“If you’re declared bankrupt, I still take responsibility of the loan. And you’ll be left with nothing.”
His eyes held hers through the rigging, and for the quickest moment, Ali thought she saw sympathy flash in their green depths. A silent sob choked her. “You can’t take my father’s boat.” But even to her own ears, her voice sounded broken. Defeated.
She turned from him, her throat thick. Her heart ached. Numb grief settled over her, a bitter blanket against her pain. After all these years, she’d lost. Her dad’s dream, his yacht, and, since his insurance money had run out a few months ago, the only way she had to pay for her mother’s Multiple Sclerosis treatment.
The thought of her mother’s debilitating disease sliced at Ali. Three months after her father’s death, the doctors had told Jenny Graham she had MS. Every night Ali thanked God the Australian healthcare system covered most of her mom’s treatment. Heaven knows, she couldn’t afford any of it if they were back in the States. But the prescribed medications were growing expensive, as was the nursing home her mother had been admitted to a year ago, the cost of which wasn’t covered by the government’s healthcare policies. What money Ali made from charters went to paying the bills.
Now, with Jack here, she’d lost any hope of keeping afloat.
She knew no other job. If she was lucky, she could find a job waiting tables, but she had no experience and few employers wanted to risk a first-timer in this day, especially one in her mid-twenties. Thanks to her dad’s love of sailing and his willingness to indulge her own love for it, all she knew was sailing. Apart from the piffling she made captaining Zane Peterson’s harbor racing crew, With the Wind Charters was her only source of income, and it seemed even that was being taken from her.
Opening her eyes, she stared at her yacht’s aft. What was going to happen next?
A bone-aching weariness settled over her. Once, a lifetime ago, Jackson McKenzie had stolen her heart and her dignity. Now he planned to take everything else.
“Ali.” Jack’s deep voice was like salt on a raw wound. “Let me come aboard. We need to—”
Fighting hot tears of frustration and anger, Ali shook her head. “Go away, Jack. We don’t
need
to anything.” She moved toward the cockpit, her pulse pounding in her ears. Think. She needed to think. She needed to come up with a plan to get her yacht back. The Solomon Island charter might do it? What if she finally said yes to Zane Peterson’s job offer? She didn’t really want to sail to the Solomons with him. Just captaining the sleazy billionaire’s weekend racing crew was almost too much interaction for Ali to stomach, what with his barely concealed sexual suggestions, but maybe she couldn’t say no anymore. How much
could
she charge Peterson to—
Wind Seeker
dipped gently to port and Ali’s already thumping heart leapt into frantic life. Oh God, he was on board. Jack was on board, coming after her. She reached for the cabin-door handle, the sound of Jack moving into the cockpit sending a forbidden thrill through her. Heart thumping hard, she pulled at the small door and yanked it open a second before a firm hand reached over her shoulder and pushed it closed again.
“Goddamn it, Ali.” Jack’s lips brushed the sensitive skin behind her ear, his breath warm on her flesh. “Don’t walk away from me.”
A rain of burning needles swept over her, and all too easily it came back to her—what his arms felt like around her body, what his tongue felt like in her mouth. What his body felt like buried deep in hers.
“Why not?” she shot back, trying like hell to ignore the seductive heat of his body as she stared at the cockpit door. “You walked away from me.”
“Ali.” Her name was a whisper on her neck. “Don’t.”
“You’ve got what you wanted, Jack,” she ground out, tingling all over as his heat seeped into her flesh. “You’ve proved your point. You’re better than me, smarter than me. You can go back to Florida or Fremantle or wherever the hell you live now.”
She tried to open the door again, but Jack held it shut with one hand, the other pressing against the headboard. Trapping her.
The subtle smell of soap and aftershave filled her breath, his smell, the one she’d never forgotten. A squirming sense of anticipation rolled through the junction of her thighs and she bit back a groan. God, how could he still do this to her?
