The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,25

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.

What did he want?

Stella swallowed. ‘Get?’

Rick held her gaze. ‘If I win?’

Stella was lost for words for a moment. They’d never played for stakes before. Several inappropriate suggestions rose to mind but she quashed each one. She was too strung out to play games with him. ‘How about my undying gratitude?’ she quipped.

Rick shook his head slowly, dropping his gaze to her mouth. ‘How about that kiss that we didn’t quite get round to?’

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

She smiled. ‘Deal.’ She held out her hand. He wouldn’t be able to manage it, of course, but if the stakes were...interesting...maybe he’d at least try and comply.

Their gazes locked and Rick swallowed as he took her hand, cementing the deal.

Would she taste like coconuts too?

* * *

They cast off the next morning at eight o’clock, a good wind aiding their departure. The long-range weather forecast was favourable and Stella was feeling as if her body clock was finally back in sync.

Of course, she was also really embarrassed by her carry-on last night. She tried to apologise to Rick once they were out of the harbour and heading north.

‘Are you trying to welch on the deal?’ Rick teased. ‘Because you know how much I love a challenge.’

She did. God knew how many times she’d come close to drowning while challenging him to a competition to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest.

He’d beat her every time.

Except for that time he’d let her win and she’d been so mad at him he’d promised never to do it again.

‘Absolutely not,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I stand by it.’

‘Good.’ He grinned. ‘Now go write something.’

And she did. Sitting in a special chair at the bow of the boat, sun on her shoulders, breeze in her hair, laptop balanced on her knees, she found Lucinda flowed from her fingers onto the page. It was as if she frolicked and danced along the keys, slipping magically between Stella’s fingers, informing every letter, controlling every mouse click.

The cursor no longer blinked at Stella from a blank page. Instead words, lovely rich words of a bygone era, filled all the white spaces up. When Rick brought her a snack and her hat she realised she’d been writing for two hours solid and the number down the bottom of the page told her she’d written thirteen hundred words.

Thirteen hundred glorious words.

The morning flowed into the afternoon; the perfect calm conditions continued. Rick occasionally called to her, pointing out a pod of dolphins or an island in the distance. She got up and stretched regularly and when she was grappling with a scene she’d take the wheel for a while and magically, like tankers on the horizon, the solution appeared.

By the end of the day she’d written three thousand words and she felt utterly exhilarated. And it wasn’t all about the writing.

She’d forgotten how elemental sailing made a person feel. How it connected you to the earth on such a primitive level. How the feel of the waves beneath your feet and the push and pull of the tide drew you into the circadian rhythm of the planet.

How it connected her to her father.

She’d missed Nathan terribly the last six months, but out here he was everywhere. Every turn of the wheel, every flap of the sail, every pitch and roll of the hull.

They anchored just before sundown in the middle of nowhere. Just her and Rick bobbing in the middle of an enormous ocean beneath a giant dome blushing velvet and dappled with tangerine clouds.

Rick grilled steaks this time and Stella was pleased she’d kept a serving out of the freezer. She loved fish, but she knew by the time the voyage was over she’d be all fished out. And with three thousand words to celebrate, nice thick juicy steaks seemed like the perfect food. She tossed a salad and completed the meal with melt-in-your-mouth bread rolls.

It was utterly delicious and they savoured every morsel of the fresh food. Much later in