by Fiona Harper
He nodded.
He still hadn’t stepped away, he realised. Now would be a really good time. Before he did two things he needed to apologise for within twenty-four hours.
Zoe’s hands were still clutching the front of her dress, but she dropped them now and held one of them out to him. ‘Truce?’
He slid his hand into hers and they shook solemnly. ‘Truce.’
Then something occurred to him. ‘Wait a minute… Didn’t we declare a truce of sorts this morning?’
The softness, the vulnerability was gone now and the impish Zoe was back. ‘Technically, yes, but it didn’t count,’ she said as she withdrew her hand from his and looked at it. ‘Yuck.’
Damien mirrored her. He’d forgotten that blobs of gel still clung to the edges of his hands. ‘And why didn’t it count?’ he asked, still staring at his palm.
She lifted her arm. ‘Because I was lying.’
And then she dragged her palm across his face, wiping the excess gel off on his cheek, before grinning saucily at him and disappearing into the cabin. He stood there, his gaze alternating between his upturned palm and the cabin door.
He had a feeling he’d just become friends with Zoe St James.
Sara and Luke would be delighted. But Damien? He wasn’t sure whether he should be pleased that the war was over or just very, very scared.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHILE the good weather continued Zoe spent a lot of time during the next few days in the sunshine, even though she made sure she was covered up. She either lounged up the front of the boat while Damien managed things down at the business end, or window shopped on her own in the little towns they visited, looking at girly things such as shoes and pretty locally made trinkets.
She wasn’t avoiding Damien. They’d agreed to have separate holidays, hadn’t they? And they met up each evening to go out to dinner. It was all very grown-up and civilised.
They discussed cooking on board, but Damien’s utilitarian menu ideas, involving limited rations, had Zoe screwing her face up, and Zoe’s more flamboyant suggestions put a look of fear in Damien’s eyes. Eating out solved the problem. No fighting about food then, because they could choose what they wanted, but Zoe made sure she kept her grubby mitts off Damien’s plate now. Somehow that had become dangerous territory. Mainly because it reminded her of what had happened after that meal. She couldn’t quite look that tube of aftersun in the face any more.
She wandered along the narrow streets of Fowey on one of her daily shopping trips, and stopped to stare into a smart but quirky jewellery shop window. Just the memory of that massage had her placing a palm on the window to steady herself. She fanned her face down with her non-supporting hand and heaved in a breath.
Okay, so Damien wasn’t quite the arrogant snob she’d pegged him for, but that didn’t mean that having the hots for him was a good idea. He was still the same type as her ex-fiancé, and that kind of man wanted a certain kind of woman in his life, even if he said he didn’t. And if there was one thing that Zoe had taken away from the whole call-off-the-wedding-because-I’m-in-love-with-someone-else fiasco, it was that she wasn’t that kind of woman.
She sighed as she looked at her reflection in the shop window. One side of her face was a little more tanned than the other now, but it was almost back to normal. Nothing a little tinted moisturiser couldn’t cope with.
It still pained her to think of her time with Aiden. Not so much because she’d lost the man, but more the loss of the fairy tale he’d brought with him. She’d never thought someone as wonderful as him would ever be interested in someone like her. It was as if Prince Charming has swooned at the raggedy Cinderella’s feet instead of waiting until she’d got all dolled up for the ball. She’d never felt so wanted.
But somehow the story had gone into reverse. The clock had stuck midnight, the prince took one look at Cinders, had suddenly seen the rags for what they were, and had run a mile in the other direction. With one week to go before the wedding.
She looked at her reflection in the shop window again, looked herself steadily in the eye. So no more thinking about getting deliberately sunburnt just to be on the receiving end of Damien’s magic fingers again, okay?
She nodded back at herself just as sternly.
