Captain Rourke

by Helena Newbury

  What the heck was the Hawk? And why had Bertrand been interested in it? As far as I could tell, he hadn’t had time for anything that wasn’t related to the cure. And why hadn’t he come home to Nebraska when he discovered the cure was lost? From the dates in his journal, he’d found the letters almost a decade ago.

  Maybe he hadn’t wanted to admit defeat. I knew that feeling. Not only had I now missed the last flight of the day, I was going to have to go home and tell Katherine that I’d struck out. She was going to die and so were any other women in our family who were hit by the disease.

  I trudged back into the living room. I’d have to sleep on the couch and get the first flight in the morning. I was exhausted but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not with the guilt at having failed pounding through my head. I tried reading to calm myself but I’d been poring over texts for so many hours that the words swum in front of my eyes. I slammed the book closed. Dammit!

  Now I’d stopped working, I couldn’t shut out the slow crash of the waves outside. My skin began to crawl: I could feel the water soaking through my clothes, the heaviness of it sucking at me—

  I stood up. If I didn’t get out of there, the memories would come back and I’d lose it completely. There was no escaping the sound of the ocean, not on an island. But maybe if I could find a bar full of people, I could drown it out. I didn’t relish the idea of walking into a bar alone but anything was better than remembering.

  It was a weekday night and most of the bars were shuttered. But I saw an orange glow coming from McKinley’s Inn: a squat, timbered inn that looked as if it had been there even in Margaret’s day. From the noise inside, it was packed.

  I pushed open the door...and it was like stepping back in time. Everything inside was made of dark wood and the place was lit only by sputtering candles that dripped wax onto the tables. The ceiling was low and the path from door to bar was worn smooth with age.

  Heads turned. Conversation ceased. By the time I realized I was the only woman in the place, it was too late to turn back.

  The bartender, a mustachioed man with a once-white apron, gave me a look that was halfway between pity and respect. I opened my mouth to ask for a drink: maybe beer, maybe wine. But he just gave me a tiny shake of his head, put a shot glass down on the bar, and poured liquor into it. Some local brand of rum. Then he nudged it towards me with a little nod.

  I realized there was nothing behind the bar but liquor, most of it rum. I nodded my thanks for saving me the embarrassment and pushed a bill towards him.

  The bar was still silent. I lifted the glass and almost reeled when I got a hit of the fumes rising from it. I never normally touched hard liquor. But maybe it would stop me thinking about Katherine...and how I was going to have to say goodbye.

  I knocked back the shot...and then drew in a shuddering breath as it burned its way down my throat. When I exhaled, I felt as if I was breathing fire. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. Holy— People drink this?! A few seconds later, there was a slow-motion explosion of warmth down in my belly, strong enough to make me blink and press my lips together tight.

  “Another,” said a voice right next to me.

  I turned. A man had slunk right into my personal space. He had tan, heavily tattooed skin stretched over heavy muscle and long, shaggy hair the color of mud. When he grinned at me, three of his teeth were gold.

  I couldn’t speak. My throat was seared from the rum and even breathing was difficult. But I shook my head and moved away from him.

  And jumped as my hip bumped into another hard male body.

  “Another,” said the man who’d hemmed me in on my other side. He was shorter and paler, barely taller than me. He had a blond crew cut and was wearing a t-shirt that advertised some boatyard in Panama. He grinned at me and pushed his hip against mine, as if it was a game. I jerked away, which pushed me up against the first man. I saw they both had knives hanging from their belts. My stomach lurched. What the hell kind of place was this?

  “I’m fine,” I croaked.

  But the short man had already grabbed the bottle of rum and refilled my glass, splashing some of it on the bar. The bartender cursed and glared but the man ignored him, slamming the glass down on the bar in front of me. The atmosphere was changing rapidly, ugly male aggression pressing in on me from both sides. Just go, I thought. Just get out of here.

