Tory was a little taken aback that the cruise director would show interest in something as insignificant as a lost necklace.
“Hi, Patti. Sorry, there must be some kind of mistake. I was just reporting a lost necklace in my room….”
Patti laughed. “You obviously haven’t read through your orientation material yet. If you open the folder, you’ll see a colored glossy flyer with the heading ‘Teardrops of the Moon.’ The flyer will explain everything, but basically it’s a little tradition we’ve developed on board where we hide the necklace in a stateroom for one of our passengers to find. According to an old legend, the necklace is supposed to bring good luck, especially in love.”
“Oh,” Tory said, viewing the pendant in an entirely different light now. Good luck she welcomed, but good luck in love? She didn’t really have time in her life for love, not with a book to promote and a new restaurant to start up, let alone the more immediate challenge of keeping dozens of cruise passengers informed and titillated on a daily basis—all while working alongside Ben Cooper.
“Maybe you guys should put it in someone else’s room. I mean, I’m not really a guest, am I?” Tory said. She’d been assigned a stateroom because of the short duration of her stay on board and the lack of availability of other crew accommodation. The pendant must have been meant for someone else.
“Don’t tell me—a pretty girl like you doesn’t need luck in love?” Patti guessed.
“It’s not that,” Tory said, thinking wryly of how long it had been since she’d even been on a date, let alone gotten lucky. “It’s more I kind of feel like a fraud, being here to work and all.”
Patti made a dismissive noise. “Forget it. You’re a high-profile guest lecturer, not a dishwasher. I think it’s terrific you’ve found it. But if you really don’t want it, you can turn it in to us tomorrow and we’ll hide it again.”
“Okay. Thanks, Patti.”
“Read your orientation folder,” Patti admonished lightly before ending the call.
Feeling duly chastised, Tory clambered out of bed and grabbed the folder. Propped up against two pillows, she sorted through the folder until she found the flyer Patti had been talking about.
It outlined the legend behind the pendant, detailing how the moon goddess and a handsome shepherd had had to hide their love from the jealous sun god, concealing themselves under an invisible cloak with a diamond clasp. They’d been caught, however, and eventually punished. The moon goddess had been so inconsolable over the loss of her one true love that she’d cried for days and days and days. Her grief was so great and her love so unwavering that her story came to symbolize the power of true love. One of her tears had hardened over the diamond in the lovers cloak and subsequently, tear-shaped pendants became a traditional wedding gift to remind brides of the enduring quality of love.
As Tory read on, she discovered there were more benefits to her wearing the pendant than just being the recipient of good luck in love. Apparently crew members would single her out for special treats and discounts when they noticed her with the pendant, giving her the experience of being a VIP on board. And, of course, she had to hand the pendant back at the end of the cruise in order for the next passenger to play the game all over again.
Tory studied the pendant for a few minutes. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in love, let alone true love. She’d been on the planet twenty-nine years and had never really been in love with anyone. Not enough that she had imagined a shared future, babies, the whole shooting match. Maybe she was just going to be one of those women who poured her passion into her work.
It was a peculiarly depressing thought.
Feeling very self-conscious and stupid, she put the necklace on. The pendant slid down her chest to rest heavily at the very top of her cleavage. Switching the light off, Tory rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes.
Probably she would hand the pendant back to Patti first thing tomorrow.
But maybe she wouldn’t.
CHAPTER TWO
“OKAY, PEOPLE, THAT’S enough,” Janice called. “We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.”
Like the other dancers around her, Tracy let her shoulders drop and her stomach pop out. Sweat made her leotard stick to her back and chest, and her knee ached from all the high kicks Janice had made them do, over and over. Even though they all knew the routine backward, forward, inside out, their tyrannical leader and choreographer was a stickler for rehearsal and she ensured that they all went over the evening’s routines each day before releasing them for their other onboard duties.
“You’re not on vacation,” Janice said at least once a day to some member or other of the entertainment crew.
Tracy always wanted to respond with a smart-ass quip. They were floating in the middle of the Caribbean on an enormous cruise ship, they lived in crowded crew quarters up to eight berths per cabin and they worked almost constantly. It was highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how optimistic, could kid themselves that this was anything like a vacation. But she never said a word, smart or otherwise. She needed this job. More than ever, she needed this job.
She sighed heavily as she remembered the phone call she’d had from Salvatore last night. He’d let her talk to their son Franco for just a few minutes before getting back on the line.
“He’s fine,” he’d said in his flat, cold voice. His business voice. They were just business to him now, her and Franco. “Do your job. Find the pendant—and get it right this time. Then this’ll all be over and you’ll never see me again.”
Amen to that.
Grabbing a hand towel from her bag, Tracy mopped at her shiny face as she made her way to the elevator and down to the administration level of the Dream, determined to “get it right” this time, as Salvatore had so charmingly put it.
She’d done everything she could to snatch his damned necklace on the cruise before Christmas, but fate or luck or whatever it was that decided these things had been against her.
This time it would be different, she promised herself. This time she would find the pendant and get Sal out of her life once and for all. She was convinced the pendant was the only reason he still had any contact with her and Franco. He’d been absent from their lives for months before he’d suddenly turned up out of nowhere and explained he’d scored an audition for her on Alexandra’s Dream. Straightaway she’d known he wasn’t doing her a favor out of the kindness of his heart; he’d wanted her on the ship very badly for his own reasons. She’d soon learned what they were—one of Sal’s gambling customers, some guy called Giorgio, had run up an enormous debt with Sal’s people and planned to pay it off with a precious antique necklace he’d smuggled on board the ship prior to handing it over to Sal. Great plan, except Giorgio had gotten himself arrested for involvement in the high-level smuggling ring that had been busted on the Dream during its Mediterranean run. Sal had been left holding the debt, and the only chance of satisfying his bosses and securing his own financial future was to grab the pendant off the cruise ship himself. Which was where Tracy was supposed to come in.
Tracy smiled grimly to herself as she remembered Sal’s fury when he’d learned that the pendant had fallen into the hands of the cruise director and the ship’s librarian and promptly been turned into a promotional gimmick for
