Wild And Willing

Captain Kidd took a few more steps down a pier, his bare feet silent on the wooden planks. “I’m Seth Chandler. Care to tell me why you made it your mission to shriek your way in between me and the woman I planned to steal off with today?”

She hadn’t intended to be quite that bold this afternoon. But once she’d gotten a good view of Seth, she’d grown even more committed to her plan.

“Were you really going for a woman twice your age?” Did that sound too rude? “I mean, she had great legs and all, but—”

Seth set her on her feet with a thud at the end of the pier. “Don’t sweat it. Turns out Granny had her eye on another pirate anyway. Just before we left I saw her lock lips with our Krewe leader.”

“Good.” The knowledge soothed her somewhat as she stared down at a sleek white cabin cruiser tethered to the dock. “I’d hate to think I spoiled a rendezvous for you two.”

“You didn’t.” He stepped off the pier and into the sleek boat. “But that doesn’t answer my question.” He held out his hand to draw her aboard. “Why me?”

His question barely registered in her brain. Some last vestige of her reasonable self chose that moment to rear its head and ask her what the hell she was thinking to hop into a speedboat with a knife-wielding pirate she didn’t know from Adam.

Seth released a frustrated sigh and gestured to the dock behind her. “Unless you want to be tonight’s feature story, I suggest you hightail it into the boat.”

Mia chanced a glance over her shoulder and discovered a small fleet of journalists headed their way. Members of the media jogged down the sidewalk toward the wooden pier, dragging cameras and microphones along with them.

The sight made Mia’s decision for her. She leaped in the boat with both feet. “A cruise on the Bay sounds very inviting.”

Seth popped switches at the helm and fired the engine. “A pleasure cruise.” He flashed her a grin that was pure pirate. His half-naked body brushed against hers as he crossed the deck to untie the boat. “I can’t think of a better way to spend the day.”

Mia urged him to hurry, even as she wondered what she was getting herself into. She had a can of mace in her purse, however, and a crowd of people had seen them leave together. The guy would have to know he didn’t stand a chance of getting away with anything. Besides, she’d long-ago developed the ability to size up a man given the astonishing number of males her mother brought around. And Mia sensed a reassuring nobility in her bare-chested brigand.

Seth untethered them and slid back into his seat on the bridge, efficiently maneuvering out of the docking area with one hand, and peeling off his eye patch with the other.

Mia peered back toward land as they pulled away, but only until she noticed the lens of the television camera trained on them. Trying not to panic, she flung herself onto the bench seat just behind the steering wheel.

And right next to Seth. The man who’d said he was ready for a pleasure cruise.

Now things were starting to get interesting.

Mia straightened the flower in her hair, hoping she hadn’t forgotten how to flirt. She’d done so successfully in college—before her family had nearly run the tourist shop into the ground and her mother had single-handedly given Grandpa an ulcer.

Once Mia returned to Twin Palms from her art program at the University of Miami, she’d forgotten all about dating. Too many responsibilities to worry about as she’d bailed Grandma and Grandpa out of near bankruptcy. Then, after she’d stabilized their finances—barely—and was ready to start seeing people again, she quickly realized her grandparents worried themselves sick any time she went out with anyone but the boy next door.

And as upstanding and polite as Frankie the marina manager might be, Mia had no interest in him.

Thus went her social life. Until now.

“You really think it’s going to be a pleasure cruise?” Mia prompted, not caring if her fishing for reassurance was blatantly obvious. “Can I take that to mean you’ve sort of resigned yourself to me?”

Seth kicked the engines into a higher gear as they moved away from the flotilla and out of the main channels of traffic. Everyone in Tampa wanted to be at the festival but them.

“Depends.” He risked a glimpse at her now that the waterway had cleared out. “Are you ever going to answer my question?”

Had he asked her a question? Mia found it difficult to remember as he pinned her with dark eyes. Without the eye patch, she got the full impact of his intent gaze.

Her temperature climbed a few notches.

“What question?”

He shook his head and checked the channel, easing the boat around a barrier island toward open water. “What gives with the theatrics today? Why make a big deal out of planting yourself in my path if we don’t even know one another?”

“Oh, that question.” Mia created and discarded several answers before settling on the truth. “I’m looking for adventure. I thought being carried off by a pirate fit the bill quite nicely.”

She waited, worried. Would he kick her off the boat now that she’d admitted to scheming? Launch into an offended diatribe about roping him into her plot?

As they left the last of marine congestion behind them, Seth turned up the engines and the boat roared to full speed. Determined not to let her adventure end yet as the wind and water sprayed her face, Mia thought she could at least make a stab at enticing him, let him see her ideas for fun and excitement might be worth pursuing after all.

The scent of the bay, a pungent blend of fish and boat fuel, drifted through the air. The rumble of the engine and splash of water drowned out any sounds around them, insulating their world with white noise.

“I’m not really Blackbeard, you know,” Seth warned her, steering the cruiser into an occasional wave so that the spray kicked back all the more. “You’re not going to find much adventure with me.”

Says you.

Mia rose up on her feet, bracing herself on the broad band of windshield around the helm. She tipped her face into the spray and let the latest white-cap douse her.

Cool water sluiced over her, awakening her senses even though it barely diminished the warmth she experienced any time she so much as glanced at Seth.

All sense of caution washed away, Mia wrung out the water in her skirt as she stared down at him.

“Whoever you are, Seth Chandler, you’re all the excitement a girl could want on a pleasure cruise.”

WATER, WATER everywhere and not a frigging drop to drink.

Seth’s mouth had never been so parched as he tracked rivulets of H

0 streaming down Mia Quentin’s exposed thigh. She tugged at the soggy floral fabric tied around her hips, revealing more and more tanned leg as she twisted the hem to squeeze out excess water.

He struggled to think, to edge words past his dry lips. “You really don’t know who I am.”

She shrugged, a provocative move on a woman bending forward. Seth caught a glimpse of red lace in the vee of her black silk blouse.

“Seth Chandler the pirate who says he’s not really a pirate. What more is there to know?” She straightened, allowing the damp, filmy skirt to fall back against her thighs.

Seth dragged his eyes up from a slow cataloguing of the way the fabric molded to her legs. Somewhere in the background of his lust-drenched thoughts, his brain screamed at him to pay attention to what she was saying.

“I guess there isn’t much more to know.”

“You work for Gulf Coast Bank?” She moved to the seat beside him, casually taking in the controls on the bridge.

He tensed. Did he work for the bank? Hell, Chandler Enterprises owned the bank, among other things. Maybe she knew who he was better than she let on.

She gestured to his pirate garb when he said nothing. “I mean, they were the corporate sponsors of Gasparilla, so I assume you work for them?”

Seth gauged her expression calling upon the ability to read people that had always served him well in business. He saw nothing but openness and honesty in Mia’s face. Relaxing, he assured himself she had no clue about his real identity—an intriguing aspect of Mia Quentin. Every woman Seth had dated in the past knew his net worth to the penny. A circumstance that could occasionally make a guy wonder if he was being dated for himself or his checkbook.

But Mia had wanted him. Sure, she’d picked him out because of an eye patch. But she was still here now, flashing glimpses of killer thigh, driving him to the edge of sanity along with the constant niggling reminder that he hadn’t had sex in four months.