Beyond Reach

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She was down on her knees wiping the floor of the aft cabin’s shower when Troy spoke behind her. ‘Let’s take a break, Lucy.’

She glanced round, swiping at her hair with the back of her hand. ‘How does it look?’

‘You’ve done wonders,’ he said.

His praise gave her a warm glow of pride. ‘I’ve had a ball, actually—the woodwork and the fittings are all so beautiful that it’s a pleasure to clean them. Much more fun than cleaning my apartment.’ She sat back on her heels, stripping off her rubber gloves. ‘What was that about a break?’

‘I have to run the engine a couple of hours every day to keep the refrigerator and freezer cold. I thought we might head for Peter Island and have a swim. What have you got left to do?’

‘The saloon floor. Make the beds and put out the towels.’ Lucy tilted her head to one side. ‘You did say swim, didn’t you?’

She had managed to coax from him one of his reluctant smiles—a smile that, oddly, hurt something deep within her. He looked at her bucket and sponge. ‘I hate to tear you away from something you’re enjoying so much.’

‘For you, I’ll make the sacrifice.’ She got to her feet. ‘Will you show me how to snorkel?’

He looked surprised. ‘You don’t know how?’

‘Troy, I’ve never been further south than Boston in my entire life. Everything down here’s new to me.’

Her forehead was beaded with perspiration and there was a smudge of dirt on her chin, but her eyes were dancing and her smile was without artifice. Troy said slowly, ‘You’re making up for lost time, aren’t you?’

She wouldn’t have expected such discernment—or even interest—from him. Her heart beating a little faster, she said, ‘I guess I am. These four weeks seem like time out. A break from my normal life. I—I seem to have lost my sense of direction somewhere along the way.’

As though the words were torn from him, he said, ‘You’re not alone there.’ Then he raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Let’s pull up anchor and get out of here.’

No more revelations, Lucy realized, and knew better than to push. ‘I’ll dump the bucket and be right there,’ she said. But for a moment she stood still, watching him stride across the saloon and up the steps. His leg muscles were those of a runner, but what was he running from?

And how had he lost his way?

Once they were anchored off the beach at Peter Island, Lucy went below to put on her swimsuit. She had bought it—acting on another of her impulses—in the middle of a hailstorm in March. It was, in direct consequence, a bright red and quite minimal bikini. If she’d known about Troy Donovan, she thought, trying without success to cover even a fraction of her cleavage, she’d have purchased a staid one-piece. In an innocuous shade of beige. She pulled a white sport shirt over the bikini and went up on deck.

But the wind instantly whipped the shirt away from her body. As Troy turned around, about to say something, his jaw dropped, and he gaped at her as though someone had hit him hard in the chest. She was tall and full-breasted, her hips ripely curved, her long legs tapering to narrow ankles and feet. As an adolescent Lucy had hated her body, for she had shot up at the age of thirteen, towering over the boys in her class yet having to endure their covert and not-so-covert sniggers at her generous breasts. She had wanted to be tiny and delicate and feminine, like Tanya Holliday.

In the intervening years she had more or less made peace with her build. But right now she felt absurdly self-conscious, as though she were fourteen again. Grabbing at the shirt, she yanked it over what felt like an immense expanse of bare flesh.

This gave her something to do. Because if Troy was staring at her, she was struggling hard not to return the compliment. Under his taut belly his dark green trunks sat low on his hips; any attempt to regard his torso as nothing but neatly delineated groups of muscles—like the diagrams in her anatomy text—was a miserable failure. She said weakly, ‘Where’s the snorkeling gear?’

He snapped his mouth shut, knelt down and began hauling fins and masks out of a storage hatch. The wind played with his thick, unruly hair. Lucy quickly found a pair of fins that fit, then Troy passed her a mask. ‘Try this one. Keep your hair out of the way—when you breathe in through your nose, the mask should stay airtight.’

