Книга - Stryker’s Wife

Stryker's Wife
Dixie Browning


MAN OF THE MONTH TALL, DARK AND HANDSOMEMR. NOVEMBERReluctant Bachelor: Kurt Stryker didn't want to marry, but he sure needed a wife! Unsuspecting Bride: Sweet, sexy Debranne Kiley. The proposal: Gulp! Rugged Kurt Stryker wasn't a man of many words, but he did have one heck of a hot desire for Debranne Kiley. So when he needed a wife to keep custody of the boy in his care, he started practicing his "I do."Problem was, whenever he had Debranne in his arms, he couldn't get the proposal past his lips! Now this sweet, loving woman had him longing to say three little words he'd never planned on uttering again… .MAN OF THE MONTH: He has to pop the question - one of these days…









Table of Contents


Cover Page (#ub12ca479-f5b5-58ef-9522-313cbdac3f9d)

Excerpt (#u360b60cd-8cb1-5d1d-ba41-cc32fbc4c91f)

Dearreader (#ueadbdd5e-43cc-597e-84ed-c6e46873477b)

Title Page (#u36d2289b-403d-5390-b0a0-80581b0fcb3c)

About the Auther (#u9160effa-ed77-5abd-9dee-0df3e4437e5b)

One (#u58035b96-fb1f-5bb6-ba7d-dd7d9be4d45a)

Two (#ube027db6-9486-5546-b48a-ebda90d16fc1)

Three (#u974aca98-f2cf-59b7-a4a0-a1de67992920)

Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)




“Debranne, I’ve Got A Proposition For You….”


No, dammit, not a proposition, a proposal! Kurt scowled at his reflection in the mirror, one side of his face covered with lather, as he tried to compose a brief, carefully worded proposal of marriage that could not possibly be construed as a declaration of love.

He had decided that genuine liking mixed with a hefty dose of lust was not too bad a basis for a marriage. Especially considering the fact that so many marriages based on undying love ended up on the rocks.



Right. So he would start by pointing out that fact, and then he would say, “So you see, we’re not talking romance here. All I’m looking for is a simple, straightforward, mutually beneficial agreement.”



The shower droned on, the mirror steamed up. Kurt swore and cleared a patch with his forearm. “Jeez,” he muttered. “How could any woman in her right mind refuse a proposal like that?”






Three very different sexy bachelors say “I do!” You met the tall one in Alex and the Angel (September 1995), the dark one in The Beauty, the Beast and the Baby (March 1996); now meet the handsome one!


Dear Reader,



The holidays are always a busy time of year, and this year is no exception! Our “banquet table” is chock-full of delectable stories by some of your favorite authors.



November is a time to come home again—and come back to the miniseries you love. Dixie Browning continues her TALL, DARK AND HANDSOME series with Stryker’s Wife, which is Dixie’s 60th book! This MAN OF THE MONTH is a reluctant bachelor you won’t be able to resist! Fall in love with a footloose cowboy in Cowboy Pride, book five of Anne McAllister’s CODE OF THE WEST series. Be enthralled by Abbie and the Cowboy—the conclusion to the THREE WEDDINGS AND A GIFT miniseries by Cathie Linz,

And what would the season be without HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS? You won’t want to miss the second book in this cross-line continuity series by reader favorites Merline Lovelace and Carole Buck. This month, it’s a delightful wedding mix-up with Wrong Bride, Right Groom by Merline Lovelace.

And that’s not all! In Roared Flint is a secret baby tale by RITA Award winner Jan Hudson. And Pamela Ingrahm has created an adorable opposites-attract story in The Bride Wore Tie-Dye.

So, grab a book and give yourself a treat in the middle of all the holiday rushing. You’ll be glad you did.

Happy reading!






Senior Editor

and the editors of Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3




Stryker’s Wife

Dixie Browning







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


DIXIE BROWNING

is celebrating her sixtieth book for Silhouette since 1980 with the publication of Stryker’s Wife. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America, a member of Novelists, Inc., Browning has won numerous awards for her work. She divides her time between Winston-Salem and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.




One (#ulink_56597686-0207-5059-a18d-558abf55cea0)


Inhaling the familiar aroma of salt, diesel fuel and fish, Kurt Stryker tilted the fighting chair, propped his feet on the transom of his charter boat, the R&R, and sipped his first beer of the day. Life, on the whole, was good, he decided. Idly, he watched through a forest of masts and outriggers as the sun slipped slowly beneath the surface of the Atlantic.

“How many o’ them things have you had?” his young mate demanded from the pier, having just arrived with their evening meal. “There’s coffee in the pot if you want sump’n to drink.”

“One. This is it.” Kurt held up the brown bottle.

A skeptical look on his freckled face, Frog boarded the boat carrying a paper sack of burgers and fries and a king-size cola. Kurt silently cursed the drunken bastard who had spawned the kid and dragged him all over the country, leaving him with more than his share of scars. Kurt knew about scars. He had already dealt with his own, but then, his were mostly the visible kind. Frog’s were the kind that had to be found before they could be healed.

“Did you pick up the mail?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

The boy shrugged his bony shoulders. “Usual stuff.”

Which meant bills. At fourteen, Frog Smith could barely read. Kurt had enrolled him in the local school, much to the boy’s disgust. In their spare time, between charters and maintenance work, he tutored him in reading, math, navigation and survival skills.

Frog had already mastered a few survival skills that Kurt, after years of flying search-and-rescue missions for the U.S. Coast Guard, had never even considered. Their relationship had progressed over the past two years from combativeness through wariness to a mutual respect. And perhaps something more, at least on Kurt’s part.

Frog handed over a few rumpled envelopes, and Kurt quickly scanned the return addresses. “Jones’s Hardware. That’ll be the paint.” The R&R was one of the few remaining wooden charter boats along this section of the North Carolina coast. He’d bought her for a song and spent a fortune bringing her up to standard. In a year or so, he might spend another fortune on a first-class fiberglass job.

Then again, he might not. Wood was good. Classic, you might say.

He examined another envelope but didn’t bother to open it. Pierce’s Electronic Repair. “This one’s going to bust the bank,” he muttered. It took more than a compass, a flare and a few life jackets to operate legally these days.

“We broke?” There was anxiety in the boy’s voice.

“Nah, we’re not broke, but we’re going to have to hustle if we plan to buy that house out on Oyster Point.”

“Hey, who needs a house? We got us a place to live.”

“We need a house, that’s who. Anywhere else, we wouldn’t get away with living aboard the R&R. There’s rules—”

“Ah—rules is for fools,” Frog said dismissively.

