Captain Rourke

by Helena Newbury

  That was it. That was what I’d seen amongst the men. A kind of respect I’d never known before. A captain: it fitted him perfectly. That authority, that confidence…. And then the name found the heat that was still blazing inside me. Twisted around it and tightened. Captain Rourke. Something about his glare, his commanding voice....

  I flushed, realizing I’d crushed my thighs together.

  You idiot. Sure, he’d saved me...but just as quickly, he’d gone back to his seat. If he was interested, he would have stayed. And I couldn’t just go over there, even to thank him. Just thinking about it made my stomach lurch. I’d never approached a man in my life.

  I turned towards the door. Then I glanced back to the shadows, biting my lip. I knew I should just leave, crash out on my great-grandfather’s couch and wait for morning and then fly home to Katherine. That was the Hannah Barnes thing to do. I needed to get out of this bar, out of Nassau, back to the safe little burrow of my library.

  But….

  I can’t explain it, but it felt as if leaving now and never seeing him again would be like slamming a book closed when it had barely begun.

  I asked the bartender for a rum and then, willing my legs not to shake, I walked into the darkness in search of him.

  The tables near the back were small and crammed close together. But as I neared, men shifted their chairs out of the way to let me pass. They know I’m his.

  I saw his white shirt first and then he was looming up out of the darkness, bigger than the other men and sprawled in his chair, his left leg extended out in front of him. He was already looking at me. Had he been watching me, this entire time?

  I could feel my heart racing. There was something about him, something solid and real and raw, something I reacted to like a drug. What’s wrong with me?

  But what really shocked me was that I could see it in his eyes, too. His gaze ate me up, like he was imagining throwing me down on a table and—

  I felt myself flush.

  And yet the closer I got, the more he glared. I walked slower and slower, drawn in by the heat of his gaze but held back by the fierceness of his anger. He wanted me. But he didn’t want to want me.

  I swallowed. “Can I sit down?”

  He stared at me for one more breath. “No.” Savage and hard, like a slap.

  I turned to go. But just as I began to move, his hand whipped out and caught my wrist. His grip was warm and strong and rough with calluses. I could feel the power of him as he held me there. It should have been frightening but—

  I hadn’t realized how adrift I’d felt until he suddenly anchored me there.

  I met his eyes. He was glaring, furious at me. For what? I’m not doing anything!

  He nodded me towards a chair and I sat.

  “I’m Hannah,” I said after a few seconds. I put the glass of rum in front of him. “Thank you, for what you did.”

  He looked away as if embarrassed. Then, “Where the hell are you from, anyway? Kansas?” That accent again. Yu, as if it only had two letters. Frrrom, a rolling r that rippled the entire length of my spine. It was brutal and it was beautiful. It wasn’t English.

  “Nebraska,” I said.

  “That’s a long way from the sea.” He was still glaring at me, so hard I almost crumbled and fled. I don’t want you near me, his eyes said.

  No. Wait. I looked again.

  I don’t want anyone near me.

  It suddenly hit me: he was in a room full of people who obviously knew him. Why was he sitting alone?

  Everything turned around in my head. I wasn’t the one person he was pushing away; I was the one person he’d grabbed hold of and allowed to stay.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Rourke looked around. “It used to be a pirate den.” He took a sip of the rum I’d brought him. “It’s gone downhill since then.”

  And that’s when I identified the accent. Scottish. But what was a Scot doing all the way out here?

  I leaned closer. The table’s candle lit the hard line of his jaw, the rough stubble on his cheeks. All around us was dark wood, not a scrap of the twenty-first century to be seen anywhere. Rourke’s loose white shirt was simple and classic enough that it was timeless: he could have sat in the same seat three hundred years ago, surrounded by pirates, and he would have fitted right in. “The bartender said you were the best,” I said. “The best at what?”

  He frowned at me. “You don’t know?” He glanced around the room. “You don’t know what we all do?”

