Heather Graham (2 page)

Flynn laughed and returned to his task of securing the rigging. The mainsail flew and whipped in the breeze, then obediently pulled in and became tight, stretched full by the wind.

“So—you were fantasizing. I thought we came out to discuss business.”

“We did—but the afternoon is long. I brought along a book, too.” He shrugged. “Something about the sea just attracted me. Don’t you ever feel that, Juan?”

“With you—not usually. Usually, I am just worried about cruising through it.”

“Well, we’re in no hurry now.”

“No, but then I am more accustomed to our sea and to our sun. I am a Spaniard. We accept legend and mystery—you English are often too upright,
amigo
, for that which we easily accept.”

Flynn was not offended; he laughed. “I’m not English, Juan. I’m Scottish.”

Juan waved a hand, clearly stating that to a Spaniard, there was little difference. “All the same,” Juan muttered.

Tell that to the Scots, or the English, Flynn thought, but he said nothing. It would be a useless argument with the Spaniard.

“Now the Irish—they are a bit different,” Juan was saying. “They have life; fiery tempers—not so cold, eh? But that, I believe, is because of the Spaniards. So many of our ships wrecked upon their shores in the days of the Armada—they have Latin blood in their veins!”

“Watch it, Juan,” Flynn said with amusement. “You’re setting down stereotypes, and that can be dangerous. I know any number of even-tempered Irish.”

“That’s because of the English invasions,” Juan scoffed. “Temper, Flynn, temper is the spice of life.”

“Spice, eh?” Flynn queried. “And what happens when that ‘spice of life’ flies out of control?”

“It does not—in a gentleman.”

“Oh.” Flynn grinned. “I see. I get to be ‘cold’—but you, a Spaniard, get to be a ‘gentleman.’”

“Something like that,” Juan agreed with a wide, white smile cutting across his dark, mustachioed, and handsome face.

But then Juan sobered. “I worry about you sometimes,
amigo
.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you are perhaps too controlled—or too much the gentleman, whichever you would prefer. I watch you when you are angry, and you give little sign. It is frightening.”

Flynn threw up his hands in exasperation. “And what would you have me do? I can’t fly off the handle, Juan. I have to keep a level head. It’s imperative that I do in my position, and you know it.”

Juan shrugged, unruffled by the heat and tension in the question. Slowly, he smiled again.

“Business is one thing. Life is another.” He nodded slowly, as if savoring great wisdom. “Maybe today is good. It’s good that you stare out at the sea—and fantasize. And it’s good that your voice grows hard with irritation with me—I am your friend. As I said, ‘business’ is not living. Emotion is living!” He laughed suddenly. “Now Americans … I like Americans. They tend to be a bit loco, you know? They plunge in feet first and then they think. But they know how to live, yes. I like Americans.”

“Well, I’m glad you like Americans, but you’re stereotyping again,” Flynn advised.

“Maybe,” Juan said, shrugging with dismissal. He grinned. “What was this fantasy I interrupted? Were you expecting Neptune to rise from the sea, trident in hand?”

“Spaniards,” Flynn commented, “are crazy as hell.”

“You’re stereotyping.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No Neptune, then, eh?”

Flynn shook his head, a slight smile curving one corner of his lip ruefully. “No. I was just looking at the water and at the sun and thinking that it’s one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen. And that your coast is aptly named. And—” Flynn held up a hand when Juan would have interrupted him. “—I was thinking that it was easy to see why our ancestors could believe in serpents and sea gods and nymphs and the like.”

“Mermaids,” Juan said.

“Why not?” Flynn grinned. “Sounds like fun to me.” He turned around and started for the bow, calling over his shoulder, “I’m going up to the bow to tighten the jenny. We can have drinks and lunch then, and figure out our strategy for the next week or so.”

Juan nodded. Flynn continued onward to the bow, neatly stepping around the rigging. Juan—one of the best sailors he knew—began to roll the hemp line about the mainmast to his liking. Juan, he knew, was almost as incapable as he of sitting still. If there was something to be done, Juan was going to do it.

Maybe that was what made them such good friends, Flynn mused. They were close in age, but more than that, they were both … restless. They liked to move. They liked to come and go as they chose, and yet they also shared a sense of duty. He shook his head. “You are crazy,
amigo
,” Flynn muttered to himself. “I get as hot as the next man—I’m just aware that throwing things will never change a situation.”

