Janet Evanovich: Love Overboard aka Ivan Takes a Wife

Mrs. Pease put her hand to her heart. “We’re gonna die. The ship’s gonna burn to a cinder, and we’re gonna drown.”

Stephanie fanned the air with a hand towel. “This is how we lower the temperature in the woodstove,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. We do this all the time.”

Mr. Pease came over to take a closer look at the oven. “I didn’t realize being a ship’s cook was so complicated.”

Ace removed the tray of smoking cookies and set them on the counter. “Man, look at these mothers. They’ve been cremated. And the ham! Looks like a meteor I saw once in the Smithsonian.”

Stephanie squinted at the smoldering ham. “It is sort of black. Maybe it just needs basting,” she said hopefully. She poked at it with a long-handled fork. “Probably we should pick the ashes off it first.” She closed the oven door and checked the gauge. Five hundred degrees. She gave it a whack with the fork to make sure it was working. “Darn.” She turned to Ace. “Any other ideas?”

Ace put his dark glasses back on. “It looks better this way.”

The first mate looked in at them. “Stephanie here? Captain wants to see her.”

Stephanie handed the fork over to Ace. “Does he make people walk the plank?”

Ivan unconsciously gripped the wheel a little tighter when he saw Stephanie. She had a sweat stain running down the center of her tank top, her hair was plastered against her damp forehead, her face was flushed under a layer of soot and flour, and cookie dough clung to her shirt and shorts. She caught sight of a pelican fishing the shoreline and stopped in her tracks. A wondrous smile lit her face, leaving no doubt in Ivan’s mind that this was the first time she’d seen a pelican in flight.

She turned and waved at Ivan. “It’s a pelican!” she shouted.

Ivan took a quick breath as emotion knifed through him. It was unnatural, he thought- the way she could knock the wind out of him with a simple wave and smile. Maybe unnatural wasn’t precisely right, maybe supernatural was a better choice. What else would explain the instant attraction, the surge of joy at sharing a pelican sighting? Hell, he didn’t even like pelicans. They were big, dumb, ugly, brown birds. He shook his head. He was losing it. Stephanie Lowe was making him crazy. She had him blaming a rise in his testosterone level on a defenseless three-hundred-year-old ghost.

“Did you see it?” she asked wide-eyed as she approached the helm. “I never realized they were so big.”

He reached out with one hand and drew her beside him, feeling a rush of tenderness. “You really are something,” he said, plucking dried cookie batter from her hair. “I’m almost afraid to ask why you’re head-to-foot soot. Could it have something to do with the black smoke that came billowing out of the galley five minutes ago?”

“A minor setback in my cookie making,” Stephanie told him, trying to sound casual, almost swooning every time his fingertips touched her temple.

“How bad was the fire?”

“It was just some bags burning in the oven. I think we might even be able to eat the ham.”

He did a fast mental assessment of their course, searching his mind for a night harbor that had a restaurant. “Was that Mrs. Pease I heard saying she was going to be burned to a crisp and drown?”

“She got a little excited.” Stephanie put her hand on the wheel, feeling the polished wood slide under her fingertips.

“I guess I can relate to that,” Ivan said, watching to see if she caught his implication. “Stephanie Lowe,” he whispered, his voice a sexy growl, “you stir up the pirate blood in me.”

“Omigod.”

Ivan tipped his head back and laughed. It had been the perfect response. It said it all. He motioned for Stephanie to take the wheel and stood behind her. “Now, my fair pirate’s wench, time for thee to learn the ways of the ship.”

“Are you kidding me? You mean I really get to drive?”

“No, you don’t get to ‘drive.’ You get to steer. And while you steer, we can talk.”

“If I’m the one steering, why are you still hanging on to the wheel?”

Ivan pressed himself lightly into her back and murmured into her hair, brushing his lips against the shell of her ear. “Because it’s a sneaky way of getting you where I want you.”

Stephanie closed her eyes and swallowed as a combination of panic and desire rushed through her. He was good. She had to give him that. He’d made sure everything was right up front in a voice that sounded like rustling sheets. So what’s next? She wanted new experiences. How about a roll in the hay with a scoundrel? She cringed at the word scoundrel. Six months ago she would have said jerk. Now here she was thinking about ghosts and pirates and scoundrels. And romance.

She supposed those were the things her move to Maine was all about. She needed some fun and some whimsy in her life. She needed to make friends. And maybe she needed to have a real honest-to-goodness love affair. She was pretty sure a romance with Ivan Rasmussen wasn’t a good idea-but nature seemed to be taking its course in spite of her misgivings.

Ivan tugged at Stephanie’s hair. “Do you feel it, Steph?” he asked. “What do you suppose this is between us? Lust? Love? Magic?”

The huge sails rattled, and Ivan spun the wheel to change direction and catch the wind.

Stephanie licked her lips, tasting the salt spray that bathed her face when the boat bit into the sea. “It’s too soon for love, I hardly know you!”

“What about love at first sight?”

“Love at first sight is lust.”

“Okay,” he said. “What about lust at first sight? Are you in lust?”

“Definitely not!”

He grinned down at her. “Liar.”

He liked her bravado and her ability to go forward, and for the first time in two months he felt at ease with his decision to sell Haben. Somehow, he knew it had fallen into the right hands. Whether Aunt Tess thought so was another issue.

Stephanie turned to face him. “We haven’t touched on magic.”

“Magic is a definite possibility. Any ghost who would stoop to screwing up a toilet wouldn’t hesitate to mess with people’s lives.”

He looked dangerous when he smiled like that, Stephanie thought. He was teasing-on many levels. It was darned unnerving, and the beard served as the perfect foil for a smile that would have been a definite tip-off to Little Red Riding Hood. Worst of all, she couldn’t tell where the teasing ended, but she suspected he actually did believe in ghosts.

Stephanie sprawled on the polished fo’c’sle roof and stared at the black sky and bright stars. There aren’t stars like this over Jersey City, she thought. Jersey City had too many lights of its own to be bothered with stars. And if you did see stars, they weren’t close like Maine stars. Jersey City stars were remote, because nature was remote in Jersey City. Jersey City was loud and vital and had great pizza parlors, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a stand of virgin pine. Stephanie closed her eyes and admitted to herself that she definitely missed the pizza. You didn’t just wipe away your old life and start over without a few misgivings, and there had been times in the past two months when she thought she might have made too drastic a change in her lifestyle. Probably she should have moved to Connecticut for a couple of years, bought a few things fromL. L. Bean, then moved to Maine.

It was the house that had pushed her into it, she decided. When she was nine years old she’d spent the summer with Lucy in Camden and had carried the fascination with the big white house with her ever since. It was one of those bits of baggage that forever floated loose in the mind, surfacing during moments of boredom, triggering fits of fantasy and vague discontent.