lunch. We might toddle off and spend the night at Blakesley’s anchorage. Oh. Will we see you at Tricia’s party on Wednesday?’
Rafe Sanderson replied in the negative.
Maisie waited, as she heard the sound of an outboard motor revving then receding, before she got up and made her way to the main saloon, not at all sure of her reception in light of Rafe’s blunt and truthful explanation of her presence, and how he planned to handle her dismissal.
He surprised her. He came down the steps at the same time, raised an eyebrow at her and asked her if she was hungry.
Maisie closed her eyes. ‘I—I’m starving! No breakfast, no lunch.’
‘That’s what I thought, so I kept you some food.’ He withdrew some foil-wrapped plates from the fridge and set them on the table.
A minor feast greeted her eyes as he unwrapped the foil. Smoked salmon and melon; cold lobster in a salad studded with black olives and feta cheese, accompanied by a crispy chicken leg and a slice of quiche which he removed and warmed in the microwave. He also warmed two rolls.
‘Thank you so much,’ she murmured as she gazed hungrily at his offerings. She hesitated. ‘I rather thought you were going to make me walk the plank.’
‘You heard?’
‘I heard. She must have woken me when she closed the door.’
‘She can be the most infuriating woman, but Dan is a good friend,’ he said. ‘As for making you walk the plank, I’m feeding you and making you a cup of tea instead because cruelty to pregnant ladies is not amongst my vices. However,’ he paused to fill the kettle, ‘as soon as you’ve eaten, we are going straight back to Manly.’
Maisie ate the salmon and melon. ‘Where you intend to wash your hands of me?’
He looked at her expressionlessly over his shoulder then lit the gas and put the kettle on the hob. ‘As a matter of fact, I intend to leave no stone unturned until I get to the bottom of this.’
Maisie demolished the lobster and the quiche then she picked up the chicken leg and sank her teeth into it. When she finished, she wiped her fingers fastidiously on the paper napkin he’d supplied.
‘You were hungry,’ he commented.
She smiled ruefully. ‘For weeks I was as sick as a dog and could hardly look food in the face; now I’m ravenous most of the time.’ She hesitated. ‘Does that mean you believe me?’
He poured two cups of tea and came to sit down. ‘No, but neither do I disbelieve you. You could say I’m reserving judgement, but if there is some bastard going around out there impersonating me, I intend to nail him.’
Maisie shivered involuntarily.
He noted it and pressed home his advantage. ‘But if there isn’t, this is the time to come clean, Maisie Wallis,’ he added quietly, but in a way that left her in no doubt he meant it.
‘That’s exactly how it happened.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘Why would I make up such a story?’
‘Do you really need me to answer that?’
‘Yes, I do!’ Her green eyes were indignant.
‘OK, then, women have been throwing themselves in my path for years,’ he said deliberately. ‘Don’t think I enjoy it or flatter myself that my money isn’t the draw, I don’t. And this could be an original way of doing it.
‘No,’ he added as Maisie drew a deep breath, ‘the time for furious displays of anger is past, straight-talking is what we need now, Maisie. For example, when you said the only Rafael Sanderson you could come up with was me, does that mean the name meant nothing to you when this man introduced himself as me?’
‘No—yes! I’d never heard of you.’
‘So why would anyone masquerade as me to a girl it meant nothing to?’
Maisie’s eyes widened. ‘I have no idea,’ she whispered.
‘But you assumed there was a bit of substance in his background all the same?’
‘I honestly didn’t give it much thought but I suppose so. He was well-spoken, he’d travelled, he was,’ she grimaced, ‘a lot more sophisticated than anyone else I’d ever dated.’
He smiled a lethal little smile. ‘Well, that’s the kind of thing I’ll be digging into, as well as your background and so on. Do you really want me to go on with it?’
For a moment, Maisie was in two minds as it struck her that this Rafael Sanderson had an aura his impersonator—and it had to be that—had lacked.
Yes, there were physical similarities, colouring, height and so on.
This Rafe had changed again, after rescuing her and kissing her, during which a fair bit of her drenched condition had transferred itself to him, into jeans and a grey, fine-wool round-necked sweater.
With his thick, ruffled dark-blond hair, those unusual eyes, his lean, strong lines beneath his jeans and sweater, and with his beautiful hands, she noticed suddenly, he was just as attractive.
Similar build—glorious physiques in other words, similar good looks, but—two very different characters, she reflected.
The first Rafe had been charming, he’d been easy-going, he’d really made her laugh at the same time as he’d made her feel desirable and able to view the world a little less darkly in his company.
Yet, despite allusions to a wealthy background, she would never have taken him for the CEO of a minerals corporation, whereas the man sitting opposite her struck her as exactly that.
He definitely had the aura of a clever, powerful businessman who knew what he wanted and got it. It was there in the way he spoke, in his gestures and the way he handled people. It had been there in the few images she’d brought up on her computer that had puzzled her and made her wonder if they were one and the same man.
In other words, beneath those good looks, and wonderfully honed, tall body, there was a lot more substance to this man, there was even a faintly dangerous edge to him that made you stop and think twice about tangling with him.
But she was telling the truth, she reminded herself, so what did she have to lose?
‘You may do your darnedest, Mr Sanderson,’ she told him quietly. ‘I have nothing to hide.’
‘I see.’ He said it quite neutrally, but his gaze was extremely penetrating and acute.
So penetrating, Maisie found herself thinking some bizarre thoughts.
How was he seeing her?
Simply as a troublesome thorn in his side? A girl who’d got herself into trouble and was therefore beyond the pale?
Or, had any of the deliciously feminine sensations he’d aroused in her got through to him? Something had prompted him to kiss her, after all, so he’d been the one to make the first move, but…
‘Good,’ he said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Well, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s make a move.’ He got up and picked up her plate.
‘Oh, I’ll do that—unless you need me up top?’
‘Thanks, but I can manage.’ He turned away and ascended the steps to the deck two at a time.
Maisie watched him go and she drew a sudden, startled little breath to discover that it was far from settled for her.
His athleticism stripped away his sweater and jeans in her mind and presented her with an image of him unclothed, and her imagination ran riot.
She pictured herself on the aft berth with him laughing down at her with tender, wicked amusement as if at an intimate joke only they could share.
Her thoughts roamed on and she realised that if that amusement changed