Seeing Stars (20 page)

Then, after the symposium, she'd be back on her mountain, safe.

Someone knocked on the door.

Blake. She took in a deep breath and picked up a jacket that announced she'd been to the stars. She shrugged into it, picked up her purse and opened the door.

"Hi," she said, then gasped as he pulled her close, covering her mouth with a kiss just long enough to take both her breath and her thoughts.

"You braided your hair again," he said, studying her from a heartbeat away, his hand still cupped around the back of her neck.

She fought for breath and found it when she realized his eyes, though dark and inscrutable, weren't filled with this morning's hot need.

"Jeans, you said. An adventure. I didn't think it made sense to have my hair flying all over." She saw he'd brought the motorcycle and felt a shaft of pleasure. As the wind whipped around her, she realized the sky had darkened since she returned from downtown. "Where are we going? Somewhere on the motorcycle? It's probably going to rain."

"Maybe," he agreed. "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

This time she climbed onto the bike and wrapped her arms around him without hesitation. He started the bike, then covered her hands with his for a second before he kicked it into gear.

"Hold on," she thought he said, and then they were wheeling out of the resort and flying along the highway.

The air was different today, much different than the first time she'd ridden with him. Only two days ago, but it seemed much longer. She felt the flex of his muscles, the scent of a storm on the air, the wind playing over her helmet. She wished she could feel the wind on her face, in her hair, wished they could ride forever.

Somehow, she'd thought he would take her away from the town, but he took the bike into Port Townsend, driving into the port.

"We're going to the shipyard?" she asked.

Maybe he didn't hear, although right here, right now, the wind seemed still, the storm taking a breath although she could see white caps outside the breakwater.

He turned left, toward the marina, not right to his shipyard. When he stopped the bike in a parking space in front of the marina, she climbed off and said, "When are you going to tell me?"

He locked their helmets onto the bike, jerked his head and said, "This way."

"You're enjoying this, keeping me in suspense."

"Absolutely," he agreed easily, holding a hand out and leading her down to the floats.

She felt movement underfoot, the float shifting in sympathy with the sea on the other side of the breakwater. Friday night the boats had been silent, the water calm, but now she heard sounds... a rope creaking, the sound of something banging rhythmically on metal.

He took her hand and led her to a white sailboat with red trim at the end of the second finger. He opened a section of the lifeline, making a gateway, and gestured her to board.

"Is this your boat?"

"Yes. Come on."

She grabbed a rope—a stay, she thought it was—and stepped aboard. Immediately, she felt the boat's response to the water's motion.

Blake boarded behind her and went to the cockpit where he bent to some task—starting an engine, she realized when she heard the soft sound of a water-cooled diesel engine.

"We're going sailing?" she asked, still standing on the deck near the exit.

He stepped back up to her side and she saw anticipation in his eyes, not unlike what she'd seen Saturday night when he danced her outside and stood staring down at her before he kissed her senseless.

Behind him, she saw whitecaps; overhead, darkening clouds. "It looks wild. A storm. You're not planning to take us sailing in a storm?"

"If you like the motorcycle, this is ten times better."

"The motorcycle is... this is crazy." The wind smoothed the stray hairs from her face as if to approve her judgment.

He stood a hand's reach away, eyeing her speculatively. "What is it you're afraid of?"

She was afraid of a dozen things, she realized, staring up at him. Afraid she'd never get her balance again, afraid she'd drown here, in his eyes, afraid she'd never forgive herself if she didn't take every minute of this stolen week.

"I'm afraid of the boat sinking, of me drowning," she said, although as she said the words, they seemed false.

He reached back into the cockpit and handed her a life vest. Her lips curved into a smile as she took it.

"This is for when it sinks?"

"If she sinks, I hit the radio with a Mayday call and we hit the water. This time of year it's not particularly cold. You'd get wet, but even if you can't swim, the life vest will keep you upright, head out of water, until help comes."

She held the life vest in front of her, a barrier between them, she thought crazily, although if he opened his arms she knew she'd walk into them.

