Her Passionate Protector

by Laurey Bright

  But Rogan and Brodie hadn't trusted the alarm to warn them about a possible boarding party. They'd kept watch—and kept the women in ignorance, something that still rankled with both Camille and Sienna.

  Brodie opened the nailed lids of the crates and helped the women remove some things that Sienna had packed in wet sawdust. They went straight into a bath of distilled water.

  "The other box can wait," Sienna said. "Those things aren't likely to deteriorate in the air, like these. We can start work on them tomorrow."

  After breakfast next morning Brodie said, "I need to see a doctor and get these stitches out. Then I might go to the shop for a while, if you two will be okay."

  "Spend the day if you like," Camille told him. "We'll be fine."

  "I don't need much time. They're used to me being away. I won't be long."

  He wasn't, bringing some paperwork home with him and spreading it out on the kitchen counter-cum-table while in the other room Sienna and Camille chipped patiently at a china candlestick and the remains of a ship's lantern, removing layers of seaweed and coral.

  After a couple more uneventful days Brodie relaxed his vigilance a bit and began spending more time at the dive shop. Camille was in touch with the Sea-Rogue every day and reported the boat was making good time. Rogan hoped to be home the following week.

  When they'd sorted through the first box, cleaned up the more lightly coated articles and left others to soak in acid baths for a few more days, Sienna and Camille turned to the second crate. Sienna lifted out a cardboard box.

  "What's in it?" Camille asked.

  "A few odd rings, watches, fob chains—stuff that didn't need a lot of cleaning but sometime we should try to check if we can get some detail on when and where they were made.

  If we can find any particularly interesting information on them it could enhance their value to collectors or museums."

  "I could do that," Camille offered, "while you carry on with cleaning the other stuff."

  It was her area of expertise, after all. Sienna handed over the box and said, "Go for it."

  Sienna was gently rubbing a black film from a pewter platter with steel wool when Camille gave a sharp exclamation and said, "Where did this come from?"

  "What?" Sienna looked up to see her friend's face white and her eyes wide with shock, holding a ring in her fingers as though it were a bomb.

  Sienna reached out to take it, curious to see which of the several in the box had caused this reaction. "Brodie found it," she said. "But it could be from another wreck. Unless we find out who the owner was we may never know."

  "I know," Camille whispered, her eyes riveted on the ring with its black enameled background and golden urn.

  "You do?" Sienna queried, apprehension beginning to beat a tattoo in her chest.

  Camille lifted troubled eyes—haunted, even. "I don't know who the original owner was, but James used to wear a ring like that." She paused, touched her tongue to her lips and emphasized, "Exactly like that."

  "James?" No wonder Camille was upset. "James Drummond?"

  "Yes," Camille confirmed. "James Drummond."

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  When they told Brodie, he looked almost as shocked as Camille had. "Drummond's ring? Are you sure?" Turning to Sienna, he said, "You told me these things were handed out to all and sundry after a death."

  "Friends and family," she said. "Maybe only one or two, not more than a few dozen or so at most. It's hardly likely that one person in New Zealand in the twenty-first century would come across two identical ones by sheer coincidence."

  He grunted. "But if this is Drummond's…" He turned it in his big fingers. "Aw, shoot."

  "Could he have lost it," Sienna asked Camille, "when he was holding up you and Rogan on the Sea-Rogue?"

  Camille shook her head. "He was still wearing it when the police took him away. He told me once he couldn't get it off anymore, it would have to be cut, and he didn't want to do that to a fine piece of jewelry." She looked up at Brodie. "Where did you find it?"

  "I took it off a skeleton on the reef."

  Sienna exclaimed, "You didn't tell me that! This was the skeleton you told the policeman about? The one with the bullet in the skull?"

  "But that means…" Camille's voice trailed into silence.

  Brodie put into words what they were all beginning to realize. "It means Drummond's dead."

  "Well," Sienna said cautiously, "I wouldn't wish anyone dead, but … he can't do any more harm to us—or anyone."

