Mail-order Bridegroom Part 72

consideration?

"Would you like to go fis.h.i.+ng, Kate?"

She shot him an oblique glance, as if to see if he meant it, and then gave a jerky nod.

"That would be nice."

"And safer than kissing," he said, needing to make her smile.

She looked startled, her eyes widening, her mouth making a silent 0.

Then she smiled, only a little at first, then more broadly as if they were co conspirators again and not adversaries.

"Much safer," she said and danced off towards the door.

"I'll tell Silas."

Fis.h.i.+ng. Yes, fis.h.i.+ng was safe. Nothing could happen in a boat the size of Silas's. Especially with Silas in it, too, Kate told herself.

They moved from one fis.h.i.+ng spot to another while Silas studied the reefs and the weather, which promised late day storms, muttered an occasional monosyllable and then nodded his head when he thought the fis.h.i.+ng would be good.

Damon didn't dispute it. At first Kate found that surprising, expecting that as he was an expert in so many areas he would naturally a.s.sume he was an expert in this one. Heaven knew her father would have.

But Damon seemed content to let Silas do the leading today, only offering his expertise when it came to teaching her how to bait her hook. She felt all thumbs and more than a little foolish when she tried.

"I can't," she said at first, pus.h.i.+ng it away after she'd fumbled and dropped the piece of langousta Silas had offered her for bait.

"Here. Like this," Damon said, and he was surprisingly patient as he showed her once more how to slip it on to the hook.

"Don't get so frantic. No one's grading you."

Kate shot him a sceptical look, expecting sarcasm in his words, but he looked quite sincere and when he offered to demonstrate one more time, she nodded her head.

This time she got it, then cast the line overboard as Damon instructed her to.

"Now what?"

"Now we wait."

If Kate had ever given much thought to fis.h.i.+ng before, and she didn'tremember having done so, she was fairly sure she would have thought it boring.

It wasn't.

It was soothing, cent ring It gave a person time time to relax, to muse, tobask. All those things that fast-lane, big-city people like herself andDamon rarely had time for. And the miracle was, it could all be accomplishedunder the guise of actually doing something!

What a racket, she thought, smiling.

There was a sudden tug on her line and the reel began to spin.

"Oh!"

Damon grinned.

"Looks as if you've got a live one."

The reel spun madly as she tried desperately to catch the whirling k.n.o.b. At

last she clamped down on it and stopped it. Then she thrust it towards

Damon. He shook his head.

"It's your fish. Reel it in."It was harder than she'd imagined. This was no guppy on the end of her line,or if it was, they would be writing about it in Guinness.

Her arms trembled from the exertion.

"You doin' good. Hang in there," Silas encouraged her.

"Look there, he be comin'."

Kate looked where he pointed and saw a silvery flash against the surface of

the water, then felt the line jerk and she almost lost all the ground she'd

gained. She bit down on her lip and tensed her fingers.

By the time she finally hauled him in, her arms were shaking, and she expected a fifty-pound barracuda to appear on the end of her line.

"A grouper," Silas said as he netted the huge ugly yellowish fish."Ababy. ""A baby?" Kate croaked."Baby whale."Silas laughed, unhooking it and dropping it into the well."Naw. He be four, five pounds maybe at most."Kate stared."Bigger than mine," Damon said, and Kate turned to note that while she'd been duelling with her grouper, Damon had landed a fish of his own.

"Yours is prettier," she told him. It was a slim, s.h.i.+ny fish, much handsomer than hers.

Thank you very much," he replied, amus.e.m.e.nt in his tone. He grinned at her and Kate couldn't help responding in kind.

"Need some help baiting your hook this time?" She shook her head.

"I'll try it on my own." It occurred to Kate then that Damon Alexakis wasn't very much like her father after all. Her father never would have bothered teaching her to bait the hook, nor would he have sat by and tolerated her clumsy attempts to follow his instructions. Neither would he have let her land it herself. He would have taken the whole project out of her hands and done it better.

