Stryker's Wife

Suddenly, like watching tea leaves settle into a pattern in the bottom of a cup, a picture of her relationship with Mark came into focus. “Well…damn!” she whispered plaintively.

Still struggling to deal with guilt and nausea, she was overcome with anger. It never even occurred to her that the motion of the boat had changed—less forward, more up and down, with a jiggly little corkscrew action thrown in for good measure—until she heard the sound of uneven footsteps on the little ladder doohickey that led into the living room.

She sat up, still clutching the bucket. Tears streaked her cheeks, but they were tears of anger. “Are we there?” she demanded as Captain Stryker hovered over her, looking almost as stricken as she felt.

“Kiley,” he said. “His name was Kiley, wasn’t it?”

Numbly, Deke nodded. It was one thing to be made a fool of. It was quite another to have it become common knowledge.

It occurred to her that he looked oddly vulnerable for such a powerful man. “You should’ve told me to shut up and mind my own business,” he growled.

She swallowed hard. Sitting up made her feel marginally more empowered, but it didn’t do a thing for her seasickness. “I was taught never to tell anyone to shut up. In my family, we say hush. It, um—it sounds softer.”

“But it means the same thing.” He raked his fingers through his shaggy blond hair, then hooked both thumbs under his belt. “You should’ve said something. I’m sorry, Ms. Kiley—just as sorry as I can be.”

“Hush. It’s not your fault.”

He grinned, looking more than ever like the hero of a pirate story in his faded, body-loving khakis. “Hush, huh? How does your family go about telling somebody to butt out and mind their own business?”

A fresh wave of nausea swept over her, but gamely she replied, “Mostly they just change the subject. Are we there yet?”

“Speaking of changing the subject? Sorry, we’re only about halfway. I thought I’d better check on you. Do you need anything? Sure you don’t want to head back in?”

Deke thought about how much this project was costing her. She could hardly ask for her money back just because on the way to memorializing her late husband she happened to have discovered that he was a philandering, four-flushing, lying, greedy snake in the grass.

At least he had been all of those things while he was still alive. Poor Mark. No one, she supposed, deliberately chose to be a stinker. As long as she’d come this far, she might as well pay tribute to whatever good there was in him. It would make a nice, tidy end to that particular segment of her life, and she needed that to satisfy her sense of orderliness.

“I want to go on to Wreck Rock,” she said as firmly as she could, considering she was about to disgrace herself into a plastic bucket that smelled of disinfectant.

For a minute he just stood there, swaying with the motion of the boat. A shaft of sunlight slanted down through an open hatch, highlighting the golden hair on his tanned, muscular forearm.

“We’d better hustle you topside,” he said, after studying her with a single sympathetic gray eye. “You’re no sailor, that’s pretty clear. Maybe if you suck on a cola and let the wind blow in your face, you’ll feel better.”

Under a thin layer of cheap indoor-outdoor carpet that served primarily to cover the twin hatches, the deck vibrated to the beat of the engines below. Kurt noticed that the atmosphere was none too fragrant. Frog had a bad habit of hanging his fishy clothes in his locker instead of tossing them out to be washed.

Bracing his bum leg against the bulkhead, he bent and slipped his arms under her slight form. She didn’t protest. Probably felt too lousy to argue. Funny thing, though—Kurt had a feeling that small or not, she was nobody’s pushover. He’d caught a glint in her eye, a certain tilt of her delicate chin before she’d been done in by a weak belly.

In the cockpit, with a cool northwest breeze in her face, he figured she’d come around pretty fast. “Breathe deeply,” he said. “That’s it, nice and steady—inhale, exhale…no, don’t hyperventilate, just take regular breaths. You’re doing fine.”

Breathing lessons. Man, he’d really lost it. But damn, she smelled good. Crazy thing, considering where they were, but she reminded him of the way a cornfield smelled when the tassels were drying under a hot summer sun.

Carefully, he lowered her onto a chair, watched for a few seconds to see that she didn’t keel over, then shoved an ice cold can in her hand. “Sip,” he said. “Don’t gulp it down. Let me get us underway again and I’ll see what I can do about smoothing out the ride.”