  I shook my head.

  “We’re treasure hunters.”

  My mind swam with images of sunken ships and chests full of gold. I blinked at him: was he joking?

  But his face was stony. He nodded at the room. “Everyone’s seeking their fortune. They’re after that one big haul that’ll make them rich. Some of them do it on their own. Some of them sign on with a captain and take a cut.”

  “A captain like you?”

  Then the weirdest thing happened: Rourke glanced at the person sitting next to him. Right at them, making eye contact. Except….

  Except the chair was empty.

  He turned back to me. “I quit.”

  I swallowed. “So you...find treasure maps? X marks the spot?”

  For the first time, he smiled: a lopsided, long-suffering grin that softened his whole face. “Mostly it’s research. History. And a little rumor and instinct.”

  “Is there a lot of treasure?” The word treasure still sounded ridiculous to me. There can’t really be treasure, just sitting under the sea. Not these days.

  “Lots. This whole area was crisscrossed with trading routes. Merchant ships, treasure ships from Spain, pirate ships loaded with loot. There are plenty that we know went down but haven’t been found yet, like the Hawk.”

  A memory scratched in my mind. “The what?”

  “The Hawk. She’s the big prize, the one everyone here wants to find.” The anger in his eyes eased a little and his voice slowed as he relaxed. The rolling r’s became as smooth as malt whiskey. “There was a pirate by the name of Charles Mace. Attacked ships for years before the navy finally caught up with him. They chased down his ship, the Hawk, but lost him in thick fog. When the fog cleared, they found his entire crew in boats...but no Captain Mace and no Hawk. The crew said Mace had scuttled the ship and gone down with it, rather than let the navy hang him.”

  Rourke leaned closer. I found myself leaning in as well, lost in those blue eyes. They’d taken on a whole new look: there was a gleam there, a fire that had chased away all the anger and pain.

  “But there’s a rumor,” said Rourke. “That Mace knew the navy would be coming for him. That he did scuttle the ship, but in a precise location. And that he left a map to it for his lover, so that she could recover the treasure after he was gone.” He paused. “The Hawk hadn’t put into port in weeks. Its hold was loaded with spoils, including the contents of a Spanish treasure ship. That gold would be worth tens of millions, today.”

  The memory was gleaming bright in my mind, now. “The pirate’s lover,” I said. “What was her name?”

  “Esme.”

  I blinked, my mind whirling. Why would my great-grandfather have the map to a sunken pirate ship? It made no sense.

  And then that question collided with another one that had been rattling in my mind all night.

  Why did the ship carrying the cure never arrive in Nassau?

  My eyes widened. “I have to go,” I croaked. And ran for the door.

  6

  Hannah

  Please.

  I left the front door to the house wide open. Went through the door to the study so fast it banged against the wall.

  Please.

  I raced around the desk and started rooting through the books and papers on the desk. Now I knew what I was looking for, it jumped out at me immediately: a Royal Navy communication ordering the capture of the pirate Charles Mace. There was a long list of Mace’s crimes and I jumped to the most recent ones
, ships he’d raided in his final weeks. The Urca de Callao—that must be the Spanish treasure ship—entire cargo taken. The Apollo: entire cargo taken.

  The Gwendoline: entire cargo taken.

  I drew in a huge, shuddering breath.

  The Gwendoline was the ship that had been carrying the cure to Nassau. Charles Mace had seized everything on board when he raided it...including the trunk containing the cure.

  And the Hawk hadn’t put into port again until Mace scuttled it.

  The cure was in the Hawk’s hold. That’s why my great-grandfather had been searching for the pirate ship. And sometime before his death, he’d found the map that led to it.

  My heart was pounding against my ribs. A ship with tens of millions in gold was sitting on the bottom of the ocean and I was the one person who knew where it was. And in a trunk alongside all those riches was the cure that could save Katherine.

