‘Aye, aye, skipper!’ She did it all, then sat down on the carpet to watch as he worked in the confined space.
After a time, she said as she heard a muffled oath, ‘You’ve found it?’
‘Yes. A broken fan belt. Listen, Maisie,’ he half rose out of the depths of the engine room, rubbing his hands on a piece of waste cotton, ‘this is going to take a bit of time to fix but I’ve got a spare. And we do have to fix it before we can move because what little wind there was has died right down, so there’s no chance of sailing.’
‘And fan belts can be the devil to fit,’ she said ruefully. ‘Just getting to them in that confined space can be a nightmare.’
‘You’re not wrong. So, we’ll either be late or we might not make it at all.’
‘Oh.’
He glanced at her. ‘On the other hand, you would be quite safe with me here overnight if that’s the way it pans out. If by any chance I can’t fit it, I can get help out of Manly tomorrow morning.’ He consulted his watch. ‘It’s probably too late to call anyone out now.’
Maisie looked at her own watch. It was close to five o’clock. ‘All right,’ she said cautiously, although it crossed her mind that no one in their right minds, no one who knew anything about boats anyway, would put themselves through a broken fan-belt situation for an ulterior motive.
‘OK,’ he heaved himself out of the engine room. ‘I need tools and I need some old clothes.’
‘I may be able to help. I often helped my father—handing him tools and so on, and sometimes, because my hands were a lot smaller than his, I could get into really tricky spots he couldn’t.’
‘Good on you, Ms Wallis,’ he murmured and went down to the forward cabin. He came back shortly wearing an old khaki shirt and clean but stained jeans and carrying a tool bag. And he lowered himself once again into the bowels of the boat.
The job took them several hours.
Maisie handed him tools, directed the torch light and once did manage to get her hand into a tricky spot to attach a socket spanner where he couldn’t reach.
Finally he asked her to start the motor and watch the temperature gauge like a hawk.
‘It’s normal,’ she called down the companionway after running the motor for about ten minutes.
‘Good. Switch off,’ he called back and stiffly and wearily climbed out. He stretched. ‘What I need is a drink. But thank you, Maisie,’ he added as she came down. ‘You make a pretty good mechanic’s mate!’
‘I’d say you make a pretty good mechanic,’ she returned. ‘Are you one?’
‘No, not by trade, but I’ve always enjoyed tinkering around with motors. Look, I don’t know about you, but I’d like a shower, a beer, something to eat then a good sleep.’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re welcome to lock yourself into the forward cabin if you wish,’ he added. ‘I would offer you the aft berth but it doesn’t lock.’
Maisie considered that she’d only had about three hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four hours, and suddenly had to stifle a huge yawn. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I’m just about out on my feet anyway but you go and have your shower—I’ll put together a snack.’
His lips twisted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
But as Maisie heard the fresh-water pump click on, she stopped in her tracks as a mental picture of Rafe Sanderson in the shower hit her.
She could understand how stiff and cramped he must feel after a couple of hours of working in such a confined space. She could see him stretching luxuriously beneath the shower jet, she could picture the muscles of his broad shoulders flexing and the water streaming down his long body—and she could feel her own pulses starting to race.
Then, to her horror, in her mind’s eye she took her place beside him in the shower, pale and slight beside his bulk but with her breasts ripening as he lifted his hands and cupped them. As he smoothed his hands down her waist and cradled her hips and as she raised her hands and turned off the water, and offered him her mouth, flattening her body against his as she did so.
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth to make the images go away, but nothing, for a few moments, could still the tremors of desire that ran through her…
This is getting out of hand, she thought as she made herself get to work in the galley then had to stop and take several deep breaths.
She broke off her thoughts and bit her lip, and as the water pump clicked off she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand, not to mention banishing any more wild and wanton fantasies.
The snack she produced was along the same lines as the lunch he’d produced for her. And she poured a beer into a long glass for him, while she had an orange juice.
They ate companionably in the saloon. It was peaceful with the soft lap of water against the hull as they ate by lamplight and at one stage she asked him exactly what he did.
‘I’m a geologist and a mining engineer by profession and I know a bit about sheep.’
She looked at him consideringly. He’d changed again into jeans and a warm tartan shirt. His hair was still damp and bore comb marks. ‘I don’t suppose you do much of either these days.’
He rubbed his jaw. ‘You suppose right. Since my father died, I seem to spend most of my time travelling.’
‘Do you enjoy that?’
He laid his head back against the settee and shrugged. ‘It comes with the territory. It would not,’ he paused, and wondered why it had occurred to him, ‘go well with a settled family life at this stage.’
‘How so?’ she enquired. ‘I mean, you’re not getting any younger—’ She broke off and bit her lip.
He laughed outright. ‘Out of the mouths of babes? I may look ancient to you, Maisie, but I’m only thirty-four.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she assured him with a curious little spark of irony in her eyes as she thought—ancient? No, quite perfect, actually…‘I—um,’ she said hastily, ‘meant, well, it wouldn’t be a bad time to settle down, though, would it? And perhaps you need to—uh—learn to delegate a bit?’
He gazed at her, his grey eyes wry. Then, ‘No, in the normal course of events it wouldn’t be a bad idea to settle down and start a family. But my father embarked on a serious expansion programme for Sanderson Minerals a few months before he died, and it’s going to take me a couple of years at least to see it through. How about you?’
‘Me?’
‘What plans did you have before this cataclysmic event overtook you?’
She shrugged. ‘The usual, I suppose. To be honest, although I probably was a bit old still to be living with my parents, I enjoyed it, I enjoy my job and,’ she sighed, ‘things were sailing along for
