by Ann Major
He tossed the black leather bag onto the bed. "Your cat, madam."
Rigging clattered against the aluminum mast as the boat heeled precariously and the door slammed behind him.
"My—" She looked up, startled by Nicholas's cruel tone, by his stern expression.
A feline howl of outrage erupted from the bag.
"Why you beast! How could you? What kind of man are you that you would take pleasure in frightening a small, helpless animal?"
"That monster is about as helpless as a rabid sewer rat!"
She unzipped the bag. Scrambling to the safety of a shelf in the darkest corner, the cat flattened his ears and glared at him with ferocious yellow eyes.
"What did he do to you, sweetie?" she whispered. Victor yowled plaintively in an attempt to explain.
Nicholas felt an inane jealousy. How could she feel such sympathy for that beast when he’d nearly been murdered trying to rescue him?
"A better question is what did he do to me? His claws are like ice picks. He sank every one of them into my hand when I put him in that bag. Then he scratched me again while I was carrying him here. Hell, Paolo was waiting for me. So, I damned near died because of that cat."
If it hadn't been for the beast, Nicholas would have died for sure, but he kept that tidbit to himself.
For the first time since Nicholas had come in, Eva seemed to forget her fear of the incessant pitching of the yacht as it slammed into the waves. Instead she concentrated on him. She looked at his bloodied hands and the ugly purple bruise along his cheek.
"Oh, no… Victor…did you do that?"
He had to fight his reaction to the concern in her eyes and to the sympathetic quiver in her voice. She could be acting.
"Did you know Paolo would be there? Did you hope he would finish me off?"
With a gasp, she jerked back from him, letting go of the bunk railing. "No..."
When the boat hovered on the top of an immense wave and then raced down it like a roller coaster car, she lost her balance and fell, tumbling across the bed, her head banging into the headboard. As she pulled herself up, he saw the faint trace of blood upon her lower lip. She touched her mouth, which was cut and bleeding, but didn’t complain. “I-I shouldn’t have let go.”
Worried, he sank down beside her. "Eva, I…I was wrong to accuse you."
"Yes, you were. Surely you must know I would never do a thing like that. No matter how furious I was at you, no matter how terrified."
"I know," he said.
She took his battered hands in hers and gently touched the cat’s scratches one by one. “Victor must have been terrified.”
Her damp hair smelled of honeysuckle. Of home. Of all the beautiful things he had left behind, of the life he had once longed for, of all that was forever lost to him.
"You need to wash your hands,” she said. “Cat scratches get infected easily."
"That figures."
Victor yowled, as if to defend himself.
Eva caressed Nicholas's bruised cheek, her light fingertips deeply soothing. She smoothed the blood-soaked tatters of his shirt. Gently she wiped the water that was streaming from his hair off his brow, and though he willed himself to move away from her and the treacherous comfort of her touch, he couldn't. Her hand trembled slightly above his blackest bruise. "Oh, Raoul... Nicholas, I mean," she breathed. "It must have been a terrible fight."
"Yes."
"Paolo-is he..."
When he saw that her beautiful eyes had become round with horror, his temper flared again.
"No. Unfortunately, no new...murder will blacken my name," he jeered.
"You shouldn't joke. Do you have a medicine chest?" Her voice grew softer. "We should clean these cuts."
His dark gaze met the gentle concern of her eyes. Remembering their former happiness when they’d been lovers, he felt drawn.
What was he doing? Too well he knew the dangers of her gentleness and kindness. Ever since his mother had died when he was a baby, some secret part of him had longed for a woman's tenderness. Feminine kindness was the one thing that could rob his soul of anger. For eight years he had lived on his hatred and desire for revenge. Anger had driven him to make his own fortune and destroy his enemy's.
"I'll do it myself," he said cuttingly, pulling his hand away from her. “Later.”
She glanced down to hide the quick sparkle of tears in her golden-dark eyes. But he felt her pain.
