Between You And Me

by Jane Blackwood

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Unforgettable It seems like forever since Meghan Rose stormed off Will Scott's yacht, but he still stows her photo in his berth. Of course, nobody knows this; and Meg should have known better than to hit him with The Ultimatum. Sure, their four years sailing together were the best Will ever had, but that didn't mean he was ready to be tied down. . .not in the marital sense, anyway. Problem is, he needs her. Maybe he always has. That's What You Are Of all the insufferable, arrogant, obnoxious. . .Meg could go on, but her staid fiancé probably wouldn't cancel his next appointment to hear the unabridged list of adjectives Will Scott brings to mind. Tack on strong, stubborn, and hot--and here. In Meg's office. Sporting that same damned grin she's always been tempted to wipe off his face. . .with her mouth. Now he wants her to leave her landlocked life for two weeks' yacht racing--as if she'd jump at the chance to help the very guy who shattered her heart. Well, why not. Surely, she's immune by now.

Release date: November 19, 2014

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 350

Sample

In some former life, Will Scott figured he might have been a sea captain, one of those larger-than-life guys who raced around the horn to California before ambitious men decided to build one hell of a long train track. Life would have been a series of long ocean voyages with a few stops along the way for lusty women and spiced rum. Just thinking about it made him smile. All those women cheering from the shore, happy to see him, fighting over who would have the honor to get him first.

And then the image blurred and the women started to all look the same, with short blond hair and soft blue eyes and they were all holding out their hand for a wedding ring looking sad and he was frantically telling his crew to come about, turn away, before those women got their claws into him. Will shook his head with disgust. Two things had gotten into Will Scott’s blood and brains and soul and heart, even though he hated the thought of something squirming around him like that: sailing and Meghan Rose.

Sailing was easy to live with. Meghan Rose was not.

Will sat in the sparse cabin of a forty-foot Swan and realized he hadn’t thought about Meg in at least three days and was congratulating himself on that fact until he realized that he was, indeed, thinking about her. He couldn’t help himself. She’d become as much a part of him as the salt air he breathed in every day, as constant as the breeze blowing off the bay, as irritating as a heavy fog rolling in off the Atlantic.

Will swore under his breath, resisting the strong temptation to reach into the cubbyhole behind him and take out a tattered picture he had of her. It was the only one he had, torn out of a four-year-old Sailing Magazine issue that featured the country’s top women sailors. The fact that it was the only picture he had of a woman he’d been with for four years said a lot about the kind of boyfriend he’d been. But he gave himself credit for keeping the one he had. The picture wasn’t a great one; Will could hardly make out her features, but there was no mistaking Meg. Her back was to the camera, her hair bright and yellow blowing back from her face. He could just make out the curve of her jaw as she looked up at the jib she was adjusting. Some other chick blocked the rest of her, but Will figured he could fill in the blanks just fine after four years of learning every curve, every dip, every smooth line of her body. Why take out the damn picture when he could see the thing in his head just fine? Man, he was as pathetic as his father. He should throw the magazine scrap away. Just like he’d thrown her away.

Just like that.

But the hell of it was he couldn’t let go, not completely, even though he was the one who let her go. So, she broke his heart. He figured he deserved it after breaking hers. Will forced himself to concentrate on the satellite images of the Gulf Stream laid out on the small dining table in front of him. The boat’s cabin was barebones, stripped down for racing, containing only the minimum needed for sailing. The forward berths had been removed long ago, leaving the bow jammed with sails—ones for light wind, heavy wind, and everything in between. Water Baby was not made for comfort, as his crew often complained when they tried during the longer races to get a few hours’ sleep on the hard canvas bunks. She wasn’t pretty on the inside, but her outside was built for speed and was so beautiful that just looking at her could bring a tear to a racing man’s eye.

Just outside, seagulls screeched as they followed a fishing boat into Newport Harbor, and he could hear the sound of one of his neighbors washing down his deck. Blue Grass must have come in while he was working in the cabin, he thought, recognizing the owner’s southern accent as he yelled at his wife to “stop messin’ wid the dishes, honey, and come hep me brush the deck.” Then came the heavy clump of a big man moving down the dock, steps that stopped just outside Will’s boat. He looked up through the porthole, but could see only a pair of hairy legs that could have belonged to any of his crew.

