Authors: Sarah West
Passion's Tide (28 page)
“That’s a big assumption on your part,” she said as she slid into her shirt and pulled her hair back from her face with a leather tie
.
“I meant to ask you, who’s Marcus?” She thought she saw him falter, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Why do you ask?”
“When you were asleep earl
ier and Abe knocked, you said
’
go away, Marcus.’”
He relaxed
.
“He was just my room
mate at school
.
He would always have to wake me up in the mornings so I wouldn’t miss my classes.” Just then, another knock sounded at the door
.
Opening it, they were met with the sight of Deacon holding Johnny by a handful of shirt.
“There’s something you need to be seeing, Captain,” he grunted as he sh
oved the boy towards the hatch
.
Logan glanced at Amber and shrugged, and they both followed the men down into the hold
.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“It started when we noticed food had gone missing
.
Thinking it
might
be rats or Creed getting
hungry in the middle of the night, I hid and waited, and that’s when I saw the boy.” He gave Johnny a second push
.
“Come on, show em what I saw.” With a somber expression, Johnny put two fingers into his mouth and gave a curt whistle. Amber startled as something large and furry rubbed against her legs
.
Looking down, she gasped in surprise.
“Tybalt?” Incredulous, she scooped the cat into her arms.
“I don’t know who Tybalt is, I’ve just been callin’ her Daisy.”
“Tybalt is from Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
,” she explained to Johnny
.
“They called him the prince of cats
.
And besides, Daisy is a girl’s…” she trailed off as a quiet mewing came from behind a crate
.
The cat leapt from her hold and jumped out of sight, reappearing with a tiny calico kitten in her mouth.
“Unless Shakespeare wrote anything about a princess of cats, I think Daisy’s a more fitting name,” Pax observed from the doorway
.
Three trips later and Daisy, the princess of cats, had carried out a whole brood of crying kittens.
“How did the cat get on the boat, Johnny?” Logan asked.
“I didn’t do it, I swear!” the boy defended. “She must have snuck on
.
I
found her down here, and when she had the bab
i
es I just took to bringing her food and water, on account of she can’t leave em all alone because they’re always getting into trouble.”
“Logan,” Amber cut in,” in all fairness he, I mean she, probably just followed us back from the inn
.
Don’t chastise him.”
“Yeah, don’t chastise me!”
Logan rubbed his temples to subdue hi
s headache
.
“You mean to tell me that this cat snuck onto a heavily guarded pirate ship, unnoticed, stowed away, and gave birth to four ki
ttens?”
“Well, nine.”
“Nine!?”
“Don’t worry, they don’t eat much
.
And Henry and I have been taking shifts watching the little ones so Daisy can hunt.”
“Wait, hunt? What does she hunt?”
Johnny rolled his eyes
.
“Rats, of course.”
“There aren’t any rats on my ship.”
“Well not anymore, there
ain’t
.”
Logan groaned as Amber came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder
.
“There isn’t anything you can do about it now, so why don’t we just leave them?”
“I can throw them over the side of the damn ship,” he mumbled.
“Just let Johnny take care of them,” she said, picking up the nearest kitten, an orange and brown tabby
.
“I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The big deal is that he kept crucial information, vital to the well-being of this ship
,
from his captain.”
She snorted
.
“Vital information? You’re joking, right?” She dropped her voice to a whisper that only he could hear
.
“Besides, look
how happy Johnny is. Apart from Henry, he’s the only boy on this ship. It’ll do him some good to have a pet to take care of. Didn’t you have any pets when you were a boy?”
He grimaced
.
“Not a cat, certainly
.
I don’t like them.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Johnny demanded.
“They’re sneaky and manipulative creatures, and they always look like their plotting my demise.”
“
Oh
, now that’s just silly
.
How could this cute, innocent little kitten be anything but precious?” she asked as she thrust the animal towards his face
.
Catching it before it could get too close to him, he held it at arms length and stared at it
.
“Does it look manipulative to you?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.
“Liar.” Logan hid a s
mile
.
He had to admit, the little pest was endearing, if not
precious.
Its scruffy orange hair appeared too long for its tiny body and stuck out in all directions
as if
it had been struck by lightning
.
It hung limply in his hands, its tail swishing back and forth and its yellow eyes (like the mother’s, he noticed) were open as wide as dinner plates as the tiny kitten returned his stare.
And then, as if the w
hole encounter had been scripted, it began to purr
.
“Oh look, it likes you!” Amber declared as she knelt to tickle another kitten behind its ears
.
Daisy rubbed against Logan’s legs and with a grunt, he shoved the tabby at Johnny.
“Fine, keep the damn animals, for all I care
.
But they are your responsibility, you understand me? You aren’t getting out of your duties, and any food must come from your rations
.
