liked. To flirt and indulge in whatever hedonistic lifestyle he wanted.
But for the next few weeks he was on this boat with her with a job to do and he could bloody well take a break from being Mr Irresistible and keep his head in the game.
Stella was pacing when he joined her five minutes later, aware on some peripheral level she wasn’t feeling particularly rational. ‘That was quick,’ she said testily.
Rick shrugged. Danielle’s company had been pleasant enough but he didn’t feel like entertaining tonight. There was a lot of planning to do and he was aware of Stella below deck.
‘Big day tomorrow,’ he said as he made a beeline for the galley, throwing the empty beer bottles in the bin under the sink.
‘You should have brought her down here and shown her around. I bet she was dying to see below deck—a woman with an eye for a classic yacht and all,’ Stella said, sarcasm oozing from her pores.
Rick grinned as he washed his hands at the sink. ‘Oh, she wanted to. But I told her you had a headache. You know, from the jet lag.’
‘How considerate,’ she said sweetly. ‘She must have been devastated.’
‘Nah...I don’t really think she was that interested in the boat.’
Stella snorted. ‘You don’t say.’
Rick poked his head out of the galley to look at her. She seemed mad. ‘You’re bitchy when you’re jet-lagged.’
‘Yeh, headaches bring out the bitch in me too,’ she snapped.
Rick saw a spark of heat turn her olive gaze to an ominous green, like a hailstorm. He knew he was in trouble, he just wasn’t sure why. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked warily, approaching her.
Stella wasn’t exactly sure why she was so mad all of a sudden, but she knew she was. She shook her head at him. ‘You.’
‘Okay...?’
‘You honestly can’t switch it off, can you?’
Rick frowned. ‘Switch what off?’
‘God, you should come with a flirt alert. How on earth are you possibly going to manage this trip, four bloody weeks, without a woman around to charm?’
Rick, who was used to spending lengthy periods at sea, wasn’t worried about it. ‘I think I’ll manage,’ he said dryly.
‘Manage?’ Stella snorted again. ‘You can’t go a day without trying to hook up.’
Rick laughed. ‘I think you’re exaggerating a little.’
Stella stopped pacing and glared at him. ‘In thirty-six hours you have flirted with every woman who has crossed your path. Diana, the rental-car woman, the airline check-in chicky, the grandmother who ran the refreshment stall at Heathrow, several air stewardesses, the taxi driver, every waitress in the coffee shop today...’
She ticked off each conquest on a finger. ‘And when we get on that boat tomorrow after about twelve hours you’re going to start in on me because you can’t help yourself,’ she finished a little shrilly.
Rick blinked. Stel wasn’t usually the nagging, hysterical type so it was either jet lag or PMS. Neither of which he was game to suggest, but he hoped it was the former because that surely couldn’t last more than another day.
‘But I always flirt with you.’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
Stella glared. ‘Why the hell not?’ she demanded, uncaring that she knew. ‘Is there something wrong with me?’
Rick blinked, not quite able to believe he was having this conversation. ‘That’s not what I meant. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfectly...’ He groped around for a word that was flattering without saying all the things he’d desperately tried not to think about her over the years—curvy, sweet, bootylicious.
A Nathan-approved word.
‘Decent.’
Decent?
Good God, she sounded as if she were someone’s homely cousin who was all right at a pinch but was hardly likely to be picked to play spin the bottle at a party. Stella doubted she’d ever felt so underwhelmed in her life.
‘Gee, thanks,’ she snapped.
Rick pushed his hair off his face as he tried to comprehend how this night had gone so rapidly to hell. ‘I don’t understand... Do you...want me to mean it?’ he asked.
Stella’s breath hitched in her throat at the illicitness of the suggestion. What would that be like? To have all that deliberate blue-eyed charm turned on her? Like when they’d been teenagers and their banter had occasionally wandered into dangerous territory.
But grown up.
Diana’s you should have sex with him slithered into her brain and she pushed it away.
‘Of course I don’t!’ she said in her very best English-teacher-talking-to-a-student-with-a-crush voice. ‘But I don’t want you flirting with every other woman you come across either. It really is rather tiresome to watch and completely unproductive.’
Rick cocked an eyebrow. He’d personally never found flirting to be unproductive. But she was obviously accusing him of lack of control. ‘You think I can’t go a few lousy weeks without flirting with a woman?’
Stella crossed her arms. ‘Oh, I’m sure of it.’
‘Is this a dare?’ he asked.
Stella felt the conversation suddenly shift gears. It should have taken her back to their childhood but the silk in his voice took her to another place entirely.
A very adult place.
‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I dare you. I dare you to go through this whole voyage without flirting with a single woman you meet along the way.’
Rick grinned, his gaze locking with hers. ‘And what do I get?’ he asked, his voice low.
The timbre of his voice stroked along all her tired nerve endings as he stared at her with his Vasco eyes.
What did he want?
Stella swallowed. ‘Get?’
Rick held her gaze. ‘If I win?’
Stella was lost for words for a moment. They’d never played for stakes before. Several inappropriate suggestions rose to mind but she quashed each one. She was too strung out to play games with him. ‘How about my undying gratitude?’ she quipped.
Rick shook his head slowly, dropping his gaze to her mouth. ‘How about that kiss that we didn’t quite get round to?’
Stella blinked as the teenage bad-boy looked back at her. It was a tantalising offer. One she knew he didn’t expect her to take. But she’d never been one to back down from a dare and, frankly, the idea was as thrilling
