SAUSALITO, LOCATED just across the Golden Gate Bridge, was a charming little Mediterranean-type village nestled along the shoreline, reminding Grace of the French Riviera. Rustic houses, quaint Victorians and soaring homes of redwood and glass crowded the hillsides, cascading down steep slopes to the sparkling blue bay. Grace was immediately charmed.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” she said as Lucas drove past the restaurants and shops lining Bridgeway Avenue. A sign at the marina declared the town to be a Nuclear Free Zone. In a bit of whimsy, another beside it announced it was also a Cholesterol Free Zone.
“It’s definitely more laid-back than the city.” He pulled the Porsche into the parking lot of the yacht club.
“Which is why it appeals to you,” she guessed.
He shrugged. “I suppose cities have their appeal. And San Francisco is definitely one of the most appealing. If you like the fast life.”
“Which you don’t?” A man who enjoyed life in the urban fast lane probably wouldn’t be heading off to watch whales in Alaska.
Although her tone was casual, Lucas had the feeling that her reason for asking was more serious. Which is why he decided to answer honestly. “I’d rather be sailing.”
Her smile was quick and warm and pleased. “Me, too.”
That hurdle behind him, Lucas took their bags out of the car and began walking down the dock. The breeze blowing off the bay carried the scent of the sea, of salt and seaweed and exotic, faraway places.
In the distance, across the water, San Francisco gleamed golden in the sunshine like a grand dame wearing her best jewels. Moorings creaked as the boats bobbed on the water. Gulls whirled overhead, searching out fish or a tourist who’d prove generous with his french fries.
It was a perfect day. Almost too nice for thoughts of murder. It occurred to Lucas that he’d spent his entire adult life thinking about death. How to avoid his own, how to dispatch an enemy and then, during those days in that rat-infested Caribbean prison, how to stay out of the clutches of the grim reaper one day at a time.
Even the past eighteen months had focused on keeping clients from getting murdered. Even more reason, Lucas considered, why, after this conference was over, the closest he wanted to come to death would be a James Patterson thriller.
The Rebel’s Reward was berthed at the end of the dock. As he approached, Lucas felt that now familiar surge of pleasure at the sight of her sleek white hull.
He’d come a long way since the twenty-four-foot sloop he’d picked up at a bargain-basement price from a former SEAL living in Hawaii, whose wife had decided that the growing family needed a minivan more than a sailboat. The boats may have gotten bigger and more expensive, but Lucas’s love of life on the water hadn’t changed.
“Oh!” Grace drew in an appreciative breath as Lucas stopped in front of the ketch. “She’s absolutely gorgeous!”
Her honest, open appreciation assured him that he’d chosen exactly the right woman to fall in love with. “I like her,” he said mildly, not fooling either of them with his false modesty.
As he helped her onto the gleaming teak deck, Grace tried to match this boat, which must have cost a fortune, with the laid-back bodyguard whale watcher, and failed.
“What did you do?” she asked, running a hand over the gleaming brass rail, “discover a lost treasure ship? Or win her in a high-stakes poker game?” Now that she could imagine.
“It was a game, all right. But the computer kind. Virtual reality, actually. I invented one.”
“You invented a computer game?” She was discovering facets she never would have imagined. But then again, she’d only met him yesterday. “Like kids play in an arcade?”
He shrugged. “It didn’t start out that way. I originally developed the program for the Pentagon.”
“I see.” She shook her head and stared at him. “No, actually, I don’t. In fact, I’m having difficulty understanding what a man who could develop computer software for the Pentagon would be doing playing bodyguard to a romance writer.”
“Not just any romance writer,” he reminded her. “I told you, the minute I saw you—”
“I know. You fell in love.” As flattering as it was, as often as she’d written about love at first sight, Grace still wasn’t sure she believed in such a thing.
He rubbed his jaw and gave her a slow, measuring look. “Well, to be perfectly honest, it was probably more lust at first sight. But by the time I was lying on top of you in the Golden Gate Ballroom, I was definitely smitten.”
She couldn’t help smiling at that. “So, why did you become a bodyguard in the first place?”
Another shrug. “Eighteen months ago I was out of work when I got a phone call from Samantha Slade. She was looking to expand her bodyguard agency and a friend had recommended me. Since I’d just gone off the wagon and was looking for a new direction in my life, I accepted her offer. Our deal allowed me to take only as many clients as I wanted, which left time to work on my program.”
“The Pentagon software.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you talk about it? What does it do?”
