LITMIR.BIZ

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manage,’ he said dryly.

      ‘Manage?’ Stella snorted again. ‘You can’t go a day without trying to hook up.’

      Rick laughed. ‘I think you’re exaggerating a little.’

      Stella stopped pacing and glared at him. ‘In thirty-six hours you have flirted with every woman who has crossed your path. Diana, the rental-car woman, the airline check-in chicky, the grandmother who ran the refreshment stall at Heathrow, several air stewardesses, the taxi driver, every waitress in the coffee shop today...’

      She ticked off each conquest on a finger. ‘And when we get on that boat tomorrow after about twelve hours you’re going to start in on me because you can’t help yourself,’ she finished a little shrilly.

      Rick blinked. Stel wasn’t usually the nagging, hysterical type so it was either jet lag or PMS. Neither of which he was game to suggest, but he hoped it was the former because that surely couldn’t last more than another day.

      ‘But I always flirt with you.’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

      Stella glared. ‘Why the hell not?’ she demanded, uncaring that she knew. ‘Is there something wrong with me?’

      Rick blinked, not quite able to believe he was having this conversation. ‘That’s not what I meant. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfectly...’ He groped around for a word that was flattering without saying all the things he’d desperately tried not to think about her over the years—curvy, sweet, bootylicious.

      A Nathan-approved word.

      ‘Decent.’

      Decent?

      Good God, she sounded as if she were someone’s homely cousin who was all right at a pinch but was hardly likely to be picked to play spin the bottle at a party. Stella doubted she’d ever felt so underwhelmed in her life.

      ‘Gee, thanks,’ she snapped.

      Rick pushed his hair off his face as he tried to comprehend how this night had gone so rapidly to hell. ‘I don’t understand... Do you...want me to mean it?’ he asked.

      Stella’s breath hitched in her throat at the illicitness of the suggestion. What would that be like? To have all that deliberate blue-eyed charm turned on her? Like when they’d been teenagers and their banter had occasionally wandered into dangerous territory.

      But grown up.

      Diana’s you should have sex with him slithered into her brain and she pushed it away.

      ‘Of course I don’t!’ she said in her very best English-teacher-talking-to-a-student-with-a-crush voice. ‘But I don’t want you flirting with every other woman you come across either. It really is rather tiresome to watch and completely unproductive.’

      Rick cocked an eyebrow. He’d personally never found flirting to be unproductive. But she was obviously accusing him of lack of control. ‘You think I can’t go a few lousy weeks without flirting with a woman?’

      Stella crossed her arms. ‘Oh, I’m sure of it.’

      ‘Is this a dare?’ he asked.

      Stella felt the conversation suddenly shift gears. It should have taken her back to their childhood but the silk in his voice took her to another place entirely.

      A very adult place.

      ‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I dare you. I dare you to go through this whole voyage without flirting with a single woman you meet along the way.’

      Rick grinned, his gaze locking with hers. ‘And what do I get?’ he asked, his voice low.

      The timbre of his voice stroked along all her tired nerve endings as he stared at her with his Vasco eyes.

      What did he want?

      Stella swallowed. ‘Get?’

      Rick held her gaze. ‘If I win?’

      Stella was lost for words for a moment. They’d never played for stakes before. Several inappropriate suggestions rose to mind but she quashed each one. She was too strung out to play games with him. ‘How about my undying gratitude?’ she quipped.

      Rick shook his head slowly, dropping his gaze to her mouth. ‘How about that kiss that we didn’t quite get round to?’

      Stella blinked as the teenage bad-boy looked back at her. It was a tantalising offer. One she knew he didn’t expect her to take. But she’d never been one to back down from a dare and, frankly, the idea was as thrilling as it was illicit.

      She smiled. ‘Deal.’ She held out her hand. He wouldn’t be able to manage it, of course, but if the stakes were...interesting...maybe he’d at least try and comply.

      Their gazes locked and Rick swallowed as he took her hand, cementing the deal.

      Would she taste like coconuts too?

      * * *

      They cast off the next morning at eight o’clock, a good wind aiding their departure. The long-range weather forecast was favourable and Stella was feeling as if her body clock was finally back in sync.

      Of course, she was also really embarrassed by her carry-on last night. She tried to apologise to Rick once they were out of the harbour and heading north.

      ‘Are you trying to welch on the deal?’ Rick teased. ‘Because you know how much I love a challenge.’

      She did. God knew how many times she’d come close to drowning while challenging him to a competition to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest.

      He’d beat her every time.

      Except for that time he’d let her win and she’d been so mad at him he’d promised never to do it again.

      ‘Absolutely not,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I stand by it.’

      ‘Good.’ He grinned. ‘Now go write something.’

      And she did. Sitting in a special chair at the bow of the boat, sun on her shoulders, breeze in her hair, laptop balanced on her knees, she found Lucinda flowed from her fingers onto the page. It was as if she frolicked and danced along the keys, slipping magically between Stella’s fingers, informing every letter, controlling every mouse click.

      The cursor no longer blinked at Stella from a blank page. Instead words, lovely rich words of a bygone era, filled all the white spaces up. When Rick brought her a snack and her hat she realised she’d been writing for two hours solid and the number down the bottom of the page told her she’d written thirteen hundred words.

      Thirteen hundred glorious words.

      The morning flowed into the afternoon; the perfect calm conditions continued. Rick occasionally called to her, pointing out a pod of dolphins or an island in the distance. She got up and stretched regularly and when she was grappling with a scene she’d take the wheel for a while and magically, like tankers on the horizon, the solution appeared.

      By the end of the day she’d written three thousand words and she felt utterly exhilarated. And it wasn’t all about the writing.

      She’d forgotten how elemental sailing made a person feel. How it connected you to the earth on such a primitive level. How the feel of the waves beneath your feet and the push and pull of the tide drew you into the circadian rhythm of the planet.

      How it connected her to her father.

      She’d missed Nathan terribly the last six months, but out here he was everywhere. Every turn of the wheel, every flap of the sail, every pitch and roll of the hull.

      They anchored just before sundown in the middle of nowhere. Just her and Rick bobbing in the middle of an enormous ocean beneath a giant dome blushing velvet and dappled with tangerine clouds.

      Rick grilled steaks this time and Stella was pleased she’d kept a serving out of the freezer. She loved

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