They have a second chance at love, but there are some rough seas ahead in the new contemporary romance from the acclaimed author of Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Sarah Grunder Ruiz’s Luck and Last Resorts, which is out August 9th 2022.
Commitment-phobe Nina Lejeune lives by two rules:
1. Always have fun.
2. Don’t rely on anyone but yourself.
The first rule is easy; the second, she’s only broken once.
Ten years after fleeing home, Nina is the chief stewardess on the super yacht Serendipity, single by choice, and perfectly content with how life has turned out.
But Nina’s ex-coworker and old flame, Irish chef Ollie Dunne, isn’t so happy with the status quo. One year after leaving yachting, he’s returned as the Serendipity’s chef with an ultimatum: if Nina continues to deny she’s in love with him by the end of this charter season, he’ll go back to Ireland for good.
Nina and Ollie’s shared secret from their past threatens to shipwreck not only their relationship, but the entire boat. But as their connection grows amidst chaotic guests and crew drama, could there be smooth sailing in their future?
I turn, getting the first good look at him I’ve had since I left for charter season. He’s unchanged, everything about him as in-between as ever. His hair, between blond and brown, between straight and curly, short on the sides and longer on top. He isn’t tall, but he isn’t short either. Even his outfit, a navy button-down, jeans, and white sneakers, falls somewhere between formal and informal. That’s not to say Ollie is plain, because he isn’t. There’s something striking about the balance of him. Beautiful, really.
The only out-of-balance feature on Oliver Dunne is his eyes. Blue, but not like the sky or the ocean. They’re an intense, impossible blue that reminds me of the blue-raspberry Slurpees I shared with my father after gymnastics practice when I was a kid. We’d stop at the 7-Eleven, and I’d stay in the truck while my father disappeared inside. He kept a lucky quarter in the cupholder between our seats, and I’d warm it between my palms while I waited for him. When he returned, I’d pass him the quarter for his scratch-off ticket in exchange for the Slurpee. Every now and then, the smell of quarters and scratch-off dust washes over me, making me sick. I thought my father and I were playing a game. I suppose we were. But that didn’t mean there weren’t consequences.
All this is to say, I’ve encountered many attractive people in my life, ones who wanted exactly what I did—no feelings, no strings attached—but none of them drove me wild like Ollie does. At first I thought it was the accent. But even with his mouth shut I want to kiss him. I tell Jo I don’t love him. I tell him I don’t love him. But of course I do. If soul mates exist, Oliver Dunne is the closest thing I have to one. But that doesn’t mean we’re good for each other. It doesn’t make either of us immune to the damage we can inflict on one another. It doesn’t change the rules.
Ollie looks me up and down. “Nice dress,” he says. It is nice. A knee-length color-block dress with matching buttons down the front. Vintage Liz Claiborne. One hundred percent silk. He catches the hem between his fingers, and his knuckles brush against my thigh. “Where’d you get it?”
“Do you really care?” I should step back, but my muscles are frozen. I blame the bad knee.
“Maybe I do,” Ollie says, his eyes on the fabric between his fingers. “Butch, of course.” Butch, the owner of my favorite thrift store, knows exactly what I like.
“The one and only Butch. You make me jealous when you talk about him.”
When he lifts his gaze to mine, I force myself not to look away. I hate when he looks at me that way. It makes me feel stark naked when I’m obviously overdressed.
“You should be jealous. Butch is the man of my heart.”
“And Jo is the woman, I know.”
“Not anymore.” I look beyond Ollie. Amir, RJ, and some of the other deckhands have joined Jo, Alex, and Britt at the table. Amir says something that makes everyone but RJ laugh. The look RJ gives him could fillet him alive. At least I’m not the only one who’s miserable tonight.
Ollie doesn’t say anything else. When I look up at him again, I catch the soft smile he saves only for me. Being near him is like sighing into my couch when I first get home from charter season. We haven’t spent much time together since he moved from Palm Beach to Miami. He’s only an hour and a half away, but the restaurant keeps him busy, and I’ve avoided driving down to see him ever since the last time I ended up in his bed.
For the last year, my friendship with Ollie has consisted of phone calls on his drive home from work. Most nights, unless I’m working late on the boat, he calls just as I’ve gotten into bed. I always put the phone on speaker and close my eyes as we talk, mostly about nothing. The restaurant, the yacht, weird Craigslist listings. By the time I hear Ollie unlock his apartment door, I’m half-asleep, lulled there by the sound of his voice.
It sounds like a capital-R Relationship, but it’s not. I don’t know what to call it. The phone calls and occasional hook-ups are all I can give. They’re enough for me. But this phase, the one in which we can be friends, lasts only so long before Ollie is itching for more, some- thing with a label. And when I refuse, he’ll pull away from me again. We won’t talk for months, maybe a year. He always says he’s done, and sometimes he finds someone else, someone he really likes. But it’s no use. We always find ourselves back here, walking this in-between place like a balance beam.
“Did you miss me?” he asks.
“We spoke yesterday. Though you failed to mention you’d be here.”
