“He’s really not that bad,” Emily said. “In fact, I kind of like him.”
“Of course you do. You were already a huge fan of his music.”
“No, I mean I like him as a person. Eleven feet,” she added, eyes back on the fathometer. “Storm likes him, too. Ten-point-two feet.”
“You and Storm are traitors, then.”
Emily giggled.
“I accuse you both of mutiny.”
“Okay, we’ll both walk the plank as soon as we drop anchor, if it’ll make you happy.”
The song on Davis’s sound system ended. Jordan breathed deep in the momentary silence, hoping he was done for the morning. Then a new song started up, twice as annoying as the one that had played before.
“I don’t get how either one of you can find anything to appreciate in a man like Davis,” Jordan muttered.
“That’s because you’re only looking at what he shows on the surface.”
Jordan took her eyes off the channel markers to glance at Emily, startled. “What do you mean by that?”
“I know he’s got this ‘too cool for school’ act down to a science, but come on, Jordy. It’s obviously just his defense.”
“Defense? What does he need to defend himself against? He’s world-famous! He’s got more money than I’ll ever have!”
Emily looked up from the fathometer again, her pretty face shadowed by an irritated frown. “You know it creeps me out to talk about how much money my family has. But… take it from your friend who was raised like a princess: money doesn’t solve all your problems. In fact, I think it only makes more problems.”
Jordan shook her head, annoyed at herself, chiding herself for the insensitivity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right,” Emily said quickly. “You know I love ya. Thirteen feet.”
Jordan peered down at the GPS readout of the Fisherman Bay chart. She turned the helm expertly, angling the Coriolis into the exact center of the channel. They went on in silence for a few moments more. Then finally Jordan said, “So… what do you think Davis is hiding from?”
Emily raised one pale-gold eyebrow.
“Not that I’m really all that interested,” Jordan added.
“Of course not. Well, I can’t say for sure. But Davis seems to be really hate silence. Haven’t you noticed it? He can’t handle quiet—if there’s not something happening to hold his attention, some big, loud, thumping noise to distract him, he shuts himself in his cabin and blasts his music. It’s been a clear pattern since the first night of our trip. Something’s going on inside his head that makes silence intolerable.”
“His own thoughts?” Jordan wondered aloud. Dark thoughts or painful memories—those were the only things she could imagine that might haunt a quiet moment.
Emily shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
“Fat chance of that ever happening. The only time he ever talks to me is to ask me if there’s a town with a bar on whatever island we’re sailing past, so he can go ashore and party. What does he thinks this is, Jay-Z’s yacht?”
“Well, he is a paying customer,” Emily said. “Kind of. I don’t have to tell you, the consummate professional, that he gets some say over what he does, since we’re the work for hire.”
“I’m still the captain, and I call the shots as long as we’re onboard.”
They navigated through the final turn of the channel and glided out into the glassy, gray expanse of Fisherman Bay. The low, grass-green profile of Lopez Island emerged from the mist, and Jordan concentrated on anchoring the boat, grateful for a reason to stop wondering about Davis, even if it was only a momentary distraction. As the anchor chain rattled loudly down from the bow and the engine hummed into reverse, she realized that she didn’t really want to know what plagued Davis’s thoughts. If she learned what lay under that cocky, contrarian exterior she was afraid she might find him… sympathetic. As likable as Emily and Storm found him to be. Jordan didn’t want to like her final client. She wanted it to be easy to fold up Sea Wolf Charters and leave this experience behind. The last thing she needed was to look back on her chartering business with any warm, fuzzy feelings.
The sound of the anchor had evidently roused Davis from his shielding cocoon of obnoxious music. He came up the ladder to the cockpit and stood stretching right in front of Jordan’s face—his lean, hard body bent in a posture of lazy display, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling. He said nothing, but gave Jordan one of those slanted, arrogant, coolly amused smiles.
