Three Redeemable Rogues

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  “Oh my!” she exclaimed, dropping her own bread and slapping a hand over her mouth. “Tell me you aren’t missing teeth because of me!”

  It sure as hell looked like it, and it sounded that way as well.

  Kell looked panicked for an instant, his eyes going wide as he shoved a finger into his mouth to feel for missing or broken teeth. There were none, and his relief at finding them intact was evident in his gasp of relief.

  “Damn!” he said, casting an uneasy glance at Jack. “Scared me for a sec.”

  Sophie turned to Jack then, pursing her lips and trying not to laugh.

  Jack grinned at her, knowing his smile would be as flattering as Kell’s, and was rewarded with her sparkling laughter. The sound of it sent a shudder of desire through him.

  Christ, she wasn’t merely lovely when she laughed, she was dazzling. Her laughter glistened even in her eyes. He wasn’t quite prepared for the way it affected him and he found himself completely disarmed.

  Even Kell seemed to hold his breath until the spell of laughter subsided, and then he turned to meet Jack’s gaze, and Jack groaned inwardly, recognizing the instant infatuation in his friend’s eyes.

  Damn, but she was going to be trouble ... in more ways than one.

  And Jack was in trouble too, if she could win over his motley crew with a lousy as hell breakfast like that!

  Judging by the expressions on all of their faces, she’d somehow done exactly that.

  God bless the irksome wench.

  Sophie didn’t try to fool herself. She knew her first attempt at cooking had been a complete disaster, but it obviously had not gone unappreciated. The crew either felt terribly sorry for her, or they had taken her gesture for what it was ... a hand in friendship.

  In either case, they seemed to have adopted her as one of their own—Kell in particular.

  Sophie rather liked him.

  The tall, dark-haired giant was a Bohemian of sorts. His shoulder-length hair was bound at the nape like some old-time pirate’s, and his dress, as well, was reminiscent of another age. His mirth never faded from his bright blue eyes, and his patience was remarkable. For that Sophie was indebted to him.

  Without having been asked, he had taken the time to show her how the stove worked so that she might do better with her next effort. And then he’d given her a tour of the ship. She had only to ask about the cannons, and he determined to show her how they worked.

  “Are you certain it’s no trouble?” she asked, afraid to become an inconvenience. He had spent practically all afternoon amusing her, and she was beginning to feel guilty about monopolizing his attention. She knew he had work to attend to.

  “No trouble at all,” he assured, and winked, then drew her aside to watch from a safe distance as he properly packed the cannon.

  Sophie clutched her hands together as she watched him work. The prospect of actually seeing the gun go off left her with a strange sense of anticipation—like a child waiting for a display of fireworks.

  “You say this was a vessel used for exploration?”

  “Yep,” he told her. “Primarily by topographers.”

  Sophie’s brows knit. “Why would a topographer need cannons, I wonder.”

  He stopped what he was doing to answer her question. “It’s an old ship, Miss Vanderwahl. The cannons were their sole means of protection on highly ungovernable seas.”

  “Please call me Sophie!”

  He nodded. “All right, Sophie,” he replied warmly.

  The crew on deck began to gather around them, watching as well, curiosity snatching their attention.

  “They are so tiny!” she declared, speaking of the cannons. “Why so little?”

  “She was never meant to be a warship,” Kell disclosed. “No reason for heavy artillery.”

  Her brows knit as she watched Kell struggle with the preparations. “Quite a tedious process!”

  “Sometimes it was,” he agreed. And then he finished at last and lit the fuse. “Ready?”

  Sophie nodded excitedly.

  He backed away from the cannon and took her by the shoulders, pulling her out of harm’s way.

  The cannon went off with an explosion that nearly left her deaf.

  “Oh, my!” Sophie exclaimed.

  The cannonball landed in the ocean with a lame splash, not more than fifty yards from where they were.

  Sophie laughed. “How pitiful!”

