Her eyes searched his face.
She knew.
Damnation. He wanted to reach out and pat her hand reassuringly. But guiding the boat took precedence, for which he was grateful. Better to have his hands occupied with his duties than to display gentle emotions in front of his men. As a commanding officer, he had the sterling reputation of being a fair-minded disciplinarian, not a tenderhearted fool.
The boat dropped heavily into a deep trough, jarring his teeth. The next swell rose in a high arc, then collapsed over the bow. Two of the Sandwich Islanders were drenched, yet they whooped in laughter, joined by the other two.
Whether they enjoyed the exhilaration or loved defying death, he did not know. Perhaps a little of both.
From the greenish look of Cara, she didn’t share the same exuberance for the wild ride. Lord, how much more could she take? No woman should suffer as much as she had. Still, she gave him a weak smile and clung to the boat.
He urged the men on. The Kānaka complied. They could not have given any more of their strength or spirit. Several more waves dumped water into the hull before they reached the Valiant, where Bud barked excitedly. No sooner had they climbed aboard than the rain descended upon them.
“Lay aloft and loose those topsails!” bellowed Blake as the anchor chain surged and snapped and surged again. Crewmen sang out at the sheets as they hauled them home. The storm bore down as the sails filled and the ship pitched. He told the mate to leave the longboat tied off at the buoy. They would return for it later when they retrieved the anchor. With no time to think, he relied on instinct.
Grabbing Cara’s hand, he tugged her toward the hatch. Bud followed close behind. In the midst of the madness, Keoni suddenly appeared, raindrops splattering off his wide shoulders. The wind roared. Squinting up at his huge friend, Blake hauled Cara in between them.
“Get her below,” he commanded, grabbing her a bit too roughly by the back of her shoulders and pressing her toward Keoni.
Cara shouted over the noise, “I can make it on my own.”
“No, goddamn it!” he shouted back, mad as hell at her spunkiness and scared as hell of losing her. He glanced up at his friend. “Get her out of here! And make damn sure she’s safe. Sit on her if you have to!”
He knew he’d catch the devil from her later, but right now all that mattered was saving this ship. And he couldn’t be clearheaded if he worried whether she’d been washed overboard on her way to his cabin.
As Keoni started to escort her away, Blake headed toward the helm, shouting over the wind to his first mate, “All ready forward?”
“Aye-aye, sir, all ready,” responded Mr. Bellows.
“Let go!”
The chain rattled through the hawsehole. “All gone, sir.”
“Let go aft!”
A startled cry spun Blake around. He saw Cara’s eyes widen in fright, then look upward as if scanning the rigging for something or someone. He saw nothing but McGinty working his way down to the fore topmast. Having no idea what she was doing and no time to ask, he motioned angrily at Keoni.
The cook caught her around the waist with his right arm, lifting her off the deck and bracing her against his side, her back to him. She grasped his bicep, squirming in his hold without any luck.
“Blake, I need to tell you . . .” Her words faded away as Keoni carried her off, Bud following them. He thought he heard the words “fore topmast” and “yardarm,” though he had no idea what she meant. And no time to consider the question. The mast looked perfectly fine to him.
Two hours later Blake went down the companionway, stripped off his wet tarpaulin, and headed toward his cabin to check on Cara. His wide gait did little to accommodate the erratic motion of the storm-tossed ship. In the meager light of a lantern swaying from a hook, he knocked twice on the door of his cabin, paused, then rapped once. The floor beneath his feet tilted violently, pitching him against the bulkhead. If he had not been so tired and miserably wet, he would not have been so easily buffeted.
The door was opened by his steward, who stood stiff and nervous in the presence of his captain, while Bud rounded the boy’s legs and came out to greet Blake.
Without looking down at his dog, he tossed the tarpaulin against the opposite bulkhead and patted him on the head but kept his attention on Jimmy. “Where’s Keoni?”
“Sir, he left me in charge, sir,” a lilt of Irish clinging to his words.
