The Devil and the Deep

by Amy Andrews

  ‘The Mermaid,’ Stella supplied.

  ‘Oh my,’ Diana said. ‘How exciting! Inigo Alvarez...’ She rolled the name around her tongue. ‘He sounds positively dishy.’

  Rick laughed. ‘He was. A late-eighteenth-century pirate known as the Robin Hood of the seven seas. Robbing the rich to give to the poor.’

  Stella blasted Rick with a down-boy glare. ‘Robin Hood of the high seas,’ she tisked, shaking her head in disgust. ‘That’s all just anecdotal and you know it. Do not encourage her.’

  ‘Drat,’ Diana mused.

  ‘Okay, maybe he was as bloodthirsty and marauding as the rest of them but there’s heaps of historical documents citing his and The Mermaid’s existence,’ he said calmly. ‘You used to believe,’ Rick reminded her.

  They both had. Everyone in the salvaging industry seemed to have a story about the mysterious Captain Alvarez and as children they’d listened to each one until he’d grown large in both their imaginations. Rick picked up the papers that had accompanied the map, the same ones that had been in his envelope. Years of Nathan’s research into a character that had captured them both.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Diana asked.

  Rick looked at a captivated Diana. ‘He just disappeared off the face of the earth. There were rumours at the time that The Mermaid went down laden with stolen booty during a vicious storm.’

  ‘Where?’ Diana whispered, sucked in even if Stella was sitting back in her chair, refusing to be drawn. ‘Here somewhere, right?’ she asked, picking up Stella’s half of the map and joining the two pieces together on the coffee table.

  Rick shook his head. ‘Nathan obviously thought so. He’s drawn this up from his research over the years so I guess it would be hard to be sure. But he was the best damn intuitive treasure hunter I’ve ever known and if he thinks Inigo’s ship is here somewhere, then I’m willing to bet it is too.’

  ‘So why didn’t he go after it himself?’ Stella demanded, getting up off the chair and heading for the kitchen sink. When she got there she tipped out her almost-full glass of wine. She was suddenly angry with her father.

  If he’d known he was dying, why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he got treatment? Why hadn’t he come home?

  ‘When did he have the time, Stel, with so many other projects—sure things—on the books?’

  Stella looked up at the reproach in his voice, feeling suddenly guilty. They’d both known Nathan’s plans had always involved finding Inigo’s treasure...one day...when he retired...

  ‘Why on earth did he give us half a map each? He must have known I was just going to give you my half and let you have at it.’

  She’d loved her father and he had given her a magical childhood filled with sunken treasure and tropical waters but it had been a long time since she’d been a little girl who believed in pirates and mermaids. And the romance of that world had always warred with the realities of her life—divorced parents, divided loyalties.

  Rick stood and walked towards her. He could tell she was struggling with the same emotions he had when he’d seen Nathan’s handwriting again and the memories it had stirred.

  ‘I think he knew his time was drawing to a close and maybe it was his way to keep us connected? I think he wanted us to go and do this together and I think it would be a great way to honour his memory. What do you say? The long-range weather forecast is good. You want to come on a treasure hunt with me?’

  Stella glared at Rick as his not-so-subtle guilt trip found its mark. Well, it wouldn’t work. ‘Are you crazy? I can’t go gallivanting around the bloody ocean. My editor would have apoplexy. My book is way overdue and I have probably the worst case of writer’s block in the history of written language, don’t I, Diana?’

  She looked at her friend for confirmation, who did so with a vigorous nod of her head.

  ‘Well, this is exactly what you need.’ He grinned, unperturbed. ‘Nothing like the open ocean to stimulate the muse.’

  Stella stared at him askance. ‘Don’t you have other salvage jobs on the go?’

  Rick shrugged. ‘Nothing the guys can’t handle. Besides, it won’t be a salvage job, just a recon mission, see what we can find. A few weeks, four at the most. Just you and me and the open ocean. Salt, sea air and sunshine. You could get a tan,’ he cajoled as he took in her pallor. ‘It’ll be just like we were kids again.’

