Captain's Paradise: A Novel

by Kay Hooper

  Nothing mattered except now, this moment, and the feelings he was drawing from her deepest self.

  It was Michael who pulled back suddenly, holding her away from him with iron hands on her shoulders. His face was pale except for the hard flush on his cheekbones, his eyes glittering. “I didn’t plan on you,” he said hoarsely.

  Robin was staring at him, dazed. She forced her arms to let go of him. “Oh, damn,” she muttered, realizing only then that it was too late for her to fight this. Far too late. “I didn’t plan on you either.”

  He released her and drew away slowly, rising to his feet and staring down at her. His eyes were violent, but his face remained hard and still.

  Robin spoke before he could, fighting to hold her voice steady. “You may not know which I am, a sure thing or a long shot, but you know what this is, don’t you?” She didn’t have to elaborate; he knew that “this” was the explosive attraction between them.

  Michael nodded with stark control. “I know. It’s a long shot. One chance in a million. And I don’t bet on long shots.”

  She watched him move away and begin preparations to leave the marina, feeling hot and restless. And despite what Michael had said, she was still afraid.

  She didn’t bet on long shots—usually. And Michael didn’t bet on them—usually. But here they were, getting ready to sail off on this small boat alone to try to rescue women being held by armed men on a large yacht.

  And if that wasn’t a long shot … then what was?

  FOUR

  IN A LUXURIOUS condo high above Miami’s famous gleaming white strip of beach, Dane Prescott turned away from the bar in the sunken living room and abruptly went still. Seconds passed. His preoccupied frown slowly faded, a smile taking its place.

  “For someone who’s reputedly out of the business,” he murmured to the apparently empty room, “you sure creep around on cat feet. And I’ve never known a retiree more inclined to pick locks and disable security systems.”

  “You ought to change that system,” Raven Long said, stepping down into the living room. “It’s lousy.”

  “I’m a guest here,” Dane told her politely. “The place belongs to a friend.”

  Raven looked around, then gazed at him with a lifted brow. “Broke this week?” she asked him dryly.

  “No. But near enough.” He shrugged, dismissing what was obviously an unimportant problem. “What brings you down to sunny Miami? Last I heard, you’d married Joshua Long and had retired from the world of shadows and secrets.”

  “You know what they say about retired agents. They just can’t keep out of the dark. I need some information, Dane.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Do you know Michael Siran?”

  “Yes. Would you like a drink?”

  Raven’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Will I be here that long?”

  “You might.”

  “Okay. Brandy.”

  He poured her drink, then carried it to her and gestured for her to sit down. When she had, he joined her at one end of the plush gold grouping in the center of the room. “Why are you looking for Michael?” he asked.

  “I might need his help. A friend of a friend could well be in trouble down here. Very likely is in trouble. She hasn’t checked out of her hotel, but her things are still there and she hasn’t been seen for the past few days. She’s a reporter, and she was looking into a white slavery ring.” Raven studied her brandy thoughtfully. “I’m here with some friends. We checked the marina a couple of hours ago and found we’d just missed Siran’s boat. Where is he, Dane?”

  “Unless I’m much mistaken,” Dane said, “he’s with your friend of a friend. If her name’s Robin Stuart, that is.”

  Raven blinked, then smiled. “How did that happen?”

  “Seems she wasn’t just looking into white slavery; she fell into it. Managed to jump ship in the dead of night. By a great stroke of luck, Michael was in the vicinity. He fished her out of the water.”

  Raven sighed. “Teddy will be relieved.”

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Dane warned her.

  Raven half closed her eyes. “The slavers?”

  “Afraid so. Michael and Robin came to see me this afternoon asking about Edward Sutton’s yacht. They had a pretty good idea that was the boat Robin escaped from. I’d say it was a case of out-of-the-frying-pan for Robin; she just happened to be rescued by the one man who’s able to—and highly motivated to—put Sutton out of business for good. Sutton’s an old enemy of Michael’s, and he’s holding someone very dear to Michael as bait to draw him out.”

