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‘Didn’t you bring a pair of shorts with you?’
A blush crept up her face. ‘No. I—no.’
‘Check in the forward cabin—the drawer under the port bunk. You can borrow a pair of mine.’
In spite of herself her voice shook. ‘You mean you’ll take me for a trial run?’
‘Yeah… that’s what I mean.’
She gave him a dazzling smile that lit up her face and gave her, fleetingly, a true beauty. ‘Thanks,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You won’t regret it.’
Before he could change his mind, she climbed up on the foredeck, her bare feet gripping the roughened fiberglass. The forward hatch was open. With the agility’ of the fifteen-year-old she had once been, she climbed down the wooden ladder into his cabin. It had two bunks, one unmade; a faint, indefinable scent of clean male skin and aftershave teased her nostrils. Closing her mind to it, as she had closed her mind to the awkward truth that once again she was doing her utmost to involve herself with a big, handsome, blond man, Lucy pulled open the left-hand drawer. She scrabbled among Troy Donovan’s clothes, not quite able to ignore how intimate an act this was, and shook out the smallest of the three pairs of shorts there. Dropping her skirt on the bunk, she pulled them on. They might be the smallest pair, but they were still far too big, the waist gaping, the cuffs down to her knees. After grabbing a canvas belt coiled neatly in the corner of the drawer, she cinched in the waistband and let her T-shirt fall over it.
She looked ridiculous. And somehow she wasn’t so sure that that was a bad thing.
Not stopping to analyze this, Lucy climbed back on deck. A skipper from another boat had ambled over to help with the mooring lines. Troy said, giving Lucy’s attire a single derisive glance, ‘The ignition switch is by the radio. Then you can retrieve the anchor—these are the handsignals I’ll use.’ Briefly he demonstrated them. ‘We’ll head out under power, and once we’re in the strait you can hoist the mainsail.’
She should have been nervous. But, as the diesel engine began to throb beneath her feet, Lucy felt such a purity of happiness rocket through her body that there was no room for anything else. Again she went forward, pulling on the gloves she found stowed by the anchor winch and glancing back over her shoulder to catch all Troy’s instructions.
The groaning of the winch and the clanking of the anchor chain made her feel fully alive, every nerve alert, every muscle taut. As she guided the chain into its berth she found herself remembering for the first time in many years how at fifteen she had anticipated in hectic detail the way such feelings might be deliciously enhanced by that mysterious act called making love.
How wrong she’d been! Big blond men. Bah! The next time she fell in love, Lucy decided, it was going to be with someone short and stout and bald. Then Seawind began to move, and all her concerns, her love-life included, vanished from her mind.
Within minutes she’d hauled in the fenders and stowed them away. The dock was receding. The channel with its red and green buoys beckoned them on. Troy said, ‘There’s sunscreen in the cupboard under the bar. You’d better put some on before we get out on open water.’
Again Lucy went down the companionway steps. The cabin was spacious, constructed from highly polished mahogany. Two couches, flanking a dining table inlaid with marble, two padded swivel chairs, a chart cupboard and a neatly appointed galley were all fitted in without any sense of constriction, and again Lucy felt that shaft of unreasoning happiness. As she smoothed the cream over her face and arms the deck began to lift and fall beneath her feet.
When she want back up, Troy said tersely, ‘You can hoist the mainsail now.’
She fastened the halyard to the headboard and began hauling on the sheet, bending her knees to give herself leverage, using every bit of her strength. Following Troy’s instructions, she tightened the winch, slotting the handle and bracing herself against the companionway. Then she unfurled the headsail and trimmed it to a port tack. The breeze had freshened as they left the confines of Road Harbor. Troy turned off the engine and suddenly Seawind came to life, her bow rising and falling as she heeled into the wind that was her reason for being.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Lucy cried, giving Troy another of those brilliant smiles that held nothing in it of seduction yet was infinitely seductive.
Her shirt was molded to her body, her hair whipping about her ears. ‘Ease off the headsail,’ he ordered in a clipped voice.
Lucy knew enough to do as she was told. But, spoiling her exultation, a cold core of dismay had appeared somewhere in the vicinity of her gut. Did she want to sail with a skipper who so plainly hated his job? He had yet to give her anything approaching a real smile. Even now, as he checked the masthead fly and adjusted the wheel, he didn’t look the least bit happy to be out on the water.
‘We’ll change tacks in a few minutes,’ he called. ‘I’ll tell you when.’