  I jumped up but my legs had gone shaky. I leaned against the desk and ran a hand through my hair. Think! I had to be smart about this. I didn’t know a thing about diving or boats. I needed an expert. I needed one of the men in that bar. But...my stomach twisted. I’d seen first-hand what some of them were like. Millions of dollars were up for grabs. If I chose the wrong one, they’d steal the map and I’d never get the cure.

  I needed someone I could trust.

  And there was only one who’d shown me compassion, however gruff and hostile he’d been.

  The bartender had said he lived on his boat. I rolled up the map to the Hawk, put it in my purse, and set off for the harbor.

  But when I got there, there must have been fifty boats. I had no idea which one was his. And there was no one to ask: it was after one in the morning and everything was dark and silent.

  Except for one vessel. Light and music was coming from a huge white boat, its upper decks towering high above me. At the back, the hull extended like two arms surrounding a large square of water, as if the boat had its own mini harbor, complete with a crane and several small boats. The deck was cluttered with diving gear and tangled rope. Thumping bass and laughter spilled from an open doorway and I could hear the chink of bottles. The name on the side said Pitbull.

  I was just wondering how to get their attention when a man wandered out, stumbling drunkenly, and picked up a crate of beer from the deck. He grinned when he saw me: an ugly, hungry smile.

  “I’m looking for Captain Rourke,” I said with confidence I didn’t feel. “Can you please tell me which boat is his?”

  The man turned, hawked, and spat over the rail. “Rourke? Why do you want him?”

  I frowned. There was none of the respect the men in the bar had shown Rourke. Why not? I shuffled my feet, not liking the way his gaze was tracking down my body. “I just need to speak to him.”

  The man nodded at the open doorway behind him. “Come join us instead. We got plenty of beer.” Another of those grins that made me shrink inside.

  I shook my head.

  The man sneered and nodded further down the harbor. “The fucking Fortune’s Hope,” he snapped. I heard him call me a few choice names under his breath and he disappeared inside.

  I hurried down the dock. Right near the end, I found a boat as different from the Pitbull as it’s possible to be. It was a sailboat, small and sleek where the Pitbull was huge and boxy. Its polished wood looked warm, next to the Pitbull’s alien, cold white fiberglass. And its deck was scrupulously tidy and clean.

  There were no signs of life. I climbed carefully aboard and then caught my breath as I felt the deck move under me. He lives here? On a boat? I’d lived in the same house in Nebraska my entire life. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of living somewhere so...impermanent.

  But I knew this: If Captain Rourke’s life was a book, it would be a heavy, thick book, a page-turner full of action and danger with elaborate silver lettering and a picture of a ship on fire. And mine? Mine would have a simple, beige cover and it would be a dull story no one would want to read.

  He was my opposite. And right now, that was exactly what I needed.

  I knocked loudly on the door that led below deck. “Captain Rourke?”

  I waited. Nothing.

  I knocked again. “Captain Rourke!”

  Not a sound from below. I began to panic. What if I couldn’t find him?

  “Cap—”

  The door swung open. Rourke stood there, his face only a foot from mine, his chest bare. “What?!” he snarled.

  I swallowed. I tried not to stare at his chest, at those broad pecs that led to hard, bulging shoulders: God, he was so big, filling the doorway…. I tore my eyes away and then had to restrain a gasp as I saw the inside of the boat. Polished wood was lit by a flickering light. It was as neat inside as out, but the walls were loaded, every inch of space filled with cupboards and hooks for equipment and... what was that?

  Mounted on the wall at the far end was a set of huge white jawbones, three times the width of my head. A shark?! There were photographs and weapons, a hammock—

  I looked back to Rourke, forcing myself to keep my eyes on his face, this time. He was almost panting with anger. I could see the battle in his eyes again: furious that I was there, furious with himself for wanting me there. The heat in his gaze rippled down my body, soaking straight through my blouse and jeans. I flushed and my eyes dropped...but that left me staring at the hard slabs of his chest again. God, the man was carved out of rock—

  “I found it,” I blurted.

