Her Passionate Pirate

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Cora clenched her teeth. “You’re creating a spectacle.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Liza smile broadly at him and give him a slight wave. The innocent act left Cora feeling oddly betrayed.

He bent his head closer. “The better to dazzle you with,” he retorted with infuriating cheer. “Watch and learn.”

Cora glared at him. He gave her a cocky grin, then faced his audience with aplomb. For the next several minutes he volleyed their questions, expounded on his research goals, gave eloquent testimony to her work with Abigail’s diaries and generally charmed the audience’s collective socks off.

He flirted, flaunted and flashed his million-dollar smile until he had them eating out of his hand. Cora watched, torn between amusement and irritation. Even her three nieces sat uncharacteristically still during the discourse. Several times Becky sent her telling looks. No wonder, she thought, that she’d had to work so hard to dig beneath the charismatic mantle he wore to glimpse the passionate man she’d seen last night. His armor was so thick he seemed undaunted by the occasionally blatant accusations that came his way from the handful of reporters who seemed determined to resist his charm. When one asked if he deliberately courted wealthy history buffs and thrill seekers for access to their money, he smiled and said with disarming nonchalance, “Whom would you suggest I court?”

And the crowd laughed appreciatively. Even Henry Willers, whose notoriously sour expression was the constant fodder of cartoons in the student paper, chuckled.

Another reporter captured his attention by asking, “Coming off the Argo find, isn’t Cape Marr going to be anticlimactic?”

Rafael nodded. “I certainly hope so. You can understand how an expedition of that sort can be exhausting.”

“Of course,” the man persisted. “But your career is peaking, and our readers would like to know why you’d choose to invest your time on something as seemingly innocuous as the Conrad diaries.”

“The del Flores story has been a career-long interest of mine. I’m eager to work with Dr. Prescott and learn more.”

“Any reason you can give us,” yelled a woman from the back, “for why you haven’t been able to find del Flores’s ship yet?

From the corner of her eye, Cora saw Rafael tense. He seemed to carefully consider the question, but she sensed a fine tremor of energy in him. In a deceptively casual move, he propped one arm on the podium and leaned forward. “Sometimes,” he said softly, “the sea is a tantalizing adversary.”

An unnatural hush seemed to fall on the room as they waited for him to continue. “In some ways,” he went on, “exploring the ocean’s mysteries is like courting a woman. It can be elusive and mysterious. It’s mercurial and unpredictable.”

Cora could almost feel the audience falling under his spell. And who could blame them? He was weaving a delicate wave of evocative images designed to entice and fascinate. She resisted the urge to wipe her suddenly damp palms on her skirt.

Rafael seemed lost in thought now. He absently stroked the outer edge of his eye patch as he continued, “The ocean is the source of life for the world. The mother of the earth, if you will. In her womb, she still carries the remnants of the earliest forms of life.”

Cora swallowed so hard it was audible. If he noticed, he didn’t look at her. “It’s full of secrets that it hides beneath a calm surface. Like a woman, the ocean can be as warm as a tropical breeze or as cold as an Arctic current.” A suspiciously strangled cough escaped her.

“Something about that fascinates me,” he said. “I especially like to find warm currents of water where the weather pattern demands frigid temperatures. The sea is a paradox. Always changing, always moving. You can never predict what the ocean will do. She can be calm as a breezeless day one minute, and catch you in a violent storm the next. She’s fathoms deep. Passionate. Alluring.” He rolled the last word off the tip of his tongue. “I love the mystery, and I love the challenge.”

He glanced momentarily at Cora. Their gazes met. Her body temperature went up a notch. He flashed her a slight smile that said he knew exactly what she was thinking, then turned back to his audience. “Nothing compares,” he drawled, “to that brief moment of mindless euphoria that always follows the climax of an expedition.”

The crowd sat in stunned silence. Cora resisted the urge to strangle him. A fine sheen of sweat had beaded her forehead, and as much as she’d like to blame it on the stage lighting, she suspected it owed more to an increased pulse rate. Damn the man, she thought irritably.

As rumbles began in the audience, one reporter, a strikingly attractive woman in a lipstick-red tailored suit, managed to shoulder her way through the crowd of photographers near the edge of the stage. She had dark hair and an olive complexion that gave her an exotic look. “Dr. Adriano,” she said, and Cora saw an unmistakable smirk on her full mouth, “while that’s all fine and good as the reason for your, uh, passion about your work, we’d still like to know why you’ve been looking for del Flores’s ship specifically for the past twenty years.”

Amusement danced in Rafael’s eye as he met the woman’s gaze. “Some lovers are harder than others to catch.”