Bracing his hand on the door frame to maintain his balance, Blake almost laughed at the absurd idea of this young man trying to keep Cara in line. They were equal in height and weight. Having seen the fine tone of her arms, he would bet money that she was just as strong, if not stronger, though her recent illness might have given her a disadvantage.
“How is . . . Mrs. Edwards?” he inquired.
“I’m fine,” came her weary voice from behind the door.
She appeared beside the teenager, clearly unobservant of the young man’s smitten expression. Must she arouse every male in her presence? he wondered, as if it were her fault. Which it wasn’t. He was being petty, he knew. Perhaps it was his exhaustion, he told himself, refusing to accept the possibility that he might actually be jealous of a sixteen-year-old who was still wet behind the ears. If Jimmy had the chance, he would not know the first thing about pleasing a woman like Cara.
Shucking off his damp jacket, then scooping up the dripping tarpaulin, Blake held them both out to the young man. “I need dry clothes . . . again. See to it they’re in my temporary quarters as soon as possible.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” The lad took the woolen garment, then turned to Cara, his nervousness bringing out the brogue. “ ’Twas a pleasure to sit wit’ you, ma’am. If you be a’needin’ anythin’, I’ll be happy t’ get it. Anythin’ a’tall. I’ll come back—”
“Thank you, Jimmy,” she answered, smiling at him as she clung to the door for balance. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
As he slipped out of the cabin, her attention was drawn to Bud, trotting past her legs and flopping down in his favorite corner. With an amused expression, she turned back to Blake and invited him to enter.
Behind her, another lantern swung from the ceiling above the dining table. The dancing candlelight cast a shimmering halo about her head and shoulders. Her short dark hair framed the beauty of her luminous eyes. A man could drown in the depths of passion that he saw in those eyes.
He could hardly blame Jimmy for his behavior, feeling his own response to her sensual presence.
As he walked through the portal, he glanced about his quarters, noticing that Jimmy had stowed every loose item for the duration of the storm. His enamored steward was quite the reliable boy.
He went to a drawer and withdrew a small towel to dry his hair, then turned around and leaned against the bureau, his feet planted wide to counter the turbulent motion. He noticed Cara had taken a similar position with her back against the closed door, her hands by her narrow hips, her palms pressed against the wood. She wore an entirely different set of clothing, with a pair of trousers that fit quite well. And she was barefoot again.
“Different clothing, I see.” Still the same fascinating toes, he silently added, then scrubbed his scalp vigorously with the towel.
She glanced down at the white duck trousers. “Jimmy found a storage locker of old clothes.”
Blake did not tell her that the locker had been removed to make room for the uncured cattle hides they had been collecting from the ranchero owners. Along with all the other excess cargo, the chest had been left in San Diego for the duration of their stay on the California coast.
Either the lad had bartered with one of the crew for her present set of clothes or he had “borrowed” them. Then Blake realized that the fit was as close as her own garments, perhaps better. The clothes were Jimmy’s, he realized. No doubt about it. He stifled a smile.
Cara asked, “Why are you smiling like that?” Flattening his palm on his chest, he softly mimicked the Iri
sh lilt. “Ah—Cara, m’darlin’, you’ve won another heart.”
“Jimmy?”
“Yes, indeed.” He dropped the accent. “And Keoni and whoever else happens within a hundred yards of you.”
“Not the padre,” she reminded him, leaning far to her left to compensate for the ship’s list.
“He is supposed to be immune.”
Slowly making her way across the unsteady cabin floor, she headed toward the bed, her arms extended for balance like a tightrope walker. He would have offered to help but decided it was best to stay as far away as he could from his berth and her body.
After she reached her destination, she plopped down on her fanny, looking as exhausted as he felt. Her legs dangled over the wooden rail that she gripped with her hands. Her bare feet enthralled him.
“Did you come here with a reason?” she asked, her torso shifting with the motion of the storm. “Or is this just a social call.”
Damn, how she can distract a man from his purpose each and every time.
