The Devil and the Deep

CHAPTER TWO



STELLA blushed furiously. ‘Shh,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t be preposterous.’

Diana laughed. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’

Stella turned back to the sink, busying herself with washing out her wine glass. ‘There are some similarities...’ she admitted.

‘Similarities?’ Diana hooted. ‘I knew I knew him...I just couldn’t figure out where from. I mean, hell, let’s face it, if I’d met him somewhere before I’d hardly be likely to forget him—the man’s a total hottie. And, I have to say—’ she nudged Stella ‘—looks like a total sex fiend.’

‘Diana!’

She shrugged. ‘In a good way.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Stella muttered. ‘You know I’ve only ever been with Dale.’

Diana tisked. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never gone there...well, I mean you’ve obviously thought about it because you wrote an entire three-hundred-and-seventy-five page sexual fantasy about the man—’

‘I did not,’ Stella denied, picking up a tea towel and briskly drying the glass.

Diana crooked an eyebrow at her. ‘Stella, this is me. Diana. Who knows you.’

Stella looked into her friend’s eyes and could see that she knew the truth. She sagged against the sink. ‘Okay, yes,’ she sighed. ‘Rick was the inspiration for Vasco.’

Stella hadn’t set out to write a book with Rick as the hero but Vasco had taken on Rick’s features in a totally organic way. She hadn’t even been truly aware of it until she’d written the first kiss.

And then it had been so blindingly obvious she’d wondered why it had taken her so long.

‘Hah! I knew it!’ Diana clapped delightedly.

Stella rolled her eyes. ‘This is between you and me, Diana,’ she said, placing a hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Promise?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, waving a dismissive hand, ‘your secret is safe with me.’

‘Thank you,’ Stella said, releasing a breath as she shuffled away from the sink and headed towards the fire.

‘Well, there’s only one thing for it now,’ Diana said as she followed Stella and plonked herself down on one of the lounge chairs. ‘You have to go with him.’

Stella looked up from her log poking. ‘What?’

‘The man obviously inspires you to write. You need inspiration. You need to write. Problem solved.’

‘Joy doesn’t want another Vasco Ramirez, Diana.’

‘Yes, she does,’ Diana said. ‘That’s exactly what she wants. Vasco sold like hot cakes. Vasco is king. Of course she wants you to do another Vasco.’

Stella gave her friend an impatient look. ‘You know what I mean.’

Diana sighed. She didn’t want to pull out the big guns. ‘Babe, things are going to start to get nasty. And trust me, you don’t want to be with a publishing house that plays hard ball. There’ll be lawyers. It’s time to quit the whole writer’s block nonsense and write.’

Stella felt Diana’s words slice into her side. ‘You think it’s nonsense—that I’m making it up?’

Diana shook her head. She knew Stella’s instant fame had compounded her already entrenched second-book syndrome and her father’s death had just aggravated everything further. She totally got that Stella’s muse had deserted her. But...

‘The lawyers will think it is, babe.’

‘I just need a little more time,’ Stella muttered.

Diana nodded. ‘And you should take it. Absolutely. Go with Rick, get inspired. Come back replenished.’

Stella glanced at her friend. She made it sound so easy. She shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

‘Why?’ Diana challenged. ‘Because you have a thing for him?’

‘I do not have a thing for him,’ Stella denied quickly. A little too quickly perhaps. ‘He’s an old, old friend,’ she clarified, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘We’ve known each other for ever. There is no thing.’

Diana looked at her friend. Oh, there so was a thing.

Even better.

Lord alone knew, if she hadn’t had sex for almost a year on top of fairly pedestrian sex for the previous five she’d be looking at a way of fixing that pronto. And if it so happened that the man of Stella’s fantasies was there at the precise moment she decided to break the drought, then surely everyone won?

‘So it shouldn’t be a problem, then?’ Diana asked innocently. She held up her hand as Stella went to speak again. ‘Look, Rick’s right. Just sleep on it. I know it’s a lot to consider but, for what it’s worth, I think you’re mad if you don’t.’

