Beyond Reach. Sandra Field

take-out across the street from her apartment building, her theory had always been that if you could read, you could cook. Somehow she didn’t think that particular theory would impress Troy Donovan. But her mother had always taught her that you could do anything you put your mind to, and not even several flunked physics exams and a failed engagement had entirely destroyed Lucy’s faith in this maxim. With a nasty sensation that none of her answers were the right ones, she said evasively, ‘I haven’t actually cooked on a boat before. But I’m sure the same general principles hold true at sea as on land.’

      ‘What about references?’

      His eyes, too, were gray. But unlike hers they were a flat, unrevealing gray, like the slate from the quarry near her old home on the west coast. With a sinking heart she said, ‘I’m self-employed. But I can put you in touch with the bank manager where I do all my business dealings, and my physician would give you a personal reference.’

      He looked patently unimpressed. ‘You can come back tomorrow, Miss Barnes. If I haven’t found anyone by then, perhaps I’ll reconsider you.’

      He was dismissing her. He wasn’t interested. She was going to lose out on something that she craved more than breath itself. Lucy said in a rush, ‘I don’t think you quite understand—I love the sea! I come alive on a boat that’s under full sail. I’d give everything I own for four weeks on the water.. .please.’

      He had been standing with one hand wrapped around the backstay. Straightening, he ran his fingers through his hair and said, exasperated, ‘I’ve got enough on my mind without taking on someone who’s never sailed here before. I’m sorry, Miss—’

      ‘I’ll do it for nothing,’ she blurted. ‘Food and board, that’s all.’

      ‘Are you in trouble with the law?’ he said sharply.

      ‘No!’ Her brain racing, she sought for words to convince him. ‘Haven’t you ever wanted anything so desperately that you’d sell your soul to get it? You don’t really know why—you only know that your whole body is telling you what you want. That you’re denying yourself if you ignore it.’

      So quickly that she almost missed it, a flash of intense emotion crossed the carved impassivity of his features. He, like her, had pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, where they rested in hair that was a thick, sunstreaked blond. While Lucy was something of an expert in body language and the long term effects of tension, she didn’t need her expertise to realize that Troy Donovan had been under a severe stress of some kind for far too long: the toll was clearly to be seen in his shadowed, deepset eyes, his clenched jaw, the hard set of his shoulders.

      He didn’t answer her question. Instead he said slowly, ‘So you’re desperate… Why are you desperate, Lucy Barnes?’

      ‘I—I can’t tell you that. I’m not sure I know myself. But I’ll work my fingers to the bone and I’ll do my very best to please your guests. And I’m certainly strong enough physically for the job.’

      His eyes ranged her face with clinical detachment. ‘You don’t look strong. You look washed out. In fact,’ he continued, with almost diabolical accuracy, ‘you look as though you’re not fully recuperated from some sort of illness.’

      Damn the man! He’d found every chink in her armor. Worse than that, by telling him how much she wanted the job she’d revealed to him a part of herself that she would have much preferred to keep private. ‘I’ve had the flu,’ she replied shortly, and with reckless disregard for the frown on his face plunged on, ‘Why don’t you take me out for a trial run? So I can prove I’m the right person to crew for you.’

      ‘Give me one good reason why I should bother doing that.’

      She had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Her nails digging into her palms, Lucy said with false insouciance, ‘Your notice said you needed someone immediately.’ She looked around and gave him an innocent smile. ‘And I don’t exactly see a huge line-up of other applicants.’

      As his facial muscles tightened she felt a thrill of primitive victory. He said flatly, ‘The trouble is, it’s too early for college students, and anyone else who’s half reliable has long ago been snapped up by the big charter companies.’ He added, his gray eyes inimical, ‘Let’s get something straight, Miss Barnes. I’m the skipper, you’re the crew. I give the orders and you take them. Is that clear?’

      Refusing to drop her own eyes, Lucy said, ‘Those are the rules on board, yes.’

      ‘Didn’t you bring a pair of shorts with you?’

      A blush crept up her face. ‘No. I—no.’

      ‘Check in the forward cabin—the drawer under the port bunk. You can borrow a pair of mine.’

      In spite of herself her voice shook. ‘You mean you’ll take me for a trial run?’

      ‘Yeah… that’s what I mean.’

      She gave him a dazzling smile that lit up her face and gave her, fleetingly, a true beauty. ‘Thanks,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You won’t regret it.’

      Before he could change his mind, she climbed up on the foredeck, her bare feet gripping the roughened fiberglass. The forward hatch was open. With the agility’ of the fifteen-year-old she had once been, she climbed down the wooden ladder into his cabin. It had two bunks, one unmade; a faint, indefinable scent of clean male skin and aftershave teased her nostrils. Closing her mind to it, as she had closed her mind to the awkward truth that once again she was doing her utmost to involve herself with a big, handsome, blond man, Lucy pulled open the left-hand drawer. She scrabbled among Troy Donovan’s clothes, not quite able to ignore how intimate an act this was, and shook out the smallest of the three pairs of shorts there. Dropping her skirt on the bunk, she pulled them on. They might be the smallest pair, but they were still far too big, the waist gaping, the cuffs down to her knees. After grabbing a canvas belt coiled neatly in the corner of the drawer, she cinched in the waistband and let her T-shirt fall over it.

      She looked ridiculous. And somehow she wasn’t so sure that that was a bad thing.

      Not stopping to analyze this, Lucy climbed back on deck. A skipper from another boat had ambled over to help with the mooring lines. Troy said, giving Lucy’s attire a single derisive glance, ‘The ignition switch is by the radio. Then you can retrieve the anchor—these are the handsignals I’ll use.’ Briefly he demonstrated them. ‘We’ll head out under power, and once we’re in the strait you can hoist the mainsail.’

      She should have been nervous. But, as the diesel engine began to throb beneath her feet, Lucy felt such a purity of happiness rocket through her body that there was no room for anything else. Again she went forward, pulling on the gloves she found stowed by the anchor winch and glancing back over her shoulder to catch all Troy’s instructions.

      The groaning of the winch and the clanking of the anchor chain made her feel fully alive, every nerve alert, every muscle taut. As she guided the chain into its berth she found herself remembering for the first time in many years how at fifteen she had anticipated in hectic detail the way such feelings might be deliciously enhanced by that mysterious act called making love.

      How wrong she’d been! Big blond men. Bah! The next time she fell in love, Lucy decided, it was going to be with someone short and stout and bald. Then Seawind began to move, and all her concerns, her love-life included, vanished from her mind.

      Within minutes she’d hauled in the fenders and stowed them away. The dock was receding. The channel with its red and green buoys beckoned them on. Troy said, ‘There’s sunscreen in the cupboard under the bar. You’d better put some on before we get out on open water.’

      Again Lucy went down the companionway steps. The cabin was spacious, constructed from highly polished mahogany. Two couches, flanking a dining table inlaid with marble, two padded swivel chairs, a chart cupboard and a neatly appointed galley were all fitted in without any sense of constriction, and again Lucy felt that shaft of unreasoning happiness. As she smoothed the cream over her