The Devil and the Deep

CHAPTER THREE



STELLA had been seven and Rick ten when they’d first laid eyes on the Dolphin anchored at St Kitts. They’d both stood on the bow of the Persephone with their mouths open, staring at the wooden beauty. Teak, oak, cypress and the original brass fittings had given her an old-world charm hinting at an era when craftsmanship was everything and things were made to last.

Stella still remembered Rick’s awed whisper. ‘One day she’s going to be mine.’

And as they stood on the wharf looking down at her now, the brass gleaming beneath a high Aussie sun, the wooden deck warm and inviting, she looked as grand and majestic as ever.

Lucinda sighed in her head.

‘God, Rick,’ Stella breathed, that same stirring in her blood she always felt with a stiff sea breeze ruffling her hair. ‘She’s even more beautiful than I remembered.’

Rick looked down at her, her hair streaming behind her, her pink lips parted in awe. She’d changed into a vest top and cut-off denim shorts and she was so tiny the urge to tuck her under his arm took him by surprise.

‘Yes, she is,’ he murmured, looking back at his purchase.

Stella looked up at him. The sea breeze whipped his long pirate locks across his face. His strong jaw was dark with stubble. ‘She must have cost you a fortune.’

He shrugged. ‘Some things are beyond money. And she’s worth every cent.’

She nodded, looking back at the superbly crafted boat. ‘Why now?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I listened to your father talk about The Mermaid all my life. About how one day he was going to find Inigo’s final resting place. And then he died without ever having seen it.’

Rick felt a swell of emotion in his chest and stopped. He slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently into his side. ‘I always thought Nathan was invincible...’

Stella snaked an arm around his waist, her heart twisting as his words ran out. She’d always thought so too. Always thought her father would be like Captain Ahab, The Mermaid his white whale. They both stood on the dock watching the gentle bob of the Dolphin for a few moments.

‘I’ve dreamt about owning this boat since I was ten years old,’ Rick murmured, finding his voice again. ‘I didn’t want to wait any longer.’

Stella nodded, feeling a deep and abiding affinity with Rick that 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, the company’s very expensive boat—onto a reef,’ she quipped.

Rick laughed. ‘You have that right. Come on, first mate, let’s get this show on the road.’

* * *

Within half an hour they were under way, out on the open ocean, and Stella couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this alive. She’d waited patiently while Rick had used the motor to manoeuvre out of the harbour, then helped him with the still familiar motions of putting up the sails. She heard Lucinda sigh as they billowed with the moderate breeze and her pulse leapt as the boat surged forward, slicing across the whitecaps.

Rick, who had taken his shirt off—of course—stood behind her at the wheel for the first ten minutes, giving her a quick refresher. It wasn’t needed. Her feel for the boat was instantaneous, like the familiarity of her own heartbeat, and even if it hadn’t been they could easily have switched to the sophisticated autopilot system guided by the satellite technology that he’d had installed as part of the fully computerised upgrade.

But it was exhilarating to feel the pulse of the ocean beneath her feet again. She shut her eyes, raised her face to the sun as the big wheel in her hands felt like a natural extension of her being. In her mind’s eye she could see Lucinda laughing up at her as she undulated through the waves, riding the bow with the dolphins.

Rick looked up from tying down a loose rope and caught her in her sun-worshipping stance. He’d worried that buying the Dolphin on a whim had been a mistake, an indulgence he didn’t have the time to realise, a reaction to Nathan’s sudden death.

But he didn’t any more.

Nathan’s accident had rocked him to his very core. He’d been there that day. Had seen Nathan’s lifeless form, minus his breathing apparatus, bob to the surface. Had frantically dragged him aboard, puffed air into lungs that had been consumed by sea water too many minutes before.

Had demanded that he stay with him.

Stay for him.

Stay for Stella.

His own father’s memory had faded to nothing over the years. He’d been too young when his father’s regular bouts of drunken shore leave had caught up with him. Just a few faded photographs and the oft-repeated stories that got more and more fantastical late into the night after one too many beers.