‘But the book...’ Stella murmured in a last-ditch effort to make Diana see sense.

Diana shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re doing here on good old terra firma ain’t working, is it, babe?’

* * *

Stella went to bed determined to wake up in the morning and tell both Rick and Diana to go to hell.

But that was before the dream.

She dreamt all night of a mermaid following a pirate

ship. No...

She was the mermaid and she was following the pirate ship. Inside the hull a lone, rich, tenor voice would occasionally sing a deep mournful song of lost love. It was a thing of beauty and she’d fallen in love with the man even though she’d never laid eyes on him. But she knew he was a prisoner and she knew with an urgency that beat like the swell of the ocean in her breast that she had to save him.

That he was the one for her.

Stella awoke, the last tendrils of the dream still gliding over her skin like the cool kiss of sea water. It was so vivid for a moment she could almost feel the water frothing her hair in a glorious golden crown around her head.

The urge to write thrummed through her veins and she quickly opened the drawer of her bedside table, locating the stash of pens and paper she always kept there. She brushed off the dust and started to scribble and in ten minutes she’d written down the bones of a plot and some detailed description of Lucinda, the mermaid.

When she finished she sat back and stared at the words in front of her. They were a revelation. And not just because she’d written something she didn’t have the immediate urge to delete, but because it was a whole new approach.

Stella hadn’t imagined for even a minute that the heroine’s point of view would take precedence in her head. Vasco had been so strong and dominant, striding onto the page, demanding to be heard, that she’d assumed starting with the hero was always going to be her process.

All this time she’d been beating herself up about not being able to see a hero, getting her knickers in a twist because, no matter how hard she tried to visualise one, no hero was forthcoming.

And he still wasn’t. But Lucinda was fully formed and she was awesome.

Lucinda excited her as nothing had since Vasco had arrived. Lucinda was no Lady Mary waiting around to be saved. The world had gone crazy for Vasco last time, this time they would go crazy for Lucinda.

She could feel it deep inside in the same place that had told her Vasco was special, but she’d been too inexperienced to listen.

Well, she was listening now.

God, Joy was probably going to have a fit at her kick-ass mermaid. She could hear her now saying, But what about Inigo, Stella?

Stella gasped as his name came to her. Inigo. Of course that was his name. Inigo. It had to be Inigo.

It was working.

The buzz was back. The magic was here.

Inigo would be strong and noble, a perfect match for Lucinda because a strong woman required a man to equal her. A man secure in himself. A man who would understand the divided loyalties she endured every day and wouldn’t demand that she chose between the sea and land.

A subject that Stella could write about intimately.

God, why hadn’t she thought to approach her story from this way before? It seemed so obvious now. She kicked off the sheets, reached for her polar fleece dressing gown.

She had to get out of here. Had to get to her computer.

She almost laughed as she tripped over her gown in haste. The revelation had come just in time. It had saved her. There was no time now for seafaring adventures.

There was a mermaid to write. A hero to rescue.

Lucinda was calling.

Inigo too.

Stella padded straight to her computer, notes in hand. She drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited for it to power up. As soon as she was able, she opened a new word document and typed The Siren’s Call in the header.

She blinked at it. Her fingers hadn’t even consulted her brain. The title had just appeared.

It was all happening.

Then the cursor winked at her from a blank page and the buzz and pulse inside shrivelled like a sultana.

What? No...

She took her hands off the keyboard, waited a moment or two, then placed them back on. She waited for her fingers to roam over the keys, pressing randomly to make words on the page. She consulted her notes and desperately tried to recall spunky Lucinda.

But nothing came.

‘You’re up early,’ Rick’s voice murmured in her ear as he plonked a steaming hot cup of coffee at her elbow and she almost leapt two feet off the chair.