This maneuver went without a hitch. Then Lucy took a stint at the wheel, delighted to find that her old intuitive sense of wind and sail had never left her. After they’d changed tacks again, Troy questioned her on the rules of the road and threw a number of hypothetical situations at her to see how she’d deal with them. Then they headed back to the harbor, running before the wind. Finally, Lucy furled the headsail and folded the mainsail on the boom, and before she knew it Troy was backing into the dock. He was, she had to admit, a more than competent skipper.
The engine died, and into the silence Lucy said tautly, ‘Do I pass?’
He leaned against the folding table that ran along the centre of the cockpit and answered her question with another. ‘It’s ten or eleven years since you sailed, right?’
‘Ten.’
‘You loved it.’
‘They were the best years of my life,’ Lucy heard herself say, and felt her face stiffen with shock as the truth of her words struck home. ‘That’s nuts, isn’t it?’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘It can’t be true…’
‘It sure doesn’t say much for anything that’s happened since then.’
‘No…’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t.’
Ruthlessly Troy Donovan hurled two more questions at her. Are you married—or living with someone?’
‘No and no.’ Fighting to regain control of herself— what was it about this cold, unfriendly man that made her reveal herself so blatantly and so unwisely?—she added, ‘Are you?’
‘I’m interviewing you, not the reverse,’ he retorted. ‘If you’re independent, and you so clearly love sailing, why aren’t you living on the west coast again?’
‘Mr Donovan,’ Lucy said coldly, ‘this is a hiring session. Not a counseling session.’
‘The name’s Troy. Why don’t you answer the question?’
‘Because I can’t!’ she flared. ‘Because the reasons I live where I do are nothing to do with you. ‘I’m not asking you why you never smile, why you have a job that you seem to dislike so thoroughly. Because it’s none of my business.’ Her face changed. ‘Please… are you going to hire me?’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ he said unpleasantly. ‘The first guests come on board the day after tomorrow and there’s a pile of work to do in the meantime. However, I won’t make you do it for nothing.’ He named a salary that was more than fair. ‘I want you to take my vehicle now, and go to the grocery—’
‘You’ve hired me—for four whole weeks!’ Lucy interrupted. ‘But that’s terrific! Oh, I’m so excited!’ Grabbing the extra fabric that flapped around her slender legs and holding it out like a skirt, she did a solemn little dance on the deck. Then she gave him a wide grin. ‘I’ll do the very best I can, I promise.’
Because Troy was standing in the shade he had pushed his sunglasses up again and there was in the flint-gray eyes an unquestionable, if reluctant, smile. Much encouraged, Lucy said pertly, ‘So you do know how to smile. You’d be extremely handsome if you smiled properly, you know.’ She bared her teeth in an exaggerated smirk. ‘You should try it some time.’
‘Lucy,’ he said tightly, ‘maybe now’s as good a time as any to make something else clear. You and I are going to be living and working together in pretty close quarters for the next month. There’ll be no male-female stuff between us—have you got that?’
His smile was gone as if it had never been, and the anger that she’d already sensed as a huge part of his make-up was very much in evidence. She stared right back at him. ‘You’re afraid I might make a pass at you?’
Biting off the words, he said, ‘Of course I’m not afraid of you! But the comfort and security of the guests is our only concern for the next four weeks. You and I are coworkers—and that’s all.’
She could match his anger with an anger of her ownit would be all too easy—or she could keep her sense of humor. Choosing the latter—because his pronouncement definitely had its funny side—Lucy gave a hoot of laughter. ‘No problem! Now if you were fivefeet-seven, bald and overweight, then you should worry. But tall, blond and handsome—nope. I’m immune. Thank you very much.’
‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ he snarled.
‘I don’t think you see anything very much as funny,’ Lucy said, with more truth than tact. ‘And I swear that’s the last remark of a personal nature that’ll cross my lips today.’
He said—and Lucy was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t meant to say it, ‘Immunity implies exposure.’
‘Indeed,’ she said drily. ‘I fell in love with my first blond hunk—the history teacher in school—when I was twelve, and I’ve been doing it ever since. When I came down here, I’d made a vow—no more blond men. Bald is beautiful. So you’re quite safe, Troy Donovan. Now, what was that about groceries?’
‘For their sakes, I’m glad none of them married you,’ he said nastily.