“Bad news, me captain.” Will rolled his eyes upon hearing his best trimmer’s bad imitation of a pirate. Thad Westwood was the best crewmember Water Baby had ever had, except, perhaps, for Meg. He could take every ruffle out of a sail and make a boat fly, but Meg could read the wind as if it were coming at her in large print and make an adjustment before most people knew they needed to.

“Go away,” Will shouted back. “There is no bad news two weeks before the Newport-Bermuda.”

“’Fraid so,” Thad said, heaving his beefy body onto the boat, making it dip and causing the lines that tied the boat to the slip to stretch and squeak. Something about the way he sounded climbing aboard made Will tense. Thad might be a big man, but he was as graceful as a dancer on a boat. For a second or two, Thad blocked the light of the sun as he moved down the companionway. And then Will saw it: a cast, brilliant white and new, covering his arm from fingertips to shoulder like a benevolent albino boa constrictor.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not broken. Tell me that thing,” Will said, pointing at the cast, “is coming off in a week or is your idea of a joke.”

“I messed up, dude. Drank too much tequila and went out on an egg beater last night with some skirt I met at the Black Pearl. When she was coming into her slip, I crushed my arm into the piling. I twisted the shit out of it and broke it in two places.”

Will shook his head and swore viciously beneath his breath. It wasn’t as if he was the kind of guy who didn’t care if Thad was in pain or not, but hell, he’d just lost his best trimmer and he was sailing the most important race of his life in two weeks. Last race they’d come in third and only because they’d lost a rudder halfway through the race. This year the stakes were much, much higher. “You are screwing me good,” Will said, staring at the cast. “How in hell am I going to find a replacement for you two weeks before the race? You know anyone worth having was taken months ago.”

“Gary can . . .”

“Gary can’t,” Will said, closing his eyes and trying to find a bit of humanity lurking beneath the growing rage and disappointment. Gary actually could take over for Thad as his trimmer, but he needed better than Gary this year. He needed the best.

“I screwed up,” Thad repeated helplessly.

“Yeah. You did.” Will sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. The Newport-Bermuda race was considered one of the most prestigious ocean races in the world and this year he had to win it. He had Water Baby, outfitted with a new keel that made the boat scream through the water, and he’d had the best crew around, guys who’d been crewing ocean races for years.

He nodded toward Thad’s arm. “Must have hurt like hell.”

Thad managed a grin. “Naw. I only screamed like a girl for an hour.” They both laughed until they simultaneously remembered what they were laughing about. “I’m sorry, dude. You gonna tell Frank?”

Frank owned Water Baby, and until he lost a leg to diabetes ten years ago, had captained the Newport-Bermuda race fifteen times. Thirty years he’d been trying for the elusive Lighthouse Trophy, one year coming so close he claimed losing it made his hair turn gray. Five boats had sat off Bermuda with the island in clear sight, bobbing in no wind, sails hanging down like wet laundry. Frank had watched in despair while lighter, smaller boats drifted past him. Will was only a kid then, but he never forgot the look on Frank’s face when a boat that had been two minutes behind drifted by and got the horn blast that ended the race for him. Ever since that day, Will had been driven to win the cup.

“You can tell Frank,” Will said, and almost laughed out loud at the look of horror on Thad’s face.

“He’ll kill me.”

“Maybe I can steal someone else’s trimmer,” Will said, not really meaning it. He’d never sink to that level, no matter how desperate he was.

“Too bad Meg’s not around anymore,” Thad said, letting out a booming laugh at what he clearly thought was a joke. When he caught the expression on Will’s face, he sobered. “No way, dude. Not Meg. You had half your crew quit on you two years ago.”

Will grinned. “She’s the best trimmer I’ve ever known.” He ignored Thad’s mock hurt expression that he hadn’t thought Thad the best.

“But she’s gone. No one knows where she is.”

Will continued to smile.

“You know where she is, don’t you,” Thad said fatalistically.

“I just might.”

