To Catch a Groom (6 page)

The first mate exuded an urbane sophistication that sat at odds with the kind of job he did. He seemed too powerful a personality, too shrewd and intelligent to take orders from anyone else.

Though he appeared perfectly at home on the boat, she was convinced he ruled another world apart from this one.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Who could blame you. After all, you were born to be the Duchess of Kingston.”

Though his silky observation had sounded totally offhand, Greer had the sudden revelation he was after her for whatever he could get out of her. Money…jewels…her virtue.

It shouldn’t have shocked her. This was what she and
her sisters had hoped would happen when they came to the Riviera. But now that he was calling her bluff in earnest, the charade no longer felt like a joke.

To hide her dismay, she gave a careless shrug of her feminine shoulders, drawing his attention to the periwinkle silk blouse that crisscrossed the bodice.

His bold gaze dropped from her curves to the wide belt cinching her waist. By the time his eyes took in the line of her matching skirt which flowed from the flare of womanly hips, he’d managed to squeeze every ounce of breath from her lungs.

“It seems criminal to have to cover up what nature has so exquisitely endowed.” Without asking her permission, he helped her into the jacket and secured the front straps.

After the way she’d plunged into the water at the hotel, she supposed he had every reason to believe she’d thrown maidenly virtue out the window long ago.

Little did he know her primal instinct was to slap his face. For the moment, all she could do was keep up the pretense until she could get away from him.

Restraining herself she said, “Seeing you busy like this at your job helps me understand why you were solicitous of my needs last night. Even to the point of returning my shoes? Has anyone ever told you
you
would make an excellent personal valet?”

With those words, she thought his patrician jaw hardened just a trifle. “No. You’re the first. Are you offering me a full-time job?”

“Would you take it?”

“I would for the right price and benefits.”

Her pulses throbbed. “I’ll bet you’re expensive.”

“But that wouldn’t be a problem for you.”

“You mean because I’m a duchess?”

His lips twisted in a subtle smile. “Some titles have no money or property to back them up. But the pendant you
were wearing last night tells me you can afford my exclusive services.”

It all got down to the pendant.

“Ah, but for how long?” she asked with great daring.

“For as long as we continue to desire each other.”

Her body trembled. “I’m afraid you misunderstood me. I was talking about valet service only.”

“So was I. Shall we test out one of my duties to see if my work measures up to your expectations?”

In the space of a millisecond he’d tugged on the straps he’d been tying so that she fell against his hard, powerful body. Without the life jacket separating them, her heart would have jammed into his.

His other hand cupped the back of her head where the gossamer strands brushed his fingers. He had the kind of strength that made it impossible for her to evade the insistent pressure of his male mouth. She was prepared to fight him with all her might.

But when that mouth closed inexorably over hers, he didn’t swallow her alive in one gulp as she’d feared. Rather he played with her lips, nibbled on them, tasted them slowly, each time coaxing them farther apart, a little more and a little more.

After their exciting verbal skirmish, she felt a seductive rhythm building like the flow of the tide, racing up the beach a little higher, a little stronger. It filled all the aching spaces in her body which yearned toward him of its own volition.

His mouth created such sweet ecstasy, pleasure pains never before awakened came alive, demanding assuagement from the source that created them.

The moans she heard turned out to be her own.

Moans of need, of desire she didn’t know she could feel. She felt helpless, beautiful. Alive. She didn’t know herself anymore. He was making her feel immor—

“Greer?”

Olivia’s voice.

The door flew open. “Quick! We’ve got some—Greer!”

Piper’s shocked cry reverberated in the cabin.

Greer wrenched her lips from the man who’d been kissing her into oblivion and turned around in guilty reaction, but her senses were reeling.

Ironically her captor had to be the one to steady her in his strong arms. It would take time to recover from an experience that had been a breathtaking education in what really went on between a man and woman.

“Buona sera, signorine.”

“What’s going on?” Olivia demanded in a quiet, yet chilling voice. Piper looked ready to tackle him to the ground. Greer didn’t know her siblings could be this fierce.

Of course they wouldn’t have had any success if they’d tried to restrain him. The fact that he ignored their edicts and still held her arms firmly in his grasp testified to that truth.

“I-it isn’t what you think,” Greer stammered. “You’ve misinterpreted what was happening.”

“That’s right,” he said in a suave tone. “Your sister and I were getting…reacquainted. Last night there was so little time before she ran off to bed, leaving me desolate.”

Her chest heaved.

“Olivia? Piper?” Every breath sounded ragged, even to her own ears. “T-this is the man I met at the Splendido last night.”