  “Who?”

  “His sister. My guess is that since this is personal to Michael, he’s on his own. No backup.” Dane shook his head a little. “He’d storm hell if the devil had his sister; that’s about what he’s doing now. The odds aren’t good, Raven.”

  “Then we’ll improve them,” she said grimly.

  After a moment Dane smiled. “Okay. What do you need from me?”

  In his office in a larger East Coast city, Daniel Stuart slowly closed the folder on a surveillance report he had just received from one of his agents. He was frowning, and hesitated for a moment before reaching for his special phone, and dialing a special number. The call would be routed through several area codes before finally reaching the mobile phone at the other end of the connection. It was after midnight. He heard a dozen clicks, then the ring signal. At last, the phone was answered.

  “Yeah?” a voice grunted.

  “Where are you?” Daniel asked without preamble.

  “Too close to home. Miami.”

  “That’s where the ladies went?”

  “Three of them. Raven Long, Kyle Kendrick, and Teddy Steele. One of the company jets touched down a few hours ago. And they almost lost me, dammit.”

  “I did warn you that they sometimes move fast. Any sign of their husbands?”

  “No, and I don’t think they came down here to join them. The women checked the marina, asking the harbor master about the Black Angel.”

  “Michael’s boat?” Frowning, Daniel ran long fingers through his steel-gray hair. “Any idea why?”

  “No. But I can find out.” There was wry humor in the deep voice. “Raven Long just left the condo where Dane’s living at the moment.”

  Daniel half closed his eyes. “This is getting hellishly complicated, Skye.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “If those ladies have taken off after Michael …”

  “Yeah. Well, there’s something going on, that’s for sure. I think the ladies are on their own this time, and they’re moving very fast. An interesting surveillance, I’ll say that.”

  “Find out what you can from Dane.” Daniel sighed. “And let me know immediately.”

  “Right.”

  Daniel cradled his receiver and sat for a moment, thinking. There was no need, he decided, to alert Hagen; it wasn’t the women that other federal honcho was interested in. But Daniel felt distinctly uneasy. None knew better than he what Michael was up against, and if those ladies were trying to find him …

  He stared at the phone, hoping Skye would report in to him very soon.

  “Why did you name her Black Angel?” Robin asked.

  Michael, standing at the wheel in the dimly lit bridge, didn’t answer immediately. He watched the boat’s instruments and gazed ahead into darkness. He hadn’t said much since they’d left the marina hours earlier, and Robin had gone below to try to sleep.

  But sleep had been impossible, so she had returned, watching him pilot the boat and feeling unsettled. She told herself she should be relieved that he wasn’t willing to bet on their long-shot chances of a relationship, but she couldn’t help but feel the irrational sting of rejection.

  And she felt lonely, needing to hear the sound of his voice. So she tried again. “After the angel of death?”

  “That was her name when I bought her,” he said finally.

  Robin was glad of that, but his answer left her with no re
asonably innocuous subject to talk about. He had shut her out with an iron will, and even though she knew why, it didn’t lessen the pain she felt. “How long will it take us to get there?” she asked.

  “By dawn if we’re lucky.”

  Robin tried to think clearly; if he was hell-bent on doing this alone, then she had to help him all she could. “Does Sutton know what your boat looks like?”

  “He probably knows the name and general description.”

  “Then we can’t get near him.”

  “No,” Michael agreed. “But the Maze is close to several other small islands, and the fishing isn’t bad there. We shouldn’t look too suspicious getting in close enough to spot the yacht.”

  “And then?”

  “There’s an inlet on the opposite side of the island from the cove. We can anchor there.”

  “And then?” she repeated evenly.

  Still refusing to look at her, Michael drew a deep breath. “I’m thinking only one step ahead, Robin, and that’s all.”

