For once reality is sexier than fiction!

Author Stella Mills has writers’ block. Her swashbuckling debut romance was a mega-hit—and the world is crying out for a sequel. Problem is, her sexy-as-sin hero was based on childhood friend Rick Granville, whose dangerously delicious eyes have never sparkled at her that way!

So being forced to spend weeks on adventurer Rick’s luxury yacht could be just the thing to trigger her imagination—forget Johnny Depp…modern-day pirate Rick is pure physical perfection. Of course, spending night and day with the temptation that is Rick could be sailing too close to the wind—especially when her fictional fantasies start becoming red-hot reality!

“You can’t go a day without trying to hook up.”

“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. 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.

“You think I can’t go a few weeks without flirting with a woman?”

“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.

Stella swallowed. “Get?”

Rick held her gaze. “If I win? How about that kiss that we didn’t quite get round to?”

Stella blinked as the bad-boy looked back at her. It was a tantalizing 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.

The Devil and the Deep

Amy Andrews

~ Temptation on her Doorstep ~

www.millsandboon.co.uk

AMY ANDREWS has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs.

She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au.

For Halle Anne Baxter.

Much loved.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE

Lady Mary Bingham had never seen such a fine specimen of manhood in all her twenty years as she held out her hand to her unlikely saviour so he could aid her aboard. Pirate or not, Vasco Ramirez’s potent masculinity tingled through every cell of her body. And even had it not, his piercing blue eyes, the exact colour of warm, tropical waters that fringed the reefs he was rumoured to know like the back of his hand, touched a place inside her that she’d never known existed.

A place she could never now deny.

She supposed, if she were given to swooning, this would be as good a time as any. But she wasn’t. In fact she’d always found the practice rather tiresome and refused to even allow her knees the slightest tremble. Women who had fits of the vapours and cried for their smelling salts every two seconds—like her aunt—were not the kind of women she admired.

Her breath hitched as sable lashes framing those incredible eyes swept downwards in a frank inspection of every inch of her body. When his gaze returned to her face she was left in no doubt that he’d liked what he’d seen. His thumb lightly stroked the skin of her forearm and she felt the caress deep inside that newly awakened place.

Looking at the bronzed angles of his exotic face, she knew she should be afraid for had she not just gone from the frying pan straight into the fire?

Yet strangely she wasn’t.

Not even when his gaze dropped to the pulse beating rapidly against the milky white skin of her neck. Or lower to where her breasts strained against the constrictive fabric of her bodice. His lazy inspection of the agitated rise of her bosom did not elicit fear even when what it did elicit was reason for fear itself.

Her uncle, the bishop, would have declared him an instrument of the devil. A man willing to lead unsuspecting ladies to the edge of sin but strangely she’d never felt so compelled to transgress. The thought was titillating and she sucked in a breath, annoyed that this buccaneer had caused such consternation after such short acquaintance.

After all, was not one pirate just like the next?

Mary looked down at the insolent drift of his thumb. ‘You will unhand me immediately,’ she intoned in a voice that brooked no argument.

Ramirez’s smile was nine parts charm one part insolence as he slowly—very slowly—ceased the involuntary caress.

‘As you wish,’ he murmured, bowing slightly over her hand, his fingers tracing down the delicate blue veins of her forearm, whispering over the fragile bones of her wrist and the flat of her palm as he released her.

Lady Mary swallowed as the accented English slid velvet gloves over already sensitised skin. ‘I insist that you return me to my uncle forthwith.’

Vasco admired her pluck. The girl, who he knew to be barely out of her teens, may well be staring him straight in the eye but he could smell her fear as only a veteran of a hundred raids on the high seas could.

Lord alone knew what had happened to her in the two days she’d been at the mercy of Juan Del Toro and his ruffians. But something told him this pampered English miss could certainly hold her own.

And virgins fetched a much higher price at the slave markets.

‘As you wish,’ he murmured again.

Mary narrowed her eyes, suspicious of his easy capitulation. ‘You know my uncle? You know who I am?’

He smiled at her. ‘You are Lady Mary Bingham. The bishop commissioned me to...retrieve you.’

For the first time in two days Mary could see an end to the nightmare that had begun with her abduction down by the wharfs a mere forty-eight hours before and she almost sagged to the damp floorboards at his feet. She’d heard her former captives talking about slave markets and had been scared witless.

Alas, falling at the feet of a pirate, whether sanctioned by her uncle or not, wasn’t something a young woman of good breeding did. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I am most grateful for your speedy response. Juan Del Toro’s men do not know how to treat a lady.’

‘Do not thank me yet, Lady Bingham.’ He smiled with steel in his lips. ‘There are a lot of miles between here and Plymouth and by the end of it my men may well care less about you being a lady and more about you being a woman.’

Mary raised a haughty eyebrow, hoping it disguised the sudden leap in her pulse. ‘And you would allow such fiendish behaviour amongst your crew?’

Vasco smiled his most charming smile, his dark tousled hair giving him the look of the devil. ‘Amongst my crew? Of course not, Lady Bingham. But captains do enjoy certain privileges...’

STELLA MILLS sighed as she closed down the document on her desktop and dragged herself back from the swashbuckling seventeen hundreds to the reality of the here and now. She could re-read the words that had flowed effortlessly out of her last year and made her an ‘overnight’ sensation until the cows came home but it didn’t change the facts—one book did not a writer make.

One book did not a career make.

No matter how many publishing houses had bid for Pleasure Hunt at auction, no matter how many best-seller lists it had made or how many fan letters she’d received or how much money competing film companies had thrown at her for the film rights.

No matter how crazy the romance world had gone for Vasco Ramirez.

They wanted more.

And so did the publisher.

Stella stared at the blinking cursor on the blank page in front of her. The same blinking cursor she’d been staring at for almost a year now.

Oh, God. ‘I’m a one-hit wonder,’ she groaned as her head hit the keyboard.

A knock on the door interrupted her pity party and she glanced up. Several lines of gobbledygook stared back at her as the knock came again. She grimaced—it seemed she was destined to write nothing but incomprehensible garbage for ever more.

Another knock, more insistent than the last, demanded her attention. ‘Coming,’ she called as she did what she’d done every day for the past year—deleted the lot.

She hurried to the door and was reaching for the knob as a fourth knock landed. ‘Okay, okay, hold your horses,’ she said as she wrenched the damn thing open.

Piercing blue eyes, the exact colour of warm, tropical waters that fringed the reefs she knew he knew like the back of his hand, greeted her. She blinked. ‘Rick?’

‘Stel,’ he murmured, leaning forward to kiss first one cheek then the other, inhaling the familiar coconut essence of her.

She shut her eyes briefly as the smell of sea breezes and ocean salt infused her senses the way they always did whenever Riccardo Granville was close. When she opened them again Rick had withdrawn and her mother came into focus, hovering behind his shoulder. Her eyes were rimmed with red and she was biting on her bottom lip.

Her mother lived in London and Rick called the ocean his home. Why were they here? In Cornwall. Together?

Stella frowned as a feeling of doom descended.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, looking from one to the other as her pulse wooshed like a raging torrent through her ears.

Her mother stepped forward and hugged her. ‘Darling,’ she murmured, ‘it’s Nathan.’

Stella blinked. Her father?

She looked over her mother’s shoulder at Rick, his face grim. ‘Rick?’ she asked, searching for a spark of something—anything—that would bring her back from the precipice she was balanced upon.

Rick looked down at the woman he’d known almost all his thirty years and sadly shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

CHAPTER ONE

Six months later...

