No Choice But Seduction
Page 26

She fantasized about this man constantly. She had no doubt any longer about how much she wanted him. But there was also no doubt that he’d end her trip if she gave in. And lust, which was what motivated him, wasn’t enough to base a marriage on. It would be a nice benefit to marriage, but love had to be there first.
But the tropical atmosphere of Cartagena, which they had just visited, as well as his suggestion for an outing on a beach, were both still fresh in her mind, and thus it didn’t surprise her at all that her dream was filled with the same tropics.
She looked back at Boyd. He was smiling down at her this time, a warm, intimate smile, as if they had just shared something. The intense, sensual moment when he’d been about to kiss her wasn’t there again—yet. This was a more relaxed moment, just as nice, but not nearly as intense. It allowed other things to intrude, the sound of a crackling fire nearby, the smell of fish…
How rude for that to be in her dream! Wait, smelling things in dreams?
Katey scrambled to her feet so fast she stumbled and backed away even more as she stared wildly around her. She was barefoot, her toes sinking in warm sand. She was in her nightgown and it was damp. Her hair was loosely flowing about her, and that was damp, too, as if she’d swum ashore. She was on an empty beach with no ship anchored nearby, no ships at all on the horizon, nothing but endless blue waters as far as she could see.
And Boyd was there lying on his side in the sand beneath several palm trees, wearing just his breeches and a long-sleeved, white shirt opened halfway down his chest. He was leaning on his elbow as he watched her, concern in his expression now. A little campfire was burning near him, a fish roasting on a spit he’d fashioned above it. It was such a peaceful, idyllic setting, and yet the horror that filled her mind turned her cold with dread.
“My God, your ship sank?” she gasped out. “Did anyone else survive? Grace? Oh no, no—!”
He leapt immediately to his feet to grasp her shoulders. “Katey, stop it! The ship is fine. Everyone aboard her is fine!”
She stared at him wide-eyed, wanting to believe him, yet how could she? “Don’t try to tell me I’m dreaming. Dreams aren’t real like this.”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how are we here? And why can’t I recall getting here?”
“Because you slept through it.” Her eyes narrowed at him, but before she could snort her disbelief, he added, “Have you ever sleepwalked before?”
“Done what?”
“Gotten out of bed, walked around in your sleep.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then maybe you were on your way to find me? You were in your nightgown out on the deck, and that was my first thought—hope.”
“Don’t start,” she warned him.
He shrugged, but she could tell he was trying not to chuckle, and he wasn’t done coming up with other explanations. “Too much to drink at dinner then? I know I had too much myself, but I noticed you were doing a good job of emptying that bottle of wine next to you on the table as well. I think Tyrus ordered up two extra bottles last night we were emptying them so fast.”
He had been at dinner, for a change. He usually wasn’t. But last night he had been present, and a lively conversation between the captain and him had distracted her enough that she had tipped that bottle to her glass more than she should have. She didn’t recall emptying it though, nor being drunk, though how would she know when she’d never been drunk before!
“I’m not used to wine with dinner,” she admitted. “But wouldn’t there be some sort of aftereffect if I had too much of it? I recall my father groaning horribly one morning after drinking too much the night before.”
“Head not aching?”
“Not at all.”
At least now it wasn’t. But she didn’t add that aloud, since the brief pain she had felt when she shot to her feet a few minutes ago she attributed to just rising too quickly. And it was already gone.
He shrugged. “Perhaps you simply have a high tolerance for alcohol? Some people do. They can drink barrels of the stuff and wake up feeling no different than any other day.”
“Whether I do or don’t, I’m sure I didn’t go to bed drunk.” She tsked at herself for sounding so prim about it.
“You recall getting into bed then?”
“Yes—of course,” she answered, but actually, she didn’t.
Getting ready for bed was a standard nightly practice, done by rote. With nothing out of the ordinary occurring to make it stand out in her mind, how was she supposed to remember? And right now she was having trouble thinking clearly about anything.
“The deck was dark, Katey. I couldn’t actually see you clearly. You could have been hurt, could have been looking for help. I suppose you might even have been in shock. Did you have an accident?”
She shook her limbs briefly. “No, nothing hurts. I feel fine.”
“Then it probably was my second guess, that you were sleepwalking.”
She sighed at him. “I’m telling you, that isn’t something I do.”
“How would you know if you do your walking then get back into bed, all without waking?”
“Someone would have told me, seen me, if it’s something I’m prone to do.”
“Not if you never go far.”
“There has to be a better explanation than this, Boyd,” she said, somewhat exasperated. “To even suggest that I walked ashore is so—”
“Wait.” He chuckled. “I can see now why you’re having trouble believing this. No, that’s not what you did. But you did appear on deck last night. I certainly didn’t imagine that. I was manning the wheel. I do that often, take the night round at the helm. And I did doubt my eyes, I was so amazed to see you walking slowly across the deck in your nightgown. I tied off the wheel, but before I got down to you, you fell over the side! There was no time to call for help. I was terrified you’d drown if I didn’t immediately dive in after you.”
“You saved me?” she gasped, her eyes widening with that realization.
He didn’t answer that directly, but merely replied, “I would have thought hitting the water would have woken you, but incredibly, it didn’t. Actually, if you hit the water hard enough, it could have knocked you out. I’ve seen that happen before. But whichever case it was, my worst fear wasn’t realized.”
“What?”
“That you would sink immediately and I wouldn’t be able to find you in the dark depths. But you didn’t. However, by the time I reached you, the ship was already beyond shouting distance. It was quite disconcerting, watching it sail on without us.”