While the crowd laughed, the woman shook her head at him, her expression slightly mocking. There was an obvious history here, Cora noted. She just couldn’t determine its dynamics. The reporter pressed, “Then can we assume that you’re expecting to find some new information in the Conrad diaries that might shed light on the disappearance of del Flores’s ship?”

Rafael straightened from his languid pose and crossed both arms over his broad chest. “Hello, Elena,” he said with obvious warmth.

She acknowledged his greeting with a slight tilt of her head. “Are you expecting to find something in Abigail Conrad’s diaries that will shed new light on del Flores’s ship?” she persisted.

His challenging stance didn’t alter, and from the corner of her eye, Cora thought she saw his jaw tense. “Direct as usual,” he said.

“While you’re just as elusive.” The woman pressed closer to the platform. “Aren’t you really here because you believe that something in those diaries will lead you to the Isabela?”

Cora held her breath. He nodded, his expression thoughtful. “There’s always a chance,” he said carefully, “of an unexpected discovery. If Abigail Conrad was intimately acquainted with del Flores, it’s my hope that her writings will help me understand the man better. Beyond that, I have no expectations.”

“Really?” the reporter asked, her tone skeptical.

Rafael’s nod was short. “Really.”

An unnatural silence had settled on the crowd as they watched the interplay. Cora glanced at her nieces and noted that Liza seemed to have grown restless. She was resisting Becky’s efforts to keep her in her seat. Clutching Benedict Bunny in one hand, she squirmed against Becky’s restraining arm and tried to wriggle free. Elena, unaware of the movement behind her, forged ahead. “But there could be direct information about the wreck,” she countered. “Couldn’t there?”

“It’s possible, but highly unlikely. As Dr. Prescott explained, the Conrad diaries predate del Flores’s disappearance by several years.”

Elena lifted her dark eyebrows. “But there could be more diaries?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure there could be. Dr. Prescott’s team has already conducted a search, however.”

“But you haven’t searched yourself?”

“Not yet,” he conceded.

Elena seemed to sense she had gained the advantage. “And weren’t you in the middle of another project when you left Chapel Hill?”

“I was considering several options, but none piqued my interest.” His tone had taken on a slight edge as the verbal confrontation escalated.

Liza, Cora noted with another glance at the front row, was now out of her seat. She and Molly appeared to have a brief argument. Liza pointed to the stage. Molly shook her head emphatically. Kaitlin looked on, her gaze speculative.

Elena ignored the rapidly elevating noise behind her and asked another question. “So you’re going to spend valuable research time waiting for Dr. Prescott to tell you what’s in the diaries just to learn a little about del Flores? Come on, Dr. Adriano, you’re the leading expert on the man and his career. No one’s going to believe you’re here for nothing more than a glimpse of his love life.”

“That’s up to them, I suppose,” he retorted.

Elena shook her head. “I think you believe there’s something in Dr. Prescott’s house, or at least in the Conrad diaries, that’s going to help you find del Flores’s ship.” There was a collective rumble in the audience.

Rafael leveled a piercing look at the reporter. “Why in the world would you think that?”

“Because,” she said, clearly undaunted, “you could have chosen to pursue another project while Dr. Prescott studied the diaries. If you weren’t hoping to find something she might miss, why else would you be in that house?”

Cora felt the situation begin to slide into a dangerous, out-of-control spin. What was it he’d said? We’ll direct them, instead of letting them direct us. Too late for that strategy obviously.

She glanced at her nieces again and saw that Liza was making her way toward the stage, having eluded Becky’s grasp. Kaitlin now had Becky’s attention as she distracted her from Liza’s behavior. Dragging Benedict Bunny behind her, Liza looked for all the world like a miniature avenging caveman with a club. Cora could only hope that the little girl would succeed in knocking the reporter off her feet before this went too far.

Cora brought her gaze back to Rafael. The scar that ran from his hairline to the edge of his patch had whitened, giving the only indication of his rising tension. She had a sudden image of Juan Rodriguez del Flores damning caution and setting a course for the outer banks where he could rendezvous with Abigail. Abigail Conrad, Cora thought, who had flaunted convention and bravely conducted a forbidden affair with her pirate lover.

Having spent so many weeks immersed in Abigail’s writing, Cora, who was known for her formidable self-control and dignity, decided that she owed Abigail a worthy show of élan. Liza was now a few steps from Elena, and in the face of certain disaster, Cora nudged Rafael away from the microphone and faced the reporter with a bright smile. “Actually, you’re reading this entirely wrong,” she told her.