by Amy Andrews
Of course, there would always be fish.
Stella took their plates while Rick cleaned the grill and she joined him on deck twenty minutes later after a quick shower. He was lying as he had the night before, flat on his back, stretched out beneath a vast canopy of black and silver.
Although tonight, at least, he’d decided to wear a shirt.
‘Are we going to do this every night?’ she asked, joining him.
He looked up at her. She was wearing a sarong tied around her neck in some fashion, the corners flapping in the breeze to show a little bare thigh. He looked back at the sky.
‘Weather permitting,’ he murmured.
Stella settled back, the slap of the halyard against the mast making a delightful clink. The stars seemed so close this far away from the light pollution of land.
‘Well, I think I did very well today,’ he said after they’d lain in companionable silence for a few minutes. ‘Are you ready to concede yet?’
Stella laughed. ‘There’s only been me here.’
He smiled into the night. ‘It won’t make a difference.’
‘Well, we’ll see how it is when you’re surrounded by all those Micronesian babes who want to be your own private deckhands.’
He chuckled then and Stella shivered as the delicious noise slipped down her spine like a feather stroke. She raised her hand to distract herself, just as she had as a child, holding up her thumb to the moon and squinting, obliterating the glowing white orb from her vision.
She dropped her hand. ‘They look like you could just pluck them from the sky, one by one, don’t they?’
‘And that’s why you write romance novels,’ Rick teased, rolling his head to the side to look at her.
Stella smiled and just as abruptly stopped. Rick seemed so laid-back about what she did.
He frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she sighed.
‘That’s kind of a big sigh to be nothing. I thought you were ecstatic about your word count today.’
Stella let her head roll so she was facing him too. ‘I am, I’m...beyond ecstatic. I’m just...’
‘Just? Are you not happy with what you do?’
‘No. I’m very happy with it. Especially now I have words,’ she joked. ‘I have a great publisher. An editor who’s a saint, an agent who’s a shark...’
‘But?’ he asked as she turned her head away to look at the sky. ‘You should be proud of what you do. Nathan was. We’re all so proud of you, Stel.’
Stella gave a light snort. ‘Trust me, not everyone is so...proud of what I do.’
Rick frowned. ‘Oh? Someone in particular?’
She looked at him again. ‘Dale. He...broke off the engagement when he realised what I wrote.’
Nathan had told Rick about the break-up when it had occurred. Rick hadn’t asked why, he’d just assumed it was the usual sort of stuff that broke relationships up. He did remember Nathan being secretly pleased. He’d always thought his daughter’s long-term fiancé was a bit of a cold fish.
Rick had to admit to feeling a little pleased himself. He’d never met Dale but Nathan’s instincts about men had usually been spot on.
‘He didn’t know?’
She shook her head. ‘Dale thought I was writing respected historical research on eighteenth-century pirates.’
Rick was confused. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’
‘Of course I did, but he was never good at listening. He’s an academic, one of those absent-minded professor types, and all he heard was historical and pirate...’
Rick suppressed a shudder. He sounded like a total bore.
‘So,’ he said, wanting to clarify the situation before he spoke ill of her idiot ex, ‘he dumped you when he found out you wrote...’
Stella nodded. ‘Trashy, smutty, dirty little books.’
Rick cocked an eyebrow. He really had to read that book. ‘You write trashy smut?’ What the hell was wrong with the man? Didn’t he realise that was a really good reason to hang onto a woman?
Stella rolled her eyes. ‘No. I write historical romantic fiction for women. Dale called them trashy and smutty.’
Rick sucked in a breath. What a dufus. ‘How did he find out?’
‘One of his students asked him if he was the inspiration for Vasco Ramirez.’
Rick rolled up onto his elbow and looked down at her. ‘Was he?’
Stella laughed then. The irony of Rick, Vasco Ramirez personified, asking that question was just too much. ‘Most definitely not.’
Rick grinned. ‘Ouch.’
Stella felt instantly contrite—not everyone looked like an eighteenth-century pirate. ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Dale’s lovely...was lovely. In kind of a...self-absorbed way. He’s just not...buccaneer material.’
‘Well,’ Rick announced. ‘The man’s clearly an idiot.’
‘Not really...he has an IQ in the hundred and thirties.’
Rick fell back against the deck. ‘He can’t be too smart if his fiancée is writing smutty novels and he doesn’t use that to his advantage.’
Stella burst out laughing. ‘His advantage? How?’
Rick shrugged. ‘Dress up in breeches and make you read it aloud to him.’
Stella laughed again. The very thought was as wicked as it was absurd. Dale would no sooner have done that than flown to the moon. ‘Dale was a little too strait-laced for role playing. In fact I think he considered human desire a little beneath him altogether. Too...messy or something.’