Lucy flinched. She would have married Phil, who’d had wavy blond curls and had proposed to her among the tulips along the Rideau Canal when she was twentythree years old. But Phil had met Sarah, chic, fragile Sarah, two months before the wedding, and had gone to Paris with Sarah instead of staying home and marrying Lucy. She said, almost steadily, ‘If they had I wouldn’t be crewing for you, would I? What did happen to your previous cook, by the way?’
‘Her son crushed several bones in his foot last night. She flew to San Juan with him this morning.’ His scowl deepened. ‘I shouldn’t have said that about marriage— I’m sorry.’
Despite her vow, a vow she fully intended to keep, Lucy was already aware that it would be much safer if she disliked Troy. He was taller than Phil, more handsome than the history teacher, and sexier by far than anyone she had ever met. ‘Grocery store,’ she repeated in a stony voice.
‘I’ll give you the keys to my Jeep. I want you to cook supper for me tonight, as if I were a guest—an appetizer to go with drinks, then dinner and dessert. This evening you can draw up menus for the next six days and I’ll check them over. Our first charter is just one couple, Craig and Heather Merritt, from New York. They’ll come on board the day after tomorrow—by then you’ve got to have the boat provisioned and spanking clean brass and woodwork polished, bathrooms spotless, beds made so they can have their choice of cabin. I’ll look after ice, water supplies and the bar, and in the meantime I’ll overhaul the engine and the pumps. Any questions?’
She blinked. ‘No. But some time today I’ll have to get my suitcase.’
‘Use the Jeep,’ he said impatiently.
It was by now blindingly obvious to Lucy that Troy didn’t like her at all and wouldn’t have hired her if he’d had any other options. In fact, he thought so little of her that he considered her unmarried state a boon to the male sex. So she might as well confirm him in his dislike; it would beat going to the police. She said in a small voice, ‘I need to borrow you as well as the Jeep.’
He frowned. ‘Surely you haven’t got that many clothes? Storage space is limited on a boat, as you should know.’
Lucy said rapidly, ‘I arrived in Tortola this morning, planning to work for a family with a villa in the hills. But when I got to the villa it very soon became plain that the family wasn’t about to materialize and that the man of the house and I had radically different ideas about the terms of my employment.’
‘He put the make on you?’
She grimaced. ‘Yes. So I left with more haste than grace via the nearest window, and my suitcase is still there.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m scared to go back there alone,’ she confessed. ‘But I could go to the police if you don’t want to go with me, Troy. It’s nothing to do with you, I do see that.’
‘I’ll go,’ Troy said with a ferocious smile. ‘This has been the week from hell, and I don’t see much chance of it improving—I could do with a little action. Why don’t we go there first?’
Lucy took a step backwards and said with absolute truth, ‘I’m not so sure that you don’t frighten me more than Raymond Blogden.’
‘I almost hope he resists,’ Troy said, flexing both fists.
The muscles of his forearms moved smoothly and powerfully under his tanned skin and there was such pent up energy behind his words that Lucy backed off another step, until the teak edge of the bench was hard against the backs of her knees. ‘I know nothing whatsoever about you,’ she muttered, ‘and yet I’ve agreed to live on a fifty-foot boat with you for a month. Maybe I should be asking you for references.’
‘You can always check with my bank manager and my physician,’ he said with another fiendish smile. ‘Anyway, if nothing you’ve done since you were fifteen has impressed you as much as sailing a Laser, you might benefit from throwing caution to the wind. Let’s go.’
It was, Lucy thought, not bad advice.
And throwing caution to the winds had brought her to Tortola in the first place, hadn’t it?
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_70b829cf-a133-58a3-be1d-2ffe4538f9ff)
LUCY hurried below, changed back into her skirt, and five minutes later was driving west out of Road Town. Troy drove the Jeep as competently as he drove a boat; she couldn’t help noticing that the muscles in his thighs were every bit as impressive as those in his arms, and forcibly reminded herself of her vow. Fortunately, in her opinion, to be truly sexy a man had to be able to laugh…
They braked for a herd of goats trotting along the road, and then for a speed bump. ‘The turnoff’s not far from here,’ Lucy said, her pulses quickening.
The driveway to the villa wound up the hill in a series of hairpin turns; all too clearly she remembered running down them, glancing back over her shoulder in fear of pursuit. It seemed like another lifetime, another woman, so much had happened since then. And then the Spanishstyle stucco villa came in sight and her heart gave an uneasy lurch. It looked very peaceful, the bougainvillaea hanging in fuchsia clouds over the stone wall, the blinds drawn against the glare of the sun.