And, he reminded himself, springing forward and grabbing the proper line, I just can’t afford to lose my cool when decisions have to be made.

“Hey, Flynn!”

Flynn paused, turning toward the bow, curious at the tone of Juan’s voice.

Juan continued then, his voice still carrying that strange tone.

“Do you really believe in mermaids?”

Flynn arched a curious brow at his friend. He dropped the length of the jenny line he had been holding and hurried from the bow to stand beside Juan, who was now frowning and narrowing his eyes against the sun’s glaze to stare out at the mildly rippling, azure water.

“Have I truly gone loco,
amigo
, or is that a woman—”

“It
is
a woman!” Flynn interrupted incredulously. “In trouble,” he muttered, hopping to the bow rail with swift grace and plunging into the sea with a smooth dive. He struck the water and immediately began to swim with strong strokes, his sun-browned and sinewed body cleanly and effortlessly propelled toward his destination … the girl.

At first glance, she might have been a sun worshipper, stretched out to catch the midmorning rays, her sleek form every bit as enticing as ever an advertisement for sun lotion. But after the first start of seeing such a beauty drift by as if cast up by mischievous Neptune, it became apparent that she was drifting on what could barely be called a plank, and that an arm drifted lazily in the water because the mysterious beauty was barely conscious … if she was conscious at all.

Flynn reached the plank and grasped it. She started, and her eyes opened, wide … frightened. They were green. Deep green, rich and verdant like a summer field. Caught by the sun’s reflection to glow and glitter with the sparkling sea, they were fringed by lashes incredibly thick … incredibly long. Enchanting.

Absurd things to notice when she needed rescuing, not an assessment of her attributes.

“It’s all right,” he assured her, quickly, huskily. “Just lie still. My boat isn’t fifty yards away. Relax, and I’ll get you there.”

She stared at him, and the wild-eyed fear slowly faded from her features. Beautiful features. Completely classic. Slender cheeks and high bones, a full red mouth, defined and lusciously shaped, high forehead, high, nicely arched brows. Nice nose. Small, and straight. No, not straight, tilted just slightly …

Flynn groaned inwardly with vast impatience with himself; he gave the water a strenuous push, and surged toward the
Bella Christa
.

Juan had lowered the ladder and stood ready to help him. He reached down to lift the girl from the water. “Ahh! She weighs nothing,
amigo
! So petite …”

As Flynn climbed up the ladder, Juan was already hurrying into the cabin, calling out for Donald, Flynn’s valet on land, his chef on board the
Bella Christa
.

Flynn followed Juan, heedless of the water that dripped from him to the plush carpeting of the main salon. Juan, just as heedless of the French Provincial sofa, laid the girl upon it. She whimpered slightly, and her eyelids fluttered. Then Donald, very correct in a white sailing uniform with a navy jacket, reached her side, an ammonia stick in his hand. He knelt beside her and broke the stick in his fingers beneath her nose. “Oh!” she protested, trying to escape the pungent odor. Her eyes opened fully. She glanced about herself with alarm; her eyes fell upon each of three men, and she pulled herself quickly to a sitting position.

“Where … am I?” she demanded with alarm.

Donald backed away. “I’ll get some brandy, sir,” he told Flynn. “And a robe for the lady.”

“You are quite all right, Señorita,” Juan supplied as Flynn took Donald’s place, kneeling beside her and staring at her anxiously.

“You’re aboard my yacht, the
Bella Christa
,” Flynn told her. “You are perfectly all right.”

“Oh … thank God!” she murmured. Her eyes closed, and she leaned against the couch once again. She was a mystery—a mystery that puzzled Flynn incredibly, but he couldn’t help remaining silent for a minute to study the girl. She was an American; her Yankee accent had given her away immediately. Yanks never could master the Queen’s English, he thought, but not without a certain amusement directed at himself, for neither his years at Oxford—nor the summer at the American naval academy—had done much to curb the brogue in his own speech.

An American woman … floating on a plank in the waters off Costa del Sol …

A socialite?

She was stunning. More so now, incongruous in the stylish bikini on the period furniture. She was tanned to a beautiful, glistening golden color; her hair, beginning now to dry, appeared to be a luxurious auburn, deep, yet flaming with color. A green-eyed redhead, yet no freckles sprinkled over her flesh. Her skin was entirely gold and smooth and as sleek as her long, shapely limbs. Her waist was wickedly slender, her breasts wickedly full as they mounded above the skintight, enhancing white of the bikini top.

