Night Music (16 page)

“No, don’t” she said. “You’ve lost enough business as it is. Even if you can afford it financially, you can’t afford it in terms of reliability. I’ll come down Saturday afternoon … and stay. If you like.”

“I more than like,” he murmured, grateful to have gotten his secret wish. “I miss you.”

He’d never meant those words more. He did miss her. At first he he’d resisted the conspiracy to get them together, and now that he was no longer resistant, everything seemed to be conspiring to keep them apart.

“I miss you too,” she said, her voice low and incredibly sexy.

The quiet ones were a surprise, he thought happily. Why had he passed them by before? What had he been missing? Maybe not much, he conceded. Maybe it was just Hilary.

“You promise you’ll come,” he said, suddenly worried that the quiet ones might change their minds.

“Yes. I promise.”

“Good.” Still, he knew he wouldn’t feel completely at ease until she was on his boat and in his arms. “I’m really sorry about this, Hilary. I’d like to strangle Billy, but he’s in Michigan. We’ll work this out. I promise.”

“It’s just a busy time for both of us.”

“And the first time we’ve had to deal with this, I suppose.” He was grateful she was being so understanding. “You’ll drive down carefully. It’s a long ride and tiring. You’ll be by yourself—”

“You keep being this solicitous and you’ll make me think I’ve got the wrong number.” The amusement in her voice took any sting out of her words.

He laughed ruefully. “Okay, so you know my secret. I’m a mother hen at heart.”

“And I’m the Frugal Gourmet.”

“I hope not,” he said, thinking of the thin, bearded man with the piping voice he’d watched at bleary-eyed times during long winter layovers. “He isn’t as sexy as you are.”

“Devlin, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. We’ll plan our getaway so that the grandparents can follow us in hot pursuit. Can you pick up brochures and stuff from a travel agent?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Just as he hadn’t wanted to leave the previous day, he didn’t want to break the connection with her. Unfortunately work reared its ugly head. He was beginning to hate work, he decided, as he hung up the phone.

But they would figure something out, he vowed. And that was a promise.

Hilary almost didn’t make it.

From her perch on the hood of her car she watched the
Madeline Jo
approach the dock. Vast relief washed through her, along with instant anxiety. The long drive had caused a decrease in her courage and an increase in doubts, and she’d nearly turned back twice. When she’d arrived at Wildwood and seen that the boat was still out, she’d been ready to run once more. Now the nervousness and doubts were back. What if he didn’t want her, after all?

She wouldn’t know until she went down there and found out, she told herself. But maybe she didn’t want to know. She took a deep breath and put the thought from her mind. She slid off the car and got her things from the trunk. The small overnight bag and the picnic basket felt like lead weights dragging on her arms, while her feet seemed barely able to manage a slow trudge. She would probably look like Magilla Gorilla by the time she reached the boat, she thought. She should have checked her hair. And her lipstick. And her summer dress for wrinkles. What if she got seasick again? It didn’t matter that the boat would be tied up at the dock. The potential was there. Please, she prayed, not that humiliation.

When she finally reached the slip where the
Madeline Jo
was berthed, Dev’s charter group was climbing down the gangplank rungs. The closed ranks of machismo permeated the air surrounding the five men. She wished she’d waited until they’d left before she’d come down to the dock.

“Hey, Dev!” one of them called. “You’ve got a visitor.”

The men hooted. “Yeah, a visitor,” another said. “You better not go trolling with a weakie, buddy!”

This was not going well, Hilary thought with a silent moan of embarrassment.

“That’s enough,” Devlin said, his tone good-natured and his voice brooking no further comment. The men shuffled sheepishly, then nodded in apology as they walked past her.

Devlin grinned at Hilary. “Don’t mind the slobs. They just want to bask in a last moment of being macho men before going home to become henpecked husbands.”

She smiled. He looked happy to see her. Very happy. Relief shot through her. She could forgive the men their crude remarks this once.

Devlin stepped onto the dock and pulled her to him, his lips instantly on hers in a long kiss. Hilary’s doubts dissolved as the warm fire inside her promised to burst into a white-hot heat. When he finally lifted his head, he said, “Damn, but you feel good.”

