Mystery in the Moonlight (16 page)

Gazing at Lars’s serious expression, Caitlin stopped herself from blurting out a few heated remarks by reminding herself that he was balmy. Even so, she patiently tried to explain. “I haven’t been carrying on with the captain, if that’s what you’re hinting at. And I never was in with the wrong crowd, either.”

“Hint, sprint, a chocolate mint…” the sail maker singsonged as he rose to fold up the huge sail. “I haven’t had any chocolate in weeks. I wonder if de Silva brought some on board.” Just when Caitlin thought the old man had forgotten about her, he said, “Don’t take offense at any of my unwanted advice, missy. What you do is your business.”

But as she wandered about the ship that afternoon, Caitlin found herself brooding about Lars’s assumptions. Too free with her favors! In with the wrong crowd! She couldn’t help feeling insulted and angry. Stopping by the parrot’s cage to clean it, Caitlin stopped the bird’s threatened charge with a menacing snarl.

“Yikes! We’re being attacked!” screamed the macaw, backing away.

“Shut up, you fiendish fowl,” snapped Caitlin.

Irritably she thought about Lars’s advice again. In with the wrong crowd! Did anyone else on this ship believe she’d been friends with those creeps who’d forced her onto Moreau’s cruiser? Later, did they think she’d been carrying on with Bryce? Couldn’t they tell that the captain had started all the arguments, threatened Caitlin, wrestled her to the deck, and locked her in his cabin? Those incidents hadn’t been
her
fault! Besides, why should anyone care? The
Sea Devil’s
crew had to be a pretty fast crowd themselves, being criminals and all.

Thinking about Perry and Thomas, as well as Raymond de Silva, however, Caitlin had a difficult time placing those men in the same category with the group who’d first abducted her from Hibiscus Island. At first suspecting that some of Bryce’s crew had been shanghaied, she now wondered if the men had needed money desperately and, in seeking it, had fallen in with the wrong crowd themselves.

Unfortunately, whatever their reasons, the men were sure to end up in prison someday. Forgetting about her own predicament for the moment, Caitlin worried about the fate of her companions. Wasn’t there something she could do?

A few minutes later, leaving the parrot’s cage for the front deck, she saw Thomas coiling rope near the prow. Another deckhand, Carlos, a young Hispanic who’d always been friendly and polite toward her, was sitting on the rail nearby.

“I hope I get to see my family in a few weeks,” Carlos was telling Thomas. “You know my sister is expecting another baby—this will be the fourth kid for her, and her husband doesn’t even have a job. They’re all living with my mother.”

“I know how you feel, mon,” replied Thomas. “Family problems can be a worry.”

Her speculations had been right. Poor Carlos obviously needed money for his family. Approaching the two men, smiling as they nodded to her, Caitlin wondered if she should give them her honest opinion, some caring advice. She decided to try. “I may be out of line, Carlos, but there are far less dangerous ways to make money than sailing on the
Sea Devil
, you know.”

The young man smiled. “Oh, I’m not afraid I’ll drown.”

“No, but you ought to be afraid of going to jail.”

Carlos raised his brows and chuckled self-consciously.

“It’s not really funny, is it?” asked Caitlin. “Don’t you need money for your family? Did Bryce Winslow make a lot of promises in order to talk you into joining his crew?” She turned to Thomas. “I know you’re both decent men. You ought to think about finding other jobs.”

“We’ll be all right, miss. Don’t you worry,” Thomas said reassuringly.

“But I might be able to help you. I’m a professional counselor, back in North Carolina,” Caitlin stated in all seriousness. “I help college students find jobs all the time. I know the money is tempting, but piracy is punishable under every country’s laws.”

Standing near the door of the chart house, Bryce peered around the edge of the structure and could hardly believe his ears. Caitlin was lecturing to a couple of his crewmen, advising them to quit their jobs with him on the
Sea Devil.
Was she trying to pull some kind of trick? At least the men didn’t appear to believe her. Thomas was grinning from ear to ear, looking like he would break out laughing any minute.