“Wasn’t sure I’d come. But I like to see the faces you make when you tease me.”
“Teasing? Me? Never.” I rest my hands on his shoulders. “You’re built like a hunky fridge,” I say. My hands slide down his arms to give his biceps a squeeze. He laughs, and I shoot him a glare. “What? You’re frigid, and bulky, and occasionally provide food.” I’m making quite the spectacle of myself tonight. Maybe it’s time to give up the tequila.
“That face. Right there,” Ollie says. He presses his thumb to my mouth. “And you say you don’t tease me.”
My heart is doing moves now that would be physically impossible for anyone but Simone Biles. I take Ollie’s hand in mine and squint at his palm like a fortune-teller. I know the callus at the base of his forefinger. I can map out the small scars and discolored burns that run up his hands and arms. Even when I don’t want to, I think of them whenever someone else touches me. It’s a real mood killer.
“No new injuries, I see.” “Not on this hand.” “And the other?”
He puts his other hand in mine, and I spot a new burn right away, just behind the knuckle of his pinky finger. “New line cook doesn’t look where he’s fecking going,” he says.
“I wish you’d be more careful,” I say, but I regret it as soon as Ollie’s smile becomes a smirk.
“So, you did miss me.”
“I didn’t say that.” And really, what does he care if I missed him or not? What would it change about anything?
“I’m seventy percent sure you did,” Ollie says.
Ollie’s hands feel so good in mine after months apart that I don’t care that what I’m about to suggest will only make the situation be- tween us murkier. “Do you want to play a game?” I ask.
“What game?” “Truth or dare.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Oh. Sure.” He squints at me. “Truth or dare, Nina Lejeune?”
“No,” I say. “I go first.”
Ollie rolls his eyes. “Why do you always get to make the rules?” “Because I suggested the game.”
“All right, all right. You go.” “Truth or dare?” I ask.
Ollie’s eyes are bright with mischief. “Dare,” he says. “I dare you to come outside with me,” I say.
“Done.”
“Marvelous.” I drop one of his hands, keeping a tight grip on the other as I pull him through Mitch’s and toward the door that leads to the back parking lot. I’m only distracting myself from one problem by blowing up another. I know that. But I’m not very good at listening to reason, especially my own.
As soon as we step outside, I press my hands to Ollie’s chest and push him against the brick exterior of Mitch’s.
“You smell like a tin of Altoids,” I say. “Probably taste like them too.”
“This means nothing.” “Sure thing, kitten.”
When I lift myself onto my toes and kiss him, Jo’s news and the ache in my bad knee are all but forgotten. Kissing Ollie is like working a charter—familiar, but never boring. At first the kiss is soft, almost sweet. He tastes exactly as I remember. I’d bet all my tips from the season he has a still-warm tumbler of mint tea in his car. When Ollie slides his fingers into my hair and pulls me closer, my hands find his shoulders again. Really, does the man do anything besides swear, and cook, and work out?
When we pull apart, Ollie grins. “Now I’m ninety-nine percent sure you missed me.”
I roll my eyes and lean in to kiss him again, but Ollie catches my shoulders and holds me back. “Uh-uh,” he says. “It’s my turn.”
I sigh. “Fine. Go.” “Truth or dare?” he says. “Truth,” I say.
Ollie’s expression turns serious. He caresses my cheek with the back of his hand. “What’s this really about?”
I glare up at him. This is not part of the game. We don’t talk about why we do things. We just do them. “I’ve been at sea for four months; what else could it be about?”
“Come on, kitten. You’re obviously upset. Talk to me.” His voice is so gentle it makes my chest ache.
When I don’t say anything, Ollie pushes my hair, down from its usual high ponytail for once, over one shoulder. He tugs gently at one of my unicorn earrings. “These give a man false hope, you know.”
My eyes leave Ollie’s to run over his gently sloping nose, his mouth, the wrinkle between his eyebrows. “Please don’t,” I say, surprised to find myself blinking back tears. How do I always end up kissing Oliver Dunne in secret? Despite what he says about missing me and breaking up with his girlfriend, this thing between us is not serious. It shouldn’t be, anyway. And I should be inside celebrating the next chapter of my best friend’s life. But instead, I’m in a bar parking lot making out with Ollie so I can forget about it.
Ollie’s hand drops from my ear. He pulls me to him, and I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he tucks my head beneath his chin and holds me against his chest. “It’s all right,” he whispers. “Nothing has to change. You and Jo will be the same as ever.”
I want to believe him, but Ollie is wrong. I can feel it. My entire universe is being reordered, just like when he quit the boat last year. The distance between us grew, and these days we hardly see each other. My bad knee is throbbing now. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m on the Serendipity and know a storm is coming. The sky may be cloudless and calm, and RJ and Xav can tell me there’s nothing on the radar until they’re blue in the face, but I’m never wrong about storms. It’s like they’re part of me.
Ollie can pretend he doesn’t feel it too, but I know he does. Everything is about to change.
Excerpted from LUCK AND LAST RESORTS by Sarah Grunder Ruiz, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022
