He knew damned well what was under the padding. He could still see it all in his mind’s eye.
He was definitely glad he’d kept his shirt.
“So,” he said, determined to focus on her less appealing characteristics, “tell me about this proactive jump of yours.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward where the running lights of the yacht were still barely visible. “Could we, um, just get moving first?”
“Catch up with them, you mean?” Hugh said doubtfully. It would be a hell of a ride in the dark.
“No!” The word burst out from her, surprising him. Then she gave herself a little shake. “I mean, no, thank you,” she said with extreme politeness.
But even spoken with politeness, the words were still surprising. Hugh cocked his head and lifted a brow. “No, you don’t want to catch up with the boat?”
“No!” Pause. Moderation. “I don’t. In fact, I would very much like to head in the other direction.”
“I’m not going in the other direction.”
“Where are you going, then?” She looked suddenly apprehensive.
He jerked his head toward the lights of Pelican Cay. “There.”
She turned to see where he’d indicated, and her apprehension faded a bit. She nodded her head. “That’ll be fine,” she said, glancing back at the lights of the yacht, then added, “Just let’s go, okay?”
Interesting. And odd how she could swim in shark-infested waters with complete aplomb and then freak out when she was perfectly safe. Unless she wasn’t perfectly safe.
“Did you steal something?” Hugh demanded, gaze narrowing.
“Steal something?” She looked shocked. “Whatever for?”
“How the hell should I know? You jumped off a bloody boat. Why the hell else would you run away?”
“I’m not running away!”
“Oh, right. I forgot. You were just proactively jumping into shark-infested waters miles from shore.” He kept his tone conversational. It was easy enough to call her a liar with his eyes.
For an instant her gaze slid away, but then she brought it back and met his squarely and Captain Ahab was back. “I needed to leave. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, will you just go?” she said. “I’ll tell you. I promise. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just need some space and a little time.” She wasn’t quite begging, but there was a definite urgency in her tone. She met his gaze steadily. “Please.”
There was, even now, a sense of self-possession about her. As edgy as she was, it was a polite please not a frantic please.
Cripes, maybe it had been a proactive jump.
He nodded and moved to start the engine. She stepped out of his way. He got it going but didn’t let out the throttle.
“What are you waiting for?” she demanded.
“You.”
She looked blank.
“Can’t go too fast,” he explained. “I won’t be able to hear you when you tell me why you jumped. And it better be good,” he warned her, “to make up for my record catch that got away.”
“I DON’T believe it,” the scruffy fisherman said flatly when Sydney told him what had prompted her to jump overboard.
She glared at him. Who gave him the right to pass judgment, for heaven’s sake? “Well, believe it or not, it’s true.”
“Let me get this straight. You jumped off a yacht in the middle of nowhere so you wouldn’t have to get married?” He all but rolled his eyes as he repeated the gist of what she’d said.
Her jaw tightened. “More or less.”
He rolled his eyes, then cocked his head and fixed his gaze on her. “Are you too young to remember the phrase Just Say No?”
“That was to say no to drugs.”
“It is possible,” the grubby fisherman pointed out, “to say no to other things.”
“Like baths and clean clothes?” she said sweetly, her gaze raking him.
He had at least a couple of days’ growth of beard on his face and he wore a pair of faded jean cutoffs and an equally faded short-sleeved shirt covered with outrageous cartoon flamingos and palm trees.
His dark brows drew down. “I’m clean,” he protested. “I took a swim this afternoon.”
“A swim?”
“Water’s water. Don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you just say no? No, thank you,” he corrected with a grin.
“Because,” she told him haughtily, “it wouldn’t have been efficacious.” She doubted he even knew what the word meant.
He repeated it. “Efficacious. What’s that when it’s at home?”
“Appropriate. Though I doubt you know what that means, either.”
“Me?” His brows went clear up into the fringe of hair that flopped over his forehead. “I don’t know what’s appropriate? Who jumped into the ocean miles from shore?”
She felt her face grow hot, but she refused to acknowledge the foolishness, even though now her knees were feeling like jelly. “It worked. They didn’t see me. No one saw me.”
“And that makes it appropriate?” He was almost shouting at her. “You’re a flaming idiot, you know that? If I hadn’t fished you out, you’d have drowned. Or been eaten by a shark.”
“I saw your boat.”
He stared at her as if she’d just escaped from Bedlam. “You saw my boat? A quarter of a bloody mile away?” He made it sound like rank idiocy. To him it obviously was. To her, at the time, it had been completely sensible and absolutely necessary.
There had been no other way.
She certainly couldn’t call Roland Carruthers, her father’s CEO, a liar! Not in front of the entire group of management and investors he’d brought together on the yacht to celebrate the acquisition of Butler Instruments by St. John Electronics.
And Roland had known it, damn him. That was why he hadn’t said a word to her beforehand, but had simply stepped up to the microphone and announced their impending marriage.
Tonight, he’d said in his charming, dark whiskey voice, they were in for a delightful surprise. Everyone was going to get a living example of how much of a real family St. John Electronics was because they were all going to be witnesses at his shipboard marriage to Simon St. John’s only daughter, Margaret Sydney St. John.
