Page 80 of No One Aboard

“No.” Francis cracked a strange, wide smile. “Family’s who you runwith, right, Ry?”

Rylan sobbed. Or maybe he laughed. “Don’t tell her... I told you... please... I don’t want her to go.”

“Don’t worry, my son,” Francis said warmly, and he gathered Rylan into his arms. “She won’t.”

Chapter 39

Lila Logan Cameron

Call sign: Cassiopeia

Day 9 at Sea

A wannabe-runaway teenager was such a cliché Lila could almost laugh about it.

So Tia wanted to leave it all behind, hmm? She had looked back on her childhood of flying in private jets between three houses, taking summer trips on the family yacht, attending expensive schools and red-carpet events, and she had made the decision that she could do better alone?

Lila did start laughing. Her shoulders shook, and her lips peeled back. She was out of the horrible little cave of an anchor locker, leaving behind Francis to tend to Rylan. Perhaps she should track down her daughter belowdecks and give her an idea of just how selfish, how stupid she was being.

Since when had Tia Cameron run away from anything? Since when did she give up? Lila felt even more disappointed than she did betrayed. She wasn’t certain she would miss Tia if she did run. It had felt something like paradise without her this past year. But Rylan would never be the same if Tia left for good.

And Lila had tried to be a good mother.

God had she tried.

She’d read books likeSetting Limits with Your Strong-Willed ChildandParenting in the Spotlight. She had found good psychologists and teachers. She left discipline up to Francis so she could be the person her children felt safe with.

Perhaps what hurt more than anything was that, in this one way, Tia was finally acting a bit like Lila, who had left behind her parents the moment she’d landed a role in her first movie.

But that was different.

Patrick and Lori Logan were indifferent to Lila’s ambition. They were tedious, uninspired nobodies who had lost interest in Lila the minute she no longer looked like their doll.

Lila realized she had locked her jaw from clamping down so hard. She massaged furiously below her ear and loosened the tension until her jaw clicked. She wished there was a perfectly placed vase nearby for her to throw against a wall.

She headed belowdecks. She needed an aspirin. And something to aim her bad energy at.

Alejandro.

Lila went to his room, pressing her index fingers into the sides of her head.

She ran right into someone’s chest. “Jesus!”

Lila looked up, ready to slide her hands over Alejandro’s shoulders and tote him by his belt to her bed, but it wasn’t Alejandro.

It was Nico holding, of all things, a packet of condoms.

“Mrs. Cameron!”

Oh God.Lila studied the young man, trying to remember if she had ever exchanged two words with him this entire trip.

“Nico. Hello.”

Nico slipped his hand casually in his pocket and gave Lila a winning smile that was shaped somewhat like his uncle’s. “You look lovely.”

Lila let herself lean against the doorway. “And you look guilty.”

She was half Nico’s height but more than double his age with the nice bonus of being the wife of his boss. He didn’t dare push past her. It gave Lila the chance to examine him. Closely. Was he trying to sleep with Tia? She had seen them flirting a few times. What Lila wanted to know most was whether this was the first time. Could Tia, careless and bombastic as she was, really have been able to get away with having secret sex on a sixty-foot boat? Lila doubted it. This must be the first attempt, then.