on her. “Are you too young to remember the phrase Just Say No?”
“That was to say no to drugs.”
“It is possible,” the grubby fisherman pointed out, “to say no to other things.”
“Like baths and clean clothes?” she said sweetly, her gaze raking him.
He had at least a couple of days’ growth of beard on his face and he wore a pair of faded jean cutoffs and an equally faded short-sleeved shirt covered with outrageous cartoon flamingos and palm trees.
His dark brows drew down. “I’m clean,” he protested. “I took a swim this afternoon.”
“A swim?”
“Water’s water. Don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you just say no? No, thank you,” he corrected with a grin.
“Because,” she told him haughtily, “it wouldn’t have been efficacious.” She doubted he even knew what the word meant.
He repeated it. “Efficacious. What’s that when it’s at home?”
“Appropriate. Though I doubt you know what that means, either.”
“Me?” His brows went clear up into the fringe of hair that flopped over his forehead. “I don’t know what’s appropriate? Who jumped into the ocean miles from shore?”
She felt her face grow hot, but she refused to acknowledge the foolishness, even though now her knees were feeling like jelly. “It worked. They didn’t see me. No one saw me.”
“And that makes it appropriate?” He was almost shouting at her. “You’re a flaming idiot, you know that? If I hadn’t fished you out, you’d have drowned. Or been eaten by a shark.”
“I saw your boat.”
He stared at her as if she’d just escaped from Bedlam. “You saw my boat? A quarter of a bloody mile away?” He made it sound like rank idiocy. To him it obviously was. To her, at the time, it had been completely sensible and absolutely necessary.
There had been no other way.
She certainly couldn’t call Roland Carruthers, her father’s CEO, a liar! Not in front of the entire group of management and investors he’d brought together on the yacht to celebrate the acquisition of Butler Instruments by St. John Electronics.
And Roland had known it, damn him. That was why he hadn’t said a word to her beforehand, but had simply stepped up to the microphone and announced their impending marriage.
Tonight, he’d said in his charming, dark whiskey voice, they were in for a delightful surprise. Everyone was going to get a living example of how much of a real family St. John Electronics was because they were all going to be witnesses at his shipboard marriage to Simon St. John’s only daughter, Margaret Sydney St. John.
Her!
He had taken marriage—her marriage—and turned it into a business deal.
And then he’d had the temerity to meet her gaze and smile at her! As if she would approve!
Sydney had gone cold. And white. Stunned and speechless.
Which is probably exactly what he’d been counting on. And when she finally got her voice back, as he came over and put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, she still couldn’t say what she was thinking.
Because she knew better. Simon St. John had taught her well. The company always came first.
So there was no chance that Syd would undermine her father’s firm or his representatives in public. She always did what was “best for the company.” Corporate from her head to her toes, Syd would never gainsay his claim.
And Roland knew that. He’d played upon it, had counted on her agreement and on her going through with it because their marriage would be in the best interests of St. John Electronics.
But even though she might believe that, she couldn’t do it.
Not like this.
His announcement had shocked her to her core. Only years of social conditioning had prevented her from showing it on her face. But whether she was more shocked by his announcement or by her own reaction to it was something she was going to have to think about.
If he’d asked her to marry him, if he’d wooed her, charmed her, pretended to love her, Syd had the sneaking suspicion she might have said yes.
But he hadn’t. He’d presumed and simply expected her to go along with it—for the good of the company. Not because he loved her. Roland had never ever pretended to love her. They were business associates.
And yet he would have married her!
If she had been willing, Syd realized, she’d be Mrs. Roland Carruthers right now. No, she corrected herself, Roland would have been Mr. St. John Electronics.
Because it was all about business. Nothing else.
Yet if he had pretended—Syd shuddered to think about how close she might have come to agreeing, if he’d gone about it in a less manipulative fashion—she might have done it.
Thank God Roland dared to assume! Now she knew there was a line across which she wouldn’t go.
No matter how good it would be for St. John Electronics, no matter how happy their marriage would make her father, she would not marry for the company.
She would only marry for love.
But she couldn’t have said that in front of the guests!
She’d tried talking him out of it as he’d escorted her below to change into the silvery beaded dress. “This is crazy, Roland,” she’d said. “You’ve had too much sun.”
“On the contrary,” he’d assured her, “it’s exactly right. For everyone.” He’d turned a deaf ear to all her objections. “You know it’s for the best, Margaret.” He always called her Margaret because her father did. “Don’t act missish, my dear,” he’d said, steering her toward her stateroom. “It’s not like you.”
No. It wasn’t. But neither was just mindlessly doing what she was bullied into. And so she had shut the stateroom door on him.
“Hurry and change, Margaret,” he’d said. “Everyone is waiting.”
“I am not marrying you, Roland,” she’d said through the door.
“Oh, Margaret, for goodness’ sake,” he’d said with irritating good humor. “Stop fussing and get a move on. I’ll be on deck waiting for my bride.”
He’d had a long wait.
Syd had changed into the party dress so she could give the impression of cooperating if anyone saw her, then she’d gone back out and along the passage to the stern. She’d climbed the ladder to the deck, then stayed out of sight until no one was looking.
And she’d jumped.
“I’m a strong swimmer,” she told her sceptical rescuer firmly now. “I knew I could make it. And it was better than causing a fuss.”
“Getting eaten by a shark wouldn’t have caused a fuss?” He sounded furious. She didn’t understand why. He wasn’t the one who would have been fish food. But he was cracking his knuckles furiously and giving a sharp shake of his head.
“I didn’t think there were any fish around,” she said lamely.
His eyes flashed. “This is the ocean, sweetheart! Why the hell wouldn’t there be any fish?”
“You weren’t catching any,” she pointed out.
He made a strangled sound, yanked off his ugly faded baseball cap and shoved his hand through shaggy dark hair that could have used cutting. “How could I catch any damn fish,” he demanded, “with you kicking and floundering around out there? You were