by J. Haymore
Mick might have done it. But...it still doesn't make sense. What could possibly be his motive to do something like that?
Ethan's lips tighten. "I don't trust him. Just be careful with him, okay?"
"Sure…but…do you… I mean, do you have any evidence that something is…untrustworthy about him? That…maybe that he caused Kyle to fall overboard?"
Ethan shakes his head. "It's nothing like that."
"What, then?"
"It's just a feeling. But I know how to read people, and I do it well, which is one of the reasons I'm successful at what I do."
I believe him, and for the first time, the spark of interest in Mick's dark eyes on us makes me shiver.
* * * * *
That afternoon, Ethan needs to work for a while, so I go onto the deck to hang out with Kyle and Nalani. Nalani, as usual, is on the bridge, making herself busy with adjusting sails and our course and checking all the electronics. Kyle is on the roof of the cabin, turned away from Nalani, his legs dangling over the edge.
I go to Nalani first, because it seems like the right thing to do. She greets me without looking at me, utterly focused on the instrument panel.
"Did you notice something strange about the compass while you were on watch?" she asks.
"Not at all. What's going on?"
"It's just… It's like someone put a magnet next to it. The readings are swinging around like crazy. I don't get it." She sighs. "I'm going to have to remove it and see if I can figure it out."
I groan. "Great." There have been maintenance issues like this from the very first day. I'd thought that a boat as new and perfectly outfitted as the Temptation wouldn't have these problems, but I was wrong.
"It's not a big deal—we still have the handheld compasses and the GPS. Still…" She shakes her head. "Just a pain in the ass," she mutters.
"Yes, it is," I agree.
"Can you get me a Phillips screwdriver and a pair of pliers?"
"Sure." I hurry down to the cabin, quickly find the tools she wants, and in a few minutes, I'm handing them over.
"Thanks," she says. And then, "Perfect," when I hand her the screwdriver.
She's usually so critical of me, even this small praise feels like a victory. "Do you need anything else?"
"Nah." She waves me off, then bends down to focus on her task.
"If you need anything, just shout," I say.
"Right." But she's barely paying attention to me now. I watch her for a few minutes, just to make sure she doesn't need my help, but she ignores me entirely. I back out of the bridge and head over to Kyle. I'm still a few feet away when I sense his bad mood.
"What are you doing?" I sit next to him and dangle my legs off the side beside his.
He closes his eyes. "Hey, Tara."
I blink at that. It's so rare that he calls me anything but "T."
"What's wrong?" I ask.
He's quiet for a minute and then gives a short bark of a laugh. "Nothing. Nothing at all."
I reel back a bit. His words drip with bitterness. Kyle is never like that. He's the most relaxed and laidback person I've ever known. "What happened, Ky?"
"Nothing, okay?"
"O…kay." This is so bizarre. Kyle rarely lets anything upset him. "But whatever it is, you know you can talk to me about it, right?"
He just shakes his head.
I lean toward him a little. "Is it Nalani?" I ask quietly.
He tilts his head up to the sky, which is blue and cloudless today. But he doesn't answer.
It must be something to do with Nalani.
Maybe…maybe he actually likes her. That thought stuns me…and it makes me happy and sad at the same time. I want Kyle to find someone who has the ability to affect him. But I don't want his heart broken.
I can't help but press him. "Did she do something?"
He closes his eyes. "No, she didn't do anything. She's fine."
"Then what's wrong?"
He ignores my question and instead gives me a forced, tight smile. "So…what's going on with Williams?"
The question jolts me. I've been so focused on Kyle, I didn't expect this curveball. "I think he's working."
He gives another bitter laugh. "That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean, then?"
"I meant, what's going on between you and him?"
My cheeks prickle with heat. "Ummm…" How to answer this one? What's happening between Ethan and me…as we agreed last night, it's between the two of us. So I hedge. "I'm not sure…exactly."
"Really?" That bitter edge hasn't left Kyle's voice. "Mick said he saw you kissing."
"Did he?" Annoyance at Mick cuts through me. When did he see us kissing? Or is he lying about it?
At this moment, I'd really like to stomp into his cabin and tell him to mind his own business. But Ethan's distrust has made me wary of Mick, and I'm not sure if he's just being nosy or if he's actually creepy…actually dangerous.
"So what's going on?" Kyle asks.
It's none of Kyle's business either. But Kyle is my best friend. He's been there for me…forever.
"I don't know, exactly. I think…" I pause.
"What do you think?"
"I like him, Ky. But we're not going to have a long-term relationship or anything. We both have lives in LA to get back to. But for now…" I leave the end of the sentence hanging.
Kyle turns wide green eyes on me. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I am."
"Come on. Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not!"
"Of course you are. You aren't a short-term-affair kind of girl. You're a forever kind of girl."
That statement shoves me into silence for a long moment. It reminds me of Ethan telling me that I needed the kind of guy who'd give me a real relationship. What is it with these men thinking they know who I am and what I need?
"What are you saying, Kyle?" I ask carefully.
He shakes his head. "Don't you get it?"
"No. I don't get it. Please, spell it out for me."