THE cursor still blinked at her from the same blank page. Although Stella rather fancied that it had given up blinking and had moved on to mocking.

There were no words. No story.

No characters spoke in her head. No plot played like a movie reel. No shards of glittering dialogue burnt brightly on her inward eye desperate for release.

There was just the same old silence.

And now grief to boot.

And Diana would be arriving soon.

As if she’d willed it, a knock on the door heralded Stella’s closest friend. Normally she’d have leapt from her seat to welcome Diana but not today. In fact, for a moment, she seriously considered not opening the door at all.

Today, Diana was not here as her friend.

Today, Diana was here as a representative from the publisher.

And she’d promised her chapter one...

‘I know you’re in there. Don’t make me break this sucker down.’

The voice was muffled but determined and Stella resigned herself to her fate as she crossed from her work area in the window alcove, with its spectacular one-eighty-degree views of rugged Cornish coastline, to the front door. She drew in a steadying breath as she unlatched it and pulled it open.

Diana opened her arms. ‘Babe,’ she muttered as she swept Stella into a rib-cracking hug. ‘How are you doing? I’ve been so worried about you.’

Stella settled into the sweet sisterhood of the embrace, suddenly so glad to see her friend she could feel tears prick at the backs of her eyes. They’d only known each other a handful of years since meeting at uni, but Diana had called most nights since the funeral and this was her tenth visit.

‘Pretty rubbish,’ she admitted into Diana’s shoulder.

‘Of course you are,’ Diana soothed, rubbing her friend’s back. ‘Your dad died—it comes with the territory.’

Diana’s parents had passed away not long before they’d become friends so Stella knew that Diana had intimate acquaintance with grief.

‘I want to stop feeling like this.’

Diana hugged her harder. ‘You will. Eventually you will. In the meantime you need to do what you need to do. And I think that starts with a nice glass of red.’

Diana held up a bottle of shiraz she’d bought at an off-

licence in Penzance on her way to the windswept, cliff-top cottage her friend had taken out a long-term lease on after her strait-laced fiancé, Dreary Dale, hadn’t been able to handle the success of Pleasure Hunt and had scuttled away with a stick jammed up his butt.

Sure, Stella had insisted her reasons had more to do with the historic coastline’s rich pirate history stimulating her muse but, given that no book was forthcoming, Diana wasn’t buying it.

Stella looked at her watch and laughed for the first time today. It was two in the afternoon. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’

Diana tutted her disapproval. ‘The sun’s up over the yardarm—isn’t that what you nautical types say? Besides, it’s November—it’s practically night time.’

Diana didn’t wait for an answer, dragging her pull-along case inside the house and kicking the door shut with her four-inch-booted heel. She shrugged out of her calf-length, figure-hugging leather coat and unwound her Louis Vuitton scarf from her neck—all without letting go of the bottle. She wore charcoal trousers and a soft pink cashmere sweater, which matched the thick brunette curls that fell against its pearlescent perfection.

Diana was very London.

Stella looked down at her own attire and felt like a total slob. Grey sweats, coffee-stained hoodie and fluffy slippers. A haphazard ponytail that she’d scraped together this morning hung limply from her head in an even bigger state of disarray.

Stella was very reclusive writer.

Which would be much more romantic if she’d actually bloody written anything in the last eighteen months.

‘Sit,’ Diana ordered, tinkling her fingers at her friend as she headed towards the cupboard where she knew, from many a drinking session, the wine glasses were housed.

Stella sat on her red leather sofa if, for nothing else, to feel less diminutive. Diana was almost six feet and big boned in a sexy Amazonian, Wonder Woman kind of way. She, on the other hand, was just a couple of centimetres over five feet, fair and round.

‘Here,’ Diana said, thrusting a huge glass of red at her and clinking the rims together before claiming the bucket chair opposite. ‘To feeling better,’ she said, then took a decent swig.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Stella agreed, taking a more measured sip. She stared into the depths of her wine, finding it easier than looking at her friend.

‘You don’t have the chapter, do you?’ Diana asked after the silence had stretched long enough.

Stella looked at Diana over the rim of her glass. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’

Diana nodded. ‘It’s okay.’

Stella shook her head and uttered what had been on her mind since the writer’s block had descended all those months ago. ‘What if I only ever have one book in me?’

The fear had gnawed away at her since finishing the first book. Dale’s desertion had added to it. Her father’s death had cemented it.

Vasco Ramirez had demanded to be written. He’d strutted straight out of her head onto the page in all his swashbuckling glory. He had been a joy, his story a gift that had flowed effortlessly.

And now?

Now they wanted another pirate and she had nothing.

Diana held up a hand, waving the question away. ‘You don’t,’ she said emphatically.

‘But what if I do?’

Stella had never known the sting of rejection and the mere thought was paralysing. What if Joy, her editor, hated what she wrote? What if she laughed?

She’d had a dream ride—from a six-figure auction with a multi-book contract to New York Times best-seller to a movie deal.

What if it had all been a fluke?

Diana stabbed her finger at the air in her general direction. ‘You. Don’t.’

Stella felt a surge of guilt mix with the shiraz in her veins, giving it an extra charge. Diana had championed her crazy foray into writing from the beginning, encouraging her to take a break from being an English teacher and write the damn book.

She’d been the first to read it. The first to know its potential, insisting that she take it to show her boss, who was looking for exactly what Stella had written—a meaty historical romance. As an editorial assistant in a London publishing house Diana had been adamant it was a blockbuster and Stella had been flabbergasted when Diana’s prediction of a quick offer had come to pass.

She smiled at her friend, hoping it didn’t come across as desperate on the outside as it felt on the inside. ‘Will you get sacked if you return to London empty-handed?’

Almost a year past Stella’s deadline, Joy had pulled out the big guns to get her recalcitrant star to deliver. She knew how close Diana and Stella were so she’d sent Diana to do whatever it took to get book number two.

Diana shook her head. ‘No. We’re not going to talk about this tonight. Tonight, we get messy drunk, tomorrow we talk about the book. Deal?’

Stella felt the knot in her shoulder muscles release like an elastic band and she smiled. ‘Deal.’

* * *

Two hours later, a storm had drawn night in a little earlier than usual. Wind howled around the house, lashing at the shutters, not that the two women cosied up by the fire were aware. They were on their second bottle of wine and almost at the bottom of a large packet of crisps and were laughing hysterically about their uni days.

A sharp rap at the door caused them both to startle then burst out laughing at their comic-book reactions.

‘Bloody hell.’ Diana clutched her chest. ‘I think I just had a heart attack.’

Stella laughed as she rose a little unsteadily. ‘Impossible, red wine’s supposed to be good for the heart.’

‘Not in these quantities it’s not,’ Diana said and Stella cracked up again as she headed towards the door.

‘Wait, where are you going?’ Diana muttered as she also clambered to her feet.

Stella frowned. ‘To open the door.’

‘But what if it’s a two-headed moor monster?’ Even through her wine goggles Diana could see the rain lashing the window pane behind Stella’s desk. ‘It is the very definition of a dark and stormy night out there, babe.’

Stella hiccupped. ‘Well, I don’t think they knock but I’ll politely tell it to shoo and point out that Bodmin is a little north of here.’

Diana cracked up and Stella was still chuckling as she opened the door.

To Vasco Ramirez. In the flesh.