  Kell nodded. “Yep, and at this point, the ships are crashing,” he told her, donning his storyteller’s cap. “The crew is off and running to grab their real guns…”

  Sophie grinned at his boyish gestures. He brandished his finger at her as though it were a pistol.

  “No swords?” she asked.

  “Nope, no swords,” he said. “Guns ...” He stopped and winked at her. “Or maybe a few poison arrows... we’re going into savage country,” he reminded her. “Wanna try the cannon?” he asked abruptly.

  Sophie blinked in surprise. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. C’mere, I’ll teach you how.”

  Sophie followed him. It was, after all, just a baby cannon, hardly much bigger than a rifle. What harm could possibly come of it?

  Kell walked her through the entire process, and she felt almost like a pirate standing beside him, packing the powder to his boyish utterances. “All right, here they come!” he encouraged. And, “Hurry ... they’re almost upon us!”

  Never mind that this wasn’t a pirate ship at all, it felt dangerously exciting to play along.

  The crew joined Kell in his banter, and Sophie never felt so much a comrade in arms. She giggled as she rushed her preparations, trying to arm the ship before they could be overtaken by their imaginary foes.

  Someone lit a match and came running to light the fuse for her, and Sophie stepped back, plugging her ears as she waited for it to go off.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  His voice thundered over the decks and Sophie heard it despite her muffled ears.

  She spun to face him, her heart leaping at the prospect of seeing him again. He’d been locked in his cabin working all afternoon with strict orders that he not be disturbed. As she turned, her feet tangled in a coil of rope and it sent her tumbling backward against the cannon. She merely brushed it and tumbled past it onto the deck, onto her rear, but the impact of her weight tipped the cannon upward slightly, small as it was.

  Sophie only had time to realize what had happened when the cannon exploded.

  “Hell’s bells!” someone exclaimed.

  It might have been Kell.

  Sophie lay there helplessly as the ball went flying upward. Every gaze followed it.

  Complete silence fell as it rose above the sails ... and then it seemed to pause in midair for an interminable moment. Chaos broke loose as it made its descent, plunging toward the stern. It ripped through the sails, and Sophie gasped in alarm.

  She met Jack MacAuley’s murderous gaze for the briefest instant before he sprinted after his crew toward the hole she had just put in his ship.

  Chapter 13

  Sophie was afraid to move.

  She watched the crew gather around the damage she had done, and she was taken with the most overwhelming urge to jump overboard.

  Had she managed to sink the boat?

  Jack’s silence was terrifying.

  In fact, everyone seemed suddenly mute. They all gathered like mourners about a casket, curious and grim. Jack had disappeared into the mob of his crew, and had yet to resurface, but Sophie could tell by their stoic silence that she had done something really, really terrible.

  Her heart beat frantically, and though it wasn’t her way to fly from trouble, she might have done so... if she’d had somewhere to go—but there was nowhere, and nothing else to do but face Jack.

  Deciding she couldn’t avoid it, she picked herself up and brushed herself off, then went to view the damage.

  Instinctively she hid behind Kell, peeking between him and Randall.

/>   “Someone get down there,” Jack barked at them. He gestured with his hand, and several men obeyed at once. He got down on hands and knees and peered into the cannonball-sized hole. It was a long, uncomfortable moment before he spoke.

  “I’ll be damned,” he swore, and Sophie held her breath, waiting to hear the report.

  “Do you see it?” she heard Jack ask after a moment. Apparently the men had reached the damage site.

  Sophie couldn’t hear their muffled responses, but she heard the chatter of voices below deck. Kell suddenly seemed to notice her standing beside him and put a hand on her shoulder, as though to comfort her, but he said not a word. The gravity of the situation did not escape her. If the ball had managed to go through the hold and bottom of the ship, would there be anything they could do to stop it from sinking?

  Her heart raced wildly.

  “Are you sure?” Jack shouted through the gaping hole.

  More chatter below.

  “What stopped it?” he asked.

  A thousand sighs exploded around her, and Sophie thought that might be a good thing.

