Table of Contents
Epilogue
Hannah
Rourke
Contact Me
Captain Rourke
Helena Newbury
Foster & Black
Contents
1. Hannah
2. Hannah
3. Hannah
4. Rourke
5. Hannah
6. Hannah
7. Rourke
8. Hannah
9. Rourke
10. Hannah
11. Hannah
12. Rourke
13. Hannah
14. Hannah
15. Rourke
16. Hannah
17. Rourke
18. Hannah
19. Hannah
20. Rourke
21. Hannah
22. Hannah
23. Rourke
24. Hannah
25. Rourke
26. Hannah
27. Hannah
28. Hannah
29. Rourke
30. Hannah
31. Hannah
32. Hannah
33. Rourke
34. Hannah
35. Rourke
36. Hannah
37. Hannah
38. Rourke
39. Hannah
40. Rourke
41. Hannah
42. Rourke
43. Hannah
44. Rourke
45. Hannah
46. Rourke
47. Hannah
48. Hannah
49. Rourke
50. Hannah
51. Rourke
52. Hannah
53. Rourke
54. Hannah
55. Hannah
56. Rourke
57. Rourke
58. Rourke
59. Hannah
60. Rourke
61. Hannah
62. Hannah
63. Rourke
64. Hannah
65. Rourke
66. Rourke
67. Hannah
Epilogue
Contact Me
© Copyright Helena Newbury 2017
First Edition
The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+.
Cover by Mayhem Cover Creations
Main cover model image licensed from (and copyright remains with) Wander Aguiar Photography
Created with Vellum
1
Hannah
The first time I met Captain Rourke, I’d just arrived in paradise. And I wanted to escape as quickly as I could.
All around me, tourists were spilling out of the airport, pointing excitedly towards the palm trees, white beaches, and sparkling water. It was early morning, but it was already getting hot.
All I felt was cold. When I saw the waves crashing against the tiny island, eager to suck me out into the deep blue, the chill was as real as if I was already submerged.
All I wanted was to get the next flight home. The temptation to run straight back inside the terminal was almost overwhelming. By that evening, I could be back with Dad and Katherine.
But if I came back empty-handed, my sister would be dead in a week.
I hefted my bag of books onto my shoulder, picked up my suitcase and ran for the taxi rank. I gave the driver an address I prayed was still current and asked him to hurry.
The cab tore along the coast road, the acceleration pressing me back in my seat. I tried to ignore the ocean on my right and focused on the beautiful wooden houses whipping past on my left. Three hundred years ago, Nassau was home base for the pirates who stalked the Caribbean. This tiny island was where they drank and plotted and met their lovers, where governor’s daughters in corsets pouted and flounced and were swept off their feet by roguish pirate captains. At least, that’s how it was in my books.
Ten hours ago, I’d been driving through the wheat fields of Nebraska on my way to catch my first flight. Culture shock didn’t even begin to describe it.
We pulled up outside a wooden house that looked abandoned. Its eggshell-blue paint was peeling from wood so dark with damp it was almost black. My stomach lurched: what if my great-grandfather had moved? I’d never find him in time. My trip would have been for nothing and my sister would be dead.
I knocked. No answer. Oh God, please no.... I knocked again, harder. Tried the bell. Nothing.
I peered through the windows and saw furniture. It wasn’t abandoned, just very run down. I’d just have to wait for him to come home. Well, fine. I’ll wait all day if I have to. I wasn’t giving up.
But as soon as I stopped moving, I swayed on my feet. The exhaustion and the jet lag and the worry all caught up with me at once. Between staying up all night with my sister at the hospital and then the traveling, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept. I was in the house’s shadow and, even in my cardigan and jeans, it was cool enough to make me shiver. And once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.
I slowly turned around and looked behind me. The house faced directly onto the beach. I could wait there. But beyond the sand was the crashing, roaring—
The fear rose inside me and I quickly looked at my feet and took a slow, deep breath, fighting the panic back down. Then I took my shoes off and walked out onto the sand. As soon as the sun hit me, I felt better. My shivering stopped. But the beach was crowded: I couldn’t sit down where I was.
Early-morning sun worshippers looked up at me from their towels and did a double-take at the fully-dressed woman laden with bags. I ignored the stares and giggles and plodded on, eyes down, trying to shut out the growing sound of the waves.
As soon as I found an empty spot, I dropped my suitcase and bag of books and sat down. Everyone else faced the sea, but I very deliberately turned around and faced my great-grandfather’s house. I told myself it was so I didn’t miss him coming home.
The real reason was, I didn’t want to look at the sea.
I could feel it behind me, swelling and rising, never still, a bottomless pit that only the foolhardy venture out onto. I’d only ever seen it a couple of times in my life before.
And I’d only been in it once.
Just once.