Light from inside the cottage bathed the bronzed angles of his jaw and cheekbones, fell softly against his mouth and illuminated his blue eyes to tourist-brochure perfection. His shoulder-length hair, a relic from his tearaway teens, hung in damp strips around his face and water droplets clung to those incredible sable lashes.

He looked every inch the pirate.

‘Rick?’ Her breath stuttered to a halt as it always did when he was too close, sucking up all her oxygen. The recalcitrant memory of an almost-kiss over a decade ago flitted like a butterfly through her grey matter.

Rick smiled down at a frowning Stella. ‘Now what sort of greeting is that?’ he teased as he moved in for his standard double cheek kiss.

Coconut embraced him. Nathan had bought Stella coconut body products every year for her birthday and she’d faithfully worn them. Still was, apparently.

Stella shut her eyes and waited for the choirs of angels in her head to start singing hallelujah as the aroma of salt and sea enveloped her. He was, after all, so perfect he had to be heaven-sent.

She blinked as he pulled away. ‘Is everything okay?’ she asked.

Her heart beat a little faster in her chest. Which had nothing to do with the erotic scrape of his perpetual three-day growth or the brief brush of his lips, and everything to do with his last visit.

Rick didn’t just drop by.

Last time he’d arrived unannounced on her doorstep looking bleaker than the North Sea in winter, the news had not been good.

‘Is Mum—?’

Rick pressed his fingers against her mouth, hushing her. ‘Linda’s fine, Stel. Everything’s fine.’

She almost sagged against him in relief. Certainly her mouth did. He smiled at her as he withdrew his hand and she smiled back, and with the wind whipping around them and flurries of raindrops speckling their skin it was as if they were kids again, standing on the bow of the Persephone as a storm chased them back into harbour.

‘So...not a monster from the moors, then?’ Diana asked, interrupting their shared reverie.

Rick looked over Stella’s shoulder straight into the eyes of a vaguely familiar, striking brunette. She looked at him with frank admiration and he grinned.

God, but he loved women.

Particularly women like this. The kind that liked to laugh and have a good time, enjoyed a flirt and some no-strings company.

‘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. ‘The map?’

Stella shook her head. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she asked.

Rick’s eyebrows drew together in a frown to match hers as he placed his half-empty glass on the coffee table. ‘You should have received it early last week. I posted it ages ago.’

Diana rolled her eyes. ‘She probably has. She’s just not been responding to any correspondence.’

Stella blushed at her friend’s astuteness as Diana made her way to the hall stand. Unopened mail oozed all over the edges of the sturdy eighteenth-century oak and Stella felt her cheeks grow warmer. She’d been avoiding any attempt at communication with the outside world—particularly from her editor. She didn’t open her mail unless it had a window. She screened all her calls. She didn’t go to her inbox.

Diana quickly riffled through the mound of mail, letters and other miscellaneous items that had made it through Stella’s front door, some of it spilling haphazardly to the floor. She pulled out a large flat yellow envelope with enough stamps to start a collection.

‘This it?’ she asked holding it up.

Rick nodded. ‘Arrr,’ he said in his best pirate accent. ‘That be it.’

It was Stella’s turn to roll her eyes. Rick had perfected the pirate vernacular as a child, lending an authenticity to their imaginary games.

Diana laughed as she rejoined them, thrusting the envelope at Stella. ‘Ooh, you speak pirate?’

Rick grinned. ‘Aye, my lovely.’

‘Forget it,’ Stella murmured absently as she turned the envelope over and over in her hands. There was a variety of colourful postal stamps and airmail stickers adorning the front. ‘Diana’s a Jack Sparrow fan. You’re wasting your time.’

Rick look affronted. ‘Are you saying I’m not Captain Jack material?’

It was on the tip of Stella’s tongue to say that he was a thousand times sexier than the iconic film character. He was broader and taller with better oral hygiene and more scruples.

‘Hmm, I don’t know,’ Diana mused. ‘I’m sure a little more scruffed up...’

But Stella wasn’t listening. Her father’s distinctive handwriting had drawn her gaze and she touched the letters with great reverence as if they could somehow bring him back.

Rick glanced at Diana as Stella’s continuing silence fell loudly around them. She shrugged at him hopelessly and he could tell that Stella’s grief touched her too.

‘Where did you get this?’ Stella asked.

‘I finally got around to cleaning out Nathan’s desk. It was in a drawer. There was one for me as well.’

Stella nodded absently at his response. It was strange receiving something from her father six months after his death. Like a hand extending from the grave.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he asked quietly.

Stella looked up at him through the blonde stripes of her half-up-half-down fringe. ‘Do I want to?’

He grinned and nodded. ‘If it’s what I think it is you do. You really do.’

Stella doubted it but she turned the envelope over and neatly sliced open the back. A sheath of loose papers lay within and she pulled them out after another encouraging nod from Rick. A brief note from her father was paper-clipped to the front.

Stel,

Inigo’s treasure is there, I just know it.

You and Rick go find it.

Make me proud.

Daddy.

Stella swallowed hard and for a moment the bold vertical slashes blurred in front of her eyes. Finding out on autopsy that her father had been riddled with cancer and wondering if the scuba-diving accident had really been an accident had been hard to come to terms with.

But this seemed to confirm that he’d known his days were numbered and chosen to go in his own way doing what he’d loved most.

She glanced at Rick. ‘You got the same?’

He nodded and she looked back at the documents, leafing through the rest. A hand-drawn map was at the very back.

Or half a map to be precise.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, not quite comprehending her father’s frenetic squiggles around the margins.

‘The other half of this,’ Rick said, pulling out a folded page from his back pocket, unfolding it and laying it on the coffee table.

Diana sat forward. ‘Is that a...treasure map?’

Rick grinned. ‘Sort of. It shows the potential resting places of Captain Inigo Alvarez’s ship, La Sirena.’

Diana scrunched up her face, trying to remember her schoolgirl Spanish. ‘The...?’

‘The Mermaid,’ Stella supplied.

‘Oh my,’ Diana said. ‘How exciting! Inigo Alvarez...’ She rolled the name around her tongue. ‘He sounds positively dishy.’

Rick laughed. ‘He was. A late-eighteenth-century pirate known as the Robin Hood of the seven seas. Robbing the rich to give to the poor.’

Stella blasted Rick with a down-boy glare. ‘Robin Hood of the high seas,’ she tisked, shaking her head in disgust. ‘That’s all just anecdotal and you know it. Do not encourage her.’

‘Drat,’ Diana mused.

‘Okay, maybe he was as bloodthirsty and marauding as the rest of them but there’s heaps of historical documents citing his and The Mermaid’s existence,’ he said calmly. ‘You used to believe,’ Rick reminded her.

They both had. Everyone in the salvaging industry seemed to have a story about the mysterious Captain Alvarez and as children they’d listened to each one until he’d grown large in both their imaginations. Rick picked up the papers that had accompanied the map, the same ones that had been in his envelope. Years of Nathan’s research into a character that had captured them both.

‘What happened to him?’ Diana asked.

Rick looked at a captivated Diana. ‘He just disappeared off the face of the earth. There were rumours at the time that The Mermaid went down laden with stolen booty during a vicious storm.’

‘Where?’ Diana whispered, sucked in even if Stella was sitting back in her chair, refusing to be drawn. ‘Here somewhere, right?’ she asked, picking up Stella’s half of the map and joining the two pieces together on the coffee table.

Rick shook his head. ‘Nathan obviously thought so. He’s drawn this up from his research over the years so I guess it would be hard to be sure. But he was the best damn intuitive treasure hunter I’ve ever known and if he thinks Inigo’s ship is here somewhere, then I’m willing to bet it is too.’