  Brodie's tone was harsh. "He's been dead for months. Rogan and I first came across him—his bones, I mean, just before the wedding."

  "Months?" Sienna digested that. "You said, when you first saw him—it, there was no flesh left?"

  Brodie shook his head, giving her a peculiar look.

  "Then he must have already been dead then for two months or so."

  Brodie and Camille both stared at her. Camille said, "How do you know that?"

  "I've talked to pathologists. Sometimes we find bones, especially near beaches, when we're excavating an archaeological site. We have to check that they're historic and not recent. I've picked up all kinds of odd information. There were plenty of fish around the reef—they'd clean a body up in two months, easily. Was it whole?"

  "No. Unless the bottom half was buried in the sand. But sharks…"

  "Clothes?"

  He shook his head. "Whoever shot him might have stripped him. He wasn't wearing a watch, just that ring."

  "So maybe they were trying to make sure he wasn't identified," Sienna guessed. "But they couldn't get the ring off—or didn't even notice it."

  Camille said thoughtfully, "When Joe said that the man he called the boss didn't care about destroying the other artifacts to get to the gold, something seemed odd. I know James was a criminal and apparently quite willing to sanction murder, if not carry it out himself, but he had a genuine love of beautiful old things."

  Brodie said, "So we got it wrong. Drummond was there, but his partner dispensed with him when they fell out."

  Sienna shivered. "He must be utterly ruthless."

  "If Joe was an eyewitness and we've got this…" Brodie looked down at the ring. "Though it's probably not enough evidence to convict anyone."

  "Joe swore he'd never talk to the police."

  "Seems to me," Brodie said, "he'd be safer in jail than anywhere. And four witnesses can swear to what he told us."

  "Why did he?" Camille wondered.

  "Because," Sienna pointed out, "he'd been beaten up, concussed, almost drowned, had several broken bones—and two big, fit men were threatening some kind of repeat performance if he didn't cough up." She would have had trouble resisting their distinctly unsympathetic treatment in the circumstances. Joe, aware that his safety depended on them, had crumbled like an anthill under a couple of bulldozers. "He was caught between the devil—a couple of them, from his point of view—and, literally, the deep blue sea."

  Brodie shot her a glance. "You didn't approve."

  "I never approve of bullying." She added reluctantly, "But I admit the provocation was … extreme."

  "Yeah." He was still fingering the ring.

  Camille said, "Shouldn't we take that to the police?"

  Brodie grimaced. "I reckon we hold on to it until Rogue gets back here with Joe, and the police hear his story. There's a safe at the shop."

  The new alarm went off in the night, rousing the two women and sending Brodie, in the shorts he slept in, to peer out one of the front windows. Then he raced to the door and flung it open, slamming it behind him before chasing after a dark shadow that leaped into a waiting car.

  The car, unlit, took off with a roar down the street, and in the dim light he couldn't read the license plate. Swearing to himself, he trudged back to the house.

  Sienna and Camille, both wearing long T-shirts that bared half their thighs, were in the lighted hallway. Camille let him in and Sienna was on the phone, talking to the p
olice.

  She hung up. "The constable will be right round."

  He was, but with no description or number plate he didn't hold out much hope. "Your company seems to have a lot of trouble," he remarked, closing his notebook when he'd taken what meager information they could give.

  "Yeah," Brodie said, "and maybe more to come. Rogue's bringing back a suspect with him. They should be here in a few days."

  "You people," the constable said disapprovingly, "really mustn't take the law into your own hands. You can't go around detaining people at will."

  "He came to us," Brodie explained, "and confessed."

  "Confessed to what?" Obviously the policeman's patience was tried.

  "Theft, sabotage, conspiracy, witnessing a murder. An accessory after the fact, maybe."

  The constable blinked. "A murder?"

  His radio crackled and he answered a call, then said, "Right, I'll be there." Putting the radio away, he told them, "There's been a car crash—I have to go. Busy night." Casting a speculative glance at Brodie, he added, "When this … witness arrives we'll see what he has to say."

