Renegade Player by Dixie Browning

Tern . He cut the outboard and greeted them with a wide, toothy grin, and while Dotty went below for still further last-minute preparations, he entertained Willy with the day’s happenings, chatting excitedly about the various contestants, some of whom had come from as far away as South Africa.
    Kiel watched with what Willy considered unnecessary condescension as the younger man explained the importance of a mate’s position in the scheme of things and described in gory detail the sewing on of mackerel and squid for bait. Willy listened indulgently, not because she was interested but because she knew how very fragile Richy’s masculine ego was. It was Dotty who broke up the monologue when she asked impatiently if she was expected for dinner aboard the Eldorado or should she make herself a sandwich.
    “Oh, golly, Skipper’ll peel my hide off! He sent over to the fire department fish fry for fish plates and he’s probably eaten ’em both by now.” He ripped the evening quietness apart with the pull of a rope while Kiel helped Dotty into the tender, and then almost ran into the breakwater when he turned to wave good-bye a third time.
    “And I thought I was robbing the cradle,” Kiel muttered derisively, ducking into the galley to begin dinner preparations.
    Almost an hour later, with the scented darkness closing down around her, Willy listened to her stomach rumble and called down the companionway that if he didn’t get a move on she was going to fix herself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
    “Just do that thing,” he warned, “and I’ll put you out on Oliver’s Reef and eat your broiled sturgeon steaks and buttered artichokes myself.”
    Her bare feet slapped the deck and she pattered down the three shallow steps, looking avidly at the chart table, where two place settings of pewter and ironstone waited to be filled. The two wineglasses of straw-colored liquid were already dewed on the outside and she said plaintively, “I’m starved!”
    “Then have a seat and start on this, glutton, and I’ll have the sturgeon ready in a minute.” He placed a lined pewter bowl before her and she purred at the sight of the delectable petals swimming in a lake of butter.
    The meal was eaten to the accompaniment of appreciative murmurs and only when Kiel stood to serve the cheese course and pour small cups of espresso did Willy lean back, replete and marvelously happy. “You’re a fantastic cook, Kiel. Where’d you learn?” she asked.
    “Picked it up here and there. Why?”
    She moved her shoulders in an offhand way under the gauzy covering. “I dunno . . . seems a funny talent for a man of your type.”
    “Oh?” He finished off the thick black coffee and leveled a sardonic glance at her. “And what talents would you expect of a man of my type?” He put quotes around the last four words.
    She grinned lazily at him, far too relaxed to rise to his baiting, and when she answered, her voice was colored with humor. “Things like sailing, of course . . . dancing, probably . . . driving good cars extremely well, and . . .oh, the usual things a practicing playboy goes in for.”
    “Making love?” he mocked.
    “Mmmmm, that goes without saying,” she teased.
    “If I were a playboy it might.”
    “And aren’t you?”
    “I’m a hardworking man , with little enough time to play , in case you hadn’t noticed,” he reminded her, lighting a slender cigar and rising to adjust the porthole over his head. The movement brought into relief the beautiful conformation of his muscular arm and she nodded to it.
    “You didn’t get muscles like those manipulating a slide rule.”
    His lips curled with what might have been humor. “Are you by any chance hinting for the story of my life?”
    “I’m all ears,” she purred with overdone eagerness.
    “So I noticed when that young sprout was regaling you with the romantic details of sewing baits together and you fell for his line, hook and sinker.”
    She groaned. “If