Scent of a Woman

by Joanne Rock

  “What else does it say?”

  “There is a separation between your heart line and your head line, which indicates you are not as impulsive as you believe yourself to be.” He traced those distinct lines, feeling her pulse throbbing gently beneath her soft skin.

  “I will have to tell my brother—Marcel—that he has been wrong about me all these years.” She lifted her head to smile up at him, so close he could have kissed her.

  And he wanted to kiss her.

  They stood silently for a long moment, each taking the other’s measure in the warm afternoon sunlight.

  “How does my love life look to you?” Her voice was a breathy whisper that teased his senses.

  “I happen to know it’s getting better by the second,” he confided, his thumb tracing a circle around the center of her palm.

  Her eyelids fluttered in response and he closed the space between them to capture her lush mouth. Her lips parted with speed quickness and he deepened the kiss.

  She shivered lightly against him and he tugged her hand free to place her palm on his chest before he folded her in his arms. Her head tipped back in silent surrender, and hot sensation flooded through him as her body pressed against his.

  He’d dreamed of this the night before, imagining exactly what she’d feel like if he ever had the chance to hold her. The reality was even better than those heated imaginings, her sweet sighs an enticing sound that worked some kind of dark, sensual magic on him. The need to steal her away some place remote was too strong to ignore. He wanted to lay her down. To cover her body with his….

  “Danielle.” He pulled back sharply while he still could. “Let me walk you back to your room.”

  “I—” She shook her head, her expression confused. Wary. “I can’t think. I don’t know.”

  Her refusal was logical. Sensible. And…ah hell, he needed to have some space between them before he forgot everything else but kissing her again.

  “I have meetings tomorrow, but why don’t we go ashore in Naples together the next day? We can hire a boat to take us out to Capri.” He wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if he didn’t know he could spend time with her again. “I’ll meet you at your stateroom at noon. Okay?”

  He held his breath, unable to breathe in the same air as her without wanting to keep kissing her.

  “Oui.” She nodded, her violet eyes a narrow rim around dilated pupils. “Until then.”

  She refused his offer to walk her back to her room, which was probably wise considering how much he wanted to cross that threshold when they got there. He let her go, hoping she would trust him a little more each day, because he didn’t know how he would hold himself back the next time he kissed her that way. He’d dated enough women to know that chemistry like theirs didn’t come along often. And since tomorrow would be the third day of the cruise, they only had so much time left to explore the heat that simmered between them.

  THE SHIP’S newest destination tempted her.

  The Maltese Islands beckoned to her every time she looked out over the ship’s rail, but Danielle attended the fragrance exhibition and two meetings the next morning in the hope of running into the Dubai-based retailer again. She preferred socializing outside their formally scheduled meetings wherever possible. Adam was working today, too, and the knowledge spurred her to be all the more industrious about pursuing business over pleasure.

  Still, there had been no sign of Ahmed Ramnathan, the quiet and studious-looking businessman who’d been so receptive of her pitch for Les Rêves’s new Arabian Nights line. A Parisian perfumer told Danielle he thought Ahmed had attended a conference-sponsored tour of Valletta to see St. John’s Co-Cathedral. It boasted an extensive collection of Flemish tapestries and—if Danielle’s memory served—a Caravaggio that her mother had seen once. Danielle wished now she had taken the tour.

  Leaving the last of her meetings behind, she took a set of stairs to deck ten in an effort to burn off a few extra calories from the fantastic food served on the ship. Apparently the head chef was new to Alexandra’s Dream, but Danielle had read about his culinary exploits before, since he used to have a successful restaurant just down the French coast from her. Everything about the cruise seemed decadent and delightful, although she had noticed the bath products in her stateroom weren’t top of the line. She’d made a mental note to seek out the cruise line’s purchasing agent when she returned home to see if she could work up a deal to have some of Les Rêves’s new soaps and lotions on board instead.

