* *
He was on deck twenty minutes later. And he was in big, big trouble. Suddenly the filter that had always been in place where she was concerned had been stripped away. Those teenage dreams he’d had about her and refused to let himself dwell upon were front and centre.
She was in teeny tiny denim shorts with a frayed edge and a shirt that barely met in the middle. A straw cowboy-style hat, the edges curled up, sat low over her eyes and held her tucked-up hair in place save for a few haphazard wisps that had escaped and brushed her nape.
The girl he always saw, the one he’d trained himself to see, ever since Nathan had sprung them about to kiss, was gone for ever.
Now he saw the ripe bulge of her breasts as the bra he could clearly see through the thin fabric of her shirt pushed and lifted in all the right ways. The wink of her belly button taunting him from the strip of bare skin at her midriff. The killer curve where her hip flared from the tiny line of her waist.
He’d never noticed how curvy she was before. Not consciously anyway. Consciously he’d always thought of her as short and cute.
Like an elf or maybe a munchkin.
But there was nothing cute about those curves—they should come with a yellow warning sign.
And he was stuck on board with them for the next few weeks.
‘Well, about time,’ Stella said as she caught Rick’s advance in her peripheral vision. ‘Another gorgeous day for sailing.’
Rick smiled, his gaze drawn to her mouth. The mouth that was nowhere near as innocent as he’d always thought. A mouth he tried and failed not to think about on his body the way Lady Mary’s had been on Vasco’s.
Stella popped the lid on a bottle of sunscreen and squirted some into her palm. ‘If you get us under way,’ she said, slapping it on her chest, ‘I’ll cook some bacon and eggs.’
Rick swallowed as Stella distributed the white liquid to her shoulders and upper arms and across the swell of her cleavage, dipping her fingers beneath the fabric a little.
Do not look at her breasts. Do not look at her breasts.
Too late.
He looked at her breasts.
‘Sure,’ he said distractedly as her hands continued to massage the crème until her cleavage glistened in the sun.
Stella frowned at him as he stood there looking at her. Was he...was he perving at her chest? There were times when they’d been younger, pre her sweet-sixteen debacle, when she’d caught him looking at her, when their gazes had locked and he’d smile at her with wolfish appreciation, but that had been a long time ago.
‘Rick?’
Her voice brought him back from the fantasy of licking every inch of the crème off her. He blinked and quickly donned his sunglasses. ‘Yes, absolutely, getting under way.’ He saluted, turning from her gratefully, his hands trembling as if he were fifteen years old again and trying to undo Sharon Morgan’s bra.
He really needed to get a grip.
By the time the sun was high in the sky Rick was halfway to crazy. The boat was travelling along at a steady clip, which left him nothing else to do other than stare at Stella. Even metres away from him in her low chair, doing nothing but writing, she destroyed his concentration. She was almost directly in his line of sight, her legs supporting her laptop, her shirt riding up her spine to reveal a good portion of skin, including the dimples at the small of her back.
With conversation non-existent, he was left with a lot of time to think. A lot of time for his mind to wander.
Standing at the helm, the wheel in his hand, the ocean at his command, it was a little hard not to think of himself as the all-conquering pirate Vasco Ramirez.
The Vasco who decided to turn his treasure hunt into a pleasure hunt. Who actively seduced Lady Mary after the bath scene and whose slow, deliberate dance with her was both clever and cunning.
Rick’s mind wandered to those scenes of calculated seduction. Vasco washing Mary’s hair on deck. Vasco removing a splinter from her finger with his teeth. Vasco cutting into the juicy flesh of a dripping pear with his jewelled dagger and feeding her slice after slice.
And the sexiest scene of all where Vasco had tied her spreadeagled in her under-things to his bed until Mary had admitted her desire for him.
That one had got Rick hotter than a summer day on the equator.
In fact just thinking about it now was getting him pretty damn hot. Not helped by the fact that she had abandoned her seated position and was doing a sexy little stretch, bending over and touching her toes, then arching her back as she linked her hands above her head and twisted from side to side.
Oh, Lord, kill me now.
She turned then and walked towards him and he was pleased, as her breasts jiggled enticingly, for the secure placement of his very dark sunglasses.
‘You fancy a cold beer and a bite to eat?’ Stella asked as she approached.
‘Sounds great,’ he said.
Stella patted him absently on the arm. ‘Be right back,’ she said.
Rick stayed very still as the fleeting touch seemed to reach deep down inside and stroke something that it just shouldn’t have. Since when had a perfunctory touch from her had such an effect? But he suddenly understood Ramirez’s puzzlement over the sensations that Lady Mary had created when she’d clung to his sleeve briefly during some choppy weather.
Rick shook his head at the direction of his errant thoughts. Bloody hell, had he been emasculated overnight?
When Stella rejoined him ten minutes later with some ham and salad rolls and two beers, he’d found his testicles and got over himself.
‘Put it on autopilot,’ Stella said, pressing the beer into his hand. ‘Come and sit with me.’
Yeh, that was just what he needed.
But he did it anyway.
‘So, how’s the book going?’ he asked, nodding at the shut laptop as he took a man-sized swallow of beer to dilute the absolute unmanly curiosity over her current romance novel.
Stella nodded. ‘Coming along very nicely. I’m just about finished with the first chapter. I’ve emailed Diana—she’s ecstatic. I think Joy had threatened her with editing non-fic if I didn’t deliver.’ Stella grinned.
Rick smiled too. She seemed relaxed and willing to chat about the book. Maybe, instead of wondering whether Lady Mary was her, which was, quite frankly, driving him nuts, he could just come out and ask. Or at least start a conversation where he could work his way round to it.
‘So, what’s the book about?’ he asked as he took a bite out of his bread roll.
Stella looked up at him from under the brim of her hat. ‘You really want to know?’
Rick stopped chewing. ‘Of course,