  I took a step back, turning to leave...and slammed into a wall of flesh. A huge man, wide as well as tall, his stomach bulging over his belt. My heart started to hammer: I could feel the whole situation slipping rapidly out of control. I tried to look confident and push my way past him.

  But he pressed forward instead and I was driven back until my ass hit the bar. I was hemmed in by the three men. Trapped.

  How did this go so wrong, so fast?

  “Enough,” snapped the bartender. But suddenly the long-haired man had his knife out, the tip thrust an inch from the bartender’s face. The bartender swallowed and went silent.

  The short man grabbed the bottle of rum. He brandished it in front of me, making the liquid slosh inside. “Let’s give you a proper drink,” he said. And he brought it towards my mouth.

  I tried to push my way out but suddenly my arms were grabbed from both sides and I was pinioned against the bar. I shook my head as the bottle loomed closer and closer to my mouth but the men just laughed. As the short man chased my lips, he leaned in close. “Just enjoy it,” he told me. “It’ll make it easier.” His eyes flicked down to my body. And then to each of his friends in turn.

  I twisted away desperately, almost hysterical, now. They grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, my mouth opening as I cried out in pain. The rim of the bottle nudged my lips once, twice, then slid sickeningly between them. Liquid gushed into my mouth. I fought against their grip but I had to swallow or drown. My eyes bugged out as I stared at the volume of rum in the bottle. Jesus, that much will kill me! Or at the very least, I’d be unconscious.

  Unconscious, while they dragged me off somewhere and—

  “Let her go.”

  Just three words and not even loud. And yet somehow they drowned out the men’s sneering laughter as if it was nothing. The whole bar went quiet. The bottle was pulled from my lips and I spat and coughed, rum dripping down my front. My hair was released and I looked towards the voice.

  Someone was moving in the shadows. He was moving towards us with awkward, jerky steps: each time he put his left foot down, his body would tense as if in pain and he’d quickly swing his weight over to his right. The three men around me were the sort who’d find that funny.

  But none of them were laughing.

  “Let her go!”

  A snapped command. The three men all flinched as if hit and the space around me opened up a little but the short man still held my arm. This time, I picked up on the newcomer’s accent. It wasn’t anything Caribbean but it wasn’t American, either. The consonants were hard and violent but the o was long, an echoing war cry. I couldn’t place it but I still had that same, primitive reaction to it as everyone else in the bar: the hairs on the back of my neck prickled and my heart sped up. For thousands of years, hearing that accent meant the barbarians are coming.

  The man stepped into the light and I caught my breath. It was him, from the beach, the scars on his torso now covered by a loose white shirt, those powerful legs now clad in sleek black pants with a silver-buckled belt. There was something hanging from it, still lost in the shadows. God, he looked even better than my memories of him: the clothes just accentuated the roughness underneath: black stubble against white cotton, the shirt stretched across those magnificent pecs. Those deep blue eyes were locked on me, never blinking, as if—

  As if he didn’t care about anything else in the room.

  It didn’t matter that I was terrified. It didn’t matter that one of the men still had his hand on my arm. That look, that burning, urgent look...it overrode everything. It blazed right to my core and melted me, the molten heat fl
ooding straight down to my groin.

  “I’ll not ask a third time.” The man’s voice was unshakeable. The anger in his eyes was ruthlessly controlled, blistering heat frozen and carved into a weapon. I’d never understood the expression cold fury until that moment.

  The short man glanced at the other two, ignored their warning glares, and raised his knife.

  There was a musical whisper of metal and the short man froze, his neck craned back. The room went absolutely still.

  It had happened too fast to see. And the blade was almost end-on to me so it was only when I shifted slightly and saw the candlelight on the shining steel that I could make out its shape. Even then, I had trouble accepting it. That’s a—No, of course it isn’t—

  It was a sword. The man from the beach was holding the short man at sword point. Who carries a sword?!

