Читать книгу The Pirate: - Katherine Garbera - Страница 7

The way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.

—MIYAMOTO MUSASHI

Daphne was a bit unsure of herself this morning. Her “alarm” last night had been for naught and she felt very foolish. The rest of the team didn’t censure her and they all still remained on guard. Daphne and Bob were still planning to send a message to Paul as soon as they received permission from the captain.

Bob was seasick and asked her to wait a few hours before they went to use the radio and contact Paul. She wondered if he was having second thoughts now that it was daylight. She was. With the heat of the sun on her shoulders and the fresh air in her hair, she didn’t believe there was any threat to them.

This trip, which had seemed the answer to so many of her problems, now just seemed foolish. Her intent to help impoverished children didn’t feel silly to her. Even at home she had always done that by making sure her practice treated kids from all income levels. What worried her was the desire to have an adventure so she wouldn’t feel like the left-behind woman anymore.

No matter that they hadn’t been attacked by pirates last night, she knew that Laz was up to something. And this morning, as she jogged through the crates lining the deck of the tanker, she tried to clear her mind. Her iPod Shuffle was cranking out Black Sabbath and Trick Daddy but her mind wasn’t going any further than the bridge of the ship.

She was tired of being lied to by men. And though Laz didn’t come right out and lie to her, he hadn’t exactly been honest with any of them either. He was a pirate. That was the only explanation that she could come up with. Why else would he be beckoning men onto the tanker in the middle of the night?

She slowed to a walk to do her warm down and sensed someone behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Laz. She turned off her iPod as he approached.

“Mind if I join you?”

“I guess not.”

“That’s not very gracious. I must have made a bad impression last night. How about I make it up to you?”

She shook her head. How could she admit to him that his impression had been fine until she’d spied on him from the gangway? “You were charming, as I’m sure you know.”

“Charming?” he asked, arching one eyebrow at her. “Well, that’s promising.”

“It’s your tanker so I guess you can do what you want,” she said, not wanting him to read too much into her allowing him to join her.

“But I still want to respect your space,” Laz said.

“Please sit down,” she said.

He sat down next to her and the first thing she noticed was that he smelled good—a mixture of soap and mint. She took a deep breath.

“How many more days until we arrive at our destination?”

“Maybe a day,” Laz said. “The seas have been calm and we are making good time.”

“That’ll be great,” she said.

“Anxious to get to doctoring?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I don’t know if I can really explain it without sounding stupid but I feel like I’m half-alive when I’m not working.”

“That makes sense. Being a doctor is more than a job—it’s a calling. Not many people are lucky enough to find that.”

“Did you?”

He shrugged. “I think so. What I do is a necessary evil but I’m very good at it.”

“What you do? Captaining a tanker isn’t evil, Laz.”

“Nah, I guess you’re right. It’s just that compared to being a doctor captaining a tanker isn’t all that glamorous a calling.”

Daphne looked at him. He still had that aura of danger that surrounded him, but there was sincerity to his words.

“We are all called to do something different. All those different parts make up the whole.”

“Very wise.”

She started laughing. “My son said that to me before I left.”

“So he’s smart like you?”

“And lazy too,” Daphne said. “He was trying to convince me to let him play video games all summer instead of going to the academic camp I signed him up for.”

Laz arched an eyebrow at her, “Did it work?”

“No,” she said. “I want my boys to have every opportunity and only a good education can ensure that.”

She just shook her head at him. He was charming and that was a big part of her problem. She didn’t want to like this man, because she didn’t trust him.

“Fight!”

Another man yelled something she didn’t understand but she recognized the telltale sounds of a crashing chair. She looked over at the tables behind her in time to see two men fighting.

Laz stood and reached the men in two long running strides. He didn’t reach into the fighting men but just stood next to them.

“Break it up.”

His voice was a bellow that made her ears ring. The command was clear, but the men he spoke to weren’t fazed at all and didn’t pause in their fighting. She didn’t know what Laz was going to do but he waded into the mess and slammed the men’s heads together. They both fell to the deck but continued fighting.

Laz kicked the back of one man’s knee and he fell to the floor moaning. He grabbed the other man and punched him in the gut. They were both on the floor. The tall African man whose name she couldn’t remember was bleeding.

