Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9) Read online

  “That’s just weird. I get that Alaska is farther north, but it doesn’t seem like any of the other States could go this far north.”

  Erin nodded her agreement.

  Vic leafed through the folder that she had been handed when they had checked in with their tour group. Everyone had been given one, and most of them were looking through it to see the details of their tour. Terry frowned and looked sideways at Erin. She was still looking at her own itinerary and had not yet pulled out her tour folder. Erin caught his look.

  “What is it?”

  “You said that there was a vegan banquet.”

  “Yes.” Erin put her finger on her itinerary so she wouldn’t lose her place, and looked at Terry. “Isn’t it on there? Maybe they forgot to include it.”

  Vic also looked up from her brochures, her mouth open. Erin looked back and forth between them, trying to divine what was wrong.

  “What is it? Isn’t it in there?”

  Terry turned around the folder and showed the face of it to Erin. Erin stared for a moment before starting to take in all of the individual details. ARS Alaska Tour for the Animals. A Vegan Tour.

  Erin blinked. “Yes… but that doesn’t mean that everything is vegan, does it? Just that they have this banquet, and options at the buffet…”

  Terry shook his head slowly. “Oh, no. Read the description. It is a full vegan tour. No animal products of any kind in any of the meals. The whole time we’re on the ship, it’s just plant-based foods.”

  “Oh.” Erin pulled out her folder and looked at the title, and then at the welcome message in the letter inserted inside the front cover. She looked at the glossy folders with bright, colorful pictures of Vancouver and Alaska, and pictures of long buffet tables covered with food. All vegan. The whole tour.

  “Oh, boy. I had no idea.” She looked around at the others. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t. I had no idea. I didn’t pick the tour out, they just put us into this one. This was the prize that was awarded for the baking competition. I didn’t get to choose, and… I didn’t realize.”

  “Maybe we should have figured it out when that little Enzo came to the bakery,” Vic said. “The way he was going on about the vegan banquet, we should have asked a few more questions.”

  “Would it have stopped you from coming on the tour, though?” Erin asked. “If you had known ahead of time that the cruise was all vegetarian, you would still have wanted to come, wouldn’t you?”

  Her three friends looked at each other with grim faces and didn’t answer.

  At least while they were in Vancouver, there was plenty of normal food on offer. The hotel had plenty of vegan options for their tour group, and the luncheons that they were provided while on the tours of the various sites in and around Vancouver and Vancouver Island were vegan, but there were lots of other options at the restaurants around them. The other members of their tour group were all staunch vegans, it would seem, or at least one member of each of the couples, so Erin and her group were a little isolated from the rest by their eating habits. It was odd for omnivores to be in the minority and vegetarians in the majority.

  Still, the food offered on the tour was good and they didn’t separate from the group for every meal. Erin was pleasantly surprised by avocado and tomato sandwiches on chewy baguettes, vegetarian sushi, and a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. The men made complaints about not having their meat, but they too seemed to enjoy the heartier offerings of vegan burgers, chili, and stew.

  Erin was surprised at how muscular or heavy some of the other members of the tour group were. She would have expected them all to be skinny like Enzo, but she couldn’t pick out of the group which of them were vegetarian and which were “omnis” there to support vegan partners.

  “I’ve never had any problem maintaining my weight as a vegan,” Margaret, a vegan from Seattle laughed, looking down at her generous figure. She wasn’t fat, exactly, but she was certainly curvy. “I have to fight to keep from putting on weight, especially as I get closer to you-know-what.”

  Erin shook her head, not understanding.

  “My hormones are changing,” Margaret explained, smoothing her blue blouse over her stomach and hips. “And you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to pile on the pounds.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  Margaret laughed. “Well, why would you? You’re hardly more than a child! You don’t have to worry about the big change for a couple of decades yet! But be warned, it comes sooner than you think!”

  Chapter Five

  V

  ancouver Island was even more beautiful than the City of Vancouver had been, quieter and quaint. They had all enjoyed riding in the top deck of a double-decker tour bus as it made its way around Victoria. Erin found it a little windy and cold, but it was a welcome relief from Tennessee temperatures, which she still hadn’t become accustomed to after living in New England. Although it was the opposite coast, the sea air and brisk winds were more familiar to her and brought back pleasant memories of home that she hadn’t known she had.

  “I almost don’t want to leave BC,” Vic said, echoing Erin’s feelings. “I know there is going to be a ton more cool stuff to see in Alaska, but it’s so pretty here, and the people are really nice.”

  “I know,” Erin agreed. “I wish we had arranged to spend some more time here. It’s really nice to get away from work and there are so many more things that I wanted to see here. I could have spent a whole day just in Butchart Gardens!”

  The men seemed more interested in getting on with the tour than Vic and Erin were. They were goal-oriented and wanted to see Alaska. That was what they had come for, after all, not wandering around British Columbia.

  The morning of day four of the tour was bright and sunny, with just a little wind blowing off the ocean. They repacked all of their suitcases and headed to the cruise ship. Erin stared up at the huge ship that was waiting for them in the harbor. It was bigger than the ferry that had taken them to Vancouver Island. It towered above them, was blindingly white, and seemed big enough to be a city all itself.

