‘Ramón.’
‘Mr Cavellero,’ she said stubbornly. ‘With the wages you’re offering, I know you’ll find just the crew you’re looking for, no problem at all. So thank you again and goodnight.’
Then, before she could let her treacherous heart do any more impulse urging-before she could be as stupid as she’d been in the past-she turned resolutely away.
She walked straight ahead and she didn’t look back.
CHAPTER TWO
H ER heart told her she was stupid all the way home. Her head told her she was right.
Her head addressed her heart with severity. This was a totally ridiculous proposition. She didn’t know this man.
She’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, she told herself. To be indebted to a stranger, then sail away into the unknown… He could be a white slave trader!
She knew he wasn’t. Take a risk, her heart was commanding her, but then her heart had let her down before. She wasn’t going down that road again.
So, somehow, she summoned the dignity to keep on walking.
‘Think about it,’ Ramón called after her and she almost hesitated, she almost turned back, only she was a sensible woman now, not some dumb teenager who’d jump on the nearest boat and head off to sea.
So she walked on. Round the next corner, and the next, past where Charlie lived.
A police car was pulled up beside Charlie’s front door, and Charlie hadn’t made it inside. Her boss was being breathalysed. He’d be way over the alcohol limit. He’d lose his licence for sure.
She thought back and remembered Ramón lifting his cellphone. Had he…
Whoa. She scuttled past, feeling like a guilty rabbit.
Ramón had done it, not her.
Charlie would guess. Charlie would never forgive her.
Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.
By the time she got home she felt as if she’d forgotten to breathe. She raced up the steps into her little rented apartment and she slammed the door behind her.
What had Ramón done? Charlie, without his driving licence? Charlie, thinking it was her fault?
But suddenly she wasn’t thinking about Charlie. She was thinking about Ramón. Numbly, she crossed to the curtains and drew them aside. Just checking. Just in case he’d followed. He hadn’t and she was aware of a weird stab of disappointment.
Well, what did you expect? she told herself. I told him press gangs don’t work.
What if they did? What if he came up here in the dead of night, drugged her and carted her off to sea? What if she woke on his beautiful yacht, far away from this place?
I’d be chained to the sink down in the galley, she told herself with an attempt at humour. Nursing a hangover from the drugs he used to get me there.
But oh, to be on that boat…
He’d offered to pay all her bills. Get her away from Charlie…
What was she about, even beginning to think about such a crazy offer? If he was giving her so much money, then he’d be expecting something other than the work a deckie did.
But a man like Ramón wouldn’t have to pay, she thought, her mind flashing to the nubile young backpackers she knew would jump at the chance to be crew to Ramón. They’d probably jump at the chance to be anything else. So why did he want her?
Did he have a thing for older women?
She stared into the mirror and what she saw there almost made her smile. It’d be a kinky man who’d desire her like she was. Her hair was still flour-streaked from the day. She’d been working in a hot kitchen and she’d been washing up over steaming sinks. She didn’t have a spot of make-up on, and her nose was shiny. Very shiny.
Her clothes were ancient and nondescript and her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep. Oh, she had plenty of time for sleep, but where was sleep when you needed it? She’d stopped taking the pills her doctor prescribed. She was trying desperately to move on, but how?
‘What better way than to take a chance?’ she whispered to her image. ‘Charlie’s going to be unbearable to work with now. And Ramón’s gorgeous and he seems really nice. His boat’s fabulous. He’s not going to chain me to the galley, I’m sure of it.’ She even managed a smile at that. ‘If he does, I won’t be able to help him with the sails. He’d have to unchain me a couple of times a day at least. And I’d be at sea. At sea!’
So maybe…maybe…
Her heart and head were doing battle but her heart was suddenly in the ascendancy. It was trying to convince her it could be sensible as well.
Wait, she told herself severely. She ran a bath and wallowed and let her mind drift. Pros and cons. Pros and cons.
If it didn’t work, she could get off the boat at New Zealand.