I was on the dry part of the sand. I knew in my head that the water never came up this high. But I couldn’t block the image from my head: a wave rolling up behind me, breaking over me, and sucking me out into the sea—
The roar of the waves grew and grew in my mind until it was right in my ears. I was sliding down one side of the wave and Mom was on the other, arm stretched out to try to grab me, her mouth open in a scream the ocean drowned out—
I took a deep breath and stared hard at the ground beneath my bare feet, then anchored my fingers deep into the sand for good measure. You’re safe. You’re safe.
What the hell am I doing here? How had I wound up on a tiny island, surrounded by the thing I was most scared of?
Because I had no choice. Not if I wanted to save her. And however hard I tried, that might not even be possible....
I closed my eyes tight, but it was too late. Hot tears sprang up behind my closed lids. I didn’t want to cry so I reluctantly scooched around on the sand to face the sea and let the cool breeze bathe my face. I took long, slow breaths, trying to stay calm, but I was barely holding it together. What if my
great-grandfather didn’t come home? What if he couldn’t help?
All around me, women in bikinis and men in shorts: tanned, perfect people, laughing and flirting, their only dilemma whether to go for a beer or a cocktail. And then there was me, a fully dressed woman with milky-white skin, arms wrapped round her knees, her bags piled around her. I’ve never in my life felt so alone.
And then I heard the slap of feet on wet sand, coming towards me from the ocean. As they came closer, I heard something odd in them: they weren’t in rhythm, one step much quicker and lighter than the other. They came closer and closer and I waited for them to pass by.
But the footsteps stopped right in front of me. And then I felt a drop of water hit my outstretched foot. I couldn’t help it, then: I opened my eyes and looked.
He was big: I had to crane my head back to see all of him. Even if I was standing, he would have been a good head taller than me, but sitting on my ass on the sand, he looked like a giant. But it wasn’t his size that hit me most. It was that he was so... hard. So solid. He looked as if he’d been carved out of granite, everlasting and unshakeable, and the few hints of smoothness were the result of the battering of the sea. He looked as if a twenty-foot wave could slam into him and he wouldn’t move an inch.
The ocean has always been all-powerful, to me, a force of nature we have no business messing with. But he...he looked as if he could actually take it on.
Water was streaming down, making his skin shine. He’d just emerged from the sea, but he wasn’t panting and exhausted, like every other swimmer who wades ashore. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He looked as if he’d just been out for a stroll, as if—
As if he belonged in the sea just as much as I belonged to the prairies.
In fact, now that he was on the beach, his feet were shifting and moving as if he didn’t quite trust dry land. I followed his legs upward. His skin was a rich tan, almost caramel, gleaming and flecked with sand. The muscles of his calves and thighs were hard and sculpted but moved as smoothly as a big cat’s. Working muscle, packed hard and tight from swimming, not the veiny, spherical look of a gym junkie.
The handle of a knife, bound with rough scarlet cord, rose out of a scabbard strapped to his right calf. Who needs a knife, when they’re swimming? He was wearing trunks, so dark blue they were almost black, the fabric stretched tight over powerful thighs. And between them, a thick bulge—
I swallowed and quickly carried on up. The shorts gave way to—God, he had the best abs I’d ever seen, every line deeply defined, water sliding over each hard ridge and gleaming along his centerline. But—
Something had marred the perfect symmetry. A line of scars, each one as big as my thumb, rising in an arch that led from one side of his body to the other. Something had—
No. That’s insane.
But that’s what it looked like. The idea throbbed and clanged in my head, an alarm, because if it was true then it meant that the ocean was even more terrifying than I’d thought. It looked like—
Something had bitten him. Something huge had closed its jaws on him as if trying to bite him in two.
I looked higher, craning my head back. The broad curves of his chest gleamed with water droplets and—God, there was just something about the width of that chest, the raw strength of his shoulders and pecs. He loomed... if he was atop you, pushing you down on the bed, he’d almost block out the light—
I flushed. My gaze flicked over his biceps, thickly strong from tearing through the water. In one hand, he held a blunt metal tube with a barbed arrowhead sticking out of the muzzle: a spear gun. A gleaming fish the length of his forearm was speared on it, its scales glittering in the sun.
He hadn’t just been swimming. He’d been hunting his breakfast.
And now he’d stopped right in front of me. I must be in his way, I thought. And, me being me, I prepared to shuffle aside.
Then I saw the footprints he’d left. He’d waded straight up out of the ocean and then he’d veered. He’d veered towards… me. That makes no sense!
I finally lifted my gaze to his face, squinting against the sun. And found myself dropping headfirst into bottomless blue, the richest, deepest eyes I’d ever seen. Eyes you could drown in. God, he was gorgeous, and in a way I’d never seen back in Nebraska. His face was as gloriously hard as the rest of him, his cheekbones and jaw hewn from the cliffs and then smoothed by rain and wind. Yet his lower lip, pressed tight as he scowled down at me, looked so soft.
