rattle as well.
Startled, Hugh swiveled around to see it bending and rocking like mad in the twilight as Belle jumped up and barked at it. “Hang on.” He reached to grab it, too, just as he caught sight of a thrashing movement off the side of the boat.
One hell of a big thrashing movement. The line he held jerked hard and he wrapped it quickly and tightly around his hand.
What in God’s name had he caught? A bloody whale?
He braced his feet and began to haul it in again when all of a sudden his catch broke the surface.
A woman—an absolutely furious woman—sputtered up. “For heaven’s sake, stop yanking on that line! You’re going to rip my dress right off!”
Hugh goggled.
A woman?
He’d caught a woman?
No. Not possible. He gave his heat-baked brain a quick hard shake.
But even as he doubted and wondered if he’d had too much sun and too many beers, the line jerked in his hand, the rod bobbed madly and Belle leaned eagerly over the edge and wagged her tail and barked.
So she was real.
He wasn’t seeing things.
It was a woman. Or a…mermaid?
His mind wouldn’t even go there.
“Shut up, you stupid dog,” he muttered. Then, “Stop thrashing around,” he snapped at the woman.
“I’m not thrashing,” she retorted furiously. “I’m trying to get this damn hook out!” And abruptly she disappeared underwater leaving Hugh to stare at the empty ocean in the sudden silence and doubt his sanity once more.
Belle whined and leaned precariously over the edge. Hugh grabbed her collar and hauled her back just as the woman bobbed up again and the line jerked furiously in his hand, meaning she hadn’t got the hook out.
“Damned beaded dresses,” she said with annoyance.
Beaded dresses?
Hugh’s jaw sagged. But he could see that she did appear to be wearing something with sparkly silver straps over her shoulders. A beaded dress? Who the hell went swimming in a beaded dress?
She gave one more futile yank, then stopped fighting with the hook and took a couple of overhand strokes, which brought her closer to the boat but tangled her even further with his lines.
“Do you have a knife?” she demanded.
Did fish swim in the sea? “Of course I’ve got a knife.”
“Then give it here. Or cut the line and pull me out,” she ordered, stretching out a hand and sounding like Barrett, his old commanding officer, the one they’d called Captain Ahab behind his back because he was as irrational and stubborn as Melville’s legendary captain.
Barrett—and Ahab—had nothing on this woman. If she’d acted the least bit desperate, he would have handed over his knife in an instant. But he was damned if he was taking orders from a bossy mermaid.
“Well?” she demanded impatiently when he didn’t move. “What are you waiting for?”
“The magic word?” he drawled, raising one brow.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She began kicking again, splashing him.
“You might not want to do that,” he suggested. “You’ll attract sharks.”
Her eyes widened. “There aren’t—”
“Of course there are,” he said. “Big ones. Hungry ones. In case,” he added, “you thought Jaws was just a movie.” He cocked his head, and smiled at her, all the while thinking this was the most surreal experience he’d ever had in his life.
Belle whined and peered over the side.
The woman looked from him to his dog and back again. She pressed her lips together tightly, then rolled her eyes and shrugged, nearly sinking as she did so. Then she muttered a less than gracious, “Please.”
“By all means,” Hugh said affably and nudging Belle out of the way, grasped the woman’s outstretched hand and pulled. As she came out of the water, he got both of her hands, and she floundered, kicking and slithering, and landed against him, cold and wet as a fish.
But she didn’t feel like a fish.
She felt like 100 percent woman with soft breasts and shapely hips. And feet.
He felt both relieved—and irritated—that she had feet.
“What the hell were you doing out there swimming around in the middle of the damn ocean?” he demanded, gripping her arms.
She twisted out of his grasp and shoved away to stand on her own. Then she shook long wet dark hair out of her eyes and glared at him. “Well, I wasn’t swimming laps. I was trying to reach your boat obviously!”
“My boat?” That hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Your boat.” She corrected his emphasis. “It was the closest thing to aim for,” she explained as if he were slightly dim-witted.
Hugh didn’t think that under the circumstances he was the one whose wits needed questioning.
But he had a notion now where she’d come from. He arched a brow and looked her up and down, taking in the sparkly beaded dress that ended just above very shapely knees and outlined extremely enticing curves. A very snazzy cocktail dress. Not exactly day-tripper wear. More ritzy party girl. She could only have fallen off the yacht whose running lights he could still see far off in the distance.
“What happened?” he asked her. “Drink too much? Get a little tipsy? Lose your footing?”
“What?” She looked at him, offended.
So he spelled it out. “Fall off the yacht, sweetheart?”
“I did not fall off the yacht,” she told him flatly, lifting a chin not unlike Captain Ahab’s chin. “I jumped.”
Hugh’s jaw dropped. “You what!”
“I jumped,” she repeated calmly, which was exactly what he couldn’t believe she’d said the first time.
“Are you crazy? You jumped? In the middle of the bloody ocean? What the hell did you do a stupid thing like that for?”
The crazy woman drew herself up as tall as she could manage, which meant she was almost as tall as he was, and looked down her definitely Captain Ahab nose. “It was,” she informed him, “the proactive thing to do.”
Hugh sputtered. “Proactive?”
How like a ditsy female to use business babble to justify temporary insanity. At least he hoped it was temporary. He jerked his baseball cap off, ran a hand through his hair, jammed it back on again and shook his head.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed just because you drank a bit too much,” he told her. “Lots of people get a little wasted when they have a day’s holiday.”
But her chin just went higher. “It wasn’t a holiday. And I did not touch a drop. I never drink on business occasions.”
“You jump often?” Hugh inquired. “On business occasions?” His mouth twitched.
She gave him a fulminating glare, then wrapped her arms around her dripping dress and scowled. “Fine. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me whether you believe me or not.” Pause. “But I would appreciate a towel.”
He didn’t move.
The scowl grew deeper, the glare more intense. Their eyes dueled. Then Miss Captain Ahab pressed her lips together tightly. There was a long pause. Finally she gave an irritable huff and added with bad grace, “Please.”