God, what was this bond between them? How could she still seem almost a part of himself? Why did she have to be so beautiful? What made him so vulnerable to her shimmering eyes, to her red hair and to the velvet sound of her voice?
Other women were as beautiful. She was a woman, like any other woman.
Why did she mean so much more to him than others?
He clenched his hands to keep from reaching out and drawing her to him. He could understand his desire for her. What he couldn’t understand was the depth and complexity of the emotions she stirred in him.
He’d hurt her, so now she was coiled into a tight, vulnerable ball. No longer would she look at him, and her pale fingers were clenched. Always he had been able to hurt her too easily.
He remembered the first day he had pulled her lifeless body from the river. With his own breath, he’d given her life. She’d been little more than a gently-raised child while he’d been a man with years of hard living behind him. Her family had disliked his for a hundred years. But from that first moment when he'd held her and prayed for her to live, she’d been his.
He drew a shaky breath and arose. His cabin seemed suddenly too small and intimate for the two of them.
In those brief years when he'd loved her, when he'd waited for her to graduate from college, she'd shown him a softer side of life and made him see beauty in simple pastimes and experiences. She'd loved as easily as he'd hated. But Africa and Otto had obliterated their golden time together and had made a shared future impossible. Such a woman could never love a man whose name was blackened with the foul stench of murder or whose heart was blackened with the thirst for revenge.
He wanted none of her softness or beauty—she would only make the hard realities of his life more unbearable.
"Where will I stay?" she asked.
"With me. Here."
"There's no way we can share a room," she whispered.
"Would you prefer Zak’s room?" The hoarseness in his low tone betrayed him. "It’s me or him." He was bluffing. Not even to himself would he have admitted he would have killed any man who tried to sleep with her in his presence. "I drew the short straw."
She wiped at the single tear that threatened to slip down her flushed cheek.
Sheer strength of will was the only thing that enabled Nicholas to ignore her hurt and stand up, to move away from her instead of to her.
Rogue Wave fell sideways off a wave. The cabin lights went off, and she screamed as pillows, charts and a flashlight tumbled from the shelves. Then the lights flickered back on, and he saw that all color had drained from her cheeks.
“I’d better take the wheel and fast.” Ignoring the yacht’s violent motion, he moved to a locker.
"Paolo will tell Otto I took you. They will come after us."
"Otto will think I ran off with you?"
"Perhaps," he said indifferently as he rustled through the messy locker, his main concern Rogue Wave's, lousy performance. Zak was a great navigator, but he sucked as a helmsman. The yacht was being beaten to pieces.
"Connoisseurs...my independence...will all be gone because of you. You ruined my life once before. Now you're doing it again."
"You’d prefer to die?" He pulled out a shirt. "If your shop gets into trouble, get your rich father to bail you out. He's done it before."
"How can you, who prize your independence so much, say that to me?"
It was going to be a long night, and Nicholas was wet to the skin. He stripped out of his wet shirt, and that was a mistake, too.
Not only terrified, but now f
urious, too, she was up on her haunches, watching him. When she saw the scars on his back, her expression softened, and the deep concern he saw in her eyes made his hands unsteady as he pulled on a dry shirt.
"What happened to you? Who beat you?" Her words were muttered shudderingly.
Turning his back on her, he yanked his foul-weather jacket on, pulled the hood over his head, snapping the dozen or more snaps.
"It was a long time ago."
"In Africa?"
He turned back to face her. "Yes, damn it."
"You were brutally beaten." A spasm of pain passed across her beautiful face.
His voice was angry and gruff. "I lived."
"Did you? Or did the scars go so deep they twisted the inside of you as badly as those outside lumps of flesh?"
"Damn it! If you don't like the way I look, don’t stare."
Her gaze moved over his broad shoulders, his muscled back, his lean hips. "I didn't say I didn't like it."
The sudden heat in her soft tone made him forget the boat, made him forget the storm—made him forget everything else but her. He could feel his heart pulsing in his fingertips, in his throat, in his groin.
