by Fiona Harper
He’d pulled charts from the small desk that was opposite the tiny galley by the stairs that led to the cockpit, and then had spent ages muttering to himself and poring over them, and now he was up the other end of the boat doing heaven knew what. You’d have thought they were planning a transatlantic crossing, not two weeks puttering up and down the River Dart. At least, she’d assumed that was the plan. That had been her plan, anyway.
‘Hey, deck hand!’ she called, without looking up.
Damien’s head appeared through the hatch right beside her, and her book jumped out of her lap. She scrambled to pick it up. How on earth had he got down there? Last time she’d seen him he’d been up the pointy end of the boat.
‘Yes.’
Zoe took a moment to reply. He’d been so absorbed in whatever he’d been doing that he’d forgotten to put on that habitual frown he always seemed to wear when he looked at her. And without the suit—Damien always seemed to be wearing a suit—he looked younger and less stuffy. In fact, that look on his face was the distracted one her brothers had used to wear when they’d got into one of their aircraft modelling frenzies, the sort that meant they looked stressed but were actually enjoying every second.
‘We’re not planning on heading for Newfoundland or anything, are we?’
Now the frown was back. That hadn’t taken long.
‘No…’ he said, sounding as if he was expecting it to be a trick question.
She gave one shoulder a breezy shrug. ‘Just wanted to know, that’s all.’
He turned to back down into the cabin. Zoe waited until he was a couple of steps down and then said, in her sweetest, most feminine voice, ‘And, oh…Damien?’
A second of silence and then she heard his foot heavy on the step and his head appeared again.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said, tipping her head on one side and squinting at him. ‘Could you bring me a drink?’
Damien found that funny. At least, that was what she guessed the slight quirk of one eyebrow was all about.
‘What?’ she said, putting her book down and sitting up straighter. ‘You’re supposed to be my deck hand for the next two weeks—that was the deal, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, that’s the deal,’ Damien said, still smiling. ‘But I didn’t agree to be your galley slave and personal servant. You need to get your terms right before you enter into contracts you don’t understand.’
Zoe’s mouth dropped open.
‘So,’ Damien said as he turned and headed back into the cabin, ‘you can get your own drink. I’m going back to doing what a good deck hand should do—getting this boat ready to sail. I reckon we can get as far as the Isles of Scilly if we get going this afternoon.’
That had Zoe on her feet and following him into the cabin. ‘The Isles of Scilly?’ she squeaked. ‘What are you talking about?’
Damien turned round from where he was flicking switches above the map desk on something that Zoe guessed might be a radio. ‘You wanted me to sail the boat for you, so I’m going to sail it. That was my part of the deal. We can get all the way down the Devon and Cornwall coast if the weather’s good, stopping at different towns and villages every night.’ He pointed at a chart laid out on the desk. ‘Once we’ve rounded Lizard Point we can head for Land’s End and after that the Scillies.’
‘But—’
Zoe was about to argue, but an image popped into her head: wide, flat rippled sand at low tide, fringed by rock pools covered in glistening emerald seaweed. Bantham Beach.
Her aunt had had a coffee table book of Britain’s best beaches when Zoe had been small. When they visited the rest of the family would come to blows over a game of Monopoly, but Zoe would curl up in an armchair with that book and imagine what it would be like to visit all those different beaches, and some of her favourites had been in this part of the world.
Now she had a chance to see them for herself—and not by trudging through sand dunes or hiking down cliff paths, laden like a packhorse with coolbags and blankets and windbreakers. No, she’d get to sail right up to them, be one of those elusive and glamorous people she’d sometimes seen from the sand, the ones on the glossy white boats who had to be somebody important. Okay, Luke’s old boat wasn’t exactly glossy and expensive, but it would do. And she’d always wanted to have an excuse to say, Just popping back to the yacht, dahling…
‘Are you up for it?’ Damien asked, startling Zoe out of her fantasy.