‘Bloody hell, Rick, do you mind?’ she griped as she clutched at her chest. Had she been that focused she hadn’t even noticed he was up, or smelled the aroma of coffee?

‘Whoa there, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’ He grinned. ‘What are you working on?’

Stella minimised the document, leaving only her screen saver to view. She glared up at him. Then she wished she hadn’t. He was wearing long stripy flannelette pyjama bottoms and nothing on top. The drawstring was pulled low and tight on his hips, revealing way too much skin right at her eye level.

Suddenly Lucinda whispered in her head again, murmuring her story, buzzing through Stella’s veins like an illicit drug. Flashes of her childhood felt sweet against Stella’s tongue. Lucinda’s despair over Inigo tightened Stella’s chest.

This was crazy.

Stella turned back to the computer, the need to write an imperative even with Rick hovering. But as suddenly as it had come upon her the flow stopped. Stella blinked—was there a tap somewhere that somebody had just turned off?

Rick let out a long low wolf whistle, ignoring her silence—Stella had never been a morning person. ‘Sexy cover,’ he murmured, taking the other chair at the desk and straddling it. ‘Great rack.’

Stella, still willing Lucinda to come back, took a moment to work out what Rick was referring to. She looked at her computer, the cover for Pleasure Hunt her screen saver. Lady Bingham’s flowing scarlet dress with the plunging neckline made the best of her assets, pushing her milky breasts practically into the face of the leering Vasco Ramirez.

‘Nice.’ Stella glared at him as she reopened her blank page, obliterating the screen saver.

Lucinda? Lucinda? Where are you?

‘I’m just saying, he seems to be enjoying the view and I can’t blame him.’

It would indeed be hypocritical, Rick thought, considering how very much he enjoyed that kind of view himself. The kind of view that Stella was giving him right at this moment as her gown flapped open and the low-cut vest shirt she wore gaped a little to reveal a glimpse of soft female breast.

The view he was trying to ignore.

He’d had a lot of practice at ignoring Stella’s breasts, given his treasured honorary position in the Mills family, but that didn’t mean it had been easy—then or now. Witness the time he’d lost his head and succumbed to her kissing dare with a heady mix of trepidation, challenge and anticipation.

Anticipation that had been building since the summer she’d arrived on the Persephone with curves and a bra.

Being sprung by her father before he’d reached his target and Nathan’s little chat with him afterwards had set him straight. And he’d never betrayed Nathan’s trust.

Not consciously anyway.

‘He’s practically drooling,’ he murmured, gaze firmly fixed on the screen.

Stella turned to Rick to defend Vasco. To say that her hero was not a salivating pervert, but of course she couldn’t because the man was a scoundrel of the highest order and she knew damn well he’d appreciated Mary’s cleavage as he’d appreciated countless other women’s cleavages before he’d met Mary and probably still was, out there in fiction land somewhere.

But it all died on her lips as Lucinda’s sweet melodic voice started up a dialogue in her head again, talking about her father disowning her for following a whim and her mother’s grief over their rift.

The implications stunk to high heaven.

Oh, God. Please no, not this, Lucinda. I’ll do anything, I’ll go anywhere else you want, but not this.

Just then Diana entered the room, negating the need for Stella to say anything, for which she was grateful. She yawned loudly and bade them both a good morning as she made her way to the kitchen in her clingy satin Hello Kitty pyjamas and poured herself a coffee from the percolator.

Rick whistled. ‘Well, hello Kitty.’

Stella rolled her eyes. Diana grinned as she plonked herself down in a lounge chair.

‘So?’ she demanded. ‘Are you going with Rick or what?’

‘Good question, Miss Kitty.’ Rick nodded. ‘Well?’ he asked, seeking Stella’s gaze.

Even just looking at him looking at her, Stella could feel the story buzzing through her veins. She could feel Lucinda beckoning her like the siren she was, waving at her from the rocks, drawing her ever closer to her doom.

She looked back at the computer screen with its mocking little cursor and acres of blankness and got nothing.