  The short man took two shuddering breaths. He dropped his knife and released my arm. The point of the sword was rock-steady at his throat. He ran for the door, the other two men right on his heels.

  And then it was just the man from the beach and me.

  4

  Rourke

  One Hour Earlier

  I shouldn’t even have been at the inn. I had to be up early the next morning to work on the boat. But every time I tried to sleep, Edwards was there, nudging me in the ribs, telling me to go for one drink. One drink that might lead to one last crazy adventure, one last haul of treasure.

  I told him all that was behind me but he wouldn’t listen. He just put on that ridiculous Hawaiian shirt he always wore to McKinley’s and stood by the door like a dog holding its leash.

  Fine. One drink. It’d help me sleep, at least.

  My leg was having one of its bastard days so by the time I reached the inn I was cursing, pain snaking up the damaged muscle and all the way into my thigh. I fell into a chair and slumped there in the dark until Benny brought me my rum. The conversation that had stopped when we came in slowly started up again and I let myself disappear into the shadows.

  I’d accepted this as my future. Sitting in the dark in McKinley’s, sleeping in the dark of my boat and then, finally, the sea would take me. She’d drag me down into her depths and I’d be in the dark forever. Where I belonged.

  I was on my third rum when she walked in. The woman from the beach. She lit up that grimy place like a damn spotlight. Her golden hair cascaded down her back in soft waves, gleaming and bright: nothing had any right shining like that, in McKinley’s. And her skin...in a room where every man had been scorched by the sun and whipped by the wind, she looked untouched. Her skin was creamy and perfect and those eyes: big and the palest blue, that blue you only get when the clouds clear right after a storm.

  She didn’t seem to be wearing any make-up: her lips were—I felt my chest tighten as I stared at them—Jesus, she had the most perfect, kissable lips I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stop staring at them. They were a faint blush pink, soft, and delicately shining. When she realized the sort of place she’d walked into, she bit her lower lip nervously and—

  Something moved inside me, something that had grown so heavy and cold, I’d forgotten it could move. I just wanted to grab her and pull her the hell out of McKinley’s and Nassau and all of this. She wasn’t a part of this. She wasn’t like us.

  She turned slightly and I saw her shape. A classic figure, not like some of the waifs you see today. She had full breasts and a proper, round ass; hips that gave her a glorious hourglass.

  Jesus, they’d eat her alive, in this place. When men like us can’t make an honest living, we do what we have to rather than give up the sea. Smuggling, gun-running, sometimes worse. Even the best men in McKinley’s had broken plenty of laws. As for the worst men….

  Cagol and Mackal were tipping the rum down her throat. The fat German brute they hang around with had joined them, hemming her in from behind, almost hiding her from my view. And nobody did a damn thing. The evil of the place seemed to boil out of the floor and the walls and surround her, oily and black against that pale skin.

  I didn’t want it to touch her. And for a second, I didn’t want to be immersed in it myself.

  I stood up, my left leg trembling and threatening to fail.

  The men grabbed her arms. Pulled her taut against the bar, her head tipped back, and the bottle between her lips. I knew what would follow, once she was unconscious and unable to stop them.

  I took a step towards them and my voice rang out before I’d even thought about speaking. I told them to let her go. And when they didn’t obey, I drew my sword and put the tip right against Mackal’s throat.

  Everyone knows about my sword. Sergeant Watts, the cop who patrols the harbor, gives me grief about it but he looks the other way as long as I don’t wear it into town.

  I heard Mackal’s knife clatter to the floor. Then his dirty fingers unwound from her pristine, pale arm and he ran. My eyes stayed on her arm, staring at the soft skin. I was imagining how good it would feel under my fingers.

  I wanted to grip both of those slender arms and push her back against the hull of my boat, crush those blush-pink lips under mine. I’d press close enough that I could feel her warm body through our clothes, her breasts against my chest. One big hand on her cheek while I explored that perfect mouth—

  I tore my gaze away...and found myself looking straight into big, pale blue eyes that were full of gratitude. Aw, damn it! I suddenly came to my senses.

