by Linda Grimes
to stand in front of him, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Look who I found. Slippery little thing, isn’t she?” he said cheerfuly,
trying, I think, to lighten the moment for my sake. It didn’t work.
Mark’s eyes were definitely at the steel-cold end of the gray spectrum. “Barefoot?” he finaly said, his tone a perfect blend of
incredulity, anger, and disgust. “And naked under a blanket, after you nearly froze to death? Are you a complete idiot?”
I shrugged off Bily’s hands. “I didn’t have access to a wardrobe,” I said.
“Do you know how stupid it was to leave this boat by yourself? Are you trying to get yourself kiled? Or one of us, when we
have to come after you again?”
I flinched. No way to hide that. I’d heard him speak harshly before, but had never had the ful force of it directed at me. Sure, I
may have deserved that last bit—I hadn’t given a second thought to how I might be dragging them into more danger. But, realy,
did he have to take that tone? “It won’t happen again,” I said tightly.
“It better not.”
“I said it wouldn’t. So, do you want to hear what the fucking Vikings are up to, or would you rather keep yeling at me?” I said.
It wouldn’t hurt to have him think I’d gone off to gather inteligence on purpose.
That got his attention. “What are you talking about?”
“I overheard a bunch of them, the same ones from the trebuchet. They’re heading south. Apparently there’s a ‘big plan,’ and
it’s on for tomorrow.”
I could see the thoughts flying, rapid-fire, behind his eyes. “Did they say where, exactly?”
“Not that I could catch.”
He nodded. “Okay. Doesn’t matter. It stil confirms something we’ve suspected.” He skewered me with his eyes again. “So
that’s why you left the boat—you were playing spy?”
I shrugged. Flushed. Kept silent. What was I going to say? No, I was running away from your girlfriend? I don’t think so.
Laura actualy looked sorry for me. That was worse than Mark’s anger. “I think the soup is stil warm, Ciel. I’l bet you could
use something in your stomach,” she said kindly. Mark cut her an annoyed glance, but visibly relaxed when she tilted her head,
slightly, and raised one brow.
“Take Ciel below and see that she eats,” he said to Bily, his voice starting to lose some of the harshness. “Have something
yourself. Keep her down there until we’re under way—sit on her if you have to.” The last part might even have been an attempt at
humor. I ignored it and asked him where we were going.
“Relax, Howdy. Just a short hop down the coast,” he said. Yeah, pleasant enough now, and al because of that cute little signal
from Laura. I was about to say something rude, until Bily took my hand and squeezed it.
“Come on, cuz. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. Let’s eat.”
Mark’s attention was already on preparing the boat to leave the marina, with Laura’s help. They worked in sync, at ease with
each other without talking, which spoke volumes about how often they’d done it before. As I watched, a barrage of flaming
arrows dotted the sky just up the coast behind them, part of the fire show I’d heard Kevin and his princess talking about earlier.
Mark and Laura paused in unison and looked out at the sight, shoulder to shoulder. They were beautiful together.
Anger doused by a wave of dejection, I folowed Bily below.
*
The soup, a luscious chicken and corn chowder, was beyond compare, and obviously hadn’t come out of any can. After
administering first aid to my toe, Bily served us both healthy portions. I ate two helpings, torturing myself with visions of Laura as
a gourmet cook on top of being a CIA operative and an excelent sailor. She was perfect for Mark. I hated her.
Bily took care of our dishes while I moped at the table. After he finished cleaning the galey, leaving it spotless, he came and
stood next to me.
“Bedtime.” He tilted his head toward the V-berth at the front of the boat.
I don’t like V-berths. Granted, my claustrophobia seemed a petty annoyance compared to some of the things I’d been through
in the past few days, but stil. “You go ahead. I’m not sleepy yet.”
“Wel, I’m beat, and I’m not leaving you to your own devices. We’ve al seen where that leads.”
“But—”
“Look, I’m on Mark’s dime right now. He’s the boss, he said sit on you, so I’m sitting.”
I stayed right where I was.
He sighed. Rubbed the back of his neck. “Come on, Ciel. I’m operating on fumes as it is, and if I have to stay up to watch you
—and you know I would—it might just push me over the edge. Please?”
He did sound tired. He probably hadn’t had any decent sleep since he got to Sweden, poor guy. I guessed I could suck it up
and not whine about my discomfort in windowless enclosures. “Al right. But I won’t sleep.”
“Fine. You can lie awake and listen to my rhythmic breathing.”
Even with a backpack sharing the space, the mattress-covered compartment at the front of the boat wasn’t cramped. I shoved
the pack over to one side, and scooted to the other. When Bily folowed me in, he left the privacy curtain halfway open so I could
glimpse a bit of a window in the main cabin, which helped me a lot. I smiled gratefuly at him. He didn’t say anything about my
phobia, just shrugged and plopped down right in the middle of the mattress. Since there was room, I left a good foot between us
when I lay down.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, and puled me close, settling my head on his shoulder and his arm around me. “I want to be able to
feel if you try to sneak out. I warn you, I’m a light sleeper, and I wil know if you move away from me.”
