The Devil and the Deep

by Amy Andrews

  For once reality is sexier than fiction!

  Author Stella Mills has writers’ block. Her swashbuckling debut romance was a mega-hit—and the world is crying out for a sequel. Problem is, her sexy-as-sin hero was based on childhood friend Rick Granville, whose dangerously delicious eyes have never sparkled at her that way!

  So being forced to spend weeks on adventurer Rick’s luxury yacht could be just the thing to trigger her imagination—forget Johnny Depp…modern-day pirate Rick is pure physical perfection. Of course, spending night and day with the temptation that is Rick could be sailing too close to the wind—especially when her fictional fantasies start becoming red-hot reality!

  Dear Reader,

  Great news—in February 2013 Harlequin Presents Extra is merging with Presents so you will now be able to find more of your favorite authors in one place as Presents increases from six books a month to eight.

  There will be more of the themes you love, such as secret babies, marriages of convenience, scandalous affairs, all with exciting international settings and delicious alpha heroes.

  You can also find some of the authors you have come to know and love from Presents Extra in our new contemporary series Harlequin KISS which is launching in February 2013.

  So remember, from February onward there will be eight new Presents books available each month!

  Happy reading!

  The Presents Editors

  P.S. Also available this month:

  #229 SECRETS OF CASTILLO DEL ARCO

  Bound by his Ring

  Trish Morey

  #230 MARRIAGE BEHIND THE FAÇADE

  Bound by his Ring

  Lynn Raye Harris

  #231 KEEPING HER UP ALL NIGHT

  Temptation on her Doorstep

  Anna Cleary

  #232 THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP

  Temptation on her Doorstep

  Amy Andrews

  “You can’t go a day without trying to hook up.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating a little.”

  Stella stopped pacing and glared at him. “In thirty-six hours, you have flirted with every woman who has crossed your path. And when we get on that boat tomorrow after about twelve hours you’re going to start in on me because you can’t help yourself,” she finished a little shrilly.

  “You think I can’t go a few weeks without flirting with a woman?”

  “I dare you. I dare you to go through this whole voyage without flirting with a single woman you meet along the way.”

  Rick grinned, his gaze locking with hers. “And what do I get?” he asked, his voice low.

  The timbre of his voice stroked along all her tired nerve endings as he stared at her with his Vasco eyes.

  Stella swallowed. “Get?”

  Rick held her gaze. “If I win? How about that kiss that we didn’t quite get round to?”

  Stella blinked as the bad-boy looked back at her. It was a tantalizing offer. One she knew he didn’t expect her to take. But she’d never been one to back down from a dare, and frankly, the idea was as thrilling as it was illicit.

  THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP

  AMY ANDREWS

  ~ Temptation on her Doorstep ~

  AMY ANDREWS has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs.

  She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au.

  Other titles by Amy Andrews available in ebook:

  Harlequin Presents®

  204—INNOCENT ’TIL PROVEN OTHERWISE

  If you'd like to see more of this author’s fantastic books, check out her Harlequin® Medical™ Romances.

  For Halle Anne Baxter.

  Much loved.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EXCERPT

  PROLOGUE

  Lady Mary Bingham had never seen such a fine specimen of manhood in all her twenty years as she held out her hand to her unlikely saviour so he could aid her aboard. Pirate or not, Vasco Ramirez’s potent masculinity tingled through every cell of her body. And even had it not, his piercing blue eyes, the exact colour of warm, tropical waters that fringed the reefs he was rumoured to know like the back of his hand, touched a place inside her that she’d never known existed.

  A place she could never now deny.

  She supposed, if she were given to swooning, this would be as good a time as any. But she wasn’t. In fact she’d always found the practice rather tiresome and refused to even allow her knees the slightest tremble. Women who had fits of the vapours and cried for their smelling salts every two seconds—like her aunt—were not the kind of women she admired.

  Her breath hitched as sable lashes framing those incredible eyes swept downwards in a frank inspection of every inch of her body. When his gaze returned to her face she was left in no doubt that he’d liked what he’d seen. His thumb lightly stroked the skin of her forearm and she felt the caress deep inside that newly awakened place.

  Looking at the bronzed angles of his exotic face, she knew she should be afraid for had she not just gone from the frying pan straight into the fire?

  Yet strangely she wasn’t.

  Not even when his gaze dropped to the pulse beating rapidly against the milky white skin of her neck. Or lower to where her breasts strained against the constrictive fabric of her bodice. His lazy inspection of the agitated rise of her bosom did not elicit fear even when what it did elicit was reason for fear itself.

  Her uncle, the bishop, would have declared him an instrument of the devil. A man willing to lead unsuspecting ladies to the edge of sin but strangely she’d never felt so compelled to transgress. The thought was titillating and she sucked in a breath, annoyed that this buccaneer had caused such consternation after such short acquaintance.

