‘The next bit?’
‘Mmm…’ He moved her off his lap and sat her in the corner of the settee. ‘Getting rid of the sliver of china in your foot.’
‘Oh, that.’ She waved a hand. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’
But although he was quick and decisive with his tweezers, she had to sniff back a tear or two as the sliver came out.
‘I should have done that the other way around,’ he said with a keen glance at her as he bathed her foot in a disinfectant solution.
She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
‘Taken it out first and kissed you afterwards,’ he elucidated as he peeled open a plaster.
She leant forward and cupped his cheek. ‘Kiss me now, quick—and I’ll be fine.’
But as his lips rested on hers briefly and they were cool and he smelt of disinfectant she had to resist an almost overwhelming urge to ask for more…
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY had five wonderful days.
They went sailing on his boat, The Shiralee, and fishing.
Maggie was in her element on a boat. One thing she did share with her father was a love of the sea and as she was growing up she’d crewed for him.
‘I see you know what you’re doing,’ Jack said to her on their first sail.
‘Aye, aye, skipper!’ she responded as she turned the boat smartly into the wind so he could set the sails.
He climbed back into the cockpit and put his hands on her waist from behind as she stood at the wheel, and the jib ballooned out in the breeze. ‘OK, cut the motor.’
The silence after the motor died was lovely, to be replaced by the equally lovely whoosh of wind in the sails and the rush of water against the hull.
Maggie leant back against him as they braced themselves against the tilt as The Shiralee heeled and sped along. ‘She sails well,’ she said.
He slid his arms around her. ‘So she should, I designed her myself.’
Maggie smiled. ‘No false modesty about you, Mr McKinnon.’
He turned her around in his arms. ‘Not, at least, about boats. You’re looking very trim, Miss Trent.’
Maggie glanced down at her short navy shorts and blinding white T-shirt. She also wore a peaked navy cap with her hair pulled through at the back, and sunglasses. ‘A suitably nautical presence for your boat, I hope?’ she queried gravely.
‘I would say so.’ He removed her sunglasses.
Maggie raised her eyebrows.
‘Your eyes are amazing. And it is a pleasure to see them not blazing or looking absolute daggers at me,’ he said.
A gurgle of laughter rose in her throat. ‘That feels like another lifetime ago.’
‘On the contrary, it’s only a day ago that you slapped my face.’
She coloured and he watched the tide of pink stain the smooth skin of her cheeks. All the same, she said, with an attempt at insouciance, ‘Ah—just heat of the moment, I guess.’
‘Isn’t it always?’ he murmured.
Maggie stilled. ‘What are you trying to say, Jack?’
His gaze lingered on her face, then he grimaced. ‘I’m not sure—’
‘That I might be highly impulsive, if not to say irrationally so?’
‘As a matter of fact—’ he paused ‘—there is only one ‘‘highly’’ I’m conscious of at the moment in association with you and that’s—kissable. How say you, Maggie?’
The growing frown in her eyes was replaced by something quite different. ‘Actually, I love the sound of that!’
He laughed and started to kiss her thoroughly until the wind changed and the sails started to flap and they had to draw apart and concentrate on their sailing.
‘Goodness, we did come close to those rocks!’ Maggie called.
He was reeling in the jib. ‘I suspected there was a touch of Delilah in you, now I’m wondering about a siren,’ he called back.
Maggie watched him. He was precise and economical in his movements and his physique was breathtaking in khaki shorts and nothing else as he reached up to free a rope.
I knew it, she thought with a sense of satisfaction. There’s definitely an action man in there.
There was also, she discovered, an inspired cook within the man.
He’d produced a divine chicken stir-fry served with saffron rice on their first evening together. He grilled fish to perfection. He had a marinade for steak that was to die for. A lot of the food he produced was seafood he’d caught himself—fish, crabs, oysters and painted lobsters.