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‘Honey, I can be whatever you want me to be,’ he said, pushing off the door jamb, brushing past Stella and extending his hand. ‘Hi. Rick. I think we’ve already met?’
Diana smiled as she shook his hand. ‘Yes. When you were here for the funeral. Diana,’ she supplied.
‘Ah, yes, that’s right,’ Rick said, stalling a little. He’d been so caught up in his shock and disbelief and being strong for Stella and Linda that he’d not really taken anything in. ‘You work for Stel’s publishers?’
Diana grinned, her eyes twinkling, not remotely insulted that Rick had struggled to remember her. ‘Took you a while.’
Stella watched her bestie and her...whatever the hell Rick was—old family friend? deceased father’s business partner? substitute brother?—flirt effortlessly. Now why couldn’t she be more like that? The only time she’d been comfortable, truly comfortable, with a man had been with a fictional pirate.
Even her relationship with Dale had been lukewarm by comparison.
A blast of rain spattered against her neck, bringing her out of her state of bewilderment, and she realised she still had the door wide open. She shook her head at her absent-mindedness.
‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ she asked, shutting the weather out and joining the chatty twosome in the centre of the room.
Rick looked down at Stella’s cute little button nose. ‘Well—’ he winked at her before returning his attention to Diana and running his finger around the rim of her glass ‘—I heard a whisper there was a party going on.’
Diana laughed. She looked at Stella. ‘You never told me he had ESP.’ Then she scurried to the kitchen to get another glass.
Rick watched her for a moment before returning his gaze to Stella. She stared up at him and the familiar feeling of wanting to wrap her up swelled in his chest. ‘How are you doing, Stel?’ he murmured.
Rick had felt the loss of Nathan Mills probably even more profoundly than his own father. Nathan had been his guardian and mentor since Anthony Granville had got himself killed in a bar fight when Rick had been seven. The man had been the closest thing to a father he had, had curbed all his hot-headed brashness and he felt his loss in a hundred different ways every day.
He could only imagine how Stella must feel.
Stella shrugged, feeling again the mutual despair that had added an extra depth to their bond. She fell into the empathy that shone in his luminescent gaze. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile the impulsive, teenage bad-boy of her fantasies with the hardworking, responsible, compassionate man in front of her.
‘I hate it,’ she whispered.
The truth was Stella hadn’t seen her father regularly since she’d started university and joined the workforce.
Become a grown-up, as her mother would say.
A flying visit at Christmas, the arrival in the mail of a single perfect shell he’d found on a beach somewhere that always made her smile, an occasional email with pictures of him and Rick and some amazing find at the bottom of a sea bed.
But just knowing he was out there doing what he loved, following his wild boyhood dreams of sunken galleons, had kept her whole world in balance.
And now he was gone, nothing was the same.
‘I know,’ he murmured, putting his arm around her shoulder and pulling her into his chest. ‘I hate it too.’
And he did. He hated doing what he did without the one person who truly understood why by his side. He hated turning to tell Nathan something and him not being there. He hated the absence of wise words and Nathan’s particular brand of bawdy humour around the dinner table.
Rick shut his eyes against the loss he still felt so acutely and sank into her, enjoying the familiarity of having her close. He liked how she tucked into him just right. How her head fitted perfectly under his chin and how his chest was just the right height to pillow her cheek and how she always smelled liked coconut.
As kids he’d been the pirate and she’d been the mermaid and they’d played endless games revolving around sunken treasure. Not very politically correct these days, he supposed, but they’d amused themselves for countless hours and forged a bond that he still felt today.
Of course there’d been times, during their teenage years, when their games had taken a certain risqué turn and while they’d never indulged, they’d diced pretty close.
Holding her like this reminded him just how close.
‘Okay, okay, you two,’ Diana teased, pushing a glass of red wine into Rick’s hand. ‘No maudlin tonight. That’s the rule. Eat, drink and be merry tonight.’
Rick forced himself to step away, grateful that Diana was here to ground them in the present. He’d thought a lot about Stella since Nathan had died, more than usual.
And not all of those thoughts had been pure.
He accepted the wine. ‘Good plan,’ he said, clinking glasses with them both.
Stella indicated the lounge chairs huddled around the fireplace and watched as Rick shrugged out of his navy duffle coat to reveal well-worn jeans that clung in all the right places and a thick turtle-neck, cable-knit sweater.
Even off the boat the man looked as if he belonged at sea.
Diana lounged back against the cushions, inspecting him dispassionately, her wine goggles making the job a little difficult. She pointed at him over the rim of her glass.
‘There’s something familiar about you,’ she slurred.
Stella didn’t like the look of speculation on her friend’s face. She’d seen that dogged look before and didn’t want to give Diana too much latitude.
‘Yes, you met him at the funeral,’ she said, hopefully redirecting her friend’s thoughts that tended to fancy after several glasses of red.
Diana narrowed her eyes. ‘Nope,’ she said as she shook her head. ‘I have this feeling I know you beyond that.’ Even at the funeral all suited and polished he’d looked vaguely familiar to her but now, looking all lone-wolf-of-the-sea, there was definitely something she recognised about him.
Was it his eyes? Or maybe his hair?
Rick chuckled. ‘Maybe I look like your great uncle Cyril?’
Diana burst out laughing as she sipped on her drink and Stella even envied her that. She had a jingly laugh that sounded like Tinkerbell waving her magic wand. Stella had no doubt that red wine would be pouring out of her nose had she tried that same manoeuvre.
Diana wagged her finger. ‘Good try but you don’t look like anyone’s great uncle Cyril.’ She narrowed her eyes again and nudged the side of her nose three times with her index finger. ‘Don’t you worry. I will remember. I may just need—’ she looked at her almost empty wine glass ‘—a while.’
Rick saluted. ‘I look forward to the final outcome.’
Diana nodded. ‘As well you should.’
Rick looked over at Stella sitting quietly watching the byplay. The firelight spun the escaping tendrils of her long blonde hair into golden streams and he was once again reminded of their childhood games when she’d been the mermaid singing his ship onto the rocks. How many times had he snorkelled over reefs with her, her long blonde hair flowing behind her just like the mermaids from ancient mythology?
‘So,’ he said when the silence had stretched enough. ‘Did you get it?’
Stella frowned at him. ‘Get what?’
‘Your half.’
‘My half of what?’
Rick grinned.