but if the stakes were...interesting...maybe he’d at least try and comply.
Their gazes locked and Rick swallowed as he took her hand, cementing the deal.
Would she taste like coconuts too?
* * *
They cast off the next morning at eight o’clock, a good wind aiding their departure. The long-range weather forecast was favourable and Stella was feeling as if her body clock was finally back in sync.
Of course, she was also really embarrassed by her carry-on last night. She tried to apologise to Rick once they were out of the harbour and heading north.
‘Are you trying to welch on the deal?’ Rick teased. ‘Because you know how much I love a challenge.’
She did. God knew how many times she’d come close to drowning while challenging him to a competition to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest.
He’d beat her every time.
Except for that time he’d let her win and she’d been so mad at him he’d promised never to do it again.
‘Absolutely not,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I stand by it.’
‘Good.’ He grinned. ‘Now go write something.’
And she did. Sitting in a special chair at the bow of the boat, sun on her shoulders, breeze in her hair, laptop balanced on her knees, she found Lucinda flowed from her fingers onto the page. It was as if she frolicked and danced along the keys, slipping magically between Stella’s fingers, informing every letter, controlling every mouse click.
The cursor no longer blinked at Stella from a blank page. Instead words, lovely rich words of a bygone era, filled all the white spaces up. When Rick brought her a snack and her hat she realised she’d been writing for two hours solid and the number down the bottom of the page told her she’d written thirteen hundred words.
Thirteen hundred glorious words.
The morning flowed into the afternoon; the perfect calm conditions continued. Rick occasionally called to her, pointing out a pod of dolphins or an island in the distance. She got up and stretched regularly and when she was grappling with a scene she’d take the wheel for a while and magically, like tankers on the horizon, the solution appeared.
By the end of the day she’d written three thousand words and she felt utterly exhilarated. And it wasn’t all about the writing.
She’d forgotten how elemental sailing made a person feel. How it connected you to the earth on such a primitive level. How the feel of the waves beneath your feet and the push and pull of the tide drew you into the circadian rhythm of the planet.
How it connected her to her father.
She’d missed Nathan terribly the last six months, but out here he was everywhere. Every turn of the wheel, every flap of the sail, every pitch and roll of the hull.
They anchored just before sundown in the middle of nowhere. Just her and Rick bobbing in the middle of an enormous ocean beneath a giant dome blushing velvet and dappled with tangerine clouds.
Rick grilled steaks this time and Stella was pleased she’d kept a serving out of the freezer. She loved fish, but she knew by the time the voyage was over she’d be all fished out. And with three thousand words to celebrate, nice thick juicy steaks seemed like the perfect food. She tossed a salad and completed the meal with melt-in-your-mouth bread rolls.
It was utterly delicious and they savoured every morsel of the fresh food. Much later in their journey, when their fresh food had run out, the meals wouldn’t be this exciting.
Of course, there would always be fish.
Stella took their plates while Rick cleaned the grill and she joined him on deck twenty minutes later after a quick shower. He was lying as he had the night before, flat on his back, stretched out beneath a vast canopy of black and silver.
Although tonight, at least, he’d decided to wear a shirt.
‘Are we going to do this every night?’ she asked, joining him.
He looked up at her. She was wearing a sarong tied around her neck in some fashion, the corners flapping in the breeze to show a little bare thigh. He looked back at the sky.
‘Weather permitting,’ he murmured.
Stella settled back, the slap of the halyard against the mast making a delightful clink. The stars seemed so close this far away from the light pollution of land.
‘Well, I think I did very well today,’ he said after they’d lain in companionable silence for a few minutes. ‘Are you ready to concede yet?’
Stella laughed. ‘There’s only been me here.’
He smiled into the night. ‘It won’t make a difference.’
‘Well, we’ll see how it is when you’re surrounded by all those Micronesian babes who want to be your own private deckhands.’
He chuckled then and Stella shivered as the delicious noise slipped down her spine like a feather stroke. She raised her hand to distract herself, just as she had as a child, holding up her thumb to the moon and squinting, obliterating the glowing white orb from her vision.
She dropped her hand. ‘They look like you could just pluck them from the sky, one by one, don’t they?’
‘And that’s why you write romance novels,’ Rick teased, rolling his head to the side to look at her.
Stella smiled and just as abruptly stopped. Rick seemed so laid-back about what she did.
He frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she sighed.
‘That’s kind of a big sigh to be nothing. I thought you were ecstatic about your word count today.’
Stella let her head roll so she was facing him too. ‘I am, I’m...beyond ecstatic. I’m just...’
‘Just? Are you not happy with what you do?’
‘No. I’m very happy with it. Especially now I have words,’ she joked. ‘I have a great publisher. An editor who’s a saint, an agent who’s a shark...’
‘But?’ he asked as she turned her head away to look at the sky. ‘You should be proud of what you do. Nathan was. We’re all so proud of you, Stel.’
Stella gave a light snort. ‘Trust me, not everyone is so...proud of what I do.’
Rick frowned. ‘Oh? Someone in particular?’
She looked at him again. ‘Dale. He...broke off the engagement when he realised what I wrote.’
Nathan had told Rick about the break-up when it had occurred. Rick hadn’t asked why, he’d just assumed it was the usual sort of stuff that broke relationships up. He did remember Nathan being secretly pleased. He’d always thought his daughter’s long-term fiancé was a bit of a cold fish.
Rick
