“Aye. My relatives gave me nightmares too. They never understood me. Landlubbers all of them. They couldn’t see why I would put aside my land and title to sail the seas.”
“I see that now.”
“And Harley?”
The younger man’s eyes blazed. “What about her?”
“She’s a good woman.”
Killion held his stare.
“You wouldn’t be thinking of—”
“Hold it there, gramps. What happens between Harley and me is private.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, sonny. What happens to Harley matters to me.”
Killion grimaced as if he had just bit down on a lemon. “You’re not saying the two of you—”
“No. It’s not like that.” The growl of his own voice shook the room. “I’ve charmed many women in my life, but Harley rejects my charm. Still I care about her. I won’t stand by and see her used by a treasure hunter who will leave her on the rising tide. So I warn you, if you want something from me, don’t use her. Talk to me directly.”
Killion’s face reddened. “Harley is my business, old man.”
Even in his prime Three Sheets wouldn’t have wanted to fight Killion. The scowl on his face telegraphed his experience in all manner of brawls.
“Sit down. We need to talk, reasonably,” said the ghost.
“Then leave Harley out of this.” Killion sat.
“Are you single?”
The younger man hung his head back. “Aw, man. What is this? Listen gramps, I know about the birds and the bees. I don’t want a sex chat.”
“No, you want my money.”
A muscle in Killion’s right cheek flexed and released. “I’m telling you the truth. I wanted your money when I came to Sunset Cove, but meeting Harley made me realize I want more from you.”
The tone of his voice said it all and then there were his eyes. “I’ve seen that look.”
“What?”
Ha. He came for my gold, but then he met Harley. This was better than he had imagined.
Killion’s face reddened, but he didn’t say anything.
Three Sheets scratched his mustache. “So what do you want from me? Shouldn’t you be with her?”
Killion straightened his back. The soft, brown leather jacket he wore had been tailored to accent his broad shoulders and thin waist. Three Sheets felt pride in his grandson, an emotion he hadn’t felt for hundreds of years, and never with anything to do with his family. “I also want to get to know you.”
Three Sheet’s face went blank. His brows rose. “Really?”
“Harley said it would be good for me, and yeah, I think she’s right. We have a lot in common and I’d like to know more about you.”
Three Sheets’s chest expanded so much he thought he would burst. His family and most of the civilized world in his time never understood him. This one, this one could.
Killion scratched his chin. “You’re not saying anything.”
“Aye, I would like us to get to know one another. I’m sure there are many things we could learn.”
“Is it true you freed slaves and many joined you?”
“Aye. They were good men.”
“And the women?”
“What about them?”
Killion laughed. “There were many?”
“Aye. I liked variety when I was young. Ah, the stories I could tell you. As I aged I longed for something more of the heart, but those kinds of women weren’t interested in pirates, so I stayed with the wild ones. That was my thing, wild women.”
A thoughtful expression crossed Killion’s face.
“What is the term today for a man like me? A player? Are you a player?”
Killion lips spread into the same bad-boy smile that had drawn women to Three Sheets’ bed in his time. “I can’t complain.”
“And Harley?”
Killion’s face darkened. “I thought we had agreed to not talk about her.”
Three Sheets nodded. “I’m fond of her too.”
Killion put his hand up. “I don’t know her well enough to state my feelings, but I can tell you this: I intend to get to know her better. I’ve never felt so attracted to a woman so quickly, which is not something I would tell another person; but you’re a ghost and you’re my kin, so there seems no harm in saying it.”
“Aye. But do you care enough to protect her? To lay down your life, if need be?”
Killion sat up. “She’s in danger?”
“Aye, she is. My friends and this house are protecting her, but I don’t know if we’re enough for tonight. I think we’ll need real muscle.”
“Who’d want to hurt Harley? She’s a free-spirited artist.”
“Who sells forged masterpieces through the Mob.”
“Shit.” Killion’s eyes hardened.
“Two thugs went door to door looking for her yesterday, and last night they came into the house.”
“I thought she was an innocent.”
“Hah, she’s far from innocent, my lad.”
A smile tugged at the edges of Killion’s mouth. “She just keeps getting more interesting.”
“And dangerous.”
A light flickered across Killion’s eyes. “What can I do?”
“I thought you wanted my gold.”
“Later. Tell me what I can do to help Harley.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“Name it.”
“Talk to her.”
11
A Kiss is Still a Kiss
“Not all treasure is silver and gold …”
~ Captain Jack Sparrow
Harley’s smile warmed her from the inside out. So what if the Mob was chasing her? She had found a safe place to hide and she had a date with Killion.
Of course her life wasn’t free of worries, but so what. A life without worries would be like eggs without salt and pepper or a VanGogh without bright colors.
Azalea had told her she should leave town soon for her own safety, but she would worry about that tomorrow.
Three-Sheets called her interest in Killion unseemly. I guess women didn’t say they wanted to jump a guys bones and bang him like a screen door, in his day. But what else would a healthy woman say when they laid eyes on a man as sexy as Killion?
