bald and overweight, then you should worry. But tall, blond and handsome—nope. I’m immune. Thank you very much.’
‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ he snarled.
‘I don’t think you see anything very much as funny,’ Lucy said, with more truth than tact. ‘And I swear that’s the last remark of a personal nature that’ll cross my lips today.’
He said—and Lucy was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t meant to say it, ‘Immunity implies exposure.’
‘Indeed,’ she said drily. ‘I fell in love with my first blond hunk—the history teacher in school—when I was twelve, and I’ve been doing it ever since. When I came down here, I’d made a vow—no more blond men. Bald is beautiful. So you’re quite safe, Troy Donovan. Now, what was that about groceries?’
‘For their sakes, I’m glad none of them married you,’ he said nastily.
Lucy flinched. She would have married Phil, who’d had wavy blond curls and had proposed to her among the tulips along the Rideau Canal when she was twentythree years old. But Phil had met Sarah, chic, fragile Sarah, two months before the wedding, and had gone to Paris with Sarah instead of staying home and marrying Lucy. She said, almost steadily, ‘If they had I wouldn’t be crewing for you, would I? What did happen to your previous cook, by the way?’
‘Her son crushed several bones in his foot last night. She flew to San Juan with him this morning.’ His scowl deepened. ‘I shouldn’t have said that about marriage— I’m sorry.’
Despite her vow, a vow she fully intended to keep, Lucy was already aware that it would be much safer if she disliked Troy. He was taller than Phil, more handsome than the history teacher, and sexier by far than anyone she had ever met. ‘Grocery store,’ she repeated in a stony voice.
‘I’ll give you the keys to my Jeep. I want you to cook supper for me tonight, as if I were a guest—an appetizer to go with drinks, then dinner and dessert. This evening you can draw up menus for the next six days and I’ll check them over. Our first charter is just one couple, Craig and Heather Merritt, from New York. They’ll come on board the day after tomorrow—by then you’ve got to have the boat provisioned and spanking clean brass and woodwork polished, bathrooms spotless, beds made so they can have their choice of cabin. I’ll look after ice, water supplies and the bar, and in the meantime I’ll overhaul the engine and the pumps. Any questions?’
She blinked. ‘No. But some time today I’ll have to get my suitcase.’
‘Use the Jeep,’ he said impatiently.
It was by now blindingly obvious to Lucy that Troy didn’t like her at all and wouldn’t have hired her if he’d had any other options. In fact, he thought so little of her that he considered her unmarried state a boon to the male sex. So she might as well confirm him in his dislike; it would beat going to the police. She said in a small voice, ‘I need to borrow you as well as the Jeep.’
He frowned. ‘Surely you haven’t got that many clothes? Storage space is limited on a boat, as you should know.’
Lucy said rapidly, ‘I arrived in Tortola this morning, planning to work for a family with a villa in the hills. But when I got to the villa it very soon became plain that the family wasn’t about to materialize and that the man of the house and I had radically different ideas about the terms of my employment.’
‘He put the make on you?’
She grimaced. ‘Yes. So I left with more haste than grace via the nearest window, and my suitcase is still there.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m scared to go back there alone,’ she confessed. ‘But I could go to the police if you don’t want to go with me, Troy. It’s nothing to do with you, I do see that.’
‘I’ll go,’ Troy said with a ferocious smile. ‘This has been the week from hell, and I don’t see much chance of it improving—I could do with a little action. Why don’t we go there first?’
Lucy took a step backwards and said with absolute truth, ‘I’m not so sure that you don’t frighten me more than Raymond Blogden.’
‘I almost hope he resists,’ Troy said, flexing both fists.
The muscles of his forearms moved smoothly and powerfully under his tanned skin and there was such pent up energy behind his words that Lucy backed off another step, until the teak edge of the bench was hard against the backs of her knees. ‘I know nothing whatsoever about you,’ she muttered, ‘and yet I’ve agreed to live on a fifty-foot boat with you for a month. Maybe I should be asking you for references.’
‘You can always check with my bank manager and my physician,’ he said with another fiendish smile. ‘Anyway, if nothing you’ve done since you were fifteen has impressed you as much as sailing a Laser, you might benefit from throwing caution to the wind. Let’s go.’
It was, Lucy thought, not bad advice.
And throwing caution to the winds had brought her to Tortola in the first place, hadn’t it?
LUCY hurried below, changed back into her skirt, and five minutes later was driving west out of Road Town. Troy drove the Jeep as competently as he drove a boat; she couldn’t help noticing that the muscles in his thighs were every bit as impressive as those in his arms, and forcibly reminded herself of her vow. Fortunately, in her opinion, to be truly sexy a man had to be able to laugh…
They braked for a herd of goats trotting along the road, and then for a speed bump. ‘The turnoff’s not far from here,’ Lucy said, her pulses quickening.
The driveway to the villa wound up the hill in a series of hairpin turns; all too clearly she remembered running down them, glancing back over her shoulder in fear of pursuit. It seemed like another lifetime, another woman, so much had happened since then. And then the Spanishstyle stucco villa came in sight and her heart gave an uneasy lurch. It looked very peaceful, the bougainvillaea hanging in fuchsia clouds over the stone wall, the blinds drawn against the glare of the sun.
Troy drew up in front of the door and pocketed his keys. ‘Why don’t you stay here?’
She had an obscure need to confront Raymond Blogden again. ‘I know where the case is,’ she murmured, and slid to the ground.
Troy pushed the doorbell.
The chimes rang deep in the house. A bee buzzed past Lucy’s ear, and from the breadfruit trees behind the house a dove cooed monotonously. Troy leaned hard on the bell, and from inside a man’s voice said irritably, ‘Hold on, I’m on my way.’
Lucy recognized the voice all too well, and unconsciously moved a little closer to Troy. The door swung open, Troy stepped inside without being asked and Lucy,
perforce, followed. ‘What the? Who are you?’
Raymond Blogden blustered. ‘Get out of my—’ And
then he caught sight of Lucy. His recovery was instant. ‘Well, well… I’m glad you came back, Miss Barnes,’ he sneered. ‘I was about to call the police. Breach of contract and destruction of personal
