in her body straight to her core.
She registered all of this at once: he hadn’t asked permission to board her yacht, he was in his late thirties, he wore expensive Italian leather shoes, she was smeared with grease and oil, he had thick black hair, her right hand was now bleeding, he smelled wonderful.
Not your average Galveston boat monkey schlepping down to a job.
“Special Agent McLellan?” she asked.
“Connor.” His remarkable eyes gleamed at her, kicking her pulse into high gear.
“Smitty said you’d show up today.”
“He told me you’d had some excitement.” His voice resounded through the engine room. “He also showed me around a little upstairs.”
Chris got to her feet, then closed the bilge hatch. “Obsession’s not much to look at right now,” she said as she looked around for a shop rag to wipe off with, “but she’s built like a tank.”
“I noticed.”
She glanced up to find him staring at Hortense. “You won’t have to worry about the engines. Detroits were made for tough lives. Some built back in the fifties and sixties are still powering shrimpers and tow boats. Hell,” she said, running the dirty cloth over her arm, “these old ladies will outlive me.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Come on upstairs. I’m ready to look at some daylight.”
He followed her out of the port engine room into the lower deck passageway. “Will all this need to be fixed, too?” He waved a hand at the crumbling wall panels.
“Eventually. Hold your ears.” She shoved the engine room door closed and winced at the metal-on-metal shriek. “Sorry about that. Out of WD-40. The two aft staterooms here were actually in decent shape when I got her, very livable. Mine’s on your right. The one on the left needs a little work.”
She opened her door to flash him a glimpse of her queen-size bed and wall of drawers. The mariner’s compass quilt stretched across the bed’s foot. Two frilly, decorative pillows, a nod less to traditional femininity than to homeyness, lay propped up against the real ones.
He stepped closer, caught the door as she was about to close it. “Very nice,” he said, leaning in.
Chris suddenly realized just how big he was, how his shoulders filled the narrow space they stood in. What was she thinking, showing him her private space? She stepped back to cue McLellan to do the same, then closed the door when he let go. “You and Smitty can fight over the other big cabin.”
She headed for the stairs, tapping doors as she passed them. “Engine rooms, starboard and port. Laundrette. Crew cabin, for the loser.” She turned right up the steps to the upper passageway. When he reached the hall, she pointed to a forward door. “Another crew cabin, smaller than the one below. And behind it, the office.”
She stood at the edge of the salon, looked at the disaster that was once merely a fashion-challenged salon. All of the ratty brown Naugahyde furniture had been shoved onto the aft deck, waiting for a landfill run. The good furniture—the mahogany tables, the brass lamps, a mahogany bench seat with a hand-embroidered cushion—sat on old blankets in the galley. A shirtless Smitty was hoisting a roll of torn and ugly carpet onto his bare shoulder.
“How’s the flooring?” she asked.
Smitty grinned under his rime of dirt. “Solid as a rock. Marine planking. Thirty years old and still has the battleship gray primer.” He headed toward the aft door with his filthy carpet mangle, but paused long enough to say to McLellan, “Change your clothes, boy. You gonna git yo’ ass in gear for a change.”
McLellan raised a brow, unruffled in his crisp white dress shirt and dark slacks. He looked pointedly at the brown carpet strips hanging over Smitty’s bare chest like a furry vest. “Staple some of that to your chest and you’ll stop having woman problems,” he remarked mildly.
“Hey,” Smitty called from the aft deck, “don’t go south with the mouth, pretty boy.”
McLellan just shrugged.
“Have a seat.” Chris waved at the bench seat as she threaded her way through the tables to the galley sink. “I’ll wash up and be right with you.”
“Smitty said there’s a lot of work to be done.” McLellan came to stand by the island counter that separated the galley from the salon. “He told me you were very resourceful.” He paused.
She glanced up at him and found his gaze thoughtful, considering. And admiring as it slid from her chin to her collarbone, then lower. She realized suddenly the thread-bare tank top and satin demi-bra she wore for hot and dirty boat work showed almost as much as they concealed.
Then he murmured, “I see there was much he didn’t say.” He went on, “For one thing, I didn’t expect Obsession to be so…” He trailed off, looking around the profoundly empty salon, as though he expected to find his vocabulary there.
Chris dried off while she waited for him to finish.
He didn’t. Instead he asked, “What does she weigh?”
“About a hundred thousand pounds.”
“Stout lady,” he said, nearly under his breath.
“She was built in the days when fiberglass was new and the boatyards were afraid of underbuilding. Her hull’s about twice as thick as it needs to be.”
“And a classic design.” He nodded to himself, obviously pleased, and turned from the galley to the salon.
His masculine grace as he strode away reminded her of the world her grandfather had lived in with his antiques gallery, his art, his clothes, his money. The world she didn’t belong in and never would.
Smitty might not look like a DEA agent, but neither did McLellan. This one at least had the air of command, but not the militaristic bearing she associated with state troopers. Different breed, she guessed. A rich one, given the way he dressed. She wondered which of them was the boss and decided on McLellan, who apparently didn’t have a nickname. And didn’t need one.
As she joined him in the salon’s center, he turned to her. “This boat’s very beautiful.”
“She will be.”
“Is everything on schedule?” His gaze sharpened as it roamed over the cracked windows, dingy wall panels and bare floor.
“So far. The boatyard can do the big jobs, but not all of it. My timetable says we need to splash next Friday. That means everybody pitches in.” She eyed the impeccable crease in his slacks. “If you’re up to it.”
McLellan shoved his hands into his pockets, relaxed and clearly at home. “I’m up to it. Always glad to learn something new.”
Chris paused, trying to figure out how to say what she needed to say. “Thank you for letting me be a part of this.”
His eyes darkened slightly. “Against my better judgment, but Falks’s attack on you tells me you’re the key to this mission. It’ll
