скачать книгу бесплатно
“I’ve got to slow down and check out my boat soon,” she called. Although the Baby Doll didn’t handle like it was taking on water, it was a half-million-dollar piece of equipment, and it wasn’t hers. Her father would kill her if she sank his favorite toy.
“Do it,” her passenger replied.
She powered back to idle, and the sudden quiet was a shock. “Take the wheel while I have a look at the hull.”
She stepped out of the cockpit and, balancing carefully, made her way out onto the forward hull. She stretched out on her stomach and leaned over the edge of the boat to have a look at the damage. A series of dents marred the cotton-candy-pink hull, but shockingly, it didn’t look like there were any holes. Stunned, she shifted over the other side of the boat. No hull breaches there, either. Thank God.
“How’s it looking?” the man asked.
“Fine,” she replied in disbelief. She pressed to her feet and made her way back to the deck.
He offered her a hand as she stepped over the windshield. Their palms met, his large and callused and impossibly gentle. An actual tremor passed through her. And she wasn’t a trembly kind of girl, thank you very much. Wow. She hopped down, still holding his hand. He waited a millisecond too long to release her fingers. But she noticed. And her stomach did a neat flip.
She cleared her throat nervously. “None of the bullets seem to have punctured the hull. Now that I think about it, I remember hearing something about this boat having a hybrid epoxy hull that uses layers of Kevlar instead of fiberglass or carbon cloth.”
Her passenger’s eyebrows shot straight up. “A bulletproof boat?”
“Sort of.” Belatedly, caution speared through her. “Who are you? And who were those guys chasing you?”
“It doesn’t matter. For what it’s worth, my employer will pay for any damage to the boat incurred while you saved my a—” he amended, “my behind.”
“Not to worry. Anyone who can afford a boat like this can afford repairs on it.” She might have delivered that line in a supremely unconcerned manner, but she was shaking from head to foot. She’d actually been shot at! For that matter, this guy was still casually brandishing his machine gun. He’d slung it from a strap over his right shoulder, and it pointed down the length of his muscular thigh. She jerked her gaze away from his weapon nervously.
She ticked off on her fingers, “Boat chase, check. Gun battle, check. Narrow escape, check. What’s next on the agenda, Mister—?” She broke off, leaving the obvious question of his name hanging.
He hesitated just an instant too long. “Perovski. Mitch Perovski.”
“For today, at any rate?” she replied lightly.
“Something like that,” he responded, as dry as the Gobi desert.
Not much of a talker. But then, she could relate. She’d come down here to the islands in search of silence, herself. Relief from the vapid noise of humanity. “My name’s Kinsey—” she hesitated. Rather than give him her well-known last name, she substituted her middle name. “—Pierpont. Kinsey Pierpont.”
She powered the boat up to a safe and inconspicuous cruising speed, closer to twenty knots than eighty. “Where can I take you?”
He snorted. “Anywhere that’s not Tortola, or the British Virgin Islands for that matter.”
The Baby Doll carried fuel for a few hours of cruising, which would reach several nearby islands outside the British chain—not that she’d decided to take him anywhere. “Did you kill that guy?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
He shrugged. “A gut shot like that is usually fatal, but since we didn’t stick around to check him out, I wouldn’t call it a confirmed kill.”
He sounded so bloody calm about it. Her heart practically pounded its way out of her chest at the mere thought of that guy toppling overboard.
“What islands can we reach on our current fuel load?” the man asked, abruptly serious again. He’d gone from relaxed to full predator mode in the blink of an eye. The shift was disconcerting.
She glanced down at the fuel gauges. “Where did you have in mind?”
Another shrug. Cagey, he was. “You were the Plan C I wasn’t supposed to need. I didn’t work out the details after the part where you saved my hide. Thanks, by the way.”
“You’re welcome, I think. You are one of the good guys, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
That was it? No explanation? No identification? No reason offered for carrying around that monstrous gun and using it on someone? “And the guy you shot?”
“Definite bad guy.”
It would be far too easy to take this man at his word. She needed to believe him. Needed to believe he wouldn’t turn that gun on her with the same casual ease he had those other guys. Heck, she needed to get on the radio and call the British Coast Guard. She reached for the radio mike and jumped violently when her passenger’s hand whipped out to cover hers. His grip wasn’t painful, but was unmistakably powerful.
“What are you doing?” His voice was a low, dangerous rumble.
The sound vibrated deep in her belly, stirring part fear and part something else altogether. She replied lightly, “I’m calling in the cavalry.”
“Don’t.”
“But—”
“You don’t know what you’re involved in. Don’t call the authorities or the blood of a whole lot of good men could end up on your hands.”
“But those guys were shooting at us—”
“And we shot back.”
“You shot back.”
“I shot back. I need you to leave the police out of this for now. I can’t go into the details but you have to trust me.”
Riiight. Trust him. Not.
“I need you to promise you won’t contact the police. I don’t want to have to restrain you.”
“Restrain—”
He cut her off with a sharp slash of his hand through the air. “Promise.”
Their gazes clashed, hers defiant and his…the sun turned his a molten gold that could consume her whole and melt her down to nothing. A girl could lose herself in those eyes if she wasn’t careful. Very careful.
“Well?” he demanded. “Do we do this the easy way or the hard way?”
Chapter 2
Her gaze narrowed. Oh, how tempting it was to tell him to go to hell. But he was bigger than she was, stronger than she was, and undoubtedly meaner. Then there was his machine gun to consider. Reining in her surliness, she retorted, “I won’t call the police if you’ll put that gun away.”