  After all, was not one pirate just like the next?

  Mary looked down at the insolent drift of his thumb. ‘You will unhand me immediately,’ she intoned in a voice that brooked no argument.

  Ramirez’s smile was nine parts charm one part insolence as he slowly—very slowly—ceased the involuntary caress.

  ‘As you wish,’ he murmured, bowing slightly over her hand, his fingers tracing down the delicate blue veins of her forearm, whispering over the fragile bones of her wrist and the flat of her palm as he released her.

  Lady Mary swallowed as the accented English slid velvet gloves over already sensitised skin. ‘I insist that you return me to my uncle forthwith.’

  Vasco admired her pluck. The girl, who he knew to be barely out of her teens, may well be staring him straight in the eye but he could smell her fear as only a veteran of a hundred raids on the high seas could.

  Lord alone knew what had happened to her in the two days she’d been at the mercy of Juan Del Toro and his ruffians. But something told him this pampered English mis
s could certainly hold her own.

  And virgins fetched a much higher price at the slave markets.

  ‘As you wish,’ he murmured again.

  Mary narrowed her eyes, suspicious of his easy capitulation. ‘You know my uncle? You know who I am?’

  He smiled at her. ‘You are Lady Mary Bingham. The bishop commissioned me to...retrieve you.’

  For the first time in two days Mary could see an end to the nightmare that had begun with her abduction down by the wharfs a mere forty-eight hours before and she almost sagged to the damp floorboards at his feet. She’d heard her former captives talking about slave markets and had been scared witless.

  Alas, falling at the feet of a pirate, whether sanctioned by her uncle or not, wasn’t something a young woman of good breeding did. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I am most grateful for your speedy response. Juan Del Toro’s men do not know how to treat a lady.’

  ‘Do not thank me yet, Lady Bingham.’ He smiled with steel in his lips. ‘There are a lot of miles between here and Plymouth and by the end of it my men may well care less about you being a lady and more about you being a woman.’

  Mary raised a haughty eyebrow, hoping it disguised the sudden leap in her pulse. ‘And you would allow such fiendish behaviour amongst your crew?’

  Vasco smiled his most charming smile, his dark tousled hair giving him the look of the devil. ‘Amongst my crew? Of course not, Lady Bingham. But captains do enjoy certain privileges...’

  STELLA MILLS sighed as she closed down the document on her desktop and dragged herself back from the swashbuckling seventeen hundreds to the reality of the here and now. She could re-read the words that had flowed effortlessly out of her last year and made her an ‘overnight’ sensation until the cows came home but it didn’t change the facts—one book did not a writer make.

  One book did not a career make.

  No matter how many publishing houses had bid for Pleasure Hunt at auction, no matter how many best-seller lists it had made or how many fan letters she’d received or how much money competing film companies had thrown at her for the film rights.

  No matter how crazy the romance world had gone for Vasco Ramirez.

  They wanted more.

  And so did the publisher.

  Stella stared at the blinking cursor on the blank page in front of her. The same blinking cursor she’d been staring at for almost a year now.

  Oh, God. ‘I’m a one-hit wonder,’ she groaned as her head hit the keyboard.

  A knock on the door interrupted her pity party and she glanced up. Several lines of gobbledygook stared back at her as the knock came again. She grimaced—it seemed she was destined to write nothing but incomprehensible garbage for ever more.

  Another knock, more insistent than the last, demanded her attention. ‘Coming,’ she called as she did what she’d done every day for the past year—deleted the lot.

  She hurried to the door and was reaching for the knob as a fourth knock landed. ‘Okay, okay, hold your horses,’ she said as she wrenched the damn thing open.

  Piercing blue eyes, the exact colour of warm, tropical waters that fringed the reefs she knew he knew like the back of his hand, greeted her. She blinked. ‘Rick?’

  ‘Stel,’ he murmured, leaning forward to kiss first one cheek then the other, inhaling the familiar coconut essence of her.

  She shut her eyes briefly as the smell of sea breezes and ocean salt infused her senses the way they always did whenever Riccardo Granville was close. When she opened them again Rick had withdrawn and her mother came into focus, hovering behind his shoulder. Her eyes were rimmed with red and she was biting on her bottom lip.

  Her mother lived in London and Rick called the ocean his home. Why were they here? In Cornwall. Together?

  Stella frowned as a feeling of doom descended.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, looking from one to the other as her pulse wooshed like a raging torrent through her ears.

  Her mother stepped forward and hugged her. ‘Darling,’ she murmured, ‘it’s Nathan.’

  Stella blinked. Her father?

