by Cherry Adair
The door to the wheelhouse flew open. Michael grabbed her arm and hauled her bodily inside. The wind slammed the door behind her.
"God Almighty, woman. Do you have a fu-fricking death wish or something? Unhook yourself and get below." He gripped the wildly vibrating wheel, then shouted over his shoulder, "Use whatever you can find. Tie yourself to the bunk. And stay there till I come for you."
The warm, stuffy air inside the wheelhouse contrasted sharply to the bite of the clean-smelling storm. A monstrously huge black cat lay curled on the instrument panel above the wheel. He opened one green eye and twitched a chewed-up ear at her.
"Hey, Cat."
Ears back, the animal hissed at her.
Lovely. The pirate kept a pet demon.
Tally stared back at the beast until its eye closed, then concentrated on undoing the clasps on the front of the bulky jacket. Her fingers were stiff and clumsy. She swore under her breath and tried again.
Michael held out one hand and made a "come here" motion. "Turn."
Without taking his intense focus from the open sea ahead, he swiftly unfastened the safety harness, then swiveled her face front and worked the closures on the jacket. Cold air bathed Tally's wet clothing and already chilled skin. His fingers felt warm through the wet cloth of her shirt.
"Th-Thanks." Instead of feeling the cold, she felt a rush of heat and stepped away. All this fear and adrenaline rushing around inside her was screwing up her normal, logical self. Her response to the man was as unexpected as it was intriguing.
Apparently, by the look on his face, he hadn't felt anything. "Get below," he said, voice grim, jaw set. He moved about on bare feet. Moved fast, but efficiently.
"Should I take your cat with me?"
"Don't have a cat."
The black furry thing right in front of him blinked.
"What's that?"
"Snap to it, sweetheart. We've got about seventeen minutes before the tail end of that typhoon hits us."
Tally almost smiled at the precision. "Exactly seventeen minutes? How could you possibly know that?"
"Want to stand there and debate it with a stopwatch?"
"No. What can I do to help?" She had to shout, and even then she wasn't sure he'd heard her.
"Told you. Below."
Waves crashed violently over the deck, foaming and grabbing, as though trying to suck the boat down. Tally gripped onto a bulwark and held on. The boat did a dizzying lurch, then rocked unevenly as the water rose and dropped like a free-falling roller coaster.
She staggered to the hatch and pulled at the door. The deck bounced beneath her feet, and the heavy door slipped out of her grasp with a bang. Off-balance, she smashed her leg into something sharp and she stumbled again, this time into a solid hard body. She threw her arms around the pirate's waist and held on as the yacht did a fandango on the waves.
Pain radiated up her thigh, stinging like fire. "Ow. Ow. Ow!" Eyes squeezed shut, she pressed her face against his warm, bare back and clung like a limpet.
"Jesus, woman. What are you? A Jonah?"
He plucked her off his back like a piece of lint. "If you won't go below, then hang on to something that's not me, and stay out of the way."
Tally grabbed the back of the chair he wasn't using. The cat gave her the evil eye from the dashboard. She figured the pirate's familiar had already done the curse thing. The boat plowed sideways into the mounting waves. Sky up one minute, the black sea the next.
One of the windshield wipers, protruding like a mutant eyebrow hair from the windshield, snapped off as a wave broke over the wheelhouse. Tally flinched and held on tighter.
Her stomach protested vehemently, and she swallowed the nausea through sheer will. The boat rocked and pitched, the movement uneven and terrifying. Desperately Tally searched her brain for a prayer. Any prayer. Now I lay me down to sleep… No! Not that one. Hail Mary something, something. She wasn't Catholic. Oh, God, she should've gone to church more often. And Jesus, now definitely wasn't the time to blaspheme.
Fingers completely numb from gripping the chair, she kept her gaze pinned, with manic attention, on the pirate's large, strong hands on the wheel. Backlit eerily by the red lights on the instrument panel, those few teeny, tiny red lights were all that held her together.
She hated the dark. Hated, hated, hated it.