‘So why didn’t he go after it himself?’ Stella demanded, getting up off the chair and heading for the kitchen sink. When she got there she tipped out her almost-full glass of wine. She was suddenly angry with her father.

If he’d known he was dying, why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he got treatment? Why hadn’t he come home?

‘When did he have the time, Stel, with so many other projects—sure things—on the books?’

Stella looked up at the reproach in his voice, feeling suddenly guilty. They’d both known Nathan’s plans had always involved finding Inigo’s treasure...one day...when he retired...

‘Why on earth did he give us half a map each? He must have known I was just going to give you my half and let you have at it.’

She’d loved her father and he had given her a magical childhood filled with sunken treasure and tropical waters but it had been a long time since she’d been a little girl who believed in pirates and mermaids. And the romance of that world had always warred with the realities of her life—divorced parents, divided loyalties.

Rick stood and walked towards her. He could tell she was struggling with the same emotions he had when he’d seen Nathan’s handwriting again and the memories it had stirred.

‘I think he knew his time was drawing to a close and maybe it was his way to keep us connected? I think he wanted us to go and do this together and I think it would be a great way to honour his memory. What do you say? The long-range weather forecast is good. You want to come on a treasure hunt with me?’

Stella glared at Rick as his not-so-subtle guilt trip found its mark. Well, it wouldn’t work. ‘Are you crazy? I can’t go gallivanting around the bloody ocean. My editor would have apoplexy. My book is way overdue and I have probably the worst case of writer’s block in the history of written language, don’t I, Diana?’

She looked at her friend for confirmation, who did so with a vigorous nod of her head.

‘Well, this is exactly what you need.’ He grinned, unperturbed. ‘Nothing like the open ocean to stimulate the muse.’

Stella stared at him askance. ‘Don’t you have other salvage jobs on the go?’

Rick shrugged. ‘Nothing the guys can’t handle. Besides, it won’t be a salvage job, just a recon mission, see what we can find. A few weeks, four at the most. Just you and me and the open ocean. Salt, sea air and sunshine. You could get a tan,’ he cajoled as he took in her pallor. ‘It’ll be just like we were kids again.’

Stella shook her head against the temptation and romance of yesteryear, which appealed to her on a primal level she didn’t really understand. She dragged her gaze away from his seductive mouth.

They weren’t kids any more.

‘I can’t. I have a book to write.’

‘Come on,’ he murmured, feeling the longing inside her even if she couldn’t. ‘You know you want to. You always wrote like crazy whenever you were on the Persephone. Remember? You were always scribbling away in that writing pad.’

She remembered. She’d either had her head stuck in a book or she’d been writing something. He’d teased her about it mercilessly. She should have known back then she was destined to be a writer. ‘I can’t. Can I, Diana?’

Diana looked at Stella. Then at Rick. Then back at her friend. If anyone needed a change of scenery it was Stella. These four walls were obviously becoming a prison for her despite the view—maybe mixing it up a little would get the juices flowing again.

And if the open ocean was where she was most creative...

Joy would have a fit but Diana had a hunch that this was just what her friend needed. She bloody hoped so because her head would be on the chopping block if Stella returned tanned and still bookless.

She stood and joined them in the kitchen. ‘I think you should go. I think it’s a great idea.’

Stella blinked. ‘What?’ she said as Rick’s grin trebled.

‘This,’ he said, slipping his arm around Diana’s shoulders, ‘is a wise woman.’

‘Thank you.’ Diana beamed at him.

‘Come on, Stel. I dare you.’

Stella rolled her eyes. As kids their relationship had thrived on dares and one-upmanship, Stella hell-bent on proving she could keep up with a boy.

Dare you to swim through that hole in the wreck. Something expressly forbidden by her father. Dare you to bring a coin up from the bottom. Also forbidden. Dare you to touch that manta ray. Just plain stupid.

It was a wonder they’d both survived.

She remembered when the dares had stopped. That evening on deck when she’d dared him to kiss her. She wondered if he remembered. His eyes glittered back at her—all bad-boy blue—and she knew he remembered.

‘Tell you what,’ Rick said as he pulled himself back from that ancient memory that still resonated in his dreams, ‘don’t decide now. Sleep on it first, okay. I bet it won’t seem as crazy in the morning.’

Stella was willing to bet that in the cold light of day and stone-cold sober it would not only seem crazy, it would actually be crazy.

Utterly certifiable.

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then winked at Diana. ‘Can I crash here?’

Stella felt like a child between two grown-ups. ‘What, no girl in this port, sailor?’ she asked waspishly. The man had never lacked for company on shore.

Rick chuckled. ‘Not one who can make pancakes like you.’

‘Ah,’ she said, realising she was being churlish and making an effort to get them back to their usual repartee. ‘So you only want me for my pancakes.’

‘And your half of the map.’ He grinned. ‘I’m beat. I need a shower. Then I need to sleep for a week. Towels still in the same place?’ he asked as he left them, not waiting for an answer.

Diana watched him go. ‘Wow.’

Stella nodded. ‘Yes.’

She turned to face the sink, leaning her elbows against the cool steel as she looked out of the large bay window into the bleak dark night. Diana joined her, still sipping at her wine.

‘Does he wear contacts?’ she mused. ‘It’s quite striking to see a man with such dark colouring have such blue eyes.’

Stella nodded again. She’d been captivated by them for as long as she could remember. ‘Yes, it’s really quite mesmerising, isn’t it?’

‘Which room are you in, Diana?’

Both women started guiltily as the voice from behind them had them straightening and whipping around to face Rick. He was naked except for possibly the world’s smallest towel around his waist, clutched at the side where it didn’t quite meet. His blue eyes looked even bluer with less of anything much to detract from them.

‘The one on the left,’ Stella confirmed after a quick glance at a gawking, mute-looking Diana.

‘Great, I’ll doss down in the other.’ He smiled at both of them. ‘See you in the morning, ladies.’

Stella and Diana watched him as he swaggered away, the towel slipping as he gave up on trying to keep it on. They caught a glimpse of one naked buttock just before he disappeared around the corner.

A buttock adorned with a very sexy, perfectly round, dark brown birthmark, right in the middle of a very sexy dimple.

Diana gasped as suddenly everything fell into place. Bronzed colouring, piercing blue eyes, long shaggy hair, a mouth made for sin and a very cute blemish in a very specific place.

‘Oh, my God!’ She looked at Stella. ‘That’s why he’s so familiar. It’s him—he’s Vasco Ramirez!’

CHAPTER TWO

STELLA blushed furiously. ‘Shh,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t be preposterous.’

Diana laughed. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’

Stella turned back to the sink, busying herself with washing out her wine glass. ‘There are some similarities...’ she admitted.

‘Similarities?’ Diana hooted. ‘I knew I knew him...I just couldn’t figure out where from. I mean, hell, let’s face it, if I’d met him somewhere before I’d hardly be likely to forget him—the man’s a total hottie. And, I have to say—’ she nudged Stella ‘—looks like a total sex fiend.’

‘Diana!’

She shrugged. ‘In a good way.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Stella muttered. ‘You know I’ve only ever been with Dale.’

Diana tisked. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never gone there...well, I mean you’ve obviously thought about it because you wrote an entire three-hundred-and-seventy-five page sexual fantasy about the man—’

‘I did not,’ Stella denied, picking up a tea towel and briskly drying the glass.

Diana crooked an eyebrow at her. ‘Stella, this is me. Diana. Who knows you.’

