Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance (7 page)

“Now that you’ve given me the idea—”

“Just get in the boat, Dallas,” she ordered, glaring at him.

Without another word, he climbed aboard with a minimum of boat rocking and sat down on the prow seat. He pushed his sunglasses back onto his nose, then looked up to find Cass gazing at him with raised eyebrows.

“Well, at least you’re not a ‘slub,’ ” she commented, before climbing into the stern. She took
a pair of sunglasses from her shirt pocket and put them on, then plopped a straw hat on her head. Starting the motor, she said, “Cast off, Dallas.”

He pulled the bow rope off the anchor piling, and stuffed it under his seat as she cast off the stern line. Under her guidance, the small boat drifted purposefully away from the dock and the other boats, and out into the bay.

While they rode steadily toward their unknown destination, Dallas studied Cass. She was dressed in cheap thongs, threadbare jeans, and a man’s old white shirt, which was about six sizes too big for her. Her hair was in a loose topknot again, the stray tendrils swirling softly around her face in the light breeze. She looked almost like a young girl. Except for her eyes, he thought. Behind her lightly tinted sunglasses, he could see an anxious expression in them. He remembered now the redness that hinted at a restless night.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” he finally asked, absently grateful for the same breeze pushing cool air against his short-sleeve knit shirt.

“Barely,” she replied, looking past him to the traffic on the bay. “I kept Jean up all night, too, I think.”

“Jean?”

She glanced at him, then away. “I … I couldn’t stay at my place, so I went over to hers for the rest of the night.”

He could understand her feeling; alone and vulnerable in a house where someone had already tried to break in. She would have been insane if she’d stayed.

“What did the police say?” he asked.

“Just that whoever it was had scratched up the metal pretty badly around the lock. It sounded like they meant an amateur, so I figured a kid.” She smiled wryly. “I think I would have been a whole lot happier if he’d picked a night when I wasn’t home.”

Dallas chuckled at her observation. “Install a burglar alarm. I assume you don’t have one. You didn’t say.”

“I don’t have one. But I think I will after last night.” She shivered in the hot sunlight. “It’s silly to be scared of a kid.”

He refrained from saying that if there were a next time it might not be a kid. She didn’t need another nebulous anxiety; she was clearly suffering from a few, as it was. He decided she’d been wise to come out on the boat. A day of quiet fishing would be relaxing. Leaning his elbows back on the prow, he vowed to give her easy, no-pressure companionship. After what she’d been through, she deserved it.

From beneath hooded lids, he watched her expertly bring the boat across the bay and into one of the numerous inlets. The noise of the boat traffic gradually faded as they made their way around islands of tall sea grass. The breeze disappeared too. The air grew heavy and pungent, and the sun seemed even hotter. Silently Dallas cursed the heavy jeans and the knit shirt he was wearing. Perspiration was already trickling down the sides of his face. He knew he’d feel like a slowly roasted turkey before the day was over. Not only did Cass look gorgeous, but she was no doubt cool and comfortable too.

Cass finally brought the boat to a halt next to one of the islands. Dallas sat up and glanced around. “I never realized that fish used these inlets. Do they breed here?”

“Some do. But we’re catching crabs, Dallas, not fish,” she explained.

“Crabs?” He frowned at her. “But you just caught some the other day.”

“I’d catch them every day, if I could. I have this thing for them.” She chuckled. “Kind of like what Nero Wolfe has for shad roe. Have you ever read the Rex Stout books?”

Dallas nodded. “Wolfe’s a favorite of mine. I remember that he eats roe every day that it’s in season.”

“Just like me.” She dropped a small anchor weight over the side, then started rummaging through the gear. She baited a line with a piece of fish. “Since I like crabs very fresh, I decided years ago it was sensible to live near the source. Bait one of those baskets and drop it over the side, will you?”

He picked up a basket and studied it. It was more like a wire cage, but in this case, all four sides opened flat, with a line attached to the top edge of each side. He assumed the four sides would lie flat until the fisherman drew up the center cord, thereby closing the sides and entrapping the crab as it nibbled on the bait inside. It had been years since he’d been fishing, and he’d never been crabbing before.

“How do you know when a crab is in here?” he asked, turning the basket around to see if he could find some signal device.

