Beyond Reach

This maneuver went without a hitch. Then Lucy took a stint at the wheel, delighted to find that her old intuitive sense of wind and sail had never left her. After they’d changed tacks again, Troy questioned her on the rules of the road and threw a number of hypothetical situations at her to see how she’d deal with them. Then they headed back to the harbor, running before the wind. Finally, Lucy furled the headsail and folded the mainsail on the boom, and before she knew it Troy was backing into the dock. He was, she had to admit, a more than competent skipper.

The engine died, and into the silence Lucy said tautly, ‘Do I pass?’

He leaned against the folding table that ran along the centre of the cockpit and answered her question with another. ‘It’s ten or eleven years since you sailed, right?’

‘Ten.’

‘You loved it.’

‘They were the best years of my life,’ Lucy heard herself say, and felt her face stiffen with shock as the truth of her words struck home. ‘That’s nuts, isn’t it?’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘It can’t be true…’

‘It sure doesn’t say much for anything that’s happened since then.’

‘No…’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t.’

Ruthlessly Troy Donovan hurled two more questions at her. Are you married—or living with someone?’

‘No and no.’ Fighting to regain control of herself— what was it about this cold, unfriendly man that made her reveal herself so blatantly and so unwisely?—she added, ‘Are you?’

‘I’m interviewing you, not the reverse,’ he retorted. ‘If you’re independent, and you so clearly love sailing, why aren’t you living on the west coast again?’

‘Mr Donovan,’ Lucy said coldly, ‘this is a hiring session. Not a counseling session.’

‘The name’s Troy. Why don’t you answer the question?’

‘Because I can’t!’ she flared. ‘Because the reasons I live where I do are nothing to do with you. ‘I’m not asking you why you never smile, why you have a job that you seem to dislike so thoroughly. Because it’s none of my business.’ Her face changed. ‘Please… are you going to hire me?’

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ he said unpleasantly. ‘The first guests come on board the day after tomorrow and there’s a pile of work to do in the meantime. However, I won’t make you do it for nothing.’ He named a salary that was more than fair. ‘I want you to take my vehicle now, and go to the grocery—’

‘You’ve hired me—for four whole weeks!’ Lucy interrupted. ‘But that’s terrific! Oh, I’m so excited!’ Grabbing the extra fabric that flapped around her slender legs and holding it out like a skirt, she did a solemn little dance on the deck. Then she gave him a wide grin. ‘I’ll do the very best I can, I promise.’

Because Troy was standing in the shade he had pushed his sunglasses up again and there was in the flint-gray eyes an unquestionable, if reluctant, smile. Much encouraged, Lucy said pertly, ‘So you do know how to smile. You’d be extremely handsome if you smiled properly, you know.’ She bared her teeth in an exaggerated smirk. ‘You should try it some time.’

‘Lucy,’ he said tightly, ‘maybe now’s as good a time as any to make something else clear. You and I are going to be living and working together in pretty close quarters for the next month. There’ll be no male-female stuff between us—have you got that?’

His smile was gone as if it had never been, and the anger that she’d already sensed as a huge part of his make-up was very much in evidence. She stared right back at him. ‘You’re afraid I might make a pass at you?’

Biting off the words, he said, ‘Of course I’m not afraid of you! But the comfort and security of the guests is our only concern for the next four weeks. You and I are coworkers—and that’s all.’

She could match his anger with an anger of her ownit would be all too easy—or she could keep her sense of humor. Choosing the latter—because his pronouncement definitely had its funny side—Lucy gave a hoot of laughter. ‘No problem! Now if you were fivefeet-seven, bald and overweight, then you should worry. But tall, blond and handsome—nope. I’m immune. Thank you very much.’

‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ he snarled.

‘I don’t think you see anything very much as funny,’ Lucy said, with more truth than tact. ‘And I swear that’s the last remark of a personal nature that’ll cross my lips today.’

He said—and Lucy was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t meant to say it, ‘Immunity implies exposure.’

‘Indeed,’ she said drily. ‘I fell in love with my first blond hunk—the history teacher in school—when I was twelve, and I’ve been doing it ever since. When I came down here, I’d made a vow—no more blond men. Bald is beautiful. So you’re quite safe, Troy Donovan. Now, what was that about groceries?’

‘For their sakes, I’m glad none of them married you,’ he said nastily.