"Are we going to sink?" she asked intently, as if that were her true fear. She figured a person had to be crazy to go sailing in a storm, but she saw the calm confidence in his eyes and knew that wasn't the biggest danger here.

The danger was... she wasn't sure, but it had something to do with sharing this part of him, sharing something far beyond the bounds of an affair. Because this was the essence of Blake, the devil-may-care grin on his lips and the storm tossing the water outside the breakwater.

"Hell, no, we're not going to sink," he said, "but we'd be crazy to go out unprepared. Do you go hiking that mountain of yours?"

"Yes. Often."

"Arizona, that's snake country. What if you get bit?"

"I'm careful, and I take a rattlesnake kit with me."

"And what if you fall, break an ankle?"

She knew where he was going and let him lead her, just as she had let him lead her to his bed. "Edgar and Jenn always know where I've gone. They'd raise an alarm. You're telling me it's safe, that it's low-risk, like our affair."

Something flashed in his eyes, and he said, "I'm telling you nothing's really safe, but if you're going to take a chance, it makes sense to take a few precautions. You like hiking remote mountains, so you take a rattlesnake kit and tell people where you're going. I like sailing stormy weather, so I tell people where I'm going, take a radio and life preservers. Call it a calculated risk. It's always possible something could happen out there, something I can't handle. And it's possible you could fall off a cliff and smash that beautiful body on the rocks."

Jenn had told her so often enough, she thought wryly.

He stepped back, giving her more than physical space. "This is my risk, Claire. I'm inviting you to share it, but it's your choice."

Her birthday, she thought, and she would probably always remember it as the day he took her sailing in the storm. Really, she had no choice, any more than she'd had a choice about walking into his arms. The only other choice, that of refusing the adventure and always afterward regretting, was no choice at all.

She put on the life vest. "What do I do?"

He laughed and began giving her instructions, and soon she was hauling on ropes—he called them lines—and pulling the docking fenders onto the deck as he piloted the boat out of the marina under power of its diesel engine.

Then he put Claire at the tiller and pointed to a hill on the other side of the harbor, telling her to steer for it. She was surprised to find the little boat quite easy to steer even in the lumpy turbulence outside the breakwater. They purred away from Port Townsend while Blake unlashed sails, shouting instructions at her as he hauled the forward sail—the jib—tight.

"Take her off to port now!" he shouted, and she pushed on the tiller, only to feel the boat lean far over, pressed by the wind as he shouted, "No! The other way! Steer for Point Hudson!"

She willingly pulled the tiller the other way, relieved when the boat righted, although the sail started slamming from side to side. Then Blake was in the cockpit with her, urging her, "More. Another thirty degrees north."

Somewhere in the swing of the little boat, the sail caught and filled, snapping tight with a noise that made her gasp.

"Good," he muttered. "Now let me past to trim her."

She ducked out of the way and soon they were racing through the water, the waves slapping against the hull, the flag mounted at the back of the boat streaming straight out behind them. He shut off the engine, pointed out the landmark of Point Hudson to Claire, gave her the tiller again and went up on deck to raise another sail.

She wanted to call him back, because surely they had enough sail up. The wind was whistling through something in the rigging, whipping in the curve of the sail and blowing wild in her face. The boat was pressed over, tilted the way they'd been on his motorcycle, and surely more sail would only tilt them over more steeply.

Heart pounding, Claire held the course Blake had given her as he raised the second sail. They were whipping along parallel to the shoreline now, the only boat out on the water, except for the Keystone ferry which had just left Port Townsend. As Blake tightened the second sail, she concentrated on steering for Point Hudson, avoiding the temptation to veer off when she thought they were too close to shore. She could see Blake eyeing the shore, watching the ferry crossing ahead of them, watching the water off to their right where an island mercifully blocked them from the worst of the wind.

"Steering easier now?" he asked, and she realized the tiller had become once again light and responsive.