She sipped. Kurt skimmed up the ladder and took the controls again. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. She was hanging in there, angling her face to the wind, which was beginning to kick up a few knots. They were going to be doing some pitching and yawing before they reached their destination. He hoped to hell she was up to it.

Kiley, he thought. The joker’s name was Kiley, and he’d gone down with another woman. His mistress, according to the local scuttlebutt. Nobody had mentioned a wife in the background, or if they had, he hadn’t paid any attention. He’d never had much of an ear for gossip.

The jerk had been married, all right. Married to a real nice lady named Deke. Which brought up two questions in Kurt’s mind. Number one—what was his widow doing here?

And number two—why the hell had he needed a mistress?

Three

“Right about there,” he said. Resting his head against hers, Kurt pointed off to the southeast. “Nothing much to see, but according to the coordinates, this is the place where your husband and his secretary went down.” He kicked himself mentally for bringing it up again. He didn’t want to know about her problems. He had enough of his own. Deke Kiley was just another charter. In a few more hours she’d be history, and he’d be one bank deposit closer to having a real home for Frog, in case some busybody from social services took a notion that a working charter boat wasn’t a proper home for a growing boy.

She took a deep breath, and he noticed that her color had improved. The collar of her shirt was rucked up again, but he resisted the temptation to tuck it in. Barely. She still smelled like corn tassels, soap and shampoo. He figured a guy had to be pretty deprived to be turned on by something so wholesome. Too much celibacy could be hazardous to a guy’s health. Mental and otherwise.

“Right about where that gull just tipped his wings,” he said, inhaling deeply.

She still looked a little shaky. Maybe on the way back in, he’d invite her up to the flying bridge. The rolling was more noticeable there, but the view was first-class. In case he failed to raise a few porpoise, maybe she’d settle for a seagoing sunset.

“Would you please hand me my basket?” she asked, and he was reminded all over again of his mother’s ballerina music box. Ms. Kiley had a dainty way of speaking. Probably grew up saying yes ma’am and no ma’am to her elders.

He set the basket on the chair beside her and would have headed to the controls but she reached out and snagged his hand. “Would you mind opening my champagne? I’m not real good with these things. The bottle always overflows when I try it.”

“Are you sure you want to open it? Champagne’s not noted for settling stomachs.”

“Oh, my belly woes are much better now.”

Her belly woes. Kurt grinned and lifted the bottle from the wicker basket, then whistled soundlessly. He was no expert on vintages, but unless he was very much mistaken, this was a pretty high-priced bottle of French fizz.

He started to pop the cork with his thumbs, then thought better of it. She could hardly finish it off alone, and it would be a shame to let it go flat. Carefully, he eased the cork out and handed it to her. She could sniff it or stick it in her pocket, it didn’t matter to him.

“You pour,” she said, holding up two tulip glasses that glinted like wet ice in the hazy sunlight.

“I’m driving, but thanks, anyway.”

“I want to drink a toast. I can’t do it alone.”

Shrugging, Kurt poured both glasses a third full and handed her one. The little lady was a bundle of surprises. He had a feeling she wouldn’t like being referred to as a little lady, but that was the term that came to mind when he looked at her. Little, and a lady. In the best sense of the word.

“Here’s to you,” he said, raising his glass.

“No, here’s to all the smooth-talking, conniving, philandering cads who ever wrote off a honeymoon on their taxes.” She tossed back hers and held out her glass for a refill.

Kurt lifted his eyebrows. “If you say so.” He sipped. The stuff was dry as an Arizona attic. The last time he’d tasted anything like it had been at Alex and Dina’s wedding reception.

“More, please.” She held out her glass again. Cautiously, he splashed in a scant half inch.

Screwing her small face into a fearsome scowl, she said, “And here’s to all the, um, smooth-talking—did I already say that? Well, here’s to all the Lotharios who ever swept a woman off her feet and then dropped her flat on her—on her derriere with no warning.”

Kurt hesitated. “Are we, by any chance, toasting your late husband?”