She sighed at the thought of him. Holy Rembrandt she had it bad. He would be coming on his motorcycle to pick her up in twenty minutes. They planned to hit the open road and have a picnic lunch on a beach up the coast.
Now was not the time to dwell on worries. To hell with Michel and his thugs. At first she thought she had to be crazy to think the teahouse and the ghosts who hung out here could protect her, but she had faith in them. The place possessed magic, and for a reason she would never understand, it liked her. Harley patted the wall. “The feeling’s mutual,” she said. It vibrated in response shaking the watercolor painting of a vase of roses mounted on the wall.
So, putting all her negative thoughts aside she concentrated on the job at hand. She had less than half an hour to get ready, but to not look as if she tried to “get ready.” The whole dating gig made her laugh. If she were in Florence she would choose her lucky, silk and lace bra and matching thong bought in her favorite lingerie shop. But here in Sunset Cove she had only one change of clothes that Abby had brought over, so she showered and put on a clean pair of leggings and a sweatshirt. She laughed at herself as images of the two of them entwined on a motorcycle flew through her mind. What was making her think this way? She didn’t like doing it. Something about Killion was seriously messing with her circuitry.
Heavens to Monet, Killion didn’t have to be in the room to make the temperature rise. Her cheeks burned and she felt moist.
Harley had never had difficulty attracting the opposite sex. Her problem in the dating landscape was sustaining her own interest in one guy for longer than a week. She considered herself a born bachelorette destined to live out her life with cats. As a young girl when she played dolls, she never imagined suburba
n houses with picket fences and bland Ken dolls. Her dreams had involved travel, adventure and danger.
The depths of Killion’s sinfully dark-chocolate brown eyes promised all that and more. A man from afar. A man with no boundaries. A man with a killer bad-boy smile and body.
She pulled her fingers through her hair and looked at herself in the mirror. Favored with cocoa-colored skin, curly, black hair and bright-blue eyes, she had never needed to use much make-up. But what she saw in the mirror surprised her. The light in her eyes and the heightened color in her cheeks spoke of happiness. She had only spent a couple hours talking to the guy over tea.
Sheesh, she shouldn’t be this interested, this fast. It was crazy.
Hormones. It had to be a hormonal thing. But she was mid-month, which wasn’t the usual time for her to get wired on estrogen, or any of her cousins. And Harley’s cycle was as predictable as the moon.
It could be the effect of living in a magical house. Maybe. She shook her head. Nah, this house rocks. She patted the wall again and the lights flickered. One thing she knew for sure was that it wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. How she knew that, she didn’t know. She just knew it, as if it were a bone-wisdom, something strange and elemental. Maybe her people talked to its people. Who knew the secrets of how things worked in the world? The teahouse was a very magical place.
Okay, if I rule out hormones and magic, what the hell is making me so crazy about Killion? She smiled as she thought about his bad-boy smile. Michelangelo would love to sculpt this guy’s body. Well-proportioned and made for sex. She smiled at the thought of licking him from top to bottom. She wasn’t in the habit of taking such a detailed inventory of a man, but Killion stirred feelings in her, the depth of which she had never experienced. She stopped her mental drool. Oh hell. Oh hell, no. It couldn’t be. No. No. No.
She couldn’t be falling for him. She didn’t have time for that kind of thing. She had places to go, people to meet, paintings to paint. There was no room in her life for a serious relationship. Besides, what kind of life could she have with a treasure hunter?
The well-worn floorboards on the attic stairs creaked. Harley’s spine straightened. Someone was coming to see her.
Who would Azalea let up the stairs? Only someone she trusted, but the person could have slipped by her watchful eye. Harley looked out the window. The wooden fire escape undoubtedly built in the last century, looked authentic and about as useful as a hat on a unicorn.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Harley?”
“Killion?” She ran to the door and then stopped in front of it, not wanting to look as if she had hurried. After pulling a hand through her hair, she slowly opened the door. Butterflies danced in her stomach, an exhilarating, but truly confusing, feeling.
“Azalea told me to come up. I think she’s worried I’d keep her lady customers away.”
She touched his hand, felt a mega-watt spark, and pulled him into her room. “You’re early.”
As he followed her inside, he gave her a gosh-darn innocent smile, but his eyes spoke of less innocent thoughts. “We need to talk.”
12
When all Else Fails
“You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to leave the shore.”
~ Christopher Columbus
After Killion finished telling Harley about Michel’s men coming to the house the night before, and they both had a good laugh about Giovanni running back to the boat buck naked, she sent Killion packing. Not that she didn’t like his company or his willingness to protect her—gotta like that in a man—but she had some serious thinking to do.
As he pulled her into his muscular arms and kissed her, her ability to think stopped. Man-oh-man could Killion kiss. Her whole body, and most of her mind, melted on the spot. It started out as a brief touch of the lips, but became so much more. His tongue danced a sensuous tango with hers until she felt totally undone. She pulled back when she had just enough of her resolve left to shift gears and pushed him through the door. “You have to go,” she said in a raspy voice.