  “Found what?” That Scottish accent, cleaving the air like a shining steel blade.

  I managed to meet his eyes again. “I found the Hawk!” My voice was loud in the quiet harbor. “I know where she is!”

  I saw the anger in his eyes turn to full-on rage. Then he grabbed my wrist and yanked me inside, my body slamming up against his.

  7

  Rourke

  Don’t you ever say that again, I was going to scream at her. My lungs filled, my mouth opened—

  But then she slammed into me, making me stagger back a step. I’d been so desperate to get her safe, I’d pulled her harder than I meant to. I was only wearing a pair of thin cotton pants and her legs pressed against mine, the warmth of her throbbing against my thigh. Her breasts pillowed against my chest and that was even more intimate, because only her blouse and her bra separated skin from skin. They were as soft and as weightily perfect as I’d imagined them...and I wasn’t comfortable with how much I’d been imagining them, since she ran out of the bar. I could feel myself getting instantly hard. My leg was screaming from when I’d staggered but even the pain seemed to fade into the background, next to how much I wanted her.

  What was this? Ever since I saw her on the beach, I’d been...obsessed. I was used to sex being just a physical need, something I’d work off from time to time with some tourist I found in a bar. But this was different: it was like her, good and clean and honest, a lust I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager back in Scotland. The sort where every glimpse of exposed skin, even if it’s just a flash of calf or a bare shoulder, makes you hard. I couldn’t control it and that made me furious.

  I stared down at her, panting. Those shining, blush-pink lips were only inches from mine. I felt an overwhelming urge to just lean down and kiss her—

  I summoned up all my anger so I could deliver my speech. “Don’t—” I began.

  But she just looked up at me with those big blue eyes and I faltered. Looked away and cursed under my breath. I closed my eyes but that just made it worse: I could smell her, some soft perfume that made me think of wildflowers and sweet berries and walking barefoot through long grass with the sun on your back.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Dredged up my anger and started a third time, forcing my voice into a low growl.

  “First of all,” I told her, “you didn’t find the fucking Hawk. Every tourist who comes here thinks they’ve found it because they’ve read some book or been sold some piece of tourist tat. People have been searching for it for th
ree hundred years! Second, don’t scream that you’ve found it.” My voice grew firmer with each word, my fear for her fueling my anger. I grabbed her by the upper arms. “There are men here who’ll kill for a sniff of that treasure, whether it turns out to be true or not! Do you ken?”

  “What?”

  “Do you ken?” I yelled.

  “I don’t speak Scottish!”

  “Do you understand?!” I snapped.

  “Yes!”

  She was panting, scared. Well, good. She should be scared of the men around here. And if I scared her enough, maybe she’d leave me alone. That was what I wanted.

  Beside me, I heard Edwards laugh.

  That magnificent chest I loved so much was heaving up and down under her blouse. I had to look away for a second or I would have just grabbed her and kissed her right there. When I looked back, she was holding something out: a roll of cloth. I sighed.

  “Please,” she said.

  That accent...I kept hearing different things in it. It was light and melodic, softly feminine. It sounded wrong, echoing around the hard wood of the Fortune’s Hope where it’s normally just Edwards and me arguing and joking and cursing. And yet it sounded so right.

  I took the cloth. My face was already starting to twist into a grimace: I was going to have to tell her that she’d been sold a fake. I wasn’t looking forward to stepping on her dreams.

  But when I unrolled the cloth, the grimace didn’t come. Instead, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: that little prickle on the back of your neck only another treasure hunter would understand.

  You sentimental old bastard, I heard Edwards say. You’re as bad as her. It’s a fake.

  But when I rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger, it didn’t feel like a fake. It wasn’t woven on a modern machine. And the ink had just the right color, the right spread at the edges….

  I brought the map under the nearest light, a big oil lamp. I know it’s old-fashioned but the smell’s comforting.