Cass smiled. “You don’t. You just haul it up every so often and hope to find one in it.”

“Okay.” Dallas tossed it over the side with a loud splash. The basket’s anchor line slithered over the edge of the boat and disappeared into the water. At the same instant he realized he was supposed to have tied the line onto the boat. Hoping to see it floating on the water, he leaned out over the side. No line.

“Ah … Cass?”

She glanced up from baiting another line. “Yes?”

“How much did you like that basket?” he asked, smiling innocently at her.

“How much did I …” The puzzled frown on her face deepened. “What happened, Carter?”

Searching the water once again, he said, “I didn’t know I was supposed to anchor the line.”

She groaned aloud as she leaned over the side in her own search. “Damn! The current must have taken the line, and now we’ll never find it. A perfectly good basket …”

Dallas straightened and flipped off his loafers, then began pulling off his socks.

“What are you doing?”

“The line’s probably under the boat, and we just can’t see it.” Deciding the jeans would have to stay on, he eased his legs over the side of the boat, then flipped over onto his stomach so he could let himself into the water without upsetting the tiny vessel.

“Be careful, Dallas,” Cass warned, grabbing the edges with both hands as the boat rocked violently. “And watch where you put your feet. Who knows what might be down there.”

“I’m okay,” he said as his feet sank slightly into the squishy bottom. He stood chest high in the cool water. Lord, but it felt good, he thought as the heat that had been building in his body instantly dissipated. Still, he didn’t relish the idea of diving under the murky surface to retrieve the basket. The damn line was too light to have gone down deep, though. Reaching under the boat, he carefully swept around with his hands. The tips of his fingers brushed against something nearly under the hull, and he grabbed at it.

“I’ve got it!” he called out, triumphantly holding the sodden line up for her to see. He stepped sideways, closer to her end of the boat. “Here, you can—”

An agonizing bolt of pain shot through him. something had latched onto his left foot. He yelped, and leaped for the side of the boat, nearly tipping it over. His head hit the cooler, and a second sharp pain jolted to life.

“Dallas!” Cass shouted, scrambling toward him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Flopping half-in, half-out of the boat, he shouted curses as the pain intensified. He must have walked into a shark, he thought in a panic. He was positive his foot was gone and the maniacal thing was eating its way up his leg. Desperately he tried to shake the monster off. He turned his head in an unconsciously morbid attempt to see what was happening, but the awkwardness of his position and the churning water made it impossible.

Suddenly Cass was laughing. She shouted, “Don’t move! I’ll get the net.”

“The net!” he gasped out. “What the hell … !”

“You caught ‘Jaws’!” she yelled in a clearly gleeful voice. “Whatever you do, don’t move!”

“Don’t move!” he exclaimed angrily, thrashing around even harder with his body at the thought of a huge, gaping-mouthed great white gnawing his kneecap. He’d seen
Jaws
twice. Water sprayed all over him from his efforts.

“Drat, don’t move!” Cass whacked him on the backside with something hard, then sat straddled on his back to hold him still. His lungs in a sudden vise, he gasped for air. “Hold … hold …”

He’d hold, he thought in a red haze of fury at the pain and her weight on his back. He’d hold his hands around her throat when she finally got off him!

“I’ve got him!” she screamed, bouncing up and down on his back. The breath whooshed out of him, and the vise was replaced by a vacuum. He struggled frantically against it.

Suddenly she was off him, and pure air was rushing back into his lungs. Relief washed through him, and in one mighty effort he yanked the rest of his body into the boat. He slumped onto the bottom, grateful for the feel of the tackle box and other sundries jabbing into his sides.

“My foot,” he whispered weakly as he remembered the terrible pain. He slowly opened his eyes. “The shark got it, didn’t he?”

“What shark?” Cass asked, leaning over him.

“Jaws,” he said, gazing at her. Her face was upside down and absolutely beautiful.

She had a fit of giggles. “There was no shark, Dallas. Just the granddaddy of all crabs. I knew
there was a big one around here. For weeks something smart was taking big chunks out of my bait, but avoiding the traps. And you caught it!”

A damn crab, he thought, closing his eyes again as the vision of a huge shark was replaced by a scuttling shellfish. A damn crab. Then he remembered the power in the claws, and he said, “My foot. How bad is it?”