His warm breath tickling the fine wisps of hair at her temple, he dropped his head closer to hers. “Florida,” he murmured. “I’ve been in Florida for the past two years. The two years before that, Fremantle. Before Fremantle, Sydney.” He paused, brushing his lips over her earlobe with the softest of pressure. Ali’s heart leapt away in a frenzied beat, her skin prickling and her nipples pinching into aching peaks. “But you knew that already,” he went on, his body pressing against hers, sending her wild pulse wilder. “Don’t try and pretend otherwise.”
Disgusted indignation roared through her. She turned on her heel, giving him an angry glare. “Huh. Talk about being conceited.”
Jack shook his head, his forehead almost touching hers. “No. Just truthful.”
For a frozen moment, he didn’t move, just gazed at her, his breath a soft caress on her lips. And then his mouth crushed hers, demanding and forceful. She struggled, but only for a second. He lashed his tongue at her lips before plunging into the wet depth of her mouth. He gripped her butt with strong fingers, squeezing and fondling her cheeks through the coarse denim of her shorts. A moan filled the air, low and raw, and it was only when Jack yanked her hips hard against his and groaned in return that Ali realized the sound had come from her. Fire licked through her body, scorching a line from her mouth to her breasts to the very core of her being. She tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling him harder into the kiss, opening her mouth wider to his invading tongue. Their teeth clicked together and another groan slipped from Jack’s throat as she nipped at his bottom lip with a force she knew was not gentle. The sound was like a naked flame, igniting the want she’d tried to ignore for the last four years. Her body smoldered, the muscles of her sex contracted, grew wet with need.
Jack dragged his mouth from hers, his chest heaving. The heat from his body pervaded hers, licking over her flesh like a lover’s kiss, sending waves of squirming tension into the pit of her stomach. She caught the soft whimper in her throat before it could slip past her lips. Even now, when he’d come back to destroy her life for a second time, she hungered for him. Craved his touch. Even now, with the stinging memory of their last meeting in her mind—tangled sheets, tears, pain, his disgust and her shame—she wanted him.
Intense green eyes roamed her face, lingering on her lips as he pulled a long, ragged breath. “I knew your surrender would be like this.”
Ali’s breath caught in her throat. Surrender?
Self-disgust flooded through her. God, she was an idiot. He’d played her like a damn fool. Like a giddy little teenager with a crush. She shrank as far from him as possible and pushed her back to the cabin door. No matter what her body was screaming for her to do, she had to get away from him. Now.
Before she made a fool of herself again.
Jaw clenched, she gave him a look of loathing. “Go away, Jack.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, dark and impatient. “Ali, you’re being childish. We have to talk. I want to explain—”
Cold anger crashed over her. Powerful and consuming. “The last time we
talked
,” she snarled, squaring her shoulders and giving him an icy stare, “two things happened. You accused me of killing my father and we slept together.” Her voice turned flat and she shook her head. “Both were mistakes.”
Jack looked down at her, his face expressionless. For a second, she thought he was going to say something. But he didn’t. Instead, he dropped his arms and stepped away.
Ali glared at him again, the sinful taste of his lips like taunting honey on her own. “I know how little you think of me, Jackson McKenzie, but I never thought you’d take my father’s yacht from me.” She opened the cabin door and stepped down into
Wind Seeker
’s hull, her heart threatening to explode. “I hate you, Jack,” she said, looking up at him from the galley. “I truly hate you.” And with that, she turned her back on him and crossed the galley.
Wind Seeker
stood still for a moment, the soft beat of water lapping against its hull the only sign fate hadn’t frozen time. Ali held her breath. Would he come after her? Or would he…
The yacht pitched gently, followed by the sound of Jack’s feet landing on the jetty and walking away.
“Damn it,” Ali whispered, dropping onto the starboard lower bunk.
Four years ago, he’d called her a killer, taken her virginity, ripped her heart out and left her without a word. She should know better. But it seemed she didn’t. Because the throb between her thighs was growing stronger with every breath she pulled, and the aching want in her chest was growing hotter. She let out a long sigh, aching with want. He was gone. Again. Leaving her alone on her yacht and craving his touch, just like he had all those years ago.
