“Tell them to keep their pants on. You can’t rush a gourmet feast like this,” Stephanie yelled over the sizzle of coffee splattering on the hot stove. She opened the oven door, whipped out a tray of biscuits, and dumped them in a bread basket lined with a red linen napkin. “Hardly burned at all,” she told Ace. “I don’t think we even have to scrape the black off the bottoms of this batch.”
Ace took time out of his fish-eye hunt to appreciate the biscuits.
“How many eyes have you got?” Stephanie asked.
Ace poked around in the cup sitting next to the stove. “Seven. Looks like I’m only missing one. You think we could have had a one-eyed fish?”
“You keep looking while I take the biscuits up.” She assembled a tray of chowder mugs, soup spoons, napkins, and tubs of butter, and set them on the roof of the midship cabin. She added baskets of biscuits and bowls of fresh fruit, and felt her lip curl involuntarily when Ace appeared with the tureen of fish stew.
“Are you going to eat this?” he asked in a whisper.
Eat it? Was he kidding? She’d inhaled enough fish stew to last her a lifetime.
Mrs. Pease got a peculiar expression on her face halfway through her lunch. She was short and round with dimpled elbows and dimpled knees and short curly white hair. She slid her glasses low on her nose and squinted into her soup. “There’s something staring at me in here.”
Her husband looked over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
“Right there.” She pointed with her spoon. “It’s a little bitty eyeball.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “What would an eyeball be doing in your soup?”
Ace jumped to Mrs. Pease’s side and dipped his spoon into her mug. “Okay, where is it? Where’s this eyeball from outer space?” He held the spoon an inch from his nose and studied its contents. “That’s not an eyeball. That’s a black-eyed pea.” He fired the object off his spoon slingshot style, and a seagull caught it in midair. “Seagulls love black-eyed peas,” he told Mrs. Pease. He looked at Stephanie and mouthed the word “eight.”
Stephanie took a biscuit and avoided looking in Ivan’s direction.
“Our captain is staring,” Ace said. “You think he knows it was an eyeball?”
“Not a chance.”
“He looks intense,” Ace said. “I’ve only seen him look like that one time before. It was when Andy Newfarmer’s dog lifted his leg on Ivan’s new all-weather boots, and Ivan was in them.”
Stephanie nibbled on the biscuit. “What’s Ivan like? Have you known him long?”
“Ivan’s first-class. Comes from an old seafaring family. His grandfather and great- grandfather were captains of coasting schooners, and people tell me Ivan’s a descendant of Red Rasmussen, the pirate. Supposedly, Ivan’s house, Haben, is haunted by the ghost of Red’s widow. Lucy said Ivan sold the house this summer.”
Great, Stephanie thought, I bought a haunted house. Another point of interest the real estate lady failed to mention.
A gust of wind rattled the sails, Ivan spun the wheel, the ship leaned into the wind and surged ahead, and Stephanie found herself watching Ivan, trying to sort through a mixture of uncomfortable emotions. As much as she hated to admit it, he was awesome. He stood in calm control with a suggestion of suppressed power in his wide stance and steady hand. His beard hugged the angle of his jaw, making him look like the perfect captain for a ship named Savage. He was a man who felt comfortable with authority and inspired confidence. An hour ago she wouldn’t have trusted him to change the kitty litter, and now she was trapped on a little wooden boat, bobbing around in a huge ocean, counting on Ivan to keep her safe. And she was sure he would. Stephanie thought he looked very fierce and wondered if he could also be gentle.
Their gazes locked, and Stephanie felt her face flame. She’d been caught gawking. Actually, gawking wasn’t accurate. Drooling was closer to the truth. Cousin Lucy hadn’t been kidding when she’d said Ivan was terribly attractive.
Stephanie’s heart skipped a beat when she saw him hand the wheel over to the first mate and turn in her direction. Okay, she thought, if he criticizes the soup, I’ll apologize. And if he kissed her, she’d drag him down to the galley. The last thought produced a mental grimace. Good grief! Get a grip, she told herself.