“It’s kind of complicated to explain, but I suppose you can say it’s an antiterrorist game. The government paid handsomely enough for it, but then, by one of those funny quirks of fate, it fell into the hands of an admiral whose daughter just happens to be the head of a gaming software company based in Menlo Park. She asked me to come up with a consumer version, and, as they say, the rest is history.” He glanced around the ketch with unmistakable pride.
“So now you’re rich.”
“Filthy. Is that a problem?”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “I’ve already been married to one man who only wanted my money....” Her voice drifted off as she realized what she’d been about to say. “Not that I thought you were anything like Robert.”
“I appreciate that greatly, darlin’.” His lips quirked as he tugged on a tawny strand of hair that had escaped today’s tidy knot.
“And I’m not in the market for marriage.”
“That’s all right,” he agreed easily. “You’ve had a lot on your mind the past couple days, so I won’t push. For now, at least. Then, after the conference wraps up, I’ll have all the way to Alaska to change your mind.”
“What makes you think I’ll even sail to Alaska with you?”
It was not an outright refusal. Lucas figured he was definitely making headway. “Because you can’t resist my Southern charm?” His fingers trailed down her cheek. “Because you tremble when I touch you?” Around her lips, which parted instinctively at the butterfly-light touch. “Because you want me as much as I want you?”
He lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers in a brief whisper of a kiss. “Because you can’t resist the idea of taking this sleek lady out onto the high seas and racing wherever the wind blows?”
Her lips softened beneath his; her bones felt as if they were melting in the summer sun. “Is this a multiple choice test?”
“In a way.” His lips plucked at hers. Teasing, tasting, tantalizing. He’d somehow managed to rid himself of the cases he’d been carrying beneath his arm and gathered her closer, so she could feel his warmth. “Pick an answer, Gracie.” His hands were kneading her waist. “Any answer.”
If she were to be totally honest, she’d have to choose them all. “I’ll think about it,” she whispered instead against his mouth.
He lifted his head and smiled down at her. “That’s my girl.” Then his head swooped down again, like a seabird crashing into the surf.
Desire rose, a soaring tide in a storm-tossed sea. Her mind fogged as she clung to him while the ketch bobbed gently on the water. The mooring ropes made a low moaning sound as they rubbed against the dock. Rigging creaked, the wheeling gulls continued to cry, but with her blood roaring like the crash of waves in her ears, Grace could hear none of those familiar, beloved sea sounds.
Her response was as it had been before—hot and fast. And gloriously sweet. Lucas had already grown accustomed to wanting her; he figured he’d still feel this grinding, delicious need when they were in their nineties. But because the need was threatening to swamp the desire, because he was tempted to drag her down onto the deck he’d spent days sanding and polishing, he managed, just barely, to once again back away from the edge.
He’d spent nearly his entire adult life on boats, but never had he felt as if the deck was tilting so dangerously beneath his feet. The only other time he’d felt like this was when he’d been deep-sea diving off the coast of New Zealand and had surfaced too fast from fathoms below. “One request.” He skimmed a not-very-steady finger down her nose. “Think fast.”
Emotions and words tangled in Grace’s throat, preventing speech. All she could do was nod.
To her relief, the sexual tension eased for the time being as Lucas gave her a tour of the sixty-foot ketch. She did not have to pretend to be impressed as she oohed and aahed over the three staterooms; two heads, one with a tub and shower, the other with a shower; a spacious salon with an entertainment center; and galley complete with refrigerator-freezer, propane stove with eye-level oven, and microwave. There was even a washer and dryer and, amazingly, a diesel fireplace in the main stateroom.
“It’s nice on cold, rainy nights,” Lucas explained when she expressed surprise.
“I can imagine.” Too well, she discovered, as she pictured herself lying in that wide king-size berth with Lucas, while the rain pelted the overhead deck and a warm fire blazed. “She truly is a marvelous boat, Lucas.”
She dragged her gaze from that all-too-enticing bed and looked around the room. The wide windows allowed the daylight in, avoiding any submarine feeling; sunshine made the hand-rubbed cherry interior gleam like glass.
“My father always wanted a ketch like this,” she said. “He used to talk about it a lot. We had a twenty-five-foot sloop we’d take out on the Chesapeake, and I’d fantasize about the day I became a bestselling author and would be able to buy him his dream boat.”
“You knew that young that you wanted to write?”
“I think I was born a writer. My mother thought I should study something safe, to have a job to fall back on, like teaching, or something in the medical or computer professions. But I was always afraid I’d get stuck in a rut. Or worse yet, become comfortable there.”
“I’ve always thought safe was a close cousin to boring,” Lucas agreed. Even the debacle in the Caribbean hadn’t changed his mind about that.
