Joanne Rock - Making a Splash

Jack’s pause was telling.

“Come back downstairs,” he insisted. “We need to talk.”

“Hmm. You forget that conversation for you consists of asking all the questions while I do all the answering. Sorry, but I’ll pass.” She had every intention of reaching Bar Harbor with a workable business plan in place before her appointment with the owner of the seaside bed-and-breakfast she’d had her eye on these last few months. With little capital to put down on the place, she wanted to have a thorough game plan mapped out for the bank. If she couldn’t nab a business loan, the inn might wind up in foreclosure.

She needed a fresh start someplace new now that Jack was back home on the Cape. She’d gotten over their breakup a long time ago. Truly, she had. But it had been easier when he was in the navy and she didn’t have to see him around town. Now that he’d started investing in` businesses around Chatham—a fact well circulated by the local rumor mill—he’d obviously be spending more time there. And while she’d like to think they could live in the same town, she wasn’t anxious to see him show up at the local clambake with some girl she’d gone to school with, or worse, some jet-set sophisticate from one of the European jaunts he’d likely go on once he was back on the Murphy Resorts payroll.

She was over him on the condition she didn’t have his future rubbed in her face. While she wouldn’t call herself a sore loser per se, she was competitive enough to prefer winning.

Darting the rest of the way up the stairs, she stepped onto the deck and headed for the helm. Night air blew over her, the temperatures out on the water decidedly cool even though the day had been gorgeous back home on the Cape. Sea breezes dotted her cheek with cool moisture, the taste of the salt spray on her lips reminding her of Jack’s skin. Ignoring the hum of residual pleasure that memory brought, she bent to check the chart plotter and the headings he’d set. Thankfully, Jack didn’t try to stop her. She didn’t think she could handle any more touching. Her body still sang with the seductive contact from earlier.

“We’re going to Bar Harbor,” Jack told her finally, since the high-tech gadgetry wasn’t giving up any obvious clues. He checked a few instruments and made an adjustment to some stray dial. “Keith and I traded boats tonight after we got into a BS argument about who had the better vessel. Dumb guy stuff.”

Alicia whirled around to face him. She wondered how he could stand the wind with no shirt on, but then, he’d practically been born on a boat. He looked like a gorgeous Poseidon with his granite wedge of shoulders and his dark brown hair blowing in the breeze. He’d pulled on a pair of trousers, which were unbuttoned at his waist, a hint of dark cotton boxers showing through the open V above the fly.

And whoa. How did her eyes end up on that southward journey? She yanked her gaze back to his tanned skin and the crinkle of tiny lines around his eyes that spoke of long days outdoors. They’d been there even when he was younger—he had a smile that lit up his whole expression, but it was one that she’d been privy to only for a single incredible year. The lines were deeper now, as if they’d been baked in by the sun from all those months on a destroyer in the Pacific.

“So if you told him you had a better boat than him, how exactly did you end up sailing his out of the marina while I was sleeping?” Keith had told her to make herself comfortable because he’d be late arriving. Had he set her up for this? Her stomach dropped at the thought that he would do something so underhanded when she’d believed they were friends.

“Hmm…” Jack scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I might have taunted him about not knowing how to sail. I mean, will you look at this thing?” He gestured to the top-notch equipment at the helm. The tiny hot tub built into the foredeck. “How does this floating house party bear any resemblance to boating as we know it?”

For a moment, the “we” sucked her in, included her in that exclusive little club of insiders that Jack respected. His list had always been short, his high standards tough for most mortals to meet. When she had been among the people Jack trusted, the feeling had been awfully damn good for a girl who’d grown up without the mother who’d left long ago, and with a father more committed to his job than his kids. Jack Murphy had once seemed like Prince Charming, there to save the day.

Not anymore.

“So you didn’t want to take his party cruiser, but you were so dead set on forcing him to sail a real man’s boat that you swapped vessels.” She was starting to form a picture now. She could almost hear the conversation at Ryan’s party. “And what do you think Keith’s motive was for taking you up on the trade when he knew damn well I would be on board?”

A gust of wind blew the bedspread open around her legs, the fabric lifting clear up to her hip. She battled it back down, stuffing the excess fabric between her knees to pin it in place.

She thought she spied a flash of male appreciation in Jack’s eyes before he recovered the glower that now seemed to be his trademark expression around her.

“I can’t imagine what he was thinking, but you can bet I’m going to find out.” He waved his phone again.

“If you even get a cell signal out here.” She sighed. “Look, why don’t we just tuck into land wherever we are and I’ll catch a bus to Bar Harbor. No harm, no foul.”

She moved back toward the hatch to return downstairs and dress. She didn’t need this kind of garbage in her life. Whatever Keith had in mind by throwing her together with Jack tonight, it wasn’t going to work. Any chance of making peace between them had ended when he’d signed up for the navy the second he’d finished telling her they were through.

It’d been the ultimate kiss-off. Not only had he dumped her, he’d hot-footed it to the other side of the globe and sold himself to Uncle Sam in the process, just to make damn sure she knew how serious he was about getting away from her.

Or at least, that’s how it had seemed. And he’d never disabused her of the notion, keeping his explanations to a bare minimum in a way that had hurt like hell.

“No.” Jack’s arms were around her, stopping her.

It didn’t make sense, because she could see how much of a hardship it was for him to be near her. To touch her. Most guys would have at least let her dream on in her aroused state when they’d been in bed together, but Mr. Noble and Upstanding had been too honorable to cop an extra ten-second feel, bolting out of bed as if she was a pariah.

So why did he have his arms around her now?

“Excuse me?” Her hair whipped about her face in a crosswind and she had to push it aside so she could see him.

“I will take you to Bar Harbor.” His hands warmed her right through the quilt fabric. The rest of her remained chilled, while two perfect imprints of his palms flared hot on her forearms. “I have to go there anyhow to drop off the boat for Keith’s colleague.”

“That doesn’t mean we ought to travel together.” How could she survive being penned up on a boat with her controlling, I-know-best ex-boyfriend? Not in this lifetime. “In fact, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

He turned her out of the wind, taking most of it on his back and shielding her from the light spray the gusts kicked up. He was protective like that. Always had been. Some would call that thoughtful. But there came a point where a woman didn’t want to be wound up in bubble wrap for safekeeping, and somehow Jack had never understood that about her. He’d told her she shouldn’t wait for him while he was in the navy, since it would be too much to expect of her.