She shrugged and continued wrestling with an oyster. The knife she used was very short, triangular and deadly. There was no guard on the hilt. So far she had managed to avoid stabbing anything but the oysters.
„I’ll do that,“ Raven said. „Get back in the cabin where it’s warm.“
„Yes, Daddy,“ she muttered, but she didn’t give up the oyster that she was struggling with.
The idea of feeling fatherly toward Janna was so preposterous that Raven couldn’t do anything but laugh.
After a moment Janna looked up and smiled. It wasn’t her best smile but it was all she had at the moment. She still was raw from hearing Raven praise her nice, motherly attributes at the very instant when she had been all shivery just from touching him. The difference between their reactions to one another couldn’t have been greater…or more discouraging.
„Sorry,“ she said. „Guess it’s cabin fever.“
„Or hunger,“ he rumbled, touching her lips with his fingertip.
Janna’s eyes widened with shock. She wondered whether Raven had read her mind. „How did you know?“ she whispered.
„No great trick,“ he said, grinning. „It’s been five hours since lunch.“
„Lunch?“
„Yeah. You remember – the meal that comes after breakfast and before dinner?“
„Oh, that lunch.“
„Is there more than one?“ he asked innocently.
„Of course,“ she retorted, rallying. „There’s lunch and then there’s getting lunched. Lately I’ve been lunched more often than I’ve eaten.“
Raven opened his mouth, closed it and then began to laugh. „Has anyone ever told you that you have – “
„A great sense of humor?“ interrupted Janna, opening the oyster with a vicious jab of the knife. „Yeah. As one of the all-time boring virtues, it ranks right up there with motherhood.“
„Not to someone who never had a mother and who likes to laugh. They’re gifts, Janna,“ he said quietly.
„Really?“ she asked, picking up another oyster, avoiding Raven’s eyes. „Too bad we’re so far from the complaint counter. I’d exchange them for sex appeal.“
Raven’s jaw dropped in the instant before he told himself that Janna was kidding. He laughed, shaking his head, and wondered why a storm hadn’t washed Janna into his life years ago.
Janna didn’t find the idea of her being sexy nearly as amusing as Raven did. In fact, she discovered that her sense of humor on that subject had just run out.
„Here,“ Janna said, slapping the hilt of the oyster knife into Raven’s broad palm. „I’ll make the cocktail sauce. It’s too cold out here for me.“
Raven looked from the knife to the long, bare legs vanishing into the cabin. The door shut firmly. He looked back at the knife and wondered why he had the distinct feeling that Janna would have liked to stick it into him rather than an oyster.
Chapter 5
By the time Janna had finished rummaging through the galley in order to find ketchup and horseradish, she had regained some of her normal common-sense outlook and with it her usually easygoing temperament. As she reminded herself, it wasn’t Raven’s fault that he was drawn to tragic blond angels. Nor was it his problem that she was finding it harder and harder to be close to him without touching him in a decidedly unangelic fashion.
And the storm just kept calling wildly over land and sea.
From what Janna had been able to understand between the bursts of static that had come whenever Raven tried to pick up a station on the radio, they had at least two more days in Totem Inlet before the wind died down enough to make the ocean safer for small craft.
Just two days. Surely she could keep her yearnings to herself and her sense of humor intact for a mere two days.
Gloomily Janna put out the box of oyster crackers she had found in the cupboard. After a moment of frowning at the innocent crackers, she decided to sort through the Black Star’s spare cooler. She knew there weren’t any lemons in the small galley refrigerator, but she had high hopes for the storage cooler. She hadn’t found a lemon there yet, but then she hadn’t really looked, either. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did on a whim.
The cooler was little more than a long, deep plastic container set below waterline and shaped to conform to the curve of the hull. A hinged section of the counter lifted to give access to the cooler. Janna lifted the lid and looked in. No lemons had grown there since the last time she had looked, but she could swear that she smelted fresh lemons beneath the pervasive odor of onions and oranges. She stared down into the darkness at the small bags crowding against each other. Getting to the bottom of the cooler was going to require a flashlight and an ability to hang her head down in an enclosed space while balancing her weight on the edge of the counter and bracing her feet at floor level on the opposite cabinet.