After the way she’d carried on about him earlier, she couldn’t believe she was defending him now. However she drew the line at accusing him of a crime her sisters assumed would have taken place if they hadn’t barged in.

To her shame, nothing had gone on she hadn’t let happen and he knew it!

The truth was, it had given her a perverse thrill to spar with him. She’d loved baiting him. The last thing on her mind had been to scream her head off at the first sight of him so her sisters would come running.

When they recalled this incident later, they would have to admit she hadn’t been struggling with him. Au contraire. She’d ended up being an eager participant.

That’s what was so mortifying—to realize how completely out of control she’d been the second his mouth had covered hers.

He’d kissed her as if he were starving for her. Admittedly she’d kissed him back with a matching hunger that seemed to have come out of nowhere and sought appeasement only he could give.

Who knew how long their passionate interlude might have gone on if her prolonged absence hadn’t prompted her sisters to come in search of her? She had only herself to blame for this latest disaster.

Piper made no move to leave. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“I don’t believe we caught his name,” Olivia murmured.

A betraying blush crept into Greer’s cheeks.

“Allow me to do the honors,” said the man whose mouth had done things that were still sending out shock waves to the tiniest follicle of her body.

“I’m Max, the first mate on the
Piccione
. I saw the three of you out walking last night. It was a beautiful sight, one I’ll never forget.”

His hands caressed her arms down to the fingertips, then relinquished them. While Greer continued to tremble in reaction, he’d reached the open doorway in a few athletic strides.

Before disappearing he said, “
Signorine?
Meet me on
deck in five minutes with the life jackets you’ll find in the footlockers of your staterooms. I’ll show you how to fasten them correctly. Knowing what to do will save your lives if, heaven forbid, there should be an emergency on board.”

I
N THE
wake of his departure, Greer realized an explanation was in order. She blurted, “What you saw was nothing more than the result of my insulting him. Rather than fight him, I decided it might be wiser to let him get it out of his system.”

To her surprise, her sisters shut the door, then put a finger to their lips.

“What’s wrong?” Greer whispered.

“Just listen,” Piper whispered back. “Our pendants are gone.” Greer blinked. “We discovered them missing while we were putting everything away in the drawers of our stateroom.

“I only opened my cosmetic bag to get out some sun-screen. That’s when I noticed the pendant wasn’t there. I asked Olivia to look in her bag thinking maybe I’d put it there by mistake last night, but hers was gone, too.”

“Since our bags never left our sight after we packed them this morning, it means the members of the crew have to be jewel thieves who believe they’ve stolen a small fortune,” Olivia surmised. “Do you still have yours?”

Did she?

Galvanized into action, Greer ran to the bathroom where the first mate had put her cosmetic bag. She opened it and found the little case she kept it in. The pendant winked up at her.

“Mine’s still here,” she said in shaky voice. “He was probably in the process of stealing it when I surprised him by accident.”

The three of them stared at each other before Olivia said
to Greer, “We thought you were overreacting earlier, but now we know your premonitions have been right about everything.”

Piper had a far away look in her eye. “For the stranger you met last night to show up today claiming to be the first mate, and then for us to discover him kissing you like there’s no tomorrow, it’s obvious something out of the ordinary is going on here, even if you are fatally attracted to him.”

Fatally attracted. That’s what it felt like.

A shiver chased across her skin. “I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. Remember my telling you how drawn he was to the pendant?”

“Yes. If all he’d wanted was to get you into bed, he probably could have managed that last night.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Olivia,” Greer said before averting her eyes.

“We saw you in his arms just now,” Piper pointed out. “You were hardly fighting him off. No one’s blaming you. Good grief. He looks like a god, and it’s perfectly evident he’s attracted to you, as well. But he has come on way too strong, too fast! As for the captain, you were right about him. He’s— He’s—”

Greer groaned. “I know what you’re trying to say.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s face it. Signore Moretti has an interesting little operation going here. It might be legitimate, but he gets lots of perks when idiots like us charter his boat pretending to be something we’re not. We don’t have anyone else to blame but ourselves for our loss. If the parents knew…”

“We can’t think about that right now.” Olivia glanced at her watch. “The first mate said five minutes. If you’re up not on deck in about twenty seconds, he’ll use that excuse to come down and find you. I suggest we hustle
topside on the double, pretend nothing’s wrong, and talk about what we’re going to do later.”

“Agreed.”

In the next breath they hurried to the other stateroom for more life jackets, then emerged into the dazzling late-afternoon sun for which the Riviera was famous.

A mild breeze filled the sails imprinted with a stylized pigeon in flight. It propelled the boat away from the postcard perfect coast receding farther into the distance.

