Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  Breathing lessons. Man, he’d really lost it. But damn, she smelled good. Crazy thing, considering where they were, but she reminded him of the way a cornfield smelled when the tassels were drying under a hot summer sun.

  Carefully, he lowered her onto a chair, watched for a few seconds to see that she didn’t keel over, then shoved an ice cold can in her hand. “Sip,” he said. “Don’t gulp it down. Let me get us underway again and I’ll see what I can do about smoothing out the ride.”

  She sipped. Kurt skimmed up the ladder and took the controls again. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. She was hanging in there, angling her face to the wind, which was beginning to kick up a few knots. They were going to be doing some pitching and yawing before they reached their destination. He hoped to hell she was up to it.

  Kiley, he thought. The joker’s name was Kiley, and he’d gone down with another woman. His mistress, according to the local scuttlebutt. Nobody had mentioned a wife in the background, or if they had, he hadn’t paid any attention. He’d never had much of an ear for gossip.

  The jerk had been married, all right. Married to a real nice lady named Deke. Which brought up two questions in Kurt’s mind. Number one—what was his widow doing here?

  And number two—why the hell had he needed a mistress?

  Three

  “Right about there,” he said. Resting his head against hers, Kurt pointed off to the southeast. “Nothing much to see, but according to the coordinates, this is the place where your husband and his secretary went down.” He kicked himself mentally for bringing it up again. He didn’t want to know about her problems. He had enough of his own. Deke Kiley was just another charter. In a few more hours she’d be history, and he’d be one bank deposit closer to having a real home for Frog, in case some busybody from social services took a notion that a working charter boat wasn’t a proper home for a growing boy.

  She took a deep breath, and he noticed that her color had improved. The collar of her shirt was rucked up again, but he resisted the temptation to tuck it in. Barely. She still smelled like corn tassels, soap and shampoo. He figured a guy had to be pretty deprived to be turned on by something so wholesome. Too much celibacy could be hazardous to a guy’s health. Mental and otherwise.

  “Right about where that gull just tipped his wings,” he said, inhaling deeply.

  She still looked a little shaky. Maybe on the way back in, he’d invite her up to the flying bridge. The rolling was more noticeable there, but the view was first-class. In case he failed to raise a few porpoise, maybe she’d settle for a seagoing sunset.

  “Would you please hand me my basket?” she asked, and he was reminded all over again of his mother’s ballerina music box. Ms. Kiley had a dainty way of speaking. Probably grew up saying yes ma’am and no ma’am to her elders.

  He set the basket on the chair beside her and would have headed to the controls but she reached out and snagged his hand. “Would you mind opening my champagne? I’m not real good with these things. The bottle always overflows when I try it.”

  “Are you sure you want to open it? Champagne’s not noted for settling stomachs.”

  “Oh, my belly woes are much better now.”

  Her belly woes. Kurt grinned and lifted the bottle from the wicker basket, then whistled soundlessly. He was no expert on vintages, but unless he was very much mistaken, this was a pretty high-priced bottle of French fizz.

  He started to pop the cork with his thumbs, then thought better of it. She could hardly finish it off alone, and it would be a shame to let it go flat. Carefully, he eased the cork out and handed it to her. She could sniff it or stick it in her pocket, it didn’t matter to him.

  “You pour,” she said, holding up two tulip glasses that glinted like wet ice in the hazy sunlight.

  “I’m driving, but thanks, anyway.”

  “I want to drink a toast. I can’t do it alone.”

  Shrugging, Kurt poured both glasses a third full and handed her one. The little lady was a bundle of surprises. He had a feeling she wouldn’t like being referred to as a little lady, but that was the term that came to mind when he looked at her. Little, and a lady. In the best sense of the word.

  “Here’s to you,” he said, raising his glass.

  “No, here’s to all the smooth-talking, conniving, philandering cads who ever wrote off a honeymoon on their taxes.” She tossed back hers and held out her glass for a refill.