“Bily, this realy isn’t necessary. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Indulge me.”
I sighed and stayed where I was. “Go to sleep.”
I tried to lie as stil as I could, but I was restless. My mind wouldn’t let go of Mark and Laura, up on deck together, sailing
along in perfect harmony. I wondered how many assignments they’d shared in the past, and how much time they spent together
off the job. I imagined him kissing her right then, in the moonlight, his arms wrapped around her, his fingers tangled in her glorious
red hair …
“Stop thinking so loud,” Bily said, giving me a squeeze.
“I can’t help it. God, I’m such a mess. Mark’s right. I’m a total idiot.” An idiot for mooning over him, was what I meant.
“No, you’re not. A little impulsive, maybe, which may lead to the occasional idiotic behavior, but that doesn’t make you a total
idiot.”
“No, I’m an idiot al right. I wish I could be like you and Mark, good at everything, but I can’t. And it’s not just because I’m a
girl. Look at Laura—”
“Not a difficult assignment,” he said, his appreciation plain in his voice.
I gave him a little shove in the mid-section. “See? You think she’s gorgeous, too. And she’s probably a perfect spy, just like
Mark.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is about. Mark and Laura.”
I raised my head and looked at his face. “So there is a ‘Mark and Laura.’ I knew it.”
He pushed my head back down. “That’s not what I meant. I have no idea if there’s a ‘Mark and Laura’—he doesn’t keep me
informed about his love life.”
“Come on, there has to be something going on there. Did you see how they work together? How smoothly they started to
unmoor the boat,
without even talking about it? They communicate without words. I’l bet everything they do together is like that.”
He sighed impatiently. “I work smoothly with Mark, too. Doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with him.”
“You’re a guy, and you’ve known him forever. Of course you work wel together.” I shifted, adjusting the blanket that was stil
twisted around me. Bily helped, and then puled another blanket over the both of us.
“Look, you are great at what you do. How many clients have you helped in just the past year? Ten? Twelve? And every one of
them is better off, now that you’ve fixed their lives. You have a knack for knowing what’s needed, and doing it. You should be
proud of your track record.”
“Maybe,” I admitted reluctantly. “Or maybe I’ve just been lucky so far.” Except, of course, with that whole colecting payment
thing.
“And maybe you need to get your head out of your ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
I huffed an almost-laugh. “Agreed,” I said, and folowed it with a big sigh. “Don’t pay me any mind—I just need to get it
through my head Mark is never going to be attracted to me.”
“I don’t know. You guys looked pretty cozy in the sleeping bag together,” he said.
“Ha. There’s the proof right there. We were zipped up naked in a single sleeping bag, pressed together like sardines, and he
didn’t even … react.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Ciel. You were an ice cube. His nether parts were probably jumping up into his abdominal cavity in
self-defense. Give the guy a break. Besides, do you realy think Mark is the kind of man who would take advantage of a situation
like that? He can be a ruthless bastard sometimes, but he’s not a complete asshole.”
“So you don’t think it’s because I’m totaly unattractive?” I said. I know—fishing. Not cool. But he’d been so nice about my
job. Why not go for broke?
“Christ,” he said, and twisted his body toward me. “There, feel that? No, I fucking wel don’t think it’s because you’re
unattractive. Ego al better now?”
Oh, my. The bulge pressing against me was certainly impressive. Not precisely what I’d been going for—I’d been thinking
more along the lines of “Of course you’re pretty, Ciel”—but, strangely, it did make me feel better. At least somebody was
responding to me.
It made me feel something else, too. Tingly. Al over, like when he’d kissed me while we were chasing down Per and company.
I had tried to repress that, but it came back to me now in a brain-fogging whoosh.
Good Lord. Maybe I’d been concentrating my libidinous energies on the wrong guy. Bily had been teasing me for as long as I
could remember, in more ways than I could count—my size, my freckles, my abilities, my career choice, my pathetic love life. I
never took his sexual banter any more seriously than the rest of it. He’d been teling me for years that honorary step-cousins
weren’t perv material—what if he was serious?
I raised my head so I could see his eyes. They were almost black in the dim light, low-lidded, his lashes shadowing his cheeks.
He leaned his head toward me. My heart sped up, skipping randomly as I pressed closer to him, my lips parting in anticipation.
He puled back. “Forget it. I’m not going to be a standin for Mark.”
Stung, I said, “It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that, and I won’t take advantage of the situation. Regardless of how it may at times appear, I am not an
asshole when it comes to women either. Now, for God’s sake, let me sleep.” He roled away from me.
I stared at his back for a ful minute, stunned by the rebuff. Finaly, I turned away from him and buried my head under the
pilow, confused. My adolescence had been fraught with dire warnings from my brothers that men were only after one thing, and
I’d better be prepared to defend my virtue at al costs.
Ha. Defend my virtue? If I were an egg inside a chicken, maybe I could get laid. But I wouldn’t put money on it.
