Cheeks heated, Hel laughed, her heart lighter than it had been since before his sister had come in.
A few minutes later, a car was driving them back down the long hill from Caline, into the lovely streets of Calla.
There, Drake led her by the hand to an exquisite sailboat docked at the end.
Gleaming silver and wood and fiberglass shone in the growing moonlight. It was large enough that it likely boasted all the necessary amenities for a long trip, but small enough for a single man to manage on his own. It was freedom fabricated.
In the sweeping script at its bow was the name of his father,Ibrahim. Hel suspected this boat meant more to him than even the largerNya II,which he’d used to...borrow her.
Standing on the dock at his side, wonder at his sailboat a wedge in her throat, she searched for the shield of her nonchalance. “So. We’re going to Yancy Grove, are we?”
He laughed, seeing through her act in a way no one else ever had, not even those closest to her. “We are. Yancy Grove, my secluded private island.”
Hel raised an eyebrow. “You have a private island? What happened to the poor sob whose inheritance was stolen?”
Again his laughter rang out, skipping across the lapping waves like a perfectly smooth stone. Shaking with it, he asked her, “Now what kind of self-respecting pirate would I be if I didn’t have a private island where I stash my booty?” he asked.
Watching him, his deep brown eyes flashing in the moonlight, the sound of the water lulling her into dropping at least some of her shields, something strange and delightful fluttered in her throat and she smiled at him, then repeated his question, “What kind of pirate indeed?”
And when he jumped on board and reached a hand out to help her up, Hel surprised herself once again by taking it.
CHAPTER SIX
DRAKESTEEREDHISbelovedIbrahimout of Calla Bay, which rested so quiet now that no one in their right mind would have believed it had once been a chaotic playground for modern-day pirates.
Hel sat on the dash to his right, her long legs curled up beneath her as she watched the night dark sea blur into the stars ahead. Impossibly hungry again, she chewed an apple that she had found upon searching the galley after they’d set off.
She had offered him one, but he had declined.
As an admiral, he had been in command of many ships, and as a sailor before that had long become used to sailing with company, but it was a novel experience sailing with a companion. Especially on theIbrahim. This was his private vessel.
“I told you, you don’t need to stay up,” he repeated.
She crunched into her apple, then replied, “And miss sighting land on my very first pirate island? No way.”
He chuckled.
“Well, it’s lucky for you, then, that we’ll arrive at Yancy Grove in less than an hour.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Good. I was afraid we might have to sleepheretonight.”
This time he laughed outright. She spoke like theIbrahimwas a tin can, rather than a sixteen-foot luxury yacht, personally designed to meet his every whim and provide the highest level of comfort.
He loved the boat only slightly less than his late mother and his sister.
“No. Our accommodations will be regrettably more stationary for the night.”
“You say regrettable, I say acceptable,” she retorted and he reflected that it was a good thing they were alone, with no possibility of interruption, for more reasons than seduction.
She was far too good at putting him at ease. It was becoming a struggle to remember that it wasn’t mutual admiration that held them together.
He watched her while she watched the stars, her strange moonglow even brighter in contrast to the pure black of the starlit sky.
She fit there, sitting on his dash bathed in the lights of the night, as solemn and motionless as a freshly carved and diamond-painted masthead.
She was certainly as unearthly beautiful as the mermaids and Valkyries that graced the bows of so many antique boats, including some he’d had the pleasure of sailing.La Sirenita,Tristan’s Wake,Cassiopeia... Each one was a grand dame of his past. Helene and the children they would have were his future.
A future he’d been dreaming of since the day he’d washed up on shore, choking salt water and sand, remade and reborn out of the ashes of personal tragedy, though he’d only realized that was true when they’d lowered his mother into the ground, the land welcoming her solid and firm and eternally far from home.