He felt her stretch out next to him. She cradled his foot with one hand, her fingers gently probing. “I hate to tell you this, Dallas …”

He braced himself for the worst. “Yes?”

“You’ve got a cut about the size of a dime, and some scraped skin.”

Opening his eyes, he struggled to sit up. “That’s it?” he asked in disbelief. “Just a small cut?”

“Look for yourself.”

He did. Except for a small cut, his foot was fine. Feeling the heat rise to his face, he glanced up at Cass, who was grinning at him.

“The Attack of the Giant Crab!” she exclaimed. “If the folks at M & L could have seen you …”

She collapsed into hysterical laughter.

He glared at her. Privately he admitted his pleasure to see that the frightened, almost hunted look she’d had earlier was now gone. Still, he would have been much more pleased if it hadn’t been at the expense of his dignity.

Her laughter suddenly redoubled.

Dallas narrowed his eyes at her. He’d get her back for this, he vowed. Somehow.

Half an hour later, Cass was still laughing.

She had tried her best to smother it. She really had, she thought, as she kept her gaze from straying to Dallas’s angrily set jaw. The inlet currents were sluggish about carrying away sea-life refuse, and his now-dried clothes had taken on the aroma of a fish too long out of the water. His face was becoming redder, although Cass wasn’t sure if it was the heat or his anger. Jaws had certainly demolished Dallas’s sophisticated executive image.

He’d kill her if she giggled, she thought. Instantly the vision of him flopping around with a crab hanging off his foot popped into her head again.

“Oh, Lord,” she muttered under her breath while ruthlessly suppressing renewed amusement.

She glanced toward the stern, and immediately spotted Dallas’s “catch” scrabbling around in the wooden bushel basket. A burst of giggles escaped her.

“That’s it!” Dallas exclaimed, standing up.

He yanked his knit shirt off, revealing in the process a firmly muscled chest. She nearly gasped as her gaze helplessly traversed the virile picture he made. A flow of sensual lethargy radiated through her thighs.

His hands went to his belt buckle, and he began to undo it.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cass exclaimed, common sense returning at his provocative gesture.

His hands stopped their task, thankfully. “It’s too damned hot, and these clothes stink!”

“But you can’t—” she yelped.

“I will,” he said flatly. “It’s bad enough that you’re going to be laughing at me all day, but I will be damned before I’ll swelter to death too.”

“Dallas, be serious! You can’t sit around in your underwear, for goodness’ sake!”

“I don’t intend to. I’m just going to cut the jeans into shorts with the knife from the tackle box. I’d try to do it without taking my pants off, but if I cut myself, you’d probably throw me in for bait to catch Jaws II.”

Cass smiled at him.

“If your modesty is offended, then turn around,” he suggested in an exasperated voice as he went to work on the buckle again. “But these damn pants are coming off!”

She whipped her head in the opposite direction. But the sound of a zipper being opened, followed by cloth being skinned down bare flesh, brought a wealth of images to her mind … and a little mischief as well.

She began to sing
The Stripper.
“Dada-da-da. Dida-da-da. Dada-da-da, dida-a-a. Dida. Bombom. Dida. Bombom—”

“Very funny, Cass.”

Laughing helplessly, she covered her face with her hands. “It was too good to pass up.”

And it had been. She admitted she was enjoying herself hugely. Already the scare with the burglar seemed distant … even unreal. It was now as if she’d viewed the incident on television, rather than its actually having happened to her. Thank goodness for Dallas Carter, she thought, smiling to herself. He’d made her laugh on a day she hadn’t expected to.

He hadn’t mentioned M & L or the proxy once, and she was very grateful to him for that kindness. She acknowledged that he did have some honor. If the circumstances had been different, Dallas might have been a friend. A more intimate term came to mind, and she pushed it away.

A few minutes later, he said, “Okay, you can turn around.”

Grinning, she turned. Her amusement faded, though, at the sight of him in his shorts. Every muscle of his body was well defined without looking the least brawny. He could easily have been a “Hunk of the Month.” Where in the world, she wondered, did they grow company presidents like him? All this time, and she’d had no idea he had such great legs. They were muscular and lightly covered with hair. Not too much, but just enough, she admitted. Perfect. All of him was.…