  Kurt lifted his eyebrows. “If you say so.” He sipped. The stuff was dry as an Arizona attic. The last time he’d tasted anything like it had been at Alex and Dina’s wedding reception.

  “More, please.” She held out her glass again. Cautiously, he splashed in a scant half inch.

  Screwing her small face into a fearsome scowl, she said, “And here’s to all the, um, smooth-talking—did I already say that? Well, here’s to all the Lotharios who ever swept a woman off her feet and then dropped her flat on her—on her derriere with no warning.”

  Kurt hesitated. “Are we, by any chance, toasting your late husband?”

  Deke hiccupped. “Excuse me. Don’t ask personal questions.”

  “Lady, I didn’t bring him up, you did.” Dammit, he’d meant to steer clear of that particular reef.

  She shrugged and looked away, and Kurt studied the delicate line of her profile. Dina, the first woman he had loved and lost, had been a tall, elegant, classically beautiful blonde. Evelyn, the woman who had left him at the altar nearly three years ago, was a tall, sexy, voluptuously gorgeous brunette.

  Deke Kiley was none of the above.

  Not that it mattered. Deke Kiley was a stranger, he reminded himself. She was going to remain a stranger.

  Leaning over, she reached into the basket, brought out a pair of leis and proceeded to destroy them, flower by flower, tossing the torn petals overboard. Kurt watched silently for a moment and then, shaking his head, he left her and returned to the controls. She didn’t even notice his leaving. The lady, he decided, was slightly screwy, but probably harmless.

  Deke noticed, all right. Under the circumstances, it was unseemly, but she couldn’t help noticing the way his muscles flexed as he jogged up the ladder, the way the wind blew his khakis against his muscular body.

  What’s more, she decided woozily, he was nice. Unusually kind, not to mention unusually attractive, even with the eye patch.

  Especially with the eye patch.

  What he was was sexy. Deke was no expert on sexiness in a man. She’d been taught to look for other qualities, but once a woman’s hormones got in on the act, a whole new world opened up.

  There’d been a time when she’d thought Mark was sexy. He had certainly managed to convince her she couldn’t live without him, and vice versa. But if a woman could be married to a man for nearly eighteen months without even knowing who he was, she was nowhere near ready to trust her judgment of a man she had known for less than a day:

  Besides, the last thing she needed right now was to be distracted by a sexy male rear end and a pair of tanned, golden-haired, muscular forearms. Not when she was trying so hard to be furious. Or if not furious, then certainly righteously indignant. The trouble was, her righteous indignation kept slipping away, leaving behind little more than the sour dregs of resentment and disillusionment, which hardly warranted such a dramatic, not to mention expensive, memorial.

  She belched and patted her lips with a tissue. Either she was getting sick again or the mixture of champagne and cola on an empty stomach was beginning to have an effect.

  Several minutes later Captain Stryker descended the ladder again. The course held steady, the prow cutting through the waves at a low rate of speed. It occurred to Deke that there was no one driving, but before she could begin to worry, she was distracted by the way he moved about the cockpit. Her slightly glazed eyes followed him with a wistful expression that would have shocked her if she’d been aware of it. She thought he must not have been in the business of chartering very long, because he hadn�
�t quite got his sea legs yet.

  Once more she admired the way his khakis hugged his rear end when he bent over to retrieve a couple more cans of cola from a locker under the ladder, and then she chided herself for noticing. Normally it was a man’s hands and eyes she noticed, not his behind.

  Mark’s eyes had been blue, watchful and rather small.

  The captain’s eye was gray, deep-set and surprisingly gentle in such a harshly angular face.

  Mark’s hands had been elegant. He was the first man she’d ever met who had his nails professionally manicured. She’d been impressed, having been taught all her life the value of good grooming.

  Captain Stryker’s hands were square and tanned, with a glint of golden hairs on the back. His nails were square and short and scrupulously clean, but she’d bet her last tea biscuit that he’d never been anywhere near a manicurist.

  At least not in a professional capacity.

  “Hey, you want something to eat? Sandwiches? Cheese crackers?”