Shaking his head, Kurt quickly scanned the rest of the mail. No cancellations. Thank the Lord for small favors. The season was winding down. Barring storms, he still had five more charters on the book, but he was determined to make it through an entire season in the black before dipping into his retirement fund for a house that was in even worse shape than the boat had been when he’d bought it.

Actually, his first season as captain of his own boat had been pretty successful so far. He liked to think it was because he was damned good at what he did, but it probably had more to do with the fact that his rates were the cheapest along this section of the coast. The R&R was hardly a luxury yacht. Bottom-of-the-line carpet to cover the hatches. Ditto the plumbing fixtures. But she had a pair of dependable Detroit diesels and a hull that had been designed specifically for the waters around the Outer Banks.

“Three burgers? Who’s the third one for?” Kurt asked as Frog ripped into the sack.

“Hey, I’m a growing kid, awright?”

“I told you you need milk with your meals, not all those colas.”

“I ain’t growing all that much.” The towheaded teenager bit off a third of his first cheeseburger.

“Done your homework yet?” Kurt asked after awhile.

“Aww, man—you’re worse’n Pa ever was.”

Kurt doubted that. From what he’d been able to put together from the locals and a few of Frog’s remarks, the boy’s parents had migrated from somewhere out west doing odd jobs and knocking over the occasional convenience store. The mother had dropped out of sight several years ago. Nobody knew where she was. Frog and his old man had wound up at Swan Inlet, where that gentleman had found temporary work driving a fish truck. When he’d been sober enough. He’d been headed north with a load of gray trout when he’d tried to beat a fast freight train to a crossing. It was discovered during the cleanup of the ensuing wreckage that fish wasn’t all he’d been transporting.

Frog had already gone to earth by the time the first social worker had come sniffing around. It had been generally assumed that he’d moved on, and that was the end of that. Three weeks later, when he was caught shoplifting food at a neighborhood supermarket, one of the locals had offered him a room and a job. The boy had declined. Claimed he was seventeen, used to being on his own.

He was fourteen. His voice was still in the process of changing. He’d been bunking aboard a dry-docked commercial fishing boat and doing odd jobs around the marina when Kurt had bought the boat right out from under him, so to speak, and had more or less inherited the kid. They were a team now. A pretty good one, although Frog didn’t always agree with that assessment.

“Homework,” Kurt reminded him now.

“Hell, man, you told me yourself you never got no degree. What’s the big deal?”

“Didn’t get a degree, not never got no. Don’t swear, and we’re talking high school diploma now. A diploma is a big deal. We’ll talk about your degree later.”

“If I’m still around,” Frog muttered.

“You’ll be around.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Who else is going to keep me on course? One beer, no smokes and no fast women?” Kurt grinned. Slipping off his eye patch, he scratched his head where the tapes tied in back. “A man’s gotta have someone he can count on when the chips are down.”

Frog nodded sagely. “A guy to watch his back and see don’t nobody break no bottle over his head.”

Kurt didn’t bother to correct his grammar. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Right now he was more concerned with teaching the boy trust, responsibility and the advantages of a basic education. “You got it, kid.” He held up a palm. Frog high-fived him just as a woman emerged from the fifty-five-footer on the other side of the finger pier and sent him a speculative look.

“Captain Stryker, isn’t it? You took out that fishing party from Kinston? I heard you guys when you went out this morning. I was still in bed.”

“Sorry if we disturbed your sleep, ma’am.”

“Ma’am. That’s cute. And Captain—you can disturb my sleep any old time.” She smiled. She had a pretty smile. At least most people would call it pretty. For some reason, it made Kurt nervous.

“Shark off the port beam,” Frog mumbled under his breath. He was grinning from ear to ear. One of his chief sources of amusement since they had teamed up had been watching women’s reactions to Kurt and Kurt’s reaction to women.

“Ever do any moonlight cruises?” the woman inquired, her voice laced with all sorts of possibilities.

Frog covered a snort of laughter with a grimy hand. Ignoring him, Kurt concentrated on not staring at the woman’s sagging halter. What was inside it wasn’t sagging. Not at all.

“Er, ah…” He cleared his throat.

“I’ve heard it can be awfully nice offshore on a calm night.”

“Long’s you wear plenny o’ clothes. Them vampire skeeters’ll be all over you the minute the wind drops off,” Frog put in with a knowing snicker.

“Stow it,” Kurt growled quietly. He had no intention of taking the woman up on whatever it was she was hinting at. Nevertheless, it was the captain’s decision to make, not his mate’s.

And the captain was single, dammit. He was male. He might be an aging, one-eyed gimp with a lousy track record where women were concerned, but that didn’t mean he was out of the race. Not by a long shot. If he wanted a woman, he would damn well have one. And regardless of what he’d said earlier, he didn’t need any smart-mouth kid to run interference for him.

She kept looking at him. Kurt was used to having women look at him. His nickname in college had been Handsome. Which had embarrassed the hell out of him, even more than the stuttering that had made his life miserable all through grade school.

Which was one of the reasons he was still somewhat socially retarded. His two best friends back in high school, Gus and Alex, had teased him about being shy. Their girlfriends had thought he was cute.

Cute! Judas priest. That was even worse than being shy!

He’d been a damn good football player in his high school and college days, though, which had probably accounted for his popularity with women. There was sure as hell nothing out of the ordinary about dark blond hair, gray eyes and his father’s square jaw and blunt nose.

After he’d dropped out of college and joined the Coast Guard, the uniform had only seemed to add to the attraction. Unfortunately, it had been too late to do him much good. The woman he’d been in love with at the time had preferred Alex’s money to Kurt’s good looks or Gus’s rough charm.

Dina. All three of them had been in love with her. She’d chosen Alex, and eventually, Kurt and Gus had gotten over her.

At least, Kurt had. Since then he’d gotten over a number of lesser attractions before getting involved seriously again. Then, ironically, it had been his lack of looks that had done him in. He’d still been pretty much of a physical wreck when Evelyn had left him leaning on his crutch at the altar.

Idly, he wondered what Dina and Evelyn would have made of a dinky little no-stoplight fishing village like Swan Inlet.

What would they have made of Frog? A homely kid who was all long, skinny limbs, big feet and tough talk.

He couldn’t picture either one of them being content to live aboard a reconstituted commercial fishing boat with no Jacuzzi, no maid service—not even a CD player. The whole idea struck him as amusing and just a bit sad.

So, okay. Maybe he would go ahead and start the process of buying that house. He had a family now—or as much of a family as he was ever apt to have. After nearly twenty years of pulling up stakes every three years, moving from base to base—from Carolina to California, from Hawaii to Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands—he was more than ready to settle down.

