Her Passionate Pirate Page 9

  She was saved a response by the sound of Liza’s earsplitting wail and Molly’s yelling, “Aunt Cora, Aunt Cora! Come quick!”

  After a startled instant she broke away from Rafael. With him hard on her heels, Cora mounted the stairs two at a time. From the sound of Liza’s sobs, she was certain the child had mortally wounded herself. She followed the noise to the bedroom at the end of the hall. Kaitlin stood near the door, her expression wary, while Molly restrained a screaming Liza. Cora stopped so abruptly that Rafael slammed into her. She would have fallen had he failed to catch her.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  At the same instant Cora asked, “Liza, are you all right?” She raced across the room to examine the child. No signs of blood, she noted as she ran her hands up and down the shaking girl’s limbs. “Are you hurt?”

  Liza shook her head and tried to suck in a breath between sobs. Molly came to her aid. “It’s Benedict Bunny. He fell down the hole.”

  In the aftermath of her adrenaline rush, Cora now felt boneless. “Benedict Bunny,” she repeated.

  Liza pointed to a gaping crater in the plaster wall. “He felled down the hole. You have to get him out. You have to.”

  Cora shuddered as reason returned. She glanced at Kaitlin, who seemed to be the calmest of the bunch. “What are you three doing in here? I keep this door locked.”

  Kaitlin’s expression turned wary. “It’s not my fault. I heard Liza screaming.”

  Rafael had entered the room and gone to examine the damaged wall. The hole was about three feet off the floor, and approximately two feet square. Cora had examined the opening when she’d purchased the house and again when she was searching for the rest of Abigail’s diaries. It appeared to be the remains of a shaft—perhaps a refuse chute—that had been filled and closed over when future innovations made its purpose obsolete. “This is deep,” he said over his shoulder. “How did it get here?”

  Cora wiped at Liza’s tears with her palm. “When I bought the house, it was already in disrepair. I’ve been working on it for years, and I just haven’t gotten this far yet. Since there’s so much water damage, I always keep the door locked.” She looked at Molly. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  Molly’s lips started to tremble. “We just wanted to know what was in here,” she said.

  “How did you get the key?” Cora pressed.

  Molly bit her lower lip. “I found it.” Cora waited. “In your desk drawer,” Molly continued.

  “You took it from my desk, Mol?”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Cora. I am. I just wanted to know what was in here.”

  Liza pulled away from Cora and ran across the uneven floorboards to Rafael. “Benedict Bunny,” she said. “I want Benedict Bunny.”

  Rafael leaned into the cracked wall for a close look. “I don’t see him.”

  “He’s in there. I dropped him.”

  Cora decided she didn’t even want the harrowing details of how Liza had come to drop Benedict Bunny into a hole that was almost higher than she was tall. The image of her tumbling into the cracked plaster made her feel queasy.

  Liza tugged on Rafael’s jeans. “Can you get him out?” Her small face mirrored her anguish.

  He gave her a reassuring wink. “Aye, missy,” he said in a pirate’s brogue. “We pirates pride ourselves on recovering lost treasure.”

  At his teasing, Liza’s expression turned slightly hopeful. “Really?”

  “Really,” he assured her in a normal voice. He looked at Cora again. “Do you have a flashlight?”

  Kaitlin volunteered. “There’s one in the kitchen. I’ll get it.” She raced out of the room.

  Rafael stuck his arm into the hole and gingerly searched the dark cavern. “I’ll need a coat hanger, too,” he said. “I think I can just touch him with my fingertips.

  Molly eagerly offered, “I have one in my room. I’ll be right back.”

  Cora walked over to the wall and scooped Liza into her arms. “It’s all right, sweetie,” she assured her. “We’ll get him out.”

  Liza buried her tear-streaked face in Cora’s neck. “I’m sorry, Aunt Cora. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Kaitlin and Molly returned with the requested items. The room had the tense, silent feel of an operating room as Rafael peered down the hole with the flashlight.