“So do you.” It didn’t matter that her arms were hanging at her sides because of the packages she carried. All that mattered was that she was where she wanted to be.

“Come aboard.” He took the heavy picnic basket from her and held it up. “Leftovers? Again? I can’t wait.”

She laughed. “Actually it’s duck salad from the
Magnolia Café, foie gras from Assouline and Ting, rolls from the Lanci Bakery, carrot cake from the Carrot Cake Man, ribs from the Rib Crib, and soft pretzels from Fishers in the Reading Terminal.”

“What? No veggies?”

“They’re in the carrot cake.”

Devlin sighed. “My kind of unsuitable woman.”

I hope so
, she thought, as he helped her onto the boat. She was staking her emotional sanity on it. She shook off the idea that she was staking too much on something that had too many odds against it, although she mentally winced at the word
unsuitable
. It was only a word, she told herself, and it meant nothing.

The deck was a mess from the aftermath of fishing and gutting. “I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet,” Devlin said. “I hope you can bear with it for a few more minutes.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen the inside of a fish before.”

“We’ll get your stuff stowed, then I’ll come out and clean it up.”

Once inside the cabin, the wanting and need immediately broke to the surface. They were in each other’s arms, their mouths coming together in a hungry kiss, while the gangway door was still swinging closed. His hands were all over her, almost desperate, as if attempting to assure himself she was real and there with him. Hilary forgot everything, as the suppressed longing surged through her like a raging river through opened floodgates.

“I thought you were going to clean up,” she whispered, then gasped in pleasure as his hands cupped her breasts.

“Eventually,” he murmured.

The afternoon was spent in love.

Later, much later, as they lay on his narrow bed, Dev stretched lazily and said, “I like your version of ‘A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou.’ But all you really needed to bring was thou.”

She snuggled closer, her body naked and warm and languid next to his. He sighed in pleasure.

“If you don’t get the bread and jugs away in the fridge, it might just be ‘thou,’ she said, not moving.

“Thou is fine. And there’s a take-out place on the pier. We’re set for life.”

At one time those words would have been scary, he thought, but now they had a nice ring to them.

“I suppose we ought to get up,” she said.

He tightened his hold on her. “Nope.”

“If we put those things away, then there won’t be a single interruption afterward.…”

“And then we can be unsuitable again?”

“Absolutely.”

He let her go. She got up and threw on his shirt. Dev didn’t know whether to be disappointed or amused by her automatic need to cover herself. He admitted he would have been shocked if she hadn’t. And Hilary was shocking enough when she wanted to be. Still, he was intensely pleased that she had picked his shirt to wear.

“Well?” she said. “Aren’t you getting up? You’ve still got a deck to clean too.”

“You’ve got my clothes,” he pointed out. “If you take off my shirt—”

“Never mind,” she said primly, and walked out of the room.

He sighed, then called out, “Did you get some brochures?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good. Bring them in when you come back.”

“Your manners are atrocious, Devlin Kitteridge.”

He chuckled. “Think of me as virgin territory you can mold.”

She walked back around the corner of the door and leaned against the wall. “Speaking of molding, I saw this movie called
Ghost
.…”

“I’ll buy a potter’s wheel,” he promised.

“You’d better buy a potter’s steam roller if we’re going to mold you.” She turned and went back into the galley.

One up for her, Dev thought happily. “Are you trying to provoke me, woman?”

“Get out here and help me and I promise to provoke you beyond your wildest dreams.”

He was up in a flash and striding into the galley.

Hilary looked up from rummaging through the basket on the counter. Her cheeks turned pink. “Devlin, you’re naked.”

“I just want to be ready for when you provoke me,” he explained, taking a package out of the basket. “Where do you want this?”

“Fridge.”

He squeezed past her in the narrow space. Only the thin cotton of his shirt separated his flesh from the softness of her derriere, and he loved it.

“You know,” he drawled. “If you’d been wearing this when we were cramped in here on that fishing trip with the grandparents, we would have been halfway to Iceland before I got out of the galley. Nope, I’m wrong. It would have been all the way to Iceland.”