“Captain Stryker? I’m pretty much at loose ends almost every evening,” the woman in the loose halter said, her voice a husky invitation.

Kurt shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, ma’am. The thing is, I’m…uh, booked up pretty solid.”

Frog smirked.

The woman sniffed.

Kurt pretended an intense interest in the rumpled statement from Pierce’s Electronic Service.

Overhead, a gull flapped past with a finger mullet in his bill. Something hit the water not two feet abaft the port beam. It wasn’t the finger mullet.

“Splotch alert,” Frog quipped.

Kurt decided the boy’s vocabulary had improved, even if his grammar hadn’t. “Thanks, mate. We’re covered, but maybe you’d better pass the word.”

Kurt glanced up at the overhang from the flying bridge that covered a portion of the cockpit. They grinned at each other. Frog nodded toward the woman in the white shorts and halter, who was stroking her legs with after-sun lotion, her gaze straying frequently toward Kurt.

“Bet that stuff she’s rubbin’ on ‘er ain’t gullproof.”

When Kurt didn’t reply, Frog noisily finished his drink and dumped the ice overboard. “Know why she keeps looking at you?”

“No, but I expect you’re going to tell me.”

“It’s that eye patch. Makes you look like a pirate. Women like pirates.”

“Oh, yeah? How would you know what women like?” They’d talked about women before. Mostly warnings on Kurt’s part and bragging on Frog’s.

The boy shrugged. “I notice stuff like that. What about tomorrow, you gonna let me go out?”

“That’s a negative.” They had talked about this subject, too. No weekday charters during school months. It was still a sore spot between them, because in season, Frog’s tips could run anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a trip, depending on the length of the charter, the number of fish caught and the size and generosity of the party. Kurt had insisted on starting a savings account for him, much to the boy’s disgust.

“How you gonna run the boat and wait on fishermen? You need me, man.”

“What I need is a partner who can read a chart, lay out a course and follow it. What I need—”

“Awright, awright! So maybe I’ll just shove off and try my luck somewheres else where I don’t have to learn all that crap.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to leave. Kurt could only hope he didn’t mean it. He had no hold on the boy. No legal hold. “Anyhow,” Kurt said, “this Kiley fellow’s not a fisherman, he’s a photographer. No hooks to be baited.”

“So who’s gonna put film in his camera and hand over his fancy bottled water when he wants a swig?”

“Nice try, kid.” Kurt chuckled. Another crisis avoided. “Now go below and get started on your homework. I’ll be down directly to check you out.”



It had taken two years, but Debranne Eliza Ellen Kingsly Kiley, called Deke by most of her friends, was on her way. Finally!

“Funeral, here I come,” she muttered, and was mildly shocked by her own irreverence.

Her husband’s first funeral had been a circus. His brother had planned it with no input at all from her. Not that she’d been up to it at the time. She’d still been in shock.

Once she’d been able to think again, she had thought about having her own private memorial on the first anniversary of the occasion, but when the time had come she’d been sick with stomach flu that had dragged on for weeks, so she’d postponed her plans for another year. A year and six weeks wouldn’t do. Deke was cursed with an orderly mind, which meant that anniversaries came annually, not any old time it was convenient.

So now it was the second anniversary, and she was in perfect health. This time, she was determined to see it through. The champagne alone had cost nearly a week’s rent, but it was Mark’s favorite kind. While she was at it she had splurged on a pair of beautiful, brand-new crystal champagne glasses, too, because Mark had also appreciated fine crystal.

The leis had been even harder to find than the champagne, but as they had honeymooned in Hawaii, leis had seemed a fitting floral tribute.

So now she was on her way. She refused to think about those nasty whispers she had overheard a few weeks after Mark’s death, about his wandering eye. He’d been too busy building an empire for any extracurricular hanky-panky.

Goodness, he’d hardly had time for his own wife, and they’d still been in the honeymoon stage.

To clear her mind of unworthy thoughts, Deke went over her checklist. She had been taught early and well that orderliness was right up there alongside cleanliness, which was right next door to godliness. “Camera case, notebook, overnight bag—check! Champagne, glasses, leis—check!”

And then she moved on to her next list. Lights off, stove off, windows locked, door locked. Done, done, done and done.

Orphaned at the age of thirteen, Deke Kingsly Kiley could barely remember her father, who had died when she was five, but she’d never felt a lack of love. She’d been brought up by a mother who found life rather overwhelming, and by three elderly women whose notion of propriety had been formed during the Coolidge administration. She had loved them all dearly, and they had loved her right back. Although she had to admit that none of them had left her particularly well prepared for life as a single woman in the nineties. The nineteen nineties, that is.

Still, she’d made it. She was doing just fine, thank you. She had two published books to her credit, another one under contract, a part-time job at a day-care center and another one at Biddy’s Birdery, feeding baby birds and cleaning cages.

Not to mention one brief marriage.

Three and a half years ago she had married a handsome, highly successful businessman from nearby Norfolk. Mark Kiley had owned the shopping mall where she’d been signing her first book. He’d seen her there and stopped by to ask how it was going, and one thing had led to another. A week later, on their third date, he told her that her serenity and her quaint, old-fashioned beauty had knocked him clean off his pins.

Two weeks later they’d been married.

Her great-aunts had been horrified. A year’s engagement was de rigeur, Aunt Ellen had insisted. Anything less was hardly even decent, according to Aunt Eliza.

If Granna Anne hadn’t passed away the previous spring, Deke might never have been allowed to marry, because Anne Kingsly had been nobody’s pushover. Of all the Kingsly women—Deke’s mother, Deborah, her grandmother, Anne, and her two great-aunts, Eliza and Ellen, Granna Anne had been the only one with any backbone at all. Deke liked to think she had inherited it, but there were times when she wondered, she truly did.

Hers had been a storybook romance. Unfortunately, it hadn’t had a storybook ending. No happily ever after. She’d been so sure that once her family got to know Mark they would love him as much as she did, only there hadn’t been time. First Great-aunt Ellen had died, and then, in less than a year, Great-aunt Eliza had died. Mark had been too busy overseeing a huge development off the coast of South Carolina to help Deke deal with her grief. Not to mention dealing with all the legal red tape of a joint will that had been written before Deke had even been born.

She had begged Mark to help her. He’d promised to look into it just as soon as he could spare a minute. He was always incredibly busy, but then, one of the things that had attracted her in the first place had been his ambition. His aggressiveness. It had been enormously appealing to a woman who’d been trained from the cradle to be pretty, polite and passive.

