Pressing her hands against his chest, she pulled away from his kiss and gazed up at him. His heavy lids lifted. His blue eyes expressed his bewilderment
“I’m not crazy, Blake,” she said, unable to hide the hurt in her voice. “I’m not mad or insane.”
“Did I say those words?” Uncertainty flickered across his face as his hand stilled. She knew he was wondering if he had, indeed, spoken his feelings aloud.
“That’s what you think of me, though. Isn’t it?”
“Cara, I—”
Her fingertips touched his lips. “I’m not angry with you, Blake. A little hurt, maybe. But I should’ve known better by now.”
The sexually charged current of electricity continued to hum so loud in her ears that she could barely hear the sound of the wind and rain. Physically, she still wanted him to make love to her. But at what emotional cost to herself? Knowing he doubted her “stories,” knowing he doubted her sanity, she couldn’t allow herself to go any further.
Slipping out from under his arm, she levered herself up to sit on the edge of the berth. The motion of the ship rocked her. She glanced back at the wave-washed windows.
“I must be crazy,” she muttered, turning her back to the glass. And to Blake. “Hopping into bed with you in the middle of this killer storm is insane. What was I thinking?”
“The same thing as I.” His husky voice wrapped around her like a warm blanket as his fingers trailed down her spine. Her eyes drifted shut. Her heightened sense of awareness received more of the erotic images in his mind.
“Don’t do that, Blake.”
His hand paused. “Do what? This?” His fingertips continued downward to the small of her back.
“No—” Oh . . . but it feels sooooo good. “I meant . . . I know what you’re thinking . . .”
He tugged her shirttail free. Then his hand slipped beneath the material and traveled upward again. Back rubs had always been one of her greatest weaknesses, turning her into a puddle of mush.
“What am I thinking?”
Relaxing more and more, she smiled to herself as his naughty thoughts poured into her head. His palm smoothed over her shoulders, swirling back and forth in a lazy-eight.
She began to describe his fantasy. “There is a quiet, secluded cove beneath the cliffs on the northern coast of Kaua'i.” The movement of his hand slowed. “I’m stretched out on a grass mat while you give me a back rub.” His hand stopped. “And we’re both naked—”
“That’s enough,” he commanded, yanking his hand from under her shirt. He pushed himself off the mattress, his boots landing with a loud thud. Bud jumped to his feet, alerted to his master’s mood.
“Was I right?” she asked, knowing she was. “Or am I crazy?”
“Goddammit, woman, you are making me crazy!”
“I know.”
She told herself that she should have felt guilty for scaring the bejeezus out of him. Instead she felt smug. Vindicated. He couldn’t deny it this time. He wanted proof that she had a gift. He got it. Right in his face. There was no way he could write this off as a coincidence.
He headed toward the door without calling Bud, expecting the dog to follow. When he didn’t, Blake whistled for him. Still no response. “Bud, get over here,” he ordered.
Cara spoke to the dog. “It’s okay, Bud. He won’t bite.”
The black Lab thumped his tail, his tongue hanging half out of his mouth in a happy pant. His big head swung back and forth, sizing up the two argumentative humans. Finally, he loped over to the wide berth, leaped up on the mattress, turned around, and flopped down, exhaling a whoosh of air from his canine lungs. Ready to call it a night, he rested his chin on his front paws.
“Traitor,” groused Blake, swinging the door open.
“Bodyguard,” corrected Cara in a syrupy-sweet tone. The dog didn’t budge, but his eyes rolled up to look at her with a soulful expression of adoration. His tail thumped again. She turned back to Blake and shrugged. His eyes rolled upward too. But his expression was one of resignation.
“Good night, Mrs. Edwards. I’ll send Jimmy with some rope, if you need it”
“I might, at that.”
Chapter 11
The Southeaster raged for three days. By the time it expended the last of its fury, it had blown the crippled Valiant more than one hundred miles off course. On Wednesday, the twentieth of March, the sun rose on a blue sky as crystal-clear as the water beneath the bow. All hands had already been called at daybreak and were fast at work with their daily chore of swabbing the deck, supervised by chief mate Mr. Bellows.
While his barefoot men toiled from stem to stern, Blake went forward with his first mug of hot coffee in his hands. Standing on the forecastle, he stared ahead at the tranquil ocean. He heard footsteps behind him.
“Kaikaina, you plenty quiet dis mornin’, eh?” teased Keoni, holding his own full mug of coffee as he stopped beside Blake. “Maybe you think of da lady sleepin’ in your bed instead of you. Or instead of with you. Maybe?”
“I am ‘plenty quiet’ because I have not slept well since the first night of the storm.”
“Naw, you not sleep well since the first night of the wahine.”
In a peculiar Kānaka sort of way, the words almost made sense to Blake. “Is it so obvious?”
“Only to me,” answered Keoni with a broad smile, his speech pattern shifting away from the Islander dialect.
“I’ve known you a long time. And I’ve never seen you this way.”
“It is not affecting my duties as the captain of this vessel.”
“Did I say it was? And I would have, if it had been necessary.”
