by Merry Farmer
Chapter 12
Samantha
James stands next to me on the quarterdeck, the spyglass pressed to one eye. He points at the land on the horizon. “That’s where we are heading. Not much longer now.”
My stomach sinks. The clock is ticking. Not much longer till I’m gone.
The ship rocks on heavy waves as we sail at full speed. After we returned to the ship from New Providence Island, the wind had picked up and the waves had begun rolling like small hills. I managed to sleep for a few hours while James was busy with his captain’s duties. I wanted to stay awake while I waited for him in his cabin, but I drifted off and just woke up half an hour ago. He was sitting in the armchair watching me in the gray light of the morning. My lips curled in a smile. Seeing him first thing after I opened my eyes made me feel as though I might float up into the sky like a helium balloon.
After a short breakfast, I had come out onto the quarterdeck to see was going on. The sky is full of small dark clouds. The gale fills the sails and the huge waves make my stomach drop and my head spin.
New Providence Island, with its soldiers, is long gone, but the hard knot in my gut that had formed after the red coats found us, only tightens. There seems to be no end to the adventures as the sea tries it’s damnedest to capsize the ship. I inhale, trying to relax, drinking in the wet, salty air of the Atlantic.
I look at James to calm down. His hair is escaping its short seaman’s braid and frames his gorgeous face. His white shirt is open at his chest, and the sight of his broad shoulders and strong chest beneath make my throat thicken. My God, he’s so handsome my chest tightens and squeezes with a sweet ache. He looks at me, his eyes hold me, and his gaze warms my skin.
Part of me still doesn’t believe he’s real and that he wants me. Even if I pretend to be this woman who can have it all, there’s still the young romantic inside of me who wants unconditional love.
And James has reached out for that small part of me and is holding its hand.
And I’m terrified.
“What happens once we find the treasure?” I ask.
A wave hits the ship and the floor sinks under my feet, and I grip the bulwark. He frowns and an expression of vulnerability flashes across his face. “What would you like to happen?”
“I want to go back to my time.” But I also don’t want to leave you. “What would you like to happen?”
His gaze darkens. “I would like you to stay longer. I want to continue what we started on the beach. I want to make you scream my name as I give you your release and as you give me mine.”
The world freezes and my cheeks burn. My fingers grip the wooden side of the ship as I struggle to get enough air into my lungs. My mouth waters and I swallow hard.
“Would you like that?” he asks, his face showing the wicked, wolfish grin of a predator.
I gulp down a yes. I want to allow myself this last treat before I leave. Before I never see him again. But I can’t. What happened between us on the island must be enough. “I won’t stay, James. I want us to be crystal clear about that.”
He frowns, then his face relaxes, but there’s still tension around his mouth. “I will not stop you, Samantha.”
Even though this is what I want to hear, my throat hurts and my eyes prickle as his words hit me. A big wave slams us again, and the ship crests the wave and plummets down the back of it. I grab the bulwark with both hands, feeling woozy.
“Are you all right, Samantha?” James asks.
“How are you not even grabbing onto anything in this storm?”
“This is not a storm. Are you worried?”
“Aren’t you?”
He crosses his arms, seducing me with the sight of his muscled forearms. “Fine. Let me distract you. When you get back, does a fiancé or a man who courts you wait for you? Is that why you wish to go back so much?”
“No. I don’t want a fiancé or a husband or anyone courting me.”
In fact, often I’m the one doing the “courting.”
“Oh?” he says. “Do you not wish to get married, then?”
“No. I don’t want to fall in love. Not again.”
“Did someone break your heart?”
Now, the storm forgotten, I know I’m going to bleed if I tell him. I don’t want to remember Leonard, but I feel like I want to share my story with James. He seems to care enough to ask. And yet, opening up is like tearing my heart out with my own hands.
“Yeah,” I say.
He narrows his eyes at me. “It seems we have both had our share of heartbreak.”
He quiets, as if expecting me to take the bait and talk about it. “Let’s drop it, please,” I say.
“If you intend to go back soon, I shall be gone from your life forever. You might as well confide in me.”
He’s right, of course, although I don’t want him to be gone from my life forever. But this adventure will come to its end. It must. Confiding in him is actually tempting, and I know it’s probably been less than twelve hours since I met him, but it feels like I’ve known him so much longer. Especially after everything we’ve gone through together. We dealt with those soldiers like a team. I trust him more than I have any other man in my life since Leonard.
Maybe even more than Leonard.
And that’s terrifying. Like, soul-shattering, ground-sinking, heart-tearing terrifying. Because if Leonard had broken my heart like that, what would falling for James do?
Behind James, the land is ever closer. We’ll be there soon, and the need to tell him grows in me, itches me like a wound under a cast. Can I really tell him? Let him know that the mask of this confident woman who pretends to have it all is just a lie? That beneath it I’m weak and terrified of another heartbreak. That all I’m doing by pushing men away is protecting myself, hurting them before they can hurt me.
I know I’m a coward because I won’t give him a chance. Because even if in some crazy alternate universe we could be together, I would probably screw up the relationship, terrified he’d know the real me.
