The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,34

unconscious and into the water.

Her smile died as her heart started hammering in her chest. She reached for the nearest weapon, a heavy-based fry pan, and decided to go up and investigate. She climbed the spiral staircase, one tread at a time, an itch up her spine.

She took a deep breath, then popped her head above the deck line, like a meerkat.

‘Rick?’ she whispered while her eyes took a second or two to adjust from the bright light below to the low cloud-affected moonlight outside.

Still nothing.

She caught a slight movement towards the helm of the boat as the sound of running water defined itself from the gentle slap of sea against hull and the trilling of insects. She squinted to make out the shape, her vision slowly adjusting to its night capabilities.

It was a person...

A man.

Taking a shower.

Taking a shower?

The moon chose that moment to come out from behind the scudding clouds that had been hampering its brilliance all night and Stella was afforded a side view of the man standing beneath the shower spray as if someone had switched on a spotlight.

Rick.

A one hundred per cent, buck naked, Rick.

She stood there frozen to the spot for a long moment caught between two impulses. To get out now before he discovered she was staring at his naked body or just stop and take in every magnificent inch.

As the celestial spotlight continued to bathe him in milky brilliance the latter won out.

The shower head was behind him, his head tipped back, his face raised to the night as the spray bathed his shoulder-length locks into a sleek, silky sheath. His eyes were shut as if worshipping the moonbeams that painted him in alabaster.

He looked like a statue. A Michelangelo nude.

With all the beautiful symmetry of fluid muscles and the more subtle details of sinews, tendons and veins in living, breathing relief.

Water sluiced over his broad shoulders, his chest, his biceps. It ran down the planes of his back, following the curve of his spine, dipping into those two sexy dimples above the rise of his buttocks. It flowed down firm flanks and rippled like a waterfall across the defined ridges of his abdomen.

Rivulets of water ran down one powerful thigh pressed slightly forward, the knee bent, obscuring her view any lower, and Stella frowned.

Damn it, so close...

Vasco’s bath scene had been written over two years ago, and while a lot of it had been scripted out of her imagination some of it hadn’t. Having grown up with Rick wearing barely anything at all—boardies or a skin-tight diving suit being his everyday attire—she’d had plenty of inspiration for Vasco’s body and had been able to portray it with startling accuracy.

There had been some parts, however, that she’d had to... embellish.

It would be nice to know the truth of it. Had her fevered imaginings accurately represented all of Vasco or had it been pure whimsy on her behalf?

And then, as if he’d read her mind, he shifted, twisting his body slightly in her direction, straightening his bent knee and transferring his weight to his other thigh, and she no longer had to wonder if she’d got it right because the evidence that she had was right there.

Riccardo Granville was most definitely Vasco Ramirez in the flesh.

Rick turned so his back was to Stella and smiled to himself as he tilted his neck from side to side, letting the lukewarm water run over muscle that was surprisingly tense. The concentration it had taken to appear unselfconscious and relaxed, as if he were alone and being unwatched, had been much harder to carry off than he’d thought. But to see Stella’s head pop up and then feel her avid gaze on him as tangible as the water cascading from the shower head had made the exercise worthwhile.

He was back in control again and that was exactly the way he liked it. Even if he was playing games with someone he had no business playing games with.

But if she was going to secretly put him in a book and not expect him to have a bit of fun with that then she’d completely forgotten about his devilish sense of humour.

As long as he kept it light and remembered who she was—Nathan’s daughter, not a single, fully grown woman who wrote dirty books—and where the line was, it would work out just fine.

They’d both have a laugh at the end of the voyage and get on with their lives.

It was win-win as far as he was concerned.

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