His gaze slid over her. He could see the shape of her breasts beneath damp, clinging silk.
He hardened his voice. "You need to get dressed yourself before you catch your death in those wet clothes." The leather bag lay between them on the bed. To vent his frustration he grabbed it, turned it upside down and started ripping clothes out.
A black bra got caught on his scratched hand. He shook it loose, but not before he felt the hot color creeping up his neck.
He was blushing! Like a high school teenager! Thank God for the dim light.
But she saw. "Do you want to watch me?" she said with a look that lit him up inside.
Nicholas grimaced and wondered if she suspected he'd done so before. "If you're smart, you won't play with fire."
"If you were smart, you wouldn't have brought me on board."
"Well, we're stuck with each other now," he muttered. "For better or worse."
"Like marriage, huh?"
Suddenly a huge wave picked the boat up and rolled it on its side and flung Nicholas's larger body across the bed, on top of her.
For one long hideous moment, the boat stayed there. His arms and legs were intimately splayed across hers as they slid together down the length of the bed. He felt her breasts, her tiny waist, her long legs tangling around his. Under different circumstances he might have been tempted, but he heard water gushing inside the hull somewhere. If they took another knockdown before they could pump out the bilge, they might sink.
"I've got to get up on deck," he muttered brusquely, scrambling to free himself.
She clung to him and buried her face in the hollow of his neck, terrified. "Don't go out there. I don’t want you to die."
He held her close as the boat slowly righted itself. Then he loosened her cold, clinging hands. "Stay below." When he saw how wide her fear-filled eyes were, his voice gentled. "Hey, there. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"What about you? Up there…in the storm?" There was a hush. "What if you’re swept overboard?"
He tore his gaze from her ravaged face. That she might care, was something he couldn't, he wouldn't accept.
Carefully he eased her back onto the bed. "Get some rest. I can take care of myself.”
*
It seemed as if he'd been gone for hours. The reality was less than ten minutes. At first Eva had been cold and shivering in her wet silk gown. Now she lay in a pool of sweat. The air in the cabin was dank, the salt from the sea air permeating everything. The cotton sheet was as rough as sandpaper against her hot skin.
Rest! Was he insane? To sleep down below as the boat pounded through the waves? As a little girl, she'd always thrown up after carnival rides. This was worse, infinitely worse, because the ride went on and on. The constant motion of the boat flung about everything that was loose. She was bruised all over from sliding and falling and from things hitting her. As she struggled to hold onto a shelf, she envied Victor his claws that were sunk deeply into the upholstery of a large bunk cushion.
Soon she was so nauseated she couldn't even feel anger toward Nicholas for inflicting this torture on her. She was too ill even to care about Otto or Connoisseurs. Such concerns seemed to belong to another world. All that mattered was her survival and Nicholas’s. Despite his abysmal behavior, she was frantic that he was up on deck, risking his life as he struggled to sail the boat and keep her safe.
Eva lay as still as possible until finally she felt slightly stronger. With Nicholas at the helm, the boat did sail a little more smoothly. She decided to change out of her wet clothes and brush her hair, but when she tried to stand up, she felt sick all over again. The boat was rocking so forcefully it was difficult to do even the simplest thing.
Somehow she managed to hold on with one hand and undress and pull on jeans and a shirt with the other. Never before had she realized what a land creature she was. Never had she appreciated how wonderful it was to be on dry land, to stand upright on a floor that didn’t move, and to lie in a bed that didn’t pitch from side to side.
Every time the boat rode a wave to its crest, it hovered at the top before careening over it and slamming down into the trough with tornadic speed. Eva had heard of boats breaking up at sea, of sailors being washed overboard and wondered what was happening to Nicholas, who was up on deck, exposed to the howling wind and waves.
Lightning crackled. From the porthole, she saw a brilliant rain and wind-scoured sky. Rogue Wave had tall aluminum masts. Where did lightning go when it hit a sailboat? What would happen to Nicholas if the boat took a direct hit?
