Full Steam Ahead (Sea Swept #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

sunglasses on her face.
    “Are you still moving to New York after graduation, Dan?” Parker asks, and they chat about future plans. Dan is starting law school early at NYU. Yasmin and Parker are heading off to grad school. Georgia doesn’t participate in the discussion, instead applying a new layer of sunscreen. I try not to watch her smooth it over her skin, but it’s pretty damn hard.  
    Finally I stop trying to ignore her the way she seems to want me to, and plop myself on the foot of her chair. She yanks her feet away, tucking her knees against her chest.
    “So what are you going to do when you graduate?” I ask, listening with half an ear as Dan, Yasmin, and Parker compare the horrors of the GRE versus the LSAT. “Since apparently my answer was wrong earlier.”
    Her voice is chilly. “Oh, you know, I’ll be searching for any guy who’ll have me. Getting that MRS degree.”  
    I’m startled into a laugh. “Did you just make a joke?” She glares at me behind her sunglasses, and I grin. “Fine, maybe I deserved that. But come on, I’m dying of curiosity now. What are your big plans post-grad?”  
    She hesitates for a long moment, and I think she’s going to tell me to jump off the boat before I even think of speaking to her again, but then she says, “Go to London and Paris.”
    “Really?” I’m intrigued, because those cities feature in my post-graduation plans too. “Why there?”  
    “I want to see the Tate and the Pompidou.”  
    Recalling that she’s an art history major, I nod. I read about those museums in a travel book I bought. “Modern art. Good stuff.”
    She looks surprised. “You’ve actually heard of the Tate and the Pompidou?”
    “Why shouldn’t I have?” I say, just to needle her. Most of our peers couldn’t name a museum besides the Smithsonian, and since I’m a pre-med biology major there’s no reason for her to think I’m any different. Georgia smiles a little wryly.
    “I mentioned them to Hunter once and he thought I was talking about a new band,” she says, and we laugh.
    “My little sister loves to paint,” I tell her. “I’ve taken her to probably every museum in the south by now.”
    “I want to see every art museum in the world,” Georgia says, her blue eyes lighting up. She’s so closed off usually—lately, anyway—that I tend to forget how gorgeous she is when she gets excited about something. But I’m noticing now.
    “That’s going to be expensive,” I observe, and am surprised when Georgia sinks back against the chair, face falling as if I’ve told her all the art museums had closed forever.
    “Yeah, I guess so,” she murmurs.  
    Suddenly Dan claps a hand on my shoulder. He must have overheard our conversation because he says, “Expensive? Like Georgia has to worry about money. The Cantwells are totally loaded.”  
    Georgia smiles, but it’s her tacked-on smile, the frozen one that bugs me. All her light has faded. I glance at her friends, but they don’t seem to notice how still Georgia’s shoulders have gone.  
    Dan starts telling everyone about our plans for tonight. Apparently we’re all hanging out in Hunter’s suite because he smuggled a few bottles of rum and tequila into his suitcase, which means we won’t have to spend eight dollars per drink. After that, we’ll hit up the piano bar, and maybe the club after that.
    “Have you guys seen Hunter’s place?” Dan goes on. “It’s huge, at least compared to the other rooms. He has a fucking veranda .” Georgia’s expression gets even more frozen as Dan rattles on about Hunter’s palatial estate, not seeming to remember that Georgia would have been sharing that fabulous stateroom if she and Hunter hadn’t broken up a few weeks ago. Dan’s a little oblivious sometimes.
    “Let’s get some burgers,” Yasmin interrupts, because she finally has seemed to notice Georgia’s misery.
    “Yeah,” I say. “We have to grab them from the buffet, but we can eat them out