A sickening knot twisted in Ai’s belly, self-contempt warring with traitorous need.
His yacht, Ali. His yacht.
Jack sat in the cockpit of
Suspicious Ways
, watching as the late summer sun cast stretching shadows over the surrounding boats of the marina. The metallic clang and clink of masts and rigging disturbed by the gentle swell calmed him. To a degree. Two years had passed since he’d been aboard his personal yacht, a craft of such elegance and beauty it was held in the highest esteem throughout the sailing world. He should be grinning from ear to ear. Should be. Instead, he was aroused and angry and confused as hell.
He shook his head, gulping another mouthful of beer from the sweating bottle in his hand. Once again, Ali Graham had knocked him so far off-kilter he didn’t know which way was up. Dragging his free hand through the tousled mess of his hair, he looked over to
Wind Seeker
. Two hours ago, she’d stormed down the jetty, face set, jaw clenched. Her long smooth limbs—kissed golden by the warm setting sun—moved with an innate grace he’d always admired. She’d look glorious. Furious as a summer storm, but glorious.
Pulling in a steadying sigh, Jack turned his attention from Ali’s boat to the towering buildings hugging the harbor’s edge. Chest muscles tight, he watched a few scattered windows light up as dusk set in. Why did that woman disturb him so much? He was thirty-five years old, for Christ sake. The social circles he moved in placed him in contact with women far more sexually overt, more forward and experienced than Ali Graham, yet somehow his gut still knotted like a naïve schoolboy’s whenever he thought of her.
And he thought of her often.
Unbidden, an image of the slender woman filled his head, chin tilted in obstinate defiance, blue eyes flashing. Those eyes had captivated him the very second they’d first met, despite the fact she’d only been seventeen. A baby to his twenty-eight years. They’d filled his very dreams and fantasies every night, something that both unnerved and disturbed him. He remembered thinking even back then that a man could get lost in their depths if he wasn’t careful. He’d fought like hell to be careful. Christ, had he fought, if for no other reason than his friendship with her father.
He’d fought like hell to be careful today, but then he’d seen her, touched her, smelled her, and careful had gone to hell. Which was exactly where he should be now after what he’d done.
He’d been finishing his latest commission in the States when Ali’s bank manager had called to request a meeting as the loan guarantor. Jack had agreed straight away. For four years, he’d thought of Ali, no matter how hard he’d tried not to. He’d wondered how she was, what she was doing. For four years, he’d denied he still held dreams of a future with her. Coming back to Sydney was the perfect excuse to see her. Maybe take her to dinner, maybe hold her, say he was sorry. There’d been no plans to take possession of her business and yacht then, just a simple desire to see her, to find out why Andrew’s business was in trouble and to offer his help.
But then he’d learnt Ali was sailing for Zane Peterson. That Peterson was making noises at the yacht club about buying Ali’s business, letting it be known she was his, that their relationship was
special
.
In the space of a heartbeat Jack had changed his plans. Had gone from an altruistic motivation to a much darker one.
Thudding footsteps on the wooden jetty killed the bleak memory. A wiry man leapt into the cockpit, his tanned, leathery face split by a broad smile. “I’m guessin’ from the look on your face Ali Graham knows you’re back in town.”
Jack gave the new arrival a wry grin. “You could say that.”
The other man squinted at him with sharp brown eyes. “You did something’ stupid, didn’t you?”
A snort escaped Jack as he handed his ex-boss a cold beer. “Possibly.”
“Ah, shit, Jack.” Mike Turpin—the man who had taken a young, untested boat designer as an apprentice when no one else would—dropped onto the opposite bench seat. “What did you do?”
Jack didn’t answer.
Mike raised an eyebrow. “Is this mopin’ about over Zane Peterson? About what I told you drivin’ back from the airport? Or how you feel about Ali?”
Anger rolled over Jack, hot and raw and painful. He gave Mike a flat glare, his gut knotting. “Of course it’s about Peterson.”