Love Overboard - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,16

of all, you should talk about spooky things when it’s dark. Everybody knows that. And fog helps a lot.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “And a little moonlight wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

“Moonlight talk always makes me nervous.”

He fed her another piece of muffin and purposely stroked her lower lip with his fingertip. “It’s my duty as the descendant of a famous pirate to make women nervous once in a while.”

“Gee, Red would be proud of you.”

He pinned her against the counter. “Red would think I was a wimp. You know what real pirates did to their women?” he whispered, letting his lips brush against the sensitive skin just in front of her earlobe.

Stephanie shivered in anticipation.

“They ravished them,” Ivan told her. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“That’s it? No details?”

Ivan threw her a stern look. “You’re not cooperating here. You’re supposed to be intimidated.”

“You know what intimidates me? The thought of making breakfast. According to Lucy, I’m supposed to whip up a cauldron of oatmeal, three dozen eggs, and seven pounds of bacon.”

“Sounds about right.” He took the tray of mugs and turned toward the stairs. “I’ll meet you on the poop deck tonight at ten, Cinderella. Wear something appropriate for ravishing.”

At ten o’clock Stephanie took the last of the blueberry pies out of the oven and damped down the fire. Now she knew why Lucy made pies first thing in the morning. If you tried to make them in the afternoon, when the ship was under way, the filling slopped over the sides and baked on the bottom of the stove. So you had your choice of making them at night or making them in the morning. Since Stephanie wasn’t a morning person, she’d decided to make them at night.

She looked down at herself and took an inventory of everything she’d cooked: oatmeal, spaghetti sauce, cookie batter, blueberry pies, and coffee. Wonderful. And she hadn’t washed her hair since the previous morning or changed out of the sweats she’d slept in the night before. On the positive side, she’d cooked a damned good dinner of fried chicken, biscuits, green beans, and corn on the cob. Cooking wasn’t much different from police work, she concluded. It required concentration, imagination, hard work, a little technical knowhow… and luck. She looked longingly at her bunk, wanting nothing more than to crawl behind the red curtain and sleep for at least a year. Unfortunately, Ivan was waiting for her on deck.

Ivan levered himself down the galley stairs, a slow smile spreading across his face as he took in the sight of Stephanie Lowe at the end of her first full day aboard the Savage. “I got tired of waiting, so I thought I’d come check things out. Pretty tough job, huh?”

“A hot shower, and I’ll be good as new.”

“I have a better idea. What you need after a long day of slaving over a scorching stove is a moonlight swim. Cool, refreshing…” Erotic, he added to himself.

A moonlight swim sounded great. Too bad she didn’t have the strength to drag herself up the galley steps. “It’s a lovely idea, but I’d sink like a stone. I’m exhausted. I’m afraid I’m going to have to opt for the shower.”

Ivan slung his arm around her shoulders. “Honey, this is a carefully restored nineteenth century schooner. We don’t have a shower.”

“Oh Lord, no shower.” She slumped against him. “I have blueberry batter in my hair and spaghetti sauce soaked right through to my underwear, and you’re telling me we don’t have a shower?”

If she’d been alone, she probably would have burst into tears. She would have cried for all the kids she wasn’t able to save from drugs. She would have cried for the Steve she never knew. She would have cried for all the times in the past eight years when she had desperately needed to cry and wasn’t allowed that luxury. But she wasn’t alone, and she had too much pride to cry in front of a man she’d known for only two days. Besides, she wasn’t a woman who cried over spaghetti sauce. Usually she found a well-aimed expletive to be much more satisfying than indulging in tears. “So you suggest swimming, huh?”

“Did you bring a bathing suit?”

Stephanie sighed. She didn’t even own a bathing suit. Narcs in Jersey City didn’t lounge around at poolside waiting for middle-class crime, and they couldn’t afford fancy vacations.

Ivan grabbed the bottle of dish-washing detergent from the sink and pulled Stephanie to the stairs. “From

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