Stella looked into her friend’s eyes and could see that she knew the truth. She sagged against the sink. ‘Okay, yes,’ she sighed. ‘Rick was the inspiration for Vasco.’

Stella hadn’t set out to write a book with Rick as the hero but Vasco had taken on Rick’s features in a totally organic way. She hadn’t even been truly aware of it until she’d written the first kiss.

And then it had been so blindingly obvious she’d wondered why it had taken her so long.

‘Hah! I knew it!’ Diana clapped delightedly.

Stella rolled her eyes. ‘This is between you and me, Diana,’ she said, placing a hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Promise?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, waving a dismissive hand, ‘your secret is safe with me.’

‘Thank you,’ Stella said, releasing a breath as she shuffled away from the sink and headed towards the fire.

‘Well, there’s only one thing for it now,’ Diana said as she followed Stella and plonked herself down on one of the lounge chairs. ‘You have to go with him.’

Stella looked up from her log poking. ‘What?’

‘The man obviously inspires you to write. You need inspiration. You need to write. Problem solved.’

‘Joy doesn’t want another Vasco Ramirez, Diana.’

‘Yes, she does,’ Diana said. ‘That’s exactly what she wants. Vasco sold like hot cakes. Vasco is king. Of course she wants you to do another Vasco.’

Stella gave her friend an impatient look. ‘You know what I mean.’

Diana sighed. She didn’t want to pull out the big guns. ‘Babe, things are going to start to get nasty. And trust me, you don’t want to be with a publishing house that plays hard ball. There’ll be lawyers. It’s time to quit the whole writer’s block nonsense and write.’

Stella felt Diana’s words slice into her side. ‘You think it’s nonsense—that I’m making it up?’

Diana shook her head. She knew Stella’s instant fame had compounded her already entrenched second-book syndrome and her father’s death had just aggravated everything further. She totally got that Stella’s muse had deserted her. But...

‘The lawyers will think it is, babe.’

‘I just need a little more time,’ Stella muttered.

Diana nodded. ‘And you should take it. Absolutely. Go with Rick, get inspired. Come back replenished.’

Stella glanced at her friend. She made it sound so easy. She shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

‘Why?’ Diana challenged. ‘Because you have a thing for him?’

‘I do not have a thing for him,’ Stella denied quickly. A little too quickly perhaps. ‘He’s an old, old friend,’ she clarified, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘We’ve known each other for ever. There is no thing.’

Diana looked at her friend. Oh, there so was a thing.

Even better.

Lord alone knew, if she hadn’t had sex for almost a year on top of fairly pedestrian sex for the previous five she’d be looking at a way of fixing that pronto. And if it so happened that the man of Stella’s fantasies was there at the precise moment she decided to break the drought, then surely everyone won?

‘So it shouldn’t be a problem, then?’ Diana asked innocently. She held up her hand as Stella went to speak again. ‘Look, Rick’s right. Just sleep on it. I know it’s a lot to consider but, for what it’s worth, I think you’re mad if you don’t.’

‘But the book...’ Stella murmured in a last-ditch effort to make Diana see sense.

Diana shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re doing here on good old terra firma ain’t working, is it, babe?’

* * *

Stella went to bed determined to wake up in the morning and tell both Rick and Diana to go to hell.

But that was before the dream.

She dreamt all night of a mermaid following a pirate

ship. No...

She was the mermaid and she was following the pirate ship. Inside the hull a lone, rich, tenor voice would occasionally sing a deep mournful song of lost love. It was a thing of beauty and she’d fallen in love with the man even though she’d never laid eyes on him. But she knew he was a prisoner and she knew with an urgency that beat like the swell of the ocean in her breast that she had to save him.

That he was the one for her.

Stella awoke, the last tendrils of the dream still gliding over her skin like the cool kiss of sea water. It was so vivid for a moment she could almost feel the water frothing her hair in a glorious golden crown around her head.

The urge to write thrummed through her veins and she quickly opened the drawer of her bedside table, locating the stash of pens and paper she always kept there. She brushed off the dust and started to scribble and in ten minutes she’d written down the bones of a plot and some detailed description of Lucinda, the mermaid.

When she finished she sat back and stared at the words in front of her. They were a revelation. And not just because she’d written something she didn’t have the immediate urge to delete, but because it was a whole new approach.

Stella hadn’t imagined for even a minute that the heroine’s point of view would take precedence in her head. Vasco had been so strong and dominant, striding onto the page, demanding to be heard, that she’d assumed starting with the hero was always going to be her process.

All this time she’d been beating herself up about not being able to see a hero, getting her knickers in a twist because, no matter how hard she tried to visualise one, no hero was forthcoming.

And he still wasn’t. But Lucinda was fully formed and she was awesome.

Lucinda excited her as nothing had since Vasco had arrived. Lucinda was no Lady Mary waiting around to be saved. The world had gone crazy for Vasco last time, this time they would go crazy for Lucinda.

She could feel it deep inside in the same place that had told her Vasco was special, but she’d been too inexperienced to listen.

Well, she was listening now.

God, Joy was probably going to have a fit at her kick-ass mermaid. She could hear her now saying, But what about Inigo, Stella?

Stella gasped as his name came to her. Inigo. Of course that was his name. Inigo. It had to be Inigo.

It was working.

The buzz was back. The magic was here.

Inigo would be strong and noble, a perfect match for Lucinda because a strong woman required a man to equal her. A man secure in himself. A man who would understand the divided loyalties she endured every day and wouldn’t demand that she chose between the sea and land.

A subject that Stella could write about intimately.

God, why hadn’t she thought to approach her story from this way before? It seemed so obvious now. She kicked off the sheets, reached for her polar fleece dressing gown.

She had to get out of here. Had to get to her computer.

She almost laughed as she tripped over her gown in haste. The revelation had come just in time. It had saved her. There was no time now for seafaring adventures.

There was a mermaid to write. A hero to rescue.

Lucinda was calling.

Inigo too.

Stella padded straight to her computer, notes in hand. She drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited for it to power up. As soon as she was able, she opened a new word document and typed The Siren’s Call in the header.

She blinked at it. Her fingers hadn’t even consulted her brain. The title had just appeared.

It was all happening.

Then the cursor winked at her from a blank page and the buzz and pulse inside shrivelled like a sultana.

What? No...

She took her hands off the keyboard, waited a moment or two, then placed them back on. She waited for her fingers to roam over the keys, pressing randomly to make words on the page. She consulted her notes and desperately tried to recall spunky Lucinda.

But nothing came.

‘You’re up early,’ Rick’s voice murmured in her ear as he plonked a steaming hot cup of coffee at her elbow and she almost leapt two feet off the chair.

‘Bloody hell, Rick, do you mind?’ she griped as she clutched at her chest. Had she been that focused she hadn’t even noticed he was up, or smelled the aroma of coffee?

‘Whoa there, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’ He grinned. ‘What are you working on?’

Stella minimised the document, leaving only her screen saver to view. She glared up at him. Then she wished she hadn’t. He was wearing long stripy flannelette pyjama bottoms and nothing on top. The drawstring was pulled low and tight on his hips, revealing way too much skin right at her eye level.

Suddenly Lucinda whispered in her head again, murmuring her story, buzzing through Stella’s veins like an illicit drug. Flashes of her childhood felt sweet against Stella’s tongue. Lucinda’s despair over Inigo tightened Stella’s chest.

This was crazy.