“No . . . yes. That is—” He stopped drying his hair and gripped the towel in his hands. “I wanted to know about the message you wanted to give me before Keoni brought you down here.”
“About the mast? Did you keep an eye on it as I asked?”
“We lost it. Snapped like a twig in the wind.” He let out a tired sigh. “McGinty was up there.”
“Oh—no!” Her hand cupped her open mouth, then dropped away. “Is he all right?”
“Yes. Though I doubt he would be if I hadn’t been hearing your voice echoing inside my head about that damn mast.” He paused, staring down at the rough cloth in his hands. “How did you know the mast was going to go?”
“I . . .”
Her hesitation brought his eyes up. An unsettling feeling began to grow inside him. He cocked his head, studying her for a long moment, then repeated, more insistent this time, “How did you know to tell me, Cara?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor at his feet and took a deep breath. The long exhale bore the weight of the world.
“Okay, here it is—” She looked back up at him. “I saw it happen while I was up there on deck. That is, I saw it in my head—the broken mast, the ripped sails, the tangled rigging.”
“When I heard you gasp—”
She nodded, her shoulders hunched. “But I didn’t see the sailor. I didn’t know about him. Usually, I pick up something if a person is in danger.”
The southeaster gale keened and moaned. Waves dashed against the windows. The Valiant pitched and rolled. And Cara seemed to be taking the blame for it all, as though she had somehow let him down by not knowing of the accident with the seaman.
A part of him didn’t believe her story. More accurately, could not begin to fathom it. She was a madwoman, he reminded himself, his gut twisting from a deep-seated fear that he could not quite name. Was he afraid of her? Yes. No. Perhaps.
Staring at her slumped figure at the edge of the bed, he didn’t see a wild-eyed sorceress or a frightful witch. He saw only a woman he had grown to care about in a very short time. Maybe he had fallen under her spell. Yes, definitely so. Whether it was natural or mystical he couldn’t say. Yet no argument in his head seemed to be able to stop him from going to her side and sitting down next to her.
“It doesn’t matter now. Your warning kept me alert. If it hadn’t been for you, I doubt McGinty would be alive. Everyone was too busy handling their own work to notice he was in trouble. I’m the one who spotted him because I kept looking up there, thanks to you.”
“Do you actually believe me?”
“That you have a gift of sight?” No! It’s impossible. It’s merely a coincidence. I can’t possibly accept . . . His mind screamed all the reasons to denounce her as a deranged female. Instead, he answered with a lie. “I suppose I haven’t much of a choice in the matter now, have I? Not when you throw something like that at me.”
“I didn’t throw anything at you.”
The ship pitched, flinging her to one side. Blake’s hip slammed against hers, nearly collapsing him atop her. Though he would rather have pursued his baser instincts, he righted himself, then offered his hand to pull her back up to a sitting position.
“Perhaps I should blame Mother Nature for doing the tossing and throwing.”
Another wave rocked the vessel in the opposite direction. Cara practically flopped into his lap like a rag doll. His hands gripped her shoulders, bringing her back to center. “Why don’t you lie down?”
When her eyes widened, he almost forgot his manners and kissed her right then. Instead, he vowed to behave as a gentleman. He knew he should. He felt guilty enough for saying he believed her stories so she would feel better. He certainly didn’t need to add to his guilt by taking advantage of her.
“I’m fine sitting here.” The muscles in her arms tightened as she held on to the rail during another shift of the ship.
“You’re wasting what little strength you have left in trying to battle the inevitable. This storm is going to last all night, perhaps longer. Best to get in bed.”
“Staying in bed—now there’s the problem.”
“Rolling out, are you?”
She nodded. “Rope would solve it. You could tie me down—uh, scratch that last suggestion, would you? Just forget I said it.”
“Consider it forgotten.” But try as he might, he could not quite erase the fascinating image created by her slip of the tongue.
“These rails aren’t much help, either,” she added, tapping the polished wood with a fingernail. He smiled at her nervous chatter. “They’re more like speed bumps. All I get are bruises from flying over them.”
