“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About my husband.”
Dismayed she’d replied without thinking, she expected him to pull away, but he didn’t. “How did he die?”
The last five years spewed out in a breathless diatribe—the disappointments, the pain, the guilt, the shock in her husband’s eyes when he realized he’d murdered himself. “He was waving the pistol around,” she explained, “ranting in a drunken stupor about the British when it just went off. At first, I thought he’d shot me.”
Maximiliano listened without interrupting and rocked her as she wept. “It’s good to let it all out,” he said softly.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I do feel better,” she replied truthfully. “But you must think I was a terrible wife.”
“No,cariña,” he said. “You had a weak man as a husband.”
First Kiss
Throughout the Caribbean, Danish people were reputed to be hardy and hardworking. Maximiliano could well believe it. Heidi had endured an abusive marriage. The way she’d so far dealt with being marooned spoke of courage. Her determination to help him wrestle the mattress from the bunk, up the narrow companionway and off the wreck, all the while keeping a smile on her flushed face, convinced him she’d been raised to always see a task through to its completion, no matter how difficult.
The vines came in useful, as he’d hoped, to tie the mattress into a roll with the linens inside, then to heft it onto his back. Heidi carried his tinderbox, candles, a supply of ship’s biscuits, a flagon of rum, a water canteen and the candle lantern from his cabin—all wrapped in a torn piece of sail. The task of ferrying everything across the rocks was rendered somewhat more difficult by Heidi suffering a fit of giggles begun when she discovered one of her shoes wedged in the broken capstan wheel. The other was nowhere to be found.
By the time they reached the beach, her giggling had become infectious. He divested himself of the mattress, fell to his knees on the sand and let the laughter well up from inside him. It had been too long since he’d laughed so hard. Finally, he lay back against the rolled up mattress and beckoned her. “Sit beside me.”
She came, still smiling, and nestled into him. “I love your laugh,” she said.
“I haven’t laughed so much in…well, years.”
“The life of a pirate must be difficult,” she replied.
“Sí,” he rasped. No one had ever seemed to realize that before. No one had looked at his life from his point of view, or taken into account the gut-wrenching fear that stalked him. Heidi understood.
It was ironic. They were in a perilous situation, and he was certainly worried about how they might survive long enough to escape back to civilization. Yet, Heidi’s presence made him feel everything would work out in the end. They’d been marooned together for a reason.
“When will you tell me the good news?” she asked.
“First, we eat.”
“Good. I’m hungry.”
“Then, we carry our loot up to the cave.”
“You’re a hard taskmaster,” she teased.
“Then the good news.”
She planted a kiss on his lips before scrambling to her feet. “Come on then. I’m anxious to learn what the good news is.”
The effect on his cock was predictable, but he savored the salty taste of her lips. He couldn’t wait to show her the pool.
* * *
Tiny red crabs scurried out of their way on the beach. “Once we get a fire lit,” Maximiliano said, throwing down the mattress when they reached the clearing, “we can try roasting some.”
Heidi laughed. “We’ll need to catch a thousand just to make a meal.”
“True,” he replied, settling a coconut between his thighs. “For lunch we’ll have coconut, followed by more guava…”
“And biscuits,” she added.
“And we can forage for more food on the way to the cave.”