  She looked over her mother’s shoulder at Rick, his face grim. ‘Rick?’ she asked, searching for a spark of something—anything—that would bring her back from the precipice she was balanced upon.

  Rick looked down at the woman he’d known almost all his thirty years and sadly shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  CHAPTER ONE

  Six months later...

  THE cursor still blinked at her from the same blank page. Although Stella rather fancied that it had given up blinking and had moved on to mocking.

  There were no words. No story.

  No characters spoke in her head. No plot played like a movie reel. No shards of glittering dialogue burnt brightly on her inward eye desperate for release.

  There was just the same old silence.

  And now grief to boot.

  And Diana would be arriving soon.

  As if she’d willed it, a knock on the door heralded Stella’s closest friend. Normally she’d have leapt from her seat to welcome Diana but not today. In fact, for a moment, she seriously considered not opening the door at all.

  Today, Diana was not here as her friend.

  Today, Diana was here as a representative from the publisher.

  And she’d promised her chapter one...

  ‘I know you’re in there. Don’t make me break this sucker down.’

  The voice was muffled but determined and Stella resigned herself to her fate as she crossed from her work area in the window alcove, with its spectacular one-eighty-degree views of rugged Cornish coastline, to the front door. She drew in a steadying breath as she unlatched it and pulled it open.

  Diana opened her arms. ‘Babe,’ she muttered as she swept Stella into a rib-cracking hug. ‘How are you doing? I’ve been so worried about you.’

  Stella settled into the sweet sisterhood of the embrace, suddenly so glad to see her friend she could feel tears prick at the backs of her eyes. They’d only known each other a handful of years since meeting at uni, but Diana had called most nights since the funeral and this was her tenth visit.

  ‘Pretty rubbish,’ she admitted into Diana’s shoulder.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Diana soothed, rubbing her friend’s back. ‘Your dad died—it comes with the territory.’

  Diana’s parents had passed away not long before they’d become friends so Stella knew that Diana had intimate acquaintance with grief.

  ‘I want to stop feeling like this.’

  Diana hugged her harder. ‘You will. Eventually you will. In the meantime you need to do what you need to do. And I think that starts with a nice glass of red.’

  Diana held up a bottle of shiraz she’d bought at an off-

  licence in Penzance on her way to the windswept, cliff-top cottage her friend had taken out a long-term lease on after her strait-laced fiancé, Dreary Dale, hadn’t been able to handle the success of Pleasure Hunt and had scuttled away with a stick jammed up his butt.

  Sure, Stella had insisted her reasons had more to do with the historic coastline’s rich pirate history stimulating her muse but, given that no book was forthcoming, Diana wasn’t buying it.

  Stella looked at her watch and laughed for the first time today. It was two in the afternoon. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’

  Diana tutted her disapproval. ‘The sun’s up over the yardarm—isn’t that what you nautical types say? Besides, it’s November—it’s practically night time.’

  Diana didn’t wait for an answer, dragging her pull-along case inside the house and kicking the door shut with her four-inch-booted heel. She shrugged out of her calf-length, figure-hugging leather coat and unwound her Louis Vuitton scarf from her neck—all without letting go of t
he bottle. She wore charcoal trousers and a soft pink cashmere sweater, which matched the thick brunette curls that fell against its pearlescent perfection.

  Diana was very London.

  Stella looked down at her own attire and felt like a total slob. Grey sweats, coffee-stained hoodie and fluffy slippers. A haphazard ponytail that she’d scraped together this morning hung limply from her head in an even bigger state of disarray.

  Stella was very reclusive writer.

  Which would be much more romantic if she’d actually bloody written anything in the last eighteen months.

  ‘Sit,’ Diana ordered, tinkling her fingers at her friend as she headed towards the cupboard where she knew, from many a drinking session, the wine glasses were housed.

  Stella sat on her red leather sofa if, for nothing else, to feel less diminutive. Diana was almost six feet and big boned in a sexy Amazonian, Wonder Woman kind of way. She, on the other hand, was just a couple of centimetres over five feet, fair and round.

  ‘Here,’ Diana said, thrusting a huge glass of red at her and clinking the rims together before claiming the bucket chair opposite. ‘To feeling better,’ she said, then took a decent swig.

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ Stella agreed, taking a more measured sip. She stared into the depths of her wine, finding it easier than looking at her friend.

  ‘You don’t have the chapter, do you?’ Diana asked after the silence had stretched long enough.

  Stella looked at Diana over the rim of her glass. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Diana nodded. ‘It’s okay.’

  Stella shook her head and uttered what had been on her mind since the writer’s block had descended all those months ago. ‘What if I only ever have one book in me?’

  The fear had gnawed away at her since finishing the first book. Dale’s desertion had added to it. Her father’s death had cemented it.