Chapter One

 

 

 

 

Boats. For as long as she could remember, Regan had been in love with boats, and of course, the water. Her parents had had a cottage, a real cottage, not one of those palaces by the lake. It had no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. But it had had a dock, and a small boat with an outboard motor. Later, a canoe had joined the family's 'fleet'.

Since the cottage next door had a sailboat, and girl her age, she'd learned to sale when she was ten. And since the little outboard motor on their boat was constantly breaking down, she'd learned how to fix it, and eventually, how to rebuild it.

When she was a teenager, she'd taken up with a rich boy named Jason, who lived in one of the palaces across the lake. Jason had a shiny speedboat and water skis, and she'd learned how to ski, how to drive the boat, and how to deep throat, all talents she employed regularly.

Jason and she had broken up when he'd left for an ivory tower university in the northeast. Regan had perused college catalogs of various kinds but found nothing she had an interest in spending her life on, certainly not to the extent of continuing her formal education.

Regan had always thrived in the open air. Being forced to sit in a chair in a musty room listening to old men drone on about subjects she had little interest in was little short of torture. She was a hyperactive girl and needed to be doing things!

Given her interest in boats, and the long periods of time she spent at the cottage, it surprised no one in her family that she'd gotten a job at The Boathouse. The store was right alongside the lake, and sold every manner of boating equipment and supplies, not excluding snacks, beer, suntan oil and bathing suits. It had fuel pumps, and did minor repairs and maintenance.

There were a lot of jobs in The Boathouse, but most were inside. Regan preferred the docks. She got to move around more, see the sights, and to interact with people.

Of course, a lot of them were damn fools who didn't seem to know enough to turn their boats off until she yelled at them, but you took the bad with the good.

When the gleaming blue, forty foot cruiser pulled up next to the docks, well, that was good. It was a beauty, clearly from the other side of the lake. It was gorgeous, with a long, raked nose, steeply angered, low rising, curved windshield, and a short, flat roof. It looked like it was racing across the water even as it pulled slowly into the dock.

Very slowly. The 'captain' clearly didn't know what he was doing. Regan got impatient and reached out to grip the rail at the bow, pulling it in, but then didn't spot any rope to tie it down.

"You have any rope on board?" she called, looking up at the man.

Another man leaned around the side of the cabin and looked at her a moment, a faintly amused smile on his face. He wore dark glasses and a baseball cap, and not much else.

"I have lots of rope," he said. "Is there a particular color you prefer?"

The query baffled Regan and she looked at the man in confusion, then pointed out the obvious.

"I need to tie your boat down," she said.

Sometimes you had to tell idiots the obvious.

He disappeared, then as the 'captain' tried to turn off the engines he reversed them instead, suddenly. Regan was holding onto the bow rail, and it took her a moment to communicate to her hand that she needed to let go, which was too long. She was yanked over the side of the dock into the water as the engines stopped again, the boat floating slowly back and out from the dock.

She popped to the surface, glowering at the boat, then swam to the nearest pylon and climbed up the ladder and back onto the dock. Idiots, she thought. She resented that a boat like the cruiser was in the hands of a fool who didn't know enough to appreciate her.

A rich fool, of course. The boat was probably worth half a million dollars.

"Throw me a rope, you idiot," she called.

The man in the baseball cap gave her the same amused look, then tossed out a long blue line she caught and wrapped around the cleat as she drew the boat in again. She was dripping wet, but that didn't really bother her until she realized she'd had her Ipod in one of the pockets of her shorts. Cursing, she pulled it out and examined it as the man in the cap leaped over the side of the boat.

"Sorry about that," he said. "My man isn't very familiar with boats."

"That doesn't help my Ipod!' she said, raising her eyes to glare at him.

The glare held but she felt a flicker of startlement. It wasn't unusual for people to arrive in bathing suits. But this guy had a body. She'd seen some decent male bodies, of course, especially when she was with Jason, for his crowd all had home gyms and trainers.

This man, an older man, she thought, well, over thirty probably anyway, had the well-built body of a man who used his muscles. There was some gym work in there too, probably, but it wasn't the carefully styled and cut body of someone building themselves up to look pretty. It was the body of someone who used their body, who exerted it regularly.

And it was a pretty powerful body to look at, with broad shoulders, a chest just short of being brawny, a flat belly, and strong, toned arms. He had a sardonic look on his square jawed face, and once he pulled off his sunglasses, she saw he had bright blue eyes, and was indeed over thirty, maybe as old as thirty five.

