Читать книгу From Waif To His Wife - Lindsay Armstrong, Lindsay Armstrong - Страница 6

THEY didn’t make it to Manly—they didn’t manage to leave Horseshoe Bay.

Maisie started to clear up her late lunch, waiting expectantly to hear the yacht’s motor fire, which it did, only to be cut off after a few minutes and without them moving.

She glanced expectantly at Rafe as he came downstairs, to see him looking annoyed.

‘Trouble?’ she hazarded.

‘Yep, the motor’s overheating.’ He started to roll up a section of carpet in the saloon and she realised he was going into the engine room through the floorboards. ‘I haven’t been out on her for ages, and that’s always a bad thing to do to boats.’

‘I know. A problem with the cooling system?’ she hazarded.

‘Most likely. You’re a mine of unexpected information, Maisie. How come you know so much about boats?’

She told him.

‘So that’s how you got onto the berth, I wondered.’ He heaved up a section of floorboard. ‘Could you put the engine-room light on from that switchboard?’ He pointed. ‘Could you also bring me the torch that’s in the locker under those stairs?’ He pointed again.

‘Aye, aye, skipper!’ She did it all, then sat down on the carpet to watch as he worked in the confined space.

After a time, she said as she heard a muffled oath, ‘You’ve found it?’

‘Yes. A broken fan belt. Listen, Maisie,’ he half rose out of the depths of the engine room, rubbing his hands on a piece of waste cotton, ‘this is going to take a bit of time to fix but I’ve got a spare. And we do have to fix it before we can move because what little wind there was has died right down, so there’s no chance of sailing.’

‘And fan belts can be the devil to fit,’ she said ruefully. ‘Just getting to them in that confined space can be a nightmare.’

‘You’re not wrong. So, we’ll either be late or we might not make it at all.’

‘Oh.’

He glanced at her. ‘On the other hand, you would be quite safe with me here overnight if that’s the way it pans out. If by any chance I can’t fit it, I can get help out of Manly tomorrow morning.’ He consulted his watch. ‘It’s probably too late to call anyone out now.’

Maisie looked at her own watch. It was close to five o’clock. ‘All right,’ she said cautiously, although it crossed her mind that no one in their right minds, no one who knew anything about boats anyway, would put themselves through a broken fan-belt situation for an ulterior motive.

‘OK,’ he heaved himself out of the engine room. ‘I need tools and I need some old clothes.’

‘I may be able to help. I often helped my father—handing him tools and so on, and sometimes, because my hands were a lot smaller than his, I could get into really tricky spots he couldn’t.’

‘Good on you, Ms Wallis,’ he murmured and went down to the forward cabin. He came back shortly wearing an old khaki shirt and clean but stained jeans and carrying a tool bag. And he lowered himself once again into the bowels of the boat.

The job took them several hours.

Maisie handed him tools, directed the torch light and once did manage to get her hand into a tricky spot to attach a socket spanner where he couldn’t reach.

Finally he asked her to start the motor and watch the temperature gauge like a hawk.

‘It’s normal,’ she called down the companionway after running the motor for about ten minutes.

‘Good. Switch off,’ he called back and stiffly and wearily climbed out. He stretched. ‘What I need is a drink. But thank you, Maisie,’ he added as she came down. ‘You make a pretty good mechanic’s mate!’

‘I’d say you make a pretty good mechanic,’ she returned. ‘Are you one?’

‘No, not by trade, but I’ve always enjoyed tinkering around with motors. Look, I don’t know about you, but I’d like a shower, a beer, something to eat then a good sleep.’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re welcome to lock yourself into the forward cabin if you wish,’ he added. ‘I would offer you the aft berth but it doesn’t lock.’

Maisie considered that she’d only had about three hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four hours, and suddenly had to stifle a huge yawn. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I’m just about out on my feet anyway but you go and have your shower—I’ll put together a snack.’

His lips twisted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

But as Maisie heard the fresh-water pump click on, she stopped in her tracks as a mental picture of Rafe Sanderson in the shower hit her.

She could understand how stiff and cramped he must feel after a couple of hours of working in such a confined space. She could see him stretching luxuriously beneath the shower jet, she could picture the muscles of his broad shoulders flexing and the water streaming down his long body—and she could feel her own pulses starting to race.

Then, to her horror, in her mind’s eye she took her place beside him in the shower, pale and slight beside his bulk but with her breasts ripening as he lifted his hands and cupped them. As he smoothed his hands down her waist and cradled her hips and as she raised her hands and turned off the water, and offered him her mouth, flattening her body against his as she did so.

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth to make the images go away, but nothing, for a few moments, could still the tremors of desire that ran through her…

This is getting out of hand, she thought as she made herself get to work in the galley then had to stop and take several deep breaths.

She broke off her thoughts and bit her lip, and as the water pump clicked off she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand, not to mention banishing any more wild and wanton fantasies.

The snack she produced was along the same lines as the lunch he’d produced for her. And she poured a beer into a long glass for him, while she had an orange juice.

They ate companionably in the saloon. It was peaceful with the soft lap of water against the hull as they ate by lamplight and at one stage she asked him exactly what he did.

‘I’m a geologist and a mining engineer by profession and I know a bit about sheep.’

She looked at him consideringly. He’d changed again into jeans and a warm tartan shirt. His hair was still damp and bore comb marks. ‘I don’t suppose you do much of either these days.’

He rubbed his jaw. ‘You suppose right. Since my father died, I seem to spend most of my time travelling.’

‘Do you enjoy that?’

He laid his head back against the settee and shrugged. ‘It comes with the territory. It would not,’ he paused, and wondered why it had occurred to him, ‘go well with a settled family life at this stage.’

‘How so?’ she enquired. ‘I mean, you’re not getting any younger—’ She broke off and bit her lip.