He stared intently at her for a moment more, clearly weighing her honesty. Then he nodded. “Fair enough.” He pivoted with that extreme, muscular grace of his and padded to the back of the deck where his duffel still lay. She caught the wince that passed across his features.
“Are you okay?” she asked in quick concern. If those guys in the black boat came back, Mitch was her only protection.
“Yeah. It’s a flesh wound. I’ll clean it up when I know we’re safe.”
“It looks bad.”
He glanced down, surprised. “Nah, that’s a little scratch. No organs hanging out or bones showing. I’m good.”
He wasn’t good—he was hurt.
She watched cautiously as he wiped down the machine gun and stowed it in the canvas bag.
Thank God. Being in the presence of that giant weapon made her too nervous to function rationally. Not to mention, he was gorgeous enough to send her pulse into the stratosphere. Her thoughts jumped around as disjointedly as caged monkeys.
“I know your name, but who are you?” she asked more sharply than she’d intended. Panic hovered too close, waiting for the slightest opening in which to pounce.
“I’m American.”
“I can tell you’re American from your accent. But who are you?”
Silence. A frown wrinkled his brow, but he ignored her question. Or maybe chose not to answer.
How rude was that? He’d dragged her into the middle of a shoot-out, for goodness’ sake. A tiny voice in the back of her head said her anger was irrational, but the much louder voice of her fear-morphed-to-fury overruled it. “Who were those men chasing you?”
That got more reaction out of him. A full-blown shrug. Wow. Some communicator. A flinch flickered across his face, then his expression went smooth and impassive again. Except for those incredible eyes of his. They all but ate her alive.
Her insides quailing with some reaction she chose not to examine closely, she tried again. “Why were they shooting at you?”
His gaze, now tinted orange by the blossoming sunset, snapped with irritation. What did he have to be irritated about? She was the injured party here. She announced, “I want you off the boat. Now.”
“I’ll bet you do,” he purred.
He could stop sending shivers across her skin like that any time now. “I’m serious.”
He glanced around at the water on all sides with distaste. “You want me to jump overboard?”
“I was thinking more in terms of walking the plank. But I want you off the Baby Doll. I want no part of whatever it is you’re mixed up in.”
Dammit, the guy had a smile so hot it threatened to melt her righteous fury into a completely ineffectual puddle of lust. Spine, woman. Spine! Her gaze narrowed belatedly.
The humor drained from his expression, abruptly leaving it as cold as the arctic. Dread clawed her gut. Absolutely nothing radiated off him now. Not anger, not irritation, not even danger. He went absolutely, totally, completely still.
“There are sharks in these waters,” he finally muttered.
Yeah, and she was looking at the most deadly one of all. Taking a deep breath and mustering up all her courage to stare him down, she replied, “There’s no history in this area of shark attacks on humans. I don’t want any trouble. Please go. The water’s warm and it’s only about a quarter mile to shore.”
The southwestern tip of Tortola was sliding past their port side now.
He sighed and replied almost soothingly, “I’m sorry. I can’t leave you.”
“Can’t you swim?” she challenged a bit tartly.
Aggravation flashed in his gaze, and matching satisfaction surged in her. He snapped, “I swim very well, thank you. Why, I’ve swum with—” He broke off. “Look. We have a little problem. The driver of that boat got a good look at you. Too good a look.”
“And this is a problem why?”
“Because now he has to kill you.”
She huffed in disbelieving laughter. “I’ve never seen that man in my life! Why in the world would he hurt me?”
Perovski’s voice dropped into a careful, reasonable timbre. “I didn’t say hurt. I said kill. And he’d do it because he thinks you got too good a look at him.”
“I barely caught a glimpse of him what with all the bullets flying and wild driving I was doing.”
In an even gentler tone, he replied, “But he doesn’t know that. For all he knows, you could pick him out of a mug book or a lineup. He can’t afford to let you live.”
Her jaw dropped. A killer thought she could finger him? She felt a distinct urge to throw up. “Great. Why did I have to get dragged into this?”
Sounding downright apologetic now, he answered, “No one said anything about there being anyone aboard the Baby Doll. Congressman Hollingsworth said I could borrow his boat, but he didn’t say anything about you being here.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
Perovski started. “Did you steal this boat?”
“Of course not! I just didn’t tell my father I was coming down to the beach house.”
“Your father?” His voice was deadly quiet.
She exhaled hard. “Yeah. My father. Richard Hollingsworth.”
He pounced immediately. “I thought you said your name was Kinsey Pierpont.”
“It is. Kinsey Pierpont Hollingsworth.”
He absorbed that one in silence. So much for anonymity on this little retreat of hers. This guy would brag to someone in a bar about running into Kinsey Hollingsworth, and someone would overhear him. Before she knew it, the local paparazzi would mob her. And any chance at hiding in peace would be blown.
“Your middle name is really Pierpont?”
He didn’t have to sound so bloody amused about it. “What’s yours?” she challenged.
“Edgar,” he admitted.
She suppressed a spurt of laughter. “And you’re giving me grief about Pierpont?”
“I’m named after my grandfather,” he said defensively.
“So am I,” she retorted.
Laughter danced in his eyes, transforming their dangerous depths to a warm, inviting amber. Belatedly, she shook herself free of their spell.
She sighed. “Since you’re the reason I’ve apparently run afoul of the guy in the boat, what do you suggest I do about it?”
He clammed up on her again. It figured. Honestly, the whole idea of some killer tracking her down and offing her was too preposterous. She faced her impromptu companion squarely and said resolutely, “Please leave.”