Stella turned back to the computer, the need to write an imperative even with Rick hovering. But as suddenly as it had come upon her the flow stopped. Stella blinked—was there a tap somewhere that somebody had just turned off?

Rick let out a long low wolf whistle, ignoring her silence—Stella had never been a morning person. ‘Sexy cover,’ he murmured, taking the other chair at the desk and straddling it. ‘Great rack.’

Stella, still willing Lucinda to come back, took a moment to work out what Rick was referring to. She looked at her computer, the cover for Pleasure Hunt her screen saver. Lady Bingham’s flowing scarlet dress with the plunging neckline made the best of her assets, pushing her milky breasts practically into the face of the leering Vasco Ramirez.

‘Nice.’ Stella glared at him as she reopened her blank page, obliterating the screen saver.

Lucinda? Lucinda? Where are you?

‘I’m just saying, he seems to be enjoying the view and I can’t blame him.’

It would indeed be hypocritical, Rick thought, considering how very much he enjoyed that kind of view himself. The kind of view that Stella was giving him right at this moment as her gown flapped open and the low-cut vest shirt she wore gaped a little to reveal a glimpse of soft female breast.

The view he was trying to ignore.

He’d had a lot of practice at ignoring Stella’s breasts, given his treasured honorary position in the Mills family, but that didn’t mean it had been easy—then or now. Witness the time he’d lost his head and succumbed to her kissing dare with a heady mix of trepidation, challenge and anticipation.

Anticipation that had been building since the summer she’d arrived on the Persephone with curves and a bra.

Being sprung by her father before he’d reached his target and Nathan’s little chat with him afterwards had set him straight. And he’d never betrayed Nathan’s trust.

Not consciously anyway.

‘He’s practically drooling,’ he murmured, gaze firmly fixed on the screen.

Stella turned to Rick to defend Vasco. To say that her hero was not a salivating pervert, but of course she couldn’t because the man was a scoundrel of the highest order and she knew damn well he’d appreciated Mary’s cleavage as he’d appreciated countless other women’s cleavages before he’d met Mary and probably still was, out there in fiction land somewhere.

But it all died on her lips as Lucinda’s sweet melodic voice started up a dialogue in her head again, talking about her father disowning her for following a whim and her mother’s grief over their rift.

The implications stunk to high heaven.

Oh, God. Please no, not this, Lucinda. I’ll do anything, I’ll go anywhere else you want, but not this.

Just then Diana entered the room, negating the need for Stella to say anything, for which she was grateful. She yawned loudly and bade them both a good morning as she made her way to the kitchen in her clingy satin Hello Kitty pyjamas and poured herself a coffee from the percolator.

Rick whistled. ‘Well, hello Kitty.’

Stella rolled her eyes. Diana grinned as she plonked herself down in a lounge chair.

‘So?’ she demanded. ‘Are you going with Rick or what?’

‘Good question, Miss Kitty.’ Rick nodded. ‘Well?’ he asked, seeking Stella’s gaze.

Even just looking at him looking at her, Stella could feel the story buzzing through her veins. She could feel Lucinda beckoning her like the siren she was, waving at her from the rocks, drawing her ever closer to her doom.

She looked back at the computer screen with its mocking little cursor and acres of blankness and got nothing.

She sighed as Lucinda won. ‘Yes. I’m going.’

‘Really?’ Rick stood and punched a fist in the air at her curt nod.

How on earth was she going to share a boat with him when she hadn’t had sex in ages and he’d always been her private fantasy go-to man?

They were friends.

They were business partners, for crying out loud!

‘I’ve booked us two tickets to Cairns on a flight that leaves Heathrow early this evening.’

‘Ooh, cocky, I like that,’ Diana murmured, sipping her coffee.

Stella ignored her, as did Rick who, Stella knew from experience, must be biting his tongue to let that one go.

‘Australia?’ she squeaked.

Rick shrugged. ‘The map’s Micronesia and I haven’t taken the Dolphin out since I bought her.’

Stella stood. ‘You bought the Dolphin?’

Rick had been fascinated with the thirty-foot classic wooden yacht for as long as she could remember. They’d seen it in various ports over the years and it had always been a dream of his to have it for himself.

‘When?’

He grinned. ‘A few months ago. I finally tracked her down in New Zealand and had her refitted in Cairns. She’s ready to go.’

Stella felt a little thrill that had nothing to do with Lucinda. Rick had talked about it so much over the years it had almost become her dream too. ‘So we’re going to take her?’ she clarified.

He nodded. ‘If you want to. I could always hire something bigger, whiter, more pretentious if you preferred.’

Stella smiled at the distaste curling his lips. The Mills and Granville salvage fleet was three big white, powerful boats strong and, while she knew Rick was proud of what her father and he had built up, his passion had always been the classic beauty of the Dolphin. ‘Perish the thought.’ She grinned.

Rick grinned back at her and felt a hum of excitement warm his belly. There was something different about Stel this morning. Last night she’d been the Stella he’d always known—slopping around, no airs and graces, no special treatment.

This morning she glowed as if she had a secret that no one else knew. Her olive-green eyes seemed to radiate purpose. Her cheeks seemed pinker. Even her scraped-back ponytail seemed to have more perk in it.

She looked like women did when they were pregnant, as if they were doing something truly amazing and they knew it.

She was radiant.

It was quite breathtaking and his stomach clenched inside in a way that, as a man, he was all too familiar with.

But not where she was concerned.

He looked at Diana, all sleepy and tousled with her knowing eyes and cute mouth, and waited for the twinge to come again.

He got nothing.

Hmm.

‘Right.’ He drained his coffee quickly. There were things to do and not being here for a while was a good option. ‘Gotta go get some things sorted. I’ll see you both later.’

Stella busied herself in the kitchen until Rick left the house five minutes later. ‘How are you going to break it to Joy?’ she asked Diana.

‘Oh, forget that,’ Diana said, waving the query away. ‘I’ll tell her you’ve gone off to be inspired. There are much more important things to discuss.’

Stella frowned. ‘There are?’

Diana nodded vigorously, her shirt pulling tight across her chest as she leaned over the kitchen bench. ‘You two should have sex,’ she said.

Stella almost dropped her second mug of coffee. Was she mad? ‘Ah no.’ She shook her head. ‘Bad. Idea.’

Diana raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, well, you’re going to have to explain that one to me.’

Stella didn’t even know where to start with how bad an idea it was. ‘Because we’re friends. And colleagues. I’m his silent partner, for crying out loud! And trust me, I know better than anyone not to get tangled up with a man of the sea. They never choose land. They never choose love.’

Diana rolled her eyes. ‘You’re just having sex with him, not marrying the man.’

‘Which is just as well because men of the sea should not marry. My father chose the sea over my mother. Rick’s mother left when he was a baby because his father wouldn’t settle on land. We’ve both seen how that kind of life isn’t compatible with long-term relationships.’

‘You’re. Just. Having. Sex,’ Diana reiterated.

‘Oh, come on, Diana, you know I’m not good at that. The last guy I was just having sex with I ended up engaged to.’

Diana nodded. ‘And the sex was lousy.’

‘Hey,’ Stella protested. ‘It wasn’t lousy, it was...nice. Sweet. It may not have been...imaginative but it could have been worse.’ Her friend didn’t look convinced. ‘He was a pretty straight guy, Diana. Not all men want to have sex hanging from the chandeliers. There’s nothing wrong with sweet.’

‘No, absolutely not,’ she agreed. ‘Except you did write a book full of hot, sweaty, dirty, pirate sex during your time with Dale.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m no psychologist but I think they call that transference.’