“We’ll keep your kind offer in mind,” Bryce heard Carlos tell Caitlin. His face red, the young man seemed highly chagrined.

Bryce didn’t wait to hear any more. Feeling chagrined himself, he ducked back into the chart house. Wasn’t he already worried enough, involving his men in these kind of activities? Did Caitlin have to draw attention to the fact, go out of her way to warn his crew, and make him feel even worse?

Damn and double damn! He cursed the day he’d brought the woman aboard the
Sea Devil
. Whether she was crazy or not, his men seemed unable to resist her friendly charm. Remembering her seductive blue glances when he’d treated her yesterday, Bryce realized that he’d been hard-pressed to resist Caitlin’s charm, too, though what she appeared to be offering then had been more personal than a warm smile.

How long would it be before he could get rid of her?

Bryce checked his watch. He was set to rendezvous with Ralph in less than twenty-four hours. And surely Moreau would be willing to make fast and lucrative arrangements to get his woman back.

Moreau’s woman. Somehow the title was becoming more and more difficult to fasten on the gutsy, disarming young woman. Could Bryce be mistaken about Caitlin? Or did he just want to be wrong? Feeling decidedly uncomfortable about the entire situation, he went over the charts with Anselm, who’d plotted their course for that night.

Chapter Eight

Standing at the prow of the black ship, Caitlin stared out into the far reaches of the night. Content in her solitude, she zipped up her thin jacket and lifted her face into the wind, which whipped and tangled her hair. The rush of fresh sea air provided a pleasant sensation, as did the mist of salty foam that covered her with increasing vigor as the dark-sailed ship surged forward relentlessly, heedless of the ocean’s rising swells. The whole world seemed to stretch out before her, going on and on, right through and beyond the dark void in the distance.

She didn’t know where the
Sea Devil
was headed, and she didn’t exactly care.

At the moment she was even enjoying herself. And it would be so much easier to be agreeable rather than fight Bryce every step of the way. He wasn’t going to let her go until he was ready, so why not pretend that she was having a delightful adventure?

Captain Bryce Winslow. The name rolled through her thoughts softly. There were times when he didn’t seem like an uncouth criminal at all. Like the afternoon before, when he’d taken care of her jellyfish stings. She’d seen a different man in him then. One who could be compassionate and gentle and very, very appealing. After catching him sneaking a peak, she was sure he’d found her appealing, too, in spite of the way he’d put her off. Perhaps he didn’t want to be attracted to her any more than she wanted to be attracted to him.

Caitlin sighed. The romantic atmosphere of the West Indies was really getting to her. To think that she was trying to find ways to whitewash Bryce and his illegal activities just because she was attracted to the man! Even though he wasn’t a murderer, it didn’t change the fact that he
was
a thief. If she didn’t watch out, she’d have to start counseling herself instead of offering her professional services to Bryce’s men.

Leaning on the rail, Caitlin tried to pinpoint the exact time when her situation had changed from frightening to romantic, but in the end she really couldn’t say. The fact that she no longer felt the least bit seasick helped. And the jellyfish stings had all but faded. Her sunburn was turning into tan, except for the raw spot on the tip of her nose, and she’d reopened one of the rope burns on her hand by hoisting another sail, but Caitlin merely thought of the slight irritations as tangible affirmations of the fact that she was alive. More alive, actually, than she’d been in years, perhaps since her tomboy youth.

Thoughts of her rough-and-tumble childhood made Caitlin smile. Undoubtedly her imagined adventures had prepared her for this real one. She’d merely forgotten what it was like to be so active. Hoisting sails, swabbing decks, and cleaning fish were hardly part of her job description as a university counselor, after all.

And her professional position didn’t offer her experiences that were guaranteed to create an ache of longing in her when they were over: watching dolphins at play; swimming through coral-laden waters alive with colorful, albeit sometimes dangerous, marine life; viewing spectacular sunrises and sunsets; sailing under star-laden night skies.