  Stella shook her head against the temptation and romance of yesteryear, which appealed to her on a primal level she didn’t really understand. She dragged her gaze away from his seductive mouth.

  They weren’t kids any more.

  ‘I can’t. I have a book to write.’

  ‘Come on,’ he murmured, feeling the longing inside her even if she couldn’t. ‘You know you want to. You always wrote like crazy whenever you were on the Persephone. Remember? You were always scribbling away in that writing pad.’

  She remembered. She’d either had her head stuck in a book or she’d been writing something. He’d teased her about it mercilessly. She should have known back then she was destined to be a writer. ‘I can’t. Can I, Diana?’

  Diana looked at Stella. Then at Rick. Then back at her friend. If anyone needed a change of scenery it was Stella. These four walls were obviously becoming a prison for her despite the view—maybe mixing it up a little would get the juices flowing again.

  And if the open ocean was where she was most creative...

  Joy would have a fit but Diana had a hunch that this was just what her friend needed. She bloody hoped so because her head would be on the chopping block if Stella returned tanned and still bookless.

  She stood and joined them in the kitchen. ‘I think you should go. I think it’s a great idea.’

  Stella blinked. ‘What?’ she said as Rick’s grin trebled.

  ‘This,’ he said, slipping his arm around Diana’s shoulders, ‘is a wise woman.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Diana beamed at him.

  ‘Come on, Stel. I dare you.’

  Stella rolled her eyes. As kids their relationship had thrived on dares and one-upmanship, Stella hell-bent on proving she could keep up with a boy.

  Dare you to swim through that hole in the wreck. Something expressly forbidden by her father. Dare you to bring a coin up from the bottom. Also forbidden. Dare you to touch that manta ray. Just plain stupid.

  It was a wonder they’d both survived.

  She remembered when the dares had stopped. That evening on deck when she’d dared him to kiss her. She wondered if he remembered. His eyes glittered back at her—all bad-boy blue—and she knew he remembered.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Rick said as he pulled himself back from that ancient memory that still resonated in his dreams, ‘don’t decide now. Sleep on it first, okay. I bet it won’t seem as crazy in the morning.’

  Stella was willing to bet that in the cold light of day and stone-cold sober it would not only seem crazy, it would actually be crazy.

  Utterly certifiable.

  He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then winked at Diana. ‘Can I crash here?’

  Stella felt like a child between two grown-ups. ‘What, no girl in this port, sailor?’ she asked waspishly. The man had never lacked for company on shore.

  Rick chuckled. ‘Not one who can make pancakes like you.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, realising she was being churlish and making an effort to get them back to their usual repartee. ‘So you only want me for my pancakes.’

  ‘And your half of the map.’ He grinned. ‘I’m beat. I need a shower. Then I need to sleep for a week. Towels still in the same place?’ he asked as he left them, not waiting for an answer.

  Diana watched him go. ‘Wow.’

  Stella nodded. ‘Yes.’

  She turned to face the sink, leaning her elbows against the cool ste
el as she looked out of the large bay window into the bleak dark night. Diana joined her, still sipping at her wine.

  ‘Does he wear contacts?’ she mused. ‘It’s quite striking to see a man with such dark colouring have such blue eyes.’

  Stella nodded again. She’d been captivated by them for as long as she could remember. ‘Yes, it’s really quite mesmerising, isn’t it?’

  ‘Which room are you in, Diana?’

  Both women started guiltily as the voice from behind them had them straightening and whipping around to face Rick. He was naked except for possibly the world’s smallest towel around his waist, clutched at the side where it didn’t quite meet. His blue eyes looked even bluer with less of anything much to detract from them.

  ‘The one on the left,’ Stella confirmed after a quick glance at a gawking, mute-looking Diana.

