Amy Andrews - The Devil and the Deep

Vasco Ramirez had demanded to be written. He’d strutted straight out of her head onto the page in all his swashbuckling glory. He had been a joy, his story a gift that had flowed effortlessly.

And now?

Now they wanted another pirate and she had nothing.

Diana held up a hand, waving the question away. ‘You don’t,’ she said emphatically.

‘But what if I do?’

Stella had never known the sting of rejection and the mere thought was paralysing. What if Joy, her editor, hated what she wrote? What if she laughed?

She’d had a dream ride—from a six-figure auction with a multi-book contract to New York Times best-seller to a movie deal.

What if it had all been a fluke?

Diana stabbed her finger at the air in her general direction. ‘You. Don’t.’

Stella felt a surge of guilt mix with the shiraz in her veins, giving it an extra charge. Diana had championed her crazy foray into writing from the beginning, encouraging her to take a break from being an English teacher and write the damn book.

She’d been the first to read it. The first to know its potential, insisting that she take it to show her boss, who was looking for exactly what Stella had written—a meaty historical romance. As an editorial assistant in a London publishing house Diana had been adamant it was a blockbuster and Stella had been flabbergasted when Diana’s prediction of a quick offer had come to pass.

She smiled at her friend, hoping it didn’t come across as desperate on the outside as it felt on the inside. ‘Will you get sacked if you return to London empty-handed?’

Almost a year past Stella’s deadline, Joy had pulled out the big guns to get her recalcitrant star to deliver. She knew how close Diana and Stella were so she’d sent Diana to do whatever it took to get book number two.

Diana shook her head. ‘No. We’re not going to talk about this tonight. Tonight, we get messy drunk, tomorrow we talk about the book. Deal?’

Stella felt the knot in her shoulder muscles release like an elastic band and she smiled. ‘Deal.’

* * *

Two hours later, a storm had drawn night in a little earlier than usual. Wind howled around the house, lashing at the shutters, not that the two women cosied up by the fire were aware. They were on their second bottle of wine and almost at the bottom of a large packet of crisps and were laughing hysterically about their uni days.

A sharp rap at the door caused them both to startle then burst out laughing at their comic-book reactions.

‘Bloody hell.’ Diana clutched her chest. ‘I think I just had a heart attack.’

Stella laughed as she rose a little unsteadily. ‘Impossible, red wine’s supposed to be good for the heart.’

‘Not in these quantities it’s not,’ Diana said and Stella cracked up again as she headed towards the door.

‘Wait, where are you going?’ Diana muttered as she also clambered to her feet.

Stella frowned. ‘To open the door.’

‘But what if it’s a two-headed moor monster?’ Even through her wine goggles Diana could see the rain lashing the window pane behind Stella’s desk. ‘It is the very definition of a dark and stormy night out there, babe.’

Stella hiccupped. ‘Well, I don’t think they knock but I’ll politely tell it to shoo and point out that Bodmin is a little north of here.’

Diana cracked up and Stella was still chuckling as she opened the door.

To Vasco Ramirez. In the flesh.

Light from inside the cottage bathed the bronzed angles of his jaw and cheekbones, fell softly against his mouth and illuminated his blue eyes to tourist-brochure perfection. His shoulder-length hair, a relic from his tearaway teens, hung in damp strips around his face and water droplets clung to those incredible sable lashes.

He looked every inch the pirate.

‘Rick?’ Her breath stuttered to a halt as it always did when he was too close, sucking up all her oxygen. The recalcitrant memory of an almost-kiss over a decade ago flitted like a butterfly through her grey matter.

Rick smiled down at a frowning Stella. ‘Now what sort of greeting is that?’ he teased as he moved in for his standard double cheek kiss.

Coconut embraced him. Nathan had bought Stella coconut body products every year for her birthday and she’d faithfully worn them. Still was, apparently.

Stella shut her eyes and waited for the choirs of angels in her head to start singing hallelujah as the aroma of salt and sea enveloped her. He was, after all, so perfect he had to be heaven-sent.

She blinked as he pulled away. ‘Is everything okay?’ she asked.

Her heart beat a little faster in her chest. Which had nothing to do with the erotic scrape of his perpetual three-day growth or the brief brush of his lips, and everything to do with his last visit.

Rick didn’t just drop by.

Last time he’d arrived unannounced on her doorstep looking bleaker than the North Sea in winter, the news had not been good.

‘Is Mum—?’

Rick pressed his fingers against her mouth, hushing her. ‘Linda’s fine, Stel. Everything’s fine.’

She almost sagged against him in relief. Certainly her mouth did. He smiled at her as he withdrew his hand and she smiled back, and with the wind whipping around them and flurries of raindrops speckling their skin it was as if they were kids again, standing on the bow of the Persephone as a storm chased them back into harbour.

‘So...not a monster from the moors, then?’ Diana asked, interrupting their shared reverie.

Rick looked over Stella’s shoulder straight into the eyes of a vaguely familiar, striking brunette. She looked at him with frank admiration and he grinned.

God, but he loved women.

Particularly women like this. The kind that liked to laugh and have a good time, enjoyed a flirt and some no-strings company.

‘Honey, I can be whatever you want me to be,’ he said, pushing off the door jamb, brushing past Stella and extending his hand. ‘Hi. Rick. I think we’ve already met?’

Diana smiled as she shook his hand. ‘Yes. When you were here for the funeral. Diana,’ she supplied.

‘Ah, yes, that’s right,’ Rick said, stalling a little. He’d been so caught up in his shock and disbelief and being strong for Stella and Linda that he’d not really taken anything in. ‘You work for Stel’s publishers?’

Diana grinned, her eyes twinkling, not remotely insulted that Rick had struggled to remember her. ‘Took you a while.’

Stella watched her bestie and her...whatever the hell Rick was—old family friend? deceased father’s business partner? substitute brother?—flirt effortlessly. Now why couldn’t she be more like that? The only time she’d been comfortable, truly comfortable, with a man had been with a fictional pirate.

Even her relationship with Dale had been lukewarm by comparison.

A blast of rain spattered against her neck, bringing her out of her state of bewilderment, and she realised she still had the door wide open. She shook her head at her absent-mindedness.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ she asked, shutting the weather out and joining the chatty twosome in the centre of the room.

Rick looked down at Stella’s cute little button nose. ‘Well—’ he winked at her before returning his attention to Diana and running his finger around the rim of her glass ‘—I heard a whisper there was a party going on.’

Diana laughed. She looked at Stella. ‘You never told me he had ESP.’ Then she scurried to the kitchen to get another glass.

Rick watched her for a moment before returning his gaze to Stella. She stared up at him and the familiar feeling of wanting to wrap her up swelled in his chest. ‘How are you doing, Stel?’ he murmured.

Rick had felt the loss of Nathan Mills probably even more profoundly than his own father. Nathan had been his guardian and mentor since Anthony Granville had got himself killed in a bar fight when Rick had been seven. The man had been the closest thing to a father he had, had curbed all his hot-headed brashness and he felt his loss in a hundred different ways every day.