Caitlin hoped that going back to her job at the university wouldn’t be too traumatic. She was already dreading that she’d find it confining, perhaps even a little boring. But then she’d always viewed being a student counselor as a means to get away from her childhood environment and had never made any pretenses about loving the career she’d chosen. Instead she’d been content.

And there was nothing wrong with being content, she assured herself, thinking of how much better off she was than her parents had been at her age.

Caitlin couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t hated the Gary, Indiana, steel mills that had drained away her father’s youth so that he’d become an old man while he was still in the prime of his life; had made her mother live in fear that some horrible accident would take him away from his family.

Both her parents had wanted better for their children, but neither Jarvis nor Hugh had been interested in educating themselves out of their blue-collar lifestyle. And so, after graduating from high school, they’d both gone to work for one of the new oil refineries, quickly marrying and starting families of their own.

It had been Caitlin who’d chosen to break the cycle—to further her education, first at a community college, then at a state university. She’d preferred the different kind of atmosphere she’d found at school enough to want to stay in it. She also happened to enjoy working with people. And thus she’d chosen her career.

Her mother had cried at her graduation. Her father had cried when she’d received the job offer that would take her half a continent away from them. But both parents had been happy for her. Could she ever tell them what she had wasn’t enough to make her happy? That she was positive there was something more waiting for her just over the horizon?

They’d probably tell her she needed a husband and family to make her complete, as they had numerous times before. Perhaps not having her own family was part of it, but Caitlin knew that the explanation for her feelings of discontent wasn’t that simple. She hadn’t even been able to face the fact that there was something essential missing from her life until she’d come to the West Indies.

Caitlin smiled ruefully. Perhaps she was expecting too much. Perhaps Babs was right: she was far too fanciful and shouldn’t judge real life by a movie or a book.

But was what she was experiencing right now real? Caitlin asked herself, listening to the lonely sounds of a harmonica coming from below. In a way it wasn’t. It was almost as though she were living out one of the romantic tales she’d read at some time in her life. Soon she’d be back at the university, and the West Indies would be only a memory.

Aware of the fact that her adventure wouldn’t last forever, knowing that Bryce would eventually let her go, Caitlin decided to make the most of the time she had left. She wanted to experience life on the high seas to its fullest, she thought, looking behind her across the almost deserted deck to the wheel where Perry was keeping the ship on course.

Heedless of the fact that Bryce was on watch, she made her way back to the helmsman, her shoeless feet naturally conforming to and gripping the wooden surface of the deck, the muscles of her bare legs automatically tensing and flexing with the ship’s every movement. The faint glow from the lighted magnetic compass in front of the spoked wooden wheel softly illuminated the middle-aged black man who gave her a welcoming smile as she drew near.

“Evening, miss. How are you feeling tonight?”

“Wonderful, Perry.”

“Good. The crew’s been worried about you.”

“About my being seasick?”

“That too,” he said enigmatically.

Touched that the men cared about her health, Caitlin smiled and shrugged, even as she searched the darkened area for Bryce’s tall form. He was nowhere to be seen. “I’m cured of my mal de mer. That herbal tea of Lars’s works like magic.”

“Well, you’d better keep drinking it, miss,” the islander instructed softly. “We may be in for a squall sometime tomorrow when we get farther south.”

Glancing up at the clear sky, Caitlin found that hard to believe. And yet, the man had been a sailor long enough to know the signs of impending rain. “Have you ridden out many storms, Perry?”

“A few. But don’t worry none. This ship is as seaworthy as they come. Besides, Captain Winslow will find us a hurricane hole.”

“Hurricane?” Caitlin repeated, now suspecting that the man was teasing her. “It’s too early for hurricane season, isn’t it?”

“True enough. But any storm can be dangerous out at sea. The captain’s a good man. He’d never take any chances with our safety.” Again he sounded enigmatic when he added, “Unless he had a really good reason.”