AN: I've spent a week on a working schooner. I've been on cruise ships, in canoes, speedboats, rowboats, and kayaks, but I pretend to know nothing of the traditional sailboat. Apologies in advance to anyone I offend by my ignorance. This one's still a work in progress, so I'll update as I can, and while I realize posting before completion is risky for this gal, hey, one only lives once, right? (P.S. The rating may change. I haven't thought that far ahead, yet.)
Chapter 1
It wasn't for the money. That wasn't why she did it. Kate Beckett already had all the money she could ever possibly need. Thanks to a lucrative first business, one she'd built, nurtured, and then sold following the deaths of her parents in an accident two years earlier, she donated every penny she brought in now to a host of charities, and it was a respectable number of pennies.
The island that'd become her backyard was a veritable magnet for tourists. It teemed with them year-round, and despite having developed an appreciation for the stillness of her own company, Kate tolerated the clamor that accompanied them, because she knew if she didn't, if she didn't challenge herself to maintain even the most superficial of connections to the rest of the world, she might very well untie her lines and sail off, never look back.
She was as strong as they came, and not by way of adversities surmounted, though her thirty-plus years hadn't been free of their share. She'd always been stout of character, like it was part of her DNA, in her cells, and people couldn't help but see it, as if some coat she donned each day.
Men certainly saw it-a blessing often, a curse rarely. She'd taken a few to bed, told herself she'd earnestly tried to make a go of it with a couple of them, and maybe she had, but none of them were still around, and she had to suppose that was for the best. She lived on a boat, after all. How much room could she possibly make for someone else?
She never stayed in a place for very long, besides. A city girl for her entire early life, she now called the ocean her home, and she was more at peace there than she had been anywhere. The simplicity and the freedom gifted by that brand of nomadic existence turned her on, and absent a companion to inspire the same, the feeling was welcome, relished, steered into as she did her sails into the wind, but on that June afternoon, dockside at Sunset Reef Marina, she didn't yet know it, but life was about to become anything but simple.
xxxx
Rick's eyelids snapped open and then shut again when the god-awful sound slammed into his ears like a speeding train into a cement wall, the island's noon light pouring cruelly across the whole of his vacation bed through the blinds he'd neglected to flip closed the night before.
Disoriented by his position, which found his feet-still covered by the top-siders he'd worn to the bar-resting atop the pillows at the opposite end, he rolled onto his back and pushed out a Fuck, his head as heavy as a mountain with the weight of the hangover he'd strapped to it.
It was the second day of their impromptu trip, he and his buddies, Kevin and Javier, having made the jaunt down from New York for a sort of kick-off-the-summer long weekend, and together they'd closed down the resort's watering hole in the wee hours with the zeal of a trio of college spring-breakers, in Rick's case, minus the morning-after resilience.
He dropped his clad feet to the floor and slogged his way out of the bedroom to locate the source of the infernal racket and to bring it to a deserved end, found Kevin in the kitchen juicing the oranges that'd been stuffed inside their condo's gift basket. Somehow, though he too had guzzled vast quantities of tropically colored alcohol, his eyes were bright and his energy high, so much so that Rick couldn't help but want to hurl the remaining fruit at him.
"What the hell's wrong with you health freaks? You can't just pour it out of a container like the rest of humanity? How can you stand to listen to that?" He pushed past, made a beeline for the coffee pot, which he picked up to find too light to be holding anything at all. "There's no coffee? This must be a nightmare. I must still be asleep," he grumbled.
"There was plenty this morning," Kevin replied before another twist at the machine, one he fiendishly enjoyed more than any of the others. "You should've had some. It was delicious."
"You're an asshole, you know that?" Rick hissed, rummaging through the contents that remained in the basket. "Where's your partner? Last I remember he was sucking face with a brunette who was cooing at him in Spanish."
Kevin slid a glass of fresh juice in front of him, started on one for himself. "He's down at the pool, and I don't know why you're saying it like that. You seemed pretty envious last night, going on and on about how you wanted a brunette of your own." Rick pursed his brow. "You don't remember the new Rick Castle rule, the 'no more blondes or redheads' thing? You told everyone at the bar about it, especially the blondes and redheads." He snickered with the recollection.
Rick coughed out the crumbs of a cracker he'd found, swallowed the remnants down with the juice. "From the gleeful tone of your voice, I take it you didn't try to stop me? Gee, I'm so lucky to have friends like you guys. You're welcome for the free trip, by the way."
"What do you care? It's not like you're ever going to see any of those people again. Besides, you might be on to something. It's not like you've had much luck in the love department, and it's not like you're getting any younger, either."
"Got any vodka for the OJ? Unfortunately, this conversation has already managed to sober me up."
Kevin tossed a hollowed-out orange peel in Rick's face, caught a peek at his watch. "Hey, aren't you doing some sailing thing today, speaking of brunettes?"
"Sailing thing? What sailing thing?" Rick asked, mindlessly chomping on another cracker though the first had left plenty to be desired. "Maybe you are still drunk."
