Dangerous Waters

by Laurey Bright

  * * *

  On Sunday James Drummond unexpectedly turned up on the wharf, hailing Rogue as he sat in the cockpit, the log against his upraised knees.

  Hastily closing the book, Rogan stood up with it firmly held at his side. The tide was low and he had to squint upward under a raised hand.

  "Interesting book?" Drummond asked easily.

  Rogan shrugged. "Camille's below."

  He watched Drummond's cautious descent of the narrow ladder, and his clumsy landing. Entering the cockpit, the man nearly knocked Rogan off his feet.

  Steadying himself, Rogan lifted the hand clutching the log as Drummond grabbed a line, saying, "I'm not really a boating man. The damned things never stay still." With a smile of apology, he turned and carefully descended the companionway.

  His and Camille's voices sounded annoyingly intimate, and Rogan found himself straining to catch the words, possessed of a mad desire to go down and punch Drummond's supercilious nose for him.

  He glanced at the book in his hand, then descended to the saloon. His denim jacket lay on the banquette next to Camille. Muttering an apology, he reached across her to snag it, and shrugged it on, shoving the log into a pocket to free his hands as he approached the companionway. No way was he leaving it on board while Drummond was around.

  He spent a couple of hours with Brodie, drinking beer and swapping memories, and he was leaving when Brodie said, "Did you hear about the body they found?"

  A cold shiver attacked Rogan's spine. "What body—who found?"

  "A trawler dredged it up in their net this morning, in deep water offshore. Badly decomposed, I gather. I don't think anyone knows who it was yet."

  When Rogan got back there was a note from Camille saying she was having dinner with James. He crumpled it in one hand and threw it in with the galley garbage before making himself a cold meal. Much later he was lying on his bunk trying not think about what she and Drummond might be doing when he heard her come in. Then he rolled over and went to sleep.

  In the morning, he went to the police station demanding details of the unknown body and was told formal identification was pending and the constable could tell him nothing else. There would of course be an autopsy, but the man's death was probably an accident. It could possibly be Gary Collier, he allowed reluctantly. Mr. Collier had been known as a heavy drinker.

  * * *

  James had invited her to a New Year celebration at his home. "Bring your friend Rogan along," he'd suggested. "There'll be quite a crowd."

  "No, thanks," Rogan said tersely when she relayed the invitation. "Is it your sort of thing?"

  It wasn't, really. Although she admired James's home for its elegance and taste, her previous experience of his business friends hardly engendered any eagerness to repeat the experience. She had thanked him for the invitation but been deliberately vague about her plans, letting him infer that she might have other options. "It was nice of him to ask…us," she said, dodging Rogan's question.

  "To ask me, you mean." He looked skeptical. "I wonder what he's playing at?"

  "He was just being friendly." Rogan had rebuffed James's every attempt at engaging him in pleasant conversation. "And you're being a—" She broke off before adding dog in the manger. There were dangerous waters in that direction.

  Rogan cocked an inquiring eyebrow, a trick that surely must have taken weeks of practice, yet it never failed to affect her in a way she despised, causing a faint fluttering about her heart, a weakening of her knees. "I'm being a what?" he asked curiously.

  "A boor!" she flashed with a rare loss of temper.

  Both brows shot up at that. "And Drummond," he suggested, "is a perfect gentleman, I suppose." He laughed—a harsh, cut-off sound. "Does he even know how to kiss a woman properly? He probably makes love like a flatfish!"

  "I wouldn't know," she said coldly. "Not having your wide experience of mating habits at sea."

  For a moment Rogan just stared at her, then gave a delighted shout of laughter.

  Biting her lip, Camille watched him, but couldn't help a self-conscious smile when he caught her eye, his own alight still with humor. "I'm sorry," she said guiltily. "I shouldn't have called you a boor."

  Rogan shook his head at her in mock reproof. "You have a nasty tongue on you when you're aroused."