Lucy flinched. She would have married Phil, who’d had wavy blond curls and had proposed to her among the tulips along the Rideau Canal when she was twentythree years old. But Phil had met Sarah, chic, fragile Sarah, two months before the wedding, and had gone to Paris with Sarah instead of staying home and marrying Lucy. She said, almost steadily, ‘If they had I wouldn’t be crewing for you, would I? What did happen to your previous cook, by the way?’

‘Her son crushed several bones in his foot last night. She flew to San Juan with him this morning.’ His scowl deepened. ‘I shouldn’t have said that about marriage— I’m sorry.’

Despite her vow, a vow she fully intended to keep, Lucy was already aware that it would be much safer if she disliked Troy. He was taller than Phil, more handsome than the history teacher, and sexier by far than anyone she had ever met. ‘Grocery store,’ she repeated in a stony voice.

‘I’ll give you the keys to my Jeep. I want you to cook supper for me tonight, as if I were a guest—an appetizer to go with drinks, then dinner and dessert. This evening you can draw up menus for the next six days and I’ll check them over. Our first charter is just one couple, Craig and Heather Merritt, from New York. They’ll come on board the day after tomorrow—by then you’ve got to have the boat provisioned and spanking clean brass and woodwork polished, bathrooms spotless, beds made so they can have their choice of cabin. I’ll look after ice, water supplies and the bar, and in the meantime I’ll overhaul the engine and the pumps. Any questions?’

She blinked. ‘No. But some time today I’ll have to get my suitcase.’

‘Use the Jeep,’ he said impatiently.

It was by now blindingly obvious to Lucy that Troy didn’t like her at all and wouldn’t have hired her if he’d had any other options. In fact, he thought so little of her that he considered her unmarried state a boon to the male sex. So she might as well confirm him in his dislike; it would beat going to the police. She said in a small voice, ‘I need to borrow you as well as the Jeep.’

He frowned. ‘Surely you haven’t got that many clothes? Storage space is limited on a boat, as you should know.’

Lucy said rapidly, ‘I arrived in Tortola this morning, planning to work for a family with a villa in the hills. But when I got to the villa it very soon became plain that the family wasn’t about to materialize and that the man of the house and I had radically different ideas about the terms of my employment.’

‘He put the make on you?’

She grimaced. ‘Yes. So I left with more haste than grace via the nearest window, and my suitcase is still there.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m scared to go back there alone,’ she confessed. ‘But I could go to the police if you don’t want to go with me, Troy. It’s nothing to do with you, I do see that.’

‘I’ll go,’ Troy said with a ferocious smile. ‘This has been the week from hell, and I don’t see much chance of it improving—I could do with a little action. Why don’t we go there first?’

Lucy took a step backwards and said with absolute truth, ‘I’m not so sure that you don’t frighten me more than Raymond Blogden.’

‘I almost hope he resists,’ Troy said, flexing both fists.

The muscles of his forearms moved smoothly and powerfully under his tanned skin and there was such pent up energy behind his words that Lucy backed off another step, until the teak edge of the bench was hard against the backs of her knees. ‘I know nothing whatsoever about you,’ she muttered, ‘and yet I’ve agreed to live on a fifty-foot boat with you for a month. Maybe I should be asking you for references.’

‘You can always check with my bank manager and my physician,’ he said with another fiendish smile. ‘Anyway, if nothing you’ve done since you were fifteen has impressed you as much as sailing a Laser, you might benefit from throwing caution to the wind. Let’s go.’

It was, Lucy thought, not bad advice.

And throwing caution to the winds had brought her to Tortola in the first place, hadn’t it?

CHAPTER TWO

LUCY hurried below, changed back into her skirt, and five minutes later was driving west out of Road Town. Troy drove the Jeep as competently as he drove a boat; she couldn’t help noticing that the muscles in his thighs were every bit as impressive as those in his arms, and forcibly reminded herself of her vow. Fortunately, in her opinion, to be truly sexy a man had to be able to laugh…

They braked for a herd of goats trotting along the road, and then for a speed bump. ‘The turnoff’s not far from here,’ Lucy said, her pulses quickening.

The driveway to the villa wound up the hill in a series of hairpin turns; all too clearly she remembered running down them, glancing back over her shoulder in fear of pursuit. It seemed like another lifetime, another woman, so much had happened since then. And then the Spanishstyle stucco villa came in sight and her heart gave an uneasy lurch. It looked very peaceful, the bougainvillaea hanging in fuchsia clouds over the stone wall, the blinds drawn against the glare of the sun.