“Signorine?”

Every time Greer heard the deep resonance of the first mate’s voice, a current of electricity traveled through her body igniting her nervous system. Except that this time she was on to him and the captain. They’d been in the cockpit, talking. Plotting…

Some job those two had.

She wondered how many hundreds of wealthy women over the years, married or not, had been swept away by their amazing looks and overpowering charisma, never to be the same again. Never to recover their jewels again.

Science hadn’t invented a vaccine to inoculate the female of the species against the invasion of such spectacular foreign male specimens. There was no known antidote. The best you could do was run for your life in the opposite direction and never look back!

That was exactly what she and her sisters intended to do tonight after they docked. Until then they would have to stick together like Vienna sausages in the can and bluff their way through this last poker game. Greer could only pray they escaped from their doomed adventure relatively unscathed.

As her nemesis approached, the devastating white smile he flashed convinced her he could read her mind. She avoided his gaze while he inspected the way her sisters
had fastened their life jackets. Once he’d given them a few pointers, their drill began.

The boat and everything to do with it seemed to be a part of him, which ironically she had to admit was reassuring. In twenty minutes they knew where to find extra life buoys, a two-way radio, flares, fire extinguishers, an ax, sea rations, water, tool and first-aid kits, navigation lights, buckets, oars, the horn and a waterproof sea chart with compass.

“Do the two of you know how to swim as well as your sister?”

They nodded.

“Nevertheless you’ll do exactly as I say when you’re playing with any of the water gear. Even dive masters like myself or the other crew have to be prepared for the unexpected, so we’ll obey the rules to the letter. Do you have any questions?”

Greer had one. “Why are we sailing in the opposite direction from Monterosso where we’re docking this evening?”

She’d planned that part of the itinerary herself. Monterosso had the best beach of the Cinque Terre.

If this was going to be their last night in Italy, they would at least be able to tell their friends they’d bathed
once
in the waters of the Mediterranean.

His black eyes impaled her. “You’re very astute to realize we’ve made a minor detour.”

“You call ‘due east’ a minor detour,
signore?
”

His captivating smile might as well have caught hold of her heart and upended it. “Didn’t the captain tell you we’re making a stop at the port town of Lerici?”

“He mentioned it. What’s so important?”

“A sixth century castle which is just magical. You and your sisters can explore to your heart’s content.”

What a bald lie! This was a setup he and the captain
had obviously worked out over years of enticing rich women. Drop the jewels off at Lerici, then proclaim innocence at a later date when it was discovered the pendants were missing.

The boat proved to be the perfect vehicle. Seduction on the high seas, their vulnerable captives at the mercy of their potent masculine appeal.

They had the moves and the jargon down so perfectly, they could do it in their sleep—read each other’s minds without conversing! Greer could read the first mate’s since it was as transparent as a bride’s veil.

He thought himself as irresistible as Valentino, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Though he’d shocked the daylights out of her with kisses that revealed her own sensuality—a sensuality she hadn’t realized she possessed, it didn’t mean she wanted to repeat the experience.

You only had to be scalded once to know you should stay away from boiling water.

“Since when does a captain take orders from his first mate?” she challenged him. “Surely as long as you’re getting paid the going wage, your job has nothing whatsoever to do with the itinerary we decided on weeks ago.”

Her attention was caught by his hands which opened, palms upward, in a gesture so typical of Italian men she couldn’t look away.

“It was a mere suggestion,
signorina.
”

And I’m the Duchess of Kingston!

“If we’d wanted to go on a tour of the paranormal, we would have started out in Transylvania.”

His eyelids lowered to half mast. “It was very wise of you not to travel there. Even I, who do not have a drop of vampire blood in my veins, find it increasingly difficult to resist taking a bite out of you myself.”

At the mention of the word “bite,” the spot where he’d
kissed her neck beneath the pendant began throbbing again. She fought not to react.

On cue her instinct for self-preservation came to the fore. Her chin jutted. “You can inform the captain we’re not interested. Unless there’s something else you needed to tell us that could save our lives, we’ll be resting in our cabin until dinner’s served.”

After delivering her exit line she started walking toward the stairs, all the while feeling his fiery black eyes on her retreating back.

“It’s ready now,” he called out unexpectedly. “The chef is waiting.”

The girls followed her to the stateroom. “Let’s eat so they don’t suspect anything, then we’ll decide what we’re going to do about our situation,” she whispered as they removed their life jackets.

By tacit agreement they moved to the saloon. It was nothing short of amazing to see how it had been transformed. The table with an alençon lace cloth had been set for three.