  She had almost reached her destination when she spotted a familiar figure on his way down the stairs.

  “Father Connelly?” She paused to address the priest who’d given the lecture on classical antiquities.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” The priest, a gray-haired, robust-looking man in his fifties, extended his hand.

  His companion, an officer with two and a half stripes, nodded briefly to her before continuing down the stairs.

  “I’m Danielle Chevalier, Father.” She shook his hand and found herself tugged into the corner of the staircase landing. “I attended your cocktail party and part of your lecture yesterday.”

  “Ah, yes!” He snapped his fingers in recognition. “You stood in the back while I was speaking.”

  An older woman descended past them and Father Connelly winked at her, eliciting a blush. Apparently the priestly calling hadn’t dimmed his love of flirting.

  “I wanted to ask you about the Bast statue in the ship’s collection.” She was already designing perfume bottles and potential scent combinations inspired by the piece.

  “You plan to test the poor clergyman when his notes are nowhere in sight?” he teased, patting his pockets as if searching for a lost notebook. “You are a cruel woman, Ms. Chevalier.”

  “I don’t need to know anything specific,” she assured him. “But I am curious about the goddess in general and I thought you might be able to tell me more than what you included in the lecture.”

  Perhaps she’d been attracted to Bast because of the lack of warrior-like qualities in herself. The longer she thought about Marcel’s phone call and his insistence she stay away from Adam, the more certain she became that she had not fought hard enough for independence and respect from her family.

  What woman couldn’t use a little warrior spirit in her life?

  “Bless you for taking it easy on me.” He smiled. “Bast, or Bastet, is the daughter of the Egyptian sun god Re. And, like most ancient deity figures, the more you read about her, the more conflicting the information. But she is supposed to be the embodiment of the rage in Re’s eye, and she is a goddess of both household protection and vengeance. Her domain is as far-reaching as the stories about her powers and her importance.”

  He went on to describe mummified cats found throughout the same region as the statue, and shared a few other facts that weren’t relevant to her plans for a new perfume inspired by the figure. When he seemed to have exhausted his knowledge on the subject, she shook his hand and left to find her stateroom.

  There would be gardens to visit in Capri tomorrow, and she wanted to be sure her nose was ready to seek out the raw fragrances she needed to mix a perfume that would inspire a woman’s strength as well as her femininity. She could hardly wait to get to work.

  If only finding her own strength were as simple as developing a new scent.

  “WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re doing?” Giorgio Tzekas, the ship’s first officer, was pissed off at him again.

  Mike O’Connor, who went by Father Patrick Connelly on the ship, was beginning to think his sideline as Giorgio’s therapist would overshadow their real mission on board Alexandra’s Dream. The guy was seriously unstable.

  “What?” Mike feigned cluelessness. The two men were in Giorgio’s stateroom. “I can’t have a conversation with a beautiful woman? Ms. Chevalier is worth any man’s time.”

  Giorgio paced his way over to the peephole and peered out into the ship’s corridor. “Will you k
eep your voice down? And you know damn good and well that I mean what the hell are you doing mixing genuine artifacts from my expeditions with the reproductions displayed in the library?”

  Mike knew that bit of cleverness wouldn’t go overlooked for long. Too bad Giorgio didn’t have a creative mind when it came to perfecting the art of the scam. But then, that’s the way it was with people who kept one foot in the law-abiding world and one foot on the dark side. They were constantly worried their worlds would collide.

  Smooth, eloquent lies. That’s what was needed in their current scheme to smuggle priceless artifacts from the Mediterranean into the United States after the ship’s reposition cruise.

  The boss demanded perfection and Mike enjoyed that challenge. He admired the way the operation was being run so far, even if he’d never met the boss other than a few furtive phone calls to exchange information. Mike couldn’t wait to see how the artifacts were going to be smuggled off the ship. For now, he didn’t think that would be his department. It was tough enough getting things on board.