  She was a gorgeous, innocent wee thing. And I was a washed-up fucker with a limp.

  I did the only thing I could do: I turned away and stalked back to my table. Back to Edwards.

  5

  Hannah

  I stood there panting. My throat was still raw and there were tears welling in my eyes. I was shaking: I couldn’t stop shaking. But I was okay, thanks to him.

  And yet he was walking away, each step difficult and painful. I put my hand out to touch his shoulder: I needed to thank him. But my hand froze in midair when I realized it was more than that.

  Even through the fear, I’d had that same reaction to him as on the beach. I’d never had anything like that with a guy in Nebraska. I’d had attraction, I’d had lust, but this was much more than that. This man had a physical effect on me.

  I stared at his back, his muscled shoulders rocking as he limped slowly across the room. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I’d never met anyone with such dark, brooding presence, such weight of personality. The bar was full of dangerous men but every one of them glanced up at him as he passed, unable to stop themselves.

  I’ve often felt like I move through the world without leaving a trace: if I wasn’t there, no one would notice. But this guy? He was like a massive battleship leaving a foaming, churning wake. I could feel myself caught in it, the raw pull of him like an ache that started in my chest and echoed down between my thighs. My heart was thumping, my breath quick. I felt my feet twitch, trying to go after him, and I flushed. What are you doing? You don’t even know him!

  But I wanted to. I was fascinated. Like the bar, he belonged to another century. Not old but...old-fashioned. And there was something else about him, something in his bearing and his gaze. Authority, but not the vicious, greedy arrogance of a CEO in a suit. Something older and deeper. I could see men shuffling out of his way to let him past. Big, tattooed men, guys who looked like they’d stab you if you glanced at them wrong. But they were meek and respectful to him. Why? Who was he?

  He disappeared into the shadows. I turned back to the bartender, torn. I had questions but, after what had happened, dare I stay in this place?

  The bartender was already holding something out towards me. Not more rum: a glass of cool water. He was giving me an apologetic look and I nodded that it was okay. He’d tried to help; he’d had a knife to his throat.

  “You’ll be okay, now,” he said softly. “No one will touch you.”

  I blinked at him. Then I saw him glance into the darkness, where my rescuer had disappeared.

  No
one would touch me because I was his, in some primitive, caveman way this crowd understood. I should have been scared or outraged. Instead, I felt a twist of raw heat, deep inside me.

  I accepted the glass of water and drank deep, washing away the taste of the rum, cooling my burning throat. “Who was that?” I asked when I put the glass down.

  “Rourke.” The bartender said it with a note of respect.

  Rourke. I tasted the name on my tongue. Cold and hard as iron and there was something old fashioned about it: I could imagine it written on parchment with a quill dipped in glistening black ink. I turned, searching the darkness, but I couldn’t see him. I wondered if he could see me. “Is he in here a lot?”

  “Every night.” The bartender wiped the counter. “He owns the place.”

  I blinked at him. I couldn’t imagine the man I’d met doing something as pedestrian as owning a bar.

  The bartender shook his head. “It’s not what he does. He just owns it.” He leaned close and lowered his voice. “Few years back, things were tough. Looked like I was going to close. Rourke walks in here and buys the place, so I could stay open. And so he’d always have a place to drink.”

  I frowned. “He’s rich?” He didn’t look rich.

  The bartender considered it. “Used to be. Don’t know how much is left. He lives cheap now, on his boat.” He gave me a serious look. “Captain Rourke was the best.”

  Captain Rourke? Now it sounded even more old-fashioned. It felt like it should be written in elegant, looping script in some ancient ship’s log, read by the light of a lantern.

  “He has a boat,” said the bartender. “Used to have a crew. But he gave it all up, a few years back.” He nodded at the bar. “Most of the men here sailed with him, at one time or another.”