She wasn't that fond of roller coasters, either, and this was about seven hundred times worse. Putting the two together was overkill and proved that God had a sense of humor. Maybe she didn't want to pray after all. The boat hit a trough with the force of a ten-ton cement truck slamming into a granite mountain. Every bone in her body jarred.
Dear God, how long could the pirate ship last in this onslaught? Her brain pulled up every water movie she'd ever seen. Titanic. The Abyss. The Deep. Jaws ... Oh, Lord. The Perfect Storm…
There were things she still wanted to do in her life. Off the top of her head she couldn't think of a one right now. But topping her list was dying in her own bed in Chicago. Dry. Of old age.
The noise was deafening. Liquid thunder slammed against the hull. Again and again. An incessant creak and crack of distressed wood torqued unmercifully. Giant fists of rain pounded the roof of the cabin. The low pulse, more a sensation than an actual sound, of the engine beneath their feet, throbbed like a primal animal roaring death throes.
Tally's stomach rose with the next wave, leaving a terrifying feeling of free floating, then came crashing down in the next plunge as if all her internal organs weighed a thousand pounds.
As terrifying as it was, the sheer power of the storm was exhilarating. The experience was surreal, and her thumping heart and racing pulse seemed perfectly timed to the frantic beat of the water below the boat and the rain pounding on them from above.
There was no doubt they were doomed.
Tally did what she always did when she reached the end of her rope.
She sang.
Loudly. Cheerfully. Defiantly.
"The sun will come up, to-mor-row…"
If the man battling the elements heard her, he gave no indication. She finished the songs she knew from Annie, then started on Phantom of the Opera.
Tally sang to keep the fear tamped down.
She sang to defy the storm.
She sang to make sure God knew where she was since she couldn't think of an appropriate prayer.
And she sincerely hoped He liked show tunes.
He should've let her drown.
Tally Cruise had the most God-awful voice Michael had ever heard, and he'd heard some doozies in Asian karaoke bars. Fortunately the violence of the storm, and the thunder of the waves, drowned out most of it. He ignored her just as he did the pounding of his heart, faking himself out that it was the rush of facing off against the bastard Sea making his blood race and his palms sweat.
Vibrations shimmied up his arms, cruising his muscles bulge and strain. He ignored the ache in his legs from trying to maintain his balance, and the sting in his eye, half-blinded by sweat. The damn ocean fought for control of the boat. A lesser engineered vessel couldn't've survived this long. Thank you, Jake. Michael held on, fingers welded to the wheel.
He was not going into that goddamn, black water. If they went down, it wouldn't be for lack of trying on his part. Ah, Jesus…
Almost numb with shock seconds after hitting the icy water, Michael moved into action with an instinct born of countless hours of training. God, he loved this. The danger. The adrenaline. The immediacy of cramming your whole life into a single second.
Even with his illuminated Tac board, which combined compass, depth gauge, and watch, visibility was limited to six inches in the inky black water. Beside him, swim-buddy Hugo Caletti, shared the danger as they made their way down toward the night's target…
A mighty CRACK brought Michael back. Mouth dry, heart manic, he shook his head to clear it of the flashback. He had enough trouble in the here and now.
"Shit and double shit." He'd lost the mai
n mast.
For a moment, the sixty-two-foot pole hovered overhead, as if held by an invisible hand. Then, with a wrench that sent the Nemesis gyrating, it twirled into the wild, wet wind, rigging and lines trailing like tentacles. "Hell!"
"When you wish upon a star…"
Behind him, Tally continued warbling, her voice not only hideously off-key, but hoarse as well. Great. Just great. Why couldn't the mast have knocked her out before it blew out to sea?
An hour crawled by before they escaped the full fury of the monsoon. By then, thank the Lord, his passenger's voice had faded to nothing. The waves calmed to rolling swells, the wind died down, and the rain drizzled to a stop.
Shafts of amber sunlight filtered between the thinning clouds. He drew his first easy breath in what felt like a year.
"Is it over?" she asked, voice thick and husky.