"If your man isn't familiar with boats he shouldn't be trying to pilot one," she half snapped, a bit distracted by all that male body right in front of her eyes.

Her head only came up to the center of his chest, after all.

"You're probably right, but I seem short of people with that particular skill set at the moment," he replied, looking down at her with amusement.

His eyes flicked down.

"Nice outfit," he said, with another lazily amused look.

Regan flushed. She was still dripping wet, and in addition to her shorts she'd been wearing a white shirt which she'd rolled up and tied together under her breasts. White, after all, reflected sunlight best. Of course, now that it was wet it was clinging to her body in a revealing way, especially since it hadn't been buttoned.

It wasn't that her body embarrassed her, really. She thought it was a fine body, and certainly every boy she'd ever met had agreed. And she'd been teasing them in smaller and smaller bikinis for years. If you've got it, flaunt it, was a statement she, for the most part, fully agreed with, along with 'you're only young once'.

So showing a little cleavage to a handsome man, even an older man, was hardly something to unnerve her. It was the smirk that annoyed her.

"How would you like to go in the water?" she asked.

The threat failed to daunt him.

"I don't think you have the weight to push me off the dock," he said.

"Ever hear of leverage!?"

"Practically wrote the book on it," he replied.

He pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his shorts, slipped a pair of bills out of it, and then, to her outrage, folded them up, and slid them into her cleavage. Or to be more precise, slid them into the right cup of her bikini bra, which was now showing, since the shirt was plastered against her.

"Buy yourself a new music box on me, beautiful."

"Are we tied up now?" a man asked, peering down from the boat.

The man on the dock put his sunglasses on, and, grinning broadly, headed down the dock. Regan glared after him, then took a run at him from behind.

Regan had an athletic body, and had explored just about every sport at high school, including jumping and gymnastics.

"Hey, you!"

The man half turned his upper body as she leapt on his back, swinging her legs violently to the side to twist herself - and him around and spin them both off the dock and into the lake.

He made a much bigger splash than she did.

She knew a moment of fear. What if he didn't know how to swim, but he popped to the surface easily enough, and she then gave him a sniff of satisfaction, and pretended to ignore him as she swam to the pylon to climb up.

She had just started to climb up when a shadow came over her, and she quickly turned to find him right there, very close, glaring at her as he grabbed the ladder above her head.

"That wasn't very polite," he said, his voice much less amused than it had been.

"I guess I'm not a polite girl," she gulped.

"Do you know what I do to girls who aren't polite?" he asked in a low voice.

"You weren't polite stuffing bills into my top either!"

"That's true, but I'm the customer. I'm supposed to be a jerk. You're the employee. You're supposed to be polite anyway."

And with that he gripped her arm and yanked her forward, off the ladder, to fall back into the water. Before she could spin around and do a thing he had already climbed up the ladder. She glared after him, then climbed up, hearing his voice speaking to someone up above.

The voice she recognized almost at once as belonging to Mr. Billings, her boss.

He glowered at her as she climbed, dripping wet again, onto the dock, red faced with indignation.

"You are fired!" he said, shaking a finger in her face.

"But - ."

"It really was as much my fault as hers," the man said.

"I will not have employees attacking customers!" Billings said. "You can pick up your check tomorrow morning!"

He turned to the man. "Again, I apologize, sir. It won't happen again," he said.

Regan glared at Billlings' back as he stalked away.

"You see? When you work for someone, you better be on your best behavior," the man said.

She turned and glared at him instead. "Bite me!" she said.

He didn't seem insulted. "Any particular location?"

She muttered something under her breath and started to stalk off herself but he gripped her arm, his grip firm as steel, though not at all painful.

"Since you don't have a job any more you can work for me," he said.

She was just about to unload on him, but stopped in surprise.

"Work for you?! Doing what!?"

"Piloting this boat, for one. I'm sure you'll be far better at it than Ethan."

"And how would you know that?" she demanded.

He grinned at her again. "You don't recognize me? Well, there were a lot of people at the party that day."

"What day?" she asked, frowning.

"You were Jason Dunlop's girlfriend at the time. I'm his uncle. My name is Adam Kane."

"Oh, uhm, no, I don't remember," she said, her voice faltering.

"Not surprised. There was a lot of people there, that day. You drew a lot of attention, though, in a little black bikini."

Regan blushed.