Off the Charts Read online

  “Mayan ball courts.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Mayan ball courts. Archeology.”

  That fit, too. A female Indiana Jones.

  “Ball courts?” He’d seen one in the Yucatán, but ruins were ruins, right?

  Not to this woman. She pulled a napkin and pen out and started sketching away.

  “Yeah, ball courts. Like a basketball court, kind of, but shaped like a capital letter I…”

  He watched as her pen made quick strokes.

  “So I’m taking measurements of different ball courts and calculating…”

  Her eyes danced and her face glowed as she spoke, and he didn’t dare interrupt. Didn’t want to, either.

  “They’re really interesting because the players had to get a heavy ball through a hoop, but what no one really knows…”

  His lips curled up as she went on, talking and sketching. The woman could draw. Could bring the past to life with words, a couple of strokes of a pen, and those sparkling green-blue eyes.

  “And then they’d make sacrifices, but the question is…”

  Between talking, she took bites of her burger, and when she licked a smudge from her fingers, his pulse skipped a beat.

  “And you?”

  Whoops. What was she asking? He chewed to cover up, hoping she’d repeat the question.

  “What are you doing here in Santa Marta?”

  Um, other than watching her lick her fingers? He scrambled for an answer.

  “I’m sailing. On my boat.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Which boat?”

  He craned his neck, found the familiar lines of Serendipity, and pointed. “See the big, fancy catamaran over there? The one with the big awning?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Mine’s the tiny little single-master you can barely see behind it.”

  She laughed and studied it. The light was fading fast, but you could just make out the silhouette of the boat.

  “I like that boat,” she said at last. “Better than the big one, actually.”

  A woman after his own heart. “I like it better, too.”

  It was true. Serendipity was small but special. Serendipity was home.

  “That boat has a story,” she murmured.

  He stared at her. People usually asked how much Serendipity cost or how old the boat was, because even people who knew nothing about boats could tell she was pretty old. They asked how dangerous sailing was or how uncomfortable it was living in that small a space.

  Julie, though… Her eyes shone when she looked at his hardy little vessel.

  “It was my grandfather’s boat. Serendipity.”

  “Serendipity. Great name.”

  “When he died, he left us the boat.”

  “Us?”

  “Me and my brother.” He nodded toward the dance floor, where Tobin was spinning the brunette around.

  She shot him a wry grin. “You sure you’re related?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Julie laughed, then nodded toward Serendipity. “Neat,” she whispered.

  He wondered what she’d say if he told her the rest. How he’d quit his job on the verge of a major step up in the company to go sailing. Seth Cooper, the guy who always played by the rules, was finally going out on a limb. As terrifying as it had been, it felt good to be spontaneous for a change.

  He caught her looking at him, and he almost said all that, because Julie seemed like she’d get it. Julie seemed like she’d get a lot of things that other people didn’t.

  “Really neat,” she murmured, gazing at Serendipity.

  The sea breeze stirred her hair and the moonlight shone in her eyes. Like she could imagine it. Like she wanted to imagine it: living on a boat, seeing the world.

  Seth couldn’t help but imagining his own scene. Sailing with his brother had worked out a lot better than he expected, but sailing with a woman would be nice. Agreeing on where to head next probably wouldn’t involve complicated calculations of their beer supply, as it did with his brother. Wouldn’t involve quite as much double-checking to make sure Tobin didn’t steer them onto a reef. Nowhere near as many fraternity jokes or anonymous bars.

  Yeah, it would be nice to sail with a woman. Well, the right kind of woman. Tobin had had an ex-girlfriend visit in Florida, and she’d driven them both crazy by the end of the week. Julie, though, looked like she could live without a blow-dryer and air-conditioning. Christ, if Julie could ride a motorcycle all the way from Guatemala, she probably could sail a boat. They could share sunsets and landfalls. Gaze at the stars…

  He gave himself a little shake. What he was picturing was a woman like her. Not Julie herself. Because after a week on the beach, she’d be headed back to Guatemala, and he’d never see her again.

