concluded. It required concentration, imagination, hard work, a little technical knowhow… and luck. She looked longingly at her bunk, wanting nothing more than to crawl behind the red curtain and sleep for at least a year. Unfortunately, Ivan was waiting for her on deck.
Ivan levered himself down the galley stairs, a slow smile spreading across his face as he took in the sight of Stephanie Lowe at the end of her first full day aboard the Savage. “I got tired of waiting, so I thought I’d come check things out. Pretty tough job, huh?”
“A hot shower, and I’ll be good as new.”
“I have a better idea. What you need after a long day of slaving over a scorching stove is a moonlight swim. Cool, refreshing…” Erotic, he added to himself.
A moonlight swim sounded great. Too bad she didn’t have the strength to drag herself up the galley steps. “It’s a lovely idea, but I’d sink like a stone. I’m exhausted. I’m afraid I’m going to have to opt for the shower.”
Ivan slung his arm around her shoulders. “Honey, this is a carefully restored nineteenth century schooner. We don’t have a shower.”
“Oh Lord, no shower.” She slumped against him. “I have blueberry batter in my hair and spaghetti sauce soaked right through to my underwear, and you’re telling me we don’t have a shower?”
If she’d been alone, she probably would have burst into tears. She would have cried for all the kids she wasn’t able to save from drugs. She would have cried for the Steve she never knew. She would have cried for all the times in the past eight years when she had desperately needed to cry and wasn’t allowed that luxury. But she wasn’t alone, and she had too much pride to cry in front of a man she’d known for only two days. Besides, she wasn’t a woman who cried over spaghetti sauce. Usually she found a well-aimed expletive to be much more satisfying than indulging in tears. “So you suggest swimming, huh?”
“Did you bring a bathing suit?”
Stephanie sighed. She didn’t even own a bathing suit. Narcs in Jersey City didn’t lounge around at poolside waiting for middle-class crime, and they couldn’t afford fancy vacations.
Ivan grabbed the bottle of dish-washing detergent from the sink and pulled Stephanie to the stairs. “From the sound of that sigh, I take it the answer is no.” He pushed her up the stairs and stood beside her on the deck. “Are you the modest type?”
“My gynecologist asks that same question once a year, then he makes me sit in a freezing cold room wearing nothing but a paper jacket.”
“What a brute. This is going to be much more fun.”
Stephanie looked over the side of the ship at the still, black water. “You’re not expecting me to skinny-dip, are you?”
“How bad do you want to get clean?”
The deck was empty and dark except for the soft glow of light escaping up the cabin hatches. The air was cool and heavy with the smell of the sea. The water lapped gently against the sides of the ship. It was inviting and scary as hell. “Can you keep the crowds of thrill seekers away?”
“Absolutely.”
“And what about you?” she asked. “Are you swimming?”
“No. I’m ogling. Besides, I’m in charge of crowd control, remember?”
“Crowd control, yes. Ogling, no. How do I do this? It looks like a long way down.”
“The yawl is tied behind us. Just use the stern ladder. You can get undressed in the yawl and quietly slip into the water.” He handed her the bottle of dish detergent. “Use this to wash your hair. It won’t get gummy in seawater.”
He watched her go over the gunwale and scale the side of the ship like a cat burglar. Lithe, silent, efficient. He admired her style and, at the same time, hated the knowledge that it was probably a talent she’d acquired in dark, garbage-strewn alleys in seedy neighborhoods. He’d like to believe she’d directed traffic in front of a grade school or had had a nice, boring desk job, but he instinctively knew differently, and he felt his gut knot at the thought of her going toe-to-toe with drug dealers and the slime they fed off.
Stephanie settled herself in the boat and removed her shoes. “Turn your back,” she called to Ivan, thinking he looked like the Cheshire cat with his rascally smile floating in the shadows of the night. “I’m not getting undressed with you staring at me.”
I’m not much of a pirate, he thought, back turned. A real pirate would be down there in the boat with her… or at least sneaking a peek when she wasn’t looking. He heard her sweats drop to the floor of the yawl and the soft splash of her hitting the water. And then the scream. His heart slammed against the wall of his chest, and in an instant he was over the gunwale, flying down the rope ladder. He reached the boat just as her head bobbed to the surface. “Holy Toledo!” she said, gasping. “This is cold! You miserable excuse for a human being, why didn’t you tell me it would be this cold? And what are you doing in the boat?”
Ivan put his hand to his heart. “You screamed! I thought… I thought Jaws got you.”
Several passengers looked down at Stephanie and Ivan.
“What’s going on?” Mr. Pease wanted to know. “Are we interrupting anything?”
“It was the knife killer, wasn’t it?” Loretta Pease asked. “Soon as I heard that scream, I knew it was the knife killer striking again.”
Ivan looked up at her. “No, it wasn’t the knife killer. It was just Cookie taking a bath.”
“At this time of the night?”
“She had blueberry batter in her hair,” Ivan explained. “You can all go back to bed now.”
“Great crowd control,” Stephanie said. “Maybe we should have sold tickets.”
Ivan grinned at her and poured a glob of dish detergent on the top of her head. “Hold on to the edge of the boat, and I’ll wash your hair.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Can you see below the water?”
“Do you expect the descendant of a pirate to answer that honestly?”
Chapter 4
Stephanie ducked her head back to rinse out the soap and pushed herself away from the yawl. The water was tolerable, now that she was used to it, and she stroked out, enjoying the sensual freedom of swimming naked.
“Don’t swim too far,” Ivan called. “The cold is going to sneak up on you.”
She waved to acknowledge his warning and swam parallel to the ship for a few more minutes before returning to him with chattering teeth. “Is the p-p-person in charge of crowd control also in charge of towels and d-d-dry clothes?”
“I knew I forgot something.” He looked at her hopefully. “You could always air-dry.”
“You know what you are? You’re a p-p-pervert. Turn around while I get into the boat. I’ll put my sweats back on.”
“Sacrilege.” He faced the side of the ship. “It’s a crime against nature to cover that beautiful, clean body in spaghetti-stained sweats- especially the mole.”
Stephanie pulled the shirt over her head and struggled into the pants. “That mole is in a private place!”
“And it’s very pretty,” he said softly.
She didn’t know whether she was pleased or furious. She really should be mad at him, but there was something about the tone of his voice that touched her. It wasn’t lewd or suggestive or even calculating. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was smiling. A small, gentle smile, as if his world had suddenly turned beautiful because she had a mole on her backside. “Thank y-y-you,” she said.
“We have to get you warm. Can you make it up the ladder?”
“This is nothing,” she said. “Last February I was thrown into the Hudson River.”
He caught up with her on the deck and whirled her around by her shirtsleeve. “I want to know about it.”
Even in the dark, Stephanie could see that his eyes were hard. His mouth was drawn tight, and a muscle worked in his jaw. She blinked at him in surprise, confused by his emotional reaction. “It was c-c-cold.”
“Damn.” He picked her up and carried her to the galley, where he set her down in front of the stove. He checked the bunks to make sure they were empty and pulled the hatch cover shut. “Get those wet things off.” He
