someone deliberately pushed me.”
He thought. “That’s a great idea, Cate. It’s much safer if no one thinks we’re on to them. In fact, I can bring up your death-by-peppermint theory and make out like I think it’s funny-for the same reason-to make the culprit think he’s safe. However…”
“However what?”
“However, you won’t be making breakfast tomorrow, Toots. You’re going to be in here. Safe and sound.”
“You call me Toots or Cookie again, Harm, and that’s it. I won’t sleep with you, no matter how much you beg me.”
He scooched down, just another notch, pressed the softest whisper of a kiss on her brow. “Aw, yeah, you will.” And then, “What a fabulous little body you’ve got. Perfect. Curved in all the right places. Strong and sweet.”
“Yeah. I know,” she said, and damn the man, but he forced her to fall asleep on a smile.
She slept, but Harm couldn’t. First off, he couldn’t rest because he had to check on her every few minutes-to make sure she was covered, to make sure the ice packs were still cold and not leaking. And obviously, to make sure she wasn’t hurting.
And since he was stuck not sleeping, he kept turning over the last two days of events in his mind. It seemed petrifyingly likely that someone had tried to kill Cate-probably the same someone who’d killed Fiske, who was the same someone at the source of the formula disappearance.
That was easy enough to conclude. But it didn’t help him any more than it had before to identify the culprit.
He woke Cate every two hours to check her pupils, kiss her brow and order her back to sleep. By 5:00 a.m., though, he gave up trying to sleep himself. The only thing he’d gotten from the long, endless night so far was an evocative long, endless hard-on from sleeping next to her.
The pervasiveness of that hard-on made him aggravatingly aware that he was becoming more attached to that woman than a thorn on a rose. He barely knew her, yet here he was losing sleep, feeling responsible, feeling a sense of connection and pull and hunger to be around her.
Groggy-eyed, he headed up on deck and went straight for the elegant, old-fashioned coffee urn. It looked awful to him, but when push came to shove, it was just a machine. He’d made coffee in tougher spots in the army, so he wasn’t worried he couldn’t figure it out.
He prowled around Cate’s galley for coffee beans, something to measure water, then paced around, waiting for the others to wake up. The sky was blurry, a mix of doughy clouds and murky light, and didn’t discernibly change over the next hour. By then he’d worn holes in the deck, pacing around and realizing-not for the first time-that he was really good at doing, and really bad at having to wait and not act.
Finally, though, Ivan emerged from the crew quarters. Harm didn’t leap on him like a rabid dog, but the captain had barely gotten out a yawn before he barked, “Is it okay with you if I get into the pilothouse? Use the radio?”
“Sure.” Ivan filled a mug, carted it with him outside to unlock and step into the pilothouse. The captain hadn’t shaved, had sucked down his share of whiskey the night before and had the swollen eyes to prove it. Still, he was no one’s fool. He set him up with the radio, then plopped in the captain chair, out of the way. “What happened?”
“Cate was hurt last night.”
Ivan’s eyes sharpened. “How, when, where and what?”
Harm talked; Ivan started up the engines, and both of them took turns at the radio, communicating to the mainland and Baranof Springs. By then, Arthur showed up, holding a mug, saying, “Who in God’s name made this sludge? Where’s Cate? What’s going on?”
His three guys all looked as if they’d had a rough night, but none had a guilt sign tattooed on their foreheads, nothing to give away any more information than Harm already had. The story he told them-while serving a bunch of fruit in a bowl and army oatmeal-was that Cate had fallen the night before. She’d apparently headed topside to do some stargazing, dozed off and then fell.
The men all expressed concern that sounded sincere. Purdue eventually tried to lighten the atmosphere by lifting his cereal spoon, trying to make a joke. “I’ve never had much religion, but I’m willing to fall to my knees and pray that she’s feeling good enough to make the next meal. Are you sure this is oatmeal and not cement?”
Arthur was in no mood for humor. “Harm, I think we should cancel this trip completely and go home. There’s just too much going wrong. It’s as if we’re jinxed.”
Yale immediately backed up Arthur. “It doesn’t matter what the authorities said. They can’t keep us here. If they have any more questions about Fiske, they can call us or something. No one can stop us from going home.”
“It’s not that simple,” Harm said.
“Sure, it is.”
Harm said, “There isn’t a doctor, but there is a PA in Baranof Springs, and we can be there in just a couple more hours. The lump on Cate’s head is one big slugger. I really believe a medical person should check her out before going anywhere else.” He exchanged glances with Ivan. Both also knew, from the radio transmissions earlier, that the Juneau pathologist had returned from his fishing trip, and they could possibly hear more about Fiske’s autopsy later that day or tomorrow. Harm’s priority was Cate. But he was wary of making any sudden moves without all the information he could gather first.
“So we stay through today,” Arthur agreed, but his tone still reflected tension. “I just think we should head home right after that. I’m really uneasy with all this. We still don’t even know what happened to Fiske.”
“I know what Cate thought happened,” Purdue piped in. “Yale told me he heard her talking to the captain. Said she went to make more peppermint cookies for us and found all her peppermint oil-or extract, or whatever it is- gone. She was worried Fiske got into it. Might have gotten sick from it somehow.” So Yale
Arthur edged back his chair. “Actually, using peppermint on a toothache is an old-fashioned remedy. Maybe that was what Fiske was doing in the galley. We all know how he was addicted to sweets. Maybe a tooth started going bad on him.”
Harm finished the oatmeal and had another coffee. Neither tasted that bad to him. Of course, he wasn’t concentrating on food. He was studying his men, and suffering enough frustration to claw walls. None of them showed any sign of guilt. There were no hidden looks, no apparent nerves. The whole mood of the guys was darker than gloom, though, until Cate suddenly showed up in the doorway.
She looked like something the cat dragged in out of the rain. Her hair, never styled at the best of times, stuck up in ragamuffin spikes around a blue-scarf bandage. She’d pulled on big, droopy sweats over big, droopy socks, and could barely traverse the room without limping. Panic buzzed his heartbeat. “What the Sam Hill are you doing up here?” he demanded.
She shot him a look reserved usually for puppies who’d piddled. “Well, I’ll be. Did you suddenly turn into my boss?” She shot a scandalized look at the table’s contents. “Are you boys trying to eat this? And who burned the coffee? I could smell it all the way below deck.”
“Cate-” He thought she’d agreed to stay in his cabin, locked up tight, where she’d be safe.
“I was just en route to the head when some of the conversation filtered downstairs. I thought I heard that y’all were going to postpone going home because of me. That’s silly. I’m fine.” She limped over to the coffee urn. “I don’t need a doctor. You guys should do whatever it is you want or need to do. I admit, I may not be up to much cooking today…but honest to Pete, even if I were bedridden in a body cast, I can keep you guys fed better than this.”
Harm was about to get testy about all the slurs to his breakfast making, but abruptly he realized what she was doing. The men immediately took
She poured a mug of his “burned” coffee and made it all the way around the table to the seat next to him. She never winced, never outwardly showed how much she was hurting. But she still eased down next to him like a kitten next to her lion. He realized abruptly that the damn woman was making all this effort for his sake-playing his team, her way, to help him get what he wanted, which was more time here in Alaska.