Zoe chewed her lip. This way, with Damien to do all the donkey work, all she had to do was lie back and enjoy it. ‘Cruising round the Devon and Cornwall coast?’ she said, and surprised herself by smiling. ‘Yes. I think I am.’
* * *
This is the life, Zoe thought, as she lay stretched out on the deck, just in front of the mast. The sun was warm on her skin, but the pleasant breeze filling the sails stopped those rays from scorching, and the gentle slap of the waves against the hull was lulling her into a half-doze.
Damien was off somewhere keeping himself busy, which was just how she liked it. He’d told her with grave seriousness that they were going to be heading across Start Bay, round the point and into Salcombe and there they would stop for the night. Zoe didn’t care particularly where they went or where they stopped as long as the sun kept shining and she’d have a glass of wine in her hand when the sun went down. Until then Damien Stone could keep out of her way.
She’d much rather pretend he was some faceless minion, there to do her bidding. And, while she doubted very much he’d play along, at least while she was off doing her thing and he was off doing his, she could keep the fantasy alive. He might be useful to her at present, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t forgotten that kiss—or, to be more precise, the look after the kiss—and she intended to make him pay at some point. Until then she was lulling him into a sense of false security, playing nice.
Zoe’s lids were already closed and the world behind them was pale pink and blurry, lit up by the afternoon sun, but it wasn’t long before she wasn’t aware of sunshine or waves any more and she fell into a deep and lazy sleep.
She woke when a chilly breeze danced across her bare shoulders. While she’d slept she’d rolled over onto her front, and now she peeled her face off her forearm and peered fuzzily towards the back of the boat.
A dark shape was there by the tiller. Damien. The brightness seemed to have gone out of the sky. She turned her head to get her bearings and realised they had left the long pebble-beached bay behind them and had now turned round the headland and were heading into the Salcombe Kingsbridge estuary. It was windier here and the sun was much lower in the sky, skulking behind low grey clouds and blessing them with bright haloes.
She sighed. If the rest of the holiday went like this it would be perfect.
It was time to move, though, before she fused with the deck and became a strange kind of beached figurehead, stuck to the top of the boat instead of the front. She pushed herself up on one arm. That was when the pain began.
‘Ow…!’ Her back was tight and burning fiercely. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’
She collapsed down onto the deck again and tried another approach, rolling over onto her side and then pushing herself up. More pain. None of it suffered in silence.
Zoe didn’t have to look in the mirror to know what had happened. She was sunburned. Always a risk with her colouring, but she’d applied a high factor sun cream all over before lying down. Just how long had she been asleep up here?
Gingerly, she made her way along the boat and down to the cockpit, dreading the smirk she just knew would be plastered all over her sailing companion’s face. She straightened up and ignored the stinging of her back and arms, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing just how pathetic she was.
But when she stepped down into the cockpit, she was in for a surprise. Damien had been staring somewhere far ahead of the boat, lost in his own thoughts, but he glanced over when he heard the thud of her foot hitting the cockpit bench and his neutral expression quickly changed t
o a look of horror.
Zoe held a hand up to her face, which she was now aware was stinging just as badly as her back. And then she jumped down the steep stairs into the cabin, ignoring the pain it caused, and rushed for the little bathroom and checked out the damage in the mirror above the sink.
When she first saw her reflection she wanted to cry. Her face smarted. Well, to be more accurate, half her face smarted. The right half, which had been turned towards the sun while she’d slept, was a bright angry red. The left side was its usual pasty self, marred only by the vestiges of pale childhood freckles.
She looked like a freakish Halloween mask! How on earth was she going to go out in public looking like this? People would point and stare—and snigger, probably. She’d be banished to the cabin for at least a few days until it calmed down. Hardly the perfect holiday! And wouldn’t Damien be pleased? With her locked away in her cabin he could pretend she wasn’t there.
There was a soft knock at the bathroom door and Zoe jumped and banged her elbow on the wall—it was little more than a cupboard with a toilet, a sink and shower head above the couple of square feet of standing space.