Daphne walked over to the crowd of men on the deck. The coppery smell of blood brought back memories of her residency days when she’d worked in the ER. She’d enjoyed that time and the adrenaline rush that came from treating patients who had critical needs. There was a lot to be said about doctoring like that. Though she did enjoy her pediatric practice she’d always liked ER medicine.

“Stay where you are,” Laz ordered.

She shook her head. “That man is bleeding profusely, and I can help him. In fact, that’s what I’m trained to do, Captain. So let me do my job.”

“In a minute,” he said. “I doubt that Renault’s wound is critical. He can wait until I get to the bottom of this ruckus.”

Renault said something in a language that Daphne didn’t understand. But Laz nodded and spoke back to the man. How many languages did he speak?

It was another facet of the man she was starting to know, and she realized that the more she learned about him the more questions she had.

Why would a sea captain speak that many different languages? She guessed fluency came from traveling. She was looking for suspicious behavior and kept finding it.

She didn’t know if she liked this side of Laz but she did find comfort in the fact that he knew how to handle himself. She felt just a little safer knowing that he wasn’t a man who’d run away from a fight.

Laz signaled to Hamm and another crew member to take Renault and Fridjtof down below. They had a small first-aid room, which is where he ordered Renault taken. He really needed to bash some heads together to get rid of the excess anger that was riding him.

The tension of waiting for the pirates to attack and of hoping that their plan would work was getting to him. Having his men act like teenagers with no discipline also pissed him off. He needed his men to behave like grown-ups. There was enough tension on this tanker without adding testosterone posturing into the mix.

“Is it safe for me to go with the injured man?” Daphne asked.

“Yes,” Laz said. He didn’t want her alone with any of his men. “Hamm, stay with her. I need to talk to Fridjtof.”

Daphne followed Hamm down the gangway. Laz didn’t like the trouble that Fridjtof had caused. What was going on with that man?

Laz entered the hold—a rather large room that was used to transport private containers that weren’t large enough to make the trip on deck like most of the containers they hauled. Fridjtof was led to a chair and sat down.

“Thanks, Rick,” Laz said. “Go back to your duties.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Fridjtof looked up at Laz with contempt in his eyes.

“What happened?”

Fridjtof shrugged. “It’s nothing that you need to worry about. He just gets on my nerves. I can’t have someone always watching my every move.”

His accent was stronger now that he was aggravated. Laz noticed that the other man’s eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

“Are you ill?” He hoped that Fridjtof wasn’t using drugs. But if he was that might explain his erratic behavior both today and last night. He had never met the man before this voyage, so Laz had no idea what to expect from him.

“What?” Fridjtof asked. “Nah, just didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“Why don’t you go to your bunk for a few hours and catch up on some sleep?”

“Nah—”

“That’s an order.”

Fridjtof stood up and paced around the room. Laz watched the other man, waiting to see if he was going to attack. Fridjtof was moving like a caged tiger. And Laz was more than ready for whatever the other man decided to do.

“Hell. I’m not a boy to be ordered about.”

“On this ship you are,” Laz said.

“Whatever.”

“You can cool off here or in your bunk. It’s up to you.”

“My bunk.” The other man stood and stretched. “I get itchy being out to sea for this long.”

“I thought this was your normal run,” Laz said.

“It is. I still get restless. And having women on board…”

Laz wasn’t sure what the other man was getting at. “In the old days they used to think women brought bad luck at sea.”

“That’s what I mean, man.”

Laz realized the more they talked the more Fridjtof settled down, so he leaned back against the door and thought about the other man’s point. “Some curses still are in effect.”

“Yeah, I know. Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”

“But that’s a weather warning system.”

“Women are a distraction, Captain, which you seem to be experiencing firsthand.”

Laz didn’t bow to anyone and wasn’t about to stop talking to Daphne. “I’m not distracted.”

“We’ll see.”

Laz shrugged. He didn’t like Fridjtof’s attitude but there was little that could be done for it now. “No more fighting or else I’ll lock you in the storage closet until we get to port.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Cool off at your bunk for a few hours. I don’t want to see you until mealtime.”