Jordan’s cheeks burned, and she hated herself for blushing—for showing any discomfiture where Davis could see. Had he known she’d been checking him out the whole time he was stretching? Of course he had. He seemed to know every time Jordan looked at him, as if he could feel her gaze like a physical touch. And he seemed to know, too, that Jordan couldn’t help it—she had no choice but to stare at him. He was so gorgeous, so captivating… so totally infuriating.
Emily headed down to the galley to make the coffee and round up a few pastries for their breakfast. To Jordan’s dismay, Storm was quick to join her, and she was left alone in the cockpit with Davis.
“Where to today?” Davis asked.
She waved at the island. “Lopez.” As she spun off a few facts about the island and its unique culture, her mind drifted into a litany of Davis’s many physical attractions. Strong arms, scratchy face, bright blue eyes… She kept her gaze on the misty shoreline so she could avoid glancing down at his jeans. She didn’t want any excuse to add Intriguing package to his list of finer points.
Davis cut off her bland recitation of Lopez Island Fun Facts. “Does this place have a town? With a—”
“A bar?” Jordan guessed.
Davis grinned at her, and the whole length of her spine tingled.
“It does,” she admitted. “But you aren’t not going there.”
“What?” His voice was flat, disbelieving. “Come on, Captain. It’s not like you’re my AA sponsor.”
“Do you have one?”
He laughed. The tingle in her spine turned to a lightning jolt along her limbs.
“No,” Davis said. “I’ve never needed one. I may like to party, but I’m not problematic.”
That’s debatable, she told him silently. “You’re not going there because we won’t have time. The bar doesn’t open until after 5:00 sometime—”
“Sometime?”
“That’s the way things are out here in the islands. Schedules are more like suggestions. Or vague hints.”
“Well, why can’t we go over to the bar sometime after five?”
“Because we’ll be gone by then. The tide’s on a funky schedule today, and if we stay past three o’clock our keel will get stuck in the mud.”
“I thought you said schedules are more like suggestions.”
The comment caught her so off-guard that Jordan couldn’t help but smile. It was a real smile, open, willing to give Davis one brief chance—not one of the pinched attempts she’d made at hiding her conflicted, half-irritated happiness over the past several days of their voyage.
“That only applies to islanders,” she said with a little laugh. “Not to the gravitational pull of the moon.”
“Right. My bad.”
Davis fell silent, watching her for what felt like an eternity. Jordan glanced at him almost shyly; his blue eyes locked with her own, and Jordan found herself unable to look away. And she didn’t want to look away. In that brief moment of quiet, she thought she could finally make out what Emily saw in Davis—a certain mysterious vulnerability lurking just below his façade of unshakable cool, his mask of rock-star clichés.
He is bothered by something, Jordan realized as she held Davis’s faintly troubled gaze. But what? What could possibly get past that unflappable exterior of perfect masculinity? In the quiet moment they shared—one of the only times she ever saw Davis without any accompanying noise or activity—all her annoyance fell away. She suddenly wan
ted to know what made him tick—what was inside the cavalier musician’s heart.
Davis turned away with a shake of his head, barking out a coarse laugh. The gesture seemed dismissive, and the sudden brush-off flared Jordan’s annoyance instantly back to life.
Six more days, she told herself grimly as Emily and Storm brought breakfast up from the galley.
8
After they had all eaten, Storm prepared the little runabout power boat that rode low on the Coriolis’s tail. Jordan watched with grim satisfaction as Davis approached Storm to ask him just what he was doing.
“Emily and I are going to the village to do some laundry and pick up more food.”
Davis cut a quick glance in Jordan’s direction, then said, “Sweet. I’m coming with you.”
“No you’re not,” Jordan called from the helm, where she fiddled with the GPS charts on her tablet.