That settled, she peeled her hand from the window and went inside to have a look round. The shop was tucked into the ground floor of a row of Georgian buildings, compact but beautifully decorated. The wood panelling had been painted off-white and the silver and amber jewellery the shop specialised in was housed in glass cases that lined the walls. A bit restrained for Zoe’s tastes, maybe, but it showed the pieces off beautifully.
She always liked to see other designers’ work and she spent ages browsing, but she found herself admiring the shop more than its contents. One day she’d have one of these. A nice little quirky shop with a workshop at the back and a comfy little corner where she could talk to clients about designing bespoke pieces. Selling her designs to other shops around south-east England was all well and good and she was starting to make a name for herself, but it would be really lovely to have a shop of her own. One day…
She made it back to the marina at about twenty to six. Damien had said to be back by five, but she’d spent much longer in that shop than she’d meant to. She walked down the ramp and on to the pontoons, but when she came to the spot where Dream Weaver had been moored she found a large, sparkling cruiser.
She rested her hands on her hips, causing her paper shopping bags to fan out around her. Where the heck had he gone? She carried on to the end of the pontoon and stared out across the water.
All the while she’d been standing there, the buzz of an outboard motor had been getting louder and louder somewhere close by. A flash of sunlight on the water drew her attention, and that was when she saw him—Damien—coming towards her in a little grey inflatable dinghy. He wasn’t looking very happy.
Zoe put both hands behind her back in an attempt to make a shopping trip seem slightly less successful. Why did these little boutiques have to wrap everything in tissue paper and put it in an oversized bag, anyway?
Don’t react, she told herself as he brought the dinghy round to the end of the pontoon and slipped its rope round a bollard.
‘I said five,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine.
Zoe bestowed her most fetching smile on him. ‘What’s a few minutes when we’ve got ten whole days to fill?’
It didn’t work. He just glowered back.
‘I explained that these were short-stay berths, that we only had two hours and that we needed to move to a swinging mooring by five.’
He well might have. But after thirty seconds of sailing jargon it all started sounding like blah, blah, blah to Zoe.
‘What’s the rush, anyway?’
Damien remained stony-faced as she handed the first of her shopping bags to him.
‘Hey!’ she said as he chucked them unceremoniously into the triangular space at the front of the dinghy, just forward of the little inflatable seat.
He held out a hand so she could steady herself climbing in, but Zoe needed both arms to keep the rest of her bags out of his clutches. She managed somehow without his help and sat abruptly down on the little bolster-shaped seat, facing him.
Damien eyed the brightly coloured bags before casting off. ‘How many pairs of flip-flops does one woman need, anyway?’ he muttered as he reversed away from the pontoon then swung the dinghy round to plough across the river against the current. ‘If we want to get into town by seven-thirty to eat, we need to get the food shopping done by six forty-five, and I couldn’t take the dinghy to do that until I’d picked you up.’
‘Sorry,’ Zoe said softly. She hadn’t been late on purpose, just had got caught out in a little daydreaming. ‘Can’t we just shop a bit quicker or go into town a bit later?’ Seriously, would the earth fall from its axis if they weren’t sitting down and ordering by eight?
Damien didn’t answer, so obviously it
would.
Dream Weaver was about five minutes away, secured to a mooring buoy up a large creek near a wooded part of the riverbank, away from the noise and bustle of the marina. Damien didn’t bother turning the engine off when they reached her, but let Zoe climb aboard while he held the dinghy steady. She had to post her bags through the railings into the cockpit before climbing up the ladder at the back of the boat. Once her foot was on the first rung, he was off again, speeding away in the direction of the town centre and the supermarket.
Heaven forbid the boat wasn’t stocked with exactly three tins or packets of everything on Damien’s shopping list at all times. He really was quite neurotic about it. But then Zoe went to make herself a cup of tea and discovered they were out of milk, and she couldn’t even moan about it because she was the one who’d finished it off.