Fridjtof nodded and Laz opened the door to let the other man go.

Laz watched until he disappeared down the long gray hallway. Then he started to return to the bridge.

“Savage?”

There was no sound in his earpiece, not even the crackle of an open comm. “Damn it.”

Laz walked down the hallway toward the gangway. “Savage?”

“Here, Laz, what do you need?” The signal was weak and Savage’s words faded in and out.

Laz walked farther away from the hold and the sound got better. “Damn, the hold is a blackout zone for communication.”

“Is that a problem?” Savage asked.

“It could be, if the pirates attack while we are down there. I don’t know all the scenarios but I’d prefer to be able to talk to you from the entire ship.”

“How’d we miss that?” Savage asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to have Hamm see if he can fix this.”

“Roger that. What did you need from me?”

“Can Wenz do a background check on Fridjtof?”

“We already screened the crew,” Savage said.

“I just feel like we missed something. Last night he was on deck and this morning fighting with another crew member.”

“Not a problem. Wenz will radio if he finds anything. Any sign of trouble yet?”

“Nothing other than the tension on the ship. I think having passengers is making the crew antsy.” Laz hadn’t captained the crew of a tanker before. His small sailing yacht back home was just right for himself to crew. He had no problems giving orders, but a part of him was leery of having all these men under his command because he just didn’t know them. He trusted Hamm but beyond that he wasn’t sure of any of the other men.

“Makes sense,” Savage said. “They are used to being themselves without witnesses.”

“True.”

“You doing okay?” Savage asked.

Laz thought about it for a minute before answering. He didn’t want to admit that seeing Savage and then Mann marry had him thinking about his future and whether he’d ever find a girl to settle down with. He especially didn’t want to say that now when he was in the middle of a tense mission.

“Yes. I like being at sea and making sure the ship is in top shape. To be honest I could almost see myself doing this.”

“Uh oh, thinking of leaving our group?”

“Never. But this is a glimpse at what my life could have been.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll look forward to hearing from Wenz. Laz out.”

“Savage out.”

The first-aid office was really all that the medical facility was. It had a battered desk that was bolted to the floor, as was all furniture on the ship. A cabinet held rudimentary medical supplies.

“Does this kind of fighting take place often on board?” Daphne asked Hamm after Renault was patched up and had left to talk to the Captain.

Hamm was the second in command on the ship and had a friendly next-door kind of face. She realized that he had a way of moving that was completely silent.

“Sometimes. Depends on the crew. Tankers are a world of their own for the length of the cruise so we tend to just do our own thing. I’m not sure what those boys were fighting over.”

“Men can be that way,” she said, thinking of her own boys, who just got testy sometimes with each other, and needed to slug it out to get back to normal. She’d been surprised at first at that type of behavior in her boys. She’d done everything to discourage violence, but she’d noticed from a young age that their play involved more physicality.

“Boys can be that way,” Hamm said. “Men learn to control themselves.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sorry. I was only thinking of my boys, who can be that way sometimes. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. I just wanted to make sure you knew that men can control their tempers,” Hamm said.

“I’ve never been in a situation like this,” she said.

“Why are you here?” he asked. “Pardon me for asking but this seems about out of your milieu.”

She smiled at the way he said it. He was trying to be polite but being here wasn’t her thing. Serving on the board for Doctors Across Waters—that was her thing. Traveling across the world on a tanker…that was not like her.

But she’d changed. Been forced to realize that her life wasn’t on one set path. She had choices. And she’d made this one because she was tired of always wanting to make a difference in lives but never leaving her practice or her office.

She wanted to be an adventurous person, she thought. Part of it was because of Paul and the way her marriage had ended, but a bigger part had been when her youngest son Lucas had declined to go on a scouting trip because he didn’t want to risk being out of the city.

She realized her reluctance to face her own fears had been passed on to her boys. And she wanted—no, needed—to be a positive influence on them. They were the one thing she was proud to say came from her marriage.

“I needed a change,” she said. “This is a bit more adventurous then I originally anticipated. But being out here on sea has been interesting.”

“In what way?” he asked.