She knew if Davis made landfall he’d shackle himself to the bar’s front door until it finally opened. The brief moment of silence they’d shared just before breakfast seemed unbearable to him—he was jittery and shaken up now, bouncing on the balls of his feet and absent-mindedly butting both his fists together in a way that made the well-defined muscles in his arms jump—and held Jordan’s attention in an uncomfortable way.
Davis gave her a look of open disbelief.
“Not enough room in the tender, once they get the bag of laundry in there,” Jordan said casually.
Davis eyed the little motor boat with a cynical frown. “There’s plenty of room. There would have to be, anyway. The Coriolis is huge—it can carry a lot more than just the four of us. Isn’t there some kind of law that you have to fit all your passengers into…” he made a helpless, juggling gesture as he searched for the right word. “Emergency backup boats?”
Davis had her there. The tender was certainly big enough to carry him to shore. She tried another tack. “Well, I’m the captain and that means I’m the boss of the ship. I say who stays and who goes.”
Davis tried another tack. He stepped close to Jordan, smiling. He folded his arms tight across his muscular chest as he stared down into her eyes. His grin infuriated her with its smugness. “Well, I’m the paying customer. It’s my money that’s funding this trip.”
Jordan swallowed hard, and this time she didn’t even try to hide it from Davis. He was going to notice anyway, no matter what she did. The man was hyper-attuned to the effect of his own sex appeal. And he loved the way he put Jordan off balance—she could tell that from his smile.
Why did she want him to stay? It had to be more than just the threat of the bar. Jordan told herself it was the mystery of that brief flash of vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted a chance to figure him out—that was all. If she could piece together his puzzle, find out what made him tick, what made him such an oblivious, self-absorbed prick… then she could get through the next six days without going crazy.
But as Davis stepped closer to her, her skin began to tingle, and the tingle settled to a hot, throbbing glow in her chest. The heat of it spread downward until she was pulsing with excitement low in her stomach, and then lower still…
Just how much had Davis noticed Jordan checking him out? Despite her efforts to conceal it, he seemed to read her attraction to him as easily as Jordan read a nautical chart. Did he see anything else, besides her improbable, infuriating desire?
Did he know already that she’d never had great sex—that her singular, early focus on her career had kept her landlocked well away from the dating pool? Could he tell that she compared him in her imagination to what little experience she’d already had? …Or that she wondered what he’d look like naked, what it would feel like if he held her close to his strong, bare chest and reached down to part her legs with his hand, and pressed his…
No! She turned away from him in a fury and climbed out of the cockpit, up to the rear mast. With some distance between them she could breathe again, command her thoughts, focus. This was her boat—and Sea Wolf Charters was still her business. She would not get involved with a client. She would never do anything so supremely stupid.
She couldn’t, she told herself comfortably, confidently. Such idiocy—delicious, tempting idiocy—was far too spontaneous for Jordan. It wasn’t in her character to act on these meaningless impulses.
She latched onto the words Davis had spoken, clinging as if they were a life ring in a rough sea. “You’re not paying for this trip, Mr. Steen. Your record label is paying. And your manager told me what he expects: peace and quiet for you. That’s what I’m being paid for—not to sail you around and do your bidding, but to see that you relax. And by God, I’m going to do it.”
Davis turned to Storm and Emily for backup, but Storm only shrugged. “Jordan’s the boss-lady. What she says, goes.”
“All right.” Davis slid one hand into his pocket and gazed up at Jordan.
She couldn’t help but stare at the motion—at the smooth sliding of his hand, at what rested beside it in his jeans. Oh my god, she told herself. Get your mind out of the gutter.
“I’ll stay here with you, Jordan. If that’s what you want. Just you and me.”
*.*.*
Jordan sat on the deck with her back braced against the mast, watching Storm and Emily motor off toward the shore. The tender seemed to shrink in her vision more rapidly than she expected, emphasizing how very alone she now was with Davis Steen.