  “Yuck.” It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten since supper the night before, and very little even then. “I mean, no, thank you.”

  He smiled. He had nice teeth, too. Square, white but not quite perfect. She felt a vague stirring of excitement and put it down to the mixture of canned cola and French champagne and not enough food. It had to be that, because she was far too sensible to be distracted, much less attracted, by another man right now, no matter how nice his smile and his…

  Well—that, too.

  She had a book to finish and some major decisions to make concerning her future. In two brief years, her entire outlook on life had changed, and now she was ready to move forward. This time without any blow-dried jerk who wore silk underwear, Italian suits and too much cologne. A jerk who’d once made her feel like an idiot simply because she’d referred to his wristwatch as a Rolodex.

  He’d told his brother about it, and then he’d told his secretary and a couple of developers they’d been entertaining at the club, and laughed himself silly each time.

  The insensitive, self-centered bastard.

  Yes! That’s exactly what he’d been! The husband she’d felt so guilty over not mourning properly had been a self-centered, two-timing bastard.

  Deke felt a swift surge of exhilaration in thinking a word she had never spoken aloud more than once or twice in her entire life. Profanity, she decided, helping herself to another sip of champagne, could be downright empowering.

  “Bastard, bastard, bastard,” she muttered. And then, while she was at it, “Damn and hell.” When it came to satisfaction, assertiveness beat the heck—the hell—out of polite, ladylike passivity.

  “Did you say something?” Kurt called over his shoulder.

  “Nope. Nothing important.”

  He appeared beside her, holding out a frosty can of cola in a Souvenir of Swan Inlet sweat jacket. Removing the crystal tulip from her hand, he said, “Here, try this. It’s better for what ails you than champagne.”

  “Nothing ails me.” She flashed him a fivehundred-watt smile.

  Kurt blinked. “Glad to hear it. For a minute there, I thought you might be upset about something.”

  Her eyes were light brown and clear as a sunlit creek. He must have just imagined that fleeting stricken look, because her grin was gutsy as all get-out. The little lady might look like a dressing-table ballerina, but underneath that dainty exterior she was pure stainless steel.

  He invited her topside for a better view. “Might see a few porpoise roll by. At any rate, we’re in for a pretty spectacular sunset, unless I miss my guess.”

  She insisted on bringing the champagne and glasses. Kurt shook his head, but when he saw that stubborn little chin of hers ratchet up another notch, he let it pass. For some people, boats and booze went together. It wasn’t a mixture he cared for, having hauled too many such victims out of the drink in his air-sea rescue days, but he suspected the lady had had something of a shock today. If the champagne made it go down any easier, then who was he to complain?

  He let her go up first and braced a hand on each side, in case she lost her footing. The seas weren’t all that high, but they were rolling in at a pretty steady clip. He thought briefly of the latest tropical depression and then turned his attention to the view directly ahead at eye level.

  Despite the cool offshore breeze, a bead of sweat trickled down his throat. By now he’d seen her from just about every angle. Looking up at her from the cockpit while she stood on the pier above him in her lace-collared, flowered dress. Looking down at her in the cabin while she lay on his bunk clutching a bucket. Looking head-on at her while they toasted whatever the hell it was they had toasted. And now this. A small, neatly rounded stern that was close enough to touch. Close enough to—

  Okay, so she looked good. A little too good. Smelled good, too. Kurt was surprised and not a little alarmed at the degree of interest he was beginning to feel in a woman who wouldn’t be his type, even if he’d had a type.

  They were barely cruising. He’d set the controls a tad above idle. Just as she stepped onto the bridge, a rogue sea caught them on the starboard beam, and he leapt up the last few rungs. “Hang on,” he warned, grabbing her with one hand and the controls with the other. She braced her small red sneakers on the textured surface, clutched the bottle and glass stem with one hand and hooked the fingers of her other hand into his belt.

  It was like having a live hand grenade rammed into his pocket. He sucked in his breath and tried to ignore the sudden jolt of testosterone that shot through his system.

