He picked up her bag and placed it in her lap.

“Come around at eight.”

Dylan watched her walk out, his hand on the bar stool still warm with her body heat.

Messing around with that girl was a mistake in just about every way possible. He was risking Lucien’s trust, his job, and his new found peace. But he knew what was worse than all of that.

He was risking Kara Brookes. 

It was that goddamn honesty thing that did it. Why couldn’t she act coy, play stupid games like most other women?

Being around her was like drinking water from the clearest mountain spring. She was purity; vital, clean, life affirming. He lost his head when she came within ten feet of him. He didn’t just want to drink the spring water. He wanted to bathe in it.

Kara stamped her foot down on the Mustang’s accelerator, letting the wind blow her hair and praying it would blow away her stupidity along with it.

Dinner with Dylan Day? On The Love Tug? The fucking Love Tug?

It sounded, and looked, like the set for some cheap seventies porn flick. Who did he think he was, Hugh fucking Hefner? A disturbing image of Dylan wearing a red silk smoking jacket surrounded by topless Barbie girls came to mind. The Love Tug. The clue was in the name, and she should steer well away. She pulled along the driveway and turned the car in next to Lucien’s Ferrari.

Only a few hours back she’d assured Sophie that she wasn’t about to tumble into bed with Dylan Day, and here she was about to walk through the door and tell her the complete opposite.

‘I’ll cook for you,’ turned out to be an ambitious plan. Cooking on a boat was an entirely different prospect to rustling up dinner in a conventional kitchen. Dylan was no master chef, but he’d taken care of himself long enough to be able to sizzle a decent steak. Except there was no sizzle to be had on the Love Tug – not of the culinary kind anyway - just a tiny camping-style grill and one gas ring was all he had at his disposal. It was almost half past seven. Unless they wanted to dine at midnight, he needed a plan B.

He cast a glance out at the restaurants dotted around the beach, their evening lights starting to glow as early diners and families sat down to eat. The scent of garlic and fresh seafood reached his nose and plan B quickly assembled itself in his mind.

Ramming the uncooked steaks back inside the unfeasibly small fridge, Dylan glanced down at what he was wearing. Did he look okay?

Why the hell did he feel like a teenager on a first date? He was no kid, and Kara was very far from being his first date. She was different though; she had him on the emotional ropes in a way that he couldn’t recall being for a long time. But then life hadn’t dealt him the easiest card when it came to romance, he’d been out of the dating scene for a while.

Twenty minutes later and he was back on board after a dash, empty pan in hand, to the nearest restaurant for paella, thanking his lucky stars for the laid back attitude of the chef, who’d whipped up the meal in short order with a good-humoured wink. It wasn’t a moment too soon, because a flash of distinctive metallic red had already caught his eye winding down the hill towards the bay. She hadn’t changed her mind. He’d half expected her not to come, but then in a strange way he’d known full well that she’d show up. It didn’t fit well with her ‘what you see is what you get’ ethos not to do something she’d said that she would.

Dylan raised a hand in greeting as she made her way along the rocky path down to the boat. As she drew nearer, he had the strange sensation of regretting having asked her to come. Not because he didn’t want to see her, but because he feared that he wanted to see her too much. She was stepping into his world tonight, and he knew from bleak experience that it wasn’t always a good or safe place to be.

“Hey Sailor,” she said, reaching out her hand for him to steady her as she stepped aboard. For a second, he fought the urge to tell her to go back. Go back to shore. Back to safety. And then she stepped close, and any sensible intention left his head, because she looked and smelled like heaven.

“I bought pudding.” She hooked the handles of a paper bag over his fingers.

“This is the bit where you say thank you, and then tell me I look lovely,” she supplied, when he didn’t speak.

He hadn’t spoken because she’d taken his breath away. The girl had her own style and she sure knew how to work it. She’d somehow managed to make those cowboy boots look sexy as hell with a deep green lace dress that outlined every curve and contour of her body. With her sun-kissed skin, she looked as if someone had dipped her in gold, and hell, there was much of it on show to admire. Her dress finished mid thigh, and the curves of her breasts jiggled in greeting from her scooped neckline as she shrugged out of her tiny denim jacket. With her hair tumbling around her shoulders, the overall effect reeled him in like a fish on a line in the harbour below.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You unnerve me.”

He snapped out of it and looked inside the paper bag. “Chocolate bars?”

“It was all I could get. Short notice.” She shrugged, dropping her jacket on a stool just inside the cabin door as she moved inside. “Something smells good.”

Dylan dropped on his haunches and moved the steaks in the fridge up to make way for the chocolate.

“Yeah. About dinner…”

“You didn’t cook it, did you?”

“I wanted to,” he said, casting a hand around the paltry kitchen. “The boat let me down, man.”

“They say a bad workman blames his tools.”

He held the raw steak in its packet out as evidence. “This was dinner.”

Kara huffed. “Maybe it’s just as well then. I’m a vegetarian.”

Shit, he’d ordered mixed paella, and knew for a fact that it included chicken and chorizo.

“First rule of dating, Sailor. Check your facts.”

Dylan frowned, remembering back to the dinner party at the villa. His expression relaxed.

“So. You’re a vegetarian who eats ham?”

Kara’s face cracked into a grin. “I had you there for a second though, didn’t I?”

“Funny girl.” He pushed the steaks back into the fridge and stood up. “We’re eating up on deck. Go on, I’ll be up there in a minute.”

He handed Kara a bottle of wine, then stood back to allow her out. The Love Tug definitely encouraged close proximity, there wasn’t room to swing a kitten, let alone a cat. Did she sniff him as she squeezed by? The overwhelming urge to drop a kiss on the curve of her neck had him clenching his teeth. He wouldn’t make the first move. If his conscience was going to survive this girl, the ball had to stay entirely in Kara’s court. He badly wanted her to decide to play, but she had to be the one to make a move.