Rock the Boat: A Griffin Bay Novel (7 page)

Davis turned away with a shake of his head, barking out a coarse laugh. The gesture seemed dismissive, and the sudden brush-off flared Jordan’s annoyance instantly back to life.

Six more days
, she told herself grimly as Emily and Storm brought breakfast up from the galley.

.8.

A
fter they had all eaten, Storm prepared the little runabout power boat that rode low on the
Coriolis
’s tail. Jordan watched with grim satisfaction as Davis approached Storm to ask him just what he was doing.

“Emily and I are going to the village to do some laundry and pick up more food.”

Davis cut a quick glance in Jordan’s direction, then said, “Sweet. I’m coming with you.”

“No you’re not,” Jordan called from the helm, where she fiddled with the GPS charts on her tablet.

She knew if Davis made landfall he’d shackle himself to the bar’s front door until it finally opened. The brief moment of silence they’d shared just before breakfast seemed unbearable to him—he was jittery and shaken up now, bouncing on the balls of his feet and absent-mindedly butting both his fists together in a way that made the well-defined muscles in his arms jump—and held Jordan’s attention in an uncomfortable way.

Davis gave her a look of open disbelief.

“Not enough room in the tender, once they get the bag of laundry in there,” Jordan said casually.

Davis eyed the little motor boat with a cynical frown. “There’s plenty of room. There would have to be, anyway. The
Coriolis
is huge—it can carry a lot more than just the four of us. Isn’t there some kind of law that you have to fit all your passengers into…” he made a helpless, juggling gesture as he searched for the right word. “Emergency backup boats?”

Davis had her there. The tender was certainly big enough to carry him to shore. She tried another tack. “Well, I’m the captain and that means I’m the boss of the ship. I say who stays and who goes.”

Davis tried another tack. He stepped close to Jordan, smiling. He folded his arms tight across his muscular chest as he stared down into her eyes. His grin infuriated her with its smugness. “Well, I’m the paying customer. It’s my money that’s funding this trip.”

Jordan swallowed hard, and this time she didn’t even try to hide it from Davis. He was going to notice anyway, no matter what she did. The man was hyper-attuned to the effect of his own sex appeal. And he loved the way he put Jordan off balance—she could tell that from his smile.

Why
did
she want him to stay? It had to be more than just the threat of the bar. Jordan told herself it was the mystery of that brief flash of vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted a chance to figure him out—that was all. If she could piece together his puzzle, find out what made him tick, what made him such an oblivious, self-absorbed prick… then she could get through the next six days without going crazy.

But as Davis stepped closer to her, her skin began to tingle, and the tingle settled to a hot, throbbing glow in her chest. The heat of it spread downward until she was pulsing with excitement low in her stomach, and then lower still…

Just how much
had
Davis noticed Jordan checking him out? Despite her efforts to conceal it, he seemed to read her attraction to him as easily as Jordan read a nautical chart. Did he see anything else, besides her improbable, infuriating desire?

Did he know already that she’d never had great sex—that her singular, early focus on her career had kept her landlocked well away from the dating pool? Could he tell that she compared him in her imagination to what little experience she’d already had? …Or that she wondered what he’d look like naked, what it would feel like if he held her close to his strong, bare chest and reached down to part her legs with his hand, and pressed his…

No!
She turned away from him in a fury and climbed out of the cockpit, up to the rear mast. With some distance between them she could breathe again, command her thoughts, focus. This was her boat—and Sea Wolf Charters was still her business. She would not get involved with a client. She would never do anything so supremely stupid.

She
couldn’t
, she told herself comfortably, confidently. Such idiocy—
delicious, tempting idiocy
—was far too spontaneous for Jordan. It wasn’t in her character to act on these meaningless impulses.

She latched onto the words Davis had spoken, clinging as if they were a life ring in a rough sea. “You’re
not
paying for this trip, Mr. Steen. Your record label is paying. And your manager told me what he expects: peace and quiet for you. That’s what I’m being paid for—not to sail you around and do your bidding, but to see that you
relax
. And by God, I’m going to do it.”

Davis turned to Storm and Emily for backup, but Storm only shrugged. “Jordan’s the boss-lady. What she says, goes.”

“All right.” Davis slid one hand into his pocket and gazed up at Jordan.

She couldn’t help but stare at the motion—at the smooth sliding of his hand, at what rested beside it in his jeans.
Oh my god
, she told herself.
Get your mind out of the gutter
.

“I’ll stay here with you, Jordan. If that’s what you want. Just you and me.”

*.*.*

J
ordan sat on the deck with her back braced against the mast, watching Storm and Emily motor off toward the shore. The tender seemed to shrink in her vision more rapidly than she expected, emphasizing how very alone she now was with Davis Steen.

What the hell had she just done? She asked herself that question again and again until the tender finally vanished into the last weak shrouds of mist that clung to shoreline of Fisherman Bay. It wasn’t that she was worried about Davis’s behavior—he was a prick, not a creep—but she was concerned about her own. Those few moments before Storm and Emily had climbed into the boat and departed, while she stood face to face with Davis, challenging him—it was as if her mind had finally given in to her body’s mutinous desire. Davis was hot as hell. She’d been thinking it ever since she first met him. There was no denying now just how badly she wanted him, and the force of her desire frightened her. She wasn’t used to feeling so…
out of control
. To having anything surprise her so completely, and take over her carefully planned, well-ordered existence.

It’s just because I haven’t been with a guy in so long
, she told herself stoutly.
I’m just horny. And why shouldn’t I be? It’s been six years since I fooled around with anybody!

Six years of dedication to her career. Six years of planning, saving, working… six years of total predictability, absolute
un
spontaneity.

