Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships

by Sarah Grunder Ruiz

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Sometimes a yacht, a bold bucket list, and a kiss with a handsome stranger are all a person needs to dive into the deep end of life.

For the last year, yacht stewardess Jo Walker has been attempting to complete a bucket list of thirty things she wants to accomplish by her thirtieth birthday. Jo has almost everything she's ever wanted, including a condo on the beach (though she's the youngest resident by several decades) and an exciting job (albeit below deck) that lets her travel the world.

Jo is on track until the death of her nephew turns her life upside down, and the list falls by the wayside. But when her two nieces show up unannounced with plans to stay the summer, they discover her list and insist on helping Jo finish it. Though the remaining eight items (which include running a marathon, visiting ten countries, and sleeping in a castle) seem impossible to complete in twelve weeks, Jo takes on the challenge.

When she summons the courage to complete item number five--kiss a stranger--and meets Alex Hayes, all bets are off. As her feelings for Alex intensify and Jo's inability to confront difficult emotions about her family complicates her relationships, she must learn to quit playing it safe with her heart before she loses what matters most.

Release date: November 23, 2021

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 336

Sample

One

 

The summer I turned thirty started to unravel as soon as it began. It was the last day of charter season, and I was ironing a billionaire's underwear in the laundry room of the Serendipity, the superyacht I'd worked on for the last five years, when Nina called for me over the radio.

 

I set down the iron and unclipped my walkie-talkie from my shorts, kicking aside a pile of dirty sheets from last night's toga party. I'd been on laundry duty all morning, but I didn't mind, seeing as it had gotten me out of earlies-the first shift of the day.

 

"Jo?" the radio called again. "This is Nina. Do you copy?"

 

I rolled my eyes, glad she couldn't see me. I knew Nina was worried, given everything that had happened, but she could at least give me a second to respond.

 

"Go for Jo," I sang into the walkie-talkie.

 

"We need you in the galley."

 

"Copy that."

 

I clipped my radio to my shorts and turned off the iron. Off the boat, Nina was my best friend, but on it she was chief stewardess, aka my boss, meaning she made my life alternately fun and miserable. But over the last three months, ever since the accident, she'd been softer on me, letting me out of earlies because mornings were hardest, not complaining as much as she normally would when I missed a water spot on the faucet in the master bathroom. I was appreciative, but the special treatment made me uncomfortable, and I didn't like how she kept checking up on me. She'd corner me in the crew mess or pass me a drink in a Bahamian bar and ask how I was holding up. Fine, I always said, taking a long pull of whatever tropical concoction she'd ordered for me. Was I fine? Nope. Not even close. But that didn't mean I wanted to talk about it, not even with Nina.

 

Other than the week I'd gone to my sister's house in North Carolina, the last four months of my life had been back-to-back charters in the Bahamas. Every week the cycle repeated: pick up the guests, cater to their whims-including ironing their ridiculously expensive underwear (we'd googled the brand; who seriously spends $165 on a pair of briefs?!)-drop the guests back at port, flip the boat, enjoy a well-deserved night off, pick up the next guests. It was chaotic, and exhausting, and exactly what I needed. Out here in the middle of the ocean, I could pretend my real life, the one where I drove a car and wore shoes and lived alone, was on hold. But even I had to admit the cabin fever was starting to get to me.

 

Before Nina could radio me again, I raced up to the main deck and pushed through the galley doors where, as always, chaos was waiting for me.

 

"There you are!" Nina called, a wrinkle of concern on her brow. She sat at a small table, her fingers nimbly folding a mound of cloth napkins into little sailboats. "We have a beach picnic, remember?"

 

Beside the pantry stood Britt, third stewardess and my painfully messy bunkmate. Her curly hair shook as she dug through a plastic bin of decor, piling dried starfish, delicate sand dollars, and seashells at her feet. Once I'd asked her how she could be a stewardess and such a slob at the same time. We were essentially maids on fancy boats, after all. Britt replied that she spent so much time cleaning up after other people, she had no energy to pick up after herself.

 

"Fecking beach picnic," Ollie, the Serendipity's chef, muttered. He whizzed around the galley like a pinball, his Irish accent rising above the hiss of pans on the stove.

 

"He's having a bad day," Nina said.

 

I glanced at Ollie, who was now hacking a watermelon to pieces. "When isn't he?"

