do anything but laugh.
After a moment Janna looked up and smiled. It wasn’t her best smile but it was all she had at the moment. She still was raw from hearing Raven praise her nice, motherly attributes at the very instant when she had been all shivery just from touching him. The difference between their reactions to one another couldn’t have been greater…or more discouraging.
„Sorry,“ she said. „Guess it’s cabin fever.“
„Or hunger,“ he rumbled, touching her lips with his fingertip.
Janna’s eyes widened with shock. She wondered whether Raven had read her mind. „How did you know?“ she whispered.
„No great trick,“ he said, grinning. „It’s been five hours since lunch.“
„Lunch?“
„Yeah. You remember – the meal that comes after breakfast and before dinner?“
„Oh, that lunch.“
„Is there more than one?“ he asked innocently.
„Of course,“ she retorted, rallying. „There’s lunch and then there’s getting lunched. Lately I’ve been lunched more often than I’ve eaten.“
Raven opened his mouth, closed it and then began to laugh. „Has anyone ever told you that you have – “
„A great sense of humor?“ interrupted Janna, opening the oyster with a vicious jab of the knife. „Yeah. As one of the all-time boring virtues, it ranks right up there with motherhood.“
„Not to someone who never had a mother and who likes to laugh. They’re gifts, Janna,“ he said quietly.
„Really?“ she asked, picking up another oyster, avoiding Raven’s eyes. „Too bad we’re so far from the complaint counter. I’d exchange them for sex appeal.“
Raven’s jaw dropped in the instant before he told himself that Janna was kidding. He laughed, shaking his head, and wondered why a storm hadn’t washed Janna into his life years ago.
Janna didn’t find the idea of her being sexy nearly as amusing as Raven did. In fact, she discovered that her sense of humor on that subject had just run out.
„Here,“ Janna said, slapping the hilt of the oyster knife into Raven’s broad palm. „I’ll make the cocktail sauce. It’s too cold out here for me.“
Raven looked from the knife to the long, bare legs vanishing into the cabin. The door shut firmly. He looked back at the knife and wondered why he had the distinct feeling that Janna would have liked to stick it into him rather than an oyster.
Chapter 5
By the time Janna had finished rummaging through the galley in order to find ketchup and horseradish, she had regained some of her normal common-sense outlook and with it her usually easygoing temperament. As she reminded herself, it wasn’t Raven’s fault that he was drawn to tragic blond angels. Nor was it his problem that she was finding it harder and harder to be close to him without touching him in a decidedly unangelic fashion.
And the storm just kept calling wildly over land and sea.
From what Janna had been able to understand between the bursts of static that had come whenever Raven tried to pick up a station on the radio, they had at least two more days in Totem Inlet before the wind died down enough to make the ocean safer for small craft.
Just two days. Surely she could keep her yearnings to herself and her sense of humor intact for a mere two days.
Gloomily Janna put out the box of oyster crackers she had found in the cupboard. After a moment of frowning at the innocent crackers, she decided to sort through the
The cooler was little more than a long, deep plastic container set below waterline and shaped to conform to the curve of the hull. A hinged section of the counter lifted to give access to the cooler. Janna lifted the lid and looked in. No lemons had grown there since the last time she had looked, but she could swear that she smelted fresh lemons beneath the pervasive odor of onions and oranges. She stared down into the darkness at the small bags crowding against each other. Getting to the bottom of the cooler was going to require a flashlight and an ability to hang her head down in an enclosed space while balancing her weight on the edge of the counter and bracing her feet at floor level on the opposite cabinet.
That was exactly what Janna was doing when Raven came into the cabin. The sight of her long, naked legs stretched diagonally across the aisle brought him to a complete stop. Muffled thumps came from the cooler as Janna shifted potatoes, onions, carrots, oranges and other durable fresh foods from one side of the cooler to the other in her quest for lemons.
Raven barely noticed the sounds. He was fighting to control the impulse to run his hands from Janna’s ankles to the smooth curve of her hips… and from there to let his fingers slide into the shadowed feminine secrets he knew were waiting.
It would be easy to do, a few seconds, no more, and he could peel away the dark blue lace briefs that even now peeked from the edge of the oversize shirt. Or he could take longer. Much longer. He could learn every smooth bit of Janna with his teeth and his tongue, nuzzling closer to her secrets as he slowly, slowly, eased the lacy briefs down her beautiful legs.
Raven’s hands were actually reaching for Janna before he realized it. „What the hell do you think you’re doing?“ he muttered roughly to himself.
An answer floated up from below the counter. „Looking for lemons.“
„Lemons,“ he repeated thickly, watching his own shirt climb higher and higher up Janna’s body as she wriggled backward up and out of the cooler’s depths. When he saw the sweet flex and shift of Janna’s hips beneath blue lace, his whole body tightened. „Oh God,“ he gritted.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds and tried to control his own hunger. It didn’t work. Desire poured in red-hot torrents through his blood and pooled urgently, rigidly, between his thighs.
„Lemons,“ Janna said, her voice becoming clearer with each instant as she emerged from hanging upside down in the cooler. „You know – something to sweeten my disposition.“
Raven laughed almost helplessly and then swore in the same way, but silently. He had been expecting to have a tense dinner with an angry woman and had walked into the cabin to find Janna’s sexy bottom tempting him and her sense of humor restored. Now, if he could just do something about the raw, hard desire that was riding him, they might get out of the inlet before he took her down onto his bunk and ate every sweet inch of her.
And then again, they might not, especially if he didn’t stop watching her hips move. Now. Right now.
With a groan Raven forced himself to look away from the inviting curves of Janna’s bottom. By memory alone he found a plate for the oysters and retreated to the stern, shutting the cabin door behind. Using great care he stacked oysters on the plate. When he looked over his shoulder through the cabin window, Janna was head down in the cooler again. Grimly he rearranged the mound of oysters on the plate. Three times.
„I found some!“
„Thank God,“ Raven said with real feeling, turning toward the cabin.
He opened the door and closed it, balancing the heavy oyster plate in one hand. One look told him he had come back a few seconds too soon. Janna was just now wriggling onto her feet. Her face