Draped across the sofa, she was sinfully appealing. A woman couldn’t have tried to appear more appealing. Tried? She had been washed up aboard a plank. Apparently the victim of an accident—or an attack? And yet, with her assets, she was able to be both disheveled and … totally alluring. The urge to rescue and protect …

And also covet. Who was she?

Donald cleared his throat as he reappeared with a snifter of brandy. Flynn lifted the girl’s head; her eyes flew open once again. “Sip this,” he murmured. “It’s brandy.”

She took a sip of the brandy, coughed and sputtered, then pushed the snifter away. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her expression was lovely and vulnerable, lost and totally dazed.

“Do you know who you are?” he asked her.

Her eyes focused on him. “Of course! Oh, I am so sorry! Here I am … dripping all over your lovely sofa …”

Flynn waved away her distress. “Don’t worry about the bloody sofa. Who are you, miss? What happened to you?”

Her eyes met his, lifted to Juan’s, then returned to his. “My name is Brittany Martin—I’m an American, vacationing at Costa del Sol. I was terribly foolish—I mean, I’d been warned about this ‘El Drago’ who has been attacking pleasure craft—but I suppose I didn’t really believe the stories! Anyway, I just felt this terrible need to sail! Perhaps you understand—oh, surely, you must! I had to feel the wind and the sea spray—please, don’t laugh!”

Flynn wasn’t about to laugh. He was staring at her incredulously. “El Drago?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him! It’s my understanding that he’s been the scourge of these waters—the dismay of the police!”

Flynn stood and walked past the couch, stretching as he stared through the salon’s upper sheet windows. He felt Juan’s dark eyes upon him, and the girl’s.

He turned back to her.

“What happened?” he demanded tensely.

“Why, I … I …” She floundered for a moment; her lashes fell to shield her eyes. Then those dark, seductive fans fluttered and raised; her chin was high, but a sheen of moisture dazzled her eyes to an emerald brilliance. “I was in a ten-foot craft, a little catamaran rented from my hotel, La Casa Verde. I … I never saw the sloop come about—it rammed me. Then there were suddenly all these … men in the cabin, and I heard a man speak—”

“In English?”

“Ah, yes. With a Spanish accent.”

“And then?” Flynn prompted quietly.

She lowered her head. “He had already taken my bag … and he demanded to know if I had anything else. I … said … obviously not. He terrified me. I was afraid of being murdered or … murdered. He came toward me—”

“You saw him in the dark?”

“No, I heard him. And when he was near I … I kicked out as wildly as I could. I hit him—I heard him grunt with the pain. But I didn’t wait. I tore out of the cabin and back to the deck. And then I dove over the side and—well, that’s the last I remember until I opened my eyes and saw you!”

Juan began to make disgusted, tcking noises—he cursed softly in Spanish against the men who could do such a thing to such a lovely and vulnerable woman.

Flynn walked back to her and placed a hand upon her shoulder. It appeared very large and rough against the satin texture of her skin. His knuckles grazed lightly, reassuringly, over her cheek.

“You must have been very brave,” he said softly. “So small a woman, tackling a man reputed to be so fierce.”

She wasn’t looking at him; her lashes were lowered again. His hand remained near her cheek. He felt her shiver—or was it a shudder?

“I—I wasn’t particularly brave,” she murmured. “Just … ah, desperate.”

“I see.”

“You are very lucky, Señorita,” Juan said solemnly.

“Yes, lucky,” she murmured.

Flynn smiled, lifting her chin with his forefinger. “And I still insist—courageous and resourceful.”

“No …”

Those damn lashes! They shielded her eyes at will.

“You have nothing to worry about now,” he told her softly. “You’re quite safe on board the
Bella Christa
. We’ll head back in, and take you to the authorities.” Flynn saw Donald waiting with a soft terry robe. He raised his hand slightly and Donald stepped forward. Flynn took the robe and placed it gently around her shoulders. She gave him a smile of gratitude that was so warm and beautiful, it would have surely melted ice.

Yes, ice. And though he felt a bit like ice at that moment, he couldn’t resist the silken web of fascination that she spun with each word and movement.