There was just something about laughing with Rick in the night under the stars that encouraged confidences and she felt as if they were kids again, whispering their secrets to each other.
Rick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In fact he was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to hear it. And not just because a woman like Stella, or any woman for that matter, should not be having mediocre sex. But because putting sex and Stella in the same sentence was something he’d avoided his entire life.
‘Why on earth did you stay with him?’ he asked.
Stella rolled her head to face him. That one was easy.
‘Because he was a nice guy. A good guy. A kind guy. He made me laugh.’ Not in the ribald way Rick made her laugh but in a lovely, easy way that warmed her up inside. ‘He had a great job. On terra firma. He wanted to get married. He wanted kids.’
Rick almost yawned, it sounded so boring, but the way her voice softened was telling. He looked away. How could someone who had the swell of oceans running in her veins settle for such mediocrity?
‘Well, it sounds like you’re well shot of him to me,’ he said after a few moments star gazing. ‘A woman who writes smut needs someone to inspire her.’
Stella laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘That’s what you like about me.’
She thumped him on the chest. Yeh, it was what she liked about him but she wasn’t going to admit it.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, sitting up.
He sat also. ‘I’m up for that.’
Stella looked behind her at his bad-boy grin and rolled her eyes. ‘By myself.’
‘I can do smut.’
Stella laughed. ‘I bet you can.’
He held up his hand. ‘Just saying. The offer’s out there.’
Stella shook her head. ‘I think this is called flirting, Rick.’
‘Hey, you said, with women I meet along the way. I already know you. You’re fair game.’
Stella guessed she’d walked right into that one.
‘Besides I gotta put the flirt somewhere. It’s not good to let it build up. Men,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘should never let anything build up.’
Lucky for her she was used to Rick’s tea
sing and was sufficiently over the jet lag to not let it push her buttons. She stood. ‘Goodnight, Rick.’
‘Sleep tight.’ He grinned as he watched her walk away.
Then there were just the stars, the ocean and him, but not even they could keep him from the smutty book he had secreted in his cabin.
He gave her five minutes, then followed her down.
* * *
Six hours later, Rick read The End and knew he would never be the same again. Diana had been right. It was most illuminating. The hard-on he’d got in chapter two was still there and there was no way it was going away unless he did something about it.
Fortunately now he had plenty of images to help him in that department.
Two things were crystal clear.
Number one—Dale was an idiot of the first order. Hell, if he had a woman that had this sort of stuff in her head—the sheer eroticism of the beautifully scripted love scenes still clung to his loins—he wouldn’t let her out of his bed let alone his life.
Number two—the most shocking of all.
She’d written the book about him.
He was Vasco Ramirez.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lady Mary stifled a gasp as Captain Ramirez rose from the tin bath tub with the fluid grace of a stallion. Water sluiced down the long lines of his body as the flickering lamplight gilded his bronzed skin, throwing it both into mysterious shadow and enticing relief.
The mucous membranes of her throat cracked as dry as parchment, her heart skipped frantically in her chest.
She should not be here.
She should not be spying on a man, a nude man, who was unaware of being watched.
But she simply could not stop.
The last time she’d seen flesh this magnificent had been at Lord Ladbrooke’s stables and her nostrils flared as she remembered how all that leashed power had felt beneath her jodhpurs as she’d straddled and then ridden the Arabian beauty bareback.
Much to her aunt’s chagrin.
Lord alone knew what she’d do now witnessing Mary’s scandalous behaviour. There’d be smelling salts for sure.
But, alas, Mary could not take her eyes off the man.
Steam still rose in wisps around his calves as he stood waiting for the excess water to run off. She held her breath as her gaze roamed over the board-taut planes of his shoulders, obscured towards the middle by sleek wet strips of dark hair. Water trekked from the dripping ends and she followed the path of one errant droplet, gleaming in the light, as it slid down the furrow of his spine nestled between the well-defined muscles either side.
She lost it in shadow as it entered the dip of his back, bracketed by enticing hollows, but her eyes roamed south regardless to the rise of his buttocks. Two firm slabs of muscle, potently male even in his relaxed state, greeted her.
Her gaze was drawn to the left where an imperfection snagged her attention. There, in the centre of his left buttock, lay a large smooth brown birthmark.
It was utterly fascinating and Mary stared at it open-mouthed. It was a perfect circle as if some lover, for he looked to be a man who took lovers, had drawn it deliberately to brand him.
Mary’s cheeks flamed at the risqué image and she felt the roughness of her breath as it quickened in her lungs.
Just when she thought he’d turned to stone he turned slightly, affording Mary a different view. Her gaze brushed along the flare of a bicep, the jut of a masculine hip, which seemed as savage as it did graceful, and the perfect delineation of a meaty quadricep that seemed to vibrate with barely leashed power.