He laughed outright. ‘Out of the mouths of babes? I may look ancient to you, Maisie, but I’m only thirty-four.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she assured him with a curious little spark of irony in her eyes as she thought—ancient? No, quite perfect, actually…‘I—um,’ she said hastily, ‘meant, well, it wouldn’t be a bad time to settle down, though, would it? And perhaps you need to—uh—learn to delegate a bit?’

He gazed at her, his grey eyes wry. Then, ‘No, in the normal course of events it wouldn’t be a bad idea to settle down and start a family. But my father embarked on a serious expansion programme for Sanderson Minerals a few months before he died, and it’s going to take me a couple of years at least to see it through. How about you?’

‘Me?’

‘What plans did you have before this cataclysmic event overtook you?’

She shrugged. ‘The usual, I suppose. To be honest, although I probably was a bit old still to be living with my parents, I enjoyed it, I enjoy my job and,’ she sighed, ‘things were sailing along for me. I really love travelling, I spent a month backpacking in Mexico last year and…’ She gestured.

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, I started a travel fund for later this year, but I’ll obviously have to have a rethink there.’

‘No particular grand plan?’

‘Yes, one. I would like to get my master’s degree in music. There’s no age limit on that, luckily, so I might still achieve it.’

‘Are you planning to cope on a single-mother’s allowance?’ he queried.

Maisie grimaced. ‘I have a few assets. I inherited my parents’ house and the boat, but their nest egg and my father’s superannuation will have to go to pay off the mortgage they took out to renovate the house. But,’ she paused then uttered the words she hadn’t been able to make herself say, ‘I will have something when I sell them both.’

‘Tell me something else,’ he said. ‘Did you believe you were madly in love with this guy?’

Maisie folded her napkin then unfolded it and finally nodded. ‘It all came at me…’ She moved her shoulders. ‘One moment I had my feet on the ground, the next I seemed to be flying and living and laughing again. It was extraordinary.’ She pushed the napkin away.

‘And how do you really feel about him now? I mean, obviously in the circumstances you’ve described, you’d be entitled to be angry and betrayed, but what say, hypothetically, I got him back for you?’ he queried.

Maisie took an unexpected breath. ‘I—I don’t know. It’s a bit like a dream now, and it’s hard to disassociate it now from…seeing how gullible I was. But I think it would be too late to recapture the—the magic. It could only be unwillingly, if he did somehow come back now.’

‘Maybe not.’ He paused. ‘What say he came back of his own accord because he found he couldn’t forget you or live without you?’

‘Do you know, I don’t think I’d believe him?’ she said barely audibly. ‘I don’t think I’d believe a word he said.’ She swallowed.

‘So you wouldn’t take him back because of the baby?’

She hesitated. ‘That wouldn’t be any good, would it? If I didn’t believe in him.’

He ran his fingers along the blue cut-velvet settee back and watched her narrowly. ‘You don’t sound especially gullible now.’

She made a steeple of her fingers then propped her chin on her fists. ‘If there’s one good thing that comes out of the school of hard knocks, it’s that you grow up rather fast. And you suddenly begin to believe all the warnings you dismissed so lightly about falling in love and men.’

His grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully for a long moment. He’d lent her another old khaki shirt for their endeavours with the fan belt. She’d since removed it and his sister’s cable-knit sweater was clean, but a little smear of grease she hadn’t noticed remained under her chin.

Otherwise, completely au naturel, with no make-up and with her cloud of curls, she was ethereally attractive in an understated way. Her skin was pink and white and perfect. Her rosy mouth was delicate and her green eyes were stunning.

As well, as he now knew, there was a perfect little figure beneath Sonia’s clothes with high, pointed breasts, a tiny waist and peachy hips.

He frowned suddenly. Why the hell he’d been moved to kiss her had been a mystery to him at the time. He had put it down to a salute for a mad act of bravery. He’d actually felt a surge of affection for her—so half drowned but still capable of yelling at him. He had regretted insulting her, but…

Had he also experienced a protective instinct?

If so, could he be falling into a trap she was building with gossamer strands around him?

Well, he decided and took the last sip of his beer, it mightn’t be a bad idea to keep that in mind against any further protective urges. Because he still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a great little actress.

‘I’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Yes, please.’ She covered her mouth with both hands as she yawned again.

Horseshoe Bay was beautiful in the starlight.

The casuarinas along the wide curve of white beach were smudgy shadows and all the boats riding at anchor had their anchor lights reflecting in the glassy water.

Maisie was asleep in the forward berth, a comfortable cabin with two V bunks. She wore a pair of Sonia’s pyjamas, a bit too big for her—and she was dreaming. Weird dreams that prompted her to do something she thought she’d grown out of—sleepwalk.

It could have been, she was to think later, a day and night full of unusual events that produced the episode, but at the time she had no idea what she was doing.

She got out of the bunk and let herself out of the cabin and up the stairs to the saloon. She walked forward and then started to climb the companionway in a slow, dreamy way. When she got to the top of the stairs she unerringly unlocked the door that led to the cockpit and was about to step outside when Rafe intervened.

He couldn’t say what woke him but he got to the saloon in time to see Maisie’s ghostly figure climbing the stairs. He said her name but she didn’t respond so he climbed up behind her and said her name again. She didn’t even turn to him.

‘For crying out loud,’ he murmured, ‘what’s this? Maisie?’

Still no response, and he realised that she was sleepwalking.

He swore softly and turned her around gently then led her down the stairs. She came unresistingly and she rested against him at the bottom.

He examined his options. There was no way he could lock her in—some stratum of her mind was capable of dealing with locks. So how was he going to stop her from getting up on deck and perhaps falling overboard?

‘There’s only one thing for it, Miss Wallis, I just hope to heaven you don’t misinterpret it.’