  “You said you never bet on long shots,” she heard herself say. “What else could you call what you’re doing?”

  “I told you—I don’t have a choice.”

  Robin decided to drop the subject for a while. Leaning against the doorjamb and highly aware of the darkness all around them, she asked as lightly as she could manage, “How did you happen to get involved in this business anyway?”

  “Naval intelligence. But I wasn’t a career man, and when I got out there were … other offers.”

  “When was that?”

  “Eight years ago.” He sent her a speaking glance, then looked back ahead and added in a deliberate tone, “Our parents had been killed the year before, and Lisa had been in a boarding school while I finished my tour with the navy. She loved the school and wanted to stay there. It seemed best. I couldn’t provide a settled home for her then, and it wasn’t likely that state of affairs would change, since I’ve never been suited for a nine-to-five desk job. But I’ve always been able to take time off for her vacations and holidays.”

  “How old is Lisa now?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Does she know what you do?”

  Michael nodded slightly. “She’s had to. Not when she was younger, of course, but I told her four or five years ago. I wanted her to know she’d be taken care of … if something happened to me.”

  Robin was silent.

  He sent her another look, and his voice grated. “I did my best.”

  Without thinking, Robin reached out to touch his arm briefly. “I know you did. I was just remembering how I felt when my father told me he’d gone into intelligence work. It was ten years ago, and I was eighteen. It had been easy to accept the danger of his being a cop because I’d grown up with it. And my brothers had become cops. But intelligence … I understand what that meant. Even though he said he wouldn’t be a field agent, I knew him too well to believe it.”

  “Does he head up an agency?” Michael asked slowly.

  “Yes. I don’t know what it’s called. But it’s one of those small agencies formed during the last fifteen years to help regular law enforcement agencies cope with all the craziness in the world today—drugs, terrorists, international crime rings. All of that.”

  “Where’s it based?”

  Robin looked at him curiously. “I couldn’t say. For a few years Dad was mostly on the West Coast. After that he seemed to be fairly … mobile. And I haven’t seen him in three years.” When Michael said nothing, she reverted to the original topic. “Lisa must be very strong.”

  “Yes. But she shouldn’t have to cope with my enemies.”

  “There was nothing you could have done to prevent it, Michael. You know that.”

  “She deserves a normal life.”

  “What’s a normal life?” Robin shook her head slightly. “Normal is what you get accustomed to.”

  “I suppose,” he answered, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  She studied him in silence for a moment. The glow from the boat’s instruments cast a blue aura about him, throwing his features into stark relief. He looked like a hard, grim man, a dangerous man. But she was beginning to realize that the man inside was different.

  An innately quiet and reflective man, his abilities and background had led him into a dangerous world. He had learned to be wary, to never bet on long shots. He had learned to trust no one completely, to weigh every word, to measure the reach of every outstretched hand offering help. The bitterness of betrayals was buried inside him, as well as the pain of failures.

  She knew all of that. And she was beginning to realize her lifelong conception of “heroes” had been built on a number of misconceptions. She was just starting to understand that heroes, like all men, felt tired, and discouraged, and afraid. That heroes sometimes failed, and sometimes hesitated, and sometimes made the wrong decisions. That they were human.

  It was a jolt to Robin in more ways than one. As long as she’d thought of heroes as larger than life, as fearless beings, she could distance herself, using the buffer of her own feelings of inadequacy. But now the buffer was vanishing.

  Always before, when helplessly attracted to a strong man, Robin had been able to withdraw by rousing resentment, by assuring herself she could never hope to be equal; that escape hatch was closing to her now. She could build up no resentment for Michael.

  And the very idea of it seemed terrifyingly dangerous.

  “You should get some rest,” he said abruptly.

  “I’m not tired.” She straightened away from the doorjamb. “But you must be. I can take the wheel for a while.”

  “You aren’t familiar enough with these waters.”