  She nibbled her lip anxiously.

  “You’ve got to see this!” she heard someone below deck shout up at them.

  “I’m coming!” Jack told them, and bounded up from his knees. As though he had sensed her presence, his gaze seemed to find her at once, and the look in his eyes sent her pulse skittering.

  He came toward her, pointing rudely, and Sophie froze. “You!” he said. “Come with me!” And he seized her by the arm.

  “Hey, Jack, it wasn’t her fault,” Kell said in defense of her.

  No one else dared to speak up.

  Silence followed them.

  Sophie’s heart pounded with fear as he dragged her behind him. He came to the ladder and released her, practically jumping down, not bothering with the rungs, and then he motioned for her to come down after him. Sophie didn’t dare resist.

  He pulled her through the mess hall and then down another ladder, and up into the captain’s dining hall.

  Sophie had yet to see any sign of the cannon damage.

  And then she did.

  Several crewmen were gathered around her cabin, staring inside. They parted for Jack, and he released her long enough to go inside and inspect the damage firsthand.

  “Lucky thing she packs like a woman, eh?” she heard one man whisper.

  “There went her summer wardrobe,” snickered another.

  Sophie groaned inwardly and stepped forward to see for herself.

  There, indeed, went her summer wardrobe.

  The cannonball had come through the roof of her cabin and had landed, of all places, on her suitcases ... which were of course stacked upon her bed. She had dragged them out to find a suitable dress and then had stacked them on top of one another, smallest on top, because there just hadn’t been room to do anything else. She had left them there, intending to set them aside later when she went to bed.

  The first and smallest bag had been tossed aside. It had been crushed, actually. Sophie winced at the sight of it... her mirrors and toiletry. The scent of perfume permeated the cabin. The second, too, had been destroyed along with its contents and now sported more than abundant ventilation, but the third remained in place, the cannonball snuggled deep within the folds of her very expensive gowns.

  Sophie cringed at the imagined sound of her mother’s voice in her ear, shrieking with indignation.

  As she watched, they dragged that suitcase aside as well, and then her bedclothes, and found the cannonball had stopped short of destroying the wooden structure that was her bed. It was cracked and dented from the impact, but otherwise intact.

  She blinked at the sight of it.

  It was, indeed, fortunate for them all that she had packed heavily. After it had ripped through the sails and crashed through the deck, and then three suitcases, her gowns had provided adequate stoppage for the ball.

  Her gaze was drawn to the picture of Harlan she had placed face up on the bed this morning. Less than a foot or so to the right and his face would have been plastered to the cannonball... but it had been spared... more’s the pity.

  “Isn’t that... lucky,” Sophie managed to say, her stomach roiling.

  Now what was she going to wear?

  Jack glared at her, his green eyes smoldering with ire. “For the first time I can honestly say I’m damned grateful a woman never travels light!”

  Sophie didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended by his remark. Since she couldn’t very well defend herself, she might have been inclined to defend all womankind in that instant except that she was afraid to even open her mouth.

  “If there is a God out there,” he told her, “we’ve seen proof of it today!”

  She thought he meant because they had been spared. The ship was intact and they weren’t going to plummet to the bottom of the sea to be eaten by little fishies.

  “Out of everywhere on this ship that ball could have landed,” he continued angrily, “this is the one place where justice is served!”

  Sophie opened her mouth to speak in self-defense and indignation, but nothing came out.

  She closed it again.

  It was true—even though he didn’t have to be so gleeful over her loss!

  She peered up at the hole in her ceiling to find half a dozen pair of eyes staring down at them, and turned to face Jack again, wincing at his wrathful stare.

  She straightened her shoulders. “You really don’t have to shout,” she told him with as much dignity as she could muster.

  She had tried so very hard to make up for their first meeting. So much for the morning’s efforts. It seemed she and Jack were destined to remain forever at odds.

  Jack MacAuley was an insensitive brute!