  “A brilliant idea, isn’t it?” Mike helped himself to a drink from Giorgio’s minibar selection. The officer’s room was ten times nicer than the stateroom Mike had been offered as part of his lecturer gig. At least he didn’t have to share it the way the lower-level crew members did. Some of them had to bunk with six people in a room.

  When Giorgio didn’t respond, Mike figured he needed to spell out the benefits of the plan.

  “This way we don’t have to worry about hiding anything or getting caught with suspicious goods after those last few artifacts were discovered in the potted plants—your idea, you might recall. Now everything is out in the open and passed off as reproductions. As I pick up new things, we’ll add them to the collection as fakes.”

  Giorgio glared at him.

  “Brilliant is not what I would have called it. There has been more attention on your collection ever since those pieces were discovered. And the cleaning staff is grumbling about having to dust all those breakables.”

  “Remind me why I care what the guy with the mop thinks?” Mike poured himself a second drink since the bartender in the cigar club was convinced a priest shouldn’t receive full-strength alcohol.

  Giorgio swore. Or so Mike supposed. The words he rattled off in Greek didn’t exactly sound complimentary.

  “A pissed-off guy with a mop is more likely to bring attention to your display from crew and passengers alike. A cruise liner like this is a rumor mill. Someone starts talking, and pretty soon it’s the conversational topic for the whole ship. Nick Pappas is looking for any reason at all to link me to trouble. I guarantee you the boss isn’t going to like all that attention.”

  “Don’t worry about Captain Pappas. And I guarantee the boss won’t appreciate having a pussy on staff. Will you relax?” Mike thought about asking Danielle Chevalier out for a drink to discuss Bast in more detail. Single women were all over the ship and there was no way he could ignore that fact for the whole season.

  Tuning out whatever Giorgio was saying now, Mike set down his glass abruptly.

  “I’m out of here.” It would be easy to find out which room Danielle was in since the woman at the purser’s desk liked him. Perhaps he’d see if Danielle wanted to explore one of the ports with him this week to provide a much needed distraction.

  “Don’t forget you have to meet our contact tomorrow to pick up new pieces.” Giorgio hovered over him like an old woman as he made his way toward the door.

  “I’m going to score tomorrow.” Shaking off Giorgio’s tense words, Mike stepped out into the corridor. “You can count on it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “IS EVERYTHING ALL right back home?” Adam asked Danielle the next day as he rowed their boat through the water that would lead them to La Grotta Azzura, Capri’s famous blue grotto.

  She’d been quiet ever since returning from a phone call she’d had to her brother shortly after they’d arrived in Anacapri, a section of Capri that was so lush and beautiful he regretted not traveling more before now.

  Blue water surrounded them now as the hills of the island shrank slightly in the distance. Three other small boats rowed near them and larger vessels with tour groups drifted ahead and behind them, waiting to enter the grotto. Dozens of cruise passengers had chosen to tour Capri during the ship’s stay in Naples. Apparently the grotto was a major attraction even though Adam had never heard of it. Something about cruising the Mediterranean this week made him think he’d been living in too isolated a world. He knew he’d been busting his butt with work for years, but not until this trip had he realized he was also living with his head under a rock.

  “I am unsure.” Danielle shook her head as if trying to shake off a dark mood. “My brother didn’t say anything was wrong, but his voice—Marcel did not sound like himself. He even neglected to ask me about you, and I know for a fact he is worried about you and I seeing each other.”

  Adam leaned forward to dip the oars behind him and then pulled back hard, taking pleasure from the way the simple, clear-cut task propelled them through the water faster. There was something reassuring about being able to control an end result by how hard you worked to achieve it. Too often in business that wasn’t the case.

  “What is there to worry about?” He pulled the oars out of the water, pausing to let them drip.

  “I have…how shall we say? A poor track record when it comes to men.” She repositioned her legs to one side of the boat, her tanned shapely calves catching his eye.