Troy drew up in front of the door and pocketed his keys. ‘Why don’t you stay here?’

She had an obscure need to confront Raymond Blogden again. ‘I know where the case is,’ she murmured, and slid to the ground.

Troy pushed the doorbell.

The chimes rang deep in the house. A bee buzzed past Lucy’s ear, and from the breadfruit trees behind the house a dove cooed monotonously. Troy leaned hard on the bell, and from inside a man’s voice said irritably, ‘Hold on, I’m on my way.’

Lucy recognized the voice all too well, and unconsciously moved a little closer to Troy. The door swung open, Troy stepped inside without being asked and Lucy,

perforce, followed. ‘What the? Who are you?’

Raymond Blogden blustered. ‘Get out of my—’ And

then he caught sight of Lucy. His recovery was instant. ‘Well, well… I’m glad you came back, Miss Barnes,’ he sneered. ‘I was about to call the police. Breach of contract and destruction of personal property should cover it, don’t you think?’

He was a big man, his black hair slicked back in the heat, his expensive white linen suit dealing as best it could with a figure whose musculature had long ago been subsumed by fat. Rings flashed on his fingers. Lucy remembered how they had dug into her arm and shivered.

Troy said with icy precision, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr Blogden—you should be thankful Miss Barnes isn’t at the police station charging you with assault… Go get your case, Lucy. You’re quite safe this time.’

The house was shaded and cool and very quiet. Lucy scurried down the hall to the bedroom that was to have been hers, finding her blue duffel bag exactly where she had left it on the tiled floor. She picked it up and ran back to the foyer. Raymond Blogden’s complexion was several shades redder than when she had left. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me your name, young man?’ he was saying, and to her horror Lucy saw his right hand inching toward his pocket.

‘Troy, he’s got a weapon!’ she cried.

In a blur of movement Troy went on the offensive. Three seconds later Raymond Blogden’s arm was twisted behind his back and Troy was saying calmly, ‘Search his pocket, would you, Lucy?’

As gingerly as if a tarantula inhabited Raymond Blogden’s pocket, Lucy inserted her fingers and came up with a pearl-handled knife that was disconcertingly heavy. ‘We’ll take that,’ Troy said cheerfully. ‘And since I’m rather fussy about those with whom I associate, Mr Blogden, I think I’ll keep my name to myself.’

‘She’s nothing but a hooker,’ Raymond Blogden spat. ‘She dresses it up with fancy words, but that’s all she is.’

‘Shut up,’ Troy said, very softly, ‘or I’ll have your hide for a car seat… Ready, Lucy?’

She was more than ready. She opened the door and heard Troy say, in a voice all the more effective for its lack of emphasis, ‘If I ever see you within fifty feet of Miss Barnes again, I’ll wipe the floor with that pretty white suit of yours… Goodbye, Mr Blogden.’

The sunlight almost blinded Lucy. Troy gunned the motor and surged down the driveway. He was whistling between his teeth and looked extremely pleased with himself. ‘You enjoyed that,’ Lucy said shakily.

‘Damn right I did.’ With casual skill he took the first of the turns. ‘What in heaven’s name made you think you could work for a man like that?’

‘I never met him,’ she said defensively. ‘The interview was in Toronto, with his personnel adviser.’

‘And what do you do that led him to call you a prostitute?’

‘I’m a massage therapist,’ she said. ‘There are certain people who seem to think that massage has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with healing—I get so tired of all the innuendoes and off-color jokes.’

‘It’s a very useful profession,’ Troy said mildly.

She shot him a suspicious glance. ‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Kindly don’t equate me with the likes of that creep up in the villa!’

Only wanting to change the subject, Lucy looked distastefully at the knife in her lap. ‘What am I going to do with this?’

‘Keep it. In case you’re ever silly enough to work for someone like him again. Naivete doesn’t pay in any job, but particularly not in yours, I would have thought.’

Troy had spoken with a casual contempt that cut Lucy to the quick. I won’t cry, she thought, I won’t. If I didn’t cry when it happened, why would I cry now?