He explained how the force of the sails acted on the balance points of the sailboat, then he explained that they were about to tack, changing direction to head southeast toward the low island she'd calculated was providing a partial windblock.

By the time they tacked a second time, she realized that she was enjoying the motion and the sensation of speed.

"How fast are we going?" she shouted.

"About seven knots," he shouted back. She laughed when she realized it was only a tenth of the speed of the motorcycle on Highway 20. Then he caught her in his arms, turning her so the tiller was trapped between them, and kissed her. She let herself sink into his kiss, tasting the salt air on his lips, the sultry masculine temptation of his mouth.

"Are you ready for more speed?" he asked, dragging his lips from hers.

"Yes." With her eyes locked on his, she wasn't sure if her heart was pounded in anticipation of what he might do to the boat, or because of the sexual fire that seemed always ready to flare between them. "I want more."

"You'll get more. Get ready to release the starboard jib line. I'm going to tack."

This tack took them parallel to the shore of Port Townsend again, but farther out to sea, past the end of the sheltering island, into the wild white she'd spotted from on shore. The wind howled on the sails and Claire stood with the tiller in her hand, heart in her mouth as Blake trimmed sails and sent them racing over the water.

But there was more, she realized when he joined her at the tiller, taking it from her and changing course until the world went wild with wind and the sailboat sliced into the water, plowing into waves that hummed over the hull, sea foam slamming against the bow every few minutes, sending spray back over their heads.

Blake turned his head and his eyes found Claire, leaned into the corner of the cockpit where the tilt of the boat had thrown her. She saw him brace his body, then he reached out a hand and she came into his arms, fitted with her back against his chest, his arm holding her tightly against him, the tiller held between his other arm and his body.

She closed her eyes and felt the wind, the sounds of water and sails, the flexing of Blake's hard muscles against her body. Then she opened her eyes and stared into the spray, the surging white-capped waves. She didn't ask him how fast they were going. Perhaps she would, later, but right now she didn't want anything to break the breathless excitement. Like staring into the stars, finding Saturn's rings for the first time, staring into the center of the universe.

"Had enough?" he asked, his voice a murmur against her ear.

She shook her head and heard him laugh as he held her more tightly.

She wondered what it would be like to cross an ocean with him, to stand in this cockpit with the wind driving the little sailboat, and the stars showing the way overhead, while he stood steering the boat and holding her as if she belonged right here, in his arms, forever. She wondered if old sailors had done this, wondered if a pirate had ever steered by the stars with legs braced and arms tightly holding his woman.

His woman...

"Can I steer?" she asked, and he put her hand on the tiller, standing with his body braced behind hers as he showed her how she could adjust their speed by changing the course by bare degrees.

She supposed they'd already sailed halfway to Keystone, a rough ride even if taken on the ferry today, but breathlessly wild with sails up and taking the wind.

"If you really want to feel it," said Blake, "put on the safety harness and go right up front, to the bow pulpit. Sit up there, but keep your harness on."

She wasn't certain about walking on that heaving deck, but she wanted more, and a few minutes later she asked him for the harness. He fastened its clip to her life vest and told her to stay close to the deck.

The motion of the boat was far more unsettling out of the cockpit, and she wondered why on earth she was doing this, yet couldn't seem to stop herself. He'd issued a challenge and she'd been unable to refuse it. She clipped the safety harness to the lifeline as he'd said, moving it as she went forward, and finally clipping it to a cable a few feet from the stainless steel frame he called the bow pulpit.

She stepped up to the pulpit, felt the cable tug on her life vest and knew it would prevent her from falling. She hooked her arms over the rails of the pulpit and felt the deck rise and then fall away underfoot with the motion of the sea. The ocean roared up here, surging past the bow with incredible speed.

She sat, hooking her arms over the lower rails of the pulpit, and now she could see the water racing toward the bow, could see and feel the speed as if she were plowing through the water naked, surfing on the wild ocean. Mesmerized, she stared at the boiling water for an endless time, until she heard Blake call her.