LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      LUCY BARNES stared at the words on the board as if she was mesmerized, as if someone was offering her precisely what she wanted most of all in the world.

      The individual letters were printed forcefully on a square of white cardboard with an indelible black marker. A masculine hand, she’d be willing to bet, Lucy thought with a distant part of her mind, and read the notice again.

      Wanted. Cook/crew-member for four weeks, starting immediately, on chartered 50-foot sloop. Maximum four guests. Apply at Seawind.

      She raised her head, looking past the bulletin-board where the notice was pinned to the sunlit row of yachts moored along the cement dock. Several of them were sloops. Which one was Seawind? As if in response to her question, the wind from the sea lifted her hair, teasing its long mahogany-colored curls against her neck. The trade winds, she thought in pure excitement. The famous trade winds of the West Indies that she had read about in geography class, when she had been a little girl and had thought the whole world open to her… But that she had waited until now to experience. She could sail out of this harbor under their impetus. Sail among the green-clad volcanic islands that rose from a sea so blue that it made her feel like shouting for joy. She took two impetuous steps toward the dock.

      And then she stopped. Think, Lucy. Think, she ordered herself. You’ve already landed yourself in one mess by acting on impulse. A royal mess. One that you’re not finished with yet. Are you going to compound it by taking another leap into the unknown without considering all the consequences? Let’s face it. An hour ago all you wanted to do was get on the first plane out of here and head home. Where at least you know the rules, even if you don’t like them very much. Chewing her lip, she stood indecisively, the sun beating down on her face and arms, her flowered skirt blowing against her legs like a sail luffing in the wind.

      How she wanted to be on that boat! Four weeks of sailing among the Virgin Islands. Four weeks…

      Lucy thrust her hands in the pockets of her skirt, looking around her. On the other side of the road that led into the marina there was a wooden bench under a tree adorned with fat clusters of orange flowers. An oleander hedge flanked the road, its sharp-pointed leaves rustling gently, its salmon-pink blooms bobbing up and down. So much color, so much beauty… Lucy marched across the road and sat down, and knew even as she did so that this way she could see if anyone else came along to read the notice and try for the job on Seawind.

      The slats of the bench were hard under her thighs. The dappled shade of the tree played with the flowers on her skirt. Tame flowers, she thought absently, running her fingernail along the stem of a tidy little rose. Northern flowers. Nothing like the exuberant blossoms of Road Town, capital of Tortola, largest of the British Virgin Islands. Where she, Lucille Elizabeth Barnes, now found herself.

      Her money-belt dug into her waist. At least she still had that. Her money, her return ticket and her passport. Even if that was all she had. Her luggage was sitting in the guest bedroom of the villa belonging to Raymond Blogden, who had been—very briefly—her employer. And there it was likely to stay until she went back with reinforcements. Large male reinforcements. Because she wasn’t going back alone, that was for sure.

      Her two sisters had thought she was crazy to answer the advertisement in the Ottawa paper, while her cool, commonsensical mother had said, ‘But what about the clientele you’ve worked so hard to build up, Lucy? Surely if you leave for a month—especially after you’ve just been ill for three weeks—some of them will look elsewhere? Had you thought of that?’

      But

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