It had been shortly after that that she’d seen the advertisement for a mail-order course in self-empowerment and assertiveness. If she hadn’t been so worried about her marriage—the gloss seemed to have gone off rather quickly—and overwhelmed by all the legal hocus-pocus she was hearing from her great-aunt’s executor—not to mention her concerns about her second book, which wasn’t coming along as it should…

If it hadn’t been for all that, she never would have sent off for the blasted thing.

Not that it had helped much. When it worked at all it was in fits and spurts, usually when she least expected it. She still blamed Lesson Two for what happened when she’d asked Mark if they could please start a family. Empowerment is the birthright of every woman, the first paragraph had stated. It is important to express your needs in unequivocal language.

So she had. An only child, Deke had desperately wanted babies of her own. She’d said so.

Mark had laughed. He’d told her she was child enough for him, and that it was about time she grew up because she was beginning to bore him with her childish demands.

That had hurt her feelings. With all the dignity and empowerment she could summon, she had asked why he had married her if he hadn’t wanted a family.

“Why? God knows. Maybe because you were a virgin and that’s a pretty rare commodity in this day and age.”

“You couldn’t possibly have known that—not then, at least.”

“Ah, come on, honey, you were practically advertising the fact. The way you dressed—the way you talked—even the way you sat there, with your knees together and your feet flat on the floor, like you were scared to death a fly would buzz up your petticoat.”

It wasn’t true. None of it. Oh, it was true enough that she’d been a virgin, but she’d been wearing a sophisticated new outfit, a new hairstyle and a new shade of lipstick in honor of her very first autographing when they’d met.

Besides, things like that didn’t show…did they? “I don’t believe you,” she’d said flatly.

Mark had sneered. There was no other way to describe it. “You were a novelty, darling, but let’s face it—novelties wear off, so be a good little girl and get off my back, will you?”

That was when the mail-order course had kicked in. She’d thrown a vase of roses at him. A Steuben vase. It had been a wedding gift, and Mark had known to the penny how much it had cost, which she’d thought rather crass at the time, but of course, by then, her training had quit cold on her, so she hadn’t told him so.

Never go to bed angry. That, along with that business about turning the other cheek, was one of her great-aunts’ favorite sayings.

So Mark had slammed out, and Deke had waited up, unable to sleep until she had apologized and smoothed things over between them.

He hadn’t come home at all. The next day his partner had called to tell her that Mark had gone out of town on another business trip and wouldn’t be home until the following Tuesday.

Still furious, hurt and determined to get over both, she had applied herself to packing away her great-aunts’ clothing to give to the church’s Helping Hand Society.

And then word came that Mark had been killed in a plane crash.

Deke had run the gamut of emotions. Remorse, regret, anger, denial, grief—although not necessarily in that order. Suddenly, she’d found herself completely alone, without family and dangerously short on resources. In the midst of all that, poor old Mr. Hardcastle, her own family lawyer, had come to inform her that he had finally finished settling her great-aunts’ convoluted estate, and that, my how he wished he had insisted they update their will, but then, the Misses Ellen and Eliza had been a law unto themselves, hadn’t they?

The Kingsly home place, where Deke and her father and his entire family had grown up, was now the property of a distant cousin from Cleveland, who intended to put it on the market immediately because he needed the money.

The furniture was to be auctioned off, all except for one or two personal bequests.

On the heels of dealing with all that had come the news that the house she had shared with Mark had been leased in the name of the jointly owned development firm, of which Mark’s older brother, Hammond, was not only the legal counsel, but senior partner and major shareholder.

Deke had blamed herself for not becoming more informed while there’d still been time. She had blamed that darn course in self-assertiveness for letting her down and for her last quarrel with Mark. She still felt guilty over that. It was the last time she had ever seen him.

However, having no other choice, she had picked up the pieces and got on with her life. Not particularly gracefully, but at least she’d managed to deal with things as they came.

And boy, had they come! The minute word of Mark’s death got out, people she had never even met had swarmed all over her, taking over, talking over her head, going though things, shoving papers under her nose for her to sign. Hammond, who might have been more supportive, had been among the worst.

After all three estates had been finally settled with all the whereases and heretofores and bequeathings—goodness, the process took forever!—Deke had ended up with her husband’s camera and his last name, and her grandmother’s parlor organ, which was seven feet tall and weighed a ton.

Not that she could play a note, because she couldn’t. And even if she could, the bellows wheezed, but all the same, she appreciated the sentiment.

By then, of course, she had been informed that although state law allowed the widow a portion of her late husband’s assets, when those assets were corporate assets, and the corporation was privately held by a partner who was not only a lawyer but a relative, and when her late husband had allowed his life insurance to lapse rather than pay the premiums that had increased dramatically when it was discovered that both his blood pressure and his cholesterol levels were in the stratosphere—why, then, there was really nothing much the state could do.

Deke hadn’t pushed. She’d still been feeling guilty on too many counts, including the fact that once the initial shock had worn off, she’d been more angry than grieved.

It had been the most hectic period in her life, what with everything piling on at once. Tomorrow would be the second anniversary of the day Mark’s plane had gone down off a place called Swan Inlet, killing him and the secretary who’d been traveling with him. The time had come to bid a proper farewell to her late husband and get on with the rest of her life.

Unfortunately, it was easier said than done.

She scanned the two-lane highway ahead for a gas station. Her car was a guzzler, which was probably why it had been so cheap. She blamed her great-aunts for not teaching her such practical things as how to deal with bankers and lawyers and nosy reporters. She blamed Mark for not teaching her practical things like how to shop for a reliable secondhand car. And she blamed herself for trying to blame others for her own shortcomings.

Maybe she should shop for a mail-order course for handling guilt.

It was late in the afternoon by the time she checked into Swan Inlet’s one and only motel. Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the costlier chains. This entire project was beginning to erode her meager savings rather badly.

Before setting out to locate Captain Stryker and his boat, to make sure that everything was on schedule, she washed her face and brushed her straight, shoulder-length hair, tying it back with a narrow black ribbon. Not for the first time she wished she’d been born with black hair. Or red, or platinum blond. Anything but plain old brown. The next time she broke out in a rash of self-assertiveness, she just might march down to Suzzi’s Beauty Boutique and get it cut, bleached and frizzed to a fare-thee-well before she came to her senses.



Kurt was on the flying bridge hanging out laundry because the marina’s dryer was on the blink again when a woman pulled up in a spray of gravel. He noticed her right off because her car obviously needed a ring job. And then he noticed her because of the way she was dressed. Most women around these parts dressed pretty casually. It was that kind of place.

This one was wearing a dress. Not just any dress, but a floaty, flower-printed thing with a lace collar. The kind of dress he could picture his mother wearing to teach Sunday school back when he was a kid.