"Dude, for real? Maybe you should think about staying away from alcohol for the rest of the trip." When Rick took umbrage, Kevin had to recount for him yet another of the night's events. "You practically pissed yourself when you heard someone talking about dolphins and you realized you might be able to cross swimming with them off your bucket list. You interrogated the guy for, like, twenty minutes about it. Then you booked a sailing tour or something on your phone. Check your email. They probably sent you a ticket or whatever."
It sure sounded like something he'd do, but Rick recalled none of it, so he went back into the bedroom to verify, found his phone on the floor in the corner without a clue as to how it'd ended up there. A confirmation of his booking was sent, all right, logged in his email beneath one welcoming him to the Condiments of the Month Club, another thing he didn't remember signing up for and one absent ready explanation.
He was to be out at the Sunset Reef Marina at 1:45 p.m., apparently to sail off with JJB Charters on their Sun Odyssey, whatever the hell that was, and with much of the cloud of the boys' night out still hanging above him, he didn't feel as happy about it as he imagined he probably had when he'd decided to do it. That was until he called up the company's website and got a glimpse of its proprietor. One look at her and his heart began to pound louder than his head.
xxxx
Rick easily spotted the sign for JJB Charters when he arrived at the marina, followed the direction of its arrow nearly the full length of the floating dock until he came upon a second set up in front of the sailboat parked at slip seventeen. Despite being late for the scheduled meet time-thanks to a misplaced condo key, which took him an embarrassing number of minutes to find in the very pocket he'd left it in-he saw no one else around, so he went ahead and approached the vessel in search of his captain.
"Ahoy there!" he called out, and with genuine giddiness in his voice to boot, the four aspirin he'd popped before his cold shower permitting the extravagance. "Is anyone home? I'm here to report for deck-swabbing duty."
While busy delighting in his own drollery, a head popped up from below deck, and had his fingers not been clamped around the rim of the boat's hull, he undoubtedly would've fallen over at the sight. That was how stunning the woman was.
"Swabbing the deck, huh? So, you bought the deluxe package, I guess," she quipped, climbing the remaining steps of the companionway until she was in full view. "Are you Jack?"
In just three sentences, Rick already found himself wanting to agree to and with anything that ever came out of her mouth from that moment forward, and he probably would've had confusion not horned in.
"Rick, actually-If that's okay," he answered with an impressive idiocy he was promptly kicking himself for. "I signed up for the…" He took a notable pause. "Okay, I'm not exactly sure what I signed up for, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place." He watched as she pulled a band from her hair and let it tumble loose, gather it up again and secure it from the breeze, and he had to blink the blur of wonder from his eyes. "Even more beautiful than the picture." He sounded positively euphoric.
On his words, she gave the boat-her home-a thoughtful scan then spoke with palpable esteem. "She is. She's a fairy tale come to life."
"I didn't mean the boat." He heard himself say it and swallowed a gulp of air so hard, he almost choked. The words shouldn't have come out, and when she just stared back at him, he set about reversing course, which wasn't a pretty sight. "That's, well, no, of course the boat's perfectly nice-lovely, in fact. What's the lingo? Something about sexy lines or seaworthy or…" It was no use. He finally stopped flailing and raised a feeble distress call. "Mayday? SOS?"
With a hint of fluster she had to labor to conceal, she pulled her phone from her pocket. "So, um, yeah, you signed up for the 2 p.m. sail, and it definitely says your name's Jack in the form you filled out." Reading it with greater scrutiny the second time around, her brow arched. "Jack Ship." She looked up when Rick giggled. "That's cute, Jack. You must be a twelve-year-old comedian."
Gorgeous and playful, Rick thought, and with the appraisal felt his heart's trouble deepen exponentially. Somehow, he'd managed to make an ass of himself and she'd moved right past it. Surely he must be the one in a fairy tale.
"Just a for-thirty-something guy who ordered too many Bahama Mamas at the bar, I'm afraid," he offered in excuse, laying blame on the night's booze binge. "It's Rick, I promise, and I guess I'm going sailing."
She extended a hand to help him aboard, introduced herself in the process. "Try not to sound so excited about it, Rick." She punctuated his name and grinned. "I'm Kate. Watch your step." Noting his activity-appropriate shoes, she offered praise. "No flip-flops, I see. Good tourist. I take it this isn't your first time on a boat."
"Who, Me? God no, I went canoeing with my daughter once when she was nine." Hubris oozed from him, misplaced though it was given the unimpressive denouement that followed. "Although, I'm not really sure we actually got all that far. I think I tipped us over."
"Guess I'll have to make sure I hold on to something then. Thanks for the warning." Kate turned and pointed toward the bench on the port side. "Have a seat. There was supposed to be another couple, but they had to reschedule, so it's just us this afternoon. We can head on out. I hope you did a rain dance," she commented as he passed. "The forecast mentioned the possibility of a shower, and, apparently, with you on board, the potential for a rough ride is already pretty high." She teased, or so she thought.
Rick watched her every movement as she freed the boat's lines and took her place behind the wheel, and he suddenly felt as though he'd stepped into a pit of enchantment quicksand with no hope of escape. Attraction was a phenomenon he knew well. His extensive history with women was evidence of that. But he also knew that what was happening with her was beyond attraction, and somehow, between their 2:17 p.m. departure and their whatever o'clock return, he had to try to figure out what the hell he was going to do about it.