While she admired the teak decks and sparkling fittings, a man emerged from a hatch and rummaged through a tool chest. He noticed Laila, gave her a sun-crinkled smile, and turned back to his work.

“She’s beautiful,” said Laila. “Thanks. You sail?”

“Some. I’m not Columbus.”

“Who is? Come aboard if you’d like. Dave Christiansen.”

“Laila Sorrel.” It was the name she chose—after the woman who had once rescued her—when she didn’t want a stranger to know who her father was.

He showed her around the North Star. The boat was his—“mine and the bank’s, that is.” He sailed day cruises and charters. “Catalina, the other Channel Islands, once in a while down the Baja. Hawaii twice.” Sailing was his life: “I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. When I was fourteen, a kid I knew took me out on Lake Mendota in a little Sunfish. From then on, I never thought about doing anything else.”

When it was time to go, she thanked him for the tour.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m doing a group tomorrow, an overnight to Catalina— assuming I can fix the water pump on the auxiliary by then. Want to come along? As honorary crew, I mean. No charge. No pay, either.”

Why not? “Sure,” she said. “Sounds like fun.” “Some work, too. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning?” “See you then.”

They took twenty paying customers out to the beautiful little hill-ringed harbor of Avalon. Laila slept on deck under the stars. The next morning, they ran before the wind back to the mainland, where Laila, David, and the first mate, a serious young black man named Roy, toasted a successful voyage with icy bottles of beer.

Sun darkened, exhausted, muscles aching, Laila couldn’t remember when she had felt so good.

After that, she was on the North Star often. There came a time when everyone thought of her and David as a couple, and there came a time when they were. He wasn’t like the men in her social set, whether in France, New York, or Los Angeles. He was as calm, confident, and strong in a storm at sea as when he was holding her close. He wasn’t brilliant or witty, but his dry, easygoing sense of humor didn’t wear thin.

On the night he told her he loved her, she told him who she really was. “You’re kidding,” was his first reaction. When she convinced him that she wasn’t, he laughed. “Well, it’s not going to change my feelings any. But it must complicate yours.” “What do you mean?”

“Well, I say ‘I love you,’ and you say, ‘But my daddy’s a billionaire.’” He laughed again. “Hey, I’m not a total dummy—I know what the whole world will think. Who cares? What matters is what you think.”

“I don’t think you’re after my money, if that’s what you mean.”