Rachel Gibson - Lola Carlyle Reveals All

Nothing but blue sky and blue water filled her vision. She stared so long through the binoculars, Baby abandoned her. Perspiration rolled down her temples and neck, and she wiped at it with her hand. Lola hated to sweat, and she suspected that she smelled bad. Neither of these things improved her mood as she looked for a hint of land or the speck of a boat or ship. She saw nothing, and after a while she couldn’t tell where the sky stopped and ocean began.

A woman of action, she was unused to sitting around staring at the horizon, waiting for something to happen. Yet she had no other choice. She felt restless and fidgety, but with nothing else to do, she stayed up on the bridge with her binoculars and mirror.

She’d been missing less than twenty-four hours. She had to have patience and faith that she would be rescued. The problem was, she’d never had much patience, and she didn’t have faith in anything but her own abilities. Although there had been a few times in her life when a strong shoulder to lean on would have been nice. When it would have been wonderful to dump her problems in the lap of some capable man and let him take care of things. Lola had never found that man, and she doubted she’d let him take care of her anyway.

Lola didn’t know how long she stayed up on the bridge, but only after her head began to ache and her stomach grumble did she abandon her post.

She found Max on the aft deck, his behind in a folding chair, a fishing pole stuck in the chair’s arm, a Dos Equis beer in his hand. He looked like a man at ease, as if he had nothing more pressing than polishing off a few. His wet T-shirt and jeans hung over the back of the boat to dry, as well as a pair of boxer briefs, ribbed cotton, charcoal gray, with a kangaroo fly. She was afraid to see what he was or wasn’t wearing, afraid she’d see more than a fishing rod. She looked anyway.

A pair of navy nylon shorts with an elastic waist fit him snug just below his navel. He’d wrapped the bandage around his middle again, thin strips of white around his big chest. A tin of smoked salmon rested on his thigh, and he shoveled a chunk on a cracker, then popped it into his mouth. He dipped his fingers into the tin and flipped a small piece of fish to the dog sitting at his left foot.

Baby opened his jaws and swallowed without chewing. If Max thought the way to Baby’s heart was through his stomach, he was right, but only to a point. Baby was a slave to his appetite for forbidden treats, but he was an absolute prisoner to his Napoleon complex. He would not be swayed from his mission to conquer bigger dogs by a few bites of smoked salmon.

“I thought you hated my dog,” she said.

He raised the beer to his lips and took a long swallow. “I do,” he answered without looking at her. “Just trying to fatten him up in case I need to eat him later.”

She wasn’t certain he was kidding. “Come on, Baby.” She motioned for the dog to follow as she walked inside the boat, but Baby refused to obey, choosing instead to stay by the man feeding him.

Feeling a bit betrayed, Lola checked on her underwear in the bathroom, found them only slightly damp along the elastic, and slipped them on. In the galley she scrounged around for lunch, although since she didn’t have a watch, she supposed it could be time for dinner. In a sealed container in the refrigerator, she found a wheel of Brie. She grabbed it along with a bunch of grapes and a banana. Since Baby had opted to stay outside, Lola was forced to join him to make sure he didn’t eat too much greasy salmon and get sick.

She found a place to sit between Max’s wet pants and T-shirt, then opened the container of cheese. She needed something to cut the Brie, and as if Max had read her mind, he handed her the fish knife sheathed in its scabbard.

“You keep forgetting this,” he said as she took it from him.

Lola opened her mouth to thank him but didn’t. She wouldn’t need a knife at all if it wasn’t for him. She cut off a slice of cheese and ate it along with two grapes. Max shoved a box of crackers toward her, and she took a stack of Rye Crisps into her hand. “Please don’t feed Baby any more fish. He’ll get sick.”

Max didn’t respond, but he polished off the rest of the salmon himself. He didn’t offer her any, which Lola thought was rude, but she really didn’t expect polite behavior from him. She peeled her banana and glanced out at the ocean, looking anywhere but at him. She hated to admit it, but he still made her nervous with his battered face and hard muscles. She took a bite of her banana and spotted her toothbrush sticking up out of a holder in the stern. “Why is my toothbrush in a fishing pole holder?”

“I used it.”

She did look at him then, straight at his bruised face and light blue eyes. She swallowed the banana. “For what?”

“To brush my teeth.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“You stole my toothbrush?”

He shook his head. “Commandeered.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“I soaked it in rum first to kill your germs.”

“ My germs?” Her mouth fell open as she stared at him, at the slight swelling beneath his left eye, at his black and purple cheekbone, and the white Steri-Strips on his forehead. She was tired, hot, and sweaty, and a man she didn’t know had used her toothbrush. “That’s just sick… and… and,” she sputtered as she rose, knife in one hand, banana in the other. The container of cheese fell to the deck and Baby pounced on it. Lola didn’t care; she had another sort of pouncing in mind. “And disgusting!”

His gaze lowered from her face to the knife in her hand. “It’s not like I brushed my ass with it.”

“Just about!”

“What are you so mad about?” he asked. He rose also and gestured with the beer bottle. “I put it in the fish holder so the sun would sterilize it.”

She couldn’t believe he was actually serious. “You kidnap me, get me stranded in the middle of the Atlantic, use my toothbrush, and wonder why I’m mad? What’s wrong with you? Did you eat paint chips as a child?”

He didn’t answer her last question, but instead pointed out, “Give it a rest. You weren’t kidnapped, and you got us stranded.”

Lola was in no mood to even consider taking the blame for anything. “What are you going to do next, steal my underwear?”

His gaze slid down the front of her dress, over her breasts, and down her abdomen. He took a slow drink of his beer as he contemplated the red cherries printed on the material over her crotch. “I don’t know,” he drawled, “are they still hanging up in the bathroom or would I have to wrestle them off you?”

“They’re no longer hanging in the bathroom,” she informed him through tight lips.

He looked back up into her face and smiled, with his nice, white, recently brushed teeth. “Go ahead and keep them. Pink really isn’t my color.”

With the realization that he’d probably touched her underwear, she discovered in that moment what she’d wondered the night before. No, she couldn’t stick a knife into a man’s throat, because if she was capable of it, she’d have killed good old Max. Gladly.

“I don’t know what has you tight as a tick,” he said right before he polished off his beer. “It’s not like I have anything you can catch.”

“What? Am I supposed to take your word on that?” She took a step back and looked him up and down. “I don’t even know who or what you are.”

“I told you last night who and what I am.”

Moisture trickled down her neck, and she wiped it away with her shoulder. She had a headache, her eyes felt scratchy, and she wanted a bath. She was so darn miserable, she couldn’t stand herself. All she really wanted was to slip between clean sheets and sleep until this nightmare was over. “I know what you said, but you can’t prove it.”