But I won’t stay, and in a few hours I’ll never see him again.
And I let go. “I was twenty-one when I met him. I’d never been in a serious relationship before. I was a bit like my friend Lisa, naive, always looking for that one true love.”
Saying that makes my throat clench, and I choke a bit and pause. James holds me in his gaze looking at me with such intensity, as though his life depends on what I say next. The ship drops again and shakes a little, and my eyes shoot to the sea.
“Talk,” he commands. “Forget about the waves.”
“And I thought I had met my true love in Leonard. I was studying at Columbia University then.”
James raises his eyebrows. “Women are allowed to attend university in the future?”
I chuckle, his comment lightening me up a bit. “Yeah. We also go to work and run businesses and buy our own houses.”
He smiles. “A beneficial future for the world, smart and strong women in command. I always envisioned having one by my side—before she betrayed me.”
My face heats up.
“What happened next with that man—Leonard?” He scowls as he says the name.
“He…” I start to pick my fingernails, a bad habit I haven’t done since Leonard. “He was a professor of economics and fifteen years older than me. Our relationship was against the university policy, so we kept it a secret. I’d always thought that true love changes you. Well, he did. At twenty-one, I was still so naive about the world, about life, about everything. But with him, I grew up, started to believe in myself and feel more like a woman.”
A gust of wind steals the words from my mouth and chokes me, and James covers my hand with his. “Go on,” he says.
Our eyes lock. “While we were together, all I could think about was him. I started dressing differently, more appropriate for a professor’s wife. Honestly, I went a bit crazy. If he didn’t answer my calls, I went looking for him. I practically stalked him. I craved him, as
if I was no one without him. He started pulling away and soon just stopped responding to my calls, my texts, my emails. When I saw him, he addressed me as Miss Gilbert, as though I was a stranger.”
The ship lurches, but my stomach is already sour from the memories. The winds ease a bit and the sky begins to clear. A cloud drifts by, clearing the way for the sun. The rays kiss the side of James’s face, making his left eye seem almost blue. His hair glows golden; he’s like an angel with a fierce expression. Tears burn my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. He is giving me strength.
“I felt like a used tissue,” I continue. “It was close to graduation, so I dove into working on my thesis. Not long after he dumped me, I found out that I wasn’t the first nor the last one he used.”
James takes my hands in his and they are big and hot. They reassure me and make me feel steady.
“I should have filed a complaint against him or something. But I was about to graduate, and I just wanted to put it all behind me and start fresh. That was when I decided I wouldn’t let a man hurt me like that ever again. I’d become someone new. I’d be the one in control. I haven’t had a serious relationship since.”
He pulls my hands to his mouth and kisses them, closing his eyes as if the touch of my hands against his lips gives him physical pleasure. His warm lips pressed against my skin spread warmth through my arms like mulled wine on a chilly winter’s day.
“I’d kill him if I ever met him,” James says, and I smile. Here’s a man who wants to protect me from the heartbreaks of the past.
“Thankfully, your meeting will never happen,” I say and chuckle, then I freeze. “Oh my God. This is the first time I’ve smiled or laughed about that situation.” I meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
“If I manage to make you smile like this again, I will consider my life worth living.”
Something floats between us, some sort of magic. Time stops; the ship freezes; the wind stills.
And I wonder if I gave up on love too early.
Chapter 13
James
“Why is it that you don’t have a woman in your life?” Samantha says, her voice soft as silk. “No one to go to a ball with you.”
She has just poured her heart to me, and I am furious at the man who hurt her so much, but lightness and softness fill my chest because she trusted me with her heart. The invisible strings between us are back, and they pull us closer together.
And I want to tell her.
I need to tell her.
“Anne,” I say, my voice coming out as a rasp. The ship jerks a little from the wind as though shuddering along with me at the name. “You heard about her.”
“I did. But what happened? What did she do?”
“I thought I was in love with her.” I look at the horizon, remembering. “I thought she needed protection. She seduced me. Not that I resisted or was a young, innocent boy. I wanted her. She was—”
Samantha’s eyes blur with pain a little.
“I am sorry,” I say. “You do not want to hear that.”
“No, I do. Please. I just hate her for doing this to you.”
I smile. Her support warms me.
“We had an affair. She was smart, beautiful, and she had the will and ambition of a man. I had thought, at first, she was a noble lady, but it was only an act. She acted a lot, liked the attention. Later, I found out that she had her own pirate ship, which only spurred my infatuation with her. I imagined us together, sailing the seas, looking for adventure. Then after a few years, once we had enough of chasing treasures and risking our lives, I thought we would settle somewhere where no one would know who we were. Imagined us opening a proper business together. Starting a family. A family for whom I could provide safety and prosperity.”
I shake my head and look at my boots. Samantha covers my hand with hers, and I squeeze it back.
“I was a fool.” I meet her dark, endless eyes, which shine with compassion and understanding. Our stories are similar.