‘Are you okay?’ Damien said, sounding far too genuine for Zoe’s liking.
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped back, and she discovered her eyes had now added themselves to the inventory of body parts that stung.
Don’t let him be nice to me, she prayed silently, holding her breath in an attempt to halt the moisture threatening to breach her bottom lashes. I don’t want to think of Damien Stone as being nice.
Because that would mean she’d have to like him. And if she didn’t despise him, she’d have no defences against that slow-humming attraction she’d been trying to fend off since a couple of stupid rumba steps had blindsided her.
Okay, most people would say that being attracted to a good-looking man wasn’t a crime, but Zoe knew better. She knew how utterly seductive attention from a man who was way out of a girl’s league could be. For a moment it made her feel special, made her believe she was worth something. But she also knew how those things ended, and she was well aware of her own propensity for falling hard and fast, ignoring all her own warnings to hold back, stay safe. So she wasn’t looking Damien in the eye again, no matter how nice he was being, until she had her defences back in place.
So, a few minutes later, rather than heading back into the main seating area and galley, she slunk off into her own cabin and shut the door tightly behind her. She didn’t come out again until the boat was stationary and she could hear the bustle of a busy marina all around.
Damien was sitting at the map desk with a large tube of aftersun in front of him. Trust Mr Perfect to have packed the essentials. He threw it to her and she caught it one-handed, and couldn’t help feeling slightly cheered at the flicker of respect she saw in his eyes.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and sloped back off to her cabin to put it on. Her swimsuit was cut low at the back, though, and although she contorted herself into various positions to try and reach every bit of throbbing skin, there was a patch in the middle, just below her shoulder blades, that she couldn’t quite reach.
Once she’d soothed the angry skin, she eased herself out of her costume. This took at least a couple of minutes, as she avoided dragging it across her skin or letting the elasticated straps slap back anywhere too tender. And then she put on a long, brightly coloured strapless sundress with a wide elasticated section round the bust. The ruched top pinched the area she hadn’t been able to reach with the aftersun, but it was worth it to not have to deal with straps of any sort.
Then she set to trying to disguise her harlequin face with half a bottle of foundation. She ended up looking like her ballroom dancing teacher did just before a competition, but at least it was an even orangeness instead of half white, half pink.
That accomplished, she ventured out into the cabin and started hunting through the small cupboards surrounding the galley. At times like these, a girl needed something sweet.
She heard Damien thud down the steps from the cockpit. ‘Looking for something?’
She nodded and kept ferreting through the cupboards, although she didn’t know why—there was hardly anything in them. Damien had gone shopping at the tiny general store before they’d left Lower Hadwell, but all Zoe could find was some bread, some cheese, a few tins of beans, tea bags, coffee, long-life milk…
She twisted her head to look at Damien and winced; it felt as if she were giving herself a Chinese burn. ‘Where are the biscuits?’
Damien’s eyebrows rose a millimetre. ‘What biscuits?’
Zoe blinked in disbelief. No biscuits?
‘What about the chocolate?’ she asked, her voice wavering slightly.
Damien just shook his head.
Zoe untwisted her poor neck, stood up and turned to face him. He was lounging in the hatchway, one foot on a higher step, one arm resting on the roof of the galley.
‘Some deck hand you are! I thought you said you went shopping.’
Damien’s mouth curled at one side. ‘I did. But I did tell you it was just a quick shop to get the essentials, and that we’d stock up at the supermarket here tomorrow morning.’
‘Chocolate is essentials!’ Zoe cried, her plummeting sugar levels making her sound just a little desperate.
‘Like I said, we can get other supplies in the morning. A whole case of chocolate, if you want.’
Now he was mocking her. And Zoe didn’t like being mocked.
‘Just a little bit for emergencies is enough, thank you very much,’ she mumbled.