That was exactly what Janna was doing when Raven came into the cabin. The sight of her long, naked legs stretched diagonally across the aisle brought him to a complete stop. Muffled thumps came from the cooler as Janna shifted potatoes, onions, carrots, oranges and other durable fresh foods from one side of the cooler to the other in her quest for lemons.
Raven barely noticed the sounds. He was fighting to control the impulse to run his hands from Janna’s ankles to the smooth curve of her hips… and from there to let his fingers slide into the shadowed feminine secrets he knew were waiting.
It would be easy to do, a few seconds, no more, and he could peel away the dark blue lace briefs that even now peeked from the edge of the oversize shirt. Or he could take longer. Much longer. He could learn every smooth bit of Janna with his teeth and his tongue, nuzzling closer to her secrets as he slowly, slowly, eased the lacy briefs down her beautiful legs.
Raven’s hands were actually reaching for Janna before he realized it. „What the hell do you think you’re doing?“ he muttered roughly to himself.
An answer floated up from below the counter. „Looking for lemons.“
„Lemons,“ he repeated thickly, watching his own shirt climb higher and higher up Janna’s body as she wriggled backward up and out of the cooler’s depths. When he saw the sweet flex and shift of Janna’s hips beneath blue lace, his whole body tightened. „Oh God,“ he gritted.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds and tried to control his own hunger. It didn’t work. Desire poured in red-hot torrents through his blood and pooled urgently, rigidly, between his thighs.
„Lemons,“ Janna said, her voice becoming clearer with each instant as she emerged from hanging upside down in the cooler. „You know – something to sweeten my disposition.“
Raven laughed almost helplessly and then swore in the same way, but silently. He had been expecting to have a tense dinner with an angry woman and had walked into the cabin to find Janna’s sexy bottom tempting him and her sense of humor restored. Now, if he could just do something about the raw, hard desire that was riding him, they might get out of the inlet before he took her down onto his bunk and ate every sweet inch of her.
And then again, they might not, especially if he didn’t stop watching her hips move. Now. Right now.
With a groan Raven forced himself to look away from the inviting curves of Janna’s bottom. By memory alone he found a plate for the oysters and retreated to the stern, shutting the cabin door behind. Using great care he stacked oysters on the plate. When he looked over his shoulder through the cabin window, Janna was head down in the cooler again. Grimly he rearranged the mound of oysters on the plate. Three times.
„I found some!“
„Thank God,“ Raven said with real feeling, turning toward the cabin.
He opened the door and closed it, balancing the heavy oyster plate in one hand. One look told him he had come back a few seconds too soon. Janna was just now wriggling onto her feet. Her face was flushed and her hair was tousled from hanging upside down for the past few minutes.
And her shirt was bunched at her waist.
Janna noticed the cloth,
too. As her hands were full of lemons, she restored the shirt to its proper place with a quick shimmy of her hips. The tantalizing motion made Raven groan.
„Raven?“ She turned toward him. „What is it? Did you stab yourself with the oyster knife?“
No, but only because I wasn’t holding it. God, woman, there should be a law against movements like that.
Raven had just enough control left to keep the thought to himself. He took a deep breath – and smelled hot tennis shoes.
Janna smelled them at the same instant. She dumped the lemons in the sink, yanked open the oven door and pulled out her forgotten jeans and shoes. Raven set aside the oysters just in time to snag a pair of flying jeans before they wrapped around his face. Janna tossed the shoes from hand to hand, muttering to herself.
„If I’d known you were this hungry, I’d have tried for some cod,“ he said, examining the jeans with deadpan distaste.
„Who was it that I heard earlier singing paeans of praise to baked jeans?“ retorted Janna, dropping the hot but otherwise unhurt shoes to the deck.
Raven chuckled and folded the rapidly cooling jeans. Janna saw his big hands linger almost caressingly on the worn cloth of the seat and shivered, wishing she were wearing the jeans.
