighed heavily on her shoulder. “So as it turns out, she’s—”
“Hold on. I just got a text from her. She’s going to meet us in the port of San Juan on our Puerto Rico stop, and then be with us on the last leg to St. Thomas and back home,” Harry said, reading from his phone. “She got held up at work.”
Hannah’s mouth tightened at the lie. Her mom’s, not Harry’s. Since the separation, her mom had still occasionally joined them—in between boyfriends, that is—just enough times to keep Harry’s hopes up. But now her mom wanted to marry her latest boyfriend. She’d told Harry she’d come on this trip, but she’d lost her nerve and had planned to pay a courier to do her dirty work.
Hannah couldn’t let a stranger serve Harry the papers, she just couldn’t. So here she was, facing more than a few ghosts of her own past as well as her mom’s.
Harry was smiling warmly at her. “I’m so glad you showed up.”
She forced a smile. “When have I ever broken a promise or let you down?”
Guilt flashed across his craggy, been-in-the-sun-for-fifty-plus-years face because he knew he couldn’t say the same. “You’re as sweet as you are dependable.”
Right, just what every woman wanted to hear, a description of herself employing the same adjectives as those applied to a golden retriever.
Harry pulled off his hat and dropped his phone into it. “No more of this on vacay. All it does is bring bad news.” He held out the hat. Guess he could hear her phone, which had been buzzing since she’d boarded. Work, no doubt. She could tell by the sheer level of annoyance in the vibration. Pulling it from her pocket, she eyed the screen. Yep. Her boss, Cynthia, aka the Tyrant, as the office often called her. Cynthia thought it was a compliment.
“Come on now, Smalls,” Harry said. “Drop that evil ruination of modern society into the hat. You’re my gift this year, and I don’t plan on sharing you with your job 24/7 like usual.”