  As always, she looked phenomenal in linen shorts and jacket, every inch the wealthy European businesswoman. Her narrow leather belt and small designer satchel probably cost as much as his whole outfit. A silk tank top hugged her curves beneath the jacket, the delicate white fabric allowing him tantalizing glimpses of some kind of lace thing underneath.

  “You have a poor track record? I find that hard to believe.” Any man would want to claim a woman like Danielle for his own.

  She propped a pair of big sunglasses on her head, revealing her eyes.

  “The last man I grew attached to stole a valuable perfume formula before I went to market with the product.”

  “Bastard.” He wondered what had been more devastating for her—the knock to her business or the toll it must have taken on her heart.

  Not to mention her pride.

  “Precisely.” She peered around to see a small boat with tourists float into the grotto under a low rock wall.

  “But one jerk doesn’t make a bad track record. Everyone has lousy luck in romance now and then. Witness my relationship with Jessica, which she completely manipulated.” He turned around to judge the distance to the grotto. The man who’d rented them the boat told him to make sure they lay down as they went under the low-hanging cave wall since an unexpected wave could lift the craft high enough to risk injury.

  “Ah, but he was just one example.” She waved another boat ahead of them as he backed near the entrance. The couple near them shouted something that sounded like Italian for thank you.

  “I hope he’s the worst case.” The guy had a hell of a nerve to hurt her on both a personal and professional level.

  “He is,” Danielle acknowledged. “The others just dated me for the wealth of my mother’s estate. My brother Marcel calls them lazy pretty boys.”

  “Then Marcel ought to think I’m all aces since I haven’t taken a day off in six weeks or a week off in six years.” He propped the oars up again so they could settle themselves inside the boat before they floated under the entrance wall. “And no one’s ever accused me of being a pretty boy.”

  He scowled at the very idea.

  “No?” She smiled, sliding to one side of her seat. “Do you really think your Hollywood princess would wish to be photographed with an unattractive man?”

  “Hell, yeah. It makes her look better.” He wished they hadn’t been talking about another woman at the very moment they needed to lie down together, possibly his only chance
to get horizontal with her today.

  He put his feet up on her seat while she stretched out beside him, their bodies spanning the two metal seats like bridges. He slipped his arm around her, cushioning her head and shoulders.

  “Your track record is about to improve,” he assured her, speaking into her ear through the veil of her hair.

  The boat floated slowly beneath the rock wall, the light, the air and the sounds around them changing as they entered the grotto. The place smelled earthy and damp without the benefit of a fresh breeze.

  “Oh.” Danielle’s breath caught as the flood of intense blue light washed over them.

  “Wow.” Adam didn’t sit up even, though they’d cleared the low wall to float freely inside the grotto by now. The experience of holding Danielle, her head resting on his shoulder, seemed even more amazing than the indigo spectacle drenching their bodies in rich color.

  “It’s like we fell into the sky.” Danielle’s voice remained hushed, her quiet no doubt inspired by the same awe that kept the other boaters calm, too.

  The boating parties that had been loud and raucous and multilingual outside the cave now shared a universal silence as they took in a sight that seemed almost sacred.

  The space was no bigger than a half a football field, the rocks above them echoing back the liquid sounds of waves lapping at the sides of the boats.

  “Let’s look at the water,” Adam said finally, reluctant to move but not wanting Danielle to miss out on the full experience of the grotto.

  Her cheek grazed his chest for an instant before she righted herself, her long, dark hair sliding down his body like a lover’s fingers.

  “C’est magnifique.” She dipped her hand in the water, which was colored as richly as the air, and it took on an ultraviolet hue.

  “Too bad they don’t let people swim in here.” He leaned behind her to immerse his hand in the water next to hers.

  “We have found a magical place, no?” She turned to smile at him over her shoulder and he felt the air sucked right out of his lungs. Twisting in her seat to face him, she trailed her wet hand up his arm, coating his skin with fine blue mist.