She had a plain face. Not homely, just plain.

Although she couldn’t be much more than five feet tall, there was nothing at all plain about her body.

She picked her way carefully out along the finger pier, dodging the clutter of lines, buckets and shoes. And the cracks. She was wearing high heels.

“Excuse me, sir, but do you know where I can find a Captain Stryker?”

“You found him.” Kurt dropped the pair of briefs he’d been about to pin to the line and waited. She smiled then, and he decided maybe she wasn’t so plain, after all.

“Oh. Well, I’m Deke Kiley. Debranne Kiley? I wrote you—I sent a check? For tomorrow?”

From the hatch just behind him, Frog said softly, “I thought you said you was taking out some camera guy tomorrow.”

Deke Kiley. D.E.E. Kiley. That had been the name on the check. The stationery had been plain. No letterhead. If she was a Deke, then he was a blooming hibiscus. “Yeah, I got it. You’re on.” And under his breath, he said, “Pipe down, pea brain. She’s a paying customer.”

“Yes, well…I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” the woman called out in a soft little voice that reminded him of something from the distant past. “I just wanted to be sure which boat was yours,” she went on. “Eight o’clock, is that all right?”

Kurt nodded. It wasn’t all right, but it would have to do. A charter was a charter, and if some lace-trimmed lady photographer wanted to snap pictures of dolphins, he reckoned her money was as green as anyone else’s.

“Hey!” he yelled after her. She stopped and swiveled around and he remembered what it was she reminded him of. The ballerina on a tinkling little music box that used to sit on his mama’s dressing table. “Wear sneakers tomorrow, okay?”

She smiled and nodded, and Kurt watched her swish her shapely little behind down the wharf, climb into a yellow clunker about the size of an aircraft carrier and drive off.

Semper paratus, man. The Coast Guard’s motto was Always Prepared. Kurt had a feeling he just might not be prepared for this one.




Two (#ulink_bba6fa24-bf10-551e-905d-d961104ff545)


The widow wore black. Black slacks and a black silk blouse, bought especially for the occasion. She also wore a faded yellow sweatshirt because it had turned cooler than expected. Her shoes were red high tops, which weren’t exactly proper funeral attire, but she wore them anyway because Captain Stryker had said to. And Deke, while she was no great sailor—had never been on a boat in her life, in fact—was savvy enough to know that a boat was no place for high heels.

She was heading out to the pier carrying the basket, her purse and her camera bag when a lanky, freckle-faced boy emerged from Captain Stryker’s boat and hurried to meet her.

“Gimme that,” he said, and she wondered fleetingly if he was robbing her. “Watch yer step—there’s ropes and stuff.”

Deke let him take the basket. He would hardly be warning her of hazards if he was planning on mugging her. Any mugger worth his salt would have grabbed her purse and camera case first. The camera alone was worth a couple of thousand dollars. It had belonged to Mark. It was one of the two things he had left her, which was just fine, because she hadn’t married him for his money.

Three things, if you counted a nagging sense of disappointment.

The boy handed her down into the boat with an old-world courtliness that Deke found oddly touching.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He flashed her a grin and leapt onto the pier. “Gotta run,” he said just as someone spoke from behind her.

“Miss that school bus, boy, and you’re road kill.”

“Aye, sir!”

Turning, Deke encountered the man she had seen only from a distance the day before. Tall, tanned, lean and blond, he would have been the handsomest man in captivity without the eye patch. With it, he was quite simply devastating. And not entirely because, as a writer of children’s adventure stories, she was partial to pirates.

“Captain Stryker?”

Kurt nodded. “Ms. Kiley.”

“I’m early.”

“A few minutes.”

The words meant nothing. Kurt sized up his passenger. She was tiny. Looked as if a stiff breeze could capsize her. Good thing he didn’t charge by the pound.

Still, a charter was a charter. Every one added a few more bucks to the house fund. In case the child welfare people wanted to make a federal case about his casual arrangement with the boy, he needed to get them off the R&R and settled in a real house as soon as possible. That ought to weigh in his favor.

“I’ll set your gear below,” he offered, reaching for the basket, from which the neck of a dark green bottle protruded. “You didn’t have to bring your own rations. Sandwiches and drinks are included in the price of the charter.”

She murmured something he didn’t quite catch, mainly because he was too busy checking her out. Yesterday he’d thought she was plain. Just went to show you the dangers of making snap judgments. She was plain the way a sunrise over a frozen bay was plain.

He settled her in one of the three fighting chairs bolted to the deck and headed topside. Frog had cast off before he’d jogged out to meet the school bus. “You need any sunscreen?” he called down over the muffled throb of the wet exhaust.

She twisted around and glanced up at the flying bridge. She had a nice smile. Simple, uncomplicated. She was probably a nice woman, he thought as he eased out into the harbor. Attractive, nice…and already spoken for, if the plain gold band on her third finger, left hand, was anything to go by.

Not that he was interested.

They were well beyond the breakwater, headed for open sea, when he sensed her presence on the ladder behind him. Some passengers weren’t content to stay put and let him get on with his job. That was where Frog came in. For a streetwise kid who was, in the parlance, “known to the authorities” in several states, he was surprisingly good with people.

Kurt wasn’t. He hoped she hadn’t followed him topside looking for conversation.

She was hanging on to the ladder, her eyes wide, her face a little too pale. “Do you know the place where that plane went down a couple of years ago?” She had to raise her voice over the sound of the engines.

“Wreck Rock? Yeah, I know it,” he called over his shoulder.

“Is it very far?”

“About a thirty-minute run on a good day.”

“Is this a good day?”

Kurt was tempted to say it was looking better all the time, which surprised him, because he wasn’t into that sort of thing. “Yeah, this is a pretty good day if you don’t count the tropical depression that spun off the west coast of Africa a few days ago.”

“Africa?” She looked puzzled, faintly worried.

“Forget it. This late in the season, it’ll probably fizzle before it even hits the Leewards.”

She still looked puzzled, making him wish he’d kept his answer brief and to the point. “Oh. Well, could we go there? The plane crash site, I mean—not Africa.”

Ditzy.

Nice. Attractive in a quiet way, but definitely ditzy.

“Sure, but tell me first, are we talking dolphin, as in the fish? Dorado? Mahimahi? Or dolphin, as in the mammal? What we call porpoise. The bottle-nose. Because if it’s the fish you want, I can take you to a place where you’re more apt to find ’em. Wreck Rock’s too new. Takes time to build up a good feeding reef.”

“Oh, but—”

She was a distraction, but he couldn’t very well ignore her. Besides, she looked as if she could do with some distraction herself. She was beginning to turn a bit green about the gills.

