Elusive Dawn (15 page)

Shane's eyes held a trace of wonder. "And a man likes to be loved by the woman he loves," he said huskily. His arms tightened around her. "I wasn't sure we'd make it, sweetheart."

Her smile faltered for just a second. "There are still some... rough seas ahead," she warned lightly.

"I know." The deep voice was sober. "You'll tell me all about it when you're ready."

And with the abruptness of his earlier movements, he threw her overboard. Robyn came up sputtering. Treading water and pushing her hair out of her eyes, she glared up at him. "That was a rotten, no-good, low-down, sneaky trick!" she yelled at him.

"How's the water, honey?" Shane asked with interest, evidently completely unabashed by his nakedness or his actions as he leaned over the side.

"I'll get you for this!"

"Is that a promise?" He leered, arching his eyebrows.

"
Dammit
, this water's cold!"

"A brisk, reviving swim-that's what we both need."

"We?
I don't see you out here. What's that over there? Is that a shark?" she yelped.

"No, it's a stick in the water."

"I saw it move!"

"The current made it twitch. Stop imagining things."

"You're a funny man." Robyn splashed water toward him, irritated when her aim fell short. "Well? Are you going to stand there and smirk all morning, or are you going to join me in the cradle of the deep?"

Shane grinned at her. "Having a lively sense of self-preservation, I have no intention of coming in until I'm reasonably sure you won't try to drown me."

"Who, me?"
Robyn smiled innocently. "Why worry? You're bigger than I am."

"Yes, but you're a witch, and witches cast spells and things.
Eye of newt and toe of bat and so on."

Robyn laughed so hard she nearly forgot to tread water. "Bats don't have toes!"

"Whatever." He raised one foot to rest on the chrome railing and leaned an elbow on his knee. "Anyway, I don't want you casting any more spells. I'm still tangled up in the first one."

"The first one?"

"Sure. I looked across a room and tumbled into a pair of golden eyes.
Definitely a spell."
His emerald eyes were acquiring a gleam she recognized well.

Robyn eyed him carefully. "You seem to have recovered rather quickly from your exhaustion," she observed.

"You noticed that, huh?"

"It's a little difficult not to."

"Mermaids in the water do that to me." He smiled slowly. "One sure difference between a man and a woman... a man can't hide his desire."

"Especially a naked man," she pointed out.

"Are you complaining?"

Robyn took another stab at the art of vamping. Smiling gently, she murmured, "I'm simply wondering why you're still on the boat..."

She read the intent, flaring expression in his eyes long before he left the boat in a clean dive, and she hastily began swimming away. He caught her before she'd taken three strokes.

"Come here, witch..."

"Shane? Shane, not in the water! We'll drown!"

They didn't make very good time that day, which was-as Robyn gleefully pointed out more than once-all Shane's fault. Periodically, he would suddenly drop the sails, allowing the boat to drift, and lunge at Robyn. And since she couldn't run very far on a boat, he inevitably caught her.

"I've spent half the day trying to keep my clothes on!"

"I didn't notice you trying very hard a few minutes ago."

"A gentleman wouldn't point that out."

"Gentlemen don't have any fun."

The boat nearly ran aground on a sandbar once while they were otherwise occupied, and then later showed a tendency to drift toward the Bahamas. After that, Shane began dropping the anchor when he dropped the sails.

George climbed the mast and sails from time to time, then apparently lost interest in the game when neither of his human companions objected. He sulked on Robyn's bunk for the rest of the day.

Robyn had never been happier in her life. She was delighted by the fact that Shane couldn't let brief moments go by without touching her and holding her- delighted because she felt the same way about him. Laughter and teasing and love surrounded her, claimed her, and she pushed the fears from her mind. Like Scarlett O'Hara, she would think about that tomorrow.

Since Shane
said
he was determined that they reach Key Largo by sundown, they didn't stop the boat for lunch. Robyn went below and made sandwiches, bringing everything up on deck and feeding Shane a bite at a time while he steered.