“We planned a coup, a raid on a Spanish treasure ship—Anne, Cole, and I—and agreed to share the treasure. Then I would retire with Anne, and Cole would run away to the East. It was a man-o’-war, so we needed all three of us. But in the midst of it all, boarding the ship, battling the Spanish, the English Navy appeared. Cole managed to run away. Anne did not want me to leave, and while we were on board the Spanish ship, she began fighting me to stop me.”
I rub my hand against the scar on my torso.
“She told me that giving me and Cole to the British was her and her husband’s—the famous pirate Samuel van Huisen—way to get pardoned. It turned out, she wanted to settle down, too. Just not with me.”
A bitter, tight knot forms in my throat.
“I managed to run away thanks to my crew. She was hanged by the British because she failed to deliver what she had promised. I doubt they would have upheld their end of the bargain even if she had gotten me and Cole captured.”
Samantha looks me in the eyes, and there’s such softness and something resembling love in them that I want to take her into my arms and kiss her and lever let her go. Telling all this to her feels liberating, and I know we share a wound that is similar.
But just as I am about to pull her into my arms, a sailor appears next to us. “Cap’n, we shall be there soon.”
I glance at the land, and it’s already in close proximity, probably a boat ride away. Damnation. I am both glad to see the island and hate the sight of it.
Because it means that my path with Samantha is about to end.
The thought is as sobering as a bucket of ice water thrown over me. Yes, we share a common pain, but so what? I understand her reason for being like this. But it does not change the facts. I am falling in love with her, but she does not want a husband. And I do not want to grow old alone.
“Prepare the anchors,” I say to the sailor.
When Samantha looks at me again, the magic is gone and her eyes are worried, searching my face.
“It seems that our journey is about to end,” I say. “It is good that you and I belong to different worlds. You do not wish to marry. Whereas, after we find the treasure and my pirate days are behind me, there is nothing I want more than a wife and a happy stock of children.”
I turn and walk away to command the ship. And even though my mind understands the truth of these words, my chest hurts, and the pain is worse than it was with Anne.
Chapter 14
James
When Samantha and I arrive at the island, the sight takes my breath away. White sand is brilliant against the green jungle and the single low, dark mountain in the middle with a flat top. Although it emits no smoke or ashes, the whole island looks like a broad, sunken volcano. The top is where we must go.
I pull the boat onto the small beach that lies protected between two giant boulders the size of buildings. The beach and the boulders form a horseshoe of sorts. A few palm trees sway in the wind, their fronds waving like horses’ manes. The island must measure only a few square miles and is likely uninhabitable. Too small for a proper settlement, and too far away from the nearest populated land. It is no mystery why Cole hid the treasure here.
Samantha stands next to me, and her delicious scent tickles my nostrils and warms my blood. Sparks fly from the touch of our hands. Our eyes lock, and I sink in the depth of hers. I tense and step away from her so as not to dwell on my feelings. I must not indulge.
“The mountain is where we shall to go,” I say to Samantha as I study Cole’s map of the island with instructions on how to find the chest.
Samantha looks dubiously at the long skirt of her dress. “Hmm.” She stretches a hand towards the cutlass tucked at my belt. “May I have your sword?”
My brows shoot up. “My cutlass?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to attack you, James. I just want to cut these skirts. I can’t imagine hiking in these.”
I hide a smile. She is going to destroy the last memento I have left of Anne. Surprising
ly, no pain comes when I think of the woman who betrayed me, no regrets over having nothing left that would remind me of her.
“Allow me,” I say. I take her skirts, pinch them between my thumb and index finger and stretch them out. I pierce them with my cutlass, then tear off the lower part and throw it away. The skirt now ends just above her knees. At the sight of her beautiful bare legs, I cannot resist tracing the smooth skin of her inner thigh with my fingers. I gulp, barely able to restrain myself from lifting her into my arms and having her wrap her delicious legs around my waist. I meet her gaze.
“Is that better?” I ask, my mouth as dry as the sand beneath our feet.
“Much better.” She studies me, her eyes like molten starlight. They burn me, they call to me, they challenge. Remembered images of her naked body on the beach in the moonlight flood my psyche, the sweet scent of her sex awakening a desire to howl like a wolf, the echo of her moans of pleasure singing in my ears like the calls of sirens.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
“More than you can ever know,” I say hoarsely. “But I cannot submit to my desires. First, I must find the treasure. Our delay back on New Providence Island barely allowed us to escape. Who knows who or what might be up there. The island looks empty, but I do not know that for sure.”
Samantha glances at the mountain. “Let’s go then.”
We head into the bushes and undergrowth, between the rocks and the palm trees. I lead the way, my cutlass ready, though there are no beasts other than birds and buzzing insects and no signs of men. Glancing back at Samantha from time to time, I make sure she is all right. She looks as fierce and confident as though she has been hiking tropical mountains her whole life. The only thing she is missing is a pistol or a knife.
Soon, the climb becomes steeper and rockier. I step more and more carefully, sometimes moving the rocks with my foot to make sure it is safe to step on them. When we are about halfway to the top, I hear something that makes me freeze and listen. Samantha stops next to me. There’s a whisper in the air, like waves hitting the shore but more constant.