  * * *

  In the afternoon of New Year's Eve Camille went with Rogan to visit Mollie. After coffee and scones, she sat with the older woman on the back porch while Rogan spread mulch from a wheelbarrow over the flower beds, in the hope of preserving some moisture in the soil through the summer. He wore age-softened jeans that molded themselves to his taut haunches, and an old T-shirt, with a battered yachting cap that Mollie had produced, insisting he couldn't work in the sun without something to cover his head. The sleeveless denim jacket he always donned now when he left the Sea-Rogue was hung over a spare chair. One of its zipped pockets bulged and hung low with the weight of the ship's log.

  Having refilled the barrow, he paused to temporarily remove the cap and dispense with his shirt.

  Watching him pull off the garment, resettle the cap and then shovel another heap of mulch from the wheelbarrow, Camille wondered if he'd remembered to apply sunblock before leaving the Sea-Rogue. A shivering, warm sensation starting in her midriff spread through her entire body. A sensation that was becoming altogether too familiar.

  As if he'd felt her gaze, Rogan looked up, straight into her eyes, and it was almost as though she stood naked before him. Her heart pounded and she couldn't, this time, look away, afraid that her unguarded hunger for him showed all too clearly in her face.

  Rogan straightened, his hand tight about the shovel as he rested the blade on the ground. Under the cap his eyes were shadowed, yet she felt his gaze like a rapier, and a quiver of purest, primitive pleasure prickled over her skin.

  He pushed the cap back a little, then settled it more firmly, and turned away to resume his task.

  Camille could scarcely breathe. Something had happened in that two seconds of eye contact, she wasn't sure what. But it was both thrilling and wickedly dangerous.

  Mollie said, "Camille, dear, if you look in the fridge you'll find some beer. I'm sure Rogan would like one."

  There was a six-pack there, and Camille removed a can, holding its chill to her hot face for a few seconds before pulling off the top and going outside. She hesitated, then crossed the lawn to hand him the drink. As he took it from her their fingers touched briefly, and she removed hers as though the touch had burned.

  Rogan's brows lifted, then something sparked in his eyes, and he raised the can to his lips, thirstily downing the beer. She tried not to watch him, but the movement of his strong throat fascinated her, and in the hollow at the base a trickle of sweat nestled. She had a momentary bizarre fantasy of catching it on her finger and tasting its saltiness with her tongue.

  A hidden shudder ran through her. The sun was scorching on her hair, and the intense blue of the sky behind Rogan's head made his eyes seem more deeply aqua than ever as he lowered the can and looked at her.

  "Thanks," he said. "I can do with some cooling off."

  Camille, not meeting his eyes, gave a tight smile. "It was Mollie's idea. And her beer."

  He smiled, and the altered shape of his beautiful mouth hypnotized her. "Thanks all the same." Before she could guess what he intended, he leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her mouth, too quickly for her to react in any way.

  She couldn't help looking at him now. Along with the warm taste of his lips, the tang of the beer lingered, cool and bitter, and she ran her tongue over her lips.

  Rogan's eyes darkened to near-black, and his expression was suddenly intent, probing, almost ruthless.

  Camille recalled her first impression of him, that he was a pirate, a throwback to an earlier time, a danger to law-abiding sailors—and to women. Trying to break the moment, she said, "You ought to have sunblock on."

  "Are you offering?" he asked softly.

 
Recalling the day he'd asked her to apply some to his back, she was assailed by an alarming shaft of desire. Dumbly she shook her head. "I don't have any with me."

  A feeble excuse, and he knew it. No doubt Mollie could produce a bottle of the stuff. His mouth curved again, but he only said, "The hottest part of the day's over now, and I've almost finished here."

  He took her hand and she jumped. Then he was pressing the still-cold, empty can into her palm, closing her fingers about it. He nodded and went back to his work, and she walked in a daze to the porch, ignoring Mollie's knowing smile and continuing into the kitchen to drop the can in the recycling bin in a corner.

