had to make a grab for the soft fabric of his T-shirt to steady herself.
‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ he drawled.
Caught for a moment in the circle of his arms, aware of the deep contours of his chest and the heavy thunder of his heart beneath, she thought that he was going to kiss her as he dipped his head.
Instead, with his lashes coming down to hide any emotion in those steel-grey eyes, he said, ‘Take the rudder while I get the sail up,’ before moving away from her, leaving her fiercely and inexplicably disappointed.
It was an unforgettable afternoon. They sailed until the sun began to dip towards the sea while they seemed to talk about nothing and everything. She learned about his background—how he had never known his father and how he had been given up by his mother when he was three years old; about the orphanages he’d lived in and the foster homes. He had been with the family he was living with now, he told her, since he was fifteen. Now they were his responsibility, he stated with a surprising degree of pride. Just as they had made him theirs in the beginning.
He reminded her of how she had asked him earlier if he had a course, and he told her of his interest in architecture and his intention one day to build a new house for his foster mother. Marina-side, he said. With a view of boats from every balcony.
She laughed at that and said, ‘All yours, of course!’
He didn’t share her laughter, lost as he was in his personal fantasy. ‘I think I’ll put it there,’ he speculated, pointing to the piece of derelict industrial wasteland where the tall chimneys of a disused power-station created a blot on the landscape.
‘There?’ She frowned, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘I don’t think she’d thank you for that!’ She laughed again.
‘And what about you? Do you have a dream, Grace?’ His tone was slightly off-hand as though he didn’t think too much of her making fun of his dreams. ‘Or do you have so much that there’s nothing left worth striving for?’
‘No. Of course not!’ she stated indignantly. ‘I intend to settle down. Marry.’
‘What—some ex-public-school type that Daddy’s vetted who’ll give you two-point-five children and a houseful of business associates to entertain?’
She didn’t tell him that her father didn’t figure in her life, that he’d given up his paternal duties after she’d caused her mother’s death simply by being born. Those things were too private—too personal—to share with a total stranger, however handsome or amazingly sexy he might be.
Instead, guessing that it was mere envy that made him speak so derisively of her future, she asked, ‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘And that’s all you intend to do?’
‘No,’ she argued, wondering why he made it sound so mundane, unromantic, as she watched him lowering the sail. ‘There’s the company. I’m earmarked to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps one day.’
‘Ah, yes, the company. And that’s it—cut and dried? With no deviating from the pre-arranged course, no surprises, no dreams of your own?’
‘Dreams are for people who crave things they haven’t a hope of ever attaining,’ she stated, feeling a little piqued. ‘We inhabit different worlds. In mine the future’s carved out for us, and that’s the way I like it.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said dismissively, giving all his attention then to securing a rope around a mooring buoy, while Grace had been glad to let the subject drop.
A little later, when he was leaning back relaxing for a few minutes with his face to the sun, she took a small sketch-pad from the big silver beach-bag she’d brought out with her that morning and drew a cormorant sitting on a rock drying its outstretched wings in the early-evening sun.
‘You’re good. You’re very good,’ Seth praised over her shoulder, making her clasp the drawing to her, warmed by his compliment, but suddenly terribly self-conscious at her efforts.
‘You’re too talented to be embarrassed about it. Let me see,’ he insisted, but in reaching for her pad his fingers accidentally brushed the soft outer swell of her breast beneath her top, and it was that which had put the spark to the powder keg waiting to blow.
‘Would you care for a swim?’ His voice was suddenly thickened by desire, the grey eyes holding hers communicating a message that was as sensual as the feelings that were raging through her.
‘I—I don’t have any swimwear,’ she responded, excitement coiling in her stomach.
His mouth compressed wryly. ‘Neither do I.’
She looked away from him, suddenly nervous as she’d laid down her sketch pad. ‘OK. But turn around.’
He laughed, but did as she requested, while she made short work of stepping out of her shorts and pulling her red bandeau-top over her head.
Without looking at him, she stepped nimbly out of the boat and plunged into the sea, gasping from the unexpected coldness of the water.
Coming up for air some way from the dinghy, she heard the deep plunge of Seth’s body breaking the surface of the water just behind her.
They were moored near a small cove with a beckoning crescent of soft golden sand. Above and around it rose the sheer rugged face of the cliffs, making the small beach inaccessible to anyone without a boat.
Scrambling ashore first, Grace stood there on the wet sand in nothing but her flesh-coloured string, wondering how she could feel so free, so uninhibited. What she hadn’t reckoned on was the impact of Seth’s masculinity as he emerged from the water, hair plastered to his head, rivulets cascading over his hair-coarsened chest and powerful limbs; he was like some marauding sea-god, bronze from head to toe and unashamedly potent in his glorious nakedness.
None of the men Grace knew would have dared to walk naked like this, and she could only stand there and let her eyes feast on the sheer perfection of his body.
She should have crossed her arms over her own nakedness, turned away, but it didn’t even occur to her—and anyway, she couldn’t have torn her eyes away from him even if she’d wanted to.
Instead, raising her arms, she slipped her hands under the wet sheet of her hair, lifted it up and let her head tip back, revelling in the proud glory of her femininity.
She knew how she would look to him with her body at full stretch, the opposite to everything he was. Her long legs were silky and golden, her flat stomach smooth between the gently curving bowl of her hips and her breasts high and full, their sensitive tips hardening into tight buds from the excitement of all that she was inviting.
He came up to her and she lifted her head, her blue eyes beneath her long, wet lashes slumberous with desire, a desire such as she had never known before.
He didn’t say a word and Grace gasped from the wet warmth of the arm that was suddenly circling her midriff, pulling her against him. The damp matt of his chest hair was a delight against her swollen nipples; he was already erect, and she’d felt the thrusting strength of his manhood against her abdomen.
His breath was warm against her face as his other hand shaped its oval structure;