„Talk about hot pants,“ she muttered.
„What?“
„Er, are they cool enough to wear?“ she asked quickly.
„Are you cold?“
Janna opened her mouth, thought better of it, and said, „No you don’t.“
Raven gave her a slow, sideways look. „No I don’t what?“
„Sucker me into another one of those open-ended free-association conversations.“
Smiling, Raven sat on his heels and poked cautiously at the tennies. He looked up and said gravely, „Give ‘em another ten minutes while we have oysters on the half shell. The shoes should be tender by then.“
„Good idea.“
Before his astonished eyes she tossed the shoes in the oven, cranked the control up to high and slammed the oven door. She turned and began mixing cocktail sauce as though nothing had happened. He waited. And waited.
And waited.
Suddenly Raven’s deep, warm laughter filled the cabin. He bent over, shut off the oven and whisked the shoes out.
„You’d have done it, wouldn’t you?“ he asked, still laughing.
„Damn straight,“ she assured him, fighting the smile that insisted on shaping her lips into an amused curve. „The first thing a little sister learns is to out-stubborn brothers who are bigger, stronger and tougher than she is.“
„Small warrior,“ Raven murmured, touching the cinnamon fire of Janna’s hair so lightly that she didn’t feel it. „Did they torment you?“
Janna started to agree emphatically, then realized that it wasn’t quite true. „Sometimes, but they loved me in their own way. And I was a little witch to them. Sometimes.“
„But you loved them all the time,“ Raven said, watching the softness that memories brought to Janna’s mouth.
„Yes,“ she whispered. „They always tried to protect me. They used to drive me crazy vetting my dates, sending some of the boys running and scaring the others so that they were afraid to hold my hand. The only one they would let near me was the boy next door. They liked Mark. He never came on strong.“
Janna’s smile slipped. If only they had known why Mark wasn’t aggressive with their nubile little sister. But it wasn’t fair to blame them. Mark hadn’t known, either. Not really.
„Mark? Your husband?“
„Once. No more.“
„Why?“
Janna’s hands paused. With deliberate motions she scraped the cocktail sauce into a small, shallow bowl. „We were all wrong for each other.“
„What do you mean?“ Raven asked, sensing something more than the usual things that pulled marriages apart.
She hesitated, then shrugged again. „Mark saw me as a friend, a companion, a sister, sometimes even a mother. But not a lover.“ Janna’s voice was even, but all the softness was gone from her face and memories. „Do you want your lemon in the cocktail sauce or on the side?“
Raven looked at Janna for a long moment, wanting to ask more questions about her and the man she had once loved enough to marry – a man who apparently hadn’t loved her.
„On the side,“ he said finally, asking none of his questions because Janna’s eyes were jade green, no passionate silver, no emotion turning in the depths, nothing to tell him whether she had been sad or happy or indifferent when her marriage had ended.
A companion, a sister, a mother, not a lover.
Raven winced inwardly. No wonder Janna had stiffened when he had praised her in terms of her gentle hands and smile. He wondered if she had wanted her husband as a lover rather than a child. Even as the question came, he knew the answer; she had wanted a lover and had gotten a child.
„Your husband must have been blind,“ Raven said flatly.
„How gallant of you to say so,“ Janna said. Her full lips formed a smile that was as emotionless as her eyes. „But unnecessary and untrue. Mark was a pilot. He had superb vision. Do you have a corkscrew for the wine?“
„Did you love him?“
„Of course not,“ she said. „I marry every man who asks me out more than twice.“
„Janna…“ Raven began.
„Corkscrew?“ she asked, smiling at him again, a smile as cool as her voice. „My brothers showed me how to take out the cork just by hitting the bottom of the bottle with my hand, but I’m not as strong as they are. I bruise my palm every time. You’d be good at it, though. Strong and hard. Like them.“
„Do you still love him?“
„Did anyone ever tell you to mind your own business?“
„Yes. Do you still love him?“
„Why does it matter to you?“ Janna asked through clenched teeth, feeling her careful veneer of dispassion disintegrating.