And then there was his...
Mary swallowed. She had seen illustrations of the nude male anatomy in obscure texts in her uncle’s library when she’d been fifteen but they hadn’t managed to capture the sheer beauty of the real thing. The long elegant line of the male member in all its potency was a sight to behold.
It was more elongated and the girth more significant than she’d ever imagined. The curls at its base more enticing.
How magnificent would it look standing out proud as she’d seen on the midnight Arabian?
Mary felt a strange sensation take root deep inside her.
How on earth did it fit?
Captain Ramirez suddenly reached for a nearby towel, covering himself as he stepped out of the bath, his fascinating birthmark the last thing she saw before everything was obscured. Just as quickly he’d padded over to the door that led to his private bedchamber and disappeared through it.
Mary let out the breath she’d been holding. It stuttered noisily into the air around her. She knew she should move but she was utterly incapable.
Until now she’d assumed that pirates didn’t bathe.
She would be grateful until the day she died that Captain Vasco Ramirez had shattered that rather high-handed illusion.
Vasco was breathing rather heavily himself as he shut the door to his bedchamber, leaning against it, his long sable lashes covering the smoulder in his devil blue eyes. Ever since he’d seen Lady Mary in the looking glass peeking out from behind the curtains he’d been determined to shock her.
But he hadn’t been prepared for her thorough appreciation. Nor for his completely involuntary reaction to her fascinated scrutiny.
His fancy did not usually involve gently bred ladies but he’d seen those flared nostrils, heard that muffled gasp.
Maybe beneath all those prim petticoats and haughty eyes beat a passionate heart. Maybe she wasn’t as indifferent to him as her demeanour suggested.
Maybe she could be persuaded to make this voyage a lot more bearable for both of them?
RICK shut the book as he finished chapter two.
Again.
He could hear Stella moving around above him and knew he had to get out of bed and get under way but he wasn’t sure he could look her in the eye this morning.
And—he looked down at the tented sheet—he needed a little time to compose himself...
He ran his fingers over the glossy cover of Pleasure Hunt, the metallic letters boldly pronouncing her name—Stella Mills.
This was not the Stella Mills he knew.
What on earth had happened to her? The Stella who had played mermaid and pirates? Who liked to snorkel and scuba dive? Who liked to read and watch the stars at night? The Stella who hated carrots and could almost hold her breath as long as he could?
The one who had been devastated when her parents had divorced and had made him promise that whatever happened in their lives they would always be friends.
Of course that Stella had been ten years old.
Just the way he liked her.
Because otherwise he had to think of her as a very different Stella.
A grown-up Stella. Who got engaged.
Who had sex.
Who was twenty-seven and not the virgin her father had hoped she would be for ever.
Not if Pleasure Hunt was anything to go by anyway.
God, she probably didn’t even hate carrots any more.
Rick threw the covers off. This was ridiculous. And not helping his situation down below.
He cut straight to the crux of the issue, or one aspect of it anyway.
She was not Lady Mary.
He let it reverberate around his head for good measure. Lady Mary was a character she’d made up. In that vivid, hot, lustrous, dirty—God, so dirty—imagination
of hers.
Just because Vasco was him, didn’t mean that Lady Mary was her.
It didn’t mean she’d been fantasising about him sexually. Or that she’d put herself into a character whose lust for his character bordered on pornographic obsession.
That was just plain crazy.
There was nothing remotely similar about Lady Mary and Stella—nothing.
So he needed to get over himself.
He needed to go and take a shower—a cold one—and get the bloody boat moving.
* * *
He was on deck twenty minutes later. And he was in big, big trouble. Suddenly the filter that had always been in place where she was concerned had been stripped away. Those teenage dreams he’d had about her and refused to let himself dwell upon were front and centre.
She was in teeny tiny denim shorts with a frayed edge and a shirt that barely met in the middle. A straw cowboy-style hat, the edges curled up, sat low over her eyes and held her tucked-up hair in place save for a few haphazard wisps that had escaped and brushed her nape.
The girl he always saw, the one he’d trained himself to see, ever since Nathan had sprung them about to kiss, was gone for ever.
Now he saw the ripe bulge of her breasts as the bra he could clearly see through the thin fabric of her shirt pushed and lifted in all the right ways. The wink of her belly button taunting him from the strip of bare skin at her midriff. The killer curve where her hip flared from the tiny line of her waist.
He’d never noticed how curvy she was before. Not consciously anyway. Consciously he’d always thought of her as short and cute.
Like an elf or maybe a munchkin.
But there was nothing cute about those curves—they should come with a yellow warning sign.
And he was stuck on board with them for the next few weeks.
‘Well, about time,’ Stella said as she caught Rick’s advance in her peripheral vision. ‘Another gorgeous day for sailing.’