Greer noted the Waterford crystal, fine Limoges china and a centerpiece of roses in reds, pinks and yellow. Her mouth watered the second she detected the fragrance of a seafood dish escaping the covered tureen.

The door to the adjoining galley opened. They spied a cane before a lean, hard-muscled male emerged. He was dressed in jeans and a gray pullover with the sleeves shoved above the elbows.

When he lifted his head of short-cropped black hair, Greer looked into the face of an olive-skinned Mediterranean man who possessed the kind of dark, dashing looks that caused women to make utter fools of themselves! No one knew about that better than she did.

If he weren’t leaning so heavily on his cane, he would probably be as tall as the two men on deck.

“Bonsoir, mesdemoiselles.”
His deep-set gray eyes assessed Greer and Piper before traveling to Olivia.

There was no attempt on his part to apologize for studying her. His intimate perusal of her face and figure was guaranteed to wring a blush from the most hardened female. Greer had to give her sister points for holding it back.

“You must be the one named after the
olivier.
”

“Then whoever told you that was misinformed,” Olivia threw out with gratifying sangfroid.

She’d sensed this gorgeous hunk of male was no chef. Not for this boat or a royal family. If any member of this crew was legitimate, then Greer and her sisters were the three good fairies!

His mouth curved into a wicked smile, verifying Greer’s suspicions. “I’m never wrong,
mademoiselle.
”

“Really,” Olivia mocked. “Well unless you required a cane from birth, it appears you made a wrong move at least once in your life.”

Whoa, Olivia!

His handsome face turned dark as a thunderhead, revealing a man who had a dangerous look now that Olivia had struck him where it hurt.

It was patently clear that not only had the spoils been equally divided ahead of time, she and her sisters were about to be served up for their captors’ delectation.

Not if Greer could help it!

“Monsieur
Luc,
is it?” she addressed him in her best bad French. “I’m afraid there was a slight oversight on our part. We forgot to tell Signore Moretti we’re allergic to fish.”

“It’s a shame,” Piper played along. “How sad that the beautiful dinner you labored over so long with your bad leg has to go to waste.”

On their way out of the saloon Olivia turned to him.
“What was it Marie Antoinette once said, ‘If the passengers can’t eat fish, let the crew eat it’?”

Bravo, Olivia!

They walked with great dignity to their stateroom. Once they’d locked the door behind them, Greer turned to her sisters. This time she was the one to put a finger to her lips. “We’ve been
had,
guys.”

“Tell me about it!” Piper whispered furiously.

Olivia’s angry brows knit together. “It all started when we were detained by the police at the Genoa airport. Three hours for what? In a matter of a minute we told them all we knew which was absolutely nothing!”

“And when I met the
first mate
at the Splendido it certainly wasn’t by accident!” Greer muttered through gritted teeth. “When he called for a robe, the waiter obeyed him instantly. How come?

“And why did he empty my suitcase? We didn’t pay the kind of money that entitles us to the services of a personal valet. I’m thinking our crew has a friend on the police force.”

“Of course,” Piper cried. “You can always count on a small percentage of the law being corrupt. Signore Moretti is probably in on it with them. Scamming wealthy tourists is a great way to make extra money on the side.”

“Absolutely,” Olivia exclaimed. “When we told him the Duchess of Kingston was making the reservation, he probably alerted the others who told that pompous security guard to check us out when we went through customs at the airport.”

Piper nodded. “The moment he saw we were wearing the Duchesse pendants, he informed his cohorts. They figured there was a lot more where that came from and scrambled to get the boat ready.”

“A chef who looks like him cooking for royalty—I don’t believe that for a minute!” Olivia raged.

Greer moaned. “When I think I told you to ask if we could have the boat exclusively if we paid them another $1,000 apiece!”

Olivia shook her head. “They must have rubbed their hands with glee.”

“Well they’re not going to get away with it!” Piper declared. “When we reach Genoa we’ll go straight to the American Consulate and tell them what’s happened.”

“You mean
if
we reach Genoa.” Greer had been looking out the porthole. “Take a look, guys. We’re still going east, not west.”

“Why aren’t we surprised?”

The three of them stared at each other before Olivia said, “We’ll swim for it as soon as we get close enough to land or the nearest passing boat. Which ever comes first.”

Piper’s eyes rounded. “You know we could?”

“Of course we could. There’s no current here as strong as the one in the Hudson. If we wear some casual skirts and tops instead of bathing suits when we go up on deck, they won’t suspect anything,” Olivia reasoned. “Especially if we keep on our sandals.”