  “Is he downed there?” Liza asked, her voice wobbling. “Can you see him?”

  “Yes,” Rafael told her. “He’s right where I thought he was.”

  “Can I see?” Molly asked.

  Cora shook her head. “That wall could be dangerous, Mol. I don’t want you to get hurt if the plaster gives way.”

  Rafael nodded as he reached for the coat hanger. “Good advice. And next time—” he gave Molly a gentle look “—maybe you’ll listen to your aunt when she tells you to stay away from certain things.”

  Looking sheepish, Molly nodded. With a few deft twists of his wrist, Rafael molded the coat hanger into a long hook. “The difference between men and animals,” he told Cora with a wry smile. “The ability to make tools from coat hangers.”

  She chuckled. “Another scientific mystery solved.”

  Using the coat hanger to extend his reach, he slid his arm back into the hole and gingerly maneuvered the hook. After several tense seconds he began to withdraw from the hole. Hanging by his ears on the end of the hanger was a dusty but otherwise whole Benedict Bunny.

  Liza gave a shriek of joy when the rabbit appeared. “You got him!”

  Molly breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Whew.”

  Rafael eased the toy off the hook and handed it to Liza. “Here you go, sweat pea. He’s a little dirty, but I think he’ll make it.”

  Liza clutched the stuffed toy to her chest like a cherished friend and beamed at Rafael. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes filled with adoration. Then, in a dramatic voice that sounded so much like her mother that Cora almost laughed, the child added, “I would have just died if he’d been gonned forever.”

  Chapter Five

  Dearest,

  My days seem to grow longer, and the nights, longer still. Though I fear you’ll think me indelicate for saying so—I have a deep hunger for your presence. I wish so that Father could understand the man you truly are. Had he seen your heart, as I have, I know he would love you just as much.

  Lovingly,

  Abigail

  9 March 1861

  From the corner of his eye, Rafael watched Cora fidget. After he’d played hero for the day and retrieved Benedict Bunny, Cora had hurried the girls to their rooms to change. The five of them had driven down the coast to Fort Fisher, where Cora was boring her nieces almost to death with Civil War history. Hell, he even liked Civil War history, and he was bored. Twenty minutes ago he’d tuned out her informative lecture and focused on the woman. Everything about her, from the way her lips moved to the way she nervously rubbed her fingers together when she was agitated, enchanted him. She was in constant motion, he had noticed, like the surface waters of a volcanic crater. The energy and fire that lay just beneath her smooth surface caused tiny eruptions, waiting, brewing, until the moment of release.

  The thought made his groin tighten.

  Yesterday, when she’d stood in the shade of the tree and looked at him with that delicately probing expression, he’d admitted to himself that he wanted her so much that the hunger was clawing at him. His imagination told him that this was exactly what it must have been like for del Flores the first time he met Abigail. There was something heady, something arousing, something addictive about the idea that he could unleash feelings in her that no other man had.

  He had no idea why he was so certain of her inexperience.

  The word made him frown. It wasn’t inexperience, precisely. Cora Prescott was a warm, intelligent, vibrant woman, who’d had, no doubt, her share of lovers. But his gut told him that no one had ever truly tapped the passion buried within her. She was, he mused poetically, like a rare i
nstrument: capable of breathtaking music when handled with skill and finesse. And he desperately wanted to free her.

  Even the idea that she’d been waiting for him was a powerful aphrodisiac. As he watched her now, he took careful note of her movements, wanting to burn on his brain all the things that made her so alluring. Unable to sleep last night, he’d lain awake and probed his conscience, hoping the exercise would calm his ardor.

  And if he wasn’t such a cad, he thought ruefully, it should have. Cora was the kind of woman who deserved much more than he could offer. Like Abigail Conrad, she would give her heart without strings or reservations or fear.

  And like del Flores, he would probably break it. He could give her many things. Including incredible sex. That might be arrogant, but he had no doubts about it at all. He’d been with enough women to know exactly how they responded to him. And having kissed Cora, he could only imagine what it would be like when he coaxed that rapturous look onto her expressive face.