Thad leaned over the small table separating them, placing one meat-hook hand on the teak surface. Will figured Thad was trying to persuade him by putting on his tough-guy act, but Will never had been intimidated by Thad’s large size, cobra tattoo, or cleanly shaven bald head. He supposed Thad figured he looked like a badass and most people did think that, but Will just couldn’t get the Mr. Clean jingle out of his head every time he pulled this crap. “Maybe I’m not your trimmer this year but I care about this boat and this race and you. Dude, if you let her on this boat, I’m telling you it’ll be a disaster and I’ll never sail with you again.”

Will waved him away. “I could never convince her to crew for me. And that’s about the idlest threat I’ve ever heard.”

Thad shrugged, good-naturedly giving in on his threat to not crew for Will. Like a drowning man grabbing at a passing plank, he said, “You’re right. She’d never get on a boat with you. She told me herself.”

“She told everyone,” Will said dryly. “But if I did manage to convince her, it’d be different. We’re not together any more. We’d be captain and crew, that’s all.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” Thad said, shoving a couple of rolled-up charts out of the way so he could sit on the berth across from his friend. “I could help out as rail meat, you know.”

Will eyed the cast. “Won’t that thing slow you down? I can’t afford to lose any time this year, you know that.”

“You can’t win this race without me,” Thad said without a hint of false conceit.

“I can if I get Meg on board.”

Thad forced a smile. “But you and I both know that’s not going to happen.”

“I’ll charm her.”

That’s when Thad let out another of the booming laughs he was known for.

“I can be charming,” Will said, slightly bothered by his friend’s uncontrollable laughter. “I can be nice. Sort of nice.”

“Will, you’re a good guy. Hell, we’ve been friends for years. But I used to wonder what a nice girl like Meg was doing with you. You never remembered her birthday, you never got her a card or flowers.”

“I got her rain gear. Henri Lloyd. That stuff’s expensive.”

Thad stared at Will until he shrugged, acknowledging that Thad was probably right. “Well, I’m not trying to get her back, I’m just going to try to get her back on the boat.”

“Same thing.”

Will waved a tanned hand at him. “No, it’s not. I’m over her.” When Thad gave him a look of skepticism, Will insisted. “I am. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t been living like a priest for the past two years.”

“Yeah. Different girl every night.”

“Damn right.”

“You been on a second date in a while?”

Will let out a sound of disgust. “Listen to this guy,” Will said to an imaginary friend. “Where were you when you broke your arm? Hoping to get your pole waxed, that’s where. Not out picking out rings to throw on some chick’s finger.”

“Okay, you got me there,” Thad said, making Will laugh. “But at least I know I’m going to settle down some day. A long day off. Far, far away.” Thad grinned. “Hell, I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about. I only know that some day, it’s going to happen. I’ll be living in a house with a wife and two kids.” Thad suppressed a shudder.

Will shrugged and got ready to lie. “The wife thing. The kids. That’s not me.”

“The Meg thing isn’t you either.”

“She was a lousy girlfriend, at least for me. But she’s a great sailor.” A great everything, but Thad didn’t need to know that.

“She’ll never do it.”

Will dug his heels in, warming to the idea of having Meg on the boat again. Heck, more than warming to it. He was beginning to think that the only way he was going to win the Newport-Bermuda was to have her as his trimmer. “I need her on this boat.”

“Shit.”

“It’s the only way I can win this race without you and you know it. Deep down inside.”

“You are so wrong. Gary would do fine.”

“I have to do more than fine this year.”

Thad scrubbed his bald head with his good hand. “I know it. But Meg won’t do it. Tell you what, you convince her to crew for you and I’ll be on board one hundred percent. I’ll be rail meat, I’ll cook, I’ll do whatever menial task you’d give the newbies. I just want to be on this boat when she crosses that line in Bermuda.”

Will grinned. “You really don’t think I can convince her, do you?”

“Not a chance in hell that woman will step on this boat with you.”

Will leaned back and put his hands behind his head like a man who didn’t have a worry in the world. “Welcome to hell.”

Meghan Rose was having the worst—strike that—one of the worst days of her life. Two of her hard-fought-for clients had decided to take their houses off the market and one prospective buyer who’d been so enthusiastic about the Benson house twenty-four hours ago was now backpedaling so fast it was dizzying.