Now that she laid it all out in her head, it did seem kind of crazy to deny herself that kind of fun for so long. But she hadn’t noticed anything lacking in her life. Not once during all that time had she cried or moped over her celibacy. She had always been too occupied with thoughts of the future to care.

But in Davis’s presence, it seemed her body hungered for everything she’d put off since she was eighteen. The depth and force of the craving astonished her. And her inability to control it—to shut it off and return to her usual, detached, businesslike self—was scary.

Davis climbed up from the cockpit and sank down slowly to sit at Jordan’s side. He was very close—not close enough to touch, but so near that she could feel the warmth from his leg intruding against her knee. All her senses seemed focused on that one small tingle of warmth, the invisible brush of not-quite-contact.

“Well, here we are,” Davis said. “Alone.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was smirking, of course—pleased with the way he flustered her, fully aware of his effect.
What an ass
.

Jordan remembered how the silence that morning had unsettled him. If he could put her off guard, then she could play the same game. She smiled coolly at him—or at least, she hoped she looked unflustered—and said, “Yep. Alone. Just you and me and the silence. Just us, alone with our thoughts.”

“What are
you
thinking about right now?” The question was low and gravelly; the sound of his voice seemed to throb along Jordan’s veins. She suppressed a shiver of greedy desire—but she said nothing. She just continued to smile at him, holding his eyes with her own.

Davis made another attempt to knock her off balance. “You know, this morning… when I made you laugh… when you smiled. You have a really nice smile.”

Jordan gave one quick lift of her eyebrows, an acknowledgment of his praise—and held her tongue.

“What do you think of me?” Davis asked. “What do you think…
about
me?”

Still Jordan made no reply. She turned her face away from him and sighed, gazing out at the island, as if perfectly content with her own thoughts—with the gentle quiet of the misty morning.

Davis held himself rigidly still for a long moment. Then he jumped up so suddenly that Jordan nearly gasped.

“I’m going to get my speakers,” he said.

Jordan sprang to her feet, too. “No way, buddy. You’re not going to ruin
this
peace. This is the first quiet moment I’ve had since you set foot on my boat, and I’m going to enjoy it.”

He stepped to one side, then the other, trying to dodge past her toward the cabin’s ladder. But Jordan blocked him, and couldn’t stop herself from giggling at how absurd they would look if anybody were around to see them.

“Seriously,” he said, almost pleading. “Let’s have some music. I’ll keep it really low if you want. Nice and quiet.”

Jordan laid a hand on his chest. She couldn’t
believe
she did it, but she did—the evidence of her audacity was right there under her palm. She could feel the warmth of Davis’s skin burning through the thin fabric of his shirt, into her fingertips. “Wait a minute,” she said earnestly. “Tell me, Davis—honestly—why won’t you just sit and enjoy the silence?”

He stepped back slowly, breaking the contact of her touch. She could still feel her hand tingling with the sensation of his firm chest. “What do you mean?”

Jordan sat on the deck again. Davis hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other, clearly tempted to run to the solace of his music. But finally he sat, too, his body angled slightly toward Jordan’s.

“I mean,” she said, “it seems like you’re… running from something.”

“What, like I’m a criminal?” He laughed comfortably. “Like I’m on the lam?”

She shook her head, smiling. “No, that’s not what I mean. Silence seems unbearable to you—like you really can’t tolerate it. It’s almost as if it causes you some kind of pain.”

Davis shrugged and flashed that uncaring half-smile. “Well, I’m a musician. I play rock. I like loud noises.”

“I don’t think it’s that. Not at all. I saw the way you looked on our first night—when you played your guitar for us all. That wasn’t loud—it was soft. And beautiful.”

Davis stared out at the shore, watching in thoughtful silence while the fog parted, revealing more of the tree-fringed island, then came together again to obscure it from view. Finally he said, “Maybe it’s just that I find quiet isolating.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “Music connects people. When I listen to somebody else’s music, or when I play with my band, it’s like I’m hearing their thoughts, experiencing their feelings. That’s a powerful connection, you know? It’s nice to know I’m not alone in the world… that I don’t have to face the bad stuff on my own.”

Jordan tilted her head, smiling playfully. “Do you
really
face a lot of bad stuff? You?”

He gave her a quizzical look, his dark brows coming together, his mouth curved in amused confusion.

“I mean, you’re so well-known…”

“Famous.”

“Basically, yeah.” Jordan blushed, but she didn’t know why.

“That doesn’t make life any easier, you know—being famous.”

The sudden gravity of Davis’s mood struck her. “I guess it really wouldn’t make things easier. But hey, at least you get your vacations paid for.” She gestured grandly down the length of her boat. “I mean, even you, the cabin-dweller, must admit this is pretty cool.”

His low, dark chuckle stirred the heat inside her again. “It’s nice. I’m enjoying myself, in spite of my determination not to.”

“You were determined not to have fun?”

“This just isn’t the way I normally have fun,” he said with a hint of apology. “This sailing thing was all Tyler’s idea, not mine. I had no choice in the matter. If I’d wanted to unwind, forget my troubles, and have a good time, I would have headed off to London or Dubai or Sydney for a week. Hit up the clubs, do a little dancing, take in the local music scene. And have a few drinks, too.”

Jordan snorted. “Come on—there’s
no way
that’s relaxing.”

“Relaxing? Maybe not. But it is a lot of fun.”

She laughed and shook her head again. “I have such a hard time believing that.”

Warming to the conversation, he leaned toward her, and Jordan felt her heart buck in her chest. “Have you ever gotten away from your islands Jordan?”

Her name on his lips sent a warm thrill racing from her scalp to her toes. “Of course I have! I’m not as podunk as you think. And okay, I will grant you that it would be a lot of fun to get out and go to shows, and go dancing, and experience a big city for more than a day or two… which is all the time I’ve spent in a city so far.”