  She’d humble him in that moment.

  He knew that.

  The first time she looked at him in the height of her climax, her skin would be flushed, her eyes would be feverish and bright, and the impact would bring him to his figurative knees. And until the emotion ran its course—not a foreseeable circumstance with her scent still lingering in his nostrils and the imprint of her fingers on his nape—she’d own him.

  But experience told him that once the power faded, once the fire was released and the ardor cooled, she would realize that he was not the kind of man a woman built forevers on. The headiness of it would pass. And before the feeling grew stale, before he looked at her one day and saw disappointment in her eyes, he’d leave.

  Like del Flores had left Abigail. He’d leave because he didn’t have the courage to see that expression on her face.

  And Cora would be better off because he’d left her. A bitter voice reminded him that she’d be better off if he never touched her at all, but he wasn’t decent enough to heed it. Soon, too soon, she’d know it, too.

  He dragged his attention from the dismal thought to watch Liza, who was shifting from one foot to the other as her gaze wandered around the stone interior of the fort’s history center. Looking for an escape route, no doubt. Cora launched into an explanation of the complexities of nineteenth-century weaponry, and Rafael decided it was past time he took matters into his own hands.

  He approached Cora from behind and slid an arm around her waist, effectively terminating her lecture on maritime strategy. She gave him a sharp look as she tried to worm away from his grasp. “What are you doing?”

  He held fast. “It’s summertime, Professor. Time to let class out.”

  She glared at him. “I thought that we may as well include the fort in our trip today since—”

  “Since there’s a law against fun without fetter?” Her lips turned into a delicious frown—one that had him aching to kiss her again. He laughed softly. “Come on, Cora. Lighten up.”

  Something flared in her gaze. It looked an awful lot like hurt, and he watched it for a fleeting second until it disappeared behind her usual resolve. She glanced at the girls. “You’re bored, aren’t you.”

  Molly reached for Cora’s hand. “Can we go to the beach now?”

  “I wanna swim,” Liza announced while Molly nodded vigorously.

  Cora gave up with a resigned sigh. “When I was your age, I liked this stuff.”

  Rafael pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll let you finish the lecture tonight after they’re in bed.”

  She pushed his hand from her waist with an unsubtle shove and stepped away from him. “Okay.” She handed Kaitlin the oversize tote bag she had hanging on her shoulder. “Your swimsuits are in here. There’s a changing area down the path at the edge of the beach. Last one ready to get in the water has to do dishes after dinner tonight.”

  With a collective squeal of delight, the girls took off.

  “Wait for us before you get wet,” Rafael called after them.

  “We will,” Kaitlin said.

  The three girls crowded through the swinging door. He and Cora followed at a more leisurely pace. “Bring your suit?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Are you kidding? With my complexion, I burn sitting in the shade. If I sat on the beach, you’d have to soak me in ice for the rest of the night.”

  Not, he admitted, an entirely bad idea. He slid his hands into his jean pockets to keep from touching her again. Easy, he warned himself. He needed to take things easy.

  They walked in comfortable silence toward the changing area. Rafael stayed a half step behind her so he could watch the sway of her hips, neatly outlined in khaki shorts. She looked soft, and subtle—not at all his usual type. Yet he was rapidly finding that no matter what she wore, she managed to elicit the familiar tug at his gut. When he’d first met her, she’d worn her professorial uniform—a tailored skirt and blouse that he’d found irresistibly sexy. Yesterday’s press conference had found her in a no-nonsense business suit. The slit in the back of the skirt had exposed just enough shapely leg to tantalize him. He’d decided, then, that Cora had a knack for driving him to new heights of frustration.

  Then there was this morning. She’d walked into her kitchen and sent him straight to the moon. She’d looked fresh and inviting. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail. All day, he’d wanted to run his fingers through that thick shank of strawberry-blond hair. It irrationally irritated him that she managed to look so wickedly tempting clad in shorts and a simple sleeveless shirt that should have looked plain, but somehow didn’t—probably, he decided as he studied it now, because the way it outlined her breasts fell so easily on the eye.