And that scowl. His gaze pinned me as firmly as if he’d had a hand on my throat. Stay right there while I look at you, dammit. It was angry, but it didn’t feel threatening. It felt like….
It felt like he was angry with himself. As if I’d drawn him to me against his better judgment. But I was just sitting here!
And beneath that anger was something else, boiling out and expanding like storm clouds. Raw, hot need, a kind I’d never felt. A kind that didn’t just lick over my body, focusing on my breasts and face and ass. A kind that reached right down into me, past all the fear and worry... and I felt something swell up inside me and answer, completely unexpected and so strong it took my breath away.
He was so close that the wind rushing in off the sea broke against his back and swept either side of us, enclosing us in a warm space where the air was still and the sun could soak into my bones. The heat brought home to me that he was standing there in just a pair of trunks; I was in a tank top, cardigan, and jeans, with all my bags around me. I look ridiculous. And yet, the way he was looking at me, I didn’t feel ridiculous, for once. I felt—
I flushed. Don’t be stupid. Katherine is the pretty one, slender and sleek with laser-straight hair. I’m all tangled blonde curls and hips and ass.
And yet he stared. And the heat inside me grew and crackled, every inch of my skin tingling as the feeling rippled through me. I had to look away from those eyes or I was going to be lost forever beneath the surface.
His black hair was still shining and dripping from the sea, the cut short and almost old-fashioned. At least a few days of stubble turned his tan cheeks dark. It was hard to gauge his age. His body looked like an athlete just out of college, but his eyes... his eyes looked like they’d seen every corner of every ocean in the world. And they were eating up every curve of my body, even through my clothes.
I flushed. Thank God I’m not in a bathing suit.
And then, just for a second, I wish I was in a bathing suit.
His eyes flicked up to mine again. The lust was even stronger now: the storm had spread to cover the whole of those gorgeous blue eyes. And I started to catch something else, underneath, driving all that anger. Pain. Pain so raw and deep I wanted to press my whole body to him and wrap him into my arms. I’d never seen anyone hurt so much... or try so hard to hide it. I was suddenly aware that I was matching his breathing, my own chest rising and falling in time with his, locked onto him in a way that was so strong it was frightening.
And then I remembered why I was there. I checked over my shoulder and—
My heart leapt. Someone was walking up the path to my great-grandfather’s house. Not an old man: a woman.
I stood up so fast I wobbled. Even standing, he towered over me. I felt like I had to say something before I ran off, but, when I spoke, my accent sounded ridiculous, a shy little Nebraska breeze against the might of the whole ocean. “I’ve got to go,” I said.
The man frowned deeper and leaned forward. No you don’t.
I drew in my breath, every inch of my skin prickling and alive under that glare.
And then he seemed to catch himself and straightened up. The anger in his eyes grew even stronger. As if he knew he was acting out of character and couldn’t figure out why.
I shook my head, breathing fast. This is crazy. And whatever it was, I didn’t have time for it. Heart thumping, I grabbed my shoes, grabbed my bags, and ran towards the house.
But I could feel his eyes on my back the whole way.
2
; Hannah
It started two weeks ago. I was singing in the shower, the one place on our farm where I’m sure no one can hear me. I was two verses into an old favorite when my dad banged on the door and told me we had to get to the hospital, now.
My sister Katherine had collapsed at a business meeting. She’d laid there writhing in such unimaginable pain that she’d cracked a molar from grinding her teeth so hard. She described it like every nerve in my body being lit on fire. And it had lasted for close to ten minutes.
The doctors did CTs and MRIs. They checked for epilepsy, brain tumors, and tropical diseases. Nothing.
They ruled out cancer and I was relieved. Then they ruled out everything else and I started to get really scared. They wondered quietly if it might be all in her head, but the blood tests showed there was definitely something wrong: her nervous system was under attack. They just didn’t know from what.
We believe doctors are all-powerful. It was terrifying to see them stumped. How can she be this ill, this suddenly? She’d never been anything but healthy and she was younger than me, twenty-three to my twenty-five.
My dad started off stoic but, as the days went by, he started to get more and more stressed. Not worried, stressed, as if he was trying to make a decision. What the hell’s going on?
And then, on the third day, as I sat talking to Katherine, it happened again. I screamed for my dad and the doctors and they all rushed in: her boyfriend, Chris, too.
Katherine thrashed so hard she kicked over a table and drew blood from her lip. The ECG machine went crazy, her heart rate so high that the doctors were worried she was going to arrest. The doctors tried drug after drug: nothing worked. I screamed at them to help her but there was nothing they could do. My sister was in unbearable, unimaginable agony and there was nothing I could do except hold her hand.
After fifteen minutes, the spasms died away and her heart rate began to slow. The doctors looked at one another, their faces sickly pale.
Captain Rourke Page 1
