So why was this one being so difficult?
‘You’ve got twenty seconds. Damn!’ he said, suddenly catching sight of the misted face of his grandfather’s treasured watch.
He shook his head, held his annoyance in check. He’d nearly lost it once before over a stupid woman, but he’d managed to keep it intact for all these years—a gift from the one person on this earth who’d had time for him. Damn this woman. Standing on his boat, spraying her poison and leaving him soaked to the skin. She might look like a goddess—like some kind of deity in female form—but life was far too short to waste another second with a woman who made his hackles rise this high.
‘Ten,’ he said.
Biting down on the urge to throw her off himself, he ripped his T-shirt over his head and grabbed up a towel. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her watching him through narrowed eyes, seething and ungrateful. Yeah, but there was no mistaking her hunger. He could feel it—emanating out of every selfish pore. She might sound as if she wanted to fight, but she was eying him like a late lunch.
He patted the towel down each arm and over his pecs. ‘Five.’
She was still gawping, still showing no signs of going anywhere. Slowly he grabbed each end of the towel and rubbed it across his back, then down over his abs. Finally he smoothed it over his face and dragged it roughly through his hair. Then he stood right in front of her. His shorts were soaked too. Her eyes landed there and her mouth opened on a coy, ‘Oh...’
Her skin glistened in the bright late-morning light as stray droplets of water continued to course their way down all those curves. Idly he wondered if her waist-to-hip ratio was the best he’d ever seen, because it had started a reaction in his body that seemed to pay no heed at all to the fact that he really didn’t like her.
It looked as if she was planning to play hardball. Okay. He was open to the idea.
Feeling more than a little turned on himself, he lifted the towel again and swiped down each leg. He had great legs—or so he was told, he thought laughingly. ‘Great legs’ were legs that could grip a horse, make it twist or stop with a squeeze of the thighs. But she didn’t look as if riding a polo pony was what she had in mind for him.
‘You don’t seem to be moving, Princess. Were you hoping for some more body contact before you go?’
He was. He let his gaze travel all over her now. The twisted bikini provided such a generous view of her left breast. The hard bud of her nipple peeped out invitingly and he felt another hard kick of lust. For all she was annoying, she was also an incredibly attractive woman—and he could think of many ways she could redeem herself.
He cupped himself and dropped his hands to his waistband, tugged at the string and raised his eyebrows in invitation. Just how far would she let him go?
‘Zero,’ he said.
In one move he loosened the shorts, slid them down over his jutting erection to the wet floor of the boat and stepped out. She stood for a split second, a look of utter shock on her face, and then she spun, bolted to the side and dived off into the sea.
‘Man overboard!’ he called after her. ‘Again.’
He felt the splash of water on his sun-warmed skin and walked to the side to see limbs and white foam as she thrashed her way back to the Marengo.
‘Pleasure, Princess,’ he said, sending her on her way with a mock salute.
Then he pulled his shorts back on and with his hand on the wheel and his foot on the floor, he powered back through the waves. If he never saw her again it would be far too soon.
LUCIE HEAVED HERSELF back onto the Marengo, wheezing and gasping and incandescent with rage. Staff appeared from every possible corner, staring at her bedraggled form, complete with purple rash. She stomped through them, flapping her arms to get them out of her way. After what she’d just been through the last thing she needed was a crowd of strangers babbling on about jellyfish stings!
Back in her quarters, she went straight into the bathroom—and it was only then that she noticed that what had started out as a hastily thrown on bikini that she’d grabbed to do a quick circuit of the yacht had now turned itself into three postage stamps of ill-positioned fabric.
She turned herself this way and that in the mirror, looking to see what he had seen. And it wasn’t good—the ten pounds she had lost certainly hadn’t gone from her boobs or her bottom.
She pulled the skimpy thing off and tossed it in the laundry basket, wondering if she would ever have the nerve to wear it again. Then she stepped into the shower and let the hot water course down over her. What on earth would happen next on this disastrous day?
All she’d wanted when she’d jumped in was a relaxing, calming swim to clear her head, and then she’d planned a bath and an hour or so with the hairstylist and the beauty therapist to help her prepare for tonight. But instead of an aromatherapy massage and pampering to within an inch of her life she’d been nearly ploughed to death by a speedboat and stung by a jellyfish—not to mention that whole encounter on the boat.
She shuddered and reached for the shampoo. So much for being relaxed. She’d have to deal with her social anxiety on top of all the other anxieties she’d developed so far today. One thing was sure—she was in for hours of deep breathing until she finally put her head on her pillow tonight.
Damn that stupid man and his stupid boat!
And his outrageous behaviour.
She let the soap run free and stared down at her body, cringing because he had seen so much of it. But, even though she might not have been exactly dressed for an audience with Her Majesty, that didn’t excuse his unashamedly egotistical actions! Standing there in those red swim-shorts, with his manhood outlined so clearly...
She shook her head and scrubbed at the jellyfish sting like Lady Macbeth, as if by trying to get rid of the mark she would get rid of the image of him. The look that he’d speared her with—that supercilious grin and those twin dimples, those bright blue eyes that had mocked her. Those shoulders and those impossibly firm, smooth pectorals. An actual six-pack that one could imagine—touching...
What an arrogant, egotistical, boneheaded...
Urgh!
At least this was one thing that she and her mother agreed on. Men who were so obvious about sex were normally more to be pitied than despised. And he was definitely obvious! And she totally despised him.
Who was she kidding? She knew absolutely zero about men and even less about sex. One didn’t really fall over them at home with the governess or at an all-girls boarding school. Thankfully.
The last thing she wanted was a life like her mother’s—diets and dresses, reporters and snappers. With every last move scrutinised and analysed and published for the world to see. And having to wear that everything’s fabulous, darling face everywhere she went—even if she’d just caught her husband cheating or her weight had ricocheted to above eight stone.
It wasn’t that she was vehemently opposed to men—but they had very little to recommend them.
Take this yacht, for example. It was such a drain on the family finances when they could be funding more eco projects, out here or at home. But her father simply had to have it so that he could ‘entertain’.
She flipped the taps off and stepped out of the shower, twisting her hair up into a turban and grabbing a towel as she went.
Her father’s answer to everything was to throw money at it. He’d paid for the food, the drink, the staff, her dress, the harbour fees and the biggest auction item—the use of his yacht for a month.
But