He’d demand his money back.
So? She’d then owe money to Ramón instead of to Charlie, and there’d be no threat to Cathy’s apartment. The debt would be hers and hers alone.
That felt okay. Sensible, even. She felt a prickle of pure excitement as she closed her eyes and sank as deep as she could into the warm water. To sail away with Ramón…
Her eyes flew open. She’d been stupid once. One gorgeous sailor, and…Matty.
So I’m not that stupid, she told herself. I can take precautions before I go.
Before she went? This wasn’t turning out to be a relaxing bath. She sat bolt upright in the bath and thought, what am I thinking?
She was definitely thinking of going.
‘You told him where to go to find deckies,’ she said out loud. ‘He’ll have asked someone else by now.’
No!
‘So get up, get dressed and go down to that boat. Right now, before you chicken out and change your mind.
‘You’re nuts.
‘So what can happen that’s worse than being stuck here?’ she told herself and got out of the bath and saw her very pink body in the mirror. Pink? The sight was somehow a surprise.
For the last two years she’d been feeling grey. She’d been concentrating on simply putting one foot after another, and sometimes even that was an effort.
And now…suddenly she felt pink.
‘So go down to the docks, knock on the hatch of Ramón’s wonderful boat and say-yes, please, I want to come with you, even if you are a white slave trader, even if I may be doing the stupidest thing of my life. Jumping from the frying pan into the fire? Maybe, but, crazy or not, I want to jump,’ she told the mirror.
And she would.
‘You’re a fool,’ she told her reflection, and her reflection agreed.
‘Yes, but you’re not a grey fool. Just do it.’
What crazy impulse had him offering a woman passage on his boat? A needy woman. A woman who looked as if she might cling.
She was right, he needed a couple of deckies, kids who’d enjoy the voyage and head off into the unknown as soon as he reached the next port. Then he could find more.
But he was tired of kids. He’d been starting to think he’d prefer to sail alone, only Marquita wasn’t a yacht to sail by himself. She was big and old-fashioned and her sails were heavy and complicated. In good weather one man might manage her, but Ramón didn’t head into good weather. He didn’t look for storms but he didn’t shy away from them either.
The trip back around the Horn would be long and tough, and he’d hardly make it before he was due to return to Bangladesh. He’d been looking forward to the challenge, but at the same time not looking forward to the complications crew could bring.
The episode in the café this morning had made him act on impulse. The woman-Jenny-looked light years from the kids he generally employed. She looked warm and homely and mature. She also looked as if she might have a sense of humour and, what was more, she could cook.
He could make a rather stodgy form of paella. He could cook a steak. Often the kids he employed couldn’t even do that.
He was ever so slightly over paella.
Which was why the taste of Jenny’s muffins, the cosiness of her café, the look of her with a smudge of flour ove
r her left ear, had him throwing caution to the winds and offering her a job. And then, when he’d realised just where that bully of a boss had her, he’d thrown in paying off her loan for good measure.
Sensible? No. She’d looked at him as if she suspected him of buying her for his harem, and he didn’t blame her.
It was just as well she hadn’t accepted, he told himself. Move on.
It was time to eat. Maybe he could go out to one of the dockside hotels.
He didn’t feel like it. His encounter with Jenny had left him feeling strangely flat-as if he’d seen something he wanted but he couldn’t have it.
That made him sound like his Uncle Iván, he thought ruefully. Iván, Crown Prince of Cepheus, arrogance personified.
Why was he thinking of Iván now? He was really off balance.
He gave himself a fast mental shake and forced himself to go back to considering dinner. Even if he didn’t go out to eat he should eat fresh food while in port. He retrieved steak, a tomato and lettuce from the refrigerator. A representation of the height of his culinary skill.
Dinner. Then bed?
Or he could wander up to the yacht club and check the noticeboard for deckies. The sooner he found a crew, the sooner he could leave, and suddenly he was eager to leave.