  Erin hung on to Terry’s arm, staring up at the ship. K9 was leashed at his side and had so far caused no problems at any of the checkpoints they had been through. Terry had papers confirming all of his shots and his status as a police dog, and that seemed to satisfy the border guards, hotel security, and tour officials. Erin missed Orange Blossom and Marshmallow, but was glad that they were home where they were happy and that she didn’t have to put them in cages or chance that they would be sick on board the cruise ship.

  “It’s so big,” Erin murmured, still staring up at the ship.

  “Huge,” Terry agreed. He had read off a number of statistics to Erin the night before about the ship, how many people it carried, its environmental controls, how much of every kind of consumable it went through in a year, and everything else he could find about it. But none of that had given Erin the scope of how big the vessel actually was.

  Pleasant crew members checked their passports and checked them off of lists, giving them their room assignments and pointing them in the right direction to find them. Terry and Erin were on board first and turned around and waited for Willie and Vic to catch up.

  There seemed to be a delay. Erin wondered at first if they were having problems finding their room assignment on the list. It was possible that they had assigned the room under Vic’s assumed name and were having trouble reconciling it with her passport. Erin looked down at the dock, focusing on the male crewman who was talking to Vic. Vic’s face was red, and she was shaking her head. Willie was trying to step forward to talk to the guard, but Vic was holding out her arm to keep him back. Willie’s body language was aggressive and angry.

  Vic negotiated with the crewman, and eventually he let her through. Vic went slowly until Willie’s papers could be checked and, when he caught up with her, they moved more quickly, until they reached Erin and Terry.

  “What happened?” Erin asked, reac
hing out to Vic, whose red face and shiny eyes gave away her distress.

  “He kept saying that he was looking for James, and that I obviously wasn’t James. Said he was going to call the police and get us sent back to the States. Or put in jail. He kept saying that my passport wasn’t valid and that I couldn’t get on.”

  “It’s perfectly valid, how does he think you got into the country?”

  Vic shook her head. A couple of tears sped down her cheeks. “He was just being really belligerent and… hateful. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t let me on… it was more than that. It was like he really wanted to humiliate me and make a big show of me in front of everyone else.”

  “I’m going to report him to the captain,” Willie growled. “There’s no way he should be behaving like that, and I’m sure if they knew, they’d want to do something about it. That guy shouldn’t be working around people if he can’t be civil. Don’t they get any sensitivity training for working in hospitalities?”

  Erin gave Vic’s arm a squeeze. “Well, you’re on now. He can’t do anything else to bother you.”

  Once the ship got under way, all of Erin’s worries about the ship’s crew and the vegan food disappeared. She had been queasy on the ferry when they had gone to Victoria, but everyone had reassured her that she would be fine on the cruise ship. The bigger the boat, the less chance of seasickness. And the Carolina was one of the biggest ocean liners out there. You could have fit four Titanics inside of her. They all assured Erin that she wouldn’t have any trouble on the Carolina.

  But they were wrong.

  The engines had barely started when she started to feel nauseated. It didn’t take a storm or even getting all the way out to the water for her to get sick.

  “It’s just psychological,” Terry said. “No one gets sick on a ship this big. You can’t feel the ocean. It doesn’t rock like a little boat does.”

  But Erin could feel the rise and the fall of the ship. She could swear it. And even the lazy rocking was enough to set her middle ear into a panicky jig, giving Erin vertigo and making her race to the nearest toilet.

  “Maybe it’s food poisoning,” Terry offered instead. “It could be something that you ate last night or this morning.”

  Erin knew the difference between food poisoning and sea sickness, and she was definitely seasick.

  “I can’t do this. We have to go back.”

  “We can’t go back. The ship is going on, and the cruise is all paid for. Even if it is seasickness, it should wear off in a day or two, and then you’ll be able to enjoy the rest of the cruise.”

  “I can’t feel like this for two more days.” Erin wiped the sweat from her forehead, but more just sprang up in its place. “You don’t know what it’s like, Terry, it’s awful.”

  She turned to the toilet once more, and Terry withdrew while she threw up, appearing a few minutes later when the heaves had quieted and Erin was just kneeling there, slumped, wondering if there were any point trying to make it to the bed to lie down.

  “I know you’re feeling bad,” Terry commiserated. “Why don’t we find out if the ship’s doctor can prescribe something for you?”

  “Yes,” Erin immediately latched on to the idea. “Drugs. Make them give me something to feel better. I can’t last like this for two more days. I can’t stand it for two more hours. My throat will be raw and my stomach will be turned permanently inside out!”

  “My poor girl.” Terry bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead, then wrinkled his nose and changed his mind. He stroked her hair instead. “We’ll find something that will make you feel better. I’m sorry that you’re feeling sick.”

  “Go find out. I don’t want to have to wait.”

  She knew it was rude to order him around, but she wanted to feel better as quickly as she could, and she knew she wouldn’t start feeling better until she got something from the doctor that would take away the awful vertigo and nausea.