Chapter 2
There was no doubt in Ivan’s mind that there had been a fish eye in Mrs. Pease’s chowder. He was equally sure that he didn’t want to know how the fish eye had gotten there. There were some things best left untouched. And there were some things that were mystical in nature-such as why he was so attracted to Stephanie Lowe, a woman who apparently lived side by side with catastrophe. Maybe it wasn’t attraction. Maybe it was simply gruesome fascination. The sort of grim curiosity that compels you to stare at bloody victims of auto accidents and read about serial killers in the newspaper.
Now that he knew Stephanie better, he wasn’t at all surprised her house was falling apart. And if she stayed aboard the Savage, there was no telling what would happen. The plague would strike, or they’d run aground. At the very least, she’d poison them all. Stephanie Lowe was an accident just waiting to happen.
Too bad she was going to have to go, he thought as he approached her. There was an energy about her that was entertaining, and she was terrific-looking, in an unconventional sort of way. She had a few freckles across her straight little nose, silky smooth skin, and big blue eyes that were, at the moment, turning his stomach upside down. Her body language said “back off,” but there was something about the expression in those cobalt eyes that made his jeans fit tighter than usual. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t a man who took a casual view of sex, and he wasn’t the sort of man who let the fit of his jeans influence business decisions. His intuition told him to put her off on the first island, but he knew he’d have to keep her on board until he found a replacement. A Calamity Jane cook was better than no cook at all.
He took an apple from the bowl behind Stephanie and held it in his hand, enjoying the confrontation. She was waiting for him to make the first move, and her eyes weren’t giving away anything. She wasn’t going to initiate a conversation about her cooking, and she wasn’t going to flirt with him. It was a damn shame she couldn’t cook. And it was an even worse shame she wasn’t going to flirt.
He smiled at her, hoping she’d smile back. He liked her better when she was more at ease, muttering curse words and rolling down hills. When she returned the smile, he offered her the apple. “Have you had a chance to investigate the ship?”
She shook her head. “I’ve only gone as far as the galley and the ice chest.”
“Why don’t you take a few minutes off, and I’ll give you a quick tour while Ace handles cleanup.”
He started at the midship deckhouse. “We have two heads. They have flush toilets, hot and cold running water, and they’re both above deck.” He opened a door and revealed a clean lavatory. He latched the lavatory door from the outside and pointed to the hatch just opposite it. “That leads to the midship cabin with accommodations for twelve passengers.” He motioned to the structure directly in front of him. “This is the aft deckhouse.”
Stephanie followed him around the aft deck-house and down the ship’s ladder to a small room with a scarred wooden gaming table and bench seats, big enough for four people. Three double cabins were located off the left side of the room. A small delft blue-and-white-tiled, brass-fitted fireplace had been built into the far corner, behind the table. Bookshelves lined all the available wall space, and a brass ship’s lantern hung from the ceiling. It was a room that invited you to stay for a game of checkers, and almost made you wish for a dark, drizzly day so you could huddle at the table with a mug of tea, the fire at your back, and a good book in hand.
Ivan opened the only door on the right side and motioned Stephanie in. “This is my cabin.” He had a double bunk and a window at eye level, similar to the passengers’ cabins, but his quarters also included a compact sitting room with a built-in desk, racks for maps, and a wall full of navigational equipment.
“This vessel is Coast Guard approved with radar and marine radio,” he said. “We have a small crew, and I like everyone to have at least a basic understanding of this equipment.” No matter how short their stay, he silently added.
Stephanie looked at the switches and dials and found them to be far less intimidating than the woodstove. She was momentarily diverted by the wind rattling in the sails. There was a lull, then the ship heeled to as it changed direction, knocking her off-balance in the narrow quarters, flinging her at Ivan. She heard his breath hitch in his throat as her breasts flattened against his chest, and her leg accidentally snaked between his.
