The Devil and the Deep

‘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?’