*
Much later, when I was stil awake and Bily was sleeping like the dead, I heard Laura bustling in the galey. I knew it was Laura
because if it had been Mark, I never would’ve heard him. The man moves in a bubble of silence.
I’d had time to do a lot of thinking, and figured maybe I owed her an apology for ditching her and a thank-you for the soup.
Like I said, I can be big. I rearranged my toga and crawled toward the main cabin. A warm hand around my ankle yanked me
back.
“It’s okay, Bily. A replacement guard has been sent down. Go back to sleep.” The sounds from the galey confirmed my
statement.
“Fine. Go. Wake me when breakfast is ready,” he said, sleep muddying his voice. He was out again in a split second. I left him,
and closed the curtain behind me.
Laura, looking bright and chipper, was pouring the coffee. She smiled at me—a genuine smile, not at al wary. I wanted to stil
hate her, but I couldn’t.
“I’d give you my last penny for a cup of that,” I said, smiling in return.
She laughed, a low, musical sound as beautiful as her face, and handed me a mug. “No need for that. It comes free with the
pancakes.”
“Pancakes? You’re making pancakes?” Hope returned to my world, floating on the rich aroma of dark-roasted Arabica beans
and the giddy expectancy of maple syrup.
“Mark said you might like that.”
“Mark would be right. Where is he?” I asked, casualy looking back toward the quarter berths, wondering if they’d slipped in
earlier without me hearing, and had slept there together, al snug and cozy in one of the smal beds.
“He’s been out doing recon since we got here. He should be back soon.”
That was a relief. Maybe it was mean of me, but I was glad nobody else had gotten any last night either. Yeah, I can be petty
as wel as big.
“So, where are we?”
She shrugged. “Some little fishing vilage south of Visby. Mark can tel you more when he gets back.”
I sat at the table, not offering to help. I wasn’t about to display my kitchenly incompetence in front of her.
“Listen, Laura … I shouldn’t have taken off on you like that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. No harm done.” She laid a griddle across two burners on the smal stove and started it heating, then
gathered the ingredients—she was going to make them from scratch, of course—and got out a mixing bowl.
“No, realy. It was a dumb thing to do,” I said. “And thanks for the soup. It was delicious.”
She paused in her preparations and looked at me like she was debating whether to say something. Mark had probably told her
al about my infantile crush on him, and this was where she would sensitively explain their undying passion for each other. My
stomach tied itself into a great big knot while I waited for the anvil to drop.
“Ciel, Mark’s not always an easy guy.”
I snorted. “Tel me something I don’t know.”
“What I mean is, try not to be upset with him. It’s just how he is. He’l steamrol right over you, trying to make you live
according to what he thinks is best for you.” She pointed her wooden mixing spoon at me, giving it a shake for emphasis. “Don’t
let him.”
I sat back, a little shocked. Guess we weren’t going to talk romance. I was enormously relieved. “You sound like you’re
speaking from experience.”
“I am. On our first assignment together, I was fresh off the Farm—you know what the Farm is?”
“
Yeah, Mark told me about it. It’s where baby spooks are born.”
“Something like that,” she said, stirring the pancake mixture. “I was a total newbie, and a girl to boot. Mark didn’t think I had
any business working a dangerous mission—and he considers just about any mission that isn’t behind a desk dangerous. He did
everything possible to get me kicked off the job and into an office somewhere. He was so overbearing, I almost quit. Luckily, I
have a stubborn streak a mile wide…”
I felt a bond start to form as I listened to her misadventures with Mark. Damn. This, and she makes pancakes, too. Forget
Mark. I was faling for Laura.
*
I didn’t wake Bily up until after my second plate of pancakes. Why take a chance on running short of batter? Besides, I was
having too much fun talking with Laura. She’d been totaly indignant on my behalf when I related how Mark had made me throw
up with his horror stories about tough assignments. Even though she knew he only did it because he worried about me, she said
he’d had no right to buly me away from a possible career choice.
It was great to finaly have someone see it from my point of view—I was eating it up along with my breakfast. Of course, I
couldn’t tel her what I realy did for a living now, so I gave her the life coach story. She was impressed that I was running my own
business, and I basked in the glow of her approval.
When I finaly caled Bily, he emerged from behind the curtain wide-awake and totaly refreshed. He slipped in next to me at
the table as he joked with Laura about not letting me near the galey, and complimented her charmingly on her culinary skil.
While she was making more coffee he laid a warm hand on my thigh, caught my eye, and mouthed, Are we all right? I
nodded. I couldn’t stand feeling awkward with him, so I decided I just wouldn’t. He seemed to be in accord.
Once Bily was served, and a fresh stack of steaming delectability was left under an overturned bowl to keep warm for Mark,
Laura excused herself to go check something on deck. She said she’d send Mark down when he returned. I wasn’t precisely
anxious to see him again, but it was easier to contemplate after having talked with Laura. It was heartening to know I wasn’t the
only one he had ever treated like an incompetent child. If she could overcome it, I could, too.