Because her scent, which had blossomed in the close quarters, was already beginning to drive him crazy, and the nearby bed was proving too tempting, Lucas decided the time had come to put some distance between them. He touched his knuckles to her cheek. “I’ll let you unpack.”
How did he do it? Grace wondered yet again. How was it possible that all he had to do was to touch her, or even look at her in that warm, bone-melting way, to cause her mind to go as clear as glass? Because she wanted to cover his hand with hers, because she wanted to grab hold of him and pull him down onto that inviting bed, she backed away ever so slightly.
“Thank you.”
“And then you can come out and work on the deck in the sun.”
“I’d like that.”
“And then I’ll fix us lunch.”
“You don’t have to go to that much trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. Besides, I stocked the larder for the trip, so I might as well use up some of the food.”
The trip to Alaska. The trip he would have already been on if she’d called that 1-800 number a mere hour later. Having become accustomed to charting her own course, and having been burned by the mistaken youthful idea of Robert as her soul mate, Grace no longer believed in destiny. Still, as she went to work, unpacking her suitcases for the second time in two days, she was forced to wonder.
Since he’d rattled her from the beginning, Grace was surprised at how relaxed she felt with Lucas. She was also grateful she’d planned to spend a few days in wine country after the conference and had packed some casual clothes that were perfect for wearing on the boat.
They were both out on the deck, each working away on their laptop computers, aware of the other, but not so much that they couldn’t concentrate on their individual work. Grace was working on her new book, the one coincidentally with a pirate hero.
A few feet away, trying to ignore how good she smelled and how darn cute and intense she looked in those oversize glasses, Lucas was on-line, skimming through Penbrook Press’s accounting system. There were times, and this was definitely one of them, that he was grateful for the covert computer skills the navy had taught him.
From what he could tell, the publishing company had gone into the red to pay high advances on a series of celebrity biographies, several written by participants in the type of crime stories that were usually consigned to the covers of tabloid newspapers. Since their previous publishing lists hadn’t included any such books, Lucas could only conclude that Geraldine Manning was the force behind the editorial change.
A few more keystrokes took him into the publisher’s mainframe mailboxes, where he located internal memos from Manning to the top management at the parent company, Dwyer’s Drier Diapers, confirming Lucas’s guess. Since Dwyer had gone public, they were no longer a family business, but were answerable to stockholders.
Which was why she’d been appointed publisher. After a stunning success selling the disposable diapers to the lucrative Asian markets, she’d recklessly promised the board of directors a twenty-five percent profit on their investment within the first eighteen months. Although Lucas wasn’t that familiar with the logistics of the publishing business, he suspected that she was going to have to pull some very clever rabbits out of her hat to live up to her pledge.
Which, of course, should have taken her off his list of suspects, since a check of the Rainbow Romances’ profit-and-loss statement revealed that Grace was the company’s most profitable author. Geraldine might be a pain in the ass, and she might be a gambler, but he couldn’t think of any reason a publisher would want to kill the goose who laid the golden books.
He was about to explore further when the system suddenly shut down, disconnecting his modem.
When three additional attempts wouldn’t even let him into the system, he gave up and went back into the cabin.
Because he’d promised Grace lunch, and because he always thought better on a full stomach, Lucas went to work peeling the shrimp he planned to grill.
“This is heaven.”
As she sat down at the table Lucas had set up on the deck, Grace tried to remember when she’d ever felt more relaxed and came up blank.
“If you think this is nice, wait until we get to Alaska.”
“I haven’t said I was going yet,” she reminded him as she put her napkin on her lap.
“You haven’t said you won’t, either.” He opened the green bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, poured a stemmed glass and set it in front of her, where the white wine shimmered like liquid gold in the afternoon sunshine. Lucas popped the cap on a bottle of non-alcoholic beer for himself.
“True.” She took a sip of the smooth wine. “But that’s just because it’s too lovely a day to argue.” She leaned back in the chair and watched as he took the shrimp kabobs off the barbecue. “If I’d known that catering was part of a bodyguard’s duties, I think I would have hired one years ago.”
He laughed at that as he slid the shrimp and grilled vegetables onto the plate atop rice pilaf. “I like good food, but I’m not much for getting dressed up and going out, so I finally figured out that if I didn’t want to keep settling for cold cuts and Chinese take-out, it might be a good idea to teach myself the way around a galley.”
The shrimp was gingered. And delicious. “For a self-taught man, you’ve definitely risen to the head of the class.”
“Thank you, darlin’.” His grin was quick and easy. When it made her want to throw herself at him, Grace resisted the impulse and took another bite of shrimp instead. “Come sail the seven seas with me, and I’ll cook you lunch every day, dinner every night, and serve you breakfast in bed every morning.”