‘They,’ Stella said, bugging her eyes at her friend, ‘call it fiction.’

Diana held up her hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right. I’m just saying...you’re going to be on that boat with him for long periods of time where there’ll be nothing to do...it might be worth thinking about, is all...’

Stella shook her head at her incorrigible friend. ‘I’ll be writing.’

Diana laughed. ‘Good answer.’

* * *

At two Stella hugged Diana ferociously and thanked her for locking up after them. She was staying on for another night to get some work done far from the distractions of London. ‘I promise I’ll come back with a book,’ she whispered to her friend. ‘The ideas are already popping. Tell Joy she’s going to love Lucinda.’

Diana laughed. ‘Joy will be overjoyed.’

Stella grimaced. She hoped so. She’d added a decade to her very patient editor’s life and she owed Joy this. Not just a book, but a book to rival Vasco’s. She scurried to Rick’s hire car with her bag, hoping they made it out of Cornwall before another storm blew in.

Rick pulled up beside Diana and smiled at her. ‘See ya later, Miss Kitty. It was nice spending some time with you,’ he said.

Diana nodded distractedly, bobbing her head back and forth to see what Stella was up to.

Rick frowned. These two women were hard on his ego. ‘I know Stel values your friendship and—’

‘Yeh, yeh,’ Diana said, cutting him off and dragging him back inside the cottage. She pulled her dog-eared copy of Pleasure Hunt from her handbag on the hall stand and thrust it at him. ‘Take it. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.’

Rick frowned down at the cover he recognised from earlier. ‘Er, it’s really not my thing.’

‘Trust me. It’s your thing.’ She glanced over Rick’s shoulder, knowing that Stella would kill her if she even had an inkling of what Diana was doing. ‘It’s really quite...illuminating.’

‘Okay.’

He ran his fingers over the raised gold lettering that spelt out Stella’s name. He felt a surge of pride that Stel had made a path for herself in the world—something that rocked her boat. He knew that Nathan had been immensely proud of his little girl’s success.

‘Thanks,’ he said as he tucked it under his arm and backed out of the cottage.

‘Stop,’ Diana hissed. ‘What are you doing?’ She whisked it out from under his arm, spun him around, unzipped his backpack and shoved it deep inside.

‘She’s sensitive about it,’ Diana explained as Rick gave her a questioning look. ‘Do not read it around her. And if she springs you—I will deny all knowledge of how you came by it. Capiche?’

Rick chuckled as he held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sure. Okay.’

He took a couple of tentative paces out of the cottage, expecting to be yanked back inside again. It wasn’t until he was halfway to the car that he started to relax.

He smiled to himself. God, but he loved women.

* * *

Five hours later they were airborne and Rick was busily flirting with the air hostess. Stella wasn’t sure why she was so annoyed. After all, she’d seen Rick in action with women nearly all of her life.

Maybe it was just the relentless afternoon of it. The woman at the petrol station. The one at the rental desk. Another at the check-in lounge. Oh, and the coffee shop—and she’d have to have been in her sixties. It seemed there wasn’t a woman in existence who wasn’t fair game for his laid-back style of flirting.

Including her.

But she was used to his casual, flirty banter. She knew it was harmless and she could give as good as she got.

The women of the world were not.

‘Champagne?’ Rick asked her.

It was tempting but after last night her liver probably needed a break. ‘No, thanks,’ she said, smiling at the hostess, who she was pretty sure actually didn’t give a damn if Stella wanted a drink or not.

Rick watched the swagger of the stewardess’s hips in her tight pencil skirt as she left to grab his beer. Stella rolled her eyes at him and he grinned. ‘So,’ he said, snuggling down further into the comfortable leather seat. ‘You haven’t asked how the business is going.’

Stella pulled the blind down on her window. ‘Well, we’re in business class so I’m assuming it’s all going okay.’

Rick nodded. ‘It is.’

Stella sighed. ‘Rick, I told you at the wake that whatever decisions you wanted to make were fine by me. That I only wanted to be a silent partner. You’ve been half of the business since you were fifteen. It’s been your blood, sweat and tears that helped to build it to where it is today. Dad should have left his half to you, not me. It should be all yours.’

Rick looked askance, his blue eyes flashing. ‘Stel, what is a man worth if he cannot provide for his family?’ he said, his voice laced with reproach and sounding remarkably Spanish all of a sudden. ‘The business was Nathan’s legacy and he knew how much you loved it. Of course he wanted it to go to you. Of course he wanted to leave you with no financial worries.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have any idea how much money my book has made?’

Rick thought about the contraband copy of Pleasure Hunt secreted away in his backpack. ‘No. But the business has a multimillion-dollar turnover annually and whether you need it or not—half of it’s yours.’

‘I know...I’m just saying, I can look after myself.’

He nodded. ‘I know that. I’ve always known that.’

Stella’s breath caught in her throat at the sincerity in his tropical eyes. His shoulder-length hair fell forward to form a partial curtain around his face and, with his slight sideways position, she felt as if they were cut off from the rest of the aeroplane.

‘Your beer, sir.’

Stella glanced up at the stewardess and was surprised to feel Rick’s gaze linger on her face. She looked back at him quizzically and they just looked at each other for a long moment before he smiled at her, then turned to accept the offering.

He started to chat with the stewardess again and Stella turned away. She shut her eyes, not wanting to hear the banter that fell so easily from those wicked Vasco lips.

It was a long flight. She might as well try and get some sleep.

* * *

She woke a few hours later feeling miraculously refreshed. Rick was stretched out asleep in his chair, his face turned towards her, those killer sable lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks.

For a moment she just stared at him, at his utter beauty. He’d always been good-looking but age had turned all that brash youthful charisma into a deep and abiding sex appeal.

The urge to push his hair back off his forehead where it had fallen in haphazard array almost trumped the urge to trace his lips with her finger. They looked all soft and slack in slumber but she knew, without ever having experienced it, that they would be just the right amount of hard at precisely the right time—like Vasco’s.

She’d come perilously close to knowing it for real. Could still remember the way her pulse had roared, her eyes had fluttered closed as he’d leaned in to make good on her dare and fulfil all her teenage fantasies.

And, courtesy of a crush bigger than the United Kingdom, there’d been plenty of them.

Fantasies that had seen her tick each day down on a calendar as the holidays had approached, her foolish heart tripping every time she’d thought about those blue, blue eyes and all that bare, broad, bronzed skin courtesy of his Spanish mother.

All the time hoping that it would be this summer he’d see her as a woman instead of a girl. That he’d make good on the increasingly confusing signals he sent and act instead of tease.

And the eve of her sixteenth birthday all that breathless longing had come to fruition.

‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,’ he’d teased.

He’d been nearly nineteen and so much more experienced. She’d watched him flirt with girls since he’d been thirteen and been aware of his effect on them for much longer than he had.

She’d screwed up her courage. ‘Maybe you should do something about that?’ she’d murmured, her heart hammering.

She’d watched as his Adam’s apple had bobbed and his gaze had briefly fallen to her mouth. ‘Yeh, right,’ he’d dismissed.

She’d smiled at him and said the one thing she’d known would work. ‘I dare you.’

And it had worked. She’d seen something inside him give as his gaze had zeroed in on her mouth and his lips had moved closer.

Her father’s curt ‘Riccardo!’ had been the bucket of water they’d both needed.

A reminder that there was a line between them that should never be crossed no matter how close they’d danced to it.

And she was glad for it now.