  From the window over the sink she could see Rogan carrying on as if nothing untoward had taken place, his stunningly perfect male form bending and straightening to a steady rhythm, the muscles subtly rippling under his skin. She couldn't see his face anymore, but the darkened glance he'd given her lingered in her mind, and her body remembered…

  The unthinkable had happened, she realized with a dazed, hollow dismay. Despite all her sensible admonishments to herself—her clear resolve that she would never be carried away by mere physical attraction, her awareness that it would be sheer stupidity to give in to the temptation that Rogan Broderick presented, and her determination to resist it—all that had somehow been cast aside.

  She'd fallen in love—hook, line and sinker, heart and soul, head over heels. In every way possible. With a man who would surely break her heart, just as her father had broken her mother's.

  Chapter 12

  Mollie confessed she hadn't the stamina to see in the new year, but she insisted on their having a meal before they left, saying Rogan deserved it after all that work.

  Camille helped her to prepare it, and afterward they lingered for a while, leaving as dusk lowered over the hill.

  A band was playing on the green strip across from the Imperial, for an audience of mostly young people. Part of the road was closed to allow revelers to spill onto it, and a buzz of voices arose from the public bar of the hotel. Some patrons sat with their drinks on the top floor veranda, surveying the scene. Aboard the boats people crowded the decks, a few on bigger craft reclining in chairs, but most perched on any vantage point they could find.

  Liquor was banned for the night on the street and the beach, and the lone constable had been joined by several other uniformed officers, conspicuously patrolling the area and confiscating bottles and cans. Some of the crowd had rather obviously consumed a fair amount already, but they seemed reasonably good-natured about not being able to carry alcohol into the area. The pub was still open, and a steady stream of customers was evidently keeping the bar busy.

  "Want to stay for a while?" Rogan asked Camille as their progress was impeded by the growing, expectant throng.

  "Yes, let's." She didn't really want to join James's house party, but it seemed a good idea to put off returning to the boat, in the light of her disturbing new discovery. Safer to spend time with Rogan in a crowd.

  Rogan steered her across the roadway as best he could, between knots of dancing, swaying concert-goers, and found a spot under a pohutukawa where they could sit on the soft grass and lean against the shaggy trunk of the tree.

  Shoulder to shoulder with him, she discovered a sharp, sweet pleasure in the warmth of his upper arm pressing against hers. She could feel the slight bulkiness of the log book in his jacket pocket. Gradually he seemed to relax, tipping his head back, tapping fingers on his upraised knee in time to the music. It was loud enough to preclude conversation, and she was able to indulge in a dangerous pretence that these precious shared moments might lead to…

  Nothing, she reminded herself brutally. There was no way that Rogan was interested in a shared future. And no way she could let herself fall into the same trap that had turned her mother into a bitter, disappointed and lonely woman.

  She moved to edge away from the unbearably tempting contact. And Rogan, apparently misinterpreting the action, draped an arm about her shoulders, enclosing her in a loose embrace so that she leaned on him instead of the tree. "That's more comfortable," he said with satisfaction. "Mmm?"

  The rhetorical question almost roused her to hysteria. Comfortable? It was wonderful—and appallingly risky. With her back against his chest, her head resting just under his chin, his arms cradling her, she was assailed by a confusing mixture of utter contentment and poignant longing. If only this closeness could last she'd be happy forever.

  But of course it couldn't. Rogan would sail away without a backward glance whenever the fancy took him, and leave her pining like all the women in all the songs about men like him and his father—and hers.

  But tonight, for a little while, for the rest of the year—she smiled to herself sadly, counting the meager hours remaining—she would ignore the future and just enjoy the present. With that thought she relaxed against him, and his arms tightened fractionally in response.

  The music belted out and the audience, becoming increasingly dense and raucous, clapped and cheered, danced and jumped about. Then nearby an altercation broke out and escalated into fistcuffs involving several people.

  Rogan moved, and pulled Camille to her feet. "Best get you out of here," he said, shielding her with his body as a couple of struggling young men almost collided with them, while others surged toward the fray, whistling and hooting.

  Someone bumped her; she was torn from Rogan's hold, heard him call her name and lost him in the crush. Jostled and pushed, only the fact that she cannoned into a large brown-skinned man saved her from sprawling on the ground.