  “You have the course marked out, and I can read the instruments. Let me take over for a few hours at least, Michael. If you don’t get some rest, you aren’t going to be able to think straight. And that’s an edge we’re going to need.”

  He couldn’t argue, because she was right. He was so tired he was barely thinking straight now—and the sun promised to bring a very long day.

  “All right.” He stepped back to allow her to take the wheel, managing somehow not to touch her. “Can you handle it until five?”

  “Hardly enough time for you to get a decent rest. I can—”

  “Five, Robin. By then we’ll be too close to the island to take any chances. At five shut down the engine and let her drift. Wake me then.” He knew the engine shutdown would wake him in any event.

  “All right,” she agreed reluctantly.

  Dane Prescott looked up from the poker hands he was absently dealing on the coffee table, and grimaced slightly. “You could have used the front door,” he said dryly. “I hear the lock’s easy as hell to pick.”

  His visitor stepped away from the open French doors leading out onto the balcony. Coming fully into the room, he crossed to the group of sofas and made himself comfortable across from Dane. “I needed the exercise,” he said calmly.

  “We’re sixteen floors up. Don’t tell me you climbed?”

  “No. Down from the roof. You just dealt a ten into a low flush. You’re slipping.”

  Ignoring the observation, Dane gathered up the cards and lifted a brow questioningly at his visitor. “You were supposed to be up north somewhere.”

  “Best-laid plans, and all that. You had another visitor tonight.”

  With some feeling Dane said, “I’ve been having visitors all day. You’d think a man could run a decent con without agents coming out of the woodwork.”

  The visitor smiled slightly. “At least none of us are after you this time.”

  “Agents are never after me, Skye. Police sometimes, but never agents.”

  “Raven Long,” Skye prompted.

  Dane closed his eyes briefly. “I knew you were going to say that.”

  At five A.M., with dawn barely showing in the eastern sky, Robin shut the engine off and released the wheel, absently flexing her stiff hands. The abrupt silence was unsettling, wit
h only the soft slapping of the waves against the boat breaking the predawn quiet. She stood for a few moments, adjusting to the altered motion of the boat, then sighed and left the cramped bridge.

  The air was misty and held a faint chill, the darkness shading toward gray, and Robin felt very alone. She could see no sign of land or another boat. According to the course Michael had marked out, their position was between three and five miles from the outermost of the Ten Thousand Islands and their approach from the southwest.

  Robin stood on deck for a few minutes, then slowly made her way below. A light flicked on just as she entered the cabin, and she found Michael sitting on the bunk and looking completely alert.

  “It’s a quarter after five,” she offered. “According to your charts, we should be a few miles from the islands.” Before he could respond, she added lightly, “Is that galley stove as complicated as it looks? If not, I thought I’d have a shot at fixing breakfast.”

  Michael had slept in his jeans, and now rose to pull his T-shirt over his head. “It isn’t complicated,” he said in a close match of her tone. “The fuel’s gas; ignition’s automatic. Just turn the dials.”

  She thought the shadow of his beard made him look like a pirate. She told herself to stop thinking like that. “I should be able to handle it, then. Any preferences?”

  “No. But you should get some sleep, Robin.”

  “I will. When I want it.” She turned away and took two steps down the short hall to the extremely compact galley. There was barely room to move in there, and she found the light switch easily enough. The first thing she did was put water on for coffee.

  As Michael started to move past the galley, she asked, “Will we be getting under way again soon? I’m not so sure I can cook in here if we’re moving.” She didn’t look at him.

  “We’ll drift for a while. I want to take a closer look at the charts before we head toward the islands.”

  Robin nodded and concentrated on finding out where everything was stored in the tiny kitchen. Tried to concentrate, anyway, but she was all too aware of his soft footsteps moving away. She didn’t want to think anymore. The hours she had spent at the wheel had been some of the longest of her life, and had allowed far too much time for thought.