He blows out a whistling breath through his teeth. Then, "You're not the kind of girl who needs a guy fucking her, then walking away."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"What are you doing? What are you really doing?"
My hands flail out in exasperation. "I don't know. I guess… I guess I'm seeing where it can go. I like him."
"Right. So you are going to fuck him, then."
I recoil. "What the hell, Kyle?"
"Oh, come on, Tara. You tell me everything. So tell me now, are you going to fuck him?"
Yes. Yes, I am. And I can't wait. Before I met Ethan, I would never have thought of sex as fucking. But now…yes, I want to fuck him. I also want to make love to him. And everything in between.
"I don't know," I tell Kyle.
"That means yes," he mutters.
I hold out my hands. "Okay. What's your problem? You're fucking Nalani, aren't you? Before that, there was Sara. And Jessica and Marie and Michelle and Kimberly." I just rattle off the names I remember from his recent history—I don't know if they're in order, and I've probably skipped a few. "You haven't given a shit about any of them."
"That's different," he grinds out.
"No, it's not."
"It is," he insists.
"Ugh!" The sound is one of utter frustration. This is an imbalanced friendship if he can tell me in great TMI detail about the girls he's sleeping with, but when I get close to sleeping with a man, he gets pissy. "How is it different?"
"I care about you, T. I don't want you to get hurt. I swear to God, if Williams hurts you, I'm going to kill him."
"I'm a big girl. I can handle it."
He gives me a look that clearly says he doesn't believe me. "You sure?"
"I'm sure." I'm very nearly sure. Not quite all the way there. A ragged edge of fear still cuts through me. But Kyle doesn't need to know that.
"You know this guy's an asshole, right?"
"You seem
so sure of that. You're wrong, you know."
"Nope, I'm not wrong. I can just tell. There's something… Just…there's something not right about all this." He purses his lips. "I can just tell he's an ass, okay? Be careful."
I think of Ethan. He's been anything but an ass, to all of us. "What is up with you? Did Ethan say something to you, or…?"
"No." He nearly spits out the word. "I'm just worried about you."
I can tell he's really pissed about all this, and it's bewildering. "Okay, so…why haven't I had to worry about you with all the girls you've been with?"
"This is different," he growls. "You're different."
And then, all of a sudden, I get it. He thinks of me as a fragile little dandelion that will crumble with the slightest breeze. And I have been fragile. But now I'm strong…maybe not strong, but stronger. I know what I want and am willing to go after it instead of cowering from it. I'm going to throw myself into whatever is between Ethan and me, and, as he promised, I'm going to have no regrets.
"I'm stronger than you think I am," I tell Kyle.
His gaze scans me up and down, and then he looks away to scowl at the ocean. "You're right. I think you are stronger than I thought you were."
Kyle has never called me strong before. Pleasure courses through me, and I find myself grinning at him. "Do you think so?"
"Yeah, I do."
"And…that's good. Right?"
Something flashes through his green eyes—something like pain. Something I don't understand.
"It's really good." He drapes his arm over my shoulder and pulls me close. He kisses me on the cheek, then releases me and stands. "I need to go talk to Nalani." He turns and walks away.
When he reaches Nalani, he bends down to help her with the compass. I turn away from them and gaze out over the ocean. The breeze is stronger today, and whitecaps froth over the tops of the waves.
The conversation with Kyle has shaken me.
Chapter Eight
That night, I spend ten to eleven o'clock on watch alone. I'm dressed, as always, in pants and a T-shirt and my PFD…but I wait the entire hour in a state of anticipation. My whole body is charged. My senses are so attuned, I see and feel everything more sharply than usual.
It's like going on a first date with a guy I've had a crush on forever.
Ethan comes up onto the deck at eleven. His arms full of folded blankets, he walks out the companionway and through the cockpit, making his way to the bridge, his eyes never breaking from mine.
The breeze ruffles his dark hair, and a five o'clock shadow darkens his jaw. I can't help but imagine the sensation of it rubbing over my skin, which feels so sensitive right now.
His eyes are beautiful, steely blue in the starry light, and full of heat and warmth. He usually has a stern face, but whenever he looks at me, his features soften, turn even more handsome.
He puts the blankets on the bench then comes up behind me and slips his arms around me. His lips press into my hair, then move down to my ear. With a sigh I can feel through my whole body, he takes my lobe between his teeth. He doesn't bite me—he grazes his teeth over the most sensitive part of my ear, and the resulting shudder curls my toes.
"How are you?" he asks, his breath whispering over my ear.
"Glad you're here."
"I would have come earlier, but I had a conference call."
"I know." He spent most of the day in front of his computer and didn't eat dinner with the rest of us. "Is something going on?"
"Not really." He sits on the bench beside the captain's chair and rests his elbows on his knees. "Just putting out fires. They're getting twitchy without me there."
"Does that mean you'll have to go back early?"
His smile is slow, and so sexy, my insides feel molten. "I'd rather let the fires burn than give up my time with you."
My smile grows. He makes me feel good about myself. He makes me believe that he wants me because I'm me and for no other reason. It's a heady feeling—and one I haven't had in ages. Maybe ever.