  "We should have told him about the ring," Camille said after he'd left.

  Brodie shrugged. "It'll keep."

  "I s'pose so." She yawned, and stumbled in the direction of the spare room. "I'm going back to bed."

  "I need a drink," Brodie said. "Sienna?"

  She hesitated, wide awake now, every nerve on full alert, precluding any chance of sleep. "Yes," she said, and followed him to the kitchen.

  "What'll it be?" he asked, rummaging in a cupboard.

  She supposed she ought to ask for hot chocolate or a cup of tea. Instead she said, "Baileys. Make it a double."

  "Living dangerously." He reached for the Baileys.

  "We seem to have been doing that lately."

  "Yeah." He poured her drink, and a whiskey for himself, then led the way to the big sofa, and when she'd sat down handed her glass over and seated himself a foot away.

  Sienna took a mouthful of the creamy liquid, savoring the sharp underlying tang. "You're used to it." He quirked his eyebrows at her, and she said, "Living dangerously."

  "Right," he conceded. "There's a high attrition rate in diving. Only about ten percent of divers who start out in the business stick to it. Unlucky and careless ones die."

  Sienna watched him take a slug of whiskey. Every movement he made emphasized his coiled strength, the command he had over his body. The light he'd switched on gleamed on the tanned skin of his chest and arms. His long, powerful legs were spread before him. He was beautiful, a perfectly formed male. No wonder she had trouble keeping her eyes from him, controlling the disturbing sensation, hot and electric, that coursed through her.

  With surprise she noted her glass was already half empty, and she was feeling almost relaxed. Wonderful what a little alcohol could do in the right circumstances. "So," she said, leaning back beside Brodie and turning her head to look at him, "what's this spell that makes you go back?" If she could keep him talking, the overwhelming urge to touch him might be kept at bay.

  He turned too, looking at her. She could see the dark rings around the irises of his eyes, and the incipient beard on his chin. "Just being down there," he said. "It's so different, so … rare. Plus all the interesting places I've worked, the people I've met—especially the divers, guys I know I can trust with my life. The sea's unforgiving. Knowing we need one another to survive builds a special kind of comradeship."

  A shadow passed over his face, and he drank some more of his whiskey, then hunched forward and stared into his glass. "That's why it's hard to stomach that Joe would let us down. We'd worked with the guy … thought we knew him."

  Without thinking, Sienna put her hand on his bare shoulder, stroking down to his arm, a gesture of comfort. She felt a ripple of something pass over his skin beneath her palm. He went very, very still, and she knew she should move her hand away, but some compulsion of her own kept it there. She wanted to keep touching him, and no longer for comfort. Something else—elemental, urgent—washed over her like a hot tide.

  Brodie straightened suddenly and her hand fell. His head turned, his eyes searching her face, and she knew what he saw there but was powerless to look away. His voice low and almost soundless, he said, "Sienna?"

  He was only inches from her. Her lips parted and she knew she should say something—anything—to break the moment.

  "Sienna," he said. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he closed the agonizing gap and pressed his lips to hers.

  Her head resting on the sofa back, she met his kiss at first tentatively, a small voice in her mind saying, What are you doing? Are you mad? But the nagging warning was dispelled by the magic of his mouth and she gave herself up to it.

  Brodie seemed to have all the time in the world to coax and tempt, tease and persuade. The kiss was a revelation, long and leisurely and relentlessly, marvelously sexy. Only their mouths were touching, yet she'd never felt such intimacy with a man, as if he knew both her fear and her desire and was willing to confine himself to exploring nothing more than her mouth, until he knew it so thoroughly she could scarcely tell where she left off and he began.

  He drew back, leaving her dazed, and his thumb stroked over her mouth, that felt full and tingling. He gave her a crooked little grin, his eyes brilliant and very blue. Turning, he put his whiskey glass on the floor by the sofa and then gently removed her glass from her unresisting fingers, stooping to place it out of the way too.