„I won’t let you waste your life looking over your shoulder,“ Raven said quietly.
„You won’t let me.“ Janna’s teeth clicked as she shut her mouth and stared at the big, immovable man in front of her. „You aren’t responsible for my life. I already have a father and three older brothers who are almost as big and every bit as overbearing as you.“
„Do you still love Mark?“ Raven asked relentlessly.
„No! I haven’t loved him since he cried himself to sleep in my arms because he couldn’t bring himself to have sex with me!“
„What?“ said Raven, disbelief clear in his voice.
„He married me because he had always liked me, and he wanted children and thought I’d be a great little mother. He thought if any woman could turn him on, it would be me. He was wrong. I couldn’t have turned him on with a blowtorch! He was gay and hadn’t been able to admit it!“
Janna heard the words echo in the small cabin and was appalled. She had never told anyone about that terrible night when she and her husband had both realized that he was living a lie. She wouldn’t have said anything now if Raven hadn’t pushed so hard. She took a long, ragged breath, wishing she could crawl under the counter to avoid Raven’s dark, compassionate eyes.
„There. Feel better now?“ she asked, her voice shaking.
„I was just going to ask you the same question.“
„I’ve never felt worse in my life. Next time, leave me at the bottom of the inlet. The cost of being saved by you is too damned high!“
Raven made a low, involuntary sound, as though he had been struck. „Funny,“ he said finally, „that’s the same thing Angel told me.“
Raven’s lips twisted into a sad smile that tore at Janna’s heart, telling her that somehow she had wounded him more deeply than she had imagined possible, far more than he had hurt her with his questions. Abruptly the anger drained out of her.
„I’m sorry,“ she whispered. „I didn’t mean to-“
„It’s all right,“ Raven interrupted, turning away. „You didn’t know. And even if
you did, I had it coming.“
„If I had known, I wouldn’t have said it. I’m not that cruel.“
Raven turned toward Janna. „Small warrior,“ he said, smiling slightly as he stroked her cheek with his calloused palm. „Haven’t you learned? Sometimes kindness doesn’t get it done.“ He turned away, opened a galley drawer and pulled out a corkscrew. With a few easy, powerful motions he took the cork from the wine bottle. „Glasses are in the cupboard to your left.“
Numbly Janna reached for the cupboard. She pulled two wineglasses from their restraints and faced Raven again. As he filled the glasses she could see his nostrils flare in silent appreciation of the wine’s fragrance. He poured the pale golden liquid into the glasses, leaving room for the wine to be swirled by a deft movement of his wrist as he dipped his head to inhale the bouquet. The gesture spoke of a sophistication very much at odds with his rough shirt and jeans.
„What was Angel looking over her shoulder at?“ Janna asked, surprising herself. She hadn’t meant to ask Raven any more questions.
„A dead man.“
Janna paused in the act of setting cocktail sauce on the table. „She loved him?“
„He died the night before their wedding. Her parents died in the same car crash. She survived. She was too badly injured to move. She could only lie there and listen to Grant’s pain until he died.“
Raven’s voice was matter-of-fact, which only made the words more terrible.
Janna closed her eyes, unable to repress the shiver that took her at the thought of what Angel must have gone through. She felt ashamed of herself for lashing out at Raven. However sad and painful the end of her marriage had been, it hadn’t been like watching the man she loved die and being helpless even to touch his hand.
„Angel came out of it, finally.“ Raven continued, putting the plate of oysters on the kitchen table.
„And you comforted her,“ said Janna, thinking aloud, seeing in her mind a slender blonde taking refuge from pain and grief in Raven’s strong arms.
He looked sideways at Janna’s pale, tight face and wondered at the sadness he saw there. „Angel had Derry – Grant’s brother – to comfort her. She needed something tougher, something that would let her pour out all the rage she had at life for taking away the man she loved. The rage was destroying her. She had to get rid of it before she could cope with the despair that was the other side of rage.“
Love Song For A Raven Page 7