She sighed as Lucinda won. ‘Yes. I’m going.’

‘Really?’ Rick stood and punched a fist in the air at her curt nod.

How on earth was she going to share a boat with him when she hadn’t had sex in ages and he’d always been her private fantasy go-to man?

They were friends.

They were business partners, for crying out loud!

‘I’ve booked us two tickets to Cairns on a flight that leaves Heathrow early this evening.’

‘Ooh, cocky, I like that,’ Diana murmured, sipping her coffee.

Stella ignored her, as did Rick who, Stella knew from experience, must be biting his tongue to let that one go.

‘Australia?’ she squeaked.

Rick shrugged. ‘The map’s Micronesia and I haven’t taken the Dolphin out since I bought her.’

Stella stood. ‘You bought the Dolphin?’

Rick had been fascinated with the thirty-foot classic wooden yacht for as long as she could remember. They’d seen it in various ports over the years and it had always been a dream of his to have it for himself.

‘When?’

He grinned. ‘A few months ago. I finally tracked her down in New Zealand and had her refitted in Cairns. She’s ready to go.’

Stella felt a little thrill that had nothing to do with Lucinda. Rick had talked about it so much over the years it had almost become her dream too. ‘So we’re going to take her?’ she clarified.

He nodded. ‘If you want to. I could always hire something bigger, whiter, more pretentious if you preferred.’

Stella smiled at the distaste curling his lips. The Mills and Granville salvage fleet was three big white, powerful boats strong and, while she knew Rick was proud of what her father and he had built up, his passion had always been the classic beauty of the Dolphin. ‘Perish the thought.’ She grinned.

Rick grinned back at her and felt a hum of excitement warm his belly. There was something different about Stel this morning. Last night she’d been the Stella he’d always known—slopping around, no airs and graces, no special treatment.

This morning she glowed as if she had a secret that no one else knew. Her olive-green eyes seemed to radiate purpose. Her cheeks seemed pinker. Even her scraped-back ponytail seemed to have more perk in it.

She looked like women did when they were pregnant, as if they were doing something truly amazing and they knew it.

She was radiant.

It was quite breathtaking and his stomach clenched inside in a way that, as a man, he was all too familiar with.

But not where she was concerned.

He looked at Diana, all sleepy and tousled with her knowing eyes and cute mouth, and waited for the twinge to come again.

He got nothing.

Hmm.

‘Right.’ He drained his coffee quickly. There were things to do and not being here for a while was a good option. ‘Gotta go get some things sorted. I’ll see you both later.’

Stella busied herself in the kitchen until Rick left the house five minutes later. ‘How are you going to break it to Joy?’ she asked Diana.

‘Oh, forget that,’ Diana said, waving the query away. ‘I’ll tell her you’ve gone off to be inspired. There are much more important things to discuss.’

Stella frowned. ‘There are?’

Diana nodded vigorously, her shirt pulling tight across her chest as she leaned over the kitchen bench. ‘You two should have sex,’ she said.

Stella almost dropped her second mug of coffee. Was she mad? ‘Ah no.’ She shook her head. ‘Bad. Idea.’

Diana raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, well, you’re going to have to explain that one to me.’

Stella didn’t even know where to start with how bad an idea it was. ‘Because we’re friends. And colleagues. I’m his silent partner, for crying out loud! And trust me, I know better than anyone not to get tangled up with a man of the sea. They never choose land. They never choose love.’

Diana rolled her eyes. ‘You’re just having sex with him, not marrying the man.’

‘Which is just as well because men of the sea should not marry. My father chose the sea over my mother. Rick’s mother left when he was a baby because his father wouldn’t settle on land. We’ve both seen how that kind of life isn’t compatible with long-term relationships.’

‘You’re. Just. Having. Sex,’ Diana reiterated.

‘Oh, come on, Diana, you know I’m not good at that. The last guy I was just having sex with I ended up engaged to.’

Diana nodded. ‘And the sex was lousy.’