Glad that this magnificent man liked her and enjoyed her company and called her his friend. That he could drop by out of the blue and use her shower and doss down for the night and there was no awkward history, no uncomfortable silences.

Despite what Diana thought, a person didn’t die of sexual frustration and she wouldn’t sacrifice their friendship and mutual respect for a brief slaking of bodily desires.

No matter how damn good she knew it would be.

He stirred and she froze, hoping like crazy that lazy blue gaze wasn’t about to blast her in tropical heat.

It didn’t. But it was enough to spur her into action. She was not going to sit here and ogle him as if she were still in the midst of her teenage crush, watching him surreptitiously from behind her dark sunglasses as he went about the business of running a boat.

Without a shirt.

Always without a shirt.

She pulled out her laptop and powered it up.

* * *

An hour later the cabin crew came through offering a meal and Rick woke. He stretched, then righted his chair, glancing over at Stella busily tapping away. She seemed engrossed and he smiled at her.

‘I thought you were blocked.’

Stella looked up from her notes. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ she admitted.

‘Hah!’ he crowed. ‘I told you all you needed was a treasure hunt.’

‘Yeh, well, all I’m doing is some preliminary planning, at the moment. It remains to be seen if I can actually write anything.’

Although she knew she could. In fact she itched to. Lucinda and Inigo’s story was becoming clearer and clearer.

‘So how does that work, then? Writer’s block?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I look at a blank page all day terrified that I’m not good enough, that I’m a one-book wonder, willing the words to come and when, on a good day, some actually do appear, they’re all crap and I delete them.’

Rick nodded thoughtfully. He couldn’t say that he understood exactly, but he could see the consternation creasing her brow and the look he’d seen in her eyes last night akin to panic. The same look he’d sometimes seen when she’d been a kid and Nathan had been late returning to the surface.

‘Maybe you need to give yourself permission to be crap?’ he suggested. ‘Just get it all down, warts and all. Switch your internal editor off?’

Stella raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Did Diana tell you to say that?’

Rick chuckled. ‘No.’

‘Well, it’s easier said than done, believe me.’ She sighed. ‘I think if I’d had a whole bunch of books rejected before Pleasure Hunt, then I’d have known stuff like that. But this crazy instant success didn’t give me any time to fail or any time to know who I am as a writer. I think I needed this time to figure that out.’

Rick nodded. ‘So...’ he said, looking over her shoulder, ‘are you going to tell me what it’s about?’

Stella shut the lid of her laptop. ‘Nope.’

The last time a guy had realised what she’d written it hadn’t ended well.

‘Excuse me, Ms Mills?’

Stella looked up at a stewardess who had brought her some water earlier. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind—I saw your name on the passenger list and I just finished reading Pleasure Hunt.’ She held it up. ‘Would you mind signing it for me?’

Stella blushed. ‘Certainly,’ she murmured as she held her hand out for the book and proffered pen. ‘Is there any message in particular you’d like me to write?’

‘Just to me, Andrea.’ The stewardess smiled.

Stella wrote a brief message to Andrea, then signed her name with a flourish before handing the book and pen back.

‘Thank you so much,’ Andrea said. ‘I shall cherish it.’

‘Thank you,’ Stella replied. ‘It’s always nice to meet people who like what you do.’

Andrea nodded. ‘I better go and serve dinner or my little band of travellers won’t be happy.’

Stella and Rick watched her walk away. He turned to her. ‘Wow. You’re seriously famous, aren’t you?’

Stella chuckled. ‘Does that threaten your masculinity?’ It had certainly threatened Dale’s.

‘Hell, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m a little turned on, actually.’

Stella shook her head. ‘If you’re thinking threesome, forget it.’

Rick laughed. ‘Well, I am now.’

CHAPTER THREE

STELLA had been seven and Rick ten when they’d first laid eyes on the Dolphin anchored at St Kitts. They’d both stood on the bow of the Persephone with their mouths open, staring at the wooden beauty. Teak, oak, cypress and the original brass fittings had given her an old-world charm hinting at an era when craftsmanship was everything and things were made to last.

Stella still remembered Rick’s awed whisper. ‘One day she’s going to be mine.’

And as they stood on the wharf looking down at her now, the brass gleaming beneath a high Aussie sun, the wooden deck warm and inviting, she looked as grand and majestic as ever.

Lucinda sighed in her head.

‘God, Rick,’ Stella breathed, that same stirring in her blood she always felt with a stiff sea breeze ruffling her hair. ‘She’s even more beautiful than I remembered.’

Rick looked down at her, her hair streaming behind her, her pink lips parted in awe. She’d changed into a vest top and cut-off denim shorts and she was so tiny the urge to tuck her under his arm took him by surprise.

‘Yes, she is,’ he murmured, looking back at his purchase.

Stella looked up at him. The sea breeze whipped his long pirate locks across his face. His strong jaw was dark with stubble. ‘She must have cost you a fortune.’

He shrugged. ‘Some things are beyond money. And she’s worth every cent.’

She nodded, looking back at the superbly crafted boat. ‘Why now?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I listened to your father talk about The Mermaid all my life. About how one day he was going to find Inigo’s final resting place. And then he died without ever having seen it.’

Rick felt a swell of emotion in his chest and stopped. He slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently into his side. ‘I always thought Nathan was invincible...’

Stella snaked an arm around his waist, her heart twisting as his words ran out. She’d always thought so too. Always thought her father would be like Captain Ahab, The Mermaid his white whale. They both stood on the dock watching the gentle bob of the Dolphin for a few moments.

‘I’ve dreamt about owning this boat since I was ten years old,’ Rick murmured, finding his voice again. ‘I didn’t want to wait any longer.’

Stella nodded, feeling a deep and abiding affinity with Rick that couldn’t have been stronger had they been bound by blood.

That wouldn’t have been possible had they been lovers.

‘Besides,’ he grinned, giving her a quick squeeze before letting her go, ‘the company owns it.’

Stella laughed. ‘Oh, really, creative accounting, huh?’

‘Something like that,’ he laughed.

‘So she’s actually half mine?’ she teased.

Rick threw his backpack on deck and jumped on board. He held out his hand. ‘Mi casa es su casa,’ he murmured.

Stella’s breath hitched as she took his hand. He spoke Spanish impeccably and with that bronzed colouring and those impossibly blue eyes he was every inch the Spaniard. He might have an English father and have gone to English schools but for his formative years he was raised by his Romany grandmother and she’d made sure her Riccardo had been immersed in the lingo.

As she stepped aboard she checked out the small motorised dinghy hanging from a frame attached to the stern above the water line. Then her gaze fell to the starboard hull where the bold gold lettering outlined in fine black detail proclaimed a change of name. She almost tripped and stumbled into him.

‘Whoa there,’ he said, holding her hips to steady her. They curved out from her waist and he had to remind himself that the flesh beneath his palms was Stella’s. ‘You’ve turned into a real landlubber, haven’t you?’ he teased.

She stared at him for a moment. ‘You changed her name?’ she asked breathlessly.

He shrugged as he smiled down at her flummoxed face. ‘I promised you.’

Stella thumped his arm and ignored his theatrical recoil. ‘I was seven years old,’ she yelled.

She stormed to the edge and looked over at the six yellow letters, her eyes filling with tears.

Stella.

‘You don’t like it?’

She blinked her tears away and marched back to him and thumped his chest this time. ‘I love it, you idiot! It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’ Then she threw herself into his arms.

Not even her father had named a boat after her.

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