Man Overboard

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Gillian

Day 3

I watched Brady from beneath the brim of my floppy sunhat, round dark sunglasses hiding my eyes. I was belly down on one of the loungers near our private infinity pool where he was swimming laps, chin resting on my forearms, my brain and heart pretty much mush.

Lyle had ditched me. The day before our shipboard wedding. He didn’t even have the balls to text me directly. Instead, he dumped that responsibility on Brady, the nicest guy on the planet.

I was humiliated. Embarrassed. Ashamed. I should have seen this coming. It was all too good to be true, but I’d trusted Lyle. Believed him when he said he loved me because I was nothing like the socialites he usually dated. I should have listened to the initial misgivings I had when he first asked me out. The gut instinct that said movie-star handsome billionaires like Lyle Gartner didn’t date boring chubby girls from the suburbs who had to work for a living like me.

The shame burned hot, worse than the Caribbean sunshine beating down from a cloudless blue sky.

Yes, I was horrified and humiliated, but I was a little surprised at what I was not.

I was not heartbroken.

I was angry and disappointed and stunned, but part of me felt like I deserved it. Lyle was so out of my league. He was rumored to be a notorious flirt who went through girlfriends like the Kardashians went through men. He rarely took me out, instead arranging romantic trysts at his apartment on his parents’ estate, whispering that he didn’t want to share me with anyone else.

He wanted me all to himself because he didn’t want his mother’s disapproval or his friends’ amusement to tip me off to his true motivation for dating me, which was, in fact, that he was using me.

In hindsight, it was glaringly obvious.

My entire body went hot as another wave of humiliation washed over me. Lyle made some effort to conceal our relationship , but he didn’t bother hiding it from Brady or Genevieve, his mother’s social secretary. They were probably sipping champagne in a bubble bath for two overlooking the Vegas Strip, laughing at my naiveté.

“Can you believe she thought I actually intended to marry her?” Lyle would be saying.

“Make sure you get that honkin’ huge engagement diamond back from her,” Genevieve would say.

“Oh, she can throw it in the ocean,” Lyle would smirk. “It’s a cubic zirconia.”

“How’s your headache?” Brady stood in the shallow end of the pool, beads of water clinging to his tanned, sculpted torso as he shook his head, droplets flying from the ends of his shaggy dark strands.

“Better, thanks.” I’d always thought he was cute, in a boy next door kind of way, and I wondered how I’d missed his great physique. Tall, with strong shoulders and a lean waist, he had the build of a natural athlete, someone who, by nature, was physically active. I vaguely remembered him carrying me back to the suite from the bar where I’d been drowning my sorrows which required serious strength because I was no lightweight. Except, it appeared, when it came to drinking too many Mudslides.

“Let’s do something.” Brady climbed out of the pool and dried himself off with a fluffy white towel. “You probably don’t feel like it, but I hate to see you moping around. I know your heart is broken and it will take time to get over Lyle, but at least you found out his true nature before it was too late.”

“Yeah, well…” I swiveled to an upright position, crossing my legs and draping a towel over them to hide my hips and belly. The worst thing about Lyle’s betrayal? After three months with him, I’d genuinely started to believe he found my curves attractive.

Not.

That bit of stupidity was the most humiliating.

“I’m a good listener if you want to vent.” Brady sat on the lounger across from me, elbows resting on his knees, hands knotted in the towel.

“You’re super nice, Brady, and I appreciate everything you done, but this isn’t your mess.” I sighed and looked past his big strong shoulders to the endless sea and sky. “I should have known better. I’m not the kind of woman a billionaire falls in love with. Lyle was using me from the start, but I wanted to believe fairy tales really happen. I’m ashamed of falling for Lyle’s lies, but even more ashamed of the way I started acting. Like I was better than everyone else just because I was going to be Mrs. Lyle J. Gartner the Third. The day we left port, I was awake all night. I forced myself to do a reality check, and you know what? I was never really in love with Lyle.”

“Really?” Something in his expression changed. His jaw relaxed, and his dark eyes gleamed with…interest?

No, I was seeing things. No way was I making that mistake again.

“I was in love with the fantasy.” I pulled off my sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose which was starting to tingle with sunburn. “I’m not sure I’d recognize love if it hit me in the face like a wet mackerel.”

“When it’s real, you’ll know.” He stood up and held out a hand. “Come on. Everything on this cruise is prepaid. There’s also an unlimited expense account. We can eat at one of the restaurants, play pickleball, gamble at the casino, shop at the gallery of shops, get a spa treatment, go ice skating, ride the zipline, do a wine tasting or learn about craft beer, play laser tag, watch a movie in the 4D theater, or see one of the shows.”

“I don’t know…”

“Take back your power. Don’t let Lyle make you doubt yourself. He took enough from you.”

“I thought you and Lyle were friends.” I was surprised at Brady’s harsh words.

“Honestly, Gillian, Lyle doesn’t have friends. Not in the true sense of the word. We grew up together, so I understand who Lyle is. He doesn’t know how to be a friend.”

“So why did you agree to come on this cruise as his best man?” I asked.

Brady shifted nervously, as if debating his answer. Finally, he looked me in the eye. “I came for you.”