 

"TouchŽ." Nina tugged the sail of a napkin turned boat in her hands. Her dangling unicorn earrings, the ones she wore every day, swung back and forth as she looked me over. They were the only sign of the goofy Nina I knew outside of work, a stark contrast to her neat high ponytail and severe expression. Though she was tiny, and at five-two was a couple inches shorter than me, she carried herself with a confidence I doubted I'd ever have. We must have made an amusing pair: petite, dark-haired, intimidating Nina, and me, your nonconfrontational, average-everything blonde.

 

"What took you so long?" Nina said when I sat beside her. "Find skid marks in the primary's tighty-whities again?"

 

I swatted a napkin at her. "Why would you put that image in my mind?" Nina didn't usually joke about the primary-the guest who'd booked the charter-but this primary was . . . different.

 

Nina gave me a tight-lipped smile, then set a sailboat napkin on the table and handed me a checklist of everything we'd need to pack for the beach picnic. "Double- and triple-check it. I don't want another dessert spoon incident."

 

On my mental list of things that didn't belong on the beach (which included closed-toed shoes, reality TV weddings, and laptops), fancy silverware was one of them. "Because God forbid they eat dessert with any other type of spoon."

 

Ollie glared at me from where he stood over the sink, running watermelon purŽe through a strainer. "If I'm spending my entire morning spherizing watermelon, they'll eat it with a fecking dessert spoon now."

 

"All right, all right, I'll pack the dessert spoons." I held up my hands in surrender and backed away, joining Britt at the pantry, where her pile of seashells was growing larger by the second.

 

I prodded a seashell with my foot. "The picnic is on a beach, you know. That's why it's called a beach picnic."

 

Britt turned a conch shell over in her hands. "It's the last one of the season, so it has to be perfect." She sighed and clutched the shell to her chest. "Tell me again about your trip. I want to live vicariously through you. What's first?"

 

"Paris," I said, dragging a bin of silverware (including dessert spoons) onto the counter. Next month I'd be off to Europe to check off the last five countries for my thirty-by-thirty list-the list of thirty things I wanted to do before my thirtieth birthday at the end of the summer. I still had nine things to go, but hopefully I'd be able to complete them and get some great fodder for the blog I'd started to document my progress.

 

"And then Spain, right?"

 

"Barcelona and Madrid," I said. "Then Switzerland, Austria, and Scotland."

 

Nina joined us, dropping a handful of sailboat napkins onto the counter. "I'm horrified you're not going to Ibiza. That would've been my first port of call."

 

"I know," I said, inspecting a dessert spoon for water spots. She'd said as much every time I brought up my itinerary. If it weren't for the fact that one of us had to stay and work the day charters over the summer, I would've forced her to come with me.

 

"And why do you have to live vicariously through Jo?" Nina said to Britt. "Won't you be working Med season and making bank? I can't believe you're abandoning me. Honestly, I may never forgive you."

 

Britt rolled her eyes. "Working in the Mediterranean and vacationing there are two different things. I won't be sleeping in any castles."

 

Ollie banged a pot on the counter, making us jump. "Could you three shut it? I'm trying to prepare molecular gastronomy for a fecking beach picnic. That primary's a miserable little pox, and if I feck this up, I'm blaming you three for distracting me."

 

"Aren't chefs supposed to like cooking fancy shit?" Nina said. "Quit complaining and do your job."

 

Ollie gave her a look that could bleach coral. "Don't eat the head off me, Neen."

 

Nina dismissed him with a wave. "I swear, I hardly understand you sometimes."

 

Britt elbowed me and mimed sticking a finger down her throat, making me laugh. There was always some sort of tension between Nina and Ollie. We were never sure if they were about to murder each other or make out. My bet was on both.

 

"You'll text me if they hook up this summer, won't you? They've got way more drama than The Bachelor."

 

I raised my eyebrows at her. "Who's to say they haven't already?"

 

Britt gasped. "Josephine Walker, do you know something I don't?"

 

"Sorry." I zipped my hand across my mouth. "Solemn best friend duties. My lips are sealed."

 

Nina and Ollie leaned toward each other over the counter, tension sparking between them. (Sexual, or the kind that got you a special on Oxygen, who could say?) I had no idea if they'd hooked up or not. But whatever Nina felt about Ollie, it had to be serious, because she refused to talk about it, and Nina wasn't the sort of person to hold her tongue.

 

Though Ollie had a habit of complaining about everything, he was right about this: Molecular gastronomy and beach picnics did not go together. Everything about the food he was preparing depended on precise temperatures and chemical reactions, making sand and sun less than ideal. But on a superyacht, the primary got what the primary wanted. And I couldn't wait to get this one off the boat as soon as possible.