Troy drew up in front of the door and pocketed his keys. ‘Why don’t you stay here?’
She had an obscure need to confront Raymond Blogden again. ‘I know where the case is,’ she murmured, and slid to the ground.
Troy pushed the doorbell.
The chimes rang deep in the house. A bee buzzed past Lucy’s ear, and from the breadfruit trees behind the house a dove cooed monotonously. Troy leaned hard on the bell, and from inside a man’s voice said irritably, ‘Hold on, I’m on my way.’
Lucy recognized the voice all too well, and unconsciously moved a little closer to Troy. The door swung open, Troy stepped inside without being asked and Lucy,
perforce, followed. ‘What the? Who are you?’
Raymond Blogden blustered. ‘Get out of my—’ And
then he caught sight of Lucy. His recovery was instant. ‘Well, well… I’m glad you came back, Miss Barnes,’ he sneered. ‘I was about to call the police. Breach of contract and destruction of personal property should cover it, don’t you think?’
He was a big man, his black hair slicked back in the heat, his expensive white linen suit dealing as best it could with a figure whose musculature had long ago been subsumed by fat. Rings flashed on his fingers. Lucy remembered how they had dug into her arm and shivered.
Troy said with icy precision, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr Blogden—you should be thankful Miss Barnes isn’t at the police station charging you with assault… Go get your case, Lucy. You’re quite safe this time.’
The house was shaded and cool and very quiet. Lucy scurried down the hall to the bedroom that was to have been hers, finding her blue duffel bag exactly where she had left it on the tiled floor. She picked it up and ran back to the foyer. Raymond Blogden’s complexion was several shades redder than when she had left. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me your name, young man?’ he was saying, and to her horror Lucy saw his right hand inching toward his pocket.
‘Troy, he’s got a weapon!’ she cried.
In a blur of movement Troy went on the offensive. Three seconds later Raymond Blogden’s arm was twisted behind his back and Troy was saying calmly, ‘Search his pocket, would you, Lucy?’
As gingerly as if a tarantula inhabited Raymond Blogden’s pocket, Lucy inserted her fingers and came up with a pearl-handled knife that was disconcertingly heavy. ‘We’ll take that,’ Troy said cheerfully. ‘And since I’m rather fussy about those with whom I associate, Mr Blogden, I think I’ll keep my name to myself.’
‘She’s nothing but a hooker,’ Raymond Blogden spat. ‘She dresses it up with fancy words, but that’s all she is.’
‘Shut up,’ Troy said, very softly, ‘or I’ll have your hide for a car seat… Ready, Lucy?’
She was more than ready. She opened the door and heard Troy say, in a voice all the more effective for its lack of emphasis, ‘If I ever see you within fifty feet of Miss Barnes again, I’ll wipe the floor with that pretty white suit of yours… Goodbye, Mr Blogden.’
The sunlight almost blinded Lucy. Troy gunned the motor and surged down the driveway. He was whistling between his teeth and looked extremely pleased with himself. ‘You enjoyed that,’ Lucy said shakily.
‘Damn right I did.’ With casual skill he took the first of the turns. ‘What in heaven’s name made you think you could work for a man like that?’
‘I never met him,’ she said defensively. ‘The interview was in Toronto, with his personnel adviser.’
‘And what do you do that led him to call you a prostitute?’
‘I’m a massage therapist,’ she said. ‘There are certain people who seem to think that massage has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with healing—I get so tired of all the innuendoes and off-color jokes.’
‘It’s a very useful profession,’ Troy said mildly.
She shot him a suspicious glance. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Kindly don’t equate me with the likes of that creep up in the villa!’
Only wanting to change the subject, Lucy looked distastefully at the knife in her lap. ‘What am I going to do with this?’
‘Keep it. In case you’re ever silly enough to work for someone like him again. Naivete doesn’t pay in any job, but particularly not in yours, I would have thought.’
Troy had spoken with a casual contempt that cut Lucy to the quick. I won’t cry, she thought, I won’t. If I didn’t cry when it happened, why would I cry now?
But the hibiscus blooms that bordered the driveway were running together in big red blobs, as red as Raymond Blogden’s face. She stared fiercely out of the side window of the Jeep and felt Troy slow to a halt as they reached the highway. Then his hand touched her bare elbow. ‘Don’t!’ she muttered, and yanked it away.
‘Look at me, Lucy.’
‘No!’
‘Lucy…’ His fingers closed on her shoulder.