  ‘Great, I’ll doss down in the other.’ He smiled at both of them. ‘See you in the morning, ladies.’

  Stella and Diana watched him as he swaggered away, the towel slipping as he gave up on trying to keep it on. They caught a glimpse of one naked buttock just before he disappeared around the corner.

  A buttock adorned with a very sexy, perfectly round, dark brown birthmark, right in the middle of a very sexy dimple.

  Diana gasped as suddenly everything fell into place. Bronzed colouring, piercing blue eyes, long shaggy hair, a mouth made for sin and a very cute blemish in a very specific place.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She looked at Stella. ‘That’s why he’s so familiar. It’s him—he’s Vasco Ramirez!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  STELLA blushed furiously. ‘Shh,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t be preposterous.’

  Diana laughed. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’

  Stella turned back to the sink, busying herself with washing out her wine glass. ‘There are some similarities...’ she admitted.

  ‘Similarities?’ Diana hooted. ‘I knew I knew him...I just couldn’t figure out where from. I mean, hell, let’s face it, if I’d met him somewhere before I’d hardly be likely to forget him—the man’s a total hottie. And, I have to say—’ she nudged Stella ‘—looks like a total sex fiend.’

  ‘Diana!’

  She shrugged. ‘In a good way.’

  ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Stella muttered. ‘You know I’ve only ever been with Dale.’

  Diana tisked. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never gone there...well, I mean you’ve obviously thought about it because you wrote an entire three-hundred-and-seventy-five page sexual fantasy about the man—’

  ‘I did not,’ Stella denied, picking up a tea towel and briskly drying the glass.

  Diana crooked an eyebrow at her. ‘Stella, this is me. Diana. Who knows you.’

  Stella looked into her friend’s eyes and could see that she knew the truth. She sagged against the sink. ‘Okay, yes,’ she sighed. ‘Rick was the inspiration for Vasco.’

  Stella hadn’t set out to write a book with Rick as the hero but Vasco had taken on Rick’s features in a totally organic way. She hadn’t even been truly aware of it until she’d written the first kiss.

  And then it had been so blindingly obvious she’d wondered why it had taken her so long.

  ‘Hah! I knew it!’ Diana clapped delightedly.

  Stella rolled her eyes. ‘This is between you and me, Diana,’ she said, placing a hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, waving a dismissive hand, ‘your secret is safe with me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Stella said, releasing a breath as she shuffled away from the sink and headed towards the fire.

  ‘Well, there’s only one thing for it now,’ Diana said as she followed Stella and plonked herself down on one of the lounge chairs. ‘You have to go with him.’

  Stella looked up from her log poking. ‘What?’

  ‘The man obviously inspires you to write. You need inspiration. You need to write. Problem solved.’

  ‘Joy doesn’t want another Vasco Ramirez, Diana.’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ Diana said. ‘That’s exactly what she wants. Vasco sold like hot cakes. Vasco is king. Of course she wants you to do another Vasco.’

  Stella gave her friend an impatient look. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Diana sighed. She didn’t want to pull out the big guns. ‘Babe, things are going to start to get nasty. And trust me, you don’t want to be with a publishing house that plays hard ball. There’ll be lawyers. It’s time to quit the whole writer’s block nonsense and write.’

  Stella felt Diana’s words slice into her side. ‘You think it’s nonsense—that I’m making it up?’

  Diana shook her head. She knew Stella’s instant fame had compounded her already entrenched second-book syndrome and her father’s death had just aggravated everything further. She totally got that Stella’s muse had deserted her. But...

  ‘The lawyers will think it is, babe.’

  ‘I just need a little more time,’ Stella muttered.

  Diana nodded. ‘And you should take it. Absolutely. Go with Rick, get inspired. Come back replenished.’

  Stella glanced at her friend. She made it sound so easy. She shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

  ‘Why?’ Diana challenged. ‘Because you have a thing for him?’

