Dangerous Waters

by Laurey Bright

  "If this is a sample from a hoard," Rogan said, "who knows how many more there are? Dad certainly thought he was onto something."

  But his father had been—according to general opinion—deluded, or at the very least wildly overoptimistic. She said carefully, "He could have got it anywhere—even been conned into buying it." It must have been general knowledge throughout the islands frequented by the Sea-Rogue that Barney Broderick was a sucker for a treasure story. There were probably plenty of single old coins able to be picked up for a song.

  Rogan's jaw jutted. A flicker of doubt entered his eyes.

  Camille said, "Is there anything in the log about it?"

  "I haven't been through it all yet. But he certainly had something he didn't want anyone finding. What's more—" he frowned, his eyes momentarily glazing "—Mollie had a convenient accident the day after Dad's funeral."

  "Convenient? Mollie's the lady friend?"

  "Right. She was found by a neighbor, unconscious at the bottom of her back steps. They're concrete and everyone assumed she fell and banged her head on them. She's been in hospital since Dad's funeral."

  "You're not suggesting someone hit her?"

  "It just sounds too coincidental to me."

  "Coincidences happen all the time."

  Rogan sat back, scowling at the low ceiling. "Yeah, I know," he said wearily. "All circumstantial. Anyway—"he lowered his eyes and gave her a piercing look "—I don't want anyone else to know I've got the log, okay?"

  "I won't tell anyone."

  "Including your friend Drummond."

  "All right." If it made him happy…

  He said, "Mollie invited us to Christmas lunch."

  "Us?" Camille queried. "She doesn't know me."

  "I told her I won't leave you here on your own unless you have a better offer, and she said to bring you along. She's got no children and all her neighbors have families to share Christmas with."

  Mr. Trubshaw too was spending Christmas with his family in Whangarei, probably staying overnight.

  "It's very kind of her," Camille said doubtfully.

  "Seems she was hoping Dad would be sharing it with her. She'd already made a plum pudding and put a mini-turkey in the freezer before her accident. Says she doesn't want them wasted. She's lonely. I think she wants company."

  "All right," Camille agreed. "I'll come. We should take her some flowers or chocolates or something."

  "Better still, a plant," Rogan suggested.

  Next day, Christmas Eve, Brodie spent a couple of hours fruitlessly canvassing increasingly desperate options for a loan. Later he and Camille visited the town's sole nursery and Rogan found a potted miniature rose labeled Golden Coin and already Christmas-wrapped. Camille slanted him a dry look but had to admit the compact but perfect buttercup-yellow flowers were charming, their subtle scent an added attraction.

  He also bought a tiny pine tree in a pot, and a packet of Christmas decorations. Back on board Rogan placed the tree in the bow and enlisted Camille's help to decorate it.

  "I might go to Brodie's and buy some dive gear," Camille said. "A sort of Christmas present to myself."

  "I'll come with you," Rogan offered, and she accepted, grateful to have his expert advice.

  He asked Brodie for a dive certificate, filled it out there and then, and gave it to Camille. "Your official graduation document. You need to present it when you're hiring or buying dive gear."

  Brodie also had a couple of shelves of diving and boating books. Rogan bought one on New Zealand dive sites and handed it to her, saying, "Call it a Christmas gift."

  When she insisted on reciprocating, he allowed her to buy him a book on wreck diving.

  Brodie grinned as he rang up the sale, and said he was taking a couple of American divers out in his boat later, and would Camille and Rogan like to join them?

  They spent a few hours on board and in the water, and raced a summer storm back to port. Leaving the heavy air tanks with Brodie, they were almost at the Sea-Rogue when the threatened downpour began, a typical Northland deluge of fat, heavy droplets that steamed on the pavement.

  Camille's T-shirt and shorts were quickly soaked and raindrops were streaming down her bare legs when they reached the deck. The Christmas tree fixed to the bow still sparkled, remarkably perky, the ornaments shinier than ever.