“Babe,” he said.
“Not now,” she said, closing the door.
How could her life have become so messy in such a short time? For the love of all that’s holy this wasn’t fair. She counted her problems on her fingers. One: the Mob was after her and her chances of hiding from them were slimmer than slim. It didn’t matter where she went in the world, they would find her. Two: an old pirate with questionable intentions had become her confidant. Where was Yoda when you needed him? Three: her sole protection was a drafty, haunted house filled with ghosts. Her life was a disaster.
And then there was the problem of Killion. A sensual warmth flowed through her body as she thought of him. Yeah, definitely a problem. No man had ever attracted her the way he did. Just his presence, made her heart beat faster, and it wasn’t just his seriously drool-worthy bad-boy looks. It was much more than that. As crazy as it would sound, if she dared say it out loud, he matched her, perfectly. They shared a love for adventure, a love for life. She sighed. Tall, dark and dangerous.
Harley swallowed. She couldn’t let Killion, or Three Sheets, or the teahouse be harmed. She had been alone so long, she didn’t know what it was like to have friends in her corner, but she knew now. They would all sacrifice themselves for her and she would have none of that. She knew Michel well enough to guess his next move. He would set fire to the house. The ghosts couldn’t burn, but they’d lose their sanctuary, and Azalea, her business. She would be forced out into the open where Michel and his thugs would be waiting.
If Killion tried to stop them, they’d kill him. What was one more corpse to them? He’d be dead before she had a chance to really get to know him.
It would be better if she gave herself up.
But giving up had never been her way of handling things. There had to be another way. She could blackmail Michel about the murder of his accountant; send statements to the police and newspapers simultaneously so he couldn’t stop the flow of information. The problem with that plan was that they might not believe her, and Michel had undoubtedly got rid of the body. There were no other witnesses.
What she needed was concrete evidence. If she could get aboard his yacht, she could access his computer, the one he never let her use. It had to have his business stuff on it. She could download the information, or, hell, just steal the whole thing.
Getting on the yacht wouldn’t be as easy as getting off it. She could ask for help, but again, that would put people she cared about at risk. She needed a plan that she could carry out on her own. Michel was her problem and she would fix it.
Although she hated the idea, she knew it would be easier to give herself up to Michel.
The pitter-patter of rain falling on the asphalt roof calmed her ragged nerves. Inside this house she felt safe and cared about. If only she never had to leave. She sat up. There had to be a way.
Plan one: seduce Michel. Her stomach flipped and not in a good way. He was an attractive man, kind of like a GQ model with graying hair and olive skin, but she had zero interest in him. And then there was the issue of his fish breath.
Plan two: go to the police. But they might discover her less than stellar past when they started digging and she would end up behind bars.
Plan three: phone her friends in Europe. No, that wouldn’t help. They were too far away and no match for Michel and his thugs. Not to mention his family. Talk about connected. Sheesh.
A plan. She needed a plan that would work and leave no loose ends. It came to her all at once. She would visit Michel and make him think she wanted to screw him. Physically, that is. Sometime during the seduction she would slip him a mickey and after he fell unconscious, she would steal the evidence.
And this will work like magic because I’ve seen it a million times in TV movies? Not likely. She shook her head. Mata Hari she was not.
But what choice did she have? She had run out of options. Could she pull it off? It would require a lot of lying and a
lot of sheer guts, and she had the moxie. Okay, it was slightly stupid, very scary and required more luck than she had ever run with, but what the hay. It beat waiting for him to catch up with her and that was something he would do, if not here in Sunset Cover, then somewhere, sometime. No one could escape the bastard for long.
Sometimes you just have to take a leap.
“Michel,” she typed in a text message, “I’m coming aboard.”
13
Risking it All
“Now and then we had the hope that if we lived and were good God would permit us to be pirates.” (Mark Twain)
Three Sheets found Killion sitting cross legged on the back steps of the teahouse with a cup of coffee staring into space.
“That bad, eh?”
“When I told Harley about the thugs invading the house, she lost it.”
“She’ll calm down.”
Killion shook his head and gave him a sideways look. “Sure about that?”
“Harley’s different from other women. She has a wild spirit, but beneath that she has a backbone of steel. Trust me son, she’ll get through this.”
Killion nodded. “She’s a survivor.”
But he didn’t look convinced.
Three Sheets scratched his mustache, not that it itched in the afterlife, but it had been his habit to do so when something perplexed him. “You’re worried she’ll give into the Mob guy.”
“Something like that. She’s too proud to take our help. What do you think she’ll do?”
Three Sheets lifted his chin as if he were checking the direction of the wind. “You need to listen to her. She keeps her feelings close to her heart.”
“Listen?”
“Trust me. I’ve been dealing with women a lot longer than you have, and you need to listen to her.”
Killion winced. “Gramps were you ever good with women?”
Three Sheets raised his brows.
Confessions of a Pirate Ghost (Gambling Ghosts Series Book 3) Page 6