Damn it, now he couldn’t get that image of her disappearing into the water out of his head. He pushed from his office onto his private deck, where the rain and splashing waves peppered his skin. She wasn’t coming down the stairs toward him.
He climbed them, walking along the outer rail of the mid-deck, seeing no sign of her.
Actually, he walked right past her. He spied her when he paused at the door into the bridge, thinking to enter and look for her on the security cameras. Something made him glance back the way he’d come and he spotted the ball of dark clothing and white skin under the life preserver ring.
What the hell?
“Viveka.” He retraced his few steps, planting his bare feet carefully on the wet deck. “What are you doing out here?”
She lifted her face. Her hair was plastered in tendrils around her neck and shoulders. Her chin rattled as she stammered, “I n-n-need a l-l-life v-v-vest.”
“You’re freezing.” He was cold. He bent to draw her to her feet, but she stubbornly stayed in a knot of trembling muscle, fingers wrapped firmly around the mount for the ring.
What a confounding woman. With a little more force, he started to peel her fingers open.
The boat listed, testing his balance.
Before he could fully right himself, Viveka cried out and nearly knocked him over, rising to throw her arms around his neck, slapping her soaked pajamas into his front.
He swore at the impact, working to stay on his feet.
“Are we going over?”
“No.”
He could hardly breathe, she was clinging so tightly to his neck, and shaking so badly he could practically hear her bones rattling. He swore under his breath, putting together all those anxious looks out to the water. This was why she hadn’t shown the sense to be terrified of him today. She was afraid of boats.
“Come inside.” He drew her toward the stairs down to his deck.
She balked. “I don’t want to be trapped if we capsize.”
“We won’t capsize.”
She resisted so he picked her up and carried her all the way through his dark office into his stateroom, where he’d left a lamp burning, kicking doors shut along the way.
He sat on the edge of his bed, settling her icy, trembling weight on his lap. “This is only a bit of wind and freighter traffic. We’re hitting their wakes. It’s not a storm.”
There was no heat beneath these soaked pajamas. Even in the dim light, he could see her lips were blue. He ran his hands over her, trying to slick the water out of her pajamas while he rubbed warmth into her skin.
“There doesn’t have to be a storm.” She was pressing into him, her lips icy against his collarbone, arms still around his neck, relaxing and convulsing in turns. “My mother drowned when it was calm.”
“From a boat?” he guessed.
“Grigor took her out.” Her voice fractured. “Maybe on purpose to drown her. I don’t know, but I think she wanted to leave him. He took her out sailing and said he didn’t know till morning that she fell, but he never acted like he cared. He told me to stop crying and take care of Trina.”
If this was a trick, it was seriously good acting. The emotion in her voice sent him tumbling into equally disturbing memories buried deep in his subconscious. Your mother died while you were at school. The landlord had made the statement without hesitation or regret, casually destroying Mikolas’s world with a few simple words. A woman from child services is coming to get you.
So much horror had followed, Mikolas barely registered anymore how bad that day had been. He’d shuffled it all into the past once his grandfather had taken him in. The page had been turned and he never leafed back to it.
But suddenly he was stricken with that old grief. He couldn’t ignore the way her heart pounded so hard he felt it against his arm across her back. Her skin was clammy, her spine curled tight against life’s blows.
His hand unconsciously followed that hard curve, no longer just warming her, but trying to soothe while stealing a long-overdue shred of comfort for himself from someone who understood what he’d suffered.
He recovered just as quickly, shaking off the moment of empathy and rearranging her so she was forced to look up at him.
“I’ve been honest with you, haven’t I?” Perhaps he sounded harsh, but she had cracked something in him. He didn’t like the cold wind blowing through him as a result. “I would tell you if we were in danger. We’re not.”