It was quiet in this spot and there was no one else to talk to, as there would have been at the marina, so Zoe reached into one of her shopping bags and pulled out a beautiful leather-bound sketchpad she just hadn’t been able to resist. She then rummaged for a pencil in the navigation desk before returning to the cockpit and settling down to draw.
But she didn’t draw the scenery. Well, not exactly…
She took the shape, the textures of the landscape, and turned them into designs for bracelets and earrings and necklaces. Rolling hills and soft clouds, clean sharp lines and rippling water were stylised and shaped into silver.
Ever since she’d designed Sara’s ring she’d started to think about doing something different, more understated. She’d wanted to find a theme to tie some of the new collection together, and now it seemed she had it. She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she only noticed Damien had returned when a plastic carrier bag full of bread and apples came over the side of the boat and landed on the bench beside her. She put her pencil and pad down, flipping the pad closed first, and went to help.
She supposed she could have gone shopping with him, but that would have defeated the object of ‘separate holidays’. Anyway, Damien didn’t seem to like to sit still and Zoe did—rather a lot—especially when she was on holiday, so she decided not to stop him if he’d silently volunteered for the job.
She put the kettle on and made Damien a cup of tea. They’d got into a semi-comfortable routine over the last couple of days, working around each other, doing their own thing, talking only when they needed to. It was working. Sort of.
Damien bounded down the cabin steps with the last of the shopping, looking far too strong and healthy for Zoe’s liking, in a soft cotton T-shirt and knee-length shorts. He gladly accepted the tea she offered and took it back outside into the sunshine.
Zoe knew she ought to stay in the cabin, not go out and join that six-foot hunk of male healthiness sitting outside, all wind-ruffled and glowing from his jaunt back across the river. But it was such a glorious day… And it was ever so dingy in the tiny cabin, with only those long thin windows high up in the wall to let in light.
She emerged into the cockpit to find Damien sipping his tea and flipping through her sketchbook.
‘Hands off, nosey,’ she said, attempting to swat his hand away from it.
Damien didn’t have any trouble fending her off, even with a cup of tea in one hand. ‘A very different style for you—even from Sara’s ring—which I thought was beautiful, by the way.’
She stopped her ineffectual swatting. ‘Thank you…I think.’
He looked up at her, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘You think?’
Zoe fidgeted. ‘Well, in my experience, it pays to be wary of compliments from good-looking men—’ She stopped and blushed.
Damien’s glint worked its way from his eyes down to his mouth. ‘In my experience, it pays to compliment attractive women.’
Zoe, who’d been half-enjoying the gentle banter, despite her mortification, suddenly snatched her pad out of his hands and retreated to the cabin door. ‘Don’t make fun of me, Damien,’ she said, her voice hard on the surface while her stomach quivered underneath.
‘I wasn’t. I was just—’
She didn’t wait to hear the rest. She turned and headed back down inside and tucked the sketchbook safely away in her cabin. Then she folded her legs underneath herself and sat on her bunk.
She didn’t want Damien to say things like that to her. It would make the raging crush she seemed to be developing for him so much harder to control. In fact, she thought she preferred it when they were bickering. At least then she was safe.
Without stopping to think whether it was a good idea or not, she stood on the bunk, opened the hatch in the roof of her cabin and stuck her head through it.
‘Next time you can keep your opinions to yourself,’ she yelled in the direction of the cockpit. ‘About me or my work. Separate holidays, remember?’
And then she flopped down on her bunk, leaving the hatch open as ventilation.
There. He wouldn’t think she was very attractive after the way she’d screwed her face up and yelled at him, and that was fine by her. She didn’t need another smooth man who was way out of her league, giving her hope, making her believe in herself before whipping it all away from her again.
Remember what he’s like, she told herself, when he’s not in shorts and a T-shirt, when he looks all buttoned-up and rigid, not relaxed like this. That’s the real Damien Stone and you’d better not forget it.
But then a shadow blocked out the sun momentarily and a soft thud on the sleeping bag beside her completely undermined her resolve. He’d finished unpacking the shopping, it seemed. Found a bag she’d missed.