The roll up on the bridge was more pronounced. He wanted to suggest that she go below and watch the wake, but she looked so…needy. It was the first word that popped into his mind. So he tried his hand at distraction. “Now, if it’s fish you’re interested in, there might be a few sheepshead around the place where that jerk from Virginia and his mistress went down. Not as much sport as billfish or big blues, but good eating. Real good eating. We might even run into a few tuna, too, speaking of good eating.”

Maybe speaking of eating wasn’t such a hot idea. She was looking sicker by the minute.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, just as if she weren’t fighting to hang on to her breakfast, “but the plane that went down happened to belong to a well-known businessman. The person traveling with him was his secretary, not his—”

He saw her swallow hard, saw a film of sweat break out on her upper lip. He was sympathetic, but never having been seasick, he couldn’t exactly share her misery. “If you say so. I didn’t know ’em personally, you understand—it happened before I moved to Swan Inlet, but folks around here knew ’em both. They used to fly in and hitch a ride out to their private love nest, according to—”

“She was his secretary,” the woman called Deke said firmly, then spoiled the effect by gulping and moaning softly.

Oh, man. He should’ve offered her a patch or a pill when she’d first come aboard. Most fishermen, if they needed an anti-motion potion, brought their own, but this lady didn’t look as if she’d ever set foot on a boat before.

“You want to go below and lie down?”

She took a deep breath, climbed up a couple more rungs, and to his own disgust, Kurt couldn’t help noticing that as small as she was, there were some modest but intriguing curves under that sweatshirt. “No, I’ll be just fine. Tell me about—oh, anything. Just talk to me, take my mind off my stomach and I’ll be all right.” She smiled, but it was a weak effort.

“Frog—he’s my mate—the kid who helped you aboard? He’s also my social director. I’m not much of one for talking.” He made a minor adjustment in their course and then set the squelch on his ship-toshore radio.

“Why did you call it Wreck Rock? I didn’t think there were any rocks along this part of the coast.”

Kurt shrugged. “There’s not, as far as I know. Just a name. Easier than calling it by the coordinates.”

For several minutes she engaged in deep breathing exercises. Kurt hoped it worked. It was too late for Dramamine, and verbal distraction—at least his brand—didn’t seem to be helping much. The wind was picking up, pushing an incoming tide. He quartered the seas as best he could without getting too far off course.

“I’m hoping to see the mammal, not the fish. I want to take a few pictures if we see any. And she was his secretary,” the woman said belligerently. “It said so in all the reports.”

That was fine with him. If she wanted to believe Noah had gone down with all hands and hooves aboard, it was no skin off his back. “Okay, Flipper the mammal it is, and she was his secretary. They spent all those weekends out at his private island, just the two of them, working on quarterly taxes.” He scanned the sky, adjusted the throttle and made another minor course correction.

When she didn’t argue, he cut her a sidelong glance and immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d never been good at small talk, especially when his mind was on something else. And anyway, trying to talk a person out of being seasick was about as effective as trying to talk the tide into not rising.

What was going to come up was going to come up.

For a good-looking woman, she didn’t look so good. “You want to go below and lie down?” he offered again.

“Maybe I’d better. Just for a few minutes.”

Kurt set the controls and followed her below, hoping she could hold it down long enough to make it to the head. “Through the sliding door—watch the steps. Hang on and I’ll get you some fresh air.” That done, he deftly flipped down one of the convertible benches that served a dual purpose in the compact salon. “Head’s portside, forward. Uh, that is, it’s on the left, right over there. It’s kind of small, but you’ll find anything you need.” He handed her a plastic bucket, just in case.

She lowered herself carefully, one arm clutching the pale blue bucket. There was a bruised look about her that made him want to comfort her, only he didn’t know how. Wasn’t sure she’d appreciate it, even if he did. The collar of her black silk shirt was rucked up in back, so he smoothed it down and patted her shoulder once, but that didn’t seem like much comfort, not if she was feeling as lousy as she looked.

Kurt wondered whether to head back to port or keep going. His passenger didn’t look up to making the call, so he backed out of the salon and left her there. If it was Wreck Rock she wanted, it was Wreck Rock she would get. The customer was always right.

“Lie on your left side,” he called down from the open companionway. “They say it helps.”

He’d heard it somewhere but didn’t know if it was true or not. He did know that in a case like this, people needed to believe there was someone in charge who knew precisely what they were doing.

Dutifully, Deke turned onto her left side, which gave her a view of a shirt and a baseball cap hanging on a hook on the wall—or whatever the nautical equivalent was. It was swaying. And swaying, and swaying, and swaying.

Oh, mercy.

“‘All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full,’” she whispered. “Ecclesiastes one-seven. Onesix, one-five, one-four, one-three—” As a child, she’d been prone to stomach upsets. Granna Anne used to make her quote Bible verses to keep her mind off her stomach. It hadn’t worked very well. Counting back-ward didn’t work, either. She tried talking to herself. “It’s almost over, Debranne. In a little while you’ll have paid your proper respects to the past and be on your way home.”

Wherever home was. The Victorian house where she’d grown up was gone, the furniture being pawed over by a swarm of antique dealers. The run-down apartment building where she lived now was about to be demolished to make way for new low-cost housing, which she probably wouldn’t be able to afford, as she earned a few too many dollars to qualify. Her fall royalties this year had amounted to a hefty $23.11, but she had two part-time jobs, each of which paid the minimum wage, less deductions.

“Talk, don’t think, you nut! Did you bring your light meter?” Talking was supposed to prevent her from thinking about that awful feeling in her belly. “I hope you brought your meter,” she muttered, “because shooting on water is tricky, and you’re going to have to come up with a few decent pictures if you’re planning to write this whole wacko expedition off on your taxes.”

Because she was going to do it. Guilt or no guilt, she fully intended to write Mark’s memorial service off on her taxes. The whole blooming thing, charter, motel, mileage and all. Caught in the throes of guilt and nausea, she clutched the bucket and moaned.

But then, Mark would have approved, she reminded herself. Hadn’t he written off their entire honeymoon trip because he had spent a few minutes looking over a shopping complex on Maui?

Still, she did feel guilty. Partly about the tax thing, but mostly about the fact that she hadn’t really grieved as much as she should. Not that she knew what she could do about that. Evidently she was one of those people whose feelings didn’t run very deep.

As for this empowerment business, she was beginning to think it was a mixed blessing. So far, all she felt was confused.

“Hey, you all right down there?” the captain called from the open companionway. He had a nice voice. A little like rusty velvet.

