Love Overboard - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,18

p-p-pervert. Turn around while I get into the boat. I’ll put my sweats back on.”

“Sacrilege.” He faced the side of the ship. “It’s a crime against nature to cover that beautiful, clean body in spaghetti-stained sweats— especially the mole.”

Stephanie pulled the shirt over her head and struggled into the pants. “That mole is in a private place!”

“And it’s very pretty,” he said softly.

She didn’t know whether she was pleased or furious. She really should be mad at him, but there was something about the tone of his voice that touched her. It wasn’t lewd or suggestive or even calculating. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was smiling. A small, gentle smile, as if his world had suddenly turned beautiful because she had a mole on her backside. “Thank y-y-you,” she said.

“We have to get you warm. Can you make it up the ladder?”

“This is nothing,” she said. “Last February I was thrown into the Hudson River.”

He caught up with her on the deck and whirled her around by her shirtsleeve. “I want to know about it.”

Even in the dark, Stephanie could see that his eyes were hard. His mouth was drawn tight, and a muscle worked in his jaw. She blinked at him in surprise, confused by his emotional reaction. “It was c-c-cold.”

“Damn.” He picked her up and carried her to the galley, where he set her down in front of the stove. He checked the bunks to make sure they were empty and pulled the hatch cover shut. “Get those wet things off.” He grabbed a large towel, a pair of thick socks, and a set of clean sweats from the shelf above her bed and returned to her, obviously disgusted at finding her still fully clothed. He muttered something indiscernible and unceremoniously stripped her sodden shirt over her head.

“Hey!” Before she could get anything else out, Ivan had stuffed her into the clean sweatshirt. He had his hands on the waistband of her pants when she instinctively gave him a knee to the groin and knocked him backward with a follow-up kick to the chest. He rolled over in pain and took several quick gasps of air before he was able to regulate his breathing. Stephanie groaned out loud and rushed to his side. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! It was a reflex.”

Ivan closed his eyes, trying to relax. The pain in his groin was subsiding to the point where it wasn’t nearly as bad as the cramp in his ego. He’d just been trashed by a 120-pound woman. When he’d heard she’d gotten dumped in the river, he’d almost gone blind with rage, all his protective instincts for her welling to the surface. And then this poor, defenseless creature had leveled him!

Stephanie dabbed at his damp forehead with the towel. “Are you okay? You aren’t permanently damaged, are you?”

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care!”

“Swell.” He realized he was pouting and burst out laughing. He wasn’t a man with a frail self-image. Now that the pain was reduced to a dull ache, he found more humor than humiliation in the incident. “When I was a kid and I skinned my knee, my mother always kissed it to make it better.”

Stephanie hit him over the head with the towel.

He slowly got to his feet and turned his back to her. “If I were you, I’d hurry up and change while I’m still recovering.”

She did as she was told in record time. “I’m all dressed,” she said, tugging at the socks.

He handed her a cup of hot coffee and waited patiently while she sipped. He took the cup from her and towel-dried her hair until it was just slightly damp and completely unruly. He was standing very close to her, feeling ridiculously tender. She instilled the strangest feelings in him, he thought, feelings that were way beyond what they should be. They were wrapped in a pleasant intimacy that he’d never before experienced with a woman. And that intimacy was fueling a passion that was frightening in its intensity. He was trying to cover it with a flirting, casual attitude, but he didn’t know how much longer he could get away with it. His body was going to betray him if he wasn’t very, very careful.

He added a few logs to the stove to keep the fire burning and was relieved to see the color flooding back into her cheeks. He shouldn’t have allowed her to swim, but he’d been mesmerized by the sight