  For the next half hour or so, Kurt regaled his passenger with everything he knew about fish, gulls and seagoing mammals. She toasted each species with a sip of champagne. He declined.

  Watching carefully to see that she didn’t guzzle the stuff too fast and get sick again, he searched for another topic to take her mind off whatever ailed her. He mentioned the years he’d spent doing search and rescue missions for the Coast Guard, making it sound as routine as any other job, not because he was overly modest but because he’d never been given to dramatics.

  Evidently, his social skills were improving, because she sipped. She didn’t guzzle. Between sips she told him about the story line she had conceived that she was hoping to sell as a proposal for her third book, then had to explain what a proposal was.

  They talked about cold winters and hot summers and dogs they had once owned. He told her a little about growing up on a central North Carolina farm that was now a strip mall, and she told him about growing up in a small town near Norfolk, Virginia, with three elderly teetotaling relatives, and about the small girls’ school she had attended that had taught her Latin and eighteenth-century literature but not a whole lot about surviving the twentieth century.

  He caught her looking at his eye patch a few times. Evidently either her school or her elderly relatives had taught her not to ask personal questions of strangers.

  So, feeling as expansive as if he’d matched her drink for drink, he told her about the crash he’d survived in rescuing a kid and a dog during a near blizzard, again not making himself out to be a hero, because he wasn’t. He’d simply been a part of a team doing a job that was sometimes dangerous, sometimes routine and sometimes—when they were successful—exceedingly rewarding.

  “Why did you quit?” She was looking at him as if he was king of the hill, which he wasn’t. Never pretended to be, but if she wanted to think so, then what the hell—who was he to disillusion her?

  “I’d put in a lot of years. It was time to get out if I wanted to start another career. Besides, I’d discovered that, while I liked the work, I don’t have a military personality.”

  She seemed to consider that for a while. She had a way of squinting off into the distance when she was thinking that made him wonder if she needed glasses.

  Picturing her with a pair of horn-rims sliding down her minuscule nose, he grinned. They were cruising in a wide circle over the place where her husband’s plane had gone d
own. On a clear day, with the sun directly overhead, you could see the dark shadow.

  Kurt didn’t see any reason to mention it. In fact, he didn’t see any reason to hang around here any longer. The wind was kicking up. The R&R had a soft chine on her that cut through a choppy sea, but he’d just as soon not have a seasick woman on his hands again.

  Or any woman at all, he reminded himself with a certain element of regret. At the moment he had a fourteen-year-old kid to look after, a determined child welfare worker he was doing his best to avoid, a new career to worry about, a house he was wanting to buy and enough experience to know that women were a lot like Diamond Shoals. Exciting. Beautiful to look at with their ice-green, lace-edged frills dancing in the sunlight against the deep royal blue of the Gulf Stream, as long as you remembered to keep a safe distance away.

  Just like a lot of beautiful, innocent-looking women, those same beautiful, innocent-looking shoals had claimed more than their share of victims over the centuries.

  They cruised in comfortable silence for a while. Deke took tiny sips from her glass. The bottle was still over half full. Now and then Kurt pointed out something of interest. Gulls diving for supper. Several charter boats trolling offshore. He told her the bluefins were running, and she beamed another smile at him, looking pink-cheeked, pink-nosed and happier than she had all day.

  Thinking smugly that Frog wasn’t the only member of the crew with social skills, he began to hum a Beatles melody. Trouble was, it sounded, even to his tone-deaf ears, more like a bass fiddle being tuned.

  But the sunset was great. Everything he had hoped for. Deke wanted to go below for her camera, and after cautioning her to hold on to the rails, Kurt let her go down alone. All his masculine instincts were urging him to pick her up and carry her wherever she needed to go, to wait on her hand and foot, to cushion her in cotton wool. Which was one reason he thought he’d better let her go alone. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had affected him this way. Had Dina? It had been so long, he couldn’t recall. Evelyn sure as hell hadn’t.