  Terry gave her another quick stroke. “I’m going to leave K9 here with you. He’ll have to keep you company. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “You think he’ll be busy?” Erin challenged. “We just left, and you said no one else would be seasick. So he shouldn’t have anything else to do.”

  “Well… just be prepared. I don’t know how long things take to happen on a cruise ship.”

  Chapter Six

  A

  s Terry had expected, it did take some time before he managed to get in to see the doctor and talk to him about Erin’s unexpected seasickness. Erin sat in the bathroom, and eventually lay her head on the side of the bathtub, closing her eyes and wondering if she dared to get up and go to her bed. What if she got sick again as soon as she started out? Or what if she got all the way to the bed and then couldn’t make it back to the bathroom? She didn’t have a basin or anything to use if she started throwing up again once she lay down. So in spite of how tired she was, she stayed there, resting her face on the cool surface of the bathtub and trying to pretend she was somewhere else.

  K9 came sniffing around the doorway, looking concerned about her. He sat outside the bathroom and whined.

  “You can come in.”

  He immediately entered the bathroom and went to her, nosing her worriedly and giving her short, encouraging licks. Erin pushed him back.

  “I already feel sick enough. I don’t need dog drool too.”

  He sat back on his haunches and panted. Erin patted him for a minute, then closed her eyes again as another wave of nausea engulfed her. She shuddered, wishing she were anywhere other than on board a boat.

  When Terry finally returned, he found Erin still in the bathroom, cuddled up with K9.

  “Erin. Erin, wake up. Are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him for a moment before recognition finally entered her eyes. It was hard to believe that in such a short period of time she could go from the bright and vivacious girl that he knew to a hollow-eyed waif. He felt her cheek and took her pulse, then looked back at the doctor, who had followed him into the suite.

  “She’s not looking too good. Do you want me to see if I can get her to the bed?”

  Dr. Duncan O’Donoghue, a smiley, white-haired gentleman in a white lab coat, peered in at them.

  “It would be easier to have a look at her out on the bed.”

  Terry tried to encourage Erin to get up and walk to the bed with his assistance, but Erin was weak and confused and wasn’t going to make it even with help. He ended up bending down and working his hands under her knees and back to pick her up. He took her over to the bed cradled in his arms, and laid her gently down.

  “Erin, can you hear me? The doctor is going to take a look at you now. Okay?”

  She murmured something Terry wasn’t sure of, and he moved out the way for O’Donoghue to do his job.

  “Has she been sick for long?”

  “No. She wasn’t sick at all before we left. But as soon as we got underway, she started throwing up. I wondered if maybe it was food poisoning. I told her it was way too quick to be seasickness…” Terry trailed off.

  Dr. O’Donoghue began his examination of Erin, not appearing to have heard much of what Terry had said.

  “She had the flu before this?”

  “No. Nothing. She was just fine.”

  “And then she had food poisoning.”

  “No. Yes. I thought she might because she got sick so fast. But she said she didn’t think it was food poisoning.”

  “She’s very dehydrated. We’ll need to get her fluids up and to get her on something to counteract the nausea.”

  “Can you do that here? Does she need to go to a hospital?”

  “We’re fully equipped to deal with seasickness here, believe me,” the doctor said with a charming smile. “We do deal with it quite regularly.”

  “I thought nobody got seasick on big boats like this.”

  “No one except for the people who do.” He gave a little shrug. “There are always a few who insis
t on being sick even when they have no reason to.”

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

  “Yes, she’ll be fine once we get her fluids back up. Good thing you didn’t wait until tomorrow to see if she got over it on her own.”

  “That would have been pretty bad? She could have gotten worse?”

  Dr. O’Donoghue raised his eyebrows and indicated Erin’s form on the bed. “You noted yourself she’s already in pretty bad shape. Without the fluids her body needs to function, she could be dead within hours.”

  Terry shuddered at the thought. He had known that Erin wasn’t faking how sick she was, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she could go downhill that quickly.

  “I’m going to leave her with you for a few minutes and collect what I need,” O’Donoghue said. “There’s no need to put her in the infirmary when she can be just as comfortable here. She won’t be in any danger once we get her fluids back up. I’ll get an IV and you can see if you can tempt her with anything from the mini fridge. But not alcohol. Water, Gatorade, juice, or pop. Not too much juice or pop.”

  Terry nodded. “Okay. Thanks so much.”

  After he departed, Terry bent in close to Erin and tried to rouse her enough for her to sit up and take some fluids by mouth. “What would you like to drink, Erin? Would you like some ginger ale? Some apple juice?”

  “Mmm,” Erin shook her head, refusing. “No, nothing.”

  “You need to get something in you. You’ve thrown up too much and you’re going to get sicker.”

  “No.”

  “The doctor said you need to drink something.”

  Her eyes opened a slit. “I’ll just throw it up again.” She groaned. “My throat hurts.”

  “You need to try. Something that will soothe your throat. Do you want water or apple juice? Just some little sips. Or some ice chips. Do you want some ice?”