“Hey—your eyes are about to fall out, Captain. Get them nonchalantly back into your head and tell me what’s happening.”
“That’s her mother-in-law Stradford is meeting!”
Amy laughed. “How in hell can you know that?”
“Because I’ve seen her picture,” Mike murmured distractedly. God, he felt like a kid again! All tied up in knots inside because Al Stradford had met someone close to her before he’d had a chance to himself!
“So, he’s meeting her mother-in-law. Mike, a lot of people probably know her mother-in-law,” Amy said logically. “Pay attention to your food. You don’t want them to see you gaping, do you?”
Neither of them had seen them at all yet, Mike thought with a certain annoyance; he had bribed the maître d’ for a booth in the back just so that they wouldn’t be seen. Yet if Katrina had ever bothered to look up, she could have seen them. She didn’t look up, though. She was too busy laughing at Al’s witty little quips.
“Frank’s here,” he said suddenly, catching sight of Jason’s uncle. “Come on.” He was reaching across the table for Amy’s hand.
“Michael!” Amy wailed. “If you embarrass me—”
“I won’t embarrass you, I swear!”
He led Amy through the crowded tables to a foursome in the middle of the floor.
“Excuse me, Frank. I saw you all come in, and just thought that we should come over and say hello.”
“Mike!” Frank, with his pleasant smile and easygoing manner, was quickly on his feet. Mike introduced Amy, and in return met Frank’s pretty blond friend, and Nancy and Ted Denver. Ted Denver, like his wife, was tall and slim, with intelligent, hazel eyes.
They exchanged pleasantries, then Nancy Denver said softly, “Jason is quite fond of you, Captain.”
“That’s good to hear. He’s a fine boy, and I admit to being rather fond of him too. Well, excuse us again. We didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”
“No interruption at all,” Ted said. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your coming over. Amy, it was our pleasure.”
Amy smiled; Mike started to lead her back through the tables. “Be seeing you, Captain!” Frank called after him.
“You’re after the girl—not her in-laws!” Amy reminded him when they were seated.
Mike lifted his drink to her. “But it never hurts to have popular opinion in your favor!”
Amy laughed. “Okay, you old heartbreaker. I have to admit I am enjoying this! Michael Taylor—in love at last. Down on earth with the rest of us!”
A fleeting glimpse of pain passed through his eyes, and Amy, who knew him so well, was sorry for her glib words. She knew he was thinking about Margo. “In love at last—again,” he murmured, his voice a touch bitter.
Her fingers curled around his strong ones where they lay on the table. “Hey, Captain! I’m in your corner!”
And he smiled. “Thanks.”
It was as Mike was talking to her father-in-law that Katrina at last saw him. A conch fritter stuck in her throat; she coughed, drained her third martini, then coughed all over again.
He wasn’t alone! He was with Amy, the tall, slim, beautiful brunette nurse. Oh! So some people he invited to dinner—and some people he just rolled in the sand!
And he had the nerve—the gall!—to stand there talking with the Denvers, laughing with Frank! And Frank, damn him to hell, was laughing back, calling out to him as he led the pretty, pretty brunette back to their dimly lit booth.
“Another drink, Katrina?”
The brunette was reaching across the table, covering his hand with her elegant, lovely, long-nailed fingers.
“Yes! I mean, please.”
“You haven’t finished your fish. Isn’t it okay?”
She smiled weakly. “Oh, no, the fish is fine.”
She was still staring over his shoulder. And all of a sudden Mike Taylor was staring at her across the crowded restaurant. Their eyes met—and clashed. He was looking at her as if she were a stubborn, bratty child, and as if someone ought to take a hickory stick to her. As if he would like to be that someone.
Oh! She narrowed her eyes, and glared back at him. And when her martini arrived, she picked it up and swallowed it in one gulp, still so busy glaring at him that she didn’t realize this fourth drink had hit her like a ton of bricks.
He stared a second longer. Then his eyes left hers.