“Speed bumps?” he asked, a curious frown creasing his forehead. “What the devil are speed bumps?”
“Uh . . . my mistake. Never mind.”
If it were possible for a hellacious southeaster to gain any more momentum, this one did, jerking them and jostling them. Waves battered the windows. Cara’s head snapped around.
“Is that glass strong enough to hold out?” Her body fell against him. Instinctively, his arms went around her.
“Don’t worry.”
To hell with the blasted windows, Blake thought, feeling his body respond to her soft, womanly curves. The question he pondered was which would give way first—that glass or his own chivalry.
She felt good against him, her head tucked under his chin. His hand lightly rubbed her back.
“That’s . . . nice,” she murmured into his chest.
He had sworn to himself that he would not become romantically involved with this woman. Only this afternoon he’d realized she was probably insane. Now this evening, she demonstrated an uncanny ability to see into the future like a fortune-telling gypsy. Though he still preferred to dismiss the event as a coincidence. After all, she did not predict McGinty’s involvement. And any storm as severe as this one could snap a mast in two. So her expression of fears was not so far-fetched. She would have to perform something far more extraordinary to make a believer out of him.
Oddly, the more he learned about her, the more mysterious she seemed.
Yet his body still craved her.
Now more than ever.
His hand seemed to rise on its own accord, stroking the back of her head. She sighed, a soft feminine sound. God help him, he knew he should stop, but he couldn’t seem to manage.
Amid the noise and turmoil of the storm, he gently pressed her backward onto the bedcovers. She looked up at him with smoky eyes, her gaze flitting to his mouth. The tip of her tongue ran along the seam of her mouth, licking her lips.
“An invitation, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” The word sounded like a feline purr.
He moved up onto the mattress, lying next to her, his arm draped over her waist. With another roll of the ship, he tightened his hold, keeping her from slipping out of the bed.
“Still want the rope?”
“This works much better.”
He lowered his m
outh to the curve of her slender neck. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he murmured, kissing her soft skin.
She whispered, “Don’t you need to be on deck with your men?”
“I need to be down here with you.” His hand cupped her cheek, turning her head toward him. “Mr. Bellows knows his duties. He is the most reliable mate in foul weather.”
“Then what is your job?”
“Right now?” He gave a sly smile. “This is my job . . .”
He dropped his mouth to hers, gently seducing her to open to him. When her lips parted, he resisted the urge to take her too quickly. As the tempest raged outside, he intended to soothe their souls with the most tender of touches, making love to her with a slow, deliberate rhythm that would rock her to her very core.
With an inner smile, Cara read his thoughts through a dreamy haze of sexual arousal. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was relieved to learn that her psychic ability was beginning to emerge again. While there was never any complete predictability about her gift, it could be stronger at some times than at others.
And right now she relished the passionate imagery that Blake was unintentionally sending to her. The things he wanted to do to her! Lord, he possessed a vivid inventiveness for pleasuring her.
The kiss was no longer enough to satisfy her. His erotic thoughts had already stimulated her body to the point of readiness.
With a soft mew of need, she let him know her thoughts, her desire to be touched. He responded, skimming his hand over the outside of her clothes. He pressed his palm against the apex of her thighs. She arched against his hand, feeling the sensation through the rough cloth. The barrier added a forbidden element, escalating the hunger for the touch of his skin.
Quelling the urge to unbutton his damp shirt or unbuckle his belt, she held back, recalling his violent response to her aggression. Instead, she allowed him to lead at his own pace. But, Lord, it was costing her. Her restraint knotted every muscle. If Blake didn’t make love to her very soon, she was going to go crazy.
Crazy . . . mad . . . insane . . .
The words ricocheted off the inside of her skull. She realized the thoughts were not her own but his. His words echoed like a taunting chant. As he began to undress her, she read his mind, feeling his emotions battling one another. His disbelief in her stories waged war against his burning desire to claim her body.
Mystic Memories Page 14
