her fringe. ‘Dignity.’
Rick laughed, relieved that she couldn’t be too badly hurt if her sense of humour was still intact. ‘Do you think anything’s broken?’
Stella zeroed in on the pain in her upper arm where she’d fallen the hardest. It had initially been excruciating but the intensity had eased quickly. It only felt as if a brick had fallen on it now as opposed to a cement column.
‘Let me help you up,’ he offered.
Stella acquiesced with a brief nod of her head. With both arms hurting like blazes, she had no idea how she was even going to get up. Rick grabbed her around the waist and gently pulled her into a sitting position. His big warm body was behind hers and for a moment she was so relieved she wasn’t destined to spend for ever spread on the deck like a stranded beetle she sagged against him and shut her eyes.
Rick rubbed his cheek against her hair, the scent of coconuts filling his nostrils. He picked up her right hand. The knuckles were grazed and the middle three finger pads were bleeding with splinters embedded in each one.
He tried really hard not to think about Lady Mary and her splinter, but with Stella all warm and pliant against him, smelling like a pina colada, it was hard not to go there.
‘Nasty,’ he murmured, anticipation already building in his gut, knowing that he was the one who would take them out. Kiss those fingers better just as Vasco had. ‘How’s your arm? Can you move it?’
Stella gingerly rotated her shoulder. ‘Bloody sore,’ she bitched.
He smiled into her hair. ‘What about your dignity?’
Her arm throbbed and she couldn’t even rub it with her opposite hand because it throbbed as well. And was bleeding to boot. ‘Unrecoverable, I should imagine.’
He chuckled. ‘Nah. You really fell very gracefully.’
‘Oh, goody,’ she said dryly. ‘A critique.’
He laughed again. ‘Come on. Let’s get you down below and have a look at you.’
‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she muttered.
Stella blinked as the snappy rejoinder loaded with innuendo slipped from her mouth. What the?
He laughed some more. ‘Just the ones who fall at my feet.’
Rick helped her up. The boat rolled again slightly and he grabbed her waist and her good arm to steady her as she wobbled against him. He sucked in a breath as, for a moment, every part of her from her soft breasts to her round hips was pressed against him.
He took a step back as his body leapt to life. ‘You’ve got your sea legs?’ he asked.
Stella nodded. ‘Sorry ’bout that.’
‘No worries.’ He shrugged. ‘Why don’t you go on down? I’ll fix a few things up here and then I’ll join you.’
Stella, despite the throb in her arm and the sting in her fingers, was still stuck back in that moment.
She nodded her head dumbly.
No dignity anywhere in sight!
* * *
When Rick joined her half an hour later she’d recovered sufficiently to have taken some painkillers, located the first-aid kit, washed her hand in the sink and was sitting at the table valiantly trying to dig the splinters out. But trying to do it left-handed was a slow enough process without being hampered by a restricted range of movement from the soft tissue damage inflicted by the fall up higher, near her shoulder.
Rick shoved his hands on his hips. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
Stella, who had made more of a mess through pricking herself, was not in the best of moods. It really didn’t help that he looked all hot and sexy in that shirtless way of his.
‘What do you think?’ she demanded. ‘I’m trying to get the splinters out.’
Rick smiled down at the petulant set to her mouth. Oh, goody, this was going to be fun.
‘Here,’ he said, scooting her along the bench seat as he moved in beside her. ‘Let me.’ Rick held out his hand. When she didn’t comply he gave her an impatient look. ‘Stella?’
Stella was in a quandary as the scene she’d written for Pleasure Hunt looked as if it too was about to play out. Well, the G-rated version of it anyway.
She couldn’t imagine Rick sucking her fingers into his mouth. Well...she could. And she had. She’d even written it down.
But that was Vasco.
Rick could almost read the thoughts in her very expressive eyes. She was torn between medical necessity and curiosity. ‘You don’t want them to fester, do you?’ he asked innocently.
Stella swallowed as she offered him her palm, hoping that she was submitting purely on medical grounds but knowing there were other less sensible, less pure reasons.
She just prayed he never read her book.
Her palm was warm in his as Rick took an antiseptic swab and cleaned up the site so he had a clearer field of vision. This close, like Vasco, he could see Stella’s mouth and the way her teeth dug into her bottom lip.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You ready for this?’ he asked.
Stella doubted she’d ever be ready for Rick being this close, his sea-salt-and-ocean-spray aroma wrapping her in a hundred childhood memories that warred with the very adult visions of him naked beneath a shower.
‘I promise I’ll be gentle,’ he murmured.
Stella rolled her eyes at the amused glitter in his tropical gaze. The only way she was going to survive being the sole focus of his stymied flirting reflex was to give as good as she got. ‘Maybe I don’t like it gentle.’
Rick’s heart thunked hard in his chest as he pulled back a little in surprise. She had her eyebrow raised and a small smile playing on her lips.
She was flirting back.
He chuckled. It had been a long time since they’d traded banter like this. It made his plan that much more enticing.
As Vasco had, he ducked his head and leaned over her hand. Given that his deck was much more polished than that of a pirate ship from the seventeen hundreds, the splinters were much smaller than the one Mary had embedded in her finger. Certainly they were not removable by his teeth and it took some time digging them out.
She didn’t whimper or complain although Rick looked up at one stage and she had her eyes shut and face screwed up. Their legs brushed intermittently beneath the table, their upper bodies were almost touching, his head was level with her cleavage and he wondered what she’d do if he claimed that long-awaited kiss early.
Find out if her mouth tasted as sweet as it looked. If it really did taste like coconuts.
Stella opened her eyes and caught him looking at her. Her