Goodness, that didn’t even make sense! Deke managed a wobbly smile. “Fine. I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”

He grinned and saluted her, and she thought, What a nice man. Any other time she might have thought, What a strikingly masculine, stunningly handsome man, but right now, nice was all she craved.

Mark hadn’t been nice. There, she’d admitted it. He’d been suave and sexy and Hollywood handsome, but nice?

No. Not really. At least, not after they’d been married for a few months. She’d put it down to his being so busy, so ambitious to get ahead. There’d been all those late nights at the office. All those business trips. Nearly every weekend.

With his secretary.

With his young, drop-dead-gorgeous secretary who was supposed to be such a whiz on her laptop he couldn’t travel without her.

Or maybe she’d been such a whiz on his laptop.

Deke remembered the night Mark had taken her out to dinner for her birthday. When he’d opened his wallet for his credit card, she’d seen a little silver packet. She’d wondered at the time why he still carried a condom, but she’d been too embarrassed to ask.

All the same, she had wondered. She wondered all over again. Wondered about that and a lot of other things she had tried for too long to ignore because it wasn’t seemly to think ill of the dead.

Suddenly, like watching tea leaves settle into a pattern in the bottom of a cup, a picture of her relationship with Mark came into focus. “Well…damn!” she whispered plaintively.

Still struggling to deal with guilt and nausea, she was overcome with anger. It never even occurred to her that the motion of the boat had changed—less forward, more up and down, with a jiggly little corkscrew action thrown in for good measure—until she heard the sound of uneven footsteps on the little ladder doohickey that led into the living room.

She sat up, still clutching the bucket. Tears streaked her cheeks, but they were tears of anger. “Are we there?” she demanded as Captain Stryker hovered over her, looking almost as stricken as she felt.

“Kiley,” he said. “His name was Kiley, wasn’t it?”

Numbly, Deke nodded. It was one thing to be made a fool of. It was quite another to have it become common knowledge.

It occurred to her that he looked oddly vulnerable for such a powerful man. “You should’ve told me to shut up and mind my own business,” he growled.

She swallowed hard. Sitting up made her feel marginally more empowered, but it didn’t do a thing for her seasickness. “I was taught never to tell anyone to shut up. In my family, we say hush. It, um—it sounds softer.”

“But it means the same thing.” He raked his fingers through his shaggy blond hair, then hooked both thumbs under his belt. “You should’ve said something. I’m sorry, Ms. Kiley—just as sorry as I can be.”

“Hush. It’s not your fault.”

He grinned, looking more than ever like the hero of a pirate story in his faded, body-loving khakis. “Hush, huh? How does your family go about telling somebody to butt out and mind their own business?”

A fresh wave of nausea swept over her, but gamely she replied, “Mostly they just change the subject. Are we there yet?”

“Speaking of changing the subject? Sorry, we’re only about halfway. I thought I’d better check on you. Do you need anything? Sure you don’t want to head back in?”

Deke thought about how much this project was costing her. She could hardly ask for her money back just because on the way to memorializing her late husband she happened to have discovered that he was a philandering, four-flushing, lying, greedy snake in the grass.

At least he had been all of those things while he was still alive. Poor Mark. No one, she supposed, deliberately chose to be a stinker. As long as she’d come this far, she might as well pay tribute to whatever good there was in him. It would make a nice, tidy end to that particular segment of her life, and she needed that to satisfy her sense of orderliness.

“I want to go on to Wreck Rock,” she said as firmly as she could, considering she was about to disgrace herself into a plastic bucket that smelled of disinfectant.

For a minute he just stood there, swaying with the motion of the boat. A shaft of sunlight slanted down through an open hatch, highlighting the golden hair on his tanned, muscular forearm.

“We’d better hustle you topside,” he said, after studying her with a single sympathetic gray eye. “You’re no sailor, that’s pretty clear. Maybe if you suck on a cola and let the wind blow in your face, you’ll feel better.”

Under a thin layer of cheap indoor-outdoor carpet that served primarily to cover the twin hatches, the deck vibrated to the beat of the engines below. Kurt noticed that the atmosphere was none too fragrant. Frog had a bad habit of hanging his fishy clothes in his locker instead of tossing them out to be washed.

Bracing his bum leg against the bulkhead, he bent and slipped his arms under her slight form. She didn’t protest. Probably felt too lousy to argue. Funny thing, though—Kurt had a feeling that small or not, she was nobody’s pushover. He’d caught a glint in her eye, a certain tilt of her delicate chin before she’d been done in by a weak belly.

In the cockpit, with a cool northwest breeze in her face, he figured she’d come around pretty fast. “Breathe deeply,” he said. “That’s it, nice and steady—inhale, exhale…no, don’t hyperventilate, just take regular breaths. You’re doing fine.”

Breathing lessons. Man, he’d really lost it. But damn, she smelled good. Crazy thing, considering where they were, but she reminded him of the way a cornfield smelled when the tassels were drying under a hot summer sun.

Carefully, he lowered her onto a chair, watched for a few seconds to see that she didn’t keel over, then shoved an ice cold can in her hand. “Sip,” he said. “Don’t gulp it down. Let me get us underway again and I’ll see what I can do about smoothing out the ride.”

She sipped. Kurt skimmed up the ladder and took the controls again. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. She was hanging in there, angling her face to the wind, which was beginning to kick up a few knots. They were going to be doing some pitching and yawing before they reached their destination. He hoped to hell she was up to it.

Kiley, he thought. The joker’s name was Kiley, and he’d gone down with another woman. His mistress, according to the local scuttlebutt. Nobody had mentioned a wife in the background, or if they had, he hadn’t paid any attention. He’d never had much of an ear for gossip.

The jerk had been married, all right. Married to a real nice lady named Deke. Which brought up two questions in Kurt’s mind. Number one—what was his widow doing here?

And number two—why the hell had he needed a mistress?




Three (#ulink_459987d7-fde2-5c20-b0e1-52440dbd3fa4)


“Right about there,” he said. Resting his head against hers, Kurt pointed off to the southeast. “Nothing much to see, but according to the coordinates, this is the place where your husband and his secretary went down.” He kicked himself mentally for bringing it up again. He didn’t want to know about her problems. He had enough of his own. Deke Kiley was just another charter. In a few more hours she’d be history, and he’d be one bank deposit closer to having a real home for Frog, in case some busybody from social services took a notion that a working charter boat wasn’t a proper home for a growing boy.

She took a deep breath, and he noticed that her color had improved. The collar of her shirt was rucked up again, but he resisted the temptation to tuck it in. Barely. She still smelled like corn tassels, soap and shampoo. He figured a guy had to be pretty deprived to be turned on by something so wholesome. Too much celibacy could be hazardous to a guy’s health. Mental and otherwise.

