Love Overboard - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,10

bags from a cubbyhole under the sink. “Lucy wets these and puts them in the oven. She says it brings the temperature down.”

Stephanie soaked the bags and stuffed them in around the ham. She added another tray of cookies, closed the door, and secretly tried to bribe God into lowering the heat. If you just do this one thing for me, she promised, I’ll never say another curseword, I’ll eat all my vegetables, I’ll drive at the speed limit.

Mr. and Mrs. Pease carefully lowered themselves down the fo’c’sle stairs. “Isn’t this cozy?” Mrs. Pease said. “And it smells wonderful down here.”

Mr. Pease poured two mugs of coffee and peered into the bowl of cookie dough. “Did you use oat flour?” he asked Stephanie.

“Nope. Just plain old flour flour.”

He shook his head. “Oat flour’s the secret to a chewy cookie. You have to use some oat flour, and you can’t bake them too long.”

Mrs. Pease took a mug from her husband. “He’s a wonderful cookie baker,” she told Stephanie. “You’d never know they were homemade.”

Stephanie sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “Is it always this smoky in here?” she asked Ace.

“Smoky?” Ace removed his dark glasses. “You’re right. It’s smoky.” He checked the flue and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong. The flue is okay.”

“Maybe something’s burning in the oven,” Mrs. Pease suggested.

Stephanie opened the door and jumped back as a wall of smoke and flame rolled out at her.

“Jeez,” Ace said, “looks like the bags caught fire. That never happened when Lucy did it.”

Stephanie stuck her hand into a thick potholder mitt, pulled the flaming bags out of the oven, and hurled them into the sink.

Mrs. Pease put her hand to her heart. “We’re gonna die. The ship’s gonna burn to a cinder, and we’re gonna drown.”

Stephanie fanned the air with a hand towel. “This is how we lower the temperature in the woodstove,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. We do this all the time.”

Mr. Pease came over to take a closer look at the oven. “I didn’t realize being a ship’s cook was so complicated.”

Ace removed the tray of smoking cookies and set them on the counter. “Man, look at these mothers. They’ve been cremated. And the ham! Looks like a meteor I saw once in the Smithsonian.”

Stephanie squinted at the smoldering ham. “It is sort of black. Maybe it just needs basting,” she said hopefully. She poked at it with a long-handled fork. “Probably we should pick the ashes off it first.” She closed the oven door and checked the gauge. Five hundred degrees. She gave it a whack with the fork to make sure it was working. “Darn.” She turned to Ace. “Any other ideas?”

Ace put his dark glasses back on. “It looks better this way.”

The first mate looked in at them. “Stephanie here? Captain wants to see her.”

Stephanie handed the fork over to Ace. “Does he make people walk the plank?”

Ivan unconsciously gripped the wheel a little tighter when he saw Stephanie. She had a sweat stain running down the center of her tank top, her hair was plastered against her damp forehead, her face was flushed under a layer of soot and flour, and cookie dough clung to her shirt and shorts. She caught sight of a pelican fishing the shoreline and stopped in her tracks. A wondrous smile lit her face, leaving no doubt in Ivan’s mind that this was the first time she’d seen a pelican in flight.

She turned and waved at Ivan. “It’s a pelican!” she shouted.

Ivan took a quick breath as emotion knifed through him. It was unnatural, he thought— the way she could knock the wind out of him with a simple wave and smile. Maybe unnatural wasn’t precisely right, maybe supernatural was a better choice. What else would explain the instant attraction, the surge of joy at sharing a pelican sighting? Hell, he didn’t even like pelicans. They were big, dumb, ugly, brown birds. He shook his head. He was losing it. Stephanie Lowe was making him crazy. She had him blaming a rise in his testosterone level on a defenseless three-hundred-year-old ghost.

“Did you see it?” she asked wide-eyed as she approached the helm. “I never realized they were so big.”

He reached out with one hand and drew her beside him, feeling a rush of tenderness. “You really are something,” he said, plucking dried cookie batter from her hair. “I’m almost afraid to ask why you’re head-to-foot soot. Could it have something to do with the black

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