She clutched the phone painfully even though she kept her voice even. “Bathroom tile can easily be changed,” she said. Perky, perky, even though Meghan did not think of herself as the “perky” type.

“It’s not just that,” her client said, and from the way she was hesitating, Meghan knew something more substantive was bothering the woman. “It’s the neighborhood. It’s a bit more ethnically diverse than we were looking for.”

Okay, Meghan thought, many aspects of real estate are distasteful. You want to sell houses. You want to make people happy. You want . . . to scream at this woman.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s the Hispanics,” she said, lowering her voice as if the offending “Hispanics” might hear her. When the woman didn’t get a response from Meg, she said, “Across the street. You know, in the yellow house.”

Meghan was dumbfounded. “You mean the DiSilvas? They’re fourth generation, not that should make a difference. He’s vice president of a bank and she’s a high school teacher. I’m afraid I don’t see what could be objectionable.”

“No, no. I know. I’m certain they are very nice people.”

“Nicer than you,” Meghan mumbled.

“Pardon?”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mrs. Carter. I can find you a good house in a good neighborhood and negotiate a fair price for you. But I can’t, in good conscience, take a poll of the neighbors to find out if they are white enough for you.”

“Oh, God, I didn’t mean to sound like a bigot. But a house is a big investment, you know.”

Meghan’s grip on the phone tightened. The Carters were looking in the eight hundred thousand dollar range, which meant a very nice commission. She could hear Alan’s voice in her head telling her that her main goal was to make everyone happy. That’s how she’d build a client list, that’s how she’d begin making money. But although she loved it when she found a young couple the perfect house, she hated other parts of the job, the parts that made her be less than honest, the parts that made her wish she was back on a boat feeling the warm, salty wind in her face.

“Why don’t we just keep looking,” Meghan said, though being nice to this woman was making her slightly ill.

Mrs. Carter let out an audible sound of relief. “Thank you for being so understanding.”

Meghan could not bring herself to utter even a syllable of agreement. She hung up feeling ashamed that she hadn’t given that woman a piece of her mind before telling her she couldn’t help her.

Alan came into the office at that moment, and seeing her expression, immediately came over to her. He was like that, could sense something was bothering her in one look. It was why he was such a good salesman. That and his amazing good looks. He looked like something out of a 1940s movie magazine—sandy hair always perfectly combed, blue eyes, beautiful white teeth, and a winning smile. That package and an innate ability to almost instantly see whether a client loved a house, hated it, or was indifferent had made him one of the most successful real estate agents in the state. He could read people, including her, which was a refreshing change from dating a man who wouldn’t have noticed if she’d fallen overboard unless it affected how well his boat was sailing.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

She didn’t like that Alan called her “baby,” especially in the office, but no matter how many times she’d asked him to stop, he didn’t. But if that was his biggest flaw, she’d take it, just like she took the engagement ring he gave her that wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted. She would have picked out something slightly less—she wouldn’t say gaudy, but perhaps less flashy, more subtle. But who cared? It was a ring and it was beautiful and it meant she’d finally found someone who wanted to build a life with her, who wanted the same things she wanted—a home and a family and permanence. Alan was a rock—steady, strong, and wonderfully dull. Alan was just what she needed after years and years of not having a real home or a man with whom she felt safe. Alan was safe and that’s what she loved about him most.

“The Carters want only white neighbors so they passed on the Benson house.”

Alan furrowed his brow. “Pine Hill is about as white a neighborhood as you can get.” And then his face cleared. “The DiSilvas. Of course.”

Meghan raised her eyebrow. “Of course?”

“They put out their Portuguese flag.”

“Right next to the American flag,” Meghan pointed out.

Alan shrugged. “You just have to get used to people like the Carters.”

“I don’t want to get used to people like that,” Meghan said forcefully, feeling disappointed in Alan’s reaction.

Alan sat on the corner of her desk. “People like them drive me nuts, too. But they still have to buy a house and why not buy a house through us? Listen, if it bothers you that much, I’ll deal with the Carters and give you two percent of the commission. Sound fair? That way the firm still gets the sale, you can keep your sensibilities. And some of the commission.”

Meghan scowled. “Sometimes I hate this business.”