“Right about where that gull just tipped his wings,” he said, inhaling deeply.

She still looked a little shaky. Maybe on the way back in, he’d invite her up to the flying bridge. The rolling was more noticeable there, but the view was first-class. In case he failed to raise a few porpoise, maybe she’d settle for a seagoing sunset.

“Would you please hand me my basket?” she asked, and he was reminded all over again of his mother’s ballerina music box. Ms. Kiley had a dainty way of speaking. Probably grew up saying yes ma’am and no ma’am to her elders.

He set the basket on the chair beside her and would have headed to the controls but she reached out and snagged his hand. “Would you mind opening my champagne? I’m not real good with these things. The bottle always overflows when I try it.”

“Are you sure you want to open it? Champagne’s not noted for settling stomachs.”

“Oh, my belly woes are much better now.”

Her belly woes. Kurt grinned and lifted the bottle from the wicker basket, then whistled soundlessly. He was no expert on vintages, but unless he was very much mistaken, this was a pretty high-priced bottle of French fizz.

He started to pop the cork with his thumbs, then thought better of it. She could hardly finish it off alone, and it would be a shame to let it go flat. Carefully, he eased the cork out and handed it to her. She could sniff it or stick it in her pocket, it didn’t matter to him.

“You pour,” she said, holding up two tulip glasses that glinted like wet ice in the hazy sunlight.

“I’m driving, but thanks, anyway.”

“I want to drink a toast. I can’t do it alone.”

Shrugging, Kurt poured both glasses a third full and handed her one. The little lady was a bundle of surprises. He had a feeling she wouldn’t like being referred to as a little lady, but that was the term that came to mind when he looked at her. Little, and a lady. In the best sense of the word.

“Here’s to you,” he said, raising his glass.

“No, here’s to all the smooth-talking, conniving, philandering cads who ever wrote off a honeymoon on their taxes.” She tossed back hers and held out her glass for a refill.

Kurt lifted his eyebrows. “If you say so.” He sipped. The stuff was dry as an Arizona attic. The last time he’d tasted anything like it had been at Alex and Dina’s wedding reception.

“More, please.” She held out her glass again. Cautiously, he splashed in a scant half inch.

Screwing her small face into a fearsome scowl, she said, “And here’s to all the, um, smooth-talking—did I already say that? Well, here’s to all the Lotharios who ever swept a woman off her feet and then dropped her flat on her—on her derriere with no warning.”

Kurt hesitated. “Are we, by any chance, toasting your late husband?”

Deke hiccupped. “Excuse me. Don’t ask personal questions.”

“Lady, I didn’t bring him up, you did.” Dammit, he’d meant to steer clear of that particular reef.

She shrugged and looked away, and Kurt studied the delicate line of her profile. Dina, the first woman he had loved and lost, had been a tall, elegant, classically beautiful blonde. Evelyn, the woman who had left him at the altar nearly three years ago, was a tall, sexy, voluptuously gorgeous brunette.

Deke Kiley was none of the above.

Not that it mattered. Deke Kiley was a stranger, he reminded himself. She was going to remain a stranger.

Leaning over, she reached into the basket, brought out a pair of leis and proceeded to destroy them, flower by flower, tossing the torn petals overboard. Kurt watched silently for a moment and then, shaking his head, he left her and returned to the controls. She didn’t even notice his leaving. The lady, he decided, was slightly screwy, but probably harmless.

Deke noticed, all right. Under the circumstances, it was unseemly, but she couldn’t help noticing the way his muscles flexed as he jogged up the ladder, the way the wind blew his khakis against his muscular body.

What’s more, she decided woozily, he was nice. Unusually kind, not to mention unusually attractive, even with the eye patch.

Especially with the eye patch.

What he was was sexy. Deke was no expert on sexiness in a man. She’d been taught to look for other qualities, but once a woman’s hormones got in on the act, a whole new world opened up.

There’d been a time when she’d thought Mark was sexy. He had certainly managed to convince her she couldn’t live without him, and vice versa. But if a woman could be married to a man for nearly eighteen months without even knowing who he was, she was nowhere near ready to trust her judgment of a man she had known for less than a day:

Besides, the last thing she needed right now was to be distracted by a sexy male rear end and a pair of tanned, golden-haired, muscular forearms. Not when she was trying so hard to be furious. Or if not furious, then certainly righteously indignant. The trouble was, her righteous indignation kept slipping away, leaving behind little more than the sour dregs of resentment and disillusionment, which hardly warranted such a dramatic, not to mention expensive, memorial.

She belched and patted her lips with a tissue. Either she was getting sick again or the mixture of champagne and cola on an empty stomach was beginning to have an effect.

Several minutes later Captain Stryker descended the ladder again. The course held steady, the prow cutting through the waves at a low rate of speed. It occurred to Deke that there was no one driving, but before she could begin to worry, she was distracted by the way he moved about the cockpit. Her slightly glazed eyes followed him with a wistful expression that would have shocked her if she’d been aware of it. She thought he must not have been in the business of chartering very long, because he hadn’t quite got his sea legs yet.

Once more she admired the way his khakis hugged his rear end when he bent over to retrieve a couple more cans of cola from a locker under the ladder, and then she chided herself for noticing. Normally it was a man’s hands and eyes she noticed, not his behind.

Mark’s eyes had been blue, watchful and rather small.

The captain’s eye was gray, deep-set and surprisingly gentle in such a harshly angular face.

Mark’s hands had been elegant. He was the first man she’d ever met who had his nails professionally manicured. She’d been impressed, having been taught all her life the value of good grooming.

Captain Stryker’s hands were square and tanned, with a glint of golden hairs on the back. His nails were square and short and scrupulously clean, but she’d bet her last tea biscuit that he’d never been anywhere near a manicurist.

At least not in a professional capacity.

“Hey, you want something to eat? Sandwiches? Cheese crackers?”

“Yuck.” It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since supper the night before, and very little even then. “I mean, no, thank you.”

He smiled. He had nice teeth, too. Square, white but not quite perfect. She felt a vague stirring of excitement and put it down to the mixture of canned cola and French champagne and not enough food. It had to be that, because she was far too sensible to be distracted, much less attracted, by another man right now, no matter how nice his smile and his…

Well—that, too.

She had a book to finish and some major decisions to make concerning her future. In two brief years, her entire outlook on life had changed, and now she was ready to move forward. This time without any blow-dried jerk who wore silk underwear, Italian suits and too much cologne. A jerk who’d once made her feel like an idiot simply because she’d referred to his wristwatch as a Rolodex.





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