used to his casual, flirty banter. She knew it was harmless and she could give as good as she got.
The women of the world were not.
‘Champagne?’ Rick asked her.
It was tempting but after last night her liver probably needed a break. ‘No, thanks,’ she said, smiling at the hostess, who she was pretty sure actually didn’t give a damn if Stella wanted a drink or not.
Rick watched the swagger of the stewardess’s hips in her tight pencil skirt as she left to grab his beer. Stella rolled her eyes at him and he grinned. ‘So,’ he said, snuggling down further into the comfortable leather seat. ‘You haven’t asked how the business is going.’
Stella pulled the blind down on her window. ‘Well, we’re in business class so I’m assuming it’s all going okay.’
Rick nodded. ‘It is.’
Stella sighed. ‘Rick, I told you at the wake that whatever decisions you wanted to make were fine by me. That I only wanted to be a silent partner. You’ve been half of the business since you were fifteen. It’s been your blood, sweat and tears that helped to build it to where it is today. Dad should have left his half to you, not me. It should be all yours.’
Rick looked askance, his blue eyes flashing. ‘Stel, what is a man worth if he cannot provide for his family?’ he said, his voice laced with reproach and sounding remarkably Spanish all of a sudden. ‘The business was Nathan’s legacy and he knew how much you loved it. Of course he wanted it to go to you. Of course he wanted to leave you with no financial worries.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have any idea how much money my book has made?’
Rick thought about the contraband copy of Pleasure Hunt secreted away in his backpack. ‘No. But the business has a multimillion-dollar turnover annually and whether you need it or not—half of it’s yours.’
‘I know...I’m just saying, I can look after myself.’
He nodded. ‘I know that. I’ve always known that.’
Stella’s breath caught in her throat at the sincerity in his tropical eyes. His shoulder-length hair fell forward to form a partial curtain around his face and, with his slight sideways position, she felt as if they were cut off from the rest of the aeroplane.
‘Your beer, sir.’
Stella glanced up at the stewardess and was surprised to feel Rick’s gaze linger on her face. She looked back at him quizzically and they just looked at each other for a long moment before he smiled at her, then turned to accept the offering.
He started to chat with the stewardess again and Stella turned away. She shut her eyes, not wanting to hear the banter that fell so easily from those wicked Vasco lips.
It was a long flight. She might as well try and get some sleep.
* * *
She woke a few hours later feeling miraculously refreshed. Rick was stretched out asleep in his chair, his face turned towards her, those killer sable lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks.
For a moment she just stared at him, at his utter beauty. He’d always been good-looking but age had turned all that brash youthful charisma into a deep and abiding sex appeal.
The urge to push his hair back off his forehead where it had fallen in haphazard array almost trumped the urge to trace his lips with her finger. They looked all soft and slack in slumber but she knew, without ever having experienced it, that they would be just the right amount of hard at precisely the right time—like Vasco’s.
She’d come perilously close to knowing it for real. Could still remember the way her pulse had roared, her eyes had fluttered closed as he’d leaned in to make good on her dare and fulfil all her teenage fantasies.
And, courtesy of a crush bigger than the United Kingdom, there’d been plenty of them.
Fantasies that had seen her tick each day down on a calendar as the holidays had approached, her foolish heart tripping every time she’d thought about those blue, blue eyes and all that bare, broad, bronzed skin courtesy of his Spanish mother.
All the time hoping that it would be this summer he’d see her as a woman instead of a girl. That he’d make good on the increasingly confusing signals he sent and act instead of tease.
And the eve of her sixteenth birthday all that breathless longing had come to fruition.
‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,’ he’d teased.
He’d been nearly nineteen and so much more experienced. She’d watched him flirt with girls since he’d been thirteen and been aware of his effect on them for much longer than he had.
She’d screwed up her courage. ‘Maybe you should do something about that?’ she’d murmured, her heart hammering.
She’d watched as his Adam’s apple had bobbed and his gaze had briefly fallen to her mouth. ‘Yeh, right,’ he’d dismissed.
She’d smiled at him and said the one thing she’d known would work. ‘I dare you.’
And it had worked. She’d seen something inside him give as his gaze had zeroed in on her mouth and his lips had moved closer.
Her father’s curt ‘Riccardo!’ had been the bucket of water they’d both needed.
A reminder that there was a line between them that should never be crossed no matter how close they’d danced to it.
And she was glad for it now.
Glad that this magnificent man liked her and enjoyed her company and called her his friend. That he could drop by out of the blue and use her shower and doss down for the night and there was no awkward history, no uncomfortable silences.
Despite what Diana thought, a person didn’t die of sexual frustration and she wouldn’t sacrifice their friendship and mutual respect for a brief slaking of bodily desires.
No matter how damn good she knew it would be.
He stirred and she froze, hoping like crazy that lazy blue gaze wasn’t about to blast her in tropical heat.
It didn’t. But it was enough to spur her into action. She was not going to sit here and ogle him as if she were still in the midst of her teenage crush, watching him surreptitiously from behind her dark sunglasses as he went about the business of running a boat.
Without a shirt.
Always without a shirt.
She pulled out her laptop and powered it up.
* * *
An hour later the cabin crew came through offering a meal and Rick woke. He stretched, then righted his chair, glancing over at Stella busily tapping away. She seemed engrossed and he smiled at her.
‘I thought you were blocked.’
Stella looked up from her notes. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ she admitted.
‘Hah!’