Michael peeled his numb fingers off the wheel. "Looks like." He set the boat on automatic pilot and turned, taking in her appearance. Soaking wet, shivering to beat the band, her face dead white, lips tinged blue. "Go below and find something dry to put on. We'll be out here until she blows through, might as well get comfortable."
She didn't move. Her white-knuckled grip appeared permanently attached to the back of his chair. She licked the teeth marks on her lower lip. "What about you?"
"I'll do the same. Hey, Luck? Here, boy." The cat crawled from beneath the wheel and limped over on three legs to be picked up. Both man and beast headed toward the door. Michael pulled it open. "After you."
Tally passed by him, careful not to make bodily contact. She was acutely aware of him, all her senses ultrasensitive and almost vibratingly alert. Darn it. It was pitch black down there. "Is there a li—" He reached over her head and hit the switch. "Oh. Thanks."
The salon was small. Too small for the two of them. The storm had tossed everything he owned all over the place. Clothes, shoes, papers, and open books littered every flat surface. A sock hung over a wall light. A pair of sunglasses lay in a corner as if crushed underfoot and kicked aside.
He caught her perusal out of his good eye. "Maid's year off. Here." He bent to gather a scatter of papers off the floor, then opened a locker, shoved them inside, then locked it. Why he bothered with those when the place was a shambles Tally had no idea.
He opened another locker and handed her a rumpled, hopefully clean, pair of Hawaiian shorts, and a creased white T-shirt. "Head's that way." He turned her toward the back of the boat by her shoulders. "I'll take a look at that arm when you're done."
A buzzy electrical current passed from his hand through her body and sizzled tantalizingly just under her skin. Tally refrained from flinging herself into the pirate's arms and holding on to his hard body. Tightly. It wasn't lust, she told herself firmly. She would've flung herself on any man who'd managed to keep her alive through that storm.
He was big. Solid. Unafraid.
Strung as tight as a rubber band, heart still in her throat, Tally craved a little of that confidence rubbed off onto her. Instead, she drew a deep shuddering breath and stepped away.
"Make it snappy," he told her as she opened the narrow door to the head. "And don't take all the hot water."
Door closed, Tally sank down onto the closed toilet seat and buried her face in her hands. Emotions on overload, she sat for several minutes. Now that she could breathe again, she had trouble drawing air into her lungs. She couldn't move. Couldn't assimilate all that had happened in the last few hours.
Arnaud had been a louse, but he didn't deserve to die alone, and in the dark, like that. God, he must've been terrified…
He pounded on the door. Tally jumped to her feet fighting a fresh surge of adrenaline. "Up and at 'em, honey. If you're not going to shower, let me in. I'm freezing my ass off out here."
Tally turned on the faucet and took the fastest shower on record. She emerged five minutes later, slightly warmer, and extremely self-conscious in his baggy orange shorts and T-shirt. Her Wonderbra had been far too wet to put on again, and she held the bundle of wet clothes against her chest as a shield. "That did the trick. Thanks for letting me go first. I was as quick as I could."
"No problem." He gave her an ironic look. "If you hang on to those wet things like that, the shower will prove useless. Toss everything in the dryer. Sandwiches and hot coffee in the galley. Help yourself."
The door to the minuscule bathroom closed with a click.
Lord, how was she going to handle her father when he got back? As slimy as Arnaud might've been, he'd played the role of intermediary superbly. So superbly he'd once managed to slither right into her bed. Tally shuddered. That counted as one of life's Big Mistakes.
"I'm sorry you drowned. But I am so freaking annoyed with you, I could scream. And just so you know—the sex was lousy. And to top it all off, you never did tell me why my father sent for me, you creep."
"Meow."
The black cat sat regally on the table staring at her out of unblinking eyes. He meowed again. She stared back. "I'm going to have some hot coffee. Is that all right with you?" The cat cocked its head and continued its unblinking, malevolent green stare. "Well, aren't you just charming?"
She paused to refold an open map, spread half-on, and half-off the table. Moving through the cabin, she inserted a Post-it note into an open book as a bookmark, closed the novel, and returned it to a secured shelf above the sofa. Next, she gathered broken pieces of his sunglasses before someone stepped on them again.