"You know, I really don't know much about you," she commented thoughtfully a little while later, sitting cross-legged on the bench in one of Shane's shirts.
"Generalities, but no specifics."

"What do you want to know?" Shane was spending more time gazing at her with glowing eyes than paying attention to their course.

"Well, everything, obviously!
Tell me about your family... and where you live when you're not traveling ... and your favorite colors... and what you plan to do with your life... Good Lord-I don't know
anything
about you!"

He chuckled softly. "We can fix that. Let's see- my family. I think I told you that Mother runs the family wine business. My father died about ten years ago. I have three younger sisters, two of them married and one still in college." He slanted Robyn a grin. "I spent a lot of years playing big brother. And they all still run to me when they have a problem, which I'm glad of."

The brief sketch told Robyn more, perhaps, than Shane knew. It told her that he was accustomed to responsibilities, which he didn't shirk. Inevitably, she compared him to Brian, whose recklessness had carried over into his personal life. He had always left responsibility to others.

Shane was chuckling again. "Sharon, the youngest, is suffering the pangs of love at the moment. Or she was when she called me a couple of weeks ago. She's after some med student at UCLA, and since she's majoring in history, they don't seem to have much in common."

Robyn smiled at him. "So she called big brother for advice. And what did big brother tell her?"

"To keep looking!
My baby sister has fallen in love a dozen times in the last year alone. I keep telling her not to try so hard."

Laughing, Robyn observed, "I bet she liked that!"

"Sure." Shane grimaced slightly. "I've heard cleaner language from liberty-bound sailors."

Robyn smiled at the affection in his voice,
then
prodded curiously. "Do you all live in California? When you're not traveling, I mean?"

"As a matter of fact, aside from Sharon, who comes home for holidays, we all live within a few miles of each other. The business is in the northern end of Napa Valley. Mother lives nearest to it. My oldest sister, Connie, married a lawyer, and they live nearby. Beth's the middle sister. She startled all of us a few years ago by marrying the eldest son of a vintner- our biggest rival! I don't know who was more dismayed, Mother or Beth's new father-in-law."

"Montague and Capulet?"
Robyn teased, her lips twitching.

"Only in tragedies!"
Shane laughed softly. "Actually, Mother and Alan's father accepted the situation with good grace. The rivalry is a cordial one."

"A missed opportunity!"
Robyn mourned with mock regret. "Just think how romantic it would have been: a modern day story of star-crossed lovers! A family feud-"

Shane grinned at her.
"No way!
For one thing, Beth's no weeping Juliet. She would have told us all to go to hell and marched off with Alan to conquer a world or two. And I'm sure Alan could slay dragons with the best of them."

"Really?"
Robyn lifted an inquiring brow. "And how are you at slaying dragons? A woman likes to know these things."

"Not bad." Shane pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Although I think I'm better at scaring away things that go bump in the night."

"Dragons don't go bump?"

"Have you ever
seen
a dragon? They're huge.
Absolutely huge.
Before you hear the bump, you're squashed flat."

"Then how do you slay them?"

"Where on earth did you go to school? I've never heard such ignorance! Dragons are slain with magic swords, of course."

"I beg your pardon," Robyn sputtered, biting the inside of her lip to keep from laughing out loud. "I thought it was slingshots."

"That was Goliath," Shane informed her pityingly.

"Oh." She reflected for a moment. "Are there dragons in Napa Valley? Do they squash the grapes?"

"Oh, we drove them deep into the mountains years ago," he told her loftily. With spur-of-the-moment invention, he continued gravely, "They only come out in years ending in a zero, and then we find a witch to curse them until they hide again."

"I
knew
you had an ulterior motive!" she accused.

"Of course.
I
need
a resident witch. With
her own
familiar and a book of spells to keep the dragons away, so I won't have to dent my magic sword."

"Oh, damn," she murmured mournfully. "And I traded my book of spells
to
a wizard for Stardust! I'm afraid you'll just have to keep looking for your witch. I won't do at all."

