Dangerous Waters

Rogan somehow managed to control his breathing and his blood pressure whenever he caught sight of Camille’s curvy feminine behind stretching the fabric of her shorts as she bent to sift through the jumble on the floor, or when he couldn’t help noticing how pretty and perky her breasts were as she reached to replace a book on a railed shelf.

When the daylight in the cabin began to dim, Rogan glanced at his watch. “Anyone hungry?” he asked.

Granger straightened from his task of mopping the galley floor. “Now you mention it…”

Rogan pulled off his sweat-dampened shirt and wiped his forehead with it, leaving a streak of something that might have been cocoa across the tanned skin. Camille dragged her gaze away as he lowered the shirt. “Shall we call it a day,” he suggested, “and go back to the hotel?”

Camille said, “Couldn’t we finish tonight?” The main cabin was no longer strewn with foodstuffs, and the men had dealt with the gear and miscellaneous sacks and boxes that had cluttered the hold in the bow. Although the two sleeping cabins tucked into the sides and the larger one at the stern had been vandalised, they weren’t as bad.

“Sure,” Rogan acquiesced, “but I need to eat.”

Granger surveyed his brother, then himself, and finally Camille. The spilled condiments mixed with sauces, spreads and the water and detergent they’d used had left them all the worse for wear. “No decent establishment would have us,” he deduced. “We’ll have to buy hamburgers or something.”

“You volunteering?” Rogan asked. “I’ll have a double burger with egg and bacon, and plenty of fries. And a couple of doughnuts.”

With good grace Granger accepted the request and turned to Camille, who asked for a cheeseburger. “You’d better start the generator,” he advised Rogan, “so we can have some light.” Then, throwing his brother a quizzical glance, he ascended to the deck.

Camille realized she and Rogan were alone. The cabin seemed small and increasingly dark, and he was gazing at her rather disconcertingly.

She put a hand to her hair, smoothing several strands that had escaped from their elastic band to fall stickily across her eyes. Pulling the hair tie off, she gathered up the ponytail again and secured it.

Rogan’s eyes glazed. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll get that generator fired up.”

He disappeared, and a few minutes later she heard and felt the throb of an engine. A light flickered on, and soon afterward Rogan came back.

Camille was carefully wiping down an old copy of Dumas’s Les Trois Mousquetaires, handsomely bound in tooled leather. She glanced up. “Your father read The Three Musketeers in French?”

“He was fluent in French,” Rogan said. “And a few other languages, including Pidgin.” He nodded at the book in her hands. “I struggled through that when I was a kid.”

“You did?”

“I’d already read it in English—but it was a challenge.”

Camille could picture him welcoming physical challenges; it hadn’t occurred to her he might enjoy intellectual ones.

She placed the book with others on a shelf. A lot of them seemed to be about disasters at sea. “You must have seen more of your father than I did of mine.”

“He dropped by when he was in port—a couple of times a year—and took us sailing along the coast when we were old enough. My mother wouldn’t let him go out of sight of the land when we were on board.” Rogan laughed. “I stowed away once. I was fourteen, and when the old man found me he went ballistic. Turned right round and brought me back. He said if I ever did that to my mother again he’d flay the hide right off my backside.”

Camille looked at him curiously. “Didn’t she mind that he spent so much time away from her?”

“I guess she did. She went with him one time, before she had Granger and me, but she got so seasick they had to airlift her off before Dad could get her back to shore, because she was dangerously dehydrated. After that she couldn’t face a boat again. But Dad lived for the sea. On land he was a fish out of water. I don’t think she ever tried to change him.”

“Is she…?”

“She died,” Rogan said abruptly. “When I was nineteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked down at the books still piled on the floor, waiting to be cleaned and replaced.

Camille picked up a copy of Treasure Island. “I suppose you devoured this?”

“You bet. And this.” He lifted another book and wiped the cover with his hand. “Coasts of Treachery by Eugene Grayland. Great yarns, full of mayhem and murder.” Meeting her level look, he added hastily, “I mean, very well written. Educational,” he told her. “You should read it.”

“I have.” She read every New Zealand history book she could get her hands on—those aimed at a general audience as well as weighty, heavily referenced tomes and professional journals. “I’m a history lecturer.”

“Is that right? Where?”

His eyes were brilliant with interest and, Camille saw with satisfaction, respect. “At Rusden.” It was a small campus in the lower half of the North Island, a satellite of one of the larger universities.

She couldn’t help noticing again what an unusual blue his eyes were, like the inner curve of an incoming breaker at certain blue-water beaches. And his mouth was quite beautiful in a masculine way, the curves well-defined, his lips firm but not thin. Catching a glimpse of white, straight teeth, she felt her blood thicken. Her own mouth softened and parted infinitesimally.

Disturbed by a quick heat that made her legs weaken, Camille turned back to the task in hand. She thought Rogan moved closer, her skin signaling a simmering awareness.

To break the silence she said randomly, “All these books about shipwrecks…not exactly comfort reading for a sailor.”

Rogan gave a quiet huffle of laughter. “Dad had a dream that he’d find a sunken treasure one day.”

“I guess my father shared it.”

They’d been cut from the same cloth. Both had neglected their families to drift about the Pacific, picking up cargoes and passengers, diving for pearls or beche de mer occasionally, working onshore only when necessary. And in between, hunting for an elusive, legendary prize.

Granger returned with their meal, and they went up to the cool air of the deck to eat. Rogan shrugged back into his shirt, to Camille’s relief. She’d found his bare torso shamingly distracting.

“Camille teaches history,” Rogan told his brother. “At Rusden.”

“Really?” Granger looked at her thoughtfully.

“Mmm,” she confirmed, swallowing a mouthful of cheeseburger.

Rogan asked curiously, “You enjoy it?”

“Very much.” Teaching was a nice, steady occupation. If she needed excitement she could find it between the covers of a book about former times. And her salary was enough to keep her in reasonable comfort and help pay the mortgage on the house she shared with her mother. “What do you do?” she asked Granger.

“I’m a solicitor. And barrister, though I don’t do a lot of court work.”

“He likes playing with rorts and torts,” Rogan said with a tolerant but puzzled air.

Granger slanted him a grin, and for a moment the likeness between them was extraordinary. “I bet you don’t even know what they are,” he said.

“Dead right!” Rogan agreed cheerfully, lifting one of the cans of beer that Granger had brought back from his foraging expedition. He drank thirstily, and Camille stared in fascination at the tilt of his chin, the tautness of his throat.

When she pulled her gaze away Granger was looking at her, his eyes assessing, attentive. “My little brother is a deep-sea diver,” he said. “Fighting off sharks and giant squid for a living.”

Rogan spluttered, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s a load of sh…sugar,” he said. “I’ve never had to fight off a squid, even a baby one. They’re not aggressive anyway. You can stroke them.”

Camille asked, “Does that mean you’ve fought sharks?” Her skin crawled.