A small bar of her favourite chocolate sat innocently on the bunk with a Post-it note attached. For emergencies, it said in a strong, dark scrawl.
Damn that man, Zoe thought, as she ripped the foil open and sunk her teeth into it. She didn’t want him to be nice to her, not when she was doing her best to put him off, because she was starting to like—really like—Damien Stone. And if that wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was.
* * *
Zoe woke the following morning to find a huge grey cloud hanging over her cabin skylight. She did her usual contortionist’s act to get dressed in the tiny triangular space. Maybe sharing it with a huge case hadn’t been such a great idea after all.
When she emerged, most annoyed at having to put something with long sleeves on, she found Damien humming to himself in the little galley, cooking sausages and looking horrendously chirpy. Didn’t he know that grey skies on a holiday practically required one to be in a state of mourning?
She yawned. Zoe wasn’t usually an early riser but the daylight flooding into her cabin and the noise of the wire shrouds banging against the top of the mast in the wind had been a pretty effective alarm clock.
‘Where are we off to today?’ she mumbled as Damien shoved a mug of tea in her direction.
‘Mevagissey,’ he said, and carried on whistling.
‘Really? I thought we’d stay here if the weather was going to be bad.’
He made a scoffing noise and looked up to the monochrome sky above the hatch. ‘This isn’t bad weather. It’s not even raining, and the forecast says it’ll hold off until evening.’
Zoe leaned forward to follow his gaze. By the looks of that cloud, it would rain sooner rather than later.
‘It’s perfect sailing weather,’ Damien announced matter-of-factly.
Well, they obviously had very different ideas about what perfect sailing involved. If it didn’t involve a cool drink and a bikini, Zoe didn’t want to know.
‘You’ve got a waterproof coat with you, haven’t you?’ he asked, looking a little concerned.
Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘Of course.’ Even she wasn’t that stupid. This was an English summer, after all.
Damien seemed to have inhaled his sausage sandwich while she’d been staring heavenwards and grumbling about the weather, and now he glugged the last of his tea down and bounded up top with all the restraint of a springer spaniel.
* * *
The wind sliced through Damien’s hair, lifting it at its roots, and he turned his face to the wind. Dream Weaver was listing about forty-five degrees, her sails full, and he stood with one foot on the sloping cockpit floor, the other on the leeward bench and both hands on the tiller.
As he’d told Zoe—perfect sailing weather. They were making fabulous progress. In fact, if they kept this up they might even make the Scillies a day early. And if there was one thing Damien liked better than sticking to the plan, it was being one step ahead of the plan.
Thinking of Zoe… Where was she? He hadn’t seen her since he’d hoisted the sails and cut the motor, and that had been over an hour ago. She was missing all the fun.
‘Zoe?’ he yelled in the direction of the hatch. He’d go and find her, but the wind had been steadily increasing in force and he needed both hands to hang on to things. In fact, an extra pair of hands would be a godsend. He opened his mouth to yell again. ‘Zo—’
A dishevelled copper head appeared in the hatchway. The face, however, was grey and her eyes were huge. He’d never noticed before that they weren’t brown but a more woody olive-green. Unfortunately, the ashy colour of her complexion was bringing the colour out nicely.
‘Not feeling too hot, I take it.’
She shook her head and turned to go back inside.
‘You’d be better out here,’ he added.
Slowly, she twisted back to look at him, her disbelief obvious.
‘No, really. It’s just like being car sick. Keeping an eye on the horizon and plenty of fresh air will help.’
She stayed where she was for a second, but then continued up the steps. It was then that he realised her waterproof coat had some kind of animal print on it—in luminous pink, for goodness’ sake. He knew he shouldn’t, not when she was feeling so rough, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to fake a cough so he could cover his mouth and hide his smile. There was nothing predictable about Zoe St James.