Damien just shrugged. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t pick a fight—which left them both standing there, him towering above her half in, half out of the hatch, and Zoe suddenly realised how close they were. And then she realised how difficult it was to be anything but this close on a boat this size.
Damn it, if her non-pink cheek didn’t flame to life to match the other one at that point. Thank goodness for the relative gloom of the galley and a layer of foundation her plasterer brother would have been proud of.
Damien held out his hand, and Zoe eyed it suspiciously.
‘If you’re really in need of nutrition, why don’t we go and grab some dinner?’
Zoe obviously let her feelings regarding that suggestion show on her face because Damien gave her a weary look.
‘Surely we can be adult enough to eat at the same table without starting World War Three. I’m starving, and there are plenty of restaurants nearby. I just can’t be bothered to argue about it tonight.’
While Zoe didn’t really want to spend any more time with Damien than was necessary, she was feeling more than a little sorry for herself, and the idea of letting someone else do all the thinking, all the planning, was rather appealing. She was all for delegating whenever she got the chance and, since her business meant she was a one-woman operation she really didn’t get an opportunity to delegate that much, and she supposed Damien’s proposal was reasonable enough.
But she ignored Damien’s hand, retreating further back into the cabin. ‘I’m just going to…er…go and get a wrap for my shoulders,’ she muttered.
No hand-holding with Damien Stone, okay?
Last time she’d taken his hand willingly was when they’d swapped partners on the dance floor, and look how well that had turned out.
But he can’t find you too disgusting if he’s willing to touch you again, even if he’s just being polite.
Yes, but he might change his mind again, like he did last time, and she couldn’t have that. Better to keep as much of a distance as possible, especially as whenever she got within five feet of him she couldn’t help remembering how strong and sure his arms had felt around her or just how expert those lips were. So she made sure she trailed behind Damien as they got off the boat and negotiated the metal wires that ran round the deck without assistance, even though the long skirt of her dress threatened to wrap itself round them.
No, who would want to put themselves
in line for humiliation twice in twenty-four hours? Definitely not her.
CHAPTER SIX
ZOE got her wish. By the time the sun was setting she was sitting on a restaurant terrace, high up on a hill above the estuary with a glass of perfectly chilled white wine in her hand. Bliss. Delicious seafood smells wafted from inside the trendy but reasonably priced restaurant and her stomach gurgled in anticipation. The breeze was soft, still clinging to the memory of the sunshine that had filtered through it all day, and the sky was a frosty blue, warming to primrose at the horizon.
Even Damien was behaving himself. He’d let her choose the restaurant, and he hadn’t got all caveman-like when she’d insisted on paying her share.
Their starters arrived. Zoe had chosen a crabmeat timbale, covered in smoked salmon, but when she saw Damien’s deep-fried lime and chilli king prawns she couldn’t help thinking that she’d chosen hastily, and that maybe she should have perused the whole menu instead of just plumping for the thing that jumped out at her first. She couldn’t help counting down the prawns as Damien worked his way mechanically through them.
Eventually, when there were only two left, Damien shook his head, glanced heavenwards and held one out to her by its tail. ‘I can’t eat with you staring at me like that. You might as well have one.’
I couldn’t possibly.
That should have been the response that sprang instantly to her lips, but she was so transfixed by the bubbly golden batter and the sweet hot chilli sauce that glistened and threatened to sully the clean white tablecloth that she completely forgot to utter it. Saliva pooled in the bottom of her mouth.
Part of her didn’t want to take anything from this man, but that part was quickly clubbed over the head and locked in a cupboard by the part of her that was licking its lips.
Moving quickly—so as not to hijack herself by coming over all appropriate—she leaned forwards, opened her mouth and closed her lips round the prawn, biting it off near the tail. She couldn’t quite help closing her eyes as she savoured the sweetness and acidity of the dipping sauce, then the crunchy texture of the batter, and finally the firm flesh of the prawn beneath. A perfect pairing of opposites in so many ways. She let a little murmur of satisfaction out before opening her eyes again.