Why had the woman disturbed him? She had nothing to do with him. He didn’t need to regard Jenny’s refusal as a loss.
‘Hello?’
For a moment he thought he was imagining things, but his black mood lifted, just like that, as he abandoned his steak and made his way swiftly up to the deck.
He wasn’t imagining things. Jenny was on the jetty, looking almost as he’d last seen her but cleaner. She was still in her battered coat and jeans, but the flour was gone and her curls were damp from washing.
She looked nervous.
‘Jenny,’ he said and he couldn’t disguise the pleasure in his voice. Nor did he want to. Something inside him was very pleased to see her again. Extremely pleased.
‘I just… I just came out for a walk,’ she said.
‘Great,’ he said.
‘Charlie was arrested for drink-driving.’
‘Really?’
‘That wouldn’t have anything to do with you?’
‘Who, me?’ he demanded, innocence personified. ‘Would you like to come on board?’
‘I…yes,’ she said, and stepped quickly onto the deck as if she was afraid he might rescind his invitation. And suddenly her nerves seemed to be gone. She gazed around in unmistakable awe. ‘Wow!’
‘Wow’ was right. Ramón had no trouble agreeing with Jenny there. Marquita was a gracious old lady of the sea, built sixty years ago, a wooden schooner crafted by boat builders who knew their trade and loved what they were doing.
Her hull and cabins were painted white but the timbers of her deck and her trimmings were left unpainted, oiled to a warm honey sheen. Brass fittings glittered in the evening light and, above their heads, Marquita’s vast oak masts swayed majestically, matching the faint swell of the incoming tide.
Marquita was a hundred feet of tradition and pure unashamed luxury. Ramón had fallen in love with her the moment he’d seen her, and he watched Jenny’s face now and saw exactly the same response.
‘What a restoration,’ she breathed. ‘She’s exquisite.’
Now that was different. Almost everyone who saw this boat looked at Ramón and said: ‘She must have cost a fortune.’
Jenny wasn’t thinking money. She was thinking beauty.
Beauty… There was a word worth lingering on. He watched the delight in Jenny’s eyes as she gazed around the deck, taking in every detail, and he thought it wasn’t only his boat that was beautiful.
Jenny was almost as golden-skinned as he was; indeed, she could be mistaken for having the same Mediterranean heritage. She was small and compact. Neat, he thought and then thought, no, make that cute. Exceedingly cute. And smart. Her green eyes were bright with intelligence and interest. He thought he was right about the humour as well. She looked like a woman who could smile.
But she wasn’t smiling now. She was too awed.
‘Can I see below?’ she breathed.
‘Of course,’ he said, and he’d hardly got the words out before she was heading down. He smiled and followed. A man could get jealous. This was one beautiful woman, taking not the slightest interest in him. She was totally entranced by his boat.
He followed her down into the main salon, but was brought up short. She’d stopped on the bottom step, drawing breath, seemingly awed into silence.
He didn’t say anything; just waited.
This was the moment for people to gush. In truth, there was much to gush about. The rich oak wainscoting, the burnished timber, the soft worn leather of the deep settees. The wonderful colours and fabrics of the furnishing, the silks and velvets of the cushions and curtains, deep crimsons and dark blues, splashed with touches of bright sunlit gold.
When Ramón had bought this boat, just after the accident that had claimed his mother and sister, she’d been little more than a hull. He’d spent time, care and love on her renovation and his Aunt Sofía had helped as well. In truth, maybe Sofía’s additions were a little over the top, but he loved Sofía and he wasn’t about to reject her offerings. The result was pure comfort, pure luxury. He loved the Marquita-and right now he loved Jenny’s reaction.
She was totally entranced, moving slowly around the salon, taking in every detail. This was the main room. The bedrooms were beyond. If she was interested, he’d show her those too, but she wasn’t finished here yet.