 

It wasn't that I didn't love my job, because I did. I loved the routine of it: stretching sheets taut on the beds, the thud of the lines as they hit the dock, the constant hum of the washer and dryer, planning theme parties and scavenger hunts. Most of our guests were fun and generous people. But our current guests made me wonder if I should've gone to college and found a job that required shoes, offered a 401(k), and had a regular schedule with weekends off.

 

Our current primary was a Silicon Valley type with a God complex. Last night, after spending the entire week working indoors in the Sky Lounge and complaining about spotty Wi-Fi, he'd chewed me out in front of everyone for not smiling enough during dinner service. You're coming off a little bitchy, sweetie were his exact words. What he didn't know was it had been three months to the day since Samson, my eleven-year-old nephew, was struck and killed by a car while riding his bike to a friend's house. I'd spent the entire morning crying-in the laundry room, while scrubbing toilets, as I collected leaves from a nearby island and hot glued them to construction paper to make laurel wreaths for the toga party. So yeah, my smile wasn't at full force. I'd wanted to tell him it takes a bitch to know one, but I liked being employed. Instead, I apologized and imagined all the offensive towel art I could make on his bed but wouldn't.

 

"Hey, hello? Jo?" Nina said, knocking on my forehead. "Can you check if the guests need a refill on drinks? They're on the sun deck."

 

I groaned. "Do I have to?"

 

Nina scowled, so I shut my mouth and marched up the spiral staircase without another word.

 

Though the laundry room was my true love, the sun deck was a close second. Known as the "party spot," the sun deck had a hot tub that could be converted into a dance floor, several oversized lounge chairs for sunbathing, and stunning panoramic views of the water. Another set of stairs led up to the highest point on the ship, a cushioned area called the bunny pad, where guests (or crew members looking for a moment alone) could escape for the best view on board. Mr. Silicon Valley didn't care about once-in-a-lifetime ocean vistas, however. I found him in the hot tub with his coworkers and their bored girlfriends, all of them staring at their phones.

 

"Anyone need a refill?" I asked, plastering my brightest smile on my face.

 

The primary unglued his eyes from his phone. "I'll have a gin fizz. And make sure you shake it long enough this time, Jen."

 

I almost said, My name is Jo, jerk face, but the rest of the crew would kill me if I put our tip in jeopardy, so I contented myself with a "You got it" and an eye roll once I turned away. Fussy drinks for fussy guests, go figure.

 

Nina and I used to play a game where we'd guess which drinks the guests would order based on our first impressions of them. After a few months, we got scary good at it. Vodka sodas were the favorite of youthful, weight-conscious girlfriends. Whiskey drinkers were contemplative types who stared silently out at the water, but when they did talk, they had the best stories. Winos, on the other hand, talked nonstop. They were the ones who inevitably ordered late-night snacks, meaning we had to shake Ollie awake to make them (we played rock, paper, scissors to see who got stuck with that unpleasant task). But they were also the guests who most frequently invited us to join the fun: dancing with us at theme parties, or requesting we go down the giant inflatable slide behind them or double-bounce them on the floating trampoline. Painkillers were for the flashy new-money types who squeezed every last perk from their trip. The margarita drinkers were my favorite, though. Fun, but not overly complicated, and I'm not only saying that because margaritas are my and Nina's drink of choice.

 

"Oh, and, sweetie," the primary called out. "These towels are a little damp. Mind getting fresh ones?"

 

And gin fizz drinkers were the worst of them all. After all that shaking and straining, they were never pleased. I shook his drink with extra vigor, imagining it were his head. I knew those towels were dry when I brought them up. What did a damp towel matter when he would get it soaked with his sopping-wet chest hair anyway?

 

When I finished making his drink, I stood near the hot tub and waited for his approval. All I got were smacked lips and a "Meh." But what did I expect, a thank-you?

 

I ran belowdeck to exchange the towels (aka went downstairs, refolded the towels, waited three minutes, and returned with the same towels), then stood behind the bar, watching the primary and his friends take business calls while their girlfriends took dozens of pouty photos. After what felt like an eternity, Nina appeared on the sun deck and joined me by the bar.

 

"Having fun, Jen?" she asked.

 

"So much fun," I said, wiping down the already-spotless bar with a damp rag.

 

Nina and I were peeking at the girlfriends' social media feeds (models, predictably) when my phone vibrated. At the sight of my sister's face on the screen, my chest tightened, and I stared at my phone, unable to move.