Anthony Granville had occupied a legendary status amongst the men that knew him but he’d still got himself dead.

It was Nathan who’d been Rick’s role model. His stand-in father. And Nathan who had taken on his full-time guardianship when he was a tearaway fifteen-year-old and his grandmother had washed her hands of him.

Rick had only ever wanted to be at sea managing his half of the business. And Nathan had facilitated it.

But he hadn’t made it easy—oh, no.

Nathan had been a tough task master.

Rick had thought his days of schooling and routine were done but Nathan had been worse than his grandmother. Nathan had insisted that he do his schooling by correspondence. And when he was done with that for the day, he’d given him every lousy job possible.

Had worked him like a navvy.

And Rick couldn’t be more grateful. In his own way, Nathan had given him a better grounding than if he’d grown up in a loving, two-parent secure home.

He’d been so angry with Nathan when he’d landed in the UK thirty hours after they’d given up trying to resuscitate him.

Angry that Nathan had left him to be the bearer of bad news.

Angry that he’d left full stop.

But he’d known the news had to come from him.

The thought of someone else telling Linda—telling Stella—had been completely unpalatable. Nathan would have wanted it to be him and he hadn’t wanted it to come from anyone else.

How could he have let some faceless policeman tell Linda? She and Nathan might have been divorced but even Rick had been able to see the deep and abiding love she still felt for him.

And there was no way he’d have let anyone else tell Stella.

The autopsy results just prior to the funeral had made Nathan’s death more palatable. Rick had understood, as a man of the sea himself, that Nathan had chosen the ocean over a hospital.

But it hadn’t lessened his loss.

And his very impulsive purchase of the Dolphin was so mixed up in the whole vortex of grief he just hadn’t been sure of his motivations.

But, as she opened her eyes and smiled at him as if she were riding a magic carpet instead of some very tame waves, he was one hundred per cent sure.

The Dolphin was part of them. Their history. And whatever else happened over the years in their lives, it would always bond them together, always be theirs—his, hers and Nathan’s.

* * *

It had been quite a few years since Stella had been snorkelling. But as they lay anchor a couple of hours later crystalline tropical waters the exact shade of Rick’s eyes beckoned, and she was below deck and back up again in record speed.

‘What on earth are you wearing?’ Rick demanded as she appeared by his side while he was rummaging around in a storage compartment for some goggles and fins.

Stella looked down at her very sensible one-piece. ‘You don’t like the colour?’ she asked.

He tisked to cover the fact that he didn’t give a damn what colour it was. ‘It’s stinger season, Stel. There should be a wetsuit hanging on the back of your cabin door and a stinger suit in one of the drawers.’

Stella looked at the water, desperate to feel it on her skin with no barriers just as she had in her Lucinda dream.

‘Oh, come on,’ she protested. ‘We’d be pretty protected out here on the reef, surely?’

‘I’ll be sure to tell them that’s what you thought when they’re giving you the anti-venin.’

Stella shrugged. ‘I’m willing to risk it.’

Rick shook his head emphatically. ‘I’m not.’

He worked in an inherently dangerous field—there were a lot of things in the ocean that could kill a man—and his reputation for safety was second to none. He certainly wasn’t going to have to explain to Linda that he’d let her daughter die too.

He pointed to the stairs leading to the lower deck. ‘Go,’ he intoned.

Stella rolled her eyes. ‘Yeh, yeh.’

‘Don’t make me come down there,’ he threatened.

Stella felt the flirty threat right down to her toes. What would he say if she challenged him to do just that?

Rick smiled to himself as she slunk away, her one-piece riding up the cheek of one buttock. He looked away. When she reappeared a few minutes later she was zipped into light blue neck-to-ankle Lycra.

‘I hate these things,’ she complained as she pulled at the clinging fabric. ‘I look like a dumpling.’