She could imagine. No, she couldn’t. She was still having a hard time believing any of this.
He led her back toward the little bit of shade under the palms. “Sit down. Relax. It’s early morning. Tyrus will have noticed we’re missing by now. They’ll probably find us before noon today.”
She was still too shaken to take his advice. Relax? Was he joking? Another glance around them pointed out just how alone they were on that strip of beach, without a single thing anywhere indicating habitation. And he was entirely too unconcerned over their situation. For all intents and purposes, they appeared to be shipwrecked!
The thought immediately brought back her original fear. “The ship wouldn’t have crashed, would it?” she asked anxiously. “With no one at the wheel and no one else on deck to even notice if it was going to run aground?”
He smiled at her. “No, I was due to be relieved within the hour last night. And she was set on a straight course away from land.”
“Then they’ve been looking for us since the middle of the night?”
“Possibly. Langtry, who was to relieve me, might have thought I left the deck mere minutes before he arrived, though, in which case, as I said, they won’t have found us missing until this morning. Or they could have turned around last night. Either way, it won’t be long. Tyrus knows these waters well. He won’t rest until he’s retraced the ship’s course to find us.”
“Unless he thinks we’ve drowned,” she predicted, her thoughts still frazzled.
“He’ll have his spyglass trained on the water as well.”
“He gave his spyglass to me.”
Boyd was trying not to grin again, she was sure, when he replied lightly, “You don’t really think that was his only spyglass, do you, or that there aren’t a good dozen on the ship?”
She could tell he was just humoring her now. It didn’t annoy her. It actually had the opposite effect since it pointed out that she was probably being silly in her fears. They hadn’t drowned. He’d gotten them on land. They’d be back on the ship before dark. Nothing to worry about.
She sat down in the sand again. She tried to be demure about it, but that was rather hard to do in a nightgown. He joined her, sitting cross-legged next to her. His feet were as bare as hers, though she noticed his shoes drying out in the sun nearby. At least he still had them, though that must have been hard, swimming with shoes on…
“By the way,” he said offhandedly and with a slight grin. “Are you married today—or not?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
ARE YOU MARRIED TODAY, OR NOT?
Katey didn’t answer Boyd immediately and kept her eyes trained on the gentle waves rolling in toward the shore. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer at all. He made the question sound like a joke, and that’s probably how he was seeing it now. Which was her fault. She should have just stuck to her guns.
He’d believed her lie about being married that afternoon in the captain’s cabin, after they kissed. It even looked as if he were going to avoid her again, because of it, when he missed dinner with her that evening.
Perversely, the very next time she saw him, she confessed, yet again, that she wasn’t really married. A big mistake, that, especially when she ended up changing her tune once more before they left Cartagena. The man could disturb her too much at times. He’d claimed he couldn’t think clearly in her presence? She seemed to be having the same problem these days!
“Let me rephrase that,” he said during the long silence. “Why haven’t you married? You’re certainly old enough. In fact, before long you’ll be an old maid.”
She glanced at him, just in time to see him pour sand from his fist on top of her hand, which was already half-buried in the sand, since she was leaning on it. His silly remark, and the sand, set an irresistibly friendly mood.
“An old maid, eh?”
“Absolutely. In this bright light, I can already see a few wrinkles.” She laughed. He grinned. But then he added, “So why haven’t you?”
She shrugged. “I nearly did. Before I left home, I was desperate to have something new happen in my life. And I was asked by every bachelor in Gardener, all three of them. Two were old enough to be my father. The third could have been my grandfather he was so elderly. You can see why I declined.”
“I can’t believe you only had offers from old men.”
“Believe it. Gardener was a dying village. All the young people had moved on.”
“Your parents gave you no other options? Surely they didn’t expect you to find a husband amid such limited prospects?”
“My father died long ago. My mother often talked about an extended trip to one of the big cities along the coast, maybe even New York, but we never got around to it, and then she died, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Katey replied tonelessly, glancing back at the incoming waves.
He dribbled two more fistfuls of sand on her hand before his next question, as if he’d had to work up the nerve to ask it. “So you do plan to marry someday?”
“Yes, maybe even before my trip is over. It would be exciting to marry a Persian prince, don’t you think? If I’m lucky enough to meet one, that is. Or maybe I’ll end up in a harem. I’ve heard of such exotic things, and my marriage will have to be extraordinary, at least very exciting. I won’t settle for less than that since my life before this trip has been nothing but boring.”
“A harem?” he choked out. “You’re joking, right?”
She peeked at him with a grin. He did really look horrified. She felt like patting herself on the back. She hadn’t lost her touch.
“Of course I am.”
He poured more sand on top of her hand before he said, “You wouldn’t find having an affair with a shipowner exciting?”
The image came too swiftly to her mind, of the two of them lying in a bed, limbs entwined, passionately kissing. She blinked it away. At least he hadn’t said marriage, which is what she’d thought he might be leading up to. She didn’t want to sit here all day feeling angry at him for hounding her about something that wasn’t going to happen. The present mood was too cordial. She didn’t want it to end abruptly.
So she continued in the same teasing tone, “I suppose it could be under the right circumstances, like during a terrible storm at sea where the ship might sink, or—well, you get the idea.”
“I’ll try and drum up a storm for you,” he said.
She laughed, delighted with him for playing along. Life was too short for the seriousness that he usually brought to the table.
Of course, his high passion, which he’d mentioned more than once in regard to her, no doubt accounted for some of that seriousness. But she could hardly blame the man for being overly attracted to her when she’d been having the same problem since she’d first met him. She might wish he could control it a little better, but it was nothing to hang him over.