The Devil and the Deep

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.