“You are honest to a fault, kaikua'ana.” Blake glanced over his shoulder at McGinty and another man scrubbing the deck. “There is no damn privacy when I want it.”
“Your cabin . . .”
“She is there,” he groused. “And you know full well she is.”
“Aye, sir,” he mocked.
Christ, it was hard to have a friend as a subordinate on a vessel, thought Blake, though he was always happier for the companionship than regretful of the decision to sail with Keoni.
He turned and headed aft with his friend beside him, hoping to Find some distance from listening ears.
“I’m at my wit’s end with her,” he admitted reluctantly, finding it difficult to share his feelings even with his close friend.
“Dancing to her tune, are you?”
After a sip of coffee, Blake slowly lowered the mug. Part of him wanted to wipe the smug smile off Keoni’s face. Another part of him wanted to admit the truth and ask for some Kānaka insight into the situation.
“She is . . . different.”
“Yes, her appearance and her speech—”
“She knows my thoughts.”
“Women do those things.” Keoni glanced over the rim of his mug that didn’t hide his grin. “They also like to tell you what you are thinking even if you are not thinking it,” he quipped, then took a drink.
“Not Cara. She knew exactly what I was thinking.”
“Were you kissing her at the time?”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
“Then I imagine your two minds would be on the same path.”
“No, it was more than that.” Blake looked directly at his friend. “She described things in my head that she had no possible way of knowing. She has the gift of second sight.”
The big Kanaka fell silent. He was clearly as disturbed as Blake by this unsettling information. The two of them stood side by side, drinking their coffee, gazing at the horizon.
Several minutes later Keoni finally spoke, his voice low so as not to be heard. “The broken mast—is that what she was jabbering about when I took her below?”
“Yes, she knew it was going to go.”
“Is that how you spotted McGinty?”
Blake nodded.
“I assumed she was ranting because of her fear of going down in another shipwreck.”
“Do you believe her?”
“No, and I am not even sure there is a child.” His thoughts drifted back to a comment made by Lupe. “However, there is a possibility she is with child.”
“Yours?”
With an adamant shake of his head, he speculated, “Perhaps her husband’s. Perhaps not.”
“Has she mentioned it?”
“No.” Blake felt a little guilty for insinuating that Cara would have a baby out of wedlock. Somehow he did not expect it of her, though he couldn’t say why, considering the element of mystery surrounding her. “The woman at the mission suggested the notion of a child, based upon Cara’s fainting spell and exhaustion.”
Keoni took the empty mug from Blake’s hands. “Now I understand why you have been so quiet, kaikaina. You have much to think about.”
Blake leaned on the low rail, his narrowed gaze focused on a whale breaching windward. “I’m leaving her in San Diego.”
“Alone?”
He nodded. His insides clenched.
“She might be pregnant.”
“She might not be.”
He heard Keoni let out a long breath. “It’s your decision, Captain.”
Blake briefly turned his head to the side to give his friend a quelling look, then turned back to the peaceful seascape of the migrating whales.
“I cannot take her with me,” he muttered.
“No, I don’t suppose it would sit well with the ship’s owners or the crew.”
He pivoted about, leaning against the rail, his arms folded across his chest. “She would be an unpaid female passenger using my quarters during the entire trip around the Horn. Not wise. Not wise at all.”
“I believe we’ve already established that, aikane.”
Blake looked up and blinked a few times. “Are you still here?”
“Last that I checked.”
“Don’t you have some duties? Such as breakfast to cook?’ ’
Keoni appeared unoffended by the short-tempered order. “Aye-aye, sir,” he answered in full voice. But before he turned to leave, he said quietly, “You will do what you must. No matter what happens, it will all work out for the best.”
Blake watched the dark-skinned Kanaka saunter off toward the galley, his arms swinging casually at his sides with a mug dangling from each hand.
“I hope to God you are right, kaikua'ana,” Blake murmured, turning back to view the big grays in the distance. He’d made his decision. He would not take Cara with him. Yet the thought of saying good-bye to her made his chest feel as though it had suddenly been bound with anchor chain.
Inhaling deeply of the salt air, he vowed to clear his head of any thoughts of Cara for the rest of the day.
Much to his discontent, he thought of nothing else throughout the entire morning and afternoon and long after the sun had set.
The loss of the fore topmast and the retrieval of the ship’s anchor off San Juan delayed the Valiant a full five days before she reached the wooded point of land protecting the bay of San Diego on March 25. Only a short distance from their destination, the wind had died, leaving the brig sitting in the water like a bobbing duck at sunset with nowhere to go.
Gazing out the starboard windows of the captain’s quarters, Cara sat on the berth with her legs drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees. Bud was curled up at her feet, snoring.
Even without the travelogue chats with Jimmy, Cara would have recognized the high ridge of land rising up north of the bay, having seen it many times from the deck of a small Capri 25 owned by a friend a long time ago. Or actually a long time ahead. She stared at the spot where the little white lighthouse would be built in about twenty years, remembering the visits with Mark.
Thinking of her dead husband brought a familiar wave of sadness, though not as strong as during those first months after losing him. She supposed there would always be a part of her that would hold him close to her heart, even if she found someone else to love as much as she had loved Mark.