  Grinning at her, Rogan dumped the pack containing their wet suits and thrust water-slicked hair from his forehead. A flash of lightning momentarily lit his face, accentuating its clean, strong lines, and seconds later thunder rumbled overhead. The rain hitting the deck hissed about her ankles. She raised a hand to push bedraggled tresses from her eyes. One stubborn strand remained, and Rogan carefully lifted it away, tucking it in with the rest behind her ear.

  His hand lingered, a finger tracing the outline of her ear, following the shallow groove below to the curve of her chin, then lifting her face to him. His eyes asked an explicit question, and for the space of a breath she stared back at him, then with an effort of will she took a step backward, and his hand fell away.

  He slanted her a wryly understanding smile and said, "We'd better dry off."

  Camille bolted to her cabin, vigorously toweled her hair, and emerged dressed in her loose blue cotton pants and a primrose T-shirt.

  Rogan joined her as she was preparing their evening meal. Declining help, she kept herself busy until it was time to eat. Rogan had seated himself at the table with the log, but a couple of times when she looked up from her self-imposed chore he was studying her instead of the book.

  Maybe it was the close atmosphere created by the rain that made her more aware of him than ever. With the door shut the saloon was warm, the air seeming thick, almost claustrophobic, while piled black clouds outside darkened the cabin.

  The boat kept bumping dully against the wharf. The storm was sending bigger than normal waves into the harbor, and through the portholes Camille caught glimpses of bare masts nearby dipping and swaying. She had to concentrate to keep her feet.

  "Are you okay?" Rogan queried as she carefully lifted a pot over the safety rail on the small kerosene stove that swung on its gimbal.

  "Yes."

  "You don't get seasick?"

  "Not so far," she said. "I haven't spent any time on boats until now." She hadn't been sick on either of their sea trips, but the weather had been clear, the water calm, and even today the choppy waves preceding the storm hadn't bothered her.

  When she placed two filled plates on the table Rogan put aside the log, closing it.

  "Have you found anything in there?" she asked him.

  "I know where Dad and Taff were sailing."

  "Does it say they found treasure?"

  "No," he admitted. "But they seem to have spent some time around a group of uninhabited atolls before sailing for Rarotonga. They can't have been delivering cargo."

  "Couldn't it have been because my father was ill and couldn't help sail the boat? Barney might have been waiting for him to get better, and then when he realized he wasn't going to, headed for a hospital."

  "Or they might have had another reason." He dug his fork into a piece of lamb and lifted it to his mouth.

  Camille began on her own meal. "Are you going to buy the boat?"

  Savagely Rogan stabbed another piece of meat. "What's the hurry?"

  "My mother can do with the money." All Camille's life Mona had bemoaned her lack of a decent income, comparing her straitened circumstances with her sister's comfortable lifestyle, financed by a husband with a good steady income from a good steady job. Generous presents that arrived every birthday and Christmas from Australia only served to sharpen her envy and sense of unfairness.

  "Your mother?" Rogan queried.

  "She's had a hard life. It's time something good happened to her."

  "Weren't you something good?"

  "A nice thought, but I was a mixed blessing."

  Rogan couldn't argue with that. He knew what hard times his own mother had experience
d, despite her gallant and unswerving love for his father. "Were you unhappy?"

  Camille looked faintly startled. "Not specially. My mother loved me and did her best, even helped me get through university. That wasn't easy."

  His mother had done the same for Granger before she died, with a little help from Barney and from Rogan himself, meticulously repaid despite his protests. "It can't have been easy for you either."

  "I've done what I wanted to do."

  Like her father, he thought, but as a child she'd been Taff's responsibility, which apparently he'd shucked off. Hard to believe that the man who'd seemed fond of "Barney's boys" and spent hours teaching them seamanship and carving toys for them had been so cavalier about his own family. But then, neither he nor Barney had been exactly constant fathers or husbands. He asked, "Where did you grow up?"

  "In Auckland until I was seven. We moved around a bit before I started university."

  "Did Taff know where you were, when you and your mother were shifting about?"

  "I don't think he cared."

  "He might have."

  "Your father found us easily enough. Presumably mine could have done the same."

  "Didn't he ever visit?"

