by Amy Andrews
Fantasies that had seen her tick each day down on a calendar as the holidays had approached, her foolish heart tripping every time she’d thought about those blue, blue eyes and all that bare, broad, bronzed skin courtesy of his Spanish mother.
All the time hoping that it would be this summer he’d see her as a woman instead of a girl. That he’d make good on the increasingly confusing signals he sent and act instead of tease.
And the eve of her sixteenth birthday all that breathless longing had come to fruition.
‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,’ he’d teased.
He’d been nearly nineteen and so much more experienced. She’d watched him flirt with girls since he’d been thirteen and been aware of his effect on them for much longer than he had.
She’d screwed up her courage. ‘Maybe you should do something about that?’ she’d murmured, her heart hammering.
She’d watched as his Adam’s apple had bobbed and his gaze had briefly fallen to her mouth. ‘Yeh, right,’ he’d dismissed.
She’d smiled at him and said the one thing she’d known would work. ‘I dare you.’
And it had worked. She’d seen something inside him give as his gaze had zeroed in on her mouth and his lips had moved closer.
Her father’s curt ‘Riccardo!’ had been the bucket of water they’d both needed.
A reminder that there was a line between them that should never be crossed no matter how close they’d danced to it.
And she was glad for it now.
Glad that this magnificent man liked her and enjoyed her company and called her his friend. That he could drop by out of the blue and use her shower and doss down for the night and there was no awkward history, no uncomfortable silences.
Despite what Diana thought, a person didn’t die of sexual frustration and she wouldn’t sacrifice their friendship and mutual respect for a brief slaking of bodily desires.
No matter how damn good she knew it would be.
He stirred and she froze, hoping like crazy that lazy blue gaze wasn’t about to blast her in tropical heat.
It didn’t. But it was enough to spur her into action. She was not going to sit here and ogle him as if she were still in the midst of her teenage crush, watching him surreptitiously from behind her dark sunglasses as he went about the business of running a boat.
Without a shirt.
Always without a shirt.
She pulled out her laptop and powered it up.
* * *
An hour later the cabin crew came through offering a meal and Rick woke. He stretched, then righted his chair, glancing over at Stella busily tapping away. She seemed engrossed and he smiled at her.
‘I thought you were blocked.’
Stella looked up from her notes. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ she admitted.
‘Hah!’ he crowed. ‘I told you all you needed was a treasure hunt.’
‘Yeh, well, all I’m doing is some preliminary planning, at the moment. It remains to be seen if I can actually write anything.’
Although she knew she could. In fact she itched to. Lucinda and Inigo’s story was becoming clearer and clearer.
‘So how does that work, then? Writer’s block?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘I look at a blank page all day terrified that I’m not good enough, that I’m a one-book wonder, willing the words to come and when, on a good day, some actually do appear, they’re all crap and I delete them.’
Rick nodded thoughtfully. He couldn’t say that he understood exactly, but he could see the consternation creasing her brow and the look he’d seen in her eyes last night akin to panic. The same look he’d sometimes seen when she’d been a kid and Nathan had been late returning to the surface.
‘Maybe you need to give yourself permission to be crap?’ he suggested. ‘Just get it all down, warts and all. Switch your internal editor off?’
Stella raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Did Diana tell you to say that?’
Rick chuckled. ‘No.’
‘Well, it’s easier said than done, believe me.’ She sighed. ‘I think if I’d had a whole bunch of books rejected before Pleasure Hunt, then I’d have known stuff like that. But this crazy instant success didn’t give me any time to fail or any time to know who I am as a writer. I think I needed this time to figure that out.’
Rick nodded. ‘So...’ he said, looking over her shoulder, ‘are you going to tell me what it’s about?’
Stella shut the lid of her laptop. ‘Nope.’
The last time a guy had realised what she’d written it hadn’t ended well.
‘Excuse me, Ms Mills?’
Stella looked up at a stewardess who had brought her some water earlier. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind—I saw your name on the passenger list and I just finished reading Pleasure Hunt.’ She held it up. ‘Would you mind signing it for me?’
Stella blushed. ‘Certainly,’ she murmured as she held her hand out for the book and proffered pen. ‘Is there any message in particular you’d like me to write?’
‘Just to me, Andrea.’ The stewardess smiled.
Stella wrote a brief message to Andrea, then signed her name with a flourish before handing the book and pen back.
‘Thank you so much,’ Andrea said. ‘I shall cherish it.’
‘Thank you,’ Stella replied. ‘It’s always nice to meet people who like what you do.’
Andrea nodded. ‘I better go and serve dinner or my little band of travellers won’t be happy.’
Stella and Rick watched her walk away. He turned to her. ‘Wow. You’re seriously famous, aren’t you?’
Stella chuckled. ‘Does that threaten your masculinity?’ It had certainly threatened Dale’s.
‘Hell, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m a little turned on, actually.’
Stella shook her head. ‘If you’re thinking threesome, forget it.’
Rick laughed. ‘Well, I am now.’