“It’s getting warm in here, don’t you think?” Al asked her. She didn’t notice his curious expression. “Want to take a little walk by the water? There’s a patio outside—we can come back for coffee, if you like.”
“Ah … yes! Yes, it’s very warm.”
Mike’s eyes were on her again. He’d actually looked past his date to raise his glass to her, his expression totally mocking.
She ignored him and smiled radiantly at Al, practically purring.
“I’d love to take a walk!”
She remembered then—with a very guilty conscience—to say hello to her father-in-law. Except that it wasn’t that easy. The martinis had definitely hit her. Even standing was an effort. Concentrating very hard, she made her way carefully to their table. Ted’s hug almost knocked her over. She said hello to Connie, Frank’s friend, then started back to her own table.
But Frank caught her halfway there.
“Katrina!”
“What?”
“You’re—you’re loaded!”
“I am not!” she protested, then leaned closer to him. “Oh, Frank! I didn’t do anything wrong in front of your parents, did I?”
He shook his head impatiently. “No, no. You’re acting just fine. It’s just that you don’t drink, and I can see it in your eyes. And I can see in his eyes”—he indicated Al over her shoulder—“that you’re out with a wolf on the prowl.”
“Al? Oh, pooh, Frank! You’re the one befriending the wolf!”
Frank chuckled. “Mike Taylor? Yeah, I like him. That’s beside the point. The point—”
“Frank!” Katrina pleaded. “I’m twenty-seven! I can take care of myself!”
“I know. Just be careful, and don’t you dare have another drink!”
“I won’t,” Katrina assured him miserably. She could see two of him swaying before her.
“I love you, kid,” he told her.
“I love you too. And you’re the kid!”
He shook his head sadly and released her. But after he watched her walk out of the building with Stradford, he didn’t return to his seat. He walked on down to the booth that Mike and Amy were sharing and slid in beside Amy.
“Excuse me!” He flashed Amy one of his most charming smiles.
She laughed. “Go right ahead. I’m just along for the ride!”
Frank leaned across the table to talk to Mike. “I think that my sister-in-law is tipsy if not downright inebriated. And your friend looks like the cat about to swallow the canary. I can go after her, but she’d die if my parents became involved.”
Mike was already up, tossing money on the table, reaching for Amy’s hand. “Let’s go neck.”
“I will not!”
“Fake it, then?”
“Oh, what the hell!” Amy moaned. “I’ve had dinner—I guess it’s time for some entertainment.”
Even as Katrina walked hand in hand with Al down the boardwalk that paralleled the water, she knew that Mike was gone from his booth. She could see that it was empty.
As they went farther and farther away, toward darkness and foliage, she became aware that down beneath the moonlight, Mike and Amy were out for a stroll too.
Jealousy streaked through her like a bitter, bitter gall. She stumbled in her heels against the wooden walk, and when Al swept an arm around her to support her, she fell against him. And laughed. And when he leaned her against the rail, arms on either side of her, she laughed again, setting her hands against his chest.
It was probably very natural that he should kiss her, and natural that he should be pretty expert at his task, stripping
away her defenses quickly with a firm, roving tongue. Yet she felt that she was outside of herself, completely removed, watching someone else. And all she could think was that he really wasn’t touching her at all. She didn’t feel anything: no thrill of passion, no wonderful heat to dance and ripple along her spine, no urge to touch him, to know his touch any further. All she felt was dizzy, and crushed, and too warm.
Then, quite suddenly, she couldn’t be outside of herself anymore. Because he was an expert, and his arms were about her, sweeping her around, down from the sandy plain to a place shrouded in darkness and palms. And she was on her back, and he was above her; he was kissing her still, but his hands—my God! Did he have ten of them? Every time she tried to combat him, he was someplace else. And she couldn’t breathe! Her head was spinning so badly. Her skirt was hiked halfway up to her waist and his thumb was on her breast, bare beneath the light material.
At last she managed to twist her lips from his, to cry out against him.