  Quite slowly he put an arm about her and drew her close, holding her eyes with his. His big hand cradled her nape, a thumb stroking her cheek. He seemed to be trying to read her face. "Sienna," he said, a sudden doubt in his voice, "you're not drunk, are you?"

  She smiled. "No." A lie—she was drunk with his kiss, with the scent of him, subtle and warm and male and wonderfully familiar, with the fact that he was almost naked and his magnificent chest was pressed against her breasts, separated only by a layer of cotton. Yielding to temptation, she touched him again, laying her hand on his arm, moving it to his shoulder, feeling the muscles tense.

  He said something short and inaudible, and then his mouth was on hers again, seeking, finding, giving pleasure and taking what pleasure she gave in return.

  She ran her fingers down his back and he made a throaty, inarticulate sound and returned the compliment, his hand cupping her behind as he bore her down on the wide sofa, their legs tangling together. He held her close—so close she could feel what this was doing to him, and her heart leaped and thudded with a kind of savage joy.

  His lips left hers and through the cotton of her shirt he found her breast, closed his mouth over the center, making her shudder with a renewed wave of singing sensation.

  He pushed the shirt up, his hands slightly rough on her thighs, and then with both hands on her breasts, he flicked his tongue into her navel.

  She had never known, until the night at the beach at Parakaeo, that this was an erogenous zone. But with Brodie, every part of her seemed to be one. She burned all over with need, with passion. And so fast…

  Brodie lifted his head, his teeth set in a feral smile. "I've wanted to do that again ever since the first time. I remember the little sound you made."

  "You do?" She hadn't been aware of it. Her voice was slurred, her mind dimmed, but her body had never been so alive, so sensitive to every slightest touch, like the light brush of his thumb caressing her now under the shirt, until he slid it up farther and she lifted her arms to help him remove it.

  She wore only the tiniest scrap of lace now. He smoothed a hand along her thigh, over her hip, dipped his thumb for an instant into the hollow of her navel, and laid his palm over her breast. She reached up to bring him down to her again, but he shook his head. "Time we found a bed," he said. "Mine's available."

  "No," she protested. She didn't want to move, didn't want to interrupt this lovely progression of feeling that swamped everything else, every doubt and rational thought.

/>   He bent and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. "Yes," he said. "I don't have anything with me, hon. We need to go to my room, where I keep my supplies."

  She ought to be grateful. He was being considerate and far more sensible than she had been. She watched him sit up and pass her shirt to her, but when he tried to take her hand she clutched the shirt over her bared breasts and swung her feet to the floor, closing her eyes tightly.

  "What's the matter?" Brodie asked quietly. "Sienna?"

  Her thoughts were chaotic, at war with her body that still yearned for him, heated and ultraresponsive with new awareness and yet lethargic, wanting to stretch out like a cat in the sun and be stroked and petted.

  But in her mind she was appalled and angry and humiliated and guilty all at once.

  The anger, she knew, wasn't reasonable. Confusedly, she knew it was rooted in her own chagrin at her lack of control. He could still keep a cool head when she'd been so carried away by … lust, she told herself cruelly, that the necessary precautions hadn't figured at all. But the guilt—that was deserved.

  It wasn't fair to back out now. She opened her eyes. She'd go through with this. And deal with the aftermath later. She wanted to, wanted Brodie with a fierce longing.

  Already they'd made love once, and the memory haunted her dreams, so that she woke unsatisfied and craving more. Why not take it now—a second time would make little difference, but give her one more memory to cherish.

  Brodie was on his haunches before her, his expression troubled. "What's the problem?"

  "No problem," she whispered. "Kiss me, Brodie." Surely that would help her recapture the headlong abandon that had possessed her only moments before.

  He didn't move for a second or two. Then he lifted a hand to her face, laid it along her cheek. His eyes searched hers before he leaned forward and kissed her, but not as she expected. It was soft and light and almost sexless. Then he moved his mouth away and said, "Only if you really want to."

  "I want to." But her voice sounded thin and indecisive. She bit her lip. "It will be all right."