But the hibiscus blooms that bordered the driveway were running together in big red blobs, as red as Raymond Blogden’s face. She stared fiercely out of the side window of the Jeep and felt Troy slow to a halt as they reached the highway. Then his hand touched her bare elbow. ‘Don’t!’ she muttered, and yanked it away.

‘Look at me, Lucy.’

‘No!’

‘Lucy…’ His fingers closed on her shoulder.

She turned to face him, her eyes brimming with fury and unshed tears, her mouth a mutinous line. ‘You’re only the skipper when you’re on the boat,’ she choked. ‘Let go of me!’

If anything, his hold tightened. Lines of tension scoring his cheeks, his gray eyes bleak, he said, ‘I owe you another apology, don’t I? You’ll have to forgive me, I’m—out of touch with the female sex. You did well to get away from him; he’s as nasty a piece of work as I’ve come across in a long time.’

A tear dripped from her lashes to fall on his wrist. ‘I—I was so f-frightened.’

‘Of course you were, and rightly so. That charming little object in your lap is a switchblade.’ As she regarded it with horror, Troy asked, ‘How did you get away from him?’

‘He has a collection of jade in the hallway. I picked two pieces up and told him I’d drop them if he didn’t stay where he was. I g-guess he didn’t believe me. So I dropped one on the floor and it s-smashed. I felt terrible, but I didn’t know what else to do.’ She gave a faint giggle. ‘You should have seen the look on his face. He said he’d paid nine thousand five hundred and forty dollars for it. Once I’d climbed out the window I put the other piece on the sill and ran for my life.’

The look on Troy’s face was one she hadn’t seen before. Admiration had mingled with laughter, and with something else she couldn’t name but that sent a shiver along her nerves. She said fretfully, ‘Let’s get out of here—I want to go back to Seawind.’

Troy checked for traffic and turned left. ‘The supermarket’s going to be an anticlimax after this.’

Knowing her lack of culinary skills, Lucy wasn’t so sure that he was right. Although wrestling with menus would certainly beat wrestling with Raymond Blogden. ‘I need to blow my nose,’ she mumbled.

Troy fumbled in the pocket of his shorts and produced a small wad of tissues. He checked them out, then said, grinning at her, ‘No engine grease—I thing they’re okay.’

It would be a great deal safer to dislike Troy Donovan, Lucy thought, swiping at her wet cheeks then burying her nose in the tissues and blowing hard. When he grinned like that it not only took years off his age, it put his sexual quotient right up there with Robert Redford’s. She blew again, reminding herself that violence was what had put the grin there in the first place. A physical confrontation with another man. She’d do well to remember that.

She put the tissues in her skirt pocket and said, before she could lose her nerve, ‘Thank you for going with me, Troy. I was dreading having to explain the whole situation to the police.’

‘You’re entirely welcome,’ he replied. ‘Haven’t had as much fun in months.’

‘You’d have made a good pirate,’ she snapped.

‘Blondbeard?’ he hazarded.

Smothering a smile, she went on severely, ‘You like violence?’

‘Come on, Lucy—that was a situation straight out of a Walt Disney movie. He was the bad guy, I was the good guy coming to the rescue of the beautiful maiden, and because I was bigger than him and, I flatter myself, in better condition, right triumphed. How often in these days of moral ambiguities do we have the chance to participate in something so straightforward?’

She frowned. ‘You haven’t answered the question, and I don’t think the grin on your face is quite as easily explained as all that.’

‘Of course it’s not,’ he said shortly. ‘Mind your own business.’

So she wasn’t to be told why Troy hadn’t had as much fun in months. And his tone of voice had pushed her away as decisively as if he’d strong-armed her.

Women must be after him in droves, she thought, her lips compressed. So, didn’t he like women? Certainly he hadn’t answered her when she’d asked if he was married or living with someone.

All her warning signals came on alert. Keep your distance. So what if he’s a handsome blond? You know your weakness for them and you’re not going to fall into that trap again. You’re not!

But the sunlight through the windshield was glancing on the blond hair on Troy’s arms, shadowing the hollow in the crook of his elbow where the veins stood out blue, and his fingers gripped the wheel with an unsettling combination of sensitivity and strength. Lucy remembered the speed with which he’d pinioned Raymond Blogden’s arm behind his back, the strength with which he’d almost lifted the other man off the floor.

The knight in shining armor. The villain. And she herself cast as the beautiful maiden.