The first mask was too big. As she pulled on the second Troy came closer, checking the seal. ‘That looks good,’ he said. ‘You put this piece in your mouth and clamp your teeth over it. If water gets in the tube, throw your head back and breathe out hard.’

He was standing so close to her that Lucy was having difficulty breathing at all. Fighting to subdue her pleasure in the way Troy towered over her, she nodded her understanding of his instructions.

‘The reef’s to our left,’ he added. ‘I’m going to dive down and check that the anchor’s holding, then we’ll head over there.’

He pulled on his own fins and slid off the transom of the boat into the water. Lucy shed her shirt and followed with rather less grace; with her fins flapping in front of her and an undignified splash she fell forward into the sea. But she soon discovered that the fins added immeasurably to her speed, and by the time Troy surfaced with a thumbs-up sign she was over the reef. She dunked her mask into the water and gave a gasp of delight.

Below her in the clear turquoise water big purple seafans waved in the current, and a coral that looked like nothing so much as ostrich feathers swayed lazily back and forth. Patterns of sunlight danced on the white sand. Through the prongs of a hard coral shaped like antlers a school of fish darted; when they turned as one, their scales flashed with the iridescence of sapphires. Lucy opened her mouth to tell Troy about them, swallowed seawater as bitter as Epsom salts and raised her face, choking.

Immediately, it seemed, Troy was beside her. ‘You okay?’

She spat out the water and the mouthpiece. ‘The fish— they’re like jewels!’

His own mouthpiece was hanging by his ear and he had pushed his mask up. ‘Indeed. But when you’re underwater you’d better keep your mouth shut—unless you want an early supper.’

‘Yuk,’ she said. ‘I never did like sushi.’

‘And, seriously, don’t brush against any of the corals. Fire coral can sting you quite badly.’

‘I won’t.’ Flashing him another smile before she adjusted her equipment, she struck out again. There were fish everywhere: black, yellow, silver, red and blue, small and large, striped, spotted and lined. Fascinated, she hovered over the shelves and crenellations of the corals, then Troy gestured to her and she swam over to him, forgetting how little of her body the bikini covered, ignorant of how gracefully she moved, her limbs all pale curves, her cleavage shadowed. Following his pointed finger she saw three small pink squid fluting through the water, their huge eyes, like silver coins, riveting her gaze.

Impetuously she surfaced again, shoving her mask away from her face. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me here, Troy!’ she sputtered. ‘It’s unimaginably beautiful—like another world.’ But then her voice died away. ‘What’s the matter?’

He said with a savagery that frightened her, ‘You’re the one who’s unimaginably beautiful.’ The flat of his hand hard against her back, he pulled her closer, the water swirling between them. Then he bent his head and kissed her wet lips, his mask bumping against hers, his arm heavy across her shoulders.

Her fear vanished. It was as though all the wonders she had just seen, all the brilliant hues of the fish and of the corals, had exploded in her body in a wild kaleidoscope of color, and for a split second that was outside of time Lucy was consumed by an all-powerful and allconsuming happiness. But, as suddenly as he had seized her, Troy thrust her away, his heavy breathing overriding the splash and ripple of the sea. He looked as though he hated her, she thought blankly, and could not, for the life of her, think of a word to say.

‘We’d better go back,’ he grated. ‘We’ve still got a lot to do.’ As if he was being pursued by sharks, he began stroking toward Seawind in a strong overarm crawl.

Lucy, barely remembering to tread water, stayed where she was. She was about as adept a judge of character as she was a gourmet cook, she decided. Never, in a thousand years, would she have anticipated that kiss.

Troy hated her. So why had he kissed her?

Or did he hate her because he’d kissed her?

She had no answers to either question, and she could see him hauling himself up on Seawind’s stern. She didn’t think he’d leave her behind. But then what did she really know about the man called Troy Donovan?

Painfully, pitifully little.

