Follow the Sun by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

every look, and every inflection of her beautiful voice.
    As they walked hand in hand down the dock toward his yacht, she smiled at people aboard neighboring boats, called to them by name, and swung his hand as if she and he were long-time lovers, not two people who’d known each other only a couple of days.
    But she and he weren’t strangers. Jeopard conceded silently. He doubted they’d ever been strangers, not even in the first moments when she stood below his bow as he docked the yacht, gazing up at him with amused disgust because of his tacky come-ons.
    It was getting too easy to overlook every insinuation in the royal report from the Duke of Kara. What was the duke’s idea of promiscuous, anyway? A few lovers—hell. Jeopard thought, he’d had more than a few lovers himself, starting in the tenth grade with a college girl.
    Jeopard didn’t buy the idea that women ought to be less active than men; he’d known too many strong, intelligent women with the highest moral standards who also, incidentally, loved sex. Two years ago such a woman had died to save his life during an assignment in East Germany.
    Jeopard was distracted from his brooding when a redheaded young man with the shoulders of a body builder and the tan of a George Hamilton hopped off a sailboat and swaggered his way down the dock toward them, grinning at Tess. He wore nothing but a bikini-cut piece of blue material masquerading as a decent swimsuit.
    Tess smiled at him. “Good afternoon, Timothy.”
    “Hiya, gorgeous.”
    “Timothy, this is Jeopard Surprise. He’s got the yacht next to me. Jeopard, this is Timothy Taylor. He works for the marina. I hire him to keep the
Lady
’s rigging shipshape.”
    Timothy shook Jeopard’s hand, then winked at Tess and strolled on past.
    “He needs to check his own rigging,” Jeopard remarked. “He’s a sail or two short. You ought to tellhim that the kind of swimsuit he’s wearing makes people wonder if he’s trolling for boyfriends.” “
    “Jeopard!” She looked at him in astonishment. “You don’t have to worry about Timothy. He’s extremely heterosexual.”
    He gazed down at her with a carefully neutral expression while disgust and anger grew inside him. He wasn’t going to ask how she knew so much about the kid’s sex life.
    Hell, he could stand her having a lot of lovers, but he couldn’t stand the realization that she might have several at once, and that he was only that evening’s entertainment.
    Suddenly he was furious at Tess, furious that he’d met his Waterloo in a pair of silver-blue eyes set in a face that belonged in a painter’s portrait of a Cherokee princess. She’d reduced him to making petty, mean, comments and competing for her attention.
    For the first time he understood exactly how much she had fouled up his work, his concentration, and his dignity, because he hadn’t turned his emotions off.
    Jeopard took a deep breath, focused on a cloud drifting over the sun, and cleared his conscience for what lay ahead.
    T ESS SAT IN Jeopard’s lap, one arm draped around his neck, her free hand steering the yacht, the salty ocean wind streaking her hair back and whipping tears from her eyes.
    He curled his arm more tightly around her waist, took another swallow from a glass of iced tea, and whenever she looked at him, demonstrated a heart-stopping combination of blond hair, sexy sunglasses, and a perfect masculine smile.
    She was sublimely happy.
    Finally she bent her head close to his ear and told him. “We’ve gone far enough from the marina! We don’t want anyone to come tearing along the open sea and smash us!”
    He nodded and cut the yacht’s engine. The yacht began to slow. Tess took her hand off the wheel and circled Jeopard’s neck with both arms. She was amazed that she could give him rational instructions about sailing.
    The ocean made slapping sounds against the yacht, creating a provocative background of wet rhythms. Jeopard set his tea on a ledge by the