CHAPTER THREE
STELLA had been seven and Rick ten when they’d first laid eyes on the Dolphin anchored at St Kitts. They’d both stood on the bow of the Persephone with their mouths open, staring at the wooden beauty. Teak, oak, cypress and the original brass fittings had given her an old-world charm hinting at an era when craftsmanship was everything and things were made to last.
Stella still remembered Rick’s awed whisper. ‘One day she’s going to be mine.’
And as they stood on the wharf looking down at her now, the brass gleaming beneath a high Aussie sun, the wooden deck warm and inviting, she looked as grand and majestic as ever.
Lucinda sighed in her head.
‘God, Rick,’ Stella breathed, that same stirring in her blood she always felt with a stiff sea breeze ruffling her hair. ‘She’s even more beautiful than I remembered.’
Rick looked down at her, her hair streaming behind her, her pink lips parted in awe. She’d changed into a vest top and cut-off denim shorts and she was so tiny the urge to tuck her under his arm took him by surprise.
‘Yes, she is,’ he murmured, looking back at his purchase.
Stella looked up at him. The sea breeze whipped his long pirate locks across his face. His strong jaw was dark with stubble. ‘She must have cost you a fortune.’
He shrugged. ‘Some things are beyond money. And she’s worth every cent.’
She nodded, looking back at the superbly crafted boat. ‘Why now?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I listened to your father talk about The Mermaid all my life. About how one day he was going to find Inigo’s final resting place. And then he died without ever having seen it.’
Rick felt a swell of emotion in his chest and stopped. He slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently into his side. ‘I always thought Nathan was invinci
ble...’
Stella snaked an arm around his waist, her heart twisting as his words ran out. She’d always thought so too. Always thought her father would be like Captain Ahab, The Mermaid his white whale. They both stood on the dock watching the gentle bob of the Dolphin for a few moments.
‘I’ve dreamt about owning this boat since I was ten years old,’ Rick murmured, finding his voice again. ‘I didn’t want to wait any longer.’
Stella nodded, feeling a deep and abiding affinity with Rick that couldn’t have been stronger had they been bound by blood.
That wouldn’t have been possible had they been lovers.
‘Besides,’ he grinned, giving her a quick squeeze before letting her go, ‘the company owns it.’
Stella laughed. ‘Oh, really, creative accounting, huh?’
‘Something like that,’ he laughed.
‘So she’s actually half mine?’ she teased.
Rick threw his backpack on deck and jumped on board. He held out his hand. ‘Mi casa es su casa,’ he murmured.
Stella’s breath hitched as she took his hand. He spoke Spanish impeccably and with that bronzed colouring and those impossibly blue eyes he was every inch the Spaniard. He might have an English father and have gone to English schools but for his formative years he was raised by his Romany grandmother and she’d made sure her Riccardo had been immersed in the lingo.
As she stepped aboard she checked out the small motorised dinghy hanging from a frame attached to the stern above the water line. Then her gaze fell to the starboard hull where the bold gold lettering outlined in fine black detail proclaimed a change of name. She almost tripped and stumbled into him.
‘Whoa there,’ he said, holding her hips to steady her. They curved out from her waist and he had to remind himself that the flesh beneath his palms was Stella’s. ‘You’ve turned into a real landlubber, haven’t you?’ he teased.
She stared at him for a moment. ‘You changed her name?’ she asked breathlessly.
He shrugged as he smiled down at her flummoxed face. ‘I promised you.’
Stella thumped his arm and ignored his theatrical recoil. ‘I was seven years old,’ she yelled.
She stormed to the edge and looked over at the six yellow letters, her eyes filling with tears.
Stella.
‘You don’t like it?’
She blinked her tears away and marched back to him and thumped his chest this time. ‘I love it, you idiot! It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’ Then she threw herself into his arms.
Not even her father had named a boat after her.
Rick chuckled as he lifted her feet off the ground and hugged her back, his senses infusing with coconut.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she said, her voice muffled against a pec. She pushed against the bands of his arms and squirmed away from him.
‘I told you I would.’
Stella had forgotten, but she remembered it now as if it were yesterday. Rick talking incessantly about buying the Dolphin that summer they’d first seen her and her making him promise that if he did he’d rename it after her.
‘I didn’t think you actually would,’ she said incredulously.
‘Anything for my favourite girl,’ he quipped.
She ignored his easy line as she’d ignored all his others. ‘You should have said no. I was a brat.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, you were.’
She gave him another playful thump but smiled up at him just the same. He smiled back and for a moment they just stood there, the joy of a shared memory uniting them.
‘Well, come on, then,’ she said after a moment. ‘Show me around.’
A spiral stairway led to a below deck that was far better than Stella had imagined in her wildest dreams. Polished wood invited her to run her hands along its surfaces. Brass fittings gleamed from every nook and cranny. The spacious area was dominated by ceiling beams, heavy brocade curtains over the portholes, oriental rugs and dark leather chairs.
It wasn’t lavish—she’d seen plenty of lavish interiors in her time—but it was very masculine, the addition of Rick even more so. He looked completely at home in this nautical nirvana and for a moment Stella could imagine him in a half-undone silk shirt and breeches, sprawled out down here, knocking back some rum after a hard day’s seafaring.