He always did everything better. Including live other people's lives.

As she baited the hook, with less trouble this time, and cast, she thought about how, according to Teresa, Damon had spent the better part of yesterday dealing with his sisters' various complaints.

Eugene wouldn't have dealt with them. "You made your bed, lie in it,"

he would have told them, just as he'd told Kate when she married Bryce. And as long as she was married to Bryce, he'd never spoken to her. No matter how awful his sisters were, she couldn't imagine Damon turning his back on his family that way.

And that made her like him even more. She didn't want to like Damon Alexakis. Being attracted to him was difficult enough. If she liked him as well. . .

Kate turned away from him' deliberately concentrating on Silas's strong calloused hands hauling in a hand line. But then Damon said, "I've got another one," and moments later he pulled in a s.h.i.+ny iridescent fish with frantic eyes and a gaping mouth.

Kate watched as it wriggled and twitched in the last throes of battle-weary panic fighting the man who'd caught it.

It reminded her of herself.

"I got to pick up some divers been to Doctor's Cay 'bout two o'clock," Silas said after they'd fished for another couple of hours.

"You want to go home or here his grin widened you want to go to Rainbow Cove,

do a little swimming, an' I pick you up later?"

"I don't have my suit," Kate said doubtfully.

Silas grinned.

"Don't matter."

Kate supposed it wouldn't. She could paddle around in her shorts and s.h.i.+rt

perfectly well, and since the breeze had dropped she was feeling very hot and sticky.

"Let's go swimming," Kate said impulsively.

"It would be so refres.h.i.+ng."

Besides, they'd be gone from the house that much longer, away from the bedroom, out in the open where. it was, as Damon had pointed out earlier, 'safer'.

"You tol' her 'bout Rainbow already, huh?" Silas nudged Damon."No, I didn't," he said shortly."What about your sunburn, Kate?"Kate shrugged."It's not bad. Please?""Such a willing woman." Silas chuckled. Damon looked decidedly uncomfortable."What's it got, sharks?" Kate asked."No," Damon said, and Silas laughed more heartily than ever. He opened the throttle and they surged away, heading north around the top of the mainland.

Rainbow was a secluded horseshoe-shaped cove entered by a narrow inlet. With a pristine pink sand

beach tucked into a mangrove jungle, it looked like paradise. Kate was enchanted.

"It's beautiful, like a Garden of Eden."

"You got that right." Silas cut the engine and the boat slipped smoothly through the wave-less water towards the sh.o.r.e.

"You enjoy it, now," he said as he helped her out in the shallow water. Hewinked at Damon and handed him some towels."I reckon I don't have to tell you that. Keep those clothes dry now."Then he opened the throttle and churned away.

"What'd he mean, keep our clothes dry?" Kate asked."How can you swim and keep your clothes. . .?" Her voice trailed off. Hereyes narrowed. She looked at Damon accusingly.

He scowled at her.

"Don't blame me. I wasn't the one who said, " let's", when he mentionedRainbow Cove." ."You didn't say it was the. . the. . .""Skinny-dipping beach? It always has been.""How was I supposed to know that? You should have said no.""I'm supposed to say we can't go because it's a nude beach?""You didn't have to say because it's a nude beach. You could have. .I don't know. . you could have thought of something. ""I did. Your sunburn.""Well, we don't have to," she said after a moment."It's custom.""We'll break it.""Silas is a bigger gossip than any woman on this island. You think he won't tell? We're supposed to be newlyweds, d.a.m.n it. I'd want to come here ifthis was a normal marriage!""Well, it's not, is it?" Kate said scathingly.

"No, it sure as h.e.l.l isn't," Damon said through gritted teeth.

"So swim if you want," Kate said.

"I'll sit here until he comes back.

Nice and dry, how's that? " She plopped herself down on the towel, brushed