‘Hey,’ Stella protested. ‘It wasn’t lousy, it was...nice. Sweet. It may not have been...imaginative but it could have been worse.’ Her friend didn’t look convinced. ‘He was a pretty straight guy, Diana. Not all men want to have sex hanging from the chandeliers. There’s nothing wrong with sweet.’

‘No, absolutely not,’ she agreed. ‘Except you did write a book full of hot, sweaty, dirty, pirate sex during your time with Dale.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m no psychologist but I think they call that transference.’

‘They,’ Stella said, bugging her eyes at her friend, ‘call it fiction.’

Diana held up her hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right. I’m just saying...you’re going to be on that boat with him for long periods of time where there’ll be nothing to do...it might be worth thinking about, is all...’

Stella shook her head at her incorrigible friend. ‘I’ll be writing.’

Diana laughed. ‘Good answer.’

* * *

At two Stella hugged Diana ferociously and thanked her for locking up after them. She was staying on for another night to get some work done far from the distractions of London. ‘I promise I’ll come back with a book,’ she whispered to her friend. ‘The ideas are already popping. Tell Joy she’s going to love Lucinda.’

Diana laughed. ‘Joy will be overjoyed.’

Stella grimaced. She hoped so. She’d added a decade to her very patient editor’s life and she owed Joy this. Not just a book, but a book to rival Vasco’s. She scurried to Rick’s hire car with her bag, hoping they made it out of Cornwall before another storm blew in.

Rick pulled up beside Diana and smiled at her. ‘See ya later, Miss Kitty. It was nice spending some time with you,’ he said.

Diana nodded distractedly, bobbing her head back and forth to see what Stella was up to.

Rick frowned. These two women were hard on his ego. ‘I know Stel values your friendship and—’

‘Yeh, yeh,’ Diana said, cutting him off and dragging him back inside the cottage. She pulled her dog-eared copy of Pleasure Hunt from her handbag on the hall stand and thrust it at him. ‘Take it. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.’

Rick frowned down at the cover he recognised from earlier. ‘Er, it’s really not my thing.’

‘Trust me. It’s your thing.’ She glanced over Rick’s shoulder, knowing that Stella would kill her if she even had an inkling of what Diana was doing. ‘It’s really quite...illuminating.’

‘Okay.’

He ran his fingers over the raised gold lettering that spelt out Stella’s name. He felt a surge of pride that Stel had made a path for herself in the world—something that rocked her boat. He knew that Nathan had been immensely proud of his little girl’s success.

‘Thanks,’ he said as he tucked it under his arm and backed out of the cottage.

‘Stop,’ Diana hissed. ‘What are you doing?’ She whisked it out from under his arm, spun him around, unzipped his backpack and shoved it deep inside.

‘She’s sensitive about it,’ Diana explained as Rick gave her a questioning look. ‘Do not read it around her. And if she springs you—I will deny all knowledge of how you came by it. Capiche?’

Rick chuckled as he held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sure. Okay.’

He took a couple of tentative paces out of the cottage, expecting to be yanked back inside again. It wasn’t until he was halfway to the car that he started to relax.

He smiled to himself. God, but he loved women.

* * *

Five hours later they were airborne and Rick was busily flirting with the air hostess. Stella wasn’t sure why she was so annoyed. After all, she’d seen Rick in action with women nearly all of her life.

Maybe it was just the relentless afternoon of it. The woman at the petrol station. The one at the rental desk. Another at the check-in lounge. Oh, and the coffee shop—and she’d have to have been in her sixties. It seemed there wasn’t a woman in existence who wasn’t fair game for his laid-back style of flirting.

Including her.

But she was used to his casual, flirty banter. She knew it was harmless and she could give as good as she got.

The women of the world were not.

‘Champagne?’ Rick asked her.

It was tempting but after last night her liver probably needed a break. ‘No, thanks,’ she said, smiling at the hostess, who she was pretty sure actually didn’t give a damn if Stella wanted a drink or not.

