"Who keeps texting you?" Izabel asked. "A twelve-year-old you met at the skating rink?"
"How do you say 'har-har' in Portuguese?" Lucia asked innocently, then she added, "It's just one of my sisters. She misses me." And resents my being away this long.
"How many sisters do you have?"
Hundreds. All over the world. "Enough," Lucia answered.
"I wish I had a sister."
"A twin brother isn't enough?"
"I guess," Izabel answered with a shrug.
Now that Lucia thought about it, she'd never seen the two display affection. Likely because they were so different. Izabel was brazen, confident. Charlie seemed unsure and awkward.
"Hey, do you feel that?" Izabel said. "They got the ship loose."
Lucia glanced down just as MacRieve hauled himself from the water onto the platform, the damp muscles in his back flexing so temptingly. When he stood, shaking his wet hair in that wolfy way, his sodden jeans hung even lower on his sculpted torso.
Lucia's claws curled for him. Just as she was thinking, Gods, he's fine, Izabel whispered, "I'd lock that one down while you can. Esplêndido."
The Scot was splendid. And sexy and funny. He knew how to string a recurve bow. Here was a man who treated her well, who'd proved he was understanding about her... limitations.
"Chuck!" the captain suddenly called. "Get your ass up here!"
Izabel jumped, knocking her head on the shelf. "I have to go!" Wide-eyed, she shimmied back.
"Why do you have to go?"
"To wake up Charlie."
Travis yelled, "Izabel! Where the hell is Chuck?"
"See?"
Lucia couldn't believe this girl had fallen for that querulous captain. To be stuck on this bucket, with no future, no prospects. She was so young.... "Izabel, you know there are other ships out there for you to work on. Ships that will treat you much better."
Izabel met her gaze. "I'll never want another ship as long as I live." And then she was gone, leaving Lucia to her thoughts. Which almost always centered on MacRieve.
In the last three days, Lucia had begun to fear that she was settling in with him too easily. She'd been fooled once before, and even after all these years, she was still deeply ashamed of succumbing to Cruach's trickery. Her sisters would have sensed he was evil.
Regin had. She'd taken one look at the fair-haired man at the portal and run to tell their godparents. Who'd made her swear never to see him again. Lucia had fallen right into Cruach's clutches, trusting in him so completely that she'd broken those vows.
Am I being too trusting with the Scot? As if to remind her why that'd be unwise, the nightmares were coming every night. Only now, for the first time in her life, she was sharing a bed with another, a male who'd begun questioning her, wanting to know what she dreamed of -
"Lousha?" he called then, and she too hit her head. As she crawled from the shelf, Lucia could hear him stomping along the gangway, then to the cabin below.
Just before she'd reached the steps, he bounded up them. "Where were you?" he demanded, his eyes flickering blue.
"Right up here. You couldn't scent me?"
He visibly relaxed, the tension easing from his broad shoulders. "It's difficult to find you aboard a ship like this." At her nonplussed look, he said, "I scent your bathing suit top drying on the clothesline by the galley." He twined a lock of her hair around his finger. "I smell a strand from these curls up by the wheel-house. All around, I detect your scent. It'd almost be easier for me to find you from thirty or forty miles away."
"I told you I wouldn't leave. Don't you trust me?"
"Aye, but I chased you for the better part of a year. Old habits die hard. It actually feels odd no' to be running after you. Welcome, but odd."
She tilted her head at him. "In all that time, did you... did you ever think about giving up?"
"Never."
"Not once?"
His voice was so deep as he said, "Lousha, you're my lass." He shrugged, as if he spoke an irrevocable truth.
If I'm not careful, I might just prove him right....
30
"You doona expect to catch dinner with that setup?"
Imagine that, MacRieve taunting Damiãno, Lucia thought. For the last ten days, the two men had been constantly at odds. They neared a boiling point, unable to pass each other on the narrow gangway without slamming shoulders.
"You think you could do better?" Damiãno snapped.
"Oh, aye."
"Wager on it."
Lucia sank down on the weathered lounge chair. Elbows to her knees and her chin in her hands, she settled in for the duration - because neither male had caught a single fish the entire trip. And now she could tell that neither would budge until they did....
For each of these ten days, as the Contessa had headed deeper down the San Miguel into a primeval jungle, Garreth had grown more on edge. He paced constantly, palpably restless. He couldn't run, and it weighed on him. Lucia knew the Lykae needed to run. Especially with the full moon tonight.
And then tomorrow they planned to arrive in the vicinity of Rio Labyrinto - another source of unease for him. He'd said to her, "I doona suppose there's any way I could talk you out of going to the labyrinth?" At her look, he'd added, "Dinna think so."
Yet as much as Garreth hated it here, she'd enjoyed it. She recalled that explorers used to talk about the jungle as if she were a mistress, leading men astray, making them shrug off civility. She finally understood what they'd meant.
And she liked it.
Levelheaded Lucia was losing it. Her façade of control, her tenuous rationality. Everything about this place was sensual - the colors, the warmth, the evocative scents. She felt more alive than she had in memory.
Or maybe that was owing to the werewolf whose bed she shared? MacRieve was wearing her down every day - and night. As if she needed anything to erode her control. Her house of cards was in the midst of a maelstrom. With one stray touch, all would come tumbling down....
Over these days, life aboard the Contessa had taken on a routine. Damiãno always seemed to be around, and though she sensed the male could be a threat, Lucia couldn't muster any real fear. Damiãno might have been of the Lore, but no species could match Garreth in strength.
As for Rossiter, when he wasn't pacing in his cabin, the doctor got Charlie to teach him about the inner workings of the ship, and together, they did everything from refueling the generators to changing engine filters.