Once she’d washed the salt water from her body with the transom hose, Lucy winched in the anchor and disappeared below to get changed. She was pegging her wet swimsuit to the lifeline that ran round the hull when Troy finally spoke to her. ‘You can call that kiss temporary insanity or insatiable lust or just plain curiosity… I really don’t care. I assure you it won’t happen again.’

There was as little feeling in his voice as if he were discussing the lunch menu. Carefully not looking at him, because if she did she wasn’t sure she’d be answerable for the consequences, Lucy went below decks and started washing and buffing the mahogany floor of the saloon. When they reached the harbor, she went to the forepeak and used the agreed hand signals to anchor Seawind. No need for conversation there. Afterward, she finished the floor, made two of the three beds with fresh sheets and threw together a shrimp salad for supper—activities that kept her busy and out of Troy’s way, but did nothing to tame the tumult of emotion in her breast.

She was bent over the refrigerator, wondering where she’d hidden the bottles of dressing, when a sixth sense told her Troy had come downstairs and was watching her. Feeling her scalp crawl, not looking at him, she said, ‘Ten minutes and we can eat.’ As she moved two blocks of cheese to one side she saw the yellow caps on the dressing and pulled the bottles out. ‘Good, there they are.’

‘What the devil happened to your arms?’ he demanded.

She put the bottles on the counter and clicked the hatch shut. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said, glowering at him.

He stepped on to the narrow strip of floor between the stove and the sinks, crowding her into the corner. ‘Those bruises—how did you get them?’

Craning her neck, Lucy for the first time saw the ugly purple blotches high on the backs of her arms. Involuntarily she shivered, knowing exactly how she’d gotten them. ‘Blogden—when he grabbed me, his rings dug in.’

Troy’s epithet was unprintable. But Lucy wasn’t in the mood to be impressed. ‘I wonder what his motive was,’ she said shrewishly. ‘Temporary insanity, plain curiosity or insatiable lust?’

There was a small, deadly silence. ‘Are you comparing me to him?’

As clearly as if it had just happened Lucy remembered how Troy’s kiss had filled her with a joy as many-hued and vivid as the fish, and how everything he had done since then had repudiated that joy. She was honest enough to know she was as angry with herself as with him—for she’d been the one to feel the joy, she who had sworn off tall, blond men. She didn’t want to fall in love again, it hurt too much and got her nowhere. She said, ‘I am, yes. Although overall I’d have to say he showed more emotion than you.’

‘Don’t push me, Lucy.’

‘Why did you kiss me, Troy?’

‘I gave you three good reasons.’

‘I want the real one.’

‘I already gave it to you,’ he said with a wolfish smile. ‘Insatiable lust.’

Her knees were trembling. Bracing them against the cupboard door, Lucy said, ‘You’re the one who said no male-female stuff between us.’

‘Haven’t you ever wanted something—or in this case, someone—so badly your whole body told you what it wanted?’ he quoted mockingly.

Lucy paled. ‘You know what’s so horrible about all this?’ she demanded, with sudden, searing honesty. ‘I liked you kissing me. I wanted you never to stop.’ She dashed at the tears that had filled her eyes. ‘What a stupid idiot I am… because you’re nothing but a coldblooded manipulator. You wouldn’t recognize an emotion if you fell over it.’

If her vision hadn’t been obscured by tears she might have seen Troy flinch. But all he said was, ‘So you’re not quite as immune as you thought you were. Maybe we should sleep together, Lucy—then you could add me to your total. One more blond hunk to notch in your belt. Or wherever it is you keep tally.’

There was plenty of emotion in his voice now, and all of it was anger. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, as steadily as she could. ‘I’m a little more discriminating than that.’

‘That wasn’t the impression I got.’

That he should so misread her hurt horribly. She wasn’t one bit immune, she thought wretchedly, and knew she had to end this. Turning, she cut three slices of bread with a reckless disregard for safety, plastered them with butter, put two on Troy’s plate and one on hers, then put the butter back in the refrigerator. How could she possibly have woken this morning feeling as if it was Christmas Day? More to the point, how on earth was she going to get through the next four weeks?