didn’t move. She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t know what to say.
‘This isn’t charity,’ he said quickly as she felt her colour rise. ‘It’s a proposition.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s a very sketchy proposition,’ he told her. ‘I’ve not had time to work out the details so we may have to smooth it off round the edges. But, essentially, I’ll pay your boss out if you promise to come and work with me for a year. You’ll be two deckies instead of one—crew when I need it and cook for the rest of the time. Sometimes you’ll be run off your feet but mostly not. I’ll also add a living allowance,’he said and he mentioned a sum that made her feel winded.
‘You’ll be living on the boat so that should be sufficient,’ he told her, seemingly ignoring her amazement. ‘Then, at the end of the year, I’ll organise you a flight home, from wherever Marquita ends up. So how about it, Jenny?’ And there was that smile again, flashing out to warm parts of her she hadn’t known had been cold. ‘Will you stay here as Charlie’s unpaid slave, or will you come with me, cook your cakes on my boat and see the world? What do you say? Marquita’s waiting, Jenny. Come sail away.’
‘It’s three years’ debt,’ she gasped finally. Was he mad?
‘Not to me. It’s one year’s salary for a competent cook and sailor, and it’s what I’m offering.’
‘Your owner could never give the authority to pay those kind of wages.’
He hesitated for a moment—for just a moment—but then he smiled. ‘My owner doesn’t interfere with how I run my boat,’ he told her. ‘My owner knows if I…if he pays peanuts, he gets monkeys. I want good and loyal crew and with you I believe I’d be getting it.’
‘You don’t even know me. And you’re out of your mind. Do you know how many deckies you could get with that money?’
‘I don’t want deckies. I want you.’ And then, as she kept right on staring, he amended what had been a really forceful statement. ‘If you can cook the muffins I had this morning you’ll make my life—and everyone else who comes onto the boat—a lot more pleasant.’
‘Who does the cooking now?’ She was still fighting for breath. What an offer!
‘Me or a deckie,’ he said ruefully. ‘Not a lot of class.’
‘I’d…I’d be expected to cook for the owner?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dinner parties?’
‘There’s not a lot of dinner parties on board the Marquita,’he said, sounding a bit more rueful. ‘The owner’s pretty much like me. A retiring soul.’
‘You don’t look like a retiring soul,’ she retorted, caught by the sudden flash of laughter in those blue eyes.
‘Retiring or not, I still need a cook.’
Whoa…To be a cook on a boat…With this man…
Then she caught herself. For a moment she’d allowed herself to be sucked in. To think what if.
What if she sailed away?
Only she’d jumped like this once before, and where had it got her? Matty, and all the heartbreak that went with him.
Her thoughts must have shown on her face. ‘What is it?’ Ramón asked, and his smile suddenly faded. ‘Hey, Jenny, don’t look like that. There’s no strings attached to this offer. I swear you won’t find yourself the seventeenth member of my harem, chained up for my convenience in the hold. I can even give you character references if you want. I’m extremely honourable.’
He was trying to make her smile. She did smile, but it was a wavery smile. ‘I’m sure you’re honourable,’ she said—despite the laughter lurking behind his amazing eyes suggesting he was nothing of the kind—‘but, references or not, I still don’t know you.’ Deep breath. Be sensible. ‘Sorry,’ she managed. ‘It’s an amazing offer, but I took a loan from Charlie when I wasn’t thinking straight, and look where that got me. And there have been…other times…when I haven’t thought straight either, and trouble’s followed. So I don’t act on impulse any more. I’ve learned to be sensible. Thank you for your offer, Mr Cavellero…’
‘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
HER 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
