boat?” That hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Your boat.” She corrected his emphasis. “It was the closest thing to aim for,” she explained as if he were slightly dim-witted.
Hugh didn’t think that under the circumstances he was the one whose wits needed questioning.
But he had a notion now where she’d come from. He arched a brow and looked her up and down, taking in the sparkly beaded dress that ended just above very shapely knees and outlined extremely enticing curves. A very snazzy cocktail dress. Not exactly day-tripper wear. More ritzy party girl. She could only have fallen off the yacht whose running lights he could still see far off in the distance.
“What happened?” he asked her. “Drink too much? Get a little tipsy? Lose your footing?”
“What?” She looked at him, offended.
So he spelled it out. “Fall off the yacht, sweetheart?”
“I did not fall off the yacht,” she told him flatly, lifting a chin not unlike Captain Ahab’s chin. “I jumped.”
Hugh’s jaw dropped. “You what!”
“I jumped,” she repeated calmly, which was exactly what he couldn’t believe she’d said the first time.
“Are you crazy? You jumped? In the middle of the bloody ocean? What the hell did you do a stupid thing like that for?”
The crazy woman drew herself up as tall as she could manage, which meant she was almost as tall as he was, and looked down her definitely Captain Ahab nose. “It was,” she informed him, “the proactive thing to do.”
Hugh sputtered. “Proactive?”
How like a ditsy female to use business babble to justify temporary insanity. At least he hoped it was temporary. He jerked his baseball cap off, ran a hand through his hair, jammed it back on again and shook his head.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed just because you drank a bit too much,” he told her. “Lots of people get a little wasted when they have a day’s holiday.”
But her chin just went higher. “It wasn’t a holiday. And I did not touch a drop. I never drink on business occasions.”
“You jump often?” Hugh inquired. “On business occasions?” His mouth twitched.
She gave him a fulminating glare, then wrapped her arms around her dripping dress and scowled. “Fine. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me whether you believe me or not.” Pause. “But I would appreciate a towel.”
He didn’t move.
The scowl grew deeper, the glare more intense. Their eyes dueled. Then Miss Captain Ahab pressed her lips together tightly. There was a long pause. Finally she gave an irritable huff and added with bad grace, “Please.”
Hugh grinned. “Coming right up!”
He fished a not-very-clean towel out from beneath the bow of the boat where he always stowed his sleeping bag and cooler and other sundry gear and tossed it back to her. “It’s all yours.”
She caught it, wiped her face, then met his gaze over the top of it. “Thank you,” she said with exaggerated politeness.
Still grinning, he dipped his head. “Anytime.”
She looked away then and began drying off. Hugh stood there watching, fascinated, as she rubbed her arms and legs to dry them, then tried to sop up as much water from the beaded dress as she possibly could. It was a losing battle.
“You could take it off,” he offered helpfully.
“Yes, I could,” she reflected aloud.
And damned if she didn’t!
Right then. Right there.
Well, actually it took a few moments for her to get the dress off. Palm-dampening, mouth-parching, body-hardening moments as far as Hugh was concerned. Soaking-wet and clingy beaded dresses were obviously not easy to shed.
But as he stood there gaping, the crazy woman peeled the silvery straps of her beaded dress right down her arms and wriggled and shimmied and squirmed until the dress pooled at her feet and she was wearing a strapless bra and a pair of itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini panties and nothing more.
Hugh’s mouth went dry. His body got hot. He gaped, then tried to speak, but all he could manage was a croak like a frog’s. Abruptly he shut his mouth.
The woman didn’t seem to notice. She gave a huge sigh as she stepped neatly out of the pool of dress. “Thank God. You have no idea how heavy a wet beaded dress is.”
No, he didn’t. And if he tried to think about it, his mind whirled. All the blood that ordinarily made his brain function was far too busy elsewhere.
Without thinking, he sat down. Belle came and put her head on his knee, but her gaze was still on the crazy woman.
So was Hugh’s.
“If we’re going to be polite,” the woman told him firmly, “you shouldn’t stare. My father always told me it wasn’t polite to stare.”
Hugh swallowed, but he didn’t stop staring. The ability to move his eyes was beyond him. His brain was still in neutral. Certain parts of his body, however, were on high alert.
“Huh?” he managed to croak at last, his gaze still impolitely roving over her slim but decidedly curvy form.
“What?” he said, aware that she had spoken yet unable to find the sense in her words.
“Whoa,” he murmured as his brain finally engaged and he managed to both avert his gaze and shut his mouth at the same time. Major accomplishment. While his blood was otherwise occupied, the beer seemed to have gone to his head.
Now he tipped his head back and took a couple of deep, desperate breaths.
“Can I use this?” the crazy woman asked.
Her words made him jerk his head up, and he saw her holding up the quilt that Belle normally slept on. Belle was wagging her tail and grinning, apparently quite willing to share.
“Do you have to?”
He wasn’t thinking, of course. He was just saying what came into his head. And what came into his head was how much he was enjoying the sight of all that lovely female flesh. And he was loath to lose sight of it, even when she gave him a seriously disdainful look.
“Then perhaps you could lend me your shirt.” She looked at it pointedly. “Please,” she added with more than a hint of irony.
He could. But leaving it flapping over his baggy shorts, thus hiding the evidence of his unfortunate arousal was probably a better idea.
“Use the quilt,” he said gruffly.
She blinked, taken aback. But when he didn’t change his mind, she