  He was glad he’d had the foresight to hire a couple of college kids to move his few suitcases from his hotel to Cora’s house today. Though he traveled light—a lesson learned after years on ocean expeditions—he still didn’t want to be hustling the luggage tonight after the girls were asleep. He had other plans.

  “I don’t think it will,” he heard Cora say in a distant part of his brain. “Do you?”

  Rafael looked at her blankly as he realized with some chagrin that he’d been concentrating so hard on studying her, he’d failed to listen to her. If she had the first clue what he was thinking, she’d slug him. “I’m sorry?” he said.

  She frowned. “Have you been listening to a word I said?”

  “No,” he confessed. There were times when a little raw honesty went a lot farther than finesse.

  Surprise registered on her face. “Oh. I was talking about the chance of rain this afternoon, but I suppose I bore you, too. I didn’t mean—”

  Rafael interrupted her by placing his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not bored.” I’m turned on. “I’m…preoccupied.”

  She looked at him warily. “Are you coming on to me?”

  That made him smile. “I’m trying.”

  “We’re in public,” she reminded him.

  “I know.” He stepped closer. “Believe me, I know.”

  “Rafael.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “I told you this morning—”

  “You don’t think this is a good idea. Neither do I,” he admitted.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Surrendering. Because I don’t want to fight it.”

  Her breathing had quickened and, behind her glasses, her eyes looked slightly out of focus. “Not here,” she said, her voice so soft he barely heard it. “Not now.”

  Laughter and the ring of childish voices relentlessly reminded him of their audience. He took a slow step backward. “Soon, Cora.” When she trembled, he nodded. “Very, very soon.”

  THE REST OF THE DAY passed in relative calm. The girls played in the water and the sand until their hair was salty, their skin was wrinkled and their cheeks flushed from the heat. Cora sat beneath a beach umbrella watching while Rafael entertained them. And, she thought dryly as she noted the admiring glances thrown his
way, he managed to entertain the rest of the women on the beach merely by looking like some Greek god sporting black swim trunks and an eye patch.

  Occasionally someone recognized him and stopped to talk. He signed a few autographs, but seemed to take the attention in stride. Even when the attention-giver appeared far more interested in his physique than his research.

  Not that Cora blamed them. His skin was deliciously bronzed from the Mediterranean sun, and his flat, muscled belly and chest were to die for. Heretofore, she could not remember a time when simply staring at a man’s body had brought such undiluted pleasure, but then, she also couldn’t remember a time when she had such a nice body to stare at.

  As for her nieces, they also seemed to find the man fascinating. Cora had to suppress a twinge of envy as she realized how easily he related to them—and they to him. Rafael bought them hot dogs and snow cones for lunch. When Molly spilled hers on her suit, he laughed good-naturedly and surrendered his own. A few moments in the water, he’d promised, would take care of the stain. He seemed to have formed an instant bond with her nieces, one that she’d very much wanted since their arrival and had somehow been unable to build.

  The notion, when she dwelled on it, depressed her. Determinedly she buried her thoughts in the novel she’d brought and tuned out the shrieks and giggles from the beach. By the time the sun began to set, the girls had the look of utter, but pleasant exhaustion that followed a day of high-spirited play. Rafael helped her bundle the girls into the back seat, and almost the moment she pulled out of the parking lot, the three of them were sleeping peacefully. By unspoken agreement, Cora and Rafael made the trip home in silence.

  They carried the girls upstairs. He’d left her alone and Cora managed to keep the girls awake long enough for a quick shower. She had them tucked in and sleeping fifteen minutes after they walked in the door.

  Taking a deep breath, she used the brief moment of solitude to lean against the wall outside Kaitlin’s room. Today it had felt more like family and less like tactical warfare. And she had Rafael to thank. Rafael, who even now sat in her living room, waiting for her. Waiting with that heated look in his eye and that sensual expression on his full mouth.