Hannah was very upset when the purser informed her that neither he or any of the other crew on ship had located the missing ring.

        “I can’t believe I lost it.” Hannah was sitting on the second step of the staircase, her hands covering her face. She sighed. “I lost my mother’s wedding ring. Damn unbelievable.”

        Lance put an arm around her shoulder, trying to make her feel better. This ring was really important to her. But she must have dropped it somewhere, but where?

        With her face still covered, she let out another loud sigh. “Maybe I’ll go out to the boat deck and look for it. Maybe they missed a spot or something,” Hannah said, finally uncovering her face. She saw Lance smiling at her.

        And now he was extending his hand. “Come on, I’ll go with you,” he said.

        “You don’t have to do this…”

        “I want to, and I’m going to. No buts about it, okay?” Lance wasn’t going to take no for answer. Hannah had no more time to think about it because he had her by the hand and was pulling her towards the door that led to the boat deck and the gymnasium.

        Hannah was checking out by the ladder that she had been standing by earlier that morning, but could find nothing around it but a few hair pins. She picked those up anyway, and stuffed them into her jacket pocket.

        You never know when they would come in handy.

        Lance was busy inspecting the spot in and around the many scattered deck chairs. “What does this ring look like?” he asked. “Is there anything on it that might help me know what I’m looking for exactly?”

        Hannah picked at the side of her pants, trying desperately to remember the description that was on the inside of the wedding band. “It’s gold,” she said. “And…”

        She paused to think again, and the big smile that appeared on herself a few seconds later gave Lance a clear indication that she had either remembered where she’d dropped it, or she remembered something significant that was on the ring.

        “There’s an inscription on it,” Hannah told him. “My father had it carved on the ring before they were married. It says, ‘For my love, my life, my wife.’ And there’s a little heart after the word wife.”

        “Small diamond, big diamond?”

        Hannah rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s not big, but it’s not small, either.”

        “So where was the ring when you lost it?” he asked.

        “Well, I was standing behind that ladder this morning. The last time I saw it was this morning before I met you guys for breakfast.”

        “And where was it?”

        “In my pocket,” Hannah told him. The possibility of her losing it during breakfast was impossible because she had been jingling it with her finger while she and Lance had been talking earlier on the boat deck. “I lost it out here, I know it.”

        They looked for over an hour around the large space of the entire deck, but neither had any luck.

        Hannah groaned and rubbed her face. “I lost it. I can’t believe I lost it.” And the fact that Lance was rubbing her shoulders wasn’t helping at all. It was only making her more tense.

        “I’m sure it’ll turn up,” he said, trying to reassure her. But now he wasn’t so sure.

        After all, if someone found an expensive ring, what kind of person would turn it in? There were just too many people on this ship. If anyone had found it, they probably intended on keeping it without trying to find it’s owner.

        She stared at him almost in disbelief. “Are you always this positive?” Hannah asked. “I’ve never heard you say a negative thing since I’ve met you.”

        Lance shrugged, he had never really thought about that before. He tried his best never to be negative. “I’m not always positive, you know,” he told her. “I had myself believing that after this morning you would never talk to me again. And look at us now.”

        “You’re the one that wanted to help me my mother’s ring,” she pointed out. “I’m only talking to you because I have to.”

        “Does that mean you’re not going to talk to me after this?” Lance asked her. “Cause I’d be rather disappointed.”

        Without much luck, Hannah tried not to smile, but she failed. “Did you mean what you said to Joey?” she asked quietly. “Because if you did….”

        “I didn’t.”

        “You were just mad at me, weren’t you? For saying all those mean things to you earlier.” Hannah nodded her head. “I’ll admit that I didn’t exactly choose the most appropriate words.”

        “I’ll say,” Lance muttered. “Is it so hard to believe that I want to be your friend?”

        Instead of answering that question, Hannah asked a different one about an entirely different subject. “Whose Janine?”

        Lance tensed, his entire body froze in place. “Just a girl.”

        “From back home? A girlfriend, a friend, an ex-girlfriend?”

        “Ex,” he replied coldly. “And I don’t know what the fuck she thinks she’s doing. I don’t want her around, and she should know that after our last conversation.”

        “What happened?”

        Lance sat on the closet deck chair and ran his fingers through his hair before placing them back in his lap. “We’d been together for about four months,” he started, shaking his head. “No wait, it was six months. I came home from work one day. You see, I used to work for a courier company.”

        “You came home and found her gone?”

        He laughed. “Not quite.”

        “Then what happened?”

        “I walked up to my bedroom, and found her in bed with one of my co-workers, who also happened to be a close friend of mine.” He closed his hand into a fist and looked straight out at the lifeboat in front of him.

        “Oh.” Hannah felt for him. Though she had never been in a serious relationship with anybody, she knew what it felt like to be lead on and lied to. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.

        “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.”

        Lance looked back over at Hannah and realized she really felt bad for him. It was in her eyes. It was nice that someone cared. Not that his friends hadn’t, but they just didn’t understand. They had always disliked Janine and had felt like they had been proved right by her actions.   

        “Then I guess that explains why you looked so uncomfortable with her around tonight,” Hannah said. “It wasn’t just me being there?”

        He smiled. “I was glad you were there. I wanted to apologize for earlier. I did kind of blow your head off.”

        “I shouldn’t have criticized the way you live your life,” she said. “I have no right to tell you who you spent your time with and how you spend your life.”

        “I got to admit it that after a few hours of thinking about it, that you were right,” Lance admitted.

        Hannah smiled smugly. “I was, wasn’t I?”

        “But it’s the way my life has been since Janine and I broke up,” he told her. “And if that’s the way I want to live, I don’t want to criticized about it, okay? You shouldn’t be worrying about me, anyway. Concentrate on yourself.”

        “So you can worry about me but I can’t worry about you? That makes a hell of a lot of sense.”

        “I guess that doesn’t sound fair, does it?”

        “Not at all.”

        Hannah looked up and him and they both looked into each other’s eyes, looking lost. When had he come to matter so much to her? Why did she care so much about him? Why couldn’t she just forget him and walk away?

        He broke away from the gaze when Lance realized he’d been staring at her. “Let’s go down to the lounge. I’ll buy you a drink,” he offered.

        For the first time, Hannah agreed without having a but or a complaint. “Okay.”

        And as they walked back inside, Lance wondered how the mood between them changed so quickly. A few hours ago, she was mad at hell at him. And he had managed to convince himself that he never wanted to see her again. And now here they were, and Hannah was even willing to let him buy her a drink.

        He didn’t want to question it, so he just went with it, enjoying the moment. Little did he know, it would only be the beginning of a dangerous road.

---