  He grabbed at her arms and grinned down at her. "Sorry, love, I'm taken."

  A woman at his elbow said, "Shut up, Hemi!" and to Camille, "You all right?"

  "Yes, thanks," she gasped as the man released her. The couple moved on, and she looked about, trying to find Rogan.

  Policemen converged on the fight, and she saw someone throw a punch at one of them, knocking his hat from his head before they were both enveloped by seething brawlers.

  In a few minutes it seemed it was all over. A police van nosed its way between the dancers, some of whom hadn't even noticed the contretemps behind them, and then she saw, finally, Rogan pushing his way toward the beach, a trickle of blood seeping from a small cut over his cheekbone as he looked about him, his face taut and anxious.

  Her heart, which had been jumping all over the place, settled back into something like its normal rhythm as she too fought her way to the sand and met him there.

  His expression relaxed. "Thank God you're okay."

  "I'm fine, but what happened to you?"

  He looked a little surprised at her shrill tone, but gave her a crooked grin and said, "I copped a couple of punches. But I got a few in of my own." He seemed quite pleased with himself, making her want to hit him herself. He raised a knuckle to the cut, and glanced at the blood left on it before dropping his hand to his side. "It's nothing," he said.

  She was torn between relief and a strange fury because she'd been worried about him. "That cut needs seeing to," she snapped. Close up she could see a dark swelling about it. "We'd better get back to the boat."

  "I told you, it's nothing."

  But he fell in beside her as she made her way along the beach, almost tripping over a couple who had made themselves a snug hollow and were oblivious to the entertainment and to the rest of the world.

  While Rogan gave a quiet laugh she skirted them and marched on—as best she could in the soft sand. Eventually they regained the path and continued to the wharf in silence. The tide was high and Camille ignored the hand Rogan offered to help her board. In the saloon she got out the first-aid kit and said crisply, "Wash that cut and I'll put a dressing on it for you."

  He cast her a rueful look before obeying, and came out with a tissue pressed to his cheek, then sat at the table while she efficiently cleaned the wound with disinfectant and stuck a dressing into place.

  "Thanks," he said, and as she made to close the first-
aid box he caught her hand. "What are you mad about?"

  "I'm not mad."

  She tried to tug away but he retained his hold. "You're angry. I'm sorry about losing you, but some guy jumped me and you were probably safer out of the way."

  "I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself."

  "What, then?" Rogan seemed genuinely puzzled.

  "Nothing, I told you!" She pulled more strongly and he reluctantly let her go. Her mouth tight, she put away the kit while he stayed at the table, watching her every move.

  "You've got blood on your shirt," she said when she looked at him again.

  Rogan looked down. "Yeah." He stood, his hand going to the pocket of his jacket as if he needed to check the log was still there. "They nearly ripped this off me."

  "You hear of teenagers beating up other kids for their jackets or shoes."

  "Not in Mokohina. I couldn't see them clearly in the dark and with all the stuff going on, but this was no kid." He added slowly, "And I think, though he was wearing a fishing hat pulled well down, I recognized him. I reckon he was after the log."

  Camille blinked. "There was a riot going on. You surely don't imagine it was manufactured just so someone could steal your jacket and take the log?"

  "I guess not." But he didn't seem convinced. Slowly he added, "If Drummond knew I had it, they could have been waiting for an opportunity."

  "James? You're surely not saying James attacked you!"

  "I don't suppose he'd dirty his lily-white hands. But I'm pretty sure the thug was the skipper of Drummond's boat."

  It sounded like something out of a TV series. He thought he'd recognized one of his attackers, and was pretty sure it was the skipper of James's boat. He was so hostile to James he'd see the other man's hand in every misfortune that befell him.

  The hostility was rooted in his natural grief and anger over his father's death, and he'd fixated his hatred on James simply because he didn't want to sell the Sea-Rogue and James had made an innocent offer to buy it. She supposed the boat was some kind of symbol for him.