  No sunsets. No stars. No sharing, at least not that kind.

  He put down his fork and stared into the shadows.

  The waiter popped in again. “Anything else, señorita?”

  She looked up. “Sure. Another beer. No, wait. A Kahlua. I’m splurging tonight.”

  “Splurging on what?”

  “My birthday.” Her smile faded quickly, like she’d let a secret slip.

  “It’s your birthday? Two, then,” he told the waiter and watched Julie sink lower in her seat.

  Okay, so he probably shouldn’t order a cake with candles and get the whole bar to sing Feliz Cumpleaños at the top of their lungs. Most of the women he knew — the singles, anyway — threw themselves big birthday parties. They printed invitations, rallied their girlfriends, took over bars. This one seemed content with a sea adventure book and a little quiet time.

  Cool.

  “Happy birthday,” he whispered, joining her little conspiracy.

  That coaxed a smile out of her. “Thanks.”

  “What do you have planned?”

  Her smile grew and she whispered, as if she was planning on playing hooky from school. “Scuba diving tomorrow, then a ride along the coast.”

  He’d meant right now, but asking What about tonight? might come across as a come-on, and he didn’t want that.

  Or did he?

  “Good way to celebrate,” he said at last.

  He watched her look out at the horizon. So, no cake, no singing. It was pretty clear she wasn’t into that kind of thing. But he could keep her company, right?

  Her eyes swung back to his, and both of them seemed to hold their breath.

  Chapter Three

  Julie blinked and forced her eyes away from Seth’s. Let them rove over the bar, the beach, the scenery instead. Because she was getting way too relaxed around him, and a woman had to stay on guard, all the time.

  Except she was a little tired of standing guard. A little tired of being alone.

  And Seth was nice. Genuinely nice.

  But just nice didn’t begin to describe him, and she knew it. For one thing, the man was hot. Steaming-afternoon-in-the-jungle hot, what with those angled eyebrows over deep brown eyes with impossibly soft-looking eyelashes. Wide shoulders, strong hands. Shadowy lines where the curves of his cheeks gave way to the rectangle of his mouth.

  He’d look like a million bucks cleaned up and stuck in a suit, but she liked the T-shirt-and-shorts look better. This island-time version of the harried city type.

  That was the other thing she liked. That feeling of the real man, finding his way out of the mold. Wandering off the beaten track.

  “You sailed all the way down here from the US?” She looked out at the boat. Serendipity. A fitting name for a little vessel that had brought this man to her side tonight.

  “From New Hampshire, actually.”

  Her eyes jumped right back over to him. “All the way from New Hampshire?”

  He nodded and she caught a flare of modest pride in his eyes. “All the way.”

  “Where did you stop? Where did you go?”

  He looked at her with an expression that said, Where do I start?

  So she started for him, sketching out
a map on another napkin. A curved line formed the eastern seaboard of North America, leading into the leg of Florida, the scooping indent of the Gulf of Mexico.

  “So if Cuba is over here,” she narrated as she sketched. “And Puerto Rico is here…” She caught him looking at her. “What? I like maps, okay?”

  He put up his hands and grinned. “I like maps, too.”

  Of course he did. The man had good taste — in boats, books, beach bars.

  Her face went all warm, so she went back to drawing before her mind could skip off into dangerous territory, such as what else they might share tastes in.

  “Okay, and the Yucatán Peninsula is here…”

  There was an empty chair between them, and Seth slid into it for a closer look at the map.

  “There’s Panama, and South America…” She sketched on, feeling the warmth of him sneak over to her. Feeling all his focus on her. Well, okay, on the map.

  Or maybe her, because he glanced up at her face then snapped his eyes back down. Not wanting to get caught in the act, maybe.

  A little like her.