"In any case," he adds, "things will be easier when we're in Hawaii. I'm about to throw the damned satellite phone into the ocean. It's a pain in the ass. And the Internet out here…" He shakes his head in disgust.
"You'll get a better connection in Hawaii." The bad signal out here irritates him no end. After trying to log on to the Internet a few times, I decided I don't have the patience for it. I'd just wanted to log on to google Ethan anyway. But Ethan actually does have important things to do, and it's frustrating for him that he can't be as efficient as he's used to.
He squeezes me a bit tighter. "Everything okay here?"
"Yes." I've checked the radar, the autopilot, all the instruments. The wind is averaging at fifteen knots, our speed is about eight knots, and everything is as it should be.
"Good. Let's go up top."
I unclip my harness, and we go to the roof of the cabin. Ethan spreads out the blankets he's brought, and we stretch out on them. Both of us gaze up at the sky for a moment, then I turn to him, propping my head on my palm. He looks young staring up at the heavens like this, but he's twenty-nine, an owner of a very successful business and, according to Kyle, loaded with money. None of us have discussed Ethan's wealth. But it's so much a part of him that he's at the point where he doesn't need to talk about it.
He glances over at me, and smiles as he reaches up and brushes a strand of hair from my face. "Hey, beautiful."
Heat prickles on my face. "Hey," I whisper.
"What are you thinking about?"
"You."
"What about me?"
"I was just wondering how you became what you are."
"Why?"
A slight tension colors the word, but I plunge ahead anyway. "I want to know everything about you."
He's all I can think about, and I want to know him, peel him open, and find out what lies beneath all the facades he chooses to present to the world.
"Mmm…" He turns back to face the sky, his expression unreadable. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Where did you go to school?"
"I went to public schools in San Jose."
"Did you go to college?"
He nods. "Stanford. But I quit in my junior year to join a tech startup."
"Sounds a little like you were following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs," I say, recalling the biography I read on the founder of Apple.
He grins. "That's what I thought at the time. We designed innovative memory chips. We were pretty successful, and after a couple of years, we were bought out by Oracle."
I remember how his father was also involved in a startup before his death. "Did you get involved in the startup because you wanted to follow in your dad's footsteps?"
He slants a glance at me, then turns his gaze to the sky again. "Not really. It'd be more accurate to say I wanted to succeed where he failed."
"And you did."
"I did," he agrees. "A thousand times over." His voice is devoid of emotion and his expression carefully blank as the Temptation pitches and rolls gently in the swell.
"So…were you angry at your dad for failing? For leaving you and your mom alone?"
His face whips in my direction, his eyes wide, deep pools reflected in the moonlight. "What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. It just seems like it was important for you to prove that you could do it better than him."
"He left my mom penniless, Tara. He sank every single cent they had into that business. He was passionate and hardworking, and my mom never blamed him for all that we went through afterward."
"But you did."
He's quiet for a moment. Then, quietly, "I guess so. He was a selfish bastard. It's why I never become emotionally involved with the startups I fund. I study the numbers and analyze potential. It's a business, and I'm not going to forget that. He did. He let his emotional attachment to the company rule him. And look where it left us."
"Sounds to me like your mom made it through okay."
>
"Eventually." Ethan's lips are tight, and the moonlight gives his face a pale, silvery sheen. "We lost the house within a year of my dad dying. Welfare isn't enough when you don't have a roof over your head."
My throat seems to close in on itself. "I can't imagine," I say softly. "Did you go to relatives, or…?"
"There was no one to go to. We lived in a shelter for a while. Then my mom got a job as a janitor, and she earned enough money—barely—for a studio apartment. Eventually, she took some early childhood education classes and worked as an aide in a daycare, then she became a teacher in a preschool. I keep telling her she doesn't need to teach anymore, but she likes it."
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that."
"Yeah." He takes a deep breath. "No more, okay? Not about that."
"Okay." There's got to be a lot more to what he and his mom went through, but that's enough for tonight. I'm already reeling, imagining him as a boy having lost his dad and his house, living in a shelter… My stomach gets tight thinking about it.
But there's so much more I want to know. And he eventually went to Stanford, so growing up couldn't have been all bad for him.
We both lie there, moving with the motion of the Temptation, listening to the sounds of the cat pushing through the waves.
Eventually, I say, "So…you moved to LA after Oracle bought your company?"
"No, not exactly." A muscle works in his jaw. "I continued to work there for another year. And then…I was forced out."
"Why?" I ask.
After a long silence, he shrugs. "Why does anything happen? There was conflict, and it was decided all around that it'd be better if I left. So I moved away and started the business in LA. I was an angel investor at first."
I think about that for a minute—an angel investor is someone who invests their own funds in startup businesses. "That must have required quite a bit of capital."
"It did."
It seems like becoming an angel investor would require a lot more than the proceeds of the sale of a startup tech company. Chewing my lip, I consider whether to ask him about that. No. If he wanted to tell me more right now, he would. I roll onto my back. "So you started off as an angel investor, but then…"