“Al! Stop—”
“Ah, baby, come on! You were leaning against me, kissing me back, asking for some action all night!”
“No—”
His mouth covered hers, a panic reached her through the dull, throbbing haze of the vodka. She tried to kick him from her, and received his touch along her inner thigh. She realized then with frightening clarity that she was a ninety-nine-pound woman and he was a husky, well-muscled man. And that she had carelessly gotten herself into a horrible position. But, dear God, he couldn’t mean to rape her, right here, outside of the restaurant.
“No!” she cried again.
“Katrina, no one can see us.”
“No!”
His mouth ground against hers, and she wasn’t at all sure of his intentions anymore. He was grasping at her pantyhose, his hand on her hip.
“No—ohh!”
He was suddenly gone, so suddenly that she lay stunned, desperately trying to smooth her clothing decently back around her body. She was trying to sit up, trying to decipher what had happened.
And then she knew; not five feet away, two men were tousling in the sand. She heard the sickening crunch of blows, guttural threats.
Mike Taylor had wrenched Al from her.
Another blow sounded, then a splash as someone landed in the water. Then words again.
“She’s my date, Taylor! What’s the matter—can’t get your own?”
“She said no, Stradford!”
“She said no to you, Taylor; that’s the problem, isn’t it? She was asking for it—from me!”
And then Mike spoke again, saying words that humiliated her to the core. “All right, Stradford. She was a flirt. Egging you on. But she didn’t want it as far as you did, so that’s where it’s got to end.”
“What are you, her guardian angel? Responsible for her?”
“Yeah, responsible.”
Another blow fell. Katrina closed her eyes in absolute misery. She opened them again and found a slim hand outstretched to her. It was the brunette nurse, Amy.
She stared at the hand. “Oh, dear God!” she murmured miserably. “Look at what, at what I—one of them is going to hurt the other.”
Miraculously, Amy laughed. “No, Mrs. Denver, let them be. This has been coming on for years. It really isn’t your fault. They’re both enjoying every second of it.”
Thanks to Amy, Katrina made it to her feet. But it seemed that the nightmare was only beginning. The sound of running footsteps came down the boardwalk.
“Trina! Katrina!” Frank stopped short, right in front of her. He breathed deeply with relief. “You’re all right.”
Then there was a woman’s voice. “Katrina! Oh, goodness! What is going on here?”
“I—”
Frank took his mother’s arm. Too late—she had already seen the two men knocking it out in the surf and the sand.
Katrina wanted to die. At the very least she wanted to sink into the sand forever and ever as her mother-in-law stared at her with concerned, and very confused, eyes.
“Ma! It’s all right!” Frank assured her. “Let’s get out of here before Dad shows up!”
He was leading her away, but she cast a look back. “Katrina?”
Katrina had to find her voice, and she was very grateful when Amy answered for her. “We’re fine, Mrs. Denver! You know boys—they have to play now and then!”
And Katrina managed a weak, weak smile. “I’ll see you soon, Mom!”
“I think that I want to die!” Katrina murmured when they were gone.
“Don’t be silly! After you get through your hangover, you’ll be fine,” Amy assured her. “Oh—I think we have a victor!”
And they did. Mike—with a bleeding lip and the promise of a black eye—was coming toward them. His mouth was dead grim, so tight it was whiter than the sand. His face was stretched taut, making his jaw a concrete square. And his eyes, piercing through Katrina with such rage, might have been steel blades.
He gripped her arm, pulling her forcibly from Amy.
“Let’s go!” he growled.
She hung back, frightened. She was determined not to go anywhere with him when he looked like that.
“No! I—uh—can’t. Ah, Al—”
“Don’t you dare say anything right now, lady. And don’t you dare give me one bit of trouble!”
“But—”
He ignored her, looking at Amy.
“Amy?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll go patch him up and get him back to the ship. What’s a good nurse for?”
“Thanks, Amy.”
“No problem. Except that the admiral is going to skin you both for breakfast, you know!”
