Lindsay Armstrong: From Waif To His Wife

He poured two cups of tea and came to sit down. ‘No, but neither do I disbelieve you. You could say I’m reserving judgement, but if there is some bastard going around out there impersonating me, I intend to nail him.’

Maisie shivered involuntarily.

He noted it and pressed home his advantage. ‘But if there isn’t, this is the time to come clean, Maisie Wallis,’ he added quietly, but in a way that left her in no doubt he meant it.

‘That’s exactly how it happened.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘Why would I make up such a story?’

‘Do you really need me to answer that?’

‘Yes, I do!’ Her green eyes were indignant.

‘OK, then, women have been throwing themselves in my path for years,’ he said deliberately. ‘Don’t think I enjoy it or flatter myself that my money isn’t the draw, I don’t. And this could be an original way of doing it.

‘No,’ he added as Maisie drew a deep breath, ‘the time for furious displays of anger is past, straight-talking is what we need now, Maisie. For example, when you said the only Rafael Sanderson you could come up with was me, does that mean the name meant nothing to you when this man introduced himself as me?’

‘No-yes! I’d never heard of you.’

‘So why would anyone masquerade as me to a girl it meant nothing to?’

Maisie’s eyes widened. ‘I have no idea,’ she whispered.

‘But you assumed there was a bit of substance in his background all the same?’

‘I honestly didn’t give it much thought but I suppose so. He was well-spoken, he’d travelled, he was,’ she grimaced, ‘a lot more sophisticated than anyone else I’d ever dated.’

He smiled a lethal little smile. ‘Well, that’s the kind of thing I’ll be digging into, as well as your background and so on. Do you really want me to go on with it?’

For a moment, Maisie was in two minds as it struck her that this Rafael Sanderson had an aura his impersonator-and it had to be that-had lacked.

Yes, there were physical similarities, colouring, height and so on.

This Rafe had changed again, after rescuing her and kissing her, during which a fair bit of her drenched condition had transferred itself to him, into jeans and a grey, fine-wool round-necked sweater.

With his thick, ruffled dark-blond hair, those unusual eyes, his lean, strong lines beneath his jeans and sweater, and with his beautiful hands, she noticed suddenly, he was just as attractive.

Similar build-glorious physiques in other words, similar good looks, but-two very different characters, she reflected.

The first Rafe had been charming, he’d been easy-going, he’d really made her laugh at the same time as he’d made her feel desirable and able to view the world a little less darkly in his company.

Yet, despite allusions to a wealthy background, she would never have taken him for the CEO of a minerals corporation, whereas the man sitting opposite her struck her as exactly that.

He definitely had the aura of a clever, powerful businessman who knew what he wanted and got it. It was there in the way he spoke, in his gestures and the way he handled people. It had been there in the few images she’d brought up on her computer that had puzzled her and made her wonder if they were one and the same man.

In other words, beneath those good looks, and wonderfully honed, tall body, there was a lot more substance to this man, there was even a faintly dangerous edge to him that made you stop and think twice about tangling with him.

But she was telling the truth, she reminded herself, so what did she have to lose?

‘You may do your darnedest, Mr Sanderson,’ she told him quietly. ‘I have nothing to hide.’

‘I see.’ He said it quite neutrally, but his gaze was extremely penetrating and acute.

So penetrating, Maisie found herself thinking some bizarre thoughts.

How was he seeing her?

Simply as a troublesome thorn in his side? A girl who’d got herself into trouble and was therefore beyond the pale?

Or, had any of the deliciously feminine sensations he’d aroused in her got through to him? Something had prompted him to kiss her, after all, so he’d been the one to make the first move, but…

‘Good,’ he said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Well, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s make a move.’ He got up and picked up her plate.

‘Oh, I’ll do that-unless you need me up top?’

‘Thanks, but I can manage.’ He turned away and ascended the steps to the deck two at a time.

Maisie watched him go and she drew a sudden, startled little breath to discover that it was far from settled for her.

His athleticism stripped away his sweater and jeans in her mind and presented her with an image of him unclothed, and her imagination ran riot.

She pictured herself on the aft berth with him laughing down at her with tender, wicked amusement as if at an intimate joke only they could share.

Her thoughts roamed on and she realised that if that amusement changed to Rafe Sanderson looking at her with heavy-lidded desire, it would send her to the moon…

Even just the thought of it, and the images that accompanied it, raised her pulses to fever pitch and left her awash with sensation all through her body.

Maisie, Maisie, she thought in some desperation, don’t let this happen to you! Think of your fatherless baby if nothing else.

THEYdidn’t make it to Manly-they didn’t manage to leave Horseshoe Bay.

Maisie started to clear up her late lunch, waiting expectantly to hear the yacht’s motor fire, which it did, only to be cut off after a few minutes and without them moving.

She glanced expectantly at Rafe as he came downstairs, to see him looking annoyed.

‘Trouble?’ she hazarded.

‘Yep, the motor’s overheating.’ He started to roll up a section of carpet in the saloon and she realised he was going into the engine room through the floorboards. ‘I haven’t been out on her for ages, and that’s always a bad thing to do to boats.’

‘I know. A problem with the cooling system?’ she hazarded.

‘Most likely. You’re a mine of unexpected information, Maisie. How come you know so much about boats?’

She told him.

‘So that’s how you got onto the berth, I wondered.’ He heaved up a section of floorboard. ‘Could you put the engine-room light on from that switchboard?’ He pointed. ‘Could you also bring me the torch that’s in the locker under those stairs?’ He pointed again.

‘Aye, aye, skipper!’ She did it all, then sat down on the carpet to watch as he worked in the confined space.

After a time, she said as she heard a muffled oath, ‘You’ve found it?’

‘Yes. A broken fan belt. Listen, Maisie,’ he half rose out of the depths of the engine room, rubbing his hands on a piece of waste cotton, ‘this is going to take a bit of time to fix but I’ve got a spare. And we do have to fix it before we can move because what little wind there was has died right down, so there’s no chance of sailing.’

‘And fan belts can be the devil to fit,’ she said ruefully. ‘Just getting to them in that confined space can be a nightmare.’

‘You’re not wrong. So, we’ll either be late or we might not make it at all.’

‘Oh.’

He glanced at her. ‘On the other hand, you would be quite safe with me here overnight if that’s the way it pans out. If by any chance I can’t fit it, I can get help out of Manly tomorrow morning.’ He consulted his watch. ‘It’s probably too late to call anyone out now.’

Maisie looked at her own watch. It was close to five o’clock. ‘All right,’ she said cautiously, although it crossed her mind that no one in their right minds, no one who knew anything about boats anyway, would put themselves through a broken fan-belt situation for an ulterior motive.