Free Flirtation by Samantha Hunter Page A

out the window, she mentally counted the mile markers as they passed, lulling herself back into a comfortable frame of mind. She didn’t realize she’d been counting aloud.
    “Are you feeling okay? Is everything all right?”
    She snapped around to face him, realizing EJ must have been observing her silent struggle with herself, and smiled wanly.
    “I’m fine, sorry. Just internal conversations that sometimes, well…”
    “Show up on the outside?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I know what you mean—when my sister gets really stressed, or is under a lot of pressure, she talks to herself in this kind of high-speed mumble that she doesn’t even realize she’s doing. She calls it ‘leaking.’ Like a pressure cooker letting off steam.” He grinned, keeping his eyes on the road.
    “That’s a really good description. It does feel like that.”
    “It sounded like you were counting?”
    “Yeah, I do that sometimes.” She didn’t really want to get into her little habit, and she hoped he picked up on the vibe.
    “So here we are, after a lovely meal and good company—speaking for myself, anyway.” He flashed a charming smile and then continued. “And why would you be feeling stressed?”
    She shrugged, and fiddled with some of the lace on the dress, but stopped before she pulled a thread, keeping in mind she had to return it to the shop in the morning. Suddenly she felt like she was in danger of turning into a pumpkin.
    “I’m just not used to this.”
    “To what?”
    “You know. This. Fancy dresses, fancy restaurants.” She heaved a heavy breath, and laughed lightly. “Fancy dates.”
    She barely noticed when he pulled into a parking lot that definitely wasn’t her apartment. In fact, she realized after a moment that they were down by the Elizabeth River, by the naval shipyards in Portsmouth. She looked around, her voice tentative.
    “Where are we?”
    “I want to show you something.”
    He drove through narrow lanes, easily passing through the few checkpoints where the uniformed men at the window seemed to know him, but checked his ID anyway before waving him through. Charlotte didn’t feel so much fearful as confused. Those emotions turned into sheer awe as he maneuvered down through narrow roads and alleys, pulling up near two piers that ran along the side of a huge ship.She had to scrunch down and look up through the window to see the top of it.
    “Wow,” she whispered.
    “She’s one of ours.”
    Charlotte looked at him quizzically in the small confines of the car, and he elaborated with a proud smile.
    “We built that. My father’s company.”
    “Really? That’s incredible. I’d never seen a real Navy ship before I lived here. I watch them go in and out of the Bay, but I never really caught which one is which. It’s smaller than the Wisconsin , the one down on the waterfront—what kind is this?”
    “The Wisconsin is a battleship. This is a destroyer, Burke class. It’s smaller, but faster, and generally is used for submarine warfare and battleship defense. Come out and get a better look.”
    They got out of the car, and the cool breeze off the water chilled her skin, but she barely noticed, she was so busy studying the ship.
    “It’s so intimidating. Powerful. I always wondered why everyone refers to ships as feminine when they are so obviously male. I mean, really, look at all the parts poking out—it’s almost embarrassingly phallic.”
    EJ laughed, delighted by the observation, and tried to elaborate.
    “There are a lot of ideas why ships are referred to as female. Some say it’s because they’re temperamental and not every man can handle one right,” heteased, grinning when she turned her head and gazed at him through narrowed eyes. “Then there is the more logical view that in the Romance languages, the word for ship is always in the feminine. As such, Mediterranean sailors always referred to their ship as she. It just became habit after that. And then there’s the idea that early