A hackneyed story. But—she knew from the languorous throb of blood through her veins—a primitive and still powerful story, nevertheless.

She’d better bring her mind back to the menus. She could handle Seawind; she had no fears on that score. But meals for several days for four people, one of them the steel-eyed Troy Donovan? Now that was a challenge.

Not nearly the challenge of keeping her distance from that same steel-eyed Troy Donovan.

An hour later, after paying ten dollars for a driver’s license, and having been given Troy’s account number at the supermarket and strict instructions to drive on the left, Lucy was on her own. All she had to do was get the supplies for tonight’s dinner and come up with ideas for the next few days.

That was all, she thought wryly, standing in front of the meat counter and wishing she’d paid more attention in her grade nine home economics classes. But home economics had taken third place to sailing and the captain of the basketball team: six feet tall, blond and—by the not very demanding standards of a fourteen-year-old— incredibly sexy.

Tom Bentham. Who’d dated her, Lucy, twice and then gone steady for the next two years with petite and pretty Tanya Holiday.

Someone jostled her and Lucy brought her mind back to the present with a bump. She roamed the store, cudgeling her brain for some of her mother’s recipes. Her mother combined a career as a forensic pathologist with a reputation as one of the city’s most elegant hostesses, whereas Lucy’s idea of fun on a Saturday night was a group of friends, a case of beer and pizza ordered from the neighborhood Italian restaurant.

She began putting things in the cart. The couple from New York no doubt had very sophisticated tastes, and Troy, she’d be willing to bet, was on a par with them. A man didn’t acquire the kind of confidence he wore like a second skin by doing nothing but chartering yachts in Tortola. She’d got to impress him. She didn’t think he’d fire her—he needed her too much for that—but he could make life very unpleasant for her if he chose.

Another forty-five minutes had passed before she was lugging the brown paper bags of food on board. Troy, stripped to the waist, his hands coated with grease, had the various components of a pump spread over the table in the cockpit. He gave her a preoccupied nod as she eased past him. ‘I ran the engine while you were gone— so the refrigerator’s cold.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, and disappeared into the cabin as fast as she could. His image had burned into her brain: the dent in his chin, the entrancing hollow of his collarbone, the tangled blond hair on his deep chest. It’s not fair, she thought wildly. No man should look that gorgeous.

Not only gorgeous, but oblivious to his own appeal. Because Troy, she was quite sure, wasn’t trying to impress her with his physique. Troy was merely oiling the pump and didn’t want to get his shirt dirty.

He wasn’t interested in her enough to try and impress her.

Scowling, Lucy stepped down into the galley. It was past six o’clock already. She’d better get moving. She’d decided to make a crab and cream cheese dip, chicken Wellington, a sweet potato casserole, broccoli with a hollandaise sauce, and a chocolate fondue with fruit. All of these were tried and true recipes of her mother’s that she herself had made at least once. She’d mix the pastry first and put it in the refrigerator to set, then do the two sauces and get the dip in the oven.

An hour later Troy came down the stairs, shrugging into his shirt. ‘How’re you doing? I’m getting hungry.’

The hollandaise sauce had curdled, so she’d had to resuscitate it in the blender; she’d forgotten to get cream for the chocolate sauce and every inch of counterspace was cluttered with dirty dishes and partially cooked food. ‘Fine,’ she said, trying to look cool and collected when she could feel the heat scorching her cheeks and wisps of damp hair clinging to her neck.

‘I wouldn’t want the guests seeing the galley in such a mess,’ he commented.

‘Troy,’ Lucy snapped, ‘I haven’t figured out where everything is yet, I’ve had a long and difficult day, and chaos is a sign of creativity. Didn’t you know that?’

The anger that was so integral to him flared in response. ‘Chaos can also be a sign of disorganization. Didn’t you know that?’

It had been a more than difficult day, and Lucy suddenly realized she was spoiling for a fight. Making a valiant effort to control her temper, she said, ‘The crab dip will be done in fifteen minutes, and I’ll serve it to you in the cockpit.’

‘I’m serious, Lucy… People come on these cruises to relax, to get away from it all. The state the galley’s in is totally unacceptable.’

She should count to ten. She should smile politely and ask him if he’d like a drink. Lucy banged a saucepan on the plastic counter and cried, ‘You may be the skipper—but I’m the cook! The galley’s my territory. Not yours. I’d appreciate your keeping that in mind.’