“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 grabbed a large towel, a pair of thick socks, and a set of clean sweats from the shelf above her bed and returned to her, obviously disgusted at finding her still fully clothed. He muttered something indiscernible and unceremoniously stripped her sodden shirt over her head.

“Hey!” Before she could get anything else out, Ivan had stuffed her into the clean sweatshirt. He had his hands on the waistband of her pants when she instinctively gave him a knee to the groin and knocked him backward with a follow-up kick to the chest. He rolled over in pain and took several quick gasps of air before he was able to regulate his breathing. Stephanie groaned out loud and rushed to his side. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! It was a reflex.”

Ivan closed his eyes, trying to relax. The pain in his groin was subsiding to the point where it wasn’t nearly as bad as the cramp in his ego. He’d just been trashed by a 120-pound woman. When he’d heard she’d gotten dumped in the river, he’d almost gone blind with rage, all his protective instincts for her welling to the surface. And then this poor, defenseless creature had leveled him!

Stephanie dabbed at his damp forehead with the towel. “Are you okay? You aren’t permanently damaged, are you?”

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care!”

“Swell.” He realized he was pouting and burst out laughing. He wasn’t a man with a frail self-image. Now that the pain was reduced to a dull ache, he found more humor than humiliation in the incident. “When I was a kid and I skinned my knee, my mother always kissed it to make it better.”

Stephanie hit him over the head with the towel.

He slowly got to his feet and turned his back to her. “If I were you, I’d hurry up and change while I’m still recovering.”

She did as she was told in record time. “I’m all dressed,” she said, tugging at the socks.

He handed her a cup of hot coffee and waited patiently while she sipped. He took the cup from her and towel-dried her hair until it was just slightly damp and completely unruly. He was standing very close to her, feeling ridiculously tender. She instilled the strangest feelings in him, he thought, feelings that were way beyond what they should be. They were wrapped in a pleasant intimacy that he’d never before experienced with a woman. And that intimacy was fueling a passion that was frightening in its intensity. He was trying to cover it with a flirting, casual attitude, but he didn’t know how much longer he could get away with it. His body was going to betray him if he wasn’t very, very careful.

He added a few logs to the stove to keep the fire burning and was relieved to see the color flooding back into her cheeks. He shouldn’t have allowed her to swim, but he’d been mesmerized by the sight of her gliding through the black water.

Stephanie felt as if she were glowing from head to toe. She’d never experienced anything like her moonlight swim, and she’d never had a man care enough about her to dry her hair. It wasn’t just lust between them, she thought happily. He liked her. And she liked him. She reached for her mug of coffee and stared at the pies sitting on the countertop. She counted them twice. “There’s a pie missing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I could guarantee it. I gave these pies four of the best hours of my life. Man, this is the pits. A pienapper! How low can you go?”

“Maybe we should look on the positive side. At least they’re not afraid to try your cooking.”

She gave him a warning wrinkle of her nose. “You want to elaborate on that?”

Ivan grinned at her. “Not me. I try not to get drop-kicked more than once a day.”

Stephanie grimaced. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“Now I know how you kept your virginity for so long.”

“I was an undercover narcotics cop for eight years, and that’s the first time I’ve ever had to use self-defense to keep my pants on.” Ivan didn’t say anything, but Stephanie suspected he was thinking of more practical methods of removing her clothes. Their gazes held for a long moment, until Stephanie sighed in defeat, acknowledging that she’d only prolonged the inevitable. Sooner or later, he was going to get her naked-or more than likely, she was going to get herself naked. She decided to change the subject and make him a peace offering. “Could I interest you in some pie?”

Ten minutes later they were sitting at the heavy oak table enjoying warm blueberry pie, when someone knocked on the closed hatch cover. “Anybody home?” a female voice called. “Do I smell fresh coffee and hot blueberry pie?”

A second female passenger made her way down the ladder. “Blueberry pie! Yum!”

Mr. and Mrs. Pease joined them along with several other people. Stephanie put another pot of coffee on to drip and brought out more plates.

“You know who would love this?” Mrs. Pease said. “Lena Neilson and her cabin mate, Elsie. Do you think I should go get them?”

“Yes,” Stephanie said, “and you could see if Mr. Kramer and Mr. and Mrs. Dembrowski are awake.” She cut two more pies into wedges, set them on the table, and returned to the stove.

Ivan stood beside her, slouched against the wood cabinet. “You like this, don’t you?”

Stephanie laughed. “It’s hard work being a ship’s cook, but it’s fun.” She wiped her hands on her clean sweats, never thinking about the new blueberry stains she was acquiring. When she spoke she kept her voice low so the conversation didn’t carry past Ivan. “I was a narc for a long time, and my world was really very small. My work environment was frantic. The station house was noisy and chaotic, with a bunch of dedicated, underpaid, overworked cops living on candy bars and coffee. When I wasn’t at the station house, I was in a school that was even noisier and more chaotic. After a while you get to thinking all of it is normal. You wonder if the whole world lives on fast food and works eighteen-hour days.”

“What about your family and friends outside of work? What about those Sunday chicken dinners?”

Stephanie cut another pie while she talked. “I had personal reasons for becoming a cop, but once I started working, the personal reasons weren’t important anymore. It was the kids who were important. I liked them. They needed help. They needed someone to get the pushers far away from them. They needed education. They needed enough confidence in themselves not to succumb to peer pressure. It wasn’t as if I was God and could solve all those problems, but I made a small contribution. Anyway, it was very consuming. I visited my family, but I lived in the high school hallways. Then I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and realized I was getting too old to pass for a teenager.”

There was a lot more to it than that, but she didn’t feel like relating it. They’d moved her from one school to another, prolonging her career. In the end, she’d almost been killed because she hadn’t been smart enough to quit while she was ahead.

She shrugged away the memory of it. Almost killed didn’t count, she told herself. Everything had worked out okay, and here she was, cutting pie.

“I’ve missed a whole chunk of my life,” she said. “I spent my twenties masquerading as a teenager. I didn’t mind that so much, but I did mind the rat race existence I’d become used to. When I quit the police force and did some long-overdue introspection, I found myself feeling absolutely starved for things that were wholesome. Clean air, healthy food, good people. The one thing I’ve missed at Haben has been the people. I haven’t been able to open for business because of the repairs, and I’ve been lonely.”