“Not much I can do about that,” Mike murmured. His voice lowered to a furious grate as his fingers tightened around Katrina’s arms. “Let’s go. Now, Mrs. Denver.”
She wanted to grasp onto the rail, but she had the sinking feeling that he would just break it off. She looked at Amy, allowing her to see the naked plea in her eyes.
But nothing much seemed to faze Amy.
“Don’t worry!” she told Katrina cheerfully. “His growl is ten times worse than his bite!”
No help there.
And then Mike’s whisper was touching her ear, warm and staccato and tense.
“Want to walk—or be carried?”
She started walking. But in the end, after they had skirted the restaurant and reached the dock, he picked her up after all. Her heel had caught in a plank, and the vodka had so dazed her reflexes that she almost fell.
Not that he carried her gently. He swung her into his arms roughly, then practically tossed her into the rear of a dinghy.
She didn’t move. She closed her eyes, vowing that she never wanted to even see a bottle of vodka again, and prayed that Michael Taylor and the entire night might disappear when she opened her eyes again.
But he was still there, his expression masked by the night as the dinghy streaked out into the water.
CHAPTER TEN
THE BREEZE FELT GOOD, almost as good as the salt spray that licked Katrina’s face as the launch moved through the night. She had been born by the seaside, had learned to swim before she had walked, and spent her entire life with boats.
She’d never been seasick in her life. She felt like absolute hell now, tempted beyond all measure to throw herself over the side of the speeding launch.
She didn’t move. She didn’t like Mike’s shadowed expression, not one bit. She didn’t want to think of herself as being a coward, but at this moment she was. What a mess! Al, back there somewhere in the sand. Mike, furious. Nancy Denver having come upon the whole scene. Oh, God! How could she have hurt her mother-in-law so?
“Oh, you macho idiot!” she suddenly raged. “It was your fault! The whole damn, humiliating thing was your fault!”
The tail end of her shout filled her ears like ringing bells; she hadn’t realized that they were so close to the island, and Mike had cut the motor.
“My fault?” h
e said in a deathly quiet voice.
The dinghy scraped bottom. He leapt past her, landing neatly in the damp sand, pulling the dinghy high onto it before reaching out a hand to help her from it. She didn’t want to take that hand; she wasn’t given a chance to refuse. She was suddenly standing on the sand, sand that swayed miserably beneath the moonlight. Out on the water she could see the Navy cutter, alive with light. The island seemed to offer only darkness, but the darkness didn’t relieve her mind, it just swayed along with the sand.
He dragged her along at a furious pace. One of her heels caught, and she cried out, staggered by the pain in her ankle.
He swung around to pick her up, and she instantly wished that she were a larger woman, so that she couldn’t be tossed about so easily—like baggage!
“Let me down, I can walk!” She pitted a blow against his chest; his eyes didn’t even fall to hers.
In another minute they were at the house. He knew she never locked her door; it slammed and reverberated when he closed it behind them. She found herself gracelessly set on the couch, her skirt riding too high, her feet a tangle beneath her. She scurried to rectify her position, but it didn’t matter; he wasn’t looking at her. He was pacing the floor behind her, one set of fingers threading through his hair, the other white-knuckled in a grip on his hip.
“My fault? My fault, Mrs. Denver?”
His eyes were on her again; she decided that she had been much better off when he had been staring distractedly at the walls.
“Yes!” she flared. “You bastard! If you hadn’t been there—”
“If I hadn’t been there, you’d have been raped. Oh, excuse me—unless you were egging him on purposely?”
Even through her haze of pain it was too much. She muttered a curse that told him exactly what he should do with himself, slamming both her fists against the chest that prevented her escape.
He captured her wrists and sat at her side, the bite of his fingers like steel around her, his wrath increasing so that he leaned again, forcing her back into the soft cushions of the sofa.
“I’m more than willing to be corrected if I’m wrong, Mrs. Denver!” he told her angrily. “Please, do tell me! Did I interrupt the high point of your evening? How was I at fault?”
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