He stepped out, gripping the weighty tool bag in his right hand. The one she had left behind. Sacrificed like a lamb on his yacht during her escape.
Vito reluctantly confessed last night that he'd hidden the well-loved bag behind the bar in the brightly lit salon. The pudgy Italian had been pale and extremely apologetic by the time Alexandros had finished with him and had him escorted ashore.
He reached up and removed his sunglasses as he stepped into the service bay. The scent hit him first: sea salt, hot metal, oil, and a faint undertone of fish. He curled his nose. A place like this would send his private chef into early retirement.
A curious sound floated through the air—music, but not the kind he expected. Somewhere between Ludovico Einaudi and Enya. It wafted from the trawler propped up ahead on blocks like a patient in dry dock, her hull chipped and sun-faded.
He followed the sound.
A metallic clang, a muttered curse, and the unmistakable growl of someone losing an argument with an engine. A voice that sounded an awful lot like it came from his mermaid.
He stepped closer, and there she was.
Danika.
Her name rolled over his tongue like a caress. She would never be just Dani to him. She was too beautiful to have her name shortened. His body hardened at the thought of stroking her, murmuring her name as he tasted her sweet nectar—and heard his name on her lips as she came.
His gaze greedily roamed over her. She was bent at the waist, her hips balanced over the side of the open engine compartment, one leg braced on the edge, the other dangling for balance. She was as different today as she had been last night in the sports bra and red sequined gown.
She hadn’t seen him yet.
In the full light of day, she was… mesmerizing. Her dark auburn hair was twisted up in a messy bun, curls spilling like rebellious vines from pins barely clinging to order. His fingers itched to tug the pins free, just to watch that glorious mane fall around her shoulders.
Her skin was pale but kissed by the sun—more Mediterranean cream than porcelain. There was a smudge of engine grease on her cheek, just below one high cheekbone. It shouldn’t have looked sensual. But on her, it did.
She muttered something he couldn’t hear. With another unladylike growl, she twisted the wrench with a ferocious little grunt of triumph. The sound skittered down his spine like a challenge.
He recognized the instant she realized she wasn’t alone anymore.
She turned, slowly, her eyes lifting and locking with his.
Wide. Green. And stunning.
Eyes that I could spend a lifetime drowning in,he thought with a sense of shock.
A beat of surprise flickered across her face, followed by something else—something that set his pulse kicking: delight. Her entire face lit up, and her mouth curved into a smile a man might kill to earn.
It hit him like a punch to the chest. Heat ricocheted through him, his body responding before his brain caught up. And then?—
Pop!That was the only way to describe the sensual bubble building inside him.
“Oh! My baby!” she gasped, her eyes zeroing in on the tool bag like he was holding a kidnapped kitten instead of twenty pounds of steel.
He blinked.Seriously?
She practically cooed. “You found her! Come here, sweet thing. Mama missed you.”
His lips flattened in disappointment. The sensual storm swirling inside him hiccupped and abruptly turned into annoyance. Not at her. At the damn tool bag.
Women cooed over diamonds. Not over socket sets!
She leaned over the railing and wiggled her fingers at him.
“Perfect timing! I need the 12-millimeter socket for a nut that refuses to admit defeat.”
He stepped forward, climbed halfway up the ladder, and handed her the bag without a word. The weight transferred from his hand to hers—and in seconds, she had turned and vanished again into the trawler’s belly. Just like in his dream.
Only this time, he wasn’t going to let her slip away so easily.