She prowled, like a small cat inspecting each tiny part of a new territory. Her fingers brushed the burnished timber, lightly, almost reverently. She crossed to the galley and examined the taps, the sink, the stove, the attachments used to hold things steady in a storm. She bent to examine the additional safety features on the stove. Gas stoves on boats could be lethal. Not his. She opened the cupboard below the sink and proceeded to check out the plumbing.
He found he was smiling, enjoying her awe. Enjoying her eye for detail. She glanced up from where she was inspecting the valves below the sink and caught him smiling. And flushed.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s just so interesting. Is it okay to look?’
‘It’s more than okay,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve never had someone gasp at my plumbing before.’
She didn’t return his smile. ‘This pump,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve seen one in a catalogue. You’ve got them all through the boat?’
‘There are three bathrooms,’ he told her, trying not to sound smug. ‘All pumped on the same system.’
‘You have three bathrooms?’ She almost choked. ‘My father didn’t hold with plumbing. He said real sailors used buckets. I gather your owner isn’t a bucket man.’
‘No,’ he agreed gravely. ‘My owner definitely isn’t a bucket man.’
She did smile then, but she was still on the prowl. She crossed to the navigation desk, examining charts, checking the navigation instruments, looking at the radio. Still seeming awed.
Then… ‘You leave your radio off?’
‘I only use it for outgoing calls.’
‘Your owner doesn’t mind? With a boat like this, I’d imagine he’d be checking on you daily.’
Your owner…
Now was the time to say he was the owner; this was his boat. But Jenny was starting to relax, becoming companionable, friendly. Ramón had seen enough of other women’s reactions when they realised the level of his wealth. For some reason, he didn’t want that reaction from Jenny.
Not yet. Not now.
‘My owner and I are in accord,’ he said gravely. ‘We keep in contact when we need to.’
‘How lucky,’ she said softly. ‘To have a boss who doesn’t spend his life breathing down your neck.’ And then she went right on prowling.
He watched, growing more fascinated by the moment. He’d had boat fanatics on board before-of course he had-and most of them had c
hecked out his equipment with care. Others had commented with envy on the luxury of his fittings and furnishings. But Jenny was seeing the whole thing. She was assessing the boat, and he knew a part of her was also assessing him. In her role as possible hired hand? Yes, he thought, starting to feel optimistic. She was now under the impression that his owner trusted him absolutely, and such a reference was obviously doing him no harm.
If he wanted her trust, such a reference was a great way to start.
Finally, she turned back to him, and her awe had been replaced by a level of satisfaction. As if she’d seen a work of art that had touched a chord deep within. ‘I guess now’s the time to say, Isn’t she gorgeous?’ she said, and she smiled again. ‘Only it’s not a question. She just is.’
‘I know she is,’ he said. He liked her smile. It was just what it should be, lighting her face from within.
She didn’t smile enough, he thought.
He thought suddenly of the women he worked with in Bangladesh. Jenny was light years away from their desperate situations, but there was still that shadow behind her smile. As if she’d learned the hard way that she couldn’t trust the world.
‘Would you like to see the rest of her?’ he asked, suddenly unsure where to take this. A tiny niggle was starting in the back of his head. Take this further and there would be trouble…
It was too late. He’d asked. ‘Yes, please. Though…it seems an intrusion.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said and he meant it. Then he thought, hey, he’d made his bed this morning. There was a bonus. His cabin practically looked neat.
He took her to the second bedroom first. The cabin where Sofía had really had her way. He’d restored Marquita in the months after his mother’s and sister’s death, and Sofía had poured all her concern into furnishings. ‘You spend half your life living on the floor in mud huts in the middle of nowhere,’ she’d scolded. ‘Your grandmother’s money means we’re both rich beyond our dreams so there’s no reason why you should sleep on the floor here.’
There was certainly no need now for him, or anyone else on this boat, to sleep on the floor. He’d kept a rein on his own room but in this, the second cabin, he’d let Sofía have her way. He opened the door and Jenny stared in stunned amazement-and then burst out laughing.
Cinderella: Hired by the Prince Page 3