“I don’t eat breakfast.”
“Ah, but you’ll need to. To keep your strength up.” When he waggled his brows in a rakish way, Grace couldn’t help but laugh.
Despite the threat on her life that had been the reason for them meeting in the first place, the mood remained light. Over a lunch of shrimp, rice, salad and crunchy sourdough rolls that could rival any five-star restaurant in the city, Grace found herself telling Lucas all about her family, while he shared stories about his own admiral father, who’d recently retired from the Pentagon to spend his days playing golf, and his mother, an antique dealer who’d recently had her first professional showing of watercolor paintings.
“I think that’s lovely, that she could start a new career at this stage of her life,” Grace said. “What does your father think of it?”
“He’s pleased as punch. Although I did hear they had a few tense days when he first retired and decided that he’d rearrange her studio to make it more efficient. But he dropped that idea when Mom threatened him with a divorce, then bought him a new set of Ping golf clubs and sent him out to get some daily exercise.”
Grace laughed again. “So, how do you think he’d feel if she became rich and famous?”
“Terrific. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Well, although he was obviously successful in his own work, some men might have trouble sharing the spotlight.”
“We Kincaid men have never needed spotlights shining on us to remind us who—and what—we are.” He reached across the table to toy with the ring on her finger. “And if this is a roundabout way of asking me if I’d have any problems with being married to the rich and famous Roberta Grace, you don’t have to worry your gorgeous head about that.”
“I shouldn’t think so. Since you’re obviously richer than I am.”
“I just might be.” He knew he was because he’d just read her royalty statement. But not richer by much. “But I’d feel the same if I were just an unemployed bodyguard. In fact,” he mused, rubbing his jaw with his free hand, “now that I think about it, the idea of bein’ your boy toy definitely has its appeal, sugar.”
He wasn’t the only one who found the idea appealing. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Grace murmured.
And keep it in mind she did during the rest of the afternoon, while her fictional hero kept taking on more and more of Lucas’s attributes. Thoughts of Lucas occupied her during her shower, and while dressing for the Penbrook Press cruise, which she’d just as soon skip, but didn’t dare. Especially now that she knew Robert was angling to have Geraldine decide the Roberta Grace name belonged to the publisher, who might then hand it over to him.
As Grace leaned close to the mirror to put on her lipstick, Lucas’s statement about being her boy toy flashed through her mind yet again. Although she knew he’d been joking, she also knew that Robert wouldn’t be above sleeping with Geraldine, if that’s what it took to clinch the deal. The only problem, she thought wickedly, was that in his case it would undoubtedly blow his chances of ever publishing with Penbrook again.
Wishing the boat had a full-length mirror, she backed up as far as possible, and decided that what she could see looked pretty darn good. The dress was far more romantic than she was accustomed to wearing, but when she’d first seen it in the window at Saks, she’d fallen in love with it. It had reminded her of the type of gown Cinderella might wear to the ball.
She left the stateroom and entered the salon, where Lucas was waiting. From the way his eyes darkened as they swept over her, she decided that perhaps she’d just garnered a personal best.
“Thank you.” His voice was husky, echoing the hunger in his eyes.
“For what?”
“For wearing that dress.” He allowed another longer look. Above the beaded, strapless top that showed off her spectacular cleavage, her shoulders were bare, inviting a man’s touch. His lips. The long skirt was a swirl of chiffon and white lace that hinted at the wraparound legs beneath. “If I hadn’t already fallen in love with you, this would definitely clinch it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re so shallow as to judge a woman by her looks.”
“Of course not.” He picked up a flute of champagne he’d just poured, crossed the room and handed it to her. “I’m a sucker for brains and wit and spunk, all of which you have in spades. But the fact that you look as tasty as the whipped cream on top of a hot fudge sundae is definitely the icing on the cake, to strain a metaphor.”
Although she considered herself reasonably attractive, Grace had never really thought of herself as a beautiful woman. Until yesterday, when she’d begun looking at herself through Lucas’s eyes. And while deep down inside she believed that he was prejudiced, Grace decided to enjoy the illusion.
“Speaking of looking good...” It was her turn to skim a glance over him. “You’re certainly very handsome tonight.”
That was the understatement of the century. As she took a sip of the champagne, Grace decided that taking Lucas to the dinner cruise would be like tossing him into a tank of man-eating barracudas. “Although I suppose it must come in handy in the bodyguard business, I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d have much use for a custom-tailored tux in Alaska.”
“That’s what I was thinking when I was about to put it in the bag with the stuff for the Salvation Army. Then, at the last minute, for some reason I decided to hang on to it for a while longer. Just goes to show you can’t duck your destiny.”