"Are you kidding? It took me too long to find you. We just won't tell the dragons about the book. You can chant at them in pig Latin or something. They'll never know the difference."

"I'd never have the nerve. Dragons terrify me."

"Nonsense.
I'd be standing by with my magic sword, just in case."

Robyn's laughter finally began escaping. "Oh, God!" she gasped. "I've never been party to such a ridiculous conversation in my life!"

Shane grinned at her, but then the grin faded, replaced by a frown. "Hey, witch-lady," he ordered, "
get
your butt over here."

"I
beg
your pardon!" Her voice was frosty, but she relented beneath his narrow-eyed, threatening stare and got her butt over there. "I'm here, skipper," she said meekly, but with a grin.

Shane hauled her against his side with one arm, resting his chin on the top of her head. "It's been nearly half an hour since I've touched you," he complained gruffly. "I was beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms."

Robyn slipped her arms around his waist, rubbing her cheek against his bare chest with
kittenlike
contentment. "You never told me where you live in Napa Valley," she murmured.

"Actually, I live above the valley. I have a house halfway up a mountain.
Lots of wood and stone, and huge windows with a terrific view.
It stands empty for most of the year, now, but I'm hoping that'll soon change.
Would you like to live in a mountain aerie, witch-lady?"

The casual question demanded a casual answer, and Robyn swallowed hard before she could supply one. "I think... that I'd love to live in a mountain aerie," she finally got out lightly.
"As long as my
dragonslayer
lived there, too."

He brushed his lips against her forehead gently. "Your
dragonslayer
," he vowed huskily, "will always be there. He'd sell his soul to the devil for a promise of eternity with you, love."

Robyn shut her eyes against the bright reflection of sunlight off the water and refused to let
herself
think about eternity.
Or even tomorrow.
"I love you, Shane," she whispered.

"I love you, too, honey.
So very much."

They stood that way for a long time, only the snapping of wind in the sails and the splash of water disturbing the peace of their surroundings. Then Shane-perhaps sensing, with his uncanny perception, her need to hold the fears at bay with laughter- became playful once again.

His hand slid downward and shaped a rounded hip. In a shocked voice, he exclaimed, "My God-the woman's wearing nothing but this flimsy shirt! Are you lost to all decency?"

Robyn batted his hand away and laughed. "You should know. I seem to remember express orders from the skipper to wear something without snaps, buttons, or zippers. That was after my shorts and top bit the dust for the third time."

"Counting your conquests-and at your age, too!"

"I'm putting notches on my belt." She gasped suddenly as his hand returned to probe more intimately beneath the shirt. "What
are
you doing?" she asked breathlessly.

"Well, if you don't know by now-"

"Shane! Look, there's another boat coming! They'll call the Coast Guard, and we'll be arrested for shocking the fish or something. Darling, put both hands on the wheel-!"

The "darling" was nearly her undoing, since Shane promptly showed signs of abandoning the wheel and shocking more than the fish. She somehow managed, however, to be sitting decorously on the padded bench when the other boat sailed by. Fortunately, she reflected, the other skipper and crew weren't close enough to observe her flush or the gleam in Shane's eyes.

In spite of everything, they reached Key Largo by the time the sun was setting. But Robyn was somewhat puzzled at first when Shane decided that they would drop anchor in a small cove rather than enter the marina they had stopped at before.

"No marina?" she questioned.

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Well, those bunks below are pretty narrow."

Light dawned, but Robyn kept a straight face. "So?"

"We'll be up here on deck." Busily tying one of the sails, he slanted a gleaming look her way. "And it's remotely possible that we could shock narrow-minded neighbors in the marina."

Solemnly, Robyn said, "We wouldn't want to do that."

"Of course not."

"You're a dirty old man."

"I am not old!" Shane protested indignantly.

"You have a one-track mind."

"
Quoth
the vamp."

"
I
didn't nearly run us aground. And I didn't let the boat drift toward Cuba, either."