Deke hiccupped. “Excuse me. Don’t ask personal questions.”

“Lady, I didn’t bring him up, you did.” Dammit, he’d meant to steer clear of that particular reef.

She shrugged and looked away, and Kurt studied the delicate line of her profile. Dina, the first woman he had loved and lost, had been a tall, elegant, classically beautiful blonde. Evelyn, the woman who had left him at the altar nearly three years ago, was a tall, sexy, voluptuously gorgeous brunette.

Deke Kiley was none of the above.

Not that it mattered. Deke Kiley was a stranger, he reminded himself. She was going to remain a stranger.

Leaning over, she reached into the basket, brought out a pair of leis and proceeded to destroy them, flower by flower, tossing the torn petals overboard. Kurt watched silently for a moment and then, shaking his head, he left her and returned to the controls. She didn’t even notice his leaving. The lady, he decided, was slightly screwy, but probably harmless.

Deke noticed, all right. Under the circumstances, it was unseemly, but she couldn’t help noticing the way his muscles flexed as he jogged up the ladder, the way the wind blew his khakis against his muscular body.

What’s more, she decided woozily, he was nice. Unusually kind, not to mention unusually attractive, even with the eye patch.

Especially with the eye patch.

What he was was sexy. Deke was no expert on sexiness in a man. She’d been taught to look for other qualities, but once a woman’s hormones got in on the act, a whole new world opened up.

There’d been a time when she’d thought Mark was sexy. He had certainly managed to convince her she couldn’t live without him, and vice versa. But if a woman could be married to a man for nearly eighteen months without even knowing who he was, she was nowhere near ready to trust her judgment of a man she had known for less than a day:

Besides, the last thing she needed right now was to be distracted by a sexy male rear end and a pair of tanned, golden-haired, muscular forearms. Not when she was trying so hard to be furious. Or if not furious, then certainly righteously indignant. The trouble was, her righteous indignation kept slipping away, leaving behind little more than the sour dregs of resentment and disillusionment, which hardly warranted such a dramatic, not to mention expensive, memorial.

She belched and patted her lips with a tissue. Either she was getting sick again or the mixture of champagne and cola on an empty stomach was beginning to have an effect.

Several minutes later Captain Stryker descended the ladder again. The course held steady, the prow cutting through the waves at a low rate of speed. It occurred to Deke that there was no one driving, but before she could begin to worry, she was distracted by the way he moved about the cockpit. Her slightly glazed eyes followed him with a wistful expression that would have shocked her if she’d been aware of it. She thought he must not have been in the business of chartering very long, because he hadn’t quite got his sea legs yet.

Once more she admired the way his khakis hugged his rear end when he bent over to retrieve a couple more cans of cola from a locker under the ladder, and then she chided herself for noticing. Normally it was a man’s hands and eyes she noticed, not his behind.

Mark’s eyes had been blue, watchful and rather small.

The captain’s eye was gray, deep-set and surprisingly gentle in such a harshly angular face.

Mark’s hands had been elegant. He was the first man she’d ever met who had his nails professionally manicured. She’d been impressed, having been taught all her life the value of good grooming.

Captain Stryker’s hands were square and tanned, with a glint of golden hairs on the back. His nails were square and short and scrupulously clean, but she’d bet her last tea biscuit that he’d never been anywhere near a manicurist.

At least not in a professional capacity.

“Hey, you want something to eat? Sandwiches? Cheese crackers?”

“Yuck.” It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since supper the night before, and very little even then. “I mean, no, thank you.”

He smiled. He had nice teeth, too. Square, white but not quite perfect. She felt a vague stirring of excitement and put it down to the mixture of canned cola and French champagne and not enough food. It had to be that, because she was far too sensible to be distracted, much less attracted, by another man right now, no matter how nice his smile and his…

Well—that, too.

She had a book to finish and some major decisions to make concerning her future. In two brief years, her entire outlook on life had changed, and now she was ready to move forward. This time without any blow-dried jerk who wore silk underwear, Italian suits and too much cologne. A jerk who’d once made her feel like an idiot simply because she’d referred to his wristwatch as a Rolodex.

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