The galley was small and efficient. Forcing herself to think only on the most superficial level, Tally found a compact washer and dryer cleverly hidden, and tossed in whatever clothing she found littering the floor. That done, she made quick work of the few dishes and utensils in the sink, before she wiped crumbs and butter off the Corian countertops.
Tidying up helped her focus on something outside herself. And right now that was a blessing. Satisfied with her contribution to his housekeeping, she folded the damp dish towel and hung it over the handle of the oven to dry.
But when she reached for the Thermos, the cat, sitting on the stove top, hissed at her. "What? You want a cup, too?"
Lucky gave her a superior look before contorting to lick himself.
"I'll have you know that children, the elderly, and small animals usually love me," she informed him as she poured hot, fragrant coffee into a mug. "You're just being perverse."
Tally went back to the table, then stood for a few moments admiring a beautifully rendered framed watercolor hanging on the teak wall above the sofa. The small rustic cabin nestled in snow-covered pine trees seemed an odd choice for artwork on a boat.
She slid onto the cool leather seat, the thick mug cradled between her hands, and inhaled the scent of good French roast. She let the heat swirl down inside her.
While compact, the boat had everything a person could possibly want—other than dry land. Her father's boat had been bigger, more expensive, flashier. Trevor Church loved the sizzle as much as the steak… which, she supposed, was why his too tall, unattractive daughter was such a disappointment… Tally looked around for a distraction. All she needed were a few minutes to slap patches on her self-control.
She could always polish—but the gleaming teak didn't need it. The curved banquet seat on which she sat was covered in royal blue, tufted leather, and a blue and tan plaid carpet covered the floor. All the comforts of home.
Her stomach jumped, and her pulse refused to settle down. It made no sense. No sense at all. Boats didn't just blow up for no reason. She shuddered, lifting the mug to her mouth.
The bathroom door snicked open.
The room immediately got smaller as the pirate emerged wearing nothing but wrinkly fluorescent lime green shorts and steam.
Lord, he was yummy. Tally had a disconcerting urge to rush over and rub her face on his six-pack abs.
"Are you warm enough?" Michael asked.
She was hot all over. And it had nothing to do with her shower. Tally pressed the mug to he
r mouth for a moment before she remembered to take a sip. "I'm like the baby bear. Juuust right."
His lips twitched. "Okay, little bear, take off the shirt so I can check your arm."
"I don't need to remove my top—my arms stick out the sides, in case you haven't noticed."
"Honey, I've noticed everything about you, up to, and including, this little mole right here." He brushed a finger under her right ear, and the small hairs all over her body stood to attention.
Tally discovered there were other ways to drown. And she was going under for the second time.
Chapter Three
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The injury to the back of her arm was long and raw; several stitches had pulled out, probably while she'd been swimming for her life. Blood seeped slowly from the four-inch gash on her pale olive skin.
Michael held her gently by the elbow as he inspected the wound. "The salt water did a good job, but some of the stitches should be replaced. Is there a doctor on Paradise?"
"I don't think so."
For a plain little thing she was profoundly sensual. Except for her wounds, her skin was clear and creamy, eminently touchable. Tousled, damp, black hair framed her face. Guileless blue eyes watched him with misplaced trust. The longer he held her gaze, the faster the pulse at the base of her throat throbbed.
Michael felt a twinge of admiration for her as she maintained eye contact. Unable to resist, he brushed a thumb over the soft skin of her inner elbow. Her long, black lashes fluttered, and she drew in a sweet, sharp breath at the contact but she didn't look away. The rush of lust he felt was a surprise. He'd felt nothing in nearly a year.
Perfect.
Not only would she make a powerful weapon to use against Church, seducing her would be a pleasure. Michael abruptly released her. He wasn't interested in feeling. He'd smile and say the right things. He'd play to her emotions until those big blue eyes of hers shone with anticipation… and then he'd lower the boom without a qualm.
All he had to do was remember another time and another set of trusting blue eyes.