Rick watched the swagger of the stewardess’s hips in her tight pencil skirt as she left to grab his beer. Stella rolled her eyes at him and he grinned. ‘So,’ he said, snuggling down further into the comfortable leather seat. ‘You haven’t asked how the business is going.’

Stella pulled the blind down on her window. ‘Well, we’re in business class so I’m assuming it’s all going okay.’

Rick nodded. ‘It is.’

Stella sighed. ‘Rick, I told you at the wake that whatever decisions you wanted to make were fine by me. That I only wanted to be a silent partner. You’ve been half of the business since you were fifteen. It’s been your blood, sweat and tears that helped to build it to where it is today. Dad should have left his half to you, not me. It should be all yours.’

Rick looked askance, his blue eyes flashing. ‘Stel, what is a man worth if he cannot provide for his family?’ he said, his voice laced with reproach and sounding remarkably Spanish all of a sudden. ‘The business was Nathan’s legacy and he knew how much you loved it. Of course he wanted it to go to you. Of course he wanted to leave you with no financial worries.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have any idea how much money my book has made?’

Rick thought about the contraband copy of Pleasure Hunt secreted away in his backpack. ‘No. But the business has a multimillion-dollar turnover annually and whether you need it or not—half of it’s yours.’

‘I know...I’m just saying, I can look after myself.’

He nodded. ‘I know that. I’ve always known that.’

Stella’s breath caught in her throat at the sincerity in his tropical eyes. His shoulder-length hair fell forward to form a partial curtain around his face and, with his slight sideways position, she felt as if they were cut off from the rest of the aeroplane.

‘Your beer, sir.’

Stella glanced up at the stewardess and was surprised to feel Rick’s gaze linger on her face. She looked back at him quizzically and they just looked at each other for a long moment before he smiled at her, then turned to accept the offering.

He started to chat with the stewardess again and Stella turned away. She shut her eyes, not wanting to hear the banter that fell so easily from those wicked Vasco lips.

It was a long flight. She might as well try and get some sleep.

* * *

She woke a few hours later feeling miraculously refreshed. Rick was stretched out asleep in his chair, his face turned towards her, those killer sable lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks.

For a moment she just stared at him, at his utter beauty. He’d always been good-looking but age had turned all that brash youthful charisma into a deep and abiding sex appeal.

The urge to push his hair back off his forehead where it had fallen in haphazard array almost trumped the urge to trace his lips with her finger. They looked all soft and slack in slumber but she knew, without ever having experienced it, that they would be just the right amount of hard at precisely the right time—like Vasco’s.

She’d come perilously close to knowing it for real. Could still remember the way her pulse had roared, her eyes had fluttered closed as he’d leaned in to make good on her dare and fulfil all her teenage fantasies.

And, courtesy of a crush bigger than the United Kingdom, there’d been plenty of them.

Fantasies that had seen her tick each day down on a calendar as the holidays had approached, her foolish heart tripping every time she’d thought about those blue, blue eyes and all that bare, broad, bronzed skin courtesy of his Spanish mother.

All the time hoping that it would be this summer he’d see her as a woman instead of a girl. That he’d make good on the increasingly confusing signals he sent and act instead of tease.

And the eve of her sixteenth birthday all that breathless longing had come to fruition.

‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,’ he’d teased.

He’d been nearly nineteen and so much more experienced. She’d watched him flirt with girls since he’d been thirteen and been aware of his effect on them for much longer than he had.

She’d screwed up her courage. ‘Maybe you should do something about that?’ she’d murmured, her heart hammering.

She’d watched as his Adam’s apple had bobbed and his gaze had briefly fallen to her mouth. ‘Yeh, right,’ he’d dismissed.

She’d smiled at him and said the one thing she’d known would work. ‘I dare you.’

And it had worked. She’d seen something inside him give as his gaze had zeroed in on her mouth and his lips had moved closer.