She hadn't wanted to share this cabin with him, but she’d felt safer with him there. He exuded self-confidence.
Even his deliberate insults distracted her so that she didn't worry quite so much about everything else.
The static blast of a radio in the main cabin made her jump. She heard the deep timbre of a man's voice. Hoping it might be Nicholas, she cracked the door. Instead she saw a tall black man with dark eyes and golden skin. He wore a T-shirt and white jeans, and he was huddled tensely over the radio. He looked up briefly and nodded toward her when she came in, but kept talking into the mike.
So this was Zak. He looked even tougher and harder than Nicholas.
"Highlander Beauty, we make our position to be..."
He spoke in a beautiful British accent.
Holding on to the walls, Eva made her way into the main cabin. She listened to every word Zak said, and watched everything he did. If only she could figure out how to operate the radio, she might be able to get a message out. The boat lurched wildly, sending charts, gear, antennae, books and plastic containers flying off the shelves.
Zak seemed to take it all in stride as he answered another distress call.
"There's a lot of traffic in the Mediterranean. It's dangerous in any kind of weather at night, but in a storm it's even more so," he said after he finished the call.
Ships! They might hit a ship! Why hadn't she thought of that? She began imagining ships creeping up on them from all directions. Even a small ship would crush Rogue Wave like a matchbox.
Again and again Zak used the radio, sometimes to answer a call, sometimes to make one. Every time he did, she watched him and listened intently.
During a lull, after making them cups of hot tea, Zak confided to her that he liked rough passages. As she set her cup in the sink where it couldn't roll, she sank queasily down beside him with the knowledge that she definitely didn’t fit in with the two adventurers on board.
The wind screamed outside, louder than before.
"Here we go. Hold on! We're in for another squall," Zak warned.
No sooner had he said it than a gigantic wave smashed into the boat, knocking her down, this blow a worse one than when Nicholas had fallen on top of her. Zak grabbed her and held her tightly while Rogue Wave
lay on her side and slid down the wave as still another crashed over her. Everything that wasn't a part of the boat came loose—tools, teacups, the coffeepot. Water was spilling into the cabin through dozens of tiny cracks, near the windows, the hatches.
Mon Dieu. “Are we going to sink?”
"If she goes over, we lose our rigging, and our skipper," Zak whispered, his voice as tense as death.
Nicholas... As the boat hung there, still on its side, with the waves pounding over her hull, Eva's heart filled with a wild, mindless terror for Nicholas.
Finally Rogue Wave righted herself.
The latch on the galley locker had come undone, and the door banged back and forth. Cushions, pieces of the stove, life preservers, as well as other debris were floating on the floor. But Eva didn't care. She crawled over the mess, toward the aft hatch. She had to know if Nicholas had been swept overboard. Before Zak could stop her, she flung the hatch open.
Rain poured inside, drenching everything, flooding into the bilges.
"Eva!"
Both men shouted at her to go back inside.
Her only thought was for Nicholas. He was alive! Her only desire was to be in his arms. She started to climb out.
"You don't have a safety harness or foul-weather gear!" Nicholas shouted. "Go back inside!"
Zak grabbed her, but she shook him loose and climbed out into the howling fury of the storm. She was immediately in another world, a world of black mountainous waves, a world that was brutal and overpoweringly destructive. The wet wind tore her hair back from her face as she crawled on bleeding knees toward Nicholas. Clinging to lifelines and sheets and then to winches and railings, she dragged herself by inches across the slippery deck.
Nicholas watched her, his dark face bleached of color.
"Go back! Dear God, go back!"
Suddenly she looked past him and saw what he saw—a wall of black water so immense that she knew Rogue Wave could never survive it. Eva would never reach Nicholas before the wave crashed over them. Without a safety harness, she would be swept overboard.
All of a sudden he was shouting at her, encouraging her. "Come to me, chere. You can make it."