Someone else . . . such as Blake.
She dropped her head back with a silent groan, wishing these thoughts would quit popping into her head. She couldn’t keep going back to this . . . fantasizing about him, dwelling on the feelings he’d stirred in her. If only he would have shown up in her life in the twentieth-first century.
Refusing to dwell on regretful if-onlys, Cara concentrated on the “what now?” By tomorrow, weather permitting, she could proceed with her much-interrupted search for Andrew. It was now the third week in March. He’d been missing since December 22. Three months on his own. She wondered how he was dealing with the confusion and nightmares of time-travel and abduction.
And where was he now? Could he be here in San Diego or was he halfway around the world? Unfortunately, she couldn’t just pick up a phone and call the port authorities to look out for a blond-headed, ten-year-old kid who looked entirely out of his element.
A knock at the door came as a welcome reprieve from her worrisome thoughts. “Come in, Jimmy.”
Instead of the young steward, the Kanaka cook walked into the cabin with her dinner. “Aloha ahiahi, e Cara. Pe-hea ʽoe?”
“Aloha nō,” answered Cara, her spirits lifting. Among the few bright moments the past few days had been learning a little Hawaiian from Keoni during his brief visits. So far she had learned a few easy phrases, including tonight’s question of “How are you?”
Attempting to respond with, “I’m fine, thank you,” she said to him, “Maika nō au, mahalo. “
“The word is maika’i , not maika,” corrected the cook, erupting into a roar of laughter.
This woke up Bud, who jumped down off the bed, allowing Cara to do the same. She padded over to the table and “accidentally” elbowed Keoni in the ribs as she lifted the cover from her supper.
“Ow—!”
“Then quit laughing at me. It couldn’t have been that funny.”
Through chuckles, he described to her the word she had used. Apparently, she had called herself an ancient Hawaiian term for a round stone used in some sort of game. She could hardly hold back her own giggle. Instead of “I’m fine,” she’d said, “I’m a shot put!”
Falling back on her tried-and-true English, she invited the Kanaka to stay for a while, then realized he probably needed to return to his duties in the galley.
“I can sit a few minutes.” When the dog bumped his huge black head under the cook’s hand, Keoni glanced down. “But not too long, eh, Bud, you hungry boy.”
As she ate, the cook taught her a few more words, and she practiced pronouncing yet another strange string of vowels. She was determined to learn the language, if for no other reason than her own enjoyment. God only knew when or where she would ever use it. Then again, if she didn’t make it out of the nineteenth century, she could always relocate to Kaua‘i, her favorite place on earth in the future days of Aloha Airlines and condos on the beach.
Slipping a chunk of beef to Bud, she glanced at Keoni apologetically. “Sorry, force of habit. I can’t stand to see a dog drool in my presence.”
“He likes you.”
“No kidding.” Her quip brought a perplexed look from him.
“Bud is a good judge of character.”
“Thanks. Would you mind telling that to Captain Masters?” Cara hadn’t seen the man once since the first night of the storm. During the short periods of time she’d been allowed on deck in fair weather, she noticed his conspicuous absence. “He’s avoiding me like the plague.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I asked you before about him, but you refused to talk. Won’t you at least tell me about how you met?”
He studied her for a moment, then nodded. “He was a cabin boy on a merchant ship much like this one. Th
e captain was one mean son of a—uh, that is . . . He was ‘a ‘ole maika’i.”
“No good?” translated Cara.
Keoni gave her an encouraging nod, then went back to his story. “Blake ran off, stowing away on a whaler bound for the Islands. But he was discovered the second day out.”
“Did that captain hurt him, too?”
“No, thank God. Blake never wanted to set foot on a ship again, so he was brought to my father. We’ve been brothers ever since.”
“What made him go back to the sea?”
Keoni shrugged his massive shoulders. “Time heals . . .”
Cara understood the old saying. She also understood her vision of Blake. The abuse he’d suffered had been unspeakable.
“Time hasn’t healed Blake,” she said solemnly. “The wounds are still there.”
“So you saw the scars on his back.”
“Yes, but I’m talking about something deeper—a hurt that kills the soul. I think I can help him, but he won’t let me.”
“You should concentrate on finding Andrew.” Averting his gaze, he looked toward Bud. As he stroked the dog’s shiny black coat, she sensed something was wrong.
“Blake is going to leave me in San Diego, isn’t he?” The Kanaka’s head came up slowly, a silent apology in his black eyes. “Yes, he is.”
Her appetite suddenly vanished. She pushed the plate away. “I was counting on his help to find Andrew, and I blew it! I scared him off. Damn!”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Hawaiian’s surprise. “My turn to apologize,” she said. “I shouldn’t swear.”
He grinned. “It seems to come quite easily to you.”
“Perhaps too easily. I need to watch myself more carefully.” She pivoted in her chair and put her hand on the man’s thick forearm. As before, he guarded his thoughts well. Still, she sensed certain things. “I am aware of how . . . different I seem to you and everyone else. Keoni, I need your help.”
“I will not betray ko’u kaikaina.” My younger brother.
Mystic Memories Page 15