Her father’s curt ‘Riccardo!’ had been the bucket of water they’d both needed.

A reminder that there was a line between them that should never be crossed no matter how close they’d danced to it.

And she was glad for it now.

Glad that this magnificent man liked her and enjoyed her company and called her his friend. That he could drop by out of the blue and use her shower and doss down for the night and there was no awkward history, no uncomfortable silences.

Despite what Diana thought, a person didn’t die of sexual frustration and she wouldn’t sacrifice their friendship and mutual respect for a brief slaking of bodily desires.

No matter how damn good she knew it would be.

He stirred and she froze, hoping like crazy that lazy blue gaze wasn’t about to blast her in tropical heat.

It didn’t. But it was enough to spur her into action. She was not going to sit here and ogle him as if she were still in the midst of her teenage crush, watching him surreptitiously from behind her dark sunglasses as he went about the business of running a boat.

Without a shirt.

Always without a shirt.

She pulled out her laptop and powered it up.

* * *

An hour later the cabin crew came through offering a meal and Rick woke. He stretched, then righted his chair, glancing over at Stella busily tapping away. She seemed engrossed and he smiled at her.

‘I thought you were blocked.’

Stella looked up from her notes. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ she admitted.

‘Hah!’ he crowed. ‘I told you all you needed was a treasure hunt.’

‘Yeh, well, all I’m doing is some preliminary planning, at the moment. It remains to be seen if I can actually write anything.’

Although she knew she could. In fact she itched to. Lucinda and Inigo’s story was becoming clearer and clearer.

‘So how does that work, then? Writer’s block?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I look at a blank page all day terrified that I’m not good enough, that I’m a one-book wonder, willing the words to come and when, on a good day, some actually do appear, they’re all crap and I delete them.’

Rick nodded thoughtfully. He couldn’t say that he understood exactly, but he could see the consternation creasing her brow and the look he’d seen in her eyes last night akin to panic. The same look he’d sometimes seen when she’d been a kid and Nathan had been late returning to the surface.

‘Maybe you need to give yourself permission to be crap?’ he suggested. ‘Just get it all down, warts and all. Switch your internal editor off?’

Stella raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Did Diana tell you to say that?’

Rick chuckled. ‘No.’

‘Well, it’s easier said than done, believe me.’ She sighed. ‘I think if I’d had a whole bunch of books rejected before Pleasure Hunt, then I’d have known stuff like that. But this crazy instant success didn’t give me any time to fail or any time to know who I am as a writer. I think I needed this time to figure that out.’

Rick nodded. ‘So...’ he said, looking over her shoulder, ‘are you going to tell me what it’s about?’

Stella shut the lid of her laptop. ‘Nope.’

The last time a guy had realised what she’d written it hadn’t ended well.

‘Excuse me, Ms Mills?’

Stella looked up at a stewardess who had brought her some water earlier. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind—I saw your name on the passenger list and I just finished reading Pleasure Hunt.’ She held it up. ‘Would you mind signing it for me?’

Stella blushed. ‘Certainly,’ she murmured as she held her hand out for the book and proffered pen. ‘Is there any message in particular you’d like me to write?’

‘Just to me, Andrea.’ The stewardess smiled.

Stella wrote a brief message to Andrea, then signed her name with a flourish before handing the book and pen back.

‘Thank you so much,’ Andrea said. ‘I shall cherish it.’

‘Thank you,’ Stella replied. ‘It’s always nice to meet people who like what you do.’

Andrea nodded. ‘I better go and serve dinner or my little band of travellers won’t be happy.’

Stella and Rick watched her walk away. He turned to her. ‘Wow. You’re seriously famous, aren’t you?’

Stella chuckled. ‘Does that threaten your masculinity?’ It had certainly threatened Dale’s.

‘Hell, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m a little turned on, actually.’

Stella shook her head. ‘If you’re thinking threesome, forget it.’

Rick laughed. ‘Well, I am now.’