She blinked as Rick segued into Vasco.
‘Saloon here, galley over there,’ he said, thumbing over his shoulder where she could see a glimpse of stainless steel. ‘Engine room...’ he stamped his foot ‘...below us. Forward and aft cabins both have en suites. I thought you might like the aft cabin? It’s slightly bigger.’
‘Sure.’ She shrugged, her pulse tripping madly at her bizarre vision. ‘That sounds fine.’
Rick, who’d only seen photographs of the finished product himself, sat in a chair. He ran his hand over the decadent leather. ‘Wow, they’ve done a magnificent job.’
Stella blinked again as she looked down on him for once. If ever there was magnificent it was him, sitting in that chair, captain of all he surveyed. It reminded her of the scene in Pleasure Hunt where Lady Mary finally capitulated to his touch. Where she realised, after a particularly harrowing raid, life was short and she didn’t want to die without having known the touch of a truly sensual man.
She stood in front of Vasco in the privacy of his cabin as he sat, thighs insolently spread, in his chair, caressing the arm as if it were the breast of a beautiful woman. She looked down at him, waiting. When he leant forward and reached under her skirts she didn’t protest, nor when he placed his hands on the backs of her thighs and pulled her onto his lap so she was straddling him, her skirts frothing around her.
‘It’s so much better than the photos,’ Rick murmured.
Stella blinked as his voice dragged her back to the present. She took a step back as the vivid image of Vasco played large in her mind.
‘It’s amazing, Rick,’ she agreed. ‘Just...incredible.’
Rick smiled at her as his hand continued to stroke the leather. He was pleased Stella was here to share this moment with him. This boat, more than any of the ones they’d been on over the years, connected them in a way only shared childhood dreams could.
‘Let’s take her out,’ he said, standing. The sudden urge to hoist a sail and go where the wind took him shot through his veins like the first sip of beer on a hot summer day.
‘I know we should be provisioning her for our trip but we can do that tomorrow. Let’s take her over to Green Island. Give her a good run. We can go snorkelling. We have the basics here...well, we have beer anyway...and we can catch some fish and anchor there for the night. I want to lie on the deck and look at the stars like we used to do when we were kids.’
‘Sure,’ she agreed readily. Anything, anything to get her out of this saloon and far away from the fantasy.
Where the hell was her filter? She did not fantasise
about Rick.
Not in front of him anyway.
‘Fabulous idea. Can I take her once she’s out of the harbour?’
Stella had learned to sail practically before she could walk. Her father had seen to that. Hell, so had her mother, a keen sailor in her own right, but it had been a lot of years since she’d been on the open sea.
‘You still remember what to do?’ Rick teased.
She smiled at him. ‘I’m sure it’ll come back to me. It’s just like riding a bike, yes?’
Or having sex.
Diana had assured her you didn’t forget how to do that either.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there to guide you. Do you trust me?’
Yep...exactly what Vasco had said to Lady Mary.
Do you trust me?
Stella swallowed. ‘I trust that you don’t want me to run your very ex
pensive boat—sorry, the company’s very expensive boat—onto a reef,’ she quipped.
Rick laughed. ‘You have that right. Come on, first mate, let’s get this show on the road.’
* * *
Within half an hour they were under way, out on the open ocean, and Stella couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this alive. She’d waited patiently while Rick had used the motor to manoeuvre out of the harbour, then helped him with the still familiar motions of putting up the sails. She heard Lucinda sigh as they billowed with the moderate breeze and her pulse leapt as the boat surged forward, slicing across the whitecaps.
Rick, who had taken his shirt off—of course—stood behind her at the wheel for the first ten minutes, giving her a quick refresher. It wasn’t needed. Her feel for the boat was instantaneous, like the familiarity of her own heartbeat, and even if it hadn’t been they could easily have switched to the sophisticated autopilot system guided by the satellite technology that he’d had installed as part of the fully computerised upgrade.
But it was exhilarating to feel the pulse of the ocean beneath her feet again. She shut her eyes, raised her face to the sun as the big wheel in her hands felt like a natural extension of her being. In her mind’s eye she could see Lucinda laughing up at her as she undulated through the waves, riding the bow with the dolphins.
Rick looked up from tying down a loose rope and caught her in her sun-worshipping stance. He’d worried that buying the Dolphin on a whim had been a mistake, an indulgence he didn’t have the time to realise, a reaction to Nathan’s sudden death.
But he didn’t any more.
Nathan’s accident had rocked him to his very core. He’d been there that day. Had seen Nathan’s lifeless form, minus his breathing apparatus, bob to the surface. Had frantically dragged him aboard, puffed air into lungs that had been consumed by sea water too many minutes before.
Had demanded that he stay with him.
Stay for him.
Stay for Stella.
His own father’s memory had faded to nothing over the years. He’d been too young when his father’s regular bouts of drunken shore leave had caught up with him. Just a few faded photographs and the oft-repeated stories that got more and more fantastical late into the night after one too many beers.