“Not with my stomach,” she said, leaning back against him.

“How is it?”

“Fine.” She didn’t move, however. Her body was still pressed tightly to his.

“Keep this up and we’ll be testing a personal theory I’m formulating about exactly what one can cook in here.”

“More than you think,” she murmured, but finally let him pass. He sighed in disappointment as she added, “Put away the ribs, please.”

“With pleasure.”

She handed him several more things to load into the tiny refrigerator.

“Do you think you brought enough?” he asked, eyeing the stream of packages passing through his hands.

“Have you ever seen a movie called
Tom Jones
?” she asked innocently.

He stared at her in wonder. “The eating scene?”

“The eating scene.”

“What other unsuitable movies are we going to do?” he asked.

“Wait and see.”

It would be one eye-opening weekend, Dev decided.

He couldn’t have asked for more.

“What do you think of the Micky Mouse cruise?” Hilary asked that evening, picking up one of the vacation brochures spread out on the bed.

“Too much fun,” Dev said. He was sprawled naked on top of the covers, eating ribs. He stripped some meat off the bone with his teeth and in between chewing added, “We want the grandparents to get together, not zoom around on the Dumbo ride.”

She laid the open brochure across the junction of his legs. “One down.”

“Wanna bet?”

“You are disgusting,” she pronounced, smiling fondly.

“I am a sybaritic pleasure in the making.”

“You are a sybaritic mess.” Whatever worries Hilary had started out with were gone in the afterglow of an idyllic afternoon and evening. She was almost able to ignore even the few bumps of
unsuitable
. Almost. She still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she’d become a point of rebellion for him.

Forget it, she told herself. For a point of rebellion, she’d never felt so thoroughly loved. They had the rest of the weekend together—with a time-out for his charter of course—and she wouldn’t ruin it with even one doubt. Picking up another brochure, she said, “How about this Caribbean Hopper cruise?”

Dev glanced at it. “Too many port stops, therefore too many opportunities for one or both of them to get off and fly back to the States. We need something that keeps them away from transport until they don’t care anymore.”

She laid it on top of the first brochure. “Two down.”

“You’re going to give me a complex,” he complained.

“In a pig’s eye.” She sifted through the pile, grumbling, “Do you know how many travel agents I had to go to in order to get all these damn brochures?”

“No. How many?”

“Two.”

“That many?”

“How many did you go to?”

“Zip.”

“Then shut up and let me complain.”

A Cruise to Nowhere
. They both spied the same brochure at the same time and grabbed for it. Hilary pried it out of his barbecue-sauced fingers. “Look at this mess you—
Look at this
!” she exclaimed.

He set aside the plate and leaned forward, looking over her shoulder. “I see it.”

Together they read, “Two weeks to absolutely nowhere, while being pampered by our staff. Luxury beyond belief. Nobody does it better than the
Inca Lines
.”

“They’ll be bored to tears in two days,” Devlin said with great satisfaction.

“Less.”

“The next one’s scheduled in two weeks. I’ll talk to Billy when he gets back tomorrow about taking the charters. Let’s try to book for that one, okay?”

She nodded. “I’ve got a couple of dinners and two luncheons. I’ll talk to Jane and Jeremy, too, but I don’t see a problem.”

“Well, our work is done.” He put his arms around her from behind, his hands stroking her thighs. As he kissed the curve of her neck, he murmured, “Time for play.”

“You’re getting barbecue sauce on me,” she said, breathless with the sensations he was creating.

“I’ll lick it off.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

And they sank into each other’s arms, their bodies dancing to the night music of love.

“Wake up! Hilary, wake up!”

Bleary from a dead-to-the-world sleep, Hilary
opened her eyes. She winced and immediately shut them against blinding light overhead. She had a vague notion of Devlin, fully dressed, looming over her.

“Hilary, wake up! I forgot to set the alarm, and we overslept. The guys are here. You have to go.”

“Guys? Go?” She squinted one eye in the direction of his voice. Her senses told her it wasn’t even close to a normal morning hour yet.

“The charter group’s here, and you can’t stay. You get seasick, remember? Dammit, come on!”