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They’d always been sexually compatible. But that firecracker temper of hers was something he’d only ever seen small glimpses of ten years ago—on those rare occasions when she’d stood up to him.
Unfolding his arms, he cracked the rigid line of his shoulders in a shrug and headed back towards the bow.
Big deal—she had more guts than he’d expected. He’d see how far that got her once she discovered he wasn’t going to play ball.
Ducking under the mainsail, he set about untying the line he’d secured to the anchor chain and then pressed the button to activate the yacht’s windlass.
‘What are you doing?’
The high-pitched squeak of distress from over his shoulder told him she’d followed him.
‘Weighing anchor,’ he said, stating the obvious as he lifted the anchor the rest of the way into the boat, then marched back past her. ‘You’ve got two minutes to call your guy before we head for open water.’
She scrambled after him. ‘I’m not getting off this boat until you agree to sign those papers.’
He swung round and she bumped into his chest. She stumbled back to land on the bench seat of the cockpit, her cheeks flushed with a captivating mix of shock and awareness.
Arousal powered through his system on the heels of adrenaline.
‘I’m not signing a damn thing.’
Taking the wheel, he adjusted the position of the boat until the breeze began to fill the mainsail.
‘It’s a four-day trip to the Bahamas, which is where I’m headed. With nowhere to stop en route. You want to be stuck on a boat with me for four days, that’s up to you. Either that or you can swim back to the marina.’
He cast a look over his shoulder, as if assessing the distance.
‘You’re a strong swimmer. You should be able to make it by sunset.’
The mulish expression on her face was so priceless he almost laughed—until he remembered why she was there. To protect the company of a man who had treated him like dirt.
She glared back at him. ‘I’m not budging until you sign those papers. If you think I’m scared of spending four days on a yacht with you, you’re very much mistaken.’
The renewed pulse of reaction in his crotch at this ball-busting comment forced him to admire her fighting spirit. And admit that the fierce temper suited her.
Unfortunately for her, though, she’d chosen the wrong balls to bust.
The mainsail stretched tight and the boat lurched forward.
She gripped the rail, and the flash of panic that crossed her face was some compensation for the fiery heat tying his guts in knots as the yacht picked up speed.
‘Yeah, well, maybe you should be,’ he said, realising he wasn’t nearly as mad about the prospect as he had been when she’d climbed aboard the yacht.
She’d chosen to gatecrash his solo sailing holiday and put them both into a pressure cooker situation that might very quickly get out of control. But if it did, why the hell should he care?
Doing the wild thing with Xanthe had never been a hardship. And seeing the unwanted arousal in her eyes now had taken some of his madness away, because it proved one incontrovertible fact. What had happened between them in that hotel room had been as spontaneous and unstoppable for her as it had been for him.
He wasn’t going to sign her phoney papers because that would be the same as admitting she’d been right not to trust him with the truth back in Manhattan. That her father had been right not to trust him all those years ago, too.
Charles Carmichael had accused him of being a gold-digger, of being after the Carmichael money, and his daughter must believe it too or she wouldn’t have tried to trick him into signing those papers.
He was a rich man now—he could probably buy and sell her precious Carmichael’s twenty times over—but even as a wild-eyed kid, starved of so many things, he’d never asked for a cent from her or her old man.
Xanthe had been his once—she’d insisted she loved him. But even so a part of her had stayed loyal to her old man or she would have asked questions when her father had told her lies about him. She would have tried to contact him after the miscarriage. She wouldn’t have let him go on believing she’d had an abortion up to two days ago. And she sure as hell wouldn’t need any guarantee that he wasn’t going to rip her off for 55 per cent of a company he had never wanted any part of.
If she wanted to spend the next four days pretending she was immune to him, immune to the attraction between them, so be it.
They’d see who broke first.