“Just seeing the way the crew and the captain interact. Have you known the captain for long?” she asked. She really wanted to know if Laz was a man she could trust. Every instinct she had said she could, but her instincts weren’t always on target when it came to men.

“For a while.”

“Do you trust him?” she asked.

“With my life,” Hamm said. “Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. Now what was she going to say, that she’d seen the captain on deck last night doing something suspicious? That would make her sound…silly.

“We’re all depending on him to get us safely through these waters. The attacks on ships in this area have been up and naturally I’m concerned.”

Hamm nodded. “Laz will deliver you to your destinations. He’s reliable and dependable.”

“Ah, Hamm, you’re making me sound like a Boy Scout,” Laz drawled from the doorway.

“You are,” Hamm said.

Daphne hated the way her pulse speeded up just because Laz had entered the room.

“How’s Renault?”

“Good. The cuts were superficial. I bandaged them and he’s fine now.”

“Back at work?” Laz asked Hamm.

“Yeah. How’s Fridjtof?”

“Cooling off some. He’s edgy. I was hoping you could keep an eye on him,” Laz said.

Daphne cleaned up the papers from the bandages and tried to look busy. There was no need for her to stay, except she didn’t want to have to try to squeeze by Laz to get out of the room.

“No problem. Do you need anything else?”

“Yes, but we can discuss it later.”

Hamm nodded.

“Thanks for your help, Daphne. If you hadn’t been here—”

“You would have handled it fine. This wasn’t a real medical emergency,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t, but it’s always nice to have an expert around,” Hamm said, as he walked out the door.

Daphne started to follow him but Laz stopped her with his hand on her arm.

“There is something I’m dying to know,” he said.

“What?”

“How your lips feel under mine,” he said, lowering his head and brushing his lips over hers.

She surrendered completely to the embrace. The doubts she had about Laz were slowly melting away. Though she knew her instincts had been wrong before when it came to trusting a man, this time she thought that maybe she’d found a man she could rely on.

She realized as he tunneled his hands through her hair and tipped her head backward to give him greater access to her mouth that whether this was wise or foolish she didn’t want to miss out on a moment of this experience with Laz.

He was exactly what she needed.

And for once she knew what she wanted. It had been a long time since she’d felt this decisive. She wanted to experience everything she could with this strong, sexy, mysterious man. She wasn’t about to let him slip through her fingers.

She wrapped her own arms around his lean waist and leaned up into the kiss. His tongue felt smooth and tasted wonderful against hers. She forgot to breathe, forgot everything except the feel of his hands on her body.

She’d never felt an enflaming attraction like this before. It wiped out all her other thoughts. All she wanted—no, needed—was to get closer to Laz.

She slid her hands down his back and cupped his firm butt, pulling him closer to her. She rocked her center over the side of his hard-on. A moan escaped her.

“Damn, Daph, you are one sexy woman,” he said, his voice gruff with passion.

Ten minutes ago she would have argued that she wasn’t sexy. That she was just a nice girl. A girl-next-door-kind-of-girl. But in his arms she felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.

She was the sexiest of creatures, and she knew she could tempt him. And that was a very powerful feeling.

“Yes, I am,” she said, with a half-smile.

Laz pulled her back into the first-aid room and closed the door. He lifted her up on the exam desk and then stepped forward between her legs.

Daphne reached for him, drawing him even closer, wrapping her arms around his lean waist, and resting her head on his chest.

She took comfort from this man. From the way he moved and the way he wanted her. He made her feel like she wasn’t just a divorced woman with stretch marks, but as sexy to him as a Victoria’s Secret cover model. It was a heady feeling and she was almost drunk from the sensation.

She wanted Laz. The sea captain that she wasn’t sure she trusted. But that was her mind talking. Her body knew that he could be trusted to bring her pleasure. To make her feel like she was a woman again.

He could bring back the feelings she’d lost two years ago when the words “another woman” had left her husband’s mouth—the words that had stripped away the very heart of who she was and how she thought of herself as a woman.

She lifted her head and saw him looking down at her. There was desire, lust, and passion in his gaze, and she shook from the power those feelings evoked in her.

She reached down and drew him even closer to her, afraid that he’d change his mind; she didn’t want to take a chance on that.