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He waved her down to the helm with him, obviously wanting to stick close to the controls until they were out of the more popular boating lanes.
“I remember you said the same thing about buying theVesta.” He’d purchased it on eBay for a song and spent a summer restoring it. He’d been working on it before they started dating but he hadn’t finished it- and christened it – until after they were an item.
Those hot August days when she’d come over to the house to hang out with Kyle and his friends were etched in her brain with visions of Jack hand-sanding the hull of that vintage Pearson-Triton sailboat. She remembered tanned, glistening muscles sprinkled with a sheen of sawdust.
And she’d been dying for him to notice her.
“Right.” He slid into the captain’s chair as he gave a nod to a guy on an aluminum fishing trawler. “I didn’t want the big-ass boat my dad had his eye on for me. I wanted something proven sea worthy. A classic. And I wanted to buy it myself.”
“You also bought it from a guy who was going to lose his house and needed to sell off everything.” She hadn’t thought about that for a long time, but it fit with the way Jack moved through his life- always helping out someone else. “Kind of like how you’re investing in all these run-down bars? Are those club owners struggling too?”
She twisted her damp hair into a knot on top of her head. Finding a lone golf tee rolling around in a tray full of loose change near the windshield, she threaded the wooden tee into the knot to hold it in place.
“I’m hardly the benefactor of bar owners. I just happen to like live music and if those places go under, we’ve got a lot fewer venues for cultivating new talent.”
“A philanthropist with a taste for the blues.” She shook her head, laughing at the image of him paying the bars to stay open so his favorite bands could play. “Seriously, Jack, if you’re not going into the bar business and you’re not working for your dad, what’s next for you now that you’re not floating around the Pacific anymore?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“And I really want to know why you feel the need to move three states away to start a business.”
Frowning, she didn’t have any intention of defending the move to Bar Harbor to him again. Besides, how could she admit she couldn’t bear to watch The One Who Got Away move on with the next girl? She hated to admit it to herself let alone speak it out loud.
“Since I don’t want to talk and neither do you, what do you say we play a game of poker for the answers?” He pulled out a deck of cards from the same change tray where she’d found the golf tee. “Loser has to answer the question of the winner’s choosing.”
Damn it. He knew she couldn’t resist a challenge any more than he could.
“Since when are we counting poker as a legitimate form of competition?”
“Would you rather arm wrestle?” He flexed his biceps to emphasize his obvious advantage for most sports.
A fact which ticked her off even though the sight of his arms could make her salivate most of the time.
“How about we fish for it?”
He scrubbed a hand along his jaw, considering. “Whoever catches the biggest fish gets to ask their question.”
“Loser has to answerandcook the fish,” she clarified, already seeing him at the on-board grill in her mind’s eye.
“Deal. Care to go double or nothing?” Something about the mischievous wriggle of his eyebrows warned her whatever he had in mind would be trouble.
That didn’t mean she could say no.
“Name your terms, Murphy.”
“Winner claims a sexual favor.” His green eyes seared her skin as his gaze locked on her and she had the distinct impression he already had something specific in mind.
Something he was visualizing right this moment.
A heat wave flashed along her skin. Her heart rate quadrupled. She had to lick her lips to edge words from a throat gone dry.
“You have yourself a deal.”
ChapterSeven
Her competitive nature hadn’t bothered to recall that she’d never been much of a fisher.