  “And here we are in Belize.” She looked up — cheap excuse to admire those cream-in-coffee eyes — and handed him the pen. “So which way did you come?”

  He considered the map for a moment, then made a dot. “We started here…” He drew a line that dipped south along the East Coast, and the journey came to life. “We stopped in the Chesapeake Bay…”

  Now it was her nudging her chair closer, leaning in for a view.

  “When we got to Florida, we decided to cut across to the Yucatán like this…”

  All those miles, all that distance, in one little boat.

  Her thigh brushed his, but neither of them flinched. It felt so natural. So…right.

  “But the wind went around to the southeast, so we…”

  Her right arm was getting in the way, so she put it on the back of his chair and leaned closer, imagining the wind, the waves, a horizon without any land. And if her heart was galloping just from sitting this close, well, she’d blame that on a long day.

  “Then there was this storm, and we tried heading west…”

  He drew a curved line, then connected the dots. Each one of them, a different island, a different adventure.

  A roar went out from the crowd at the bar next door, and they weren’t the only two to look up.

  “Goooooaaaaallllllll!” came the voice of a television announcer. “Belize uno, Mexico dos!”

  “Belize is playing Mexico,” she noted, completely uninterested in soccer for once.

  “Right.” He nodded. “The friendly match gearing up for the soccer World Cup.”

  She grinned. “Well, the closest a small country like Belize will ever get to the World Cup.” She gestured back to the map. “And after the storm?”

  “When it finally petered out, we decided to make a stop to fix a hatch…”

  There were close calls, stormy nights, and funny encounters with customs agents. God, did the man have stories. Stories she had to coax out of him, one by one. He had her agape, shaking with laughter, marveling at his courage. Captivated by the modest recount of an incredible voyage, and at the happy glow in his eyes.

  The more he talked, the more she saw a good boy learning how to be just a little bad. Learning that life didn’t have to go according to someone else’s plan. The hints were all in plain view, like the pale line on one wrist, as if he’d been weaning himself off wearing a watch. He scrubbed his jaw from time to time, too, perhaps getting used to the feel of stubble instead of a clean-shaven jaw.

  She liked the stubble. She liked the little-bit-longer-than-regulation hair. She liked the idea of a well-mannered man whose inner pirate was slowly swashbuckling his way out.

  She liked it more than she’d care to admit.

  He smiled, and it sent a series of tingles to all the right places. She squirmed in her chair, but that only ratcheted up the heat.

  When she realized how close her body was to his — and worse, how damn comfortable that felt — she slammed on her inner brakes and leaned away.

  Seth leaned away, too, and it felt as if someone had ripped a Band-Aid off.

  “Um, I’ll just…” She cast around for some means of composing herself. “I’ll just, um… Go to the bathroom.” She jumped up like her chair was on fire and scurried across the bar, feeling his eyes on her the whole way. Feeling a backward pull, like her body didn’t like venturing that far away from the cozy little den they’d just created, side by side.

  The bathroom was out a door that opened on a narrow alley. Just across the way, the soccer game in the sports bar was coming to a frenzied conclusion. She gulped fresh air and tilted her head back at the stars. Scorpio was over there, with his wide-open claws and huge, curving tail. The moon, nearly full and brimming with energy, lay low on the eastern horizon. The music of Santa Marta’s handful of beach bars filtered in from all sides: the samba beat from somewhere down the road, the heavy bassline from the neighboring place, the hum of voices from the sports bar on the other side.

  She entered the bathroom and closed the outer door, muffling the sound, and headed straight for the sink. Splashed the cool water in her eyes, then looked in the mirror as tiny drops trickled down her face.

  Nothing wrong with liking a nice guy, even if she’d just met him, right?

