didn’t know?’
She shook her head. ‘Dale thought I was writing respected historical research on eighteenth-century pirates.’
Rick was confused. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’
‘Of course I did, but he was never good at listening. He’s an academic, one of those absent-minded professor types, and all he heard was historical and pirate...’
Rick suppressed a shudder. He sounded like a total bore.
‘So,’ he said, wanting to clarify the situation before he spoke ill of her idiot ex, ‘he dumped you when he found out you wrote...’
Stella nodded. ‘Trashy, smutty, dirty little books.’
Rick cocked an eyebrow. He really had to read that book. ‘You write trashy smut?’ What the hell was wrong with the man? Didn’t he realise that was a really good reason to hang onto a woman?
Stella rolled her eyes. ‘No. I write historical romantic fiction for women. Dale called them trashy and smutty.’
Rick sucked in a breath. What a dufus. ‘How did he find out?’
‘One of his students asked him if he was the inspiration for Vasco Ramirez.’
Rick rolled up onto his elbow and looked down at her. ‘Was he?’
Stella laughed then. The irony of Rick, Vasco Ramirez personified, asking that question was just too much. ‘Most definitely not.’
Rick grinned. ‘Ouch.’
Stella felt instantly contrite—not everyone looked like an eighteenth-century pirate. ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Dale’s lovely...was lovely. In kind of a...self-absorbed way. He’s just not...buccaneer material.’
‘Well,’ Rick announced. ‘The man’s clearly an idiot.’
‘Not really...he has an IQ in the hundred and thirties.’
Rick fell back against the deck. ‘He can’t be too smart if his fiancée is writing smutty novels and he doesn’t use that to his advantage.’
Stella burst out laughing. ‘His advantage? How?’
Rick shrugged. ‘Dress up in breeches and make you read it aloud to him.’
Stella laughed again. The very thought was as wicked as it was absurd. Dale would no sooner have done that than flown to the moon. ‘Dale was a little too strait-laced for role playing. In fact I think he considered human desire a little beneath him altogether. Too...messy or something.’
There was just something about laughing with Rick in the night under the stars that encouraged confidences and she felt as if they were kids again, whispering their secrets to each other.
Rick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In fact he was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to hear it. And not just because a woman like Stella, or any woman for that matter, should not be having mediocre sex. But because putting sex and Stella in the same sentence was something he’d avoided his entire life.
‘Why on earth did you stay with him?’ he asked.
Stella rolled her head to face him. That one was easy.
‘Because he was a nice guy. A good guy. A kind guy. He made me laugh.’ Not in the ribald way Rick made her laugh but in a lovely, easy way that warmed her up inside. ‘He had a great job. On terra firma. He wanted to get married. He wanted kids.’
Rick almost yawned, it sounded so boring, but the way her voice softened was telling. He looked away. How could someone who had the swell of oceans running in her veins settle for such mediocrity?
‘Well, it sounds like you’re well shot of him to me,’ he said after a few moments star gazing. ‘A woman who writes smut needs someone to inspire her.’
Stella laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘That’s what you like about me.’
She thumped him on the chest. Yeh, it was what she liked about him but she wasn’t going to admit it.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, sitting up.
He sat also. ‘I’m up for that.’
Stella looked behind her at his bad-boy grin and rolled her eyes. ‘By myself.’
‘I can do smut.’
Stella laughed. ‘I bet you can.’
He held up his hand. ‘Just saying. The offer’s out there.’
Stella shook her head. ‘I think this is called flirting, Rick.’
‘Hey, you said, with women I meet along the way. I already know you. You’re fair game.’
Stella guessed she’d walked right into that one.
‘Besides I gotta put the flirt somewhere. It’s not good to let it build up. Men,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘should never let anything build up.’
Lucky for her she was used to Rick’s teasing and was sufficiently over the jet lag to not let it push her buttons. She stood. ‘Goodnight, Rick.’
‘Sleep tight.’ He grinned as he watched her walk away.
Then there were just the stars, the ocean and him, but not even they could keep him from the smutty book he had secreted in his cabin.
He gave her five minutes, then followed her down.
* * *
Six hours later, Rick read The End and knew he would never be the same again. Diana had been right. It was most illuminating. The hard-on he’d got in chapter two was still there and there was no way it was going away unless he did something about it.
Fortunately now he had plenty of images to help him in that department.
Two things were crystal clear.
Number one—Dale was an idiot of the first order. Hell, if he had a woman that had this sort of stuff in her head—the sheer eroticism of the beautifully scripted love scenes still clung to his loins—he wouldn’t let her out of his bed let alone his life.
Number two—the most shocking of all.
She’d written the book about him.
He was Vasco Ramirez.
Lady Mary stifled a gasp as Captain Ramirez rose from the tin bath tub with the fluid grace of a stallion. Water sluiced down the long lines of his body as the flickering lamplight gilded his bronzed skin, throwing it both into mysterious shadow and enticing relief.
The