“I’ve never believed in destiny.”
“Neither have I. Until you.”
When she felt herself drowning in his dark eyes again, Grace wondered what would happen if they just let the cruise boat sail without them.
“Lucas...”
“I know. You want to take things slow.”
“No.” She ran her fingernail around the rim of the flute as she met his now frustrated gaze with a reasonably level one of her own. “What I want is for you to drag me into your stateroom, rip this outrageously expensive dress off my body and spend the rest of the night ravishing me. And letting me do the same to you.”
“Now there’s a plan.”
“But I’m not an impulsive woman. I make lists of things I’m going to do every day. Then I color code the lists. My outlines for my books have been known to run nearly a hundred pages. I never buy anything without first checking with Consumer Reports and—”
“And you never sleep with a man you’ve just met.”
“Exactly.” She was relieved he understood.
“Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“How long did you know the Rat before you slept with him?”
“Six months.”
“And how long after that did you get married?”
“Eighteen months.”
“So, we’re talking about a total of two years, right?”
Grace saw where he was going and tried to head him off. “That’s right, but—”
“There’s no buts about it, Gracie. You spent two years with the Rat and you were trying so darn hard to make it work, you refused to accept what was right in front of your eyes. That the guy will never be anything but a self-indulgent loser.
“Do you have any idea how much I wish I’d known you for these past two years? Hell, I wish we’d been teenage sweethearts, because I would have loved spending hot, lazy summer nights necking with you at the Raintree Drive-in Theater and slow dancing beneath the crepe paper streamers at the senior prom.”
“That sounds nice,” she admitted. Grace hadn’t been asked to her senior prom. Nor had she ever necked at a drive-in, although Steven Blake had once French kissed her in the back row of the theater during Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.
“Yeah. Real nice. Better than nice, it sounds terrific.... But the thing is, Gracie, just because we missed out on all that is even more reason not to waste time now.”
He skimmed a hand along her bare shoulder, pleased by her slight shiver. “Sometimes all the stars and planets are in the right place, the gods are generous and two people meet and click right off the bat. Like us.” He smiled down at her, with his mouth and his eyes. “And everyone knows that the gods do not take kindly to people who reject their gifts.”
“With a line like that, I’m surprised you’ve never considered writing a book.”
“Oh, I have.”
“Oh?”
She told herself she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, everyone she knew—from her hairdresser, to her grocer, to the boy who delivered the pizza during her all-night writing marathons, to the limo driver who’d picked her up at the airport yesterday—all planned to someday write the Great American Novel.
And although she knew Lucas would never use her like Robert had, she would have preferred to discover he was the one individual in the world who wasn’t interested in becoming a rich and famous author.
“Yeah.” He watched the range of emotions move across her expressive face and decided that although Tina Parker might not be his favorite type of female, the agent was a good match for Grace. Because left on her own, the way her gorgeous face revealed her every thought, the romance writer would undoubtedly prove a lousy negotiator.
“I’m figuring it’ll be a small print run. One copy, just for us. And I’m going to title it Fifty Ways to Love Gracie.”
Because she looked like an angel and smelled like heaven, but most of all because it had been too long since he’d kissed her, he lowered his mouth to a breath away from hers. Then waited.
They stood there, his thighs pressing against the lacy white skirt, his palms smoothing her shoulders, his thumbs brushing the crest of her breasts. Lucas looking down at her, Grace looking back up at him....
She moved first, lifting a hand to his neck, her lips to his. Her mouth was hot and hungry as she kissed him in a way that was part promise, part challenge. When her teeth nipped at his bottom lip, lust razored through him. His head swam, his legs felt as if they’d gone numb from the knees down, both physical effects undoubtedly caused by all the blood rushing to more vital places.
“Only fifty ways?” she asked with a shaky laugh as the hard, impatient kiss ended.
“That’s just for starters. I plan a sequel.” He took hold of her waist and went back for seconds, but she was quicker, moving out of his grasp and out of range.
“I’ll take your proposal under editorial consideration.” Her voice was part honey, part smoke and all siren. “After the cruise.”
It wasn’t his first choice, which was to skip the cruise and spend the night driving each other crazy. But, Lucas reminded himself, some people considered anticipation to be part of the enjoyment. Of course, some people had never kissed Grace Fairfield.
“After the cruise,” he agreed. Because all that pale flesh was too tempting, he picked up the stole she’d dropped onto the floor and wrapped it around her fragrant shoulders.
As they left the boat and walked along the dock to the parking lot where he’d left the Porsche, Lucas was whistling. Grace smiled when she recognized the tune as “Amazing Grace.”