Keep them down here and out of trouble
.
If I see a cat on deck I am kicking it overboard.”
Loga
n glanced at the litter one last time then turned and left, Amber behind him
.
“You aren’t really going to kick a kitten, are you?” she asked, trying to keep pace with his long strides.
“What do you think?”
“I think, while you have the ability to kill a man, and the strength to command your men, you don’t have it in you to hurt an
animal
.
Especially a poor, defenseless, one.”
“Correct.”
“Well, then why did you tell Johnny that?”
“Because I don’t want them underfoot, getting in the way or distracting my crew
.
He’ll watch them closer than their own mother will if he believes they are in danger.”
“Clever,” she remarked.
He grinned at her
.
“I am, aren’t I?”
“How do you feel about Spain?”
Amber looked up from the pistol she had been cleaning
out on the deck
“Spain? I don’t know, I suppose I don’t really support their political system, and I think that while their navigational prowess is impressive, their desire to control the entire world is barbaric.” She noticed Logan’s stunned face
.
“What did I say?”
He shook his head with a laugh
.
“I simply wanted to know if you would mind taking a detour there for a few days.”
“Oh! I’d love to see Spain,” she said with color rising on her cheeks.
“You know, with all the sun you’ve been getting, yo
ur freckles are becoming quite pronounced.” She quickly lifted her hands to cover her face, but he pulled them away
.
“Don’t
.
I think they’re adorable.”
“I’m twenty-three years old
.
Adorable is hardly a word I enjoy hearing used to describe my physical
appearance.”
He leaned in close, his mouth inches away from
her ear
.
“Dozens of other words come to mind when I think about you
.
Why don’t you put that gun away and I’ll tell you some of them.”
Despite the shiver that coursed down her spine at
his proposal, she forced herself to look cont
rite as she pulled the cloth from the muzzle
.
“I can’t, I’m on pump duty this afternoon.” She lubricated another section of cloth and rammed it back into the barrel.
“One of the other men can do it, I’m sure.”
“They wouldn’t be happy.”
“They don’t have to be happy; they just have to do it.”
“It’s not their job
.
It’s mine, and I’m not about to slack off and let it fall to someone else.” With a clean rag she went about drying the outside of the gun,
removing any excess moisture.
“Sweetheart, don’t yo
u think you’ve worked hard enough, and deserve a break?”
”Believe it or not, I actually enjoy the work
.
It keeps me active and I like the challenge.”
He lifted the pistol from her fingers and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it. “I can think of
many other ways to keep you active
.”
She snatched the gun from him and slid it into the waistband of her pants
.
“I’m sure you could
.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get below deck.”
He g
rabbed her arm
.
“God damn it, Amber, why does everything have to be so bloody difficult? Are you truly too proud to surrender this ridiculous notion you must act like a pirate? Why can’t you simply forget about it, and enjoy the rest of the journey with
me—”
“As your mistress?” The word came out
in a hiss, its very idea leaving a sour taste on her tongue
.
“Is that really all I am to you?”
“You’re putting words into my mouth
.
I’m just trying to explain to you that you have nothing to prove.”
“Well you just convinced me that I do.” Conscious
of the stares they were receiving she stepped forward, her chin tilted at a severe angle so that she could look up at him
.
“And just so we are clear, I may have given into my baser instincts last night but in no way
was that an invitation to try and co
ntrol my every action
.
Nothing has changed
.”
“Like hell it hasn’t.”
“Is there something wrong?” Eli asked with a pointed glance at the men who had stopped working to observe the argument, stepping aside as Amber
stalked
away.
“Of course not, she’s made herself abundantly clear.”
“I must admit, Logan, your mood swings are becoming so
turbulent
, even I don’t know what to expect,” Eli said, giving his friend a curious stare.
“
My
mood swings? Ha!”
“It’s not like you to let a woman get under your skin like this.”
“Yes, well she’s crawled her way under there and sunk her little claws in deep
.
And there she stays, leechlike, to arouse me and infuriate me in rapid succession
.
I can’t understand why she insi
sts on working when she knows I
am capable of taking care of her.”
“Good lord, man, are you daft? Stop trying to keep her on a leash if you desire a civil relationship with the girl
.
Leave well enough alone.”
“But she is exerting herself for naught—”
“That is so far from the point,
it’s a wonder you’ve bedded as many
women
as you say
.
Just let her calm down, and then try treating her like one of your men.” Their attention was drawn to Amber, who ascended the steps lugging a heavy coil of rope that was
saturated with water from t
he bilge, and spread it out on the deck to dry in the sun
.
After wiping a bead of sweat from her brow, she climbed back down
.
“Though I can see why you find it difficult to treat her as anything but the woman she is.”