Chapter 7

Melinda opened her eyes and looked around. The sun was rising in the east. Seeing it, she sat up. A small breeze caused her to look down at her nude body. The events of the previous night came rushing back to her. She groaned, “Oh my God. It wasn’t a dream.”

“Good morning,” Mike said. He was lying on his side watching her sleep.

Frantic to get in the protective cover of clothes, Melinda asked, “Where’s my dress?”

“I think you are sitting on it,” Mike answered watching her try to cover her body with her hands. She wasn’t being very successful. It made him wonder if she was really trying all that hard.

Melinda shifted and grabbed her dress. She nearly tore it in her chaotic rush to put it on. With the dress still covering her head, she said, “You cheated.”

“I did?” Mike asked amazed at the difficulty that she was having in getting dressed. He would have offered to help her, but he had a feeling that would only make her angry.

“Yes, you did.”

“How?”

“You talked about my mind rather than my body,” Melinda said. It even sounded lame to her.

“I didn’t know that was cheating,” Mike said with a grin. He wondered how long it would take her to realize that she was trying to put the dress on upside down.

“It is,” Melinda declared. She gave a small scream of frustration when she realized that the dress was upside down.

“I must admit that you have a wonderful body,” Mike said.

“Don’t talk to me about my body,” Melinda said. She finally got the dress mostly covering her.

“You’re right. I’d rather talk about your mind,” Mike said.

“Don’t say a word about my mind. That’s cheating,” Melinda shouted. She finally got the dress so that it covered all of the parts it was meant to cover.

“You’re right. I’d rather talk about how much fun it would be to work on a submarine with you,” Mike said.

“Do what?” Melinda asked looking around for her underwear.

“I bet that working together, we could build a submarine that would put all of the others to shame,” Mike said.

“A submarine?” Melinda asked forgetting about her underwear for a minute.

“Yes. I keep imagining a submarine with a transparent front that would let us watch the sea life while we’re cruising through the Galapagos Islands,” Mike said.

“There’s a reason why submarines are built like tin cans,” Melinda said.

“I must admit that it would be a challenge. I was thinking of something about a hundred feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and about ten feet tall,” Mike said.

“Not a cylinder,” Melinda asked finding that she was interested in the idea.

“I was looking at making something a little more unusual than that. I was thinking of something along the lines of a manta ray in shape although not quite as wide,” Mike said.

“You wouldn’t be able to take something like that too deep. It would be kind of too large for shallow areas,” Melinda said.

“It just needs to get deep enough to avoid the turbulence of storms and we could add a small run-about for shallow areas,” Mike said.

“That’s true,” Melinda said.

Knowing that he had her well and truly hooked, he said, “I’d love to take it through the region around the Galapagos Islands. Can you imagine watching the diversity of aquatic life in their natural habitat?”

“That would be wonderful,” Melinda said. She always visited aquariums whenever she had the chance.

“It would make a nice trip for our fifth anniversary,” Mike said.

Melinda snapped out of her daydream and shouted, “Stop doing that!”

“Doing what?”

“Cheating,” Melinda said. It seemed to her that he was always keeping her off balance. Last night, he had talked about her accomplishments as an engineer. It had been so easy to talk about it that she completely dropped her guard. The next thing she knew, she was taking off her dress. Things got real fuzzy about that time.

“I wasn’t cheating. I was talking about you and me designing a fully functional touring submarine,” Mike said pleasantly.

“Where is my underwear?” Melinda asked. She had to get herself together before she lost it completely.

“Hanging off the cactus over there,” Mike said pointing to a plant a dozen feet away.

“Oh, God.”

“I never saw anyone so eager to get out of her panties,” Mike said.

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“You do let your passions get the better of you at times,” Mike observed.

“Shut up.”

“You are quite vocal too,” Mike said. He was enjoying the moment.

“Don’t say another word.”

“That was the best night of my life,” Mike said.

Melinda practically whimpered on hearing that. She hung her head and said, “That’s it. Torture me some more.”

“I’m serious. I’ve never been with a woman like you,” Mike said while getting up to walk over to the cactus on which her panties hung limply.

“Rub it in.”

“I can’t wait to work with you,” Mike said. He got the panties off the cactus and held them up for her to see. Making a production of it, he lifted the panties to his nose and sniffed. Smiling up at her, he said, “Someone was excited last night.”

“That’s disturbing,” Melinda said staring at him.

“I can’t wait to see if you are half as passionate when working as you are in bed,” Mike said tossing the panties to her.

“Kill me now,” Melinda said. She couldn’t even say why she had done what she had done the previous night. It was very rare when she let loose like that. The idea that she would do that with Mike O’Connor was so foreign to her that it felt like it was happening to a stranger.

Mike crouched down by the blanket and picked up his clothes. He said, “Let’s get to the barn and eat.”

“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” Melinda asked. She kept finding her eyes drawn to his pride and joy.

“You’ve seen it all. In fact, if I remember correctly you’ve handled the interesting bits quite extensively,” Mike said. He grinned at the sequence of expressions that crossed her face.

“I was drunk at the time,” Melinda said.

“You had one glass of wine with dinner and nothing else alcoholic for the next four hours,” Mike said pointing out the weakness in her excuse.

“Can’t you let a girl retain her dignity?”

“I’m just keeping you honest,” Mike said.

Melinda led the way to the building. She had thought it preferable to lead than to follow the naked man back to the building until Mike said, “The view from back here is wonderful.”

“Ugh! I want to kill you.”

“No need to wait up for me. I’ll just follow along behind you,” Mike said when she stopped to glare at him.

Turning, she stomped towards the building. His laughter added fuel to her anger. She muttered, “I just need ten minutes alone to collect myself.”

Mike followed along appreciating the way that her dress showed off her body. He nearly burst into laughter when she shouted, “I can’t believe that I slept with him.”

He called back, “On the first date no less!”

“Argh!”

Mike laughed at her reaction. He knew that she was going to marry him despite her constant denial. He followed her into the building. Without waiting for him, she made her way to the stairwell. She wanted to get a shower. It wasn’t until she reached the bottom of the stairs that she realized he would be able to watch her wash. She wanted to cry.

Mike passed by her before calling over his shoulder, “Let me wash up first and I’ll start breakfast while you take your shower.”

“Okay,” Melinda answered.

Five minutes later, Melinda caught herself watching Mike lather his body in the shower.

She mumbled, “God he’s a good looking man.”

Mike paused in his shower and looked over at her. Seeing that she was staring at him, he sent her an exaggerated wink. Realizing that she had been caught watching him, she spun around to face the other direction.

Mike said, “Damn, she’s a fine woman.”

After rinsing off, Mike stepped out of the shower and called over to her, “The shower is all yours.”

“Thanks,” Melinda replied wondering how she would get the nerve to strip in front of him.