  "Not since my sixth birthday. I never heard a word from him after that." She failed to hide the bitterness in her voice.

  "Maybe," Rogan said thoughtfully, "Dad knew where to find you because Taff had kept tabs on where you were."

  She gave him a look of patent disbelief, and he dropped the subject.

  * * *

  After they'd eaten, the rain was still pounding on the deck and the darkness increased. Rogan switched on the cabin lights, sat down and pulled the logbook toward him again.

  "Haven't you read it all yet?" Camille asked curiously.

  "My father's writing isn't the easiest to read, and he used a kind of personal shorthand sometimes. Some bits I can't work out. Makes me wonder why he bothered to hide the log at all…" he finished gloomily.

  "I'm accustomed to deciphering handwriting in old documents," she offered.

  He looked hopefully at her. "See what you make of this," he suggested, pointing out a phrase as she slid into the seat beside him. "'Shoals of Queens?' But there are no such shoals on any of the charts."

  "It could be shoals…or shadow? Shades," she said. "Shades of…Demons?"

  "Demons?" Doubtfully, he leaned closer to her. "I thought it was Queens."

  "I think that's a D, not a Q. Demons or…Dumas!"

  "Dumas?"

  "Well…maybe that came to mind because I've been reading Les Trois Mousquetaires."

  "I think you're right, though." He scowled at the words, then looked at her sharply. "Are there any marked passages or anything in that book?"

  "None that I've seen. No treasure map either."

  He acknowledged the small gibe with a glint in his eye and a faint twist to his mouth before turning back to the page.

  She said, "Of course that's not the only book Dumas wrote. And there was the younger Dumas, his son."

  "Who wrote the book your name came from, yeah."

  She wondered if he'd read La Dame aux Camelias in French. "Did your father own any other Dumas's?"

  "Not that I recall. The Three Musketeers is the best known."

  "Maybe you should look for a group of three islands."

  "Or two—a big one and a small one, for the father and son. I'll have to study the charts again. And can you get me that book—just in case there's something you might have missed?"

  Camille went to her cabin and reached on tiptoe to pull the book from the shelf over her bed, but as she straightened the boat gave a heave, thumping against the wharf, and she lost her balance. The book in her hand, she fell against the wooden frame of the berth and sprawled on the floor with a small cry.

  Instantly Rogan was in the doorway. "What happened?" He crouched beside her as she struggled to sit up.

  "The book," she said, still clutching it. "Take it, will you?"

  He took it and put it aside, then turned to her. She was ruefully regarding a nasty little scrape just below her elbow.

  Rogan gave a low exclamation. "How did you do that?"

  "On the edge of the bed," she said. "It's nothing."

  He helped her up. "Let's see."

  The skin was raw and pink, and blood oozed from it. He pushed her onto her berth and said, "Sit down. I'll get the first-aid kit."

  He was back quickly and, sitting beside her, gently dabbed disinfectant on the wound and dried it with gauze before applying a dressing. "There you are," he said, firming the edges into place.

  Camille lowered her arm, letting her hand fall into her lap, and raised her eyes, finding him closer than she'd realized, his eyes darkened, the pupils enlarged against the arresting blue of the irises. A strand or two of dark hair had strayed onto his forehead, and she noticed a faint sheen of sweat on his hairline. The rain hadn't really cooled the air, only made it more humid. She wanted to wipe away the dampness with a finger, but stopped herself, curling her hands together instead as she murmured, "Thank you."

  His smile was taut. "No problem." He closed the few inches between them to drop a light kiss on her lips.

  Every nerve in her body reacted to it like tinder to flame. When he lifted his head she knew her eyes had dilated. The skin of her face grew tight over the bones, cheeks flaring. Her mouth tingled and she felt her lips involuntarily part as she drew an unsteady breath, trying to control the tremor that shook her.

  She saw Rogan's eyes go more brilliant than ever, and for a second she could clearly hear the rain thudding on the boards above them, the waves slapping against the hull, but not as clearly as she heard his quickened breathing.