  Sophie came to that decision as she lay in her bed, staring at the stars through the hole in her roof.

  She wondered how a man could grow to be so hard, but she didn’t really wish to explore the answer to that question because she didn’t want to feel sorry for him. If he’d had a hard life because of his upbringing, well, it wasn’t Sophie’s fault. Nor was it her fault that her life had been made easier by her own birth circumstances.

  And neither was the afternoon’s mishap entirely her fault either!

  He didn’t have to come storming into their midst, shouting in anger. He’d frightened her, and she’d tripped, and she had just as much right as he did to be angry. She could have been hurt, but he hadn’t even stopped to think about that!

  The look in his eyes had been terrifying—almost as terrifying as her mother’s had been to her as a child.

  Her father had been soft-spoken to the extreme, bowing to her mother’s every wish, and no one in her household had ever dared go against Olivia Vanderwahl’s edicts. Only Sophie’s grandmother had ever dared scold her mother, and then only with subtle undertones that Sophie hadn’t understood for many years.

  In truth, she hadn’t even realized her father had any backbone at all until she had seen him at work in his own environment, and then it had left no doubt in her mind who was truly in charge of their household. Despite the emotional berth her parents seemed to give each other, her father had humored her mother in most things. Sophie supposed a man didn’t always have to exert his dominance... not if he had nothing to prove, and her father hadn’t had a thing to prove.

  Jack MacAuley was somewhat of a different animal, she decided.

  He didn’t actually exert his dominance over anyone... but those in his presence seemed to bow to him anyway—even Kell to some degree. It was obvious the two of them were friends, but Kell hadn’t even stood up to him to defend her, beyond his simple statement that it wasn’t all her fault.

  Aside from that, they’d all thrown her to the proverbial wolf!

  A pall had been cast over all their moods for the remainder of the day, while the damage had been assessed and repaired. Their chores had been attended to in a sort of contemplative silence—and Sophie doubte
d they were all having life-altering revelations triggered by the simple fact that she’d very nearly killed them all today. No, everyone’s mood was a reflection of Jack’s—including her own.

  He hadn’t bothered to fix her roof, however, and Sophie thought he wanted to see her suffer just a little.

  What on Earth had she done to deserve his animosity?

  She frowned as she considered that.

  Because she had yelled at him on the dock for his lack of dress ... accused him of thievery... broke his stove... burned his breakfast... and nearly sunk his ship.

  She sighed.

  Her demerits were really adding up.

  She heard voices above and tried to ignore them, wholly grateful they had chosen to do the same. Out of consideration, they seemed to be avoiding the gaping hole in their deck.

  Which was more than she could say for Jack.

  Her attention caught by their conversation, she strained to hear him. His voice was unmistakable. He was talking to Kell, she surmised—mostly because Kell seemed the only one willing to question His Holiness, for he clearly believed he had never done anything wrong in his entire life! No, Jack MacAuley was untouchable, never culpable, perfect! She gritted her teeth as she listened to them.

  “Maybe we should throw a tarp over it,” Kell suggested, and Sophie knew they were discussing the gaping masterpiece in her ceiling.

  “Hell no!” he answered. “Let her sleep with it tonight.”

  Silence a moment.

  She heard the shuffling of feet, and Sophie wondered if he’d intended for her to hear this particular conversation. Probably so. He didn’t strike her as the sort of man to leave anything to chance.

  “Jack,” Kell protested. “It feels like rain tonight.”

  “Good,” Jack retorted, without the least pause.

  Sophie bristled.

  She had paid good money—ten thousand dollars to be precise—for the dubious privilege of boarding this blasted vessel! Why should she be forced to sleep under the stars? It wasn’t as though she hadn’t suffered already. She had no clothes to wear!

  “If she wants a tarp over it, she can damned well put one over it herself,” Jack continued, his tone adamant. “She has two legs and two hands, Kell, and this isn’t a cruise expressly for her pleasure. I told her that to begin with, and we aren’t here to do her damned bidding!”