Read Jaine Austen 8 - Killer Cruise for Free Online Page B

phone that did everything except brew coffee. One thing it did not do, however, was work on board ship. So I’d arranged with my parents to communicate with them via e-mail.
    I found the computer room sandwiched between the ship’s chapel and the Photo Studio. Several Webaholics were seated at a bank of computers getting their daily Internet fix.
    One of them was Kyle Pritchard. Clad in a designer polo and Bermuda shorts, he was tapping away at his computer. At his feet was an attaché case, no doubt made of some endangered species. And spread out next to him were what looked like a bunch of financial statements.
    “Hi, Kyle,” I chirped.
    “Hmmph,” was his cheery reply.
    Careful to put plenty of space between us, I settled down at a computer and tried to get an Internet connection. For some idiotic reason, I thought it would be free, as part of my “free, all-expenses-paid” cruise. But, alas, the helpful Holiday staffer on duty informed me that I wasn’t about to be comped on e-mails.
    “How much is it?” I asked.
    “A buck fifty.”
    Gee, that wasn’t so bad.
    “A minute,” he added.
    Holy Moses. I made a mental note to keep my communications with my parents to a bare minimum. But after reading my e-mails I’m afraid I wasted valuable Internet minutes staring into space, agog at the thought of the cops charging into my apartment on a “catnapping” call.
    It was so typical of Daddy, creating an uproar over nothing. I love him to pieces, but the man is a born crazymaker. I swear, he’s caused more ulcers than pepperoni pizza and jalapeno chiles combined. How Mom has put up with him all these years, I’ll never know.
    Of course, Mom is not without a few quirks of her own. Not only is she constitutionally incapable of remembering my cat’s name, she’s probably the only person on the planet to move to Florida to be near the Home Shopping Channel, not for the weather or the oranges. Somehow she’s convinced she gets her packages faster that way.
    But I couldn’t waste any more time dawdling over my e-mails. It was almost ten o’clock. Time for my first class of the cruise.

    I have to confess I was a tad nervous.
    When I’d first asked Paige how many people I could expect at my class, she’d replied:
    “Oh, the big-name celebrities can attract hundreds. But someone of your caliber”—and there was no doubt she ranked me somewhere in the Three Stooges caliber of lecturer—“the most you can expect is fifty, maybe seventy-five.”
    Seventy-five people?? Gaack! To me that was a cast of thousands. The only other writing class I’d ever taught was at the Shalom Retirement Home, where I could count my students on the fingers of one and a half hands.
    So it was with butterflies frolicking in my stomach that I raced back to my cabin to gather the seventy-five handouts I’d xeroxed for the class. Just my luck, the elevator took forever to show up, and when it finally did, it stopped at every floor.
    Which meant that I was five minutes late when I finally came puffing up to the Galley Grill Restaurant, where the class was scheduled to take place. By now, those butterflies in my stomach were doing the conga.
    My fear quickly turned to flop sweat when I walked into the restaurant.
    There, seated at the tables that had been set up for the class, was a grand total of five students!
    Five measly people? What happened to all the others?
    I walked over to them, a sickly smile pasted on my face.
    “Hello, there!” I said, my voice echoing in the cavernous restaurant. “Welcome to Writing Your Life Story .”
    I prayed some latecomers would straggle in. Maybe some of them got held up in the elevator, like I did. Yes, I had to think positive thoughts. A whole bunch of them would probably come streaming in any minute now.
    I introduced myself, and after explaining that I was no relation to the Pride and Prejudice Jane, I started passing out my handouts: a series of memory-stimulating questions about my