What the hell had she just done? She asked herself that question again and again until the tender finally vanished into the last weak shrouds of mist that clung to shoreline of Fisherman Bay. It wasn’t that she was worried about Davis’s behavior—he was a prick, not a creep—but she was concerned about her own. Those few moments before Storm and Emily had climbed into the boat and departed, while she stood face to face with Davis, challenging him—it was as if her mind had finally given in to her body’s mutinous desire. Davis was hot as hell. She’d been thinking it ever since she first met him. There was no denying now just how badly she wanted him, and the force of her desire frightened her. She wasn’t used to feeling so… out of control. To having anything surprise her so completely, and take over her carefully planned, well-ordered existence.
It’s just because I haven’t been with a guy in so long, she told herself stoutly. I’m just horny. And why shouldn’t I be? It’s been six years since I fooled around with anybody!
Six years of dedication to her career. Six years of planning, saving, working… six years of total predictability, absolute unspontaneity.
Now that she laid it all out in her head, it did seem kind of crazy to deny herself that kind of fun for so long. But she hadn’t noticed anything lacking in her life. Not once during all that time had she cried or moped over her celibacy. She had always been too occupied with thoughts of the future to care.
But in Davis’s presence, it seemed her body hungered for everything she’d put off since she was eighteen. The depth and force of the craving astonished her. And her inability to control it—to shut it off and return to her usual, detached, businesslike self—was scary.
Davis climbed up from the cockpit and sank down slowly to sit at Jordan’s side. He was very close—not close enough to touch, but so near that she could feel the warmth from his leg intruding against her knee. All her senses seemed focused on that one small tingle of warmth, the invisible brush of not-quite-contact.
“Well, here we are,” Davis said. “Alone.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was smirking, of course—pleased with the way he flustered her, fully aware of his effect. What an ass.
Jordan remembered how the silence that morning had unsettled him. If he could put her off guard, then she could play the same game. She smiled coolly at him—or at least, she hoped she looked unflustered—and said, “Yep. Alone. Just you and me and the silence. Just us, alone with our thoughts.”
“What are you thinking about right now?” The question was low and gravelly; the sound of his
voice seemed to throb along Jordan’s veins. She suppressed a shiver of greedy desire—but she said nothing. She just continued to smile at him, holding his eyes with her own.
Davis made another attempt to knock her off balance. “You know, this morning… when I made you laugh… when you smiled. You have a really nice smile.”
Jordan gave one quick lift of her eyebrows, an acknowledgment of his praise—and held her tongue.
“What do you think of me?” Davis asked. “What do you think… about me?”
Still Jordan made no reply. She turned her face away from him and sighed, gazing out at the island, as if perfectly content with her own thoughts—with the gentle quiet of the misty morning.
Davis held himself rigidly still for a long moment. Then he jumped up so suddenly that Jordan nearly gasped.
“I’m going to get my speakers,” he said.
Jordan sprang to her feet, too. “No way, buddy. You’re not going to ruin this peace. This is the first quiet moment I’ve had since you set foot on my boat, and I’m going to enjoy it.”
He stepped to one side, then the other, trying to dodge past her toward the cabin’s ladder. But Jordan blocked him, and couldn’t stop herself from giggling at how absurd they would look if anybody were around to see them.
“Seriously,” he said, almost pleading. “Let’s have some music. I’ll keep it really low if you want. Nice and quiet.”
Jordan laid a hand on his chest. She couldn’t believe she did it, but she did—the evidence of her audacity was right there under her palm. She could feel the warmth of Davis’s skin burning through the thin fabric of his shirt, into her fingertips. “Wait a minute,” she said earnestly. “Tell me, Davis—honestly—why won’t you just sit and enjoy the silence?”
He stepped back slowly, breaking the contact of her touch. She could still feel her hand tingling with the sensation of his firm chest. “What do you mean?”
Jordan sat on the deck again. Davis hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other, clearly tempted to run to the solace of his music. But finally he sat, too, his body angled slightly toward Jordan’s.
Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology Page 102