  Nothing wrong with thinking about what kind of fun she might have with that guy, right? Because over the course of the last hour, she’d gone from annoyed at a man intruding on her space to heart-thumping hot. Cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof kind of hot. Cat-yowling-for-action kind of hot. Her body was achy, needy. Greedy for more than a little conversation and the occasional harmless touch.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  She didn’t make a habit of hooking up with guys in bars. In fact, she’d never come anywhere close. But this guy… She was wildly tempted to do a lot more than chat with him, and to get to that point much faster than her usual, cautious pace. And Seth, she figured, might just be thinking the same thing.

  But did she really dare? What if it turned out to be a big mistake?

  A dozen reasons why it didn’t have to be a mistake jumped into her mind, all of them hopping and screaming in their rush to explain why. Like, maybe when a girl was on vacation, she could let her hair down a little.

  Maybe on her birthday, she could allow herself a little present.

  Maybe just this once, she could indulge in a little fun.

  So what if he was a sailor and just passing through. In another week, she’d be out of Santa Marta, too. Really, was there any harm in a little one-night stand?

  Except she’d never had a one-night stand with a perfect stranger, and had never intended to. Not that she was a total prude, because she had indulged in a little short-term fun over the past couple of years. There’d been that cute geologist she met in Peru. The technician at her dig site in Greece. The rock climber at the gym…

  But all of them, she’d gotten to know over at least a couple of weeks, not a matter of hours.

  She cupped another handful of water, rubbed it in her eyes, and then blinked it away. God, did she even know how to proposition a man in a bar? Maybe she should just give up. Tell him thanks for the good company and good night and head back to her beach bungalow for the night. Alone.

  The alternative, however, held a lot more appeal.

  She was still mulling over if she really dared when she walked out into the night. A cat jumped into the shadows, and a bat whooshed overhead. What to do? What to do?

  The sports bar reached a new level of hysteria as the announcer screamed, “Goooooaaaaaallllll! Belize dos! Dos-a-dos!”

  She smiled, thinking that a tie for Belize was as good as a win when the announcer called the game over. A flood of humanity came gushing through the sports bar doors a second later, cheering and whooping in wild abandon. You’d have thought Belize had won the World Cup from the sight of them, jumping and hugging and roaring a
t the top of their lungs.

  Then she realized it wasn’t just the sports bar that was emptying, but another place, as well, and another place next to that. Dozens — no, hundreds — of men were piling into the alley in joyful abandon. It might have been amusing if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were bearing down on her from both sides like a tidal wave, eager to pull the whole town into their celebration.

  She whipped her head one way then the other, frozen on her feet. They were closing in fast, and she was about to get swept up in the commotion. Forced into a crowd of overexcited men who’d fondle the hell out of her, if they didn’t crush her first. She leaped toward the bar entrance, but her sandal strap came undone and the sole flopped awkwardly. She cursed, reached down to tighten it, and straightened a moment too late. Five more steps and she’d be at the door, but the crowd was too close. She wouldn’t make it out of their way in time.

  The bar door flew open and a familiar form bolted out.

  “Seth!” she yelped.

  He jumped to her side and pressed her toward the wall, guarding her with his body. “Watch out!”

  “Wait—” she started but didn’t get a chance to finish before the mob hit, and he crushed into her side.

  She staggered but managed to keep her footing. Seth’s warmth spread along her back like a solid, determined wall.

  “Hang on,” he grunted.

  Hang on to what, she didn’t know; her fingers scratched at the cement-block wall in front of her. But with Seth behind her, refusing to give way to the onslaught, her panic subsided. The crowd was brushing past, heaving like a stormy sea outside the safe harbor between his arms. Men were shouting, singing, thumping each other on the backs as they swept toward the open road. Seth might have been on the receiving end of some of those thumps, judging by the low grunts he made. But he stood solid, practically growling as the riot swept along.

  The crowd thinned and moved on, the wave spent. Seth’s tightly wound muscles relaxed slightly, and the stiff armor of his chest against her back became a soft blanket. The solid steel of his arms eased away from her shoulders, and his deep exhale brushed her cheek.