  ‘I do not have a thing for him,’ Stella denied quickly. A little too quickly perhaps. ‘He’s an old, old friend,’ she clarified, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘We’ve known each other for ever. There is no thing.’

  Diana looked at her friend. Oh, there so was a thing.

  Even better.

  Lord alone knew, if she hadn’t had sex for almost a year on top of fairly pedestrian sex for the previous five she’d be looking at a way of fixing that pronto. And if it so happened that the man of Stella’s fantasies was there at the precise moment she decided to break the drought, then surely everyone won?

  ‘So it shouldn’t be a problem, then?’ Diana asked innocently. She held up her hand as Stella went to speak again. ‘Look, Rick’s right. Just sleep on it. I know it’s a lot to consider but, for what it’s worth, I think you’re mad if you don’t.’

  ‘But the book...’ Stella murmured in a last-ditch effort to make Diana see sense.

  Diana shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re doing here on good old terra firma ain’t working, is it, babe?’

  * * *

  Stella went to bed determined to wake up in the morning and tell both Rick and Diana to go to hell.

  But that was before the dream.

  She dreamt all night of a mermaid following a pirate

  ship. No...

  She was the mermaid and she was following the pirate ship. Inside the hull a lone, rich, tenor voice would occasionally sing a deep mournful song of lost love. It was a thing of beauty and she’d fallen in love with the man even though she’d never laid eyes on him. But she knew he was a prisoner and she knew with an urgency that beat like the swell of the ocean in her breast that she had to save him.

  That he was the one for her.

  Stella awoke, the last tendrils of the dream still gliding over her skin like the cool kiss of sea water. It was so vivid for a moment she could almost feel the water frothing her hair in a glorious golden crown around her head.

  The urge to write thrummed through her veins and she quickly opened the drawer of her bedside table, locating the stash of pens and paper she always kept there. She brushed off the dust and started to scribble and in ten minutes she’d written down the bones of a plot and some detailed description of Lucinda, the mermaid.

  When she finished she sat back and stared at the words in front of her. They were a revelation. And not just because she’d written something she didn’t have the immediate urge to delete, but beca
use it was a whole new approach.

  Stella hadn’t imagined for even a minute that the heroine’s point of view would take precedence in her head. Vasco had been so strong and dominant, striding onto the page, demanding to be heard, that she’d assumed starting with the hero was always going to be her process.

  All this time she’d been beating herself up about not being able to see a hero, getting her knickers in a twist because, no matter how hard she tried to visualise one, no hero was forthcoming.

  And he still wasn’t. But Lucinda was fully formed and she was awesome.

  Lucinda excited her as nothing had since Vasco had arrived. Lucinda was no Lady Mary waiting around to be saved. The world had gone crazy for Vasco last time, this time they would go crazy for Lucinda.

  She could feel it deep inside in the same place that had told her Vasco was special, but she’d been too inexperienced to listen.

  Well, she was listening now.

  God, Joy was probably going to have a fit at her kick-ass mermaid. She could hear her now saying, But what about Inigo, Stella?

  Stella gasped as his name came to her. Inigo. Of course that was his name. Inigo. It had to be Inigo.

  It was working.

  The buzz was back. The magic was here.

  Inigo would be strong and noble, a perfect match for Lucinda because a strong woman required a man to equal her. A man secure in himself. A man who would understand the divided loyalties she endured every day and wouldn’t demand that she chose between the sea and land.

  A subject that Stella could write about intimately.

  God, why hadn’t she thought to approach her story from this way before? It seemed so obvious now. She kicked off the sheets, reached for her polar fleece dressing gown.

  She had to get out of here. Had to get to her computer.

  She almost laughed as she tripped over her gown in haste. The revelation had come just in time. It had saved her. There was no time now for seafaring adventures.

  There was a mermaid to write. A hero to rescue.

  Lucinda was calling.