“Me too,” Alan said, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. “But I have a remarkable ability to deal with the scumbags of the world and still come out with my moral outrage in check.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” Meghan gave Alan a hard look. “And I’m not sure I like that you can.”

“Listen. Half the people we deal with are jerks. If I made judgment calls and only sold houses to and for nice people, I wouldn’t be one of the top agents in the state. And half the people we think are nice probably beat their wives and molest their kids. Frankly, it’s good to know up front about the Carters. Think about the DiSilvas trying to live across the street from people who think less of them just because their ancestors came from Portugal.”

“You can put a positive spin on anything, you know that?” Meghan asked, with a small amount of grudging admiration. “I suppose you’re right. I can’t change the Carters of the world. But I can’t deal with them, either. I’ll take that two percent, but only because I’ve spent so much time with them already. I deserve something for that, I guess.”

“Fair enough.” Alan gave her a fond look. “And it doesn’t really matter anyway, it’ll all be in the same pot soon enough.”

Meghan forced a smile, not really liking the idea of a single pot. She’d been self-sufficient for a long time and the thought of sharing her money wasn’t easy. After a decade of living week to week, she finally she had money in her savings account. It was a wonderful feeling to see that amount grow and know she’d done it herself. But she supposed she’d get used to joint accounts, just like she’d gotten used to living a normal life, having a normal job and a normal boyfriend.

Normalcy. It was a beautiful thing. She had a car, an apartment, she went grocery shopping and bought doo-dads for her kitchen. She actually had enough food in her fridge to make a meal if someone happened to stop by. Her nomad life was over and thank God for it. She loved feeling as if she were part of a community. She loved waking up in a house instead of someone else’s boat or a hotel. Every day that went by, she realized she’d made the right decision about leaving the sail racing circuit. She’d walked away from everything with hardly a look back. Heck, she hadn’t even gone to the beach last summer. Newport seemed like a lifetime away, even though it was only a forty-minute drive. She hadn’t heard the clang of a halyard on a mast in two years.

She’d found Alan when she wasn’t even really looking, wonderful Alan with a real job and a real house with furniture that came from a high-end furniture store. She’d be living there within a year, having a baby within two, growing old and happy and content and she didn’t miss her former life at all. Not one single bit. And especially she didn’t miss him.

“Meghan,” Jennifer, the receptionist, rushed to her desk, her cheeks flushed. “There’s the most gorgeous man up front asking for you.”

Meghan didn’t care how gorgeous a guy was, she only cared whether he could afford to buy one of her listings. “Is he looking for a house?”

Jennifer blushed. “I didn’t ask.”

“You do work in a real estate office,” Meghan said blandly. She gave Jennifer a fond look before standing up and following her to the reception area of their large agency. Leonard Della Real Estate was the largest independent agency in New England and had more than five hundred agents and a massive amount of listings. Some people still blamed Leonard Della, who’d been dead for ten years, for the state’s skyrocketing housing prices.

Meghan walked past other agents, most talking on the phone or checking out the latest new listings in hope of finding the perfect house for their clients. It had taken Meghan a while to feel as if she belonged in this office. Two weeks after she’d gotten her real estate license she’d made her first sale and immediately went out and spent what felt like a fortune on new clothes. Her closet had been filled with shorts and T-shirts, all emblazoned with the title and logo of ocean races, along with the year. She had a T-shirt from 1994 to 2004 for the Newport-Bermuda alone, as well as a fine collection of boat shoes. She’d started racing when she was eighteen because she didn’t want to go to college right away and thought competitive racing would be fun. And God, it had been for a long time. She hadn’t cared that she didn’t have a real home, was actually proud of it. No ties, no worries, just living free and easy. It had been an idyllic life.

And then one day she woke up and she was twenty-eight and still living a life as if she were eighteen and it scared the hell out of her. How had ten years flown by? Was she going to go to college now? Not likely. She was still poor, and other than a great tan and a toned body, she didn’t have much of anything. She’d started having panic attacks before races, and Will would hand her a paper bag, tell her to breathe into it, and get the hell on the deck as fast as you can, kiddo, because we’ve got to get these sails up and head out to the starting line.

Will. God, she’d loved him. He was the strongest man she’d known in spirit and in body. She was twenty-four when they’d met and the chemistry be. . .