“Promise you won’t tell?”
She was the one frowning now. “If you don’t want me to talk about something in my interview, of course I won’t.”
“No, that’s not the reason.” He reached out a hand and it felt so natural to take it. “It’s for my family.”
Surprised—and touched—she asked, “They don’t know about it?”
“If they knew, they might think they needed to feel bad about me ignoring the waiting list for them.”
“How long is your customer waiting list?”
He shrugged. “I’ll take a look at it again next week.”
“Why do I have the sense that you pay as much attention to your waiting list as you do to your ringing phone?”
“Because you already know me so well.” He drew her closer. “I know you’re here to interview me today, not to make out with me, but I’ve spent every second since Saturday night thinking about kissing you again. Just one and then we’ll get down to business. I promise.”
“Well,” she said softly, “since you proved to me on Saturday night that you are good at keeping your promises, just one…since we really do need to get to the interview.”
“Then I’ll have to make it count, won’t I?”
Before she could even take her next breath, his mouth was on hers. Arousing. Seducing. Ravaging. And challenging her to pour just as much passion back into him. Instinctively, she answered that challenge with so much heat and passion that before she knew it her arms were around his neck, her legs were wrapped around his waist, and his hands were on her hips to hold her steady against him while they tried to get as close to each other as they possibly could in the middle of his sun-drenched boathouse.
“Wow,” she said slowly when he finally set her back on her feet and she tried to get her brain to fire on all cylinders again, “you really know how to make a kiss count, don’t you?”
“I was going to say the same about you,” he said in a hungry voice that sent another wave of desire shuddering through her.
“I think I’m going to need a minute for my head to clear.” She shook her head and took a couple of deep breaths, but it didn’t help clear the lust-filled fog from her brain. “Maybe two minutes.”
“Would coffee help?”
“Hopefully, yes.”
They both walked the short distance to his small corner kitchen, and while he brewed some seriously great-smelling coffee, she set up her recorder, pad of paper, and pen on the small table...and tried with all her might to stop thinking about how desperately she wanted to jump back into his arms.
He brought her a mug and she nearly groaned aloud with pleasure at how delicious it was. “Where did you learn to make coffee this good?”
“Good, strong coffee is the best way to wake crew members up for their watch.”
For the next hour or so, she asked him much more practical nuts-and-bolts questions about sailing and boats than she’d asked him on Friday. Finally, she returned to something he’d said about continuing to teach new sailors the ropes. “I can see how much satisfaction there must be in building a boat, and I can imagine how exciting races must be. But why do you continue to teach when I’m guessing those hours would be better spent building a pricey sailboat for someone on your waiting list?”
“Early on, when I was trying to make a go of boat building, taking people out for a long weekend was an easy, fun way to bring in funding. I’ve always enjoyed sailing with a crew. Probably comes from having four siblings and more than a dozen cousins,” he said with a grin. “The people who come out to learn with me are always an odd mix. Maybe one’s a baker. Another’s an accountant. A third is a painter. A fourth is a cop. They usually don’t have much experience with sailing, but it doesn’t matter because all of them—all of us—share the same passion. And by the time we make it back into the harbor, they’re hooked.”
“What do you tell them before you head out? What are your hard and fast rules for sailing?”
“There’s just one: When it’s your turn to stand watch, you show up on time. It’s the only thing I’m an inflexible tyrant about because I’ve seen what happens when the watch system breaks down and people lose vital hours of sleep. Fatigue will kill you faster at sea than any storm will.”
Grace was reminded yet again of the way Dylan had shifted on Saturday night from gentle to dominant, from sweet to dangerous. Obviously, he’d seen how much she liked it, but she also now knew that the sinfully sexy man who had ripped her panties off was just as much a part of him as the softhearted man who loved making her baby laugh. She could easily imagine him shifting from easygoing to no-bullshit in the blink of an eye if he thought anyone was putting his crew at risk out at sea. He was a natural-born protector.
“You really don’t have any other rules?”
“I teach my clients navigation and heavy-weather sailing. How to plan a passage. But mostly, we just sail. That’s how I learned best, not by listening to someone talk about technique, but by keeping the boat moving, one way or another. If the wind is from ahead, haul the sails in. If the wind is from the side or behind, let them out. It isn’t much harder than that.”
“You help make people’s dreams a reality,” she mused aloud. “That’s why you do it, isn’t it? Because you had that same dream once.”
“I still do. I’ve never lost my sense of awe at what the ocean is capable of, not even after hundreds of midnight watches. As far as I’m concerned, the magic of a night sea is one that can only be matched, and transcended, by one thing.” He paused and held her gaze for a long moment. “By love.”
When heat—and emotion—immediately kicked up between them, Grace did what she could to bank it for the time being and hold her focus on her interview. Later, she knew, they would shift from professional to personal. But for now, she needed to be no-bullshit, too.