The Devil and the Deep - By Amy Andrews Page 0,9

written the first kiss.

And then it had been so blindingly obvious she’d wondered why it had taken her so long.

‘Hah! I knew it!’ Diana clapped delightedly.

Stella rolled her eyes. ‘This is between you and me, Diana,’ she said, placing a hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Promise?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, waving a dismissive hand, ‘your secret is safe with me.’

‘Thank you,’ Stella said, releasing a breath as she shuffled away from the sink and headed towards the fire.

‘Well, there’s only one thing for it now,’ Diana said as she followed Stella and plonked herself down on one of the lounge chairs. ‘You have to go with him.’

Stella looked up from her log poking. ‘What?’

‘The man obviously inspires you to write. You need inspiration. You need to write. Problem solved.’

‘Joy doesn’t want another Vasco Ramirez, Diana.’

‘Yes, she does,’ Diana said. ‘That’s exactly what she wants. Vasco sold like hot cakes. Vasco is king. Of course she wants you to do another Vasco.’

Stella gave her friend an impatient look. ‘You know what I mean.’

Diana sighed. She didn’t want to pull out the big guns. ‘Babe, things are going to start to get nasty. And trust me, you don’t want to be with a publishing house that plays hard ball. There’ll be lawyers. It’s time to quit the whole writer’s block nonsense and write.’

Stella felt Diana’s words slice into her side. ‘You think it’s nonsense—that I’m making it up?’

Diana shook her head. She knew Stella’s instant fame had compounded her already entrenched second-book syndrome and her father’s death had just aggravated everything further. She totally got that Stella’s muse had deserted her. But...

‘The lawyers will think it is, babe.’

‘I just need a little more time,’ Stella muttered.

Diana nodded. ‘And you should take it. Absolutely. Go with Rick, get inspired. Come back replenished.’

Stella glanced at her friend. She made it sound so easy. She shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

‘Why?’ Diana challenged. ‘Because you have a thing for him?’

‘I do not have a thing for him,’ Stella denied quickly. A little too quickly perhaps. ‘He’s an old, old friend,’ she clarified, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘We’ve known each other for ever. There is no thing.’

Diana looked at her friend. Oh, there so was a thing.

Even better.

Lord alone knew, if she hadn’t had sex for almost a year on top of fairly pedestrian sex for the previous five she’d be looking at a way of fixing that pronto. And if it so happened that the man of Stella’s fantasies was there at the precise moment she decided to break the drought, then surely everyone won?

‘So it shouldn’t be a problem, then?’ Diana asked innocently. She held up her hand as Stella went to speak again. ‘Look, Rick’s right. Just sleep on it. I know it’s a lot to consider but, for what it’s worth, I think you’re mad if you don’t.’

‘But the book...’ Stella murmured in a last-ditch effort to make Diana see sense.

Diana shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re doing here on good old terra firma ain’t working, is it, babe?’

* * *

Stella went to bed determined to wake up in the morning and tell both Rick and Diana to go to hell.

But that was before the dream.

She dreamt all night of a mermaid following a pirate

ship. No...

She was the mermaid and she was following the pirate ship. Inside the hull a lone, rich, tenor voice would occasionally sing a deep mournful song of lost love. It was a thing of beauty and she’d fallen in love with the man even though she’d never laid eyes on him. But she knew he was a prisoner and she knew with an urgency that beat like the swell of the ocean in her breast that she had to save him.

That he was the one for her.

Stella awoke, the last tendrils of the dream still gliding over her skin like the cool kiss of sea water. It was so vivid for a moment she could almost feel the water frothing her hair in a glorious golden crown around her head.

The urge to write thrummed through her veins and she quickly opened the drawer of her bedside table, locating the stash of pens and paper she always kept there. She brushed off the dust and started to scribble and in ten minutes she’d written down the bones of a plot and some detailed description of Lucinda, the mermaid.

When she finished she sat back and stared at the words in front of her. They were a revelation. And