Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

was utterly delicious and they savoured every morsel of the fresh food. Much later in their journey, when their fresh food had run out, the meals wouldn’t be this exciting.

      Of course, there would always be fish.

      Stella took their plates while Rick cleaned the grill and she joined him on deck twenty minutes later after a quick shower. He was lying as he had the night before, flat on his back, stretched out beneath a vast canopy of black and silver.

      Although tonight, at least, he’d decided to wear a shirt.

      ‘Are we going to do this every night?’ she asked, joining him.

      He looked up at her. She was wearing a sarong tied around her neck in some fashion, the corners flapping in the breeze to show a little bare thigh. He looked back at the sky.

      ‘Weather permitting,’ he murmured.

      Stella settled back, the slap of the halyard against the mast making a delightful clink. The stars seemed so close this far away from the light pollution of land.

      ‘Well, I think I did very well today,’ he said after they’d lain in companionable silence for a few minutes. ‘Are you ready to concede yet?’

      Stella laughed. ‘There’s only been me here.’

      He smiled into the night. ‘It won’t make a difference.’

      ‘Well, we’ll see how it is when you’re surrounded by all those Micronesian babes who want to be your own private deckhands.’

      He chuckled then and Stella shivered as the delicious noise slipped down her spine like a feather stroke. She raised her hand to distract herself, just as she had as a child, holding up her thumb to the moon and squinting, obliterating the glowing white orb from her vision.

      She dropped her hand. ‘They look like you could just pluck them from the sky, one by one, don’t they?’

      ‘And that’s why you write romance novels,’ Rick teased, rolling his head to the side to look at her.

      Stella smiled and just as abruptly stopped. Rick seemed so laid-back about what she did.

      He frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing,’ she sighed.

      ‘That’s kind of a big sigh to be nothing. I thought you were ecstatic about your word count today.’

      Stella let her head roll so she was facing him too. ‘I am, I’m...beyond ecstatic. I’m just...’

      ‘Just? Are you not happy with what you do?’

      ‘No. I’m very happy with it. Especially now I have words,’ she joked. ‘I have a great publisher. An editor who’s a saint, an agent who’s a shark...’

      ‘But?’ he asked as she turned her head away to look at the sky. ‘You should be proud of what you do. Nathan was. We’re all so proud of you, Stel.’

      Stella gave a light snort. ‘Trust me, not everyone is so...proud of what I do.’

      Rick frowned. ‘Oh? Someone in particular?’

      She looked at him again. ‘Dale. He...broke off the engagement when he realised what I wrote.’

      Nathan had told Rick about the break-up when it had occurred. Rick hadn’t asked why, he’d just assumed it was the usual sort of stuff that broke relationships up. He did remember Nathan being secretly pleased. He’d always thought his daughter’s long-term fiancé was a bit of a cold fish.

      Rick had to admit to feeling a little pleased himself. He’d never met Dale but Nathan’s instincts about men had usually been spot on.

      ‘He didn’t know?’

      She shook her head. ‘Dale thought I was writing respected historical research on eighteenth-century pirates.’

      Rick was confused. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’

      ‘Of course I did, but he was never good at listening. He’s an academic, one of those absent-minded professor types, and all he heard was historical and pirate...’

      Rick suppressed a shudder. He sounded like a total bore.

      ‘So,’ he said, wanting to clarify the situation before he spoke ill of her idiot ex, ‘he dumped you when he found out you wrote...’

      Stella nodded. ‘Trashy, smutty, dirty little books.’

      Rick cocked an eyebrow. He really had to read that book. ‘You write trashy smut?’ What the hell was wrong with the man? Didn’t he realise that was a really good reason to hang onto a woman?

      Stella rolled her eyes. ‘No. I write historical romantic fiction for women. Dale called them trashy and smutty.’

      Rick sucked in a breath. What a dufus. ‘How did he find out?’

      ‘One of his students asked him if he was the inspiration for Vasco Ramirez.’

      Rick rolled up onto his elbow and looked down at her. ‘Was he?’

      Stella laughed then. The irony of Rick, Vasco Ramirez personified, asking that question was just too much. ‘Most definitely not.’

      Rick grinned. ‘Ouch.’

      Stella felt instantly contrite—not everyone looked like an eighteenth-century pirate. ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Dale’s lovely...was lovely. In kind of a...self-absorbed way. He’s just not...buccaneer material.’

      ‘Well,’ Rick announced. ‘The man’s clearly an idiot.’

      ‘Not really...he has an IQ in the hundred and thirties.’

      Rick fell back against the deck. ‘He can’t be too smart if his fiancée is writing smutty novels and he doesn’t use that to his advantage.’

      Stella burst out laughing. ‘His advantage? How?’

      Rick shrugged. ‘Dress up in breeches and make you read it aloud to him.’

      Stella laughed again. The very thought was as wicked as it was absurd. Dale would no sooner have done that than flown to the moon. ‘Dale was a little too strait-laced for role playing. In fact I think he considered human desire a little beneath him altogether. Too...messy or something.’

      There was just something about laughing with Rick in the night under the stars that encouraged confidences and she felt as if they were kids again, whispering their secrets to each other.

      Rick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In fact he was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to hear it. And not just because a woman like Stella, or any woman for that matter, should not be having mediocre sex. But because putting sex and Stella in the same sentence was something he’d avoided his entire life.

      ‘Why on earth did you stay with him?’ he asked.

      Stella rolled her head to face him. That one was easy.

      ‘Because he was a nice guy. A good guy. A kind guy. He made me laugh.’ Not in the ribald way Rick made her laugh but in a lovely, easy way that warmed her up inside. ‘He had a great job. On terra firma. He wanted to get married. He wanted kids.’

      Rick almost yawned, it sounded so boring, but the way her voice softened was telling. He looked away. How could someone who had the swell of oceans running in her veins settle for such mediocrity?

      ‘Well, it sounds like you’re well shot of him to me,’ he said after a few moments star gazing. ‘A woman who writes smut needs someone to inspire her.’

      Stella laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible.’

      ‘That’s what you like about me.’

      She thumped him on the chest. Yeh, it was what she liked about him but she wasn’t going to admit it.

      ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, sitting