Rick deliberately didn’t look. What Nathan’s daughter did or did not look like poured into a stinger suit was none of his business. He was still trying to not think about that half-

exposed butt cheek.

‘Everyone does,’ he said, handing her some flippers and her mask and snorkel.

Stella glared at him. No, not everyone did. Not size-zero six-foot supermodels. Which she wasn’t. And certainly not him, half zipped into his, his thighs outlined to perfection, the narrowness of his hips a stark contrast to the roundness of her own. He looked like an Yves St Laurent cologne guy or James freaking Bond walking out of the Mediterranean in his teeny tiny swimming trunks.

She fitted her mask to her head and looked at him. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ she asked, staring pointedly at his state of undress.

‘Right behind you,’ he said.

* * *

They snorkelled on and off for most of the afternoon. They stopped a couple of times to grab a drink of water and Rick found his state-of-the-art underwater camera but otherwise they frolicked in the warm tropical waters for hours as if they were kids again playing pirates and mermaids.

She’d forgotten just how magical it was with the sun beating on her back and her head immersed in an enchanted underworld kingdom. Where fish all the colours of the rainbow darted around her and cavorted amongst coral that formed a unique and fascinating underwater garden.

Where the dark shadows of huge manta rays and small reef sharks hovered in the distance.

Where the silence made the beauty that much more profound.

It was after five o’clock when they called it a day. Stella threw on her clothes from earlier; Rick just unzipped his suit to his waist and looked all James Bond again. They threw some fishing lines in to catch their dinner while they drank cold beer and looked at Rick’s pictures on her laptop. They laughed and reminisced and Rick showed her the pictures from their latest salvage—a nineteenth-century frigate off the Virgin Islands.

They caught two decent-sized coral trout and he cooked them on a small portable grill plate he’d brought up from below. It melted in their mouths as they dangled their legs over the side and watched the blush of twilight slowly creep across the sky to the gentle slap of waves against the hull.

Stella could feel the fatigue of jet lag catching up with her as the balmy breeze blew her drying hair into a no-doubt completely unattractive bird’s nest.

That was the one good thing about hanging out with a guy who’d known you for ever—he’d seen her looking worse.

Rick took her plate away and she collapsed back against the deck, knees bent, looking up at the stars as they slowly, one by one, appeared before her eyes. She could hear the clank of dishes below and by the time Rick rejoined her night had completely claimed the heavens and a mass of diamond pricks winked above them.

A three-quarter moon hung low in the sky, casting a trail of moonbeams on the ocean surface.

‘Are you awake, sleepy head?’ Rick asked as he approached.

She countered his question with one of her own. ‘Is it waxing or waning?’ she asked, knowing that a man of the sea knew those things without ever having to look at a tide chart—it was in their DNA.

‘Waxing,’ Rick confirmed as he took up position beside her, lying back against the sun-warmed wood, also staring towards the heavens. He’d taken his stinger suit off and was wearing just his boardies.

Stella sighed. ‘It’s so beautiful. I bet you never get sick of this.’

‘Nope. Never.’

He’d spent countless hours on deck at night, with Nathan teaching him how to navigate by the stars. He supposed to some, even back then, it had seemed hopelessly old-fashioned with all the sophisticated GPS systems and autopilot technology that had been around in the salvage industry for decades, but it had got him out of trouble more than once when satellites had been down or equipment had failed.

And he’d loved listening to the awe in Nathan’s voice as he’d talked about the heavens as if each star were a friend. He hadn’t just known their shape or the positions in relation to the horizon, but he’d known all the old seafaring legends about them and told them in such a way that had held Rick enthralled.

Nathan’s celestial knowledge had been encyclopaedic and Rick had soaked it up like a sponge.

And then he’d regurgitated it to an awestruck Stella, who’d hung on his every word.

How many hours had they spent as kids lying on their backs on the deck of a boat pointing out different constellations, waiting with bated breath for the first shooting star of the night?

Her arm brushed his as she pointed at the Southern Cross and he realised he’d missed this.

This...companionship.