  The light flickered and the boat lurched. Rogan lifted a hand to steady her, his fingers closing about her arm. She sucked in another breath of warm, thick air, and he muttered, "Oh, what the hell…" and pulled her into his arms.

  It was heaven, it was where she needed to be. He held her to him and his mouth unerringly found her parted lips, taking her on an erotic foray into unknown territory. She hadn't known a man's scent could intoxicate, his kiss be more darkly potent than wine. That a mere trailing of his fingers down her arm could awake sensations that stormed over her skin from head to toe, a brushing of knuckles over her cheek could set her on fire, his hand raking into her hair, cradling her head with a combination of tenderness and strength, could melt something deep inside her as he furthered the kiss into an intimacy she had never before experienced. Had never allowed.

  Now she wanted it, craved it, craved him and all he could give of himself. Her hands touched him—his hair, springy and soft against her fingers, his neck, taut and smooth and warm, and his shoulders, broad and muscular beneath the cotton of his shirt.

  One of his hands slid inside her shirt at the waist, and she shuddered with pleasure as he caressed her bare skin, a finger tracing the groove of her spine.

  The boat swayed again, tumbling them onto the berth that was wide for one but hardly big enough for two. Momentarily removing his mouth from hers, Rogan hitched them both farther onto the mattress and rolled her under him, his body hard and hot on hers as he kissed her again.

  But the small break had sent a shaft of sanity into her mind, and despite her body's clamor to ignore it, the cool wind of caution grew stronger.

  It was a while before Rogan realized that she was trying to extricate herself. When he lifted his head he looked dazed, his eyelids heavy, his cheeks flushed under the tanned skin. Voice slurred, he asked, "What's wrong, honey?"

  "This," Camille panted. "I'm sorry…I shouldn't have…please stop!"

  He blinked, his eyes clearing incredulously. "Stop?"

  Her hands flattened against his chest, shoving at him. "Get off!" she said sharply.

  For a moment his stubborn, immovable look appeared, and her heart thudded as she realized what a vulnerable position she was in. If he decided to carry on regardless she wouldn't have a chanc
e, trapped under his extremely fit body.

  A fleeting shock crossed his face. He rolled off her, onto his back, hitched himself on one elbow and demanded, "Why, Camille?"

  It was a fair question. She had actively encouraged him, before freezing. "I'm sorry," she said again. He deserved an apology for her about-face.

  "Not half as sorry as I am, sweetheart." As she sat up he remained where he was, regarding her broodingly. "I always carry necessary supplies," he said, "in case that's worrying you."

  She supposed it was illogical that the assurance only strengthened her resolve. "That's not it," she said, adding stiffly, "And I'm not your sweetheart," trying to tidy her tousled hair, and sliding off the bed.

  Rogan didn't follow suit, instead making himself comfortable against the pillows, clasping his hands behind his head. "Can't we talk about it?"

  "I made a mistake. So did you."

  "You mean you're not that kind of girl? Hell, I know already you don't fall into bed with just anyone. But I know too that you want me—have for a while, just as I want you. We're both adults, and as far as I know fancy free."

  "You might be."

  "You're not in love with that Drummond guy," he stated on a note of disgust. "And if you have another boyfriend why isn't he here with you?"

  "I don't have a boyfriend. And when I do it'll be someone prepared to stick around for the long haul, not a flyby-night Lothario with a girl in every port."

  Rogan sat up, dropping his hands. "Yee-owch!" he said, wincing theatrically. "That's what you think I am?" He laughed and hauled himself off the berth, his feet hitting the floor, then he was looming over her.

  Refusing to give way, Camille glared at him. "If the cap fits."

  Rogan seemed to think about it. "Not every port," he murmured finally, a glint of humor lighting his eyes. Then more seriously he said, "I don't set out to lay every woman who crosses my path, Camille. I like you, you're beautiful and sexy and nice, and yeah, I've wanted to take you to bed ever since I first saw you. But I guess you're right," he conceded. "If you want a nine-to-five guy, the cottage with roses round the door, I can't give you that." He paused. "Only I don't think you'll get what you need from James Drummond. He's a cold fish, and you're definitely not."