LITMIR.BIZ

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oil needed changing by feel. She’d crawled all over the yacht—into every bilge area, into every nasty, stinking little hole—to see for herself what needed to be done. Now if only she had a lot more cash, she’d be able to do almost all of the restoration work herself.

      Just over seventy feet from bowsprit to swim platform, Obsession had been built along the lines of the old classic motor yachts. From the bow, the pilothouse, which contained the lower helm station, swept back to the main living area. The living area had a facing dinette and galley, and behind them a salon—a living room, as Chris explained to landlubber friends—that stretched the width of the boat’s interior. Further aft, the salon’s rear sliding door opened onto a spacious covered deck. Atop the pilothouse and salon was the bridge deck, where Chris planned to steer at the upper helm during nice weather. Down in Galveston, that was ten months out of the year. Most of the sleeping quarters were below, deep in the hull: two large cabins and two crew cabins.

      She swung up the ladder to the aft deck and dropped her bag on the teak table she’d recently coaxed from weathered and stained back into golden glory. Her first varnish attempt, and it looked pretty darn good. Now if only the rest of her “little projects” would go as well.

      Her heirloom quilt drooped across a pair of deck chairs in the shade, drying after a careful hand wash early that morning. She tested the material between her thumb and forefinger. Yes, nearly dry, the fabric just as fine and solid as the day she and her mother had pulled it from the quilting frame after months of hand stitching. Chris traced the intricate mariner’s compass that emblazoned the exact center like a bull’s-eye. Funny how all things come together, she thought. Never in a million years would she have imagined at the age of eight that she’d live on a boat or drape the mariner’s compass across her stateroom bed or have earned her captain’s license.

      Snagging a bottled water from the minifridge, she settled into a third deck chair and tried not to see visions of her destroyed life jacket, its yellow-white stuffing sticking out like a half-popped kernel of corn. At least her hands had stopped shaking.

      Her cell trilled and she fished it out of her bag with a sigh. The screen flashed UNKNOWN. Probably Natalie, calling from overseas on the never-ending, globe-hopping honeymoon.

      Natalie, perfect granddaughter that she was, had followed their grandfather’s wishes and married a rich businessman. It was like Natalie to do it a mere two months after meeting the guy at the old man’s funeral. There’d been plenty of business acquaintances, but Natalie had latched onto the blond bodybuilder type’s arm and held on with a bulldog persistence that somehow managed to be both feminine and suitably mournful. Predictably, she had failed to introduce him to her sister.

      It was like Natalie to get everything she wanted at the drop of a hat, Chris thought. And she had impeccable timing, too, always knowing when Chris would be home and available to talk.

      “Chris?” echoed hollowly over the connection when she picked up.

      “Hey, Natalie. Where are you this time?”

      Natalie gave a slightly breathless laugh. “Rome! I never thought I’d be here. It’s gorgeous. You’d love it!”

      “Last week France, this week Italy,” Chris said, feeling the accident’s presence fade from the edges of her mind at Natalie’s energetic voice. “Where to next?”

      “Who knows? Jerome always surprises me. Greece, I’m hoping. They’ve got some great bazaars there.”

      “Shoes and designer dresses, right? Scarves and figurines and upholstery fabric? Not that you need to upholster anything,” Chris teased. “You don’t stay in one place long enough. At least you’re out of the Far East.”

      “Hey, we’ll make it back to the States. Eventually. But wait till you see the clothes I’m shipping to you. Don’t you dare wear them to work on that awful boat.”

      Chris grimaced. “Frilly girlie-girl wear.”

      “A more feminine style, yeah.” Natalie laughed again. “Something that shows off your legs, proves you have a waist, attracts men. You know.”

      Chris let her groan signal the end of that bit of conversation. “Tell me about Rome.”

      “You’d love it. Crammed full of smelly little cars and everyone driving too fast. Jerome says he’s never seen chaos on the road like this.”

      “Sounds like Houston,” Chris remarked dryly. “Except the cars are SUVs here. How is Jerome? Still treating you like a queen?”

      “You know how it goes.” Natalie’s voice dropped. “Sometimes the honeymoon’s over even when it’s not.”

      Chris frowned. The strained note in Natalie’s lowered voice was always the first clue that something huge was going on. Had it truly been nothing, she would have laughed it off. “What’s wrong?”

      “It’s okay, really.” A pause, then she said brightly, “Rome is so gorgeous. I’d love for you to see it.”

      Chris hesitated a beat. Natalie typically spoke her mind, no dancing around the subject. Did her avoidance of the question mean she couldn’t talk about it? Was she afraid of something?

      An old protective instinct flared in Chris. “Tell me more.”

      “It’s a place you’d have to see for yourself. In person.”

      Meaning Natalie wanted her to come to Rome?

      The silence was filled only by a rush, like holding a seashell to the ear. Natalie finally said, “This connection is crap. Let me call you another time.”

      The phone died. What the hell? Chris stared at the flashing numbers onscreen for a moment. The connection had been fine, so why had Natalie hung up on her? She put the phone down. With no caller ID, with no number to call, Chris couldn’t call her back.

      Her cell trilled again and Chris snatched it up. “Natalie?”

      “Yeah, it’s me. I had to switch phones, get outside.” Behind her voice, faint road noise: a car engine growling up a hill, tires hissing on wet pavement.

      “What’s going on?”

      “I guess I didn’t really know Jerome when I married him,” Natalie confessed, her voice now at normal volume. “You hear about men changing after they get married, and he’s one of them.”

      “Changing how?” Chris rose from her deck chair, too keyed up to sit.

      “He used to be proud of other men looking at me and making comments, but now…” Natalie sniffed. “At first it was just little things. We’d be at a friend’s party and he’d smart off to another man when the guy said something about how I looked. Just a compliment, nothing out of line. I told Jerome he was being silly. I married him because I wanted to be with him. Period. That would usually settle him down, but then after a while it didn’t.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me about this when it was happening?” Chris asked, trying not to sound accusing.

      “Because it’s a drag. I know you, Chris. You’d just worry about me and it wasn’t that bad.”

      “And now?”

      “It’s worse,” Natalie admitted, her voice quavering a little. “He got into a fight last month, nearly got arrested for punching out the party host. He’d been drinking, which never helps. Now we don’t go to any parties at all. A bunch of his friends who were traveling with us left last week and went off on their own trip.”

      “Is he treating you badly?” Chris paced to the railing, stared unseeing over the boatyard.

      “He won’t let me go anywhere without either him or one of his bodyguards. I have to take a bodyguard with me when I go shopping and the whole time the guy’s watching to make sure no one even looks at me the wrong way. I can’t even go pee without asking his permission.” Natalie sniffed again. “I used to think having a bodyguard would be fun. You know, a status thing. But

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