Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

couldn’t have been stronger had they been bound by blood.

      That wouldn’t have been possible had they been lovers.

      ‘Besides,’ he grinned, giving her a quick squeeze before letting her go, ‘the company owns it.’

      Stella laughed. ‘Oh, really, creative accounting, huh?’

      ‘Something like that,’ he laughed.

      ‘So she’s actually half mine?’ she teased.

      Rick threw his backpack on deck and jumped on board. He held out his hand. ‘Mi casa es su casa,’ he murmured.

      Stella’s breath hitched as she took his hand. He spoke Spanish impeccably and with that bronzed colouring and those impossibly blue eyes he was every inch the Spaniard. He might have an English father and have gone to English schools but for his formative years he was raised by his Romany grandmother and she’d made sure her Riccardo had been immersed in the lingo.

      As she stepped aboard she checked out the small motorised dinghy hanging from a frame attached to the stern above the water line. Then her gaze fell to the starboard hull where the bold gold lettering outlined in fine black detail proclaimed a change of name. She almost tripped and stumbled into him.

      ‘Whoa there,’ he said, holding her hips to steady her. They curved out from her waist and he had to remind himself that the flesh beneath his palms was Stella’s. ‘You’ve turned into a real landlubber, haven’t you?’ he teased.

      She stared at him for a moment. ‘You changed her name?’ she asked breathlessly.

      He shrugged as he smiled down at her flummoxed face. ‘I promised you.’

      Stella thumped his arm and ignored his theatrical recoil. ‘I was seven years old,’ she yelled.

      She stormed to the edge and looked over at the six yellow letters, her eyes filling with tears.

      Stella.

      ‘You don’t like it?’

      She blinked her tears away and marched back to him and thumped his chest this time. ‘I love it, you idiot! It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’ Then she threw herself into his arms.

      Not even her father had named a boat after her.

      Rick chuckled as he lifted her feet off the ground and hugged her back, his senses infusing with coconut.

      ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she said, her voice muffled against a pec. She pushed against the bands of his arms and squirmed away from him.

      ‘I told you I would.’

      Stella had forgotten, but she remembered it now as if it were yesterday. Rick talking incessantly about buying the Dolphin that summer they’d first seen her and her making him promise that if he did he’d rename it after her.

      ‘I didn’t think you actually would,’ she said incredulously.

      ‘Anything for my favourite girl,’ he quipped.

      She ignored his easy line as she’d ignored all his others. ‘You should have said no. I was a brat.’

      He nodded. ‘Yes, you were.’

      She gave him another playful thump but smiled up at him just the same. He smiled back and for a moment they just stood there, the joy of a shared memory uniting them.

      ‘Well, come on, then,’ she said after a moment. ‘Show me around.’

      A spiral stairway led to a below deck that was far better than Stella had imagined in her wildest dreams. Polished wood invited her to run her hands along its surfaces. Brass fittings gleamed from every nook and cranny. The spacious area was dominated by ceiling beams, heavy brocade curtains over the portholes, oriental rugs and dark leather chairs.

      It wasn’t lavish—she’d seen plenty of lavish interiors in her time—but it was very masculine, the addition of Rick even more so. He looked completely at home in this nautical nirvana and for a moment Stella could imagine him in a half-undone silk shirt and breeches, sprawled out down here, knocking back some rum after a hard day’s seafaring.

      She blinked as Rick segued into Vasco.

      ‘Saloon here, galley over there,’ he said, thumbing over his shoulder where she could see a glimpse of stainless steel. ‘Engine room...’ he stamped his foot ‘...below us. Forward and aft cabins both have en suites. I thought you might like the aft cabin? It’s slightly bigger.’

      ‘Sure.’ She shrugged, her pulse tripping madly at her bizarre vision. ‘That sounds fine.’

      Rick, who’d only seen photographs of the finished product himself, sat in a chair. He ran his hand over the decadent leather. ‘Wow, they’ve done a magnificent job.’

      Stella blinked again as she looked down on him for once. If ever there was magnificent it was him, sitting in that chair, captain of all he surveyed. It reminded her of the scene in Pleasure Hunt where Lady Mary finally capitulated to his touch. Where she realised, after a particularly harrowing raid, life was short and she didn’t want to die without having known the touch of a truly sensual man.

      She stood in front of Vasco in the privacy of his cabin as he sat, thighs insolently spread, in his chair, caressing the arm as if it were the breast of a beautiful woman. She looked down at him, waiting. When he leant forward and reached under her skirts she didn’t protest, nor when he placed his hands on the backs of her thighs and pulled her onto his lap so she was straddling him, her skirts frothing around her.

      ‘It’s so much better than the photos,’ Rick murmured.

      Stella blinked as his voice dragged her back to the present. She took a step back as the vivid image of Vasco played large in her mind.

      ‘It’s amazing, Rick,’ she agreed. ‘Just...incredible.’

      Rick smiled at her as his hand continued to stroke the leather. He was pleased Stella was here to share this moment with him. This boat, more than any of the ones they’d been on over the years, connected them in a way only shared childhood dreams could.

      ‘Let’s take her out,’ he said, standing. The sudden urge to hoist a sail and go where the wind took him shot through his veins like the first sip of beer on a hot summer day.

      ‘I know we should be provisioning her for our trip but we can do that tomorrow. Let’s take her over to Green Island. Give her a good run. We can go snorkelling. We have the basics here...well, we have beer anyway...and we can catch some fish and anchor there for the night. I want to lie on the deck and look at the stars like we used to do when we were kids.’

      ‘Sure,’ she agreed readily. Anything, anything to get her out of this saloon and far away from the fantasy.

      Where the hell was her filter? She did not fantasise

      about Rick.

      Not in front of him anyway.

      ‘Fabulous idea. Can I take her once she’s out of the harbour?’

      Stella had learned to sail practically before she could walk. Her father had seen to that. Hell, so had her mother, a keen sailor in her own right, but it had been a lot of years since she’d been on the open sea.

      ‘You still remember what to do?’ Rick teased.

      She smiled at him. ‘I’m sure it’ll come back to me. It’s just like riding a bike, yes?’

      Or having sex.

      Diana had assured her you didn’t forget how to do that either.

      ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there to guide you. Do you trust me?’

      Yep...exactly what Vasco had said to Lady Mary.

      Do you trust me?

      Stella swallowed. ‘I trust that you don’t want me to run your very expensive boat—sorry,