The last time they’d done it was the summer she’d finished school for good. A year after that near kiss. She’d alternated between giddiness at the freedom of it all and distraction over her impending results. They’d lain together on deck and looked up into the diamond studded abyss and he’d told her if they saw a shooting star it would be a sign that she’d passed.

No sooner had he spoken the words than a white streak trailed its incandescent light across the heavens right above them. She’d gasped and he’d told her to shut her eyes and wish upon it and watched her as she did.

Yep. He’d missed this.

God knew he’d had a lot of women in exactly this position over the years but this was different. For a start he hadn’t been remotely interested in looking at the stars with any of them. Although to be fair, as his relationship with Stella had teetered on the brink of something neither of them had been game enough to define during their teen years, he hadn’t exactly had his head in the stars with her either.

But he did tonight. Stella somehow seemed to bring out the amateur astronomer in him.

And it was...nice.

No agenda. No pressure. No expectations.

Just two old friends relaxing after the perfect day.

‘Hey,’ Stella said, extending her neck right back as her peripheral vision caught a moonbeam illuminating a chunk of metal hanging off some kind of a fixed pole at the stern. She squinted. ‘Is that a shower head?’

Rick extended his neck too and smiled. ‘Yep. I’ve always wanted to be able to take a shower under the stars.’ He grinned, relaxing his neck back to a more neutral position.

She laughed as she also released the abnormal stretch, returning to her inspection of the night sky. ‘Well, you’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about this boat for a lot of years.’

They fell silent for a moment, letting the slap of waves against the hull serenade them as their gazes roamed the magnificence of the celestial display.

Stella’s yawn broke the natural rhythm. ‘I’m beat.’ She shut her eyes. ‘All that sun and sea on top of the jet lag is a deadly combination.’

‘You can’t go to bed before we see a shooting star, Stel. Look.’ He nudged her shoulder. ‘There’s Gemini.’

Stella’s eyes flicked open and she dutifully followed the path of a perfectly formed bicep all the way to the tip of his raised index finger. She tutted. ‘You always had a thing for Gemini.’

He grinned. ‘What’s not to like about two chicks?’

They laughed and just as he was lowering his arm it happened: a trail of light shot across the night sky, burning bright for long seconds.

Stella gasped and Rick whispered, ‘Quick, make a wish.’

Stella thought about Lucinda and Inigo. And dear Joy with the patience of Job. She squeezed her eyes shut as the light faded into extinction and wished for another blockbuster.

Rick turned his head and watched her eye-scrunching concentration. ‘What’d you wish for?’ he asked.

Stella opened her eyes, her breath catching in her throat at their closeness. Even with the dark pressing in around them, his blue eyes seemed to pierce right into her soul. ‘It’s a secret,’ she murmured. ‘If I tell you it won’t come true.’

He shook his head. ‘You always were a romantic. I should have known you’d go on to write romance novels.’

His voice was light and teasing and not full of scorn as Dale’s had been. Dale had been barely able to say the R word. She smiled. ‘Says he who insisted I wait to wish upon a star,’ she countered.

He laughed. ‘Touché.’

His laugh did funny things to her insides and a part of her wanted to stay out with him all night and watch the sun come up, but her eyelids were growing heavier and she yawned again.

She sat. ‘Right. I’m off to bed.’ She stood and looked down at him lying on the deck of his boat wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung boardies and still somehow managing to look as if he ruled the entire ocean. ‘See you in the morning.’

He nodded. ‘I won’t be too far behind you,’ he murmured.

Stella turned away from him, padding her way across the deck, conscious of his eyes on her. She heard his faint ‘Night, Stel’ reach her as she climbed down the stairs.

She was too beat to reply as her legs took her past the galley, through the saloon to the aft cabin where Rick must have placed her luggage earlier. She didn’t bother to shower, hell, she barely bothered to undress, just kicked out of her shorts, pulled the sheets back and crawled under.

She was dreaming even before her head hit the pillow.

Dreaming of Vasco.