Mesmerizing Stranger Read online

  “Don’t call me Cookie. And believe me, I’d be baying at the top of my lungs if I had anything serious to complain about. I’m an A-grade whiner.”

  “No, you aren’t and no, you wouldn’t,” Harm said patiently. “You’re tough as nails. Strong as a rock. And stubborn as a hound.”

  “Didn’t your mother teach you any better than this? If you want to seduce a woman, you need to use sweet talk, not insults.” She was looking right at him, and he was looking right back, but Cate felt what he was doing. Peeling off the blanket. Finding the drawstring of her sleeping pants. And then she felt his big, bare hand on her flesh. She slapped her own hand over his to stop him.

  “My mom tried to teach me manners. You’d love her. She kept this little switch on the top of the refrigerator, something on par with a tree twig. Threatened me with beatings my whole childhood, but never once laid a finger on me.”

  “She should have,” Cate said darkly. With infinite gentleness, he’d lifted her hand. With even more infinite gentleness, that intrusive, intimate hand slowly stroked down her body, from the sides of her breasts to her ribs to the start of her bony hip and around. His touch, his tenderness, was the lovemaking of a fantasy-the big, strong guy able to melt for and with the right woman.

  Only this wasn’t lovemaking, and there was no fantasy. The glaring overhead light blinded her and made her feel overvulnerable.

  Damn it. She hated feeling vulnerable. Even with a lover, she picked the time, the place, the circumstance. She chose what happened and how.

  “You can tell my mom that she should have smacked me when I was a kid. She’ll totally agree with you. I can remember having an argument with her when I was in high school-something about using the car. Anyway, she got on a footstool so she’d be tall enough to shake her finger in my face. Beats me why. She won every argument we ever had anyway-damn it, Cate.”

  His soothing tone and gentle tenderness abruptly disappeared. He didn’t yank or tear, but once he discovered the mighty bruise on her hip, he forgot that she might have some serious modesty issues. It wasn’t as if the location of the injury was any surprise to her. She already figured it was going to be the mother of all bruises.

  From the way Harm was swearing, it was already the mother of all bruises times ten. And unfortunately, once he’d discovered that lumpy bruise, he turned dead serious about checking every inch of the rest of her right then, in detail, fast, no arguing with him. “This hurt?”

  “Of course it hurts. You’re poking my shoulder.”

  “Shut up, Cate. Answer the question. How about here?”

  It was that “shut up” that made the tears well. She squeezed her eyes closed so the stupid things wouldn’t fall. It was downright silly to get all buttery over a “shut up” when no woman in the universe would think of it as a love word. But it was. With him, it was. She saw it in his eyes, heard it in the gravel-roughness in his voice, felt it in the rage in his careful, careful hands.

  “Okay. The spot behind the shoulder. And the hip. And my head. But nothing’s broken-I can tell and you can tell. So I think you should cover me up with some warm blankets and bring me some wine and be nice.”

  “I think I should find who did this to you and…” His breath caught. “It’s my fault this happened to you, Cate.”

  “It certainly is. You should have been up on the top deck, waiting for the bad guy to show up and stop him from pushing me off. Talk about dereliction of responsibility. You’re a cad through and through.”

  “I’m going to the galley for more ice. Lots and lots of ice. And more bags or something to put it in. You’re getting ice on the hip as well as on your head. We’re getting that swelling down. And you’re getting woken up every couple hours just to be sure of the concussion business. Now. Try giving me a hard time.”

  She considered it. He was obviously enjoying turning into Mr.-Own-The-Universe-Bossy. But for a couple of minutes, she was increasingly feeling like a battered kickball. A little silence and rest might help her get a better grip.

  But Harm seemed to return to the cabin in three seconds flat, carrying heaping bags of ice and a dark scowl. “It’s got to hurt darned bad if it’s making you cry.”

  “I wasn’t crying! Sheesh!” She watched him turn down the lights, flick on the one in the master head, dimming the room. If the damned man was going to be considerate enough to let her hide her expression in the darkness, he really was going to make her cry. The ugly, loud kind of crying. “Harm-”

  “Yeah?” He’d covered the makeshift ice bags in towels, eased the one between the headboard and the goose egg on her head, then cushioned one against the monster bruise on her thigh. Then started covering and tucking.

  “I think Yale overheard me telling the captain about the peppermint.”

  If he added any more blankets, she was going to roast. But he looked at her so sharply, she changed her mind about complaining.

  “You think so, hmm?” Finally, he pushed off his shoes and eased down on the mattress next to her, barely taking any covers, careful not to jolt her in any way. “My first reaction to that is to go kill Yale, Cookie. But on second thought…he could have passed that information on to the other two. So there’s no guarantee he was the pusher, only that he was probably the catalyst to your getting hurt. If he did pass on your death-by-peppermint theory to the others, I’d think you’d be prey to some teasing tomorrow. That is, if any of them are brash enough-or smart enough-to bring it up openly.”

  He’d spooned around her so protectively that, hurts or no hurts, she started to feel snuggly and safe. And turned on-which struck her as a completely lunatic response, considering how beat-up she was. “Harm?”

  “Okay. You get to say one more thing. But then you’re closing your eyes and getting some rest.”

  “I was just thinking that tomorrow morning, I should tell everyone at breakfast how I fell asleep top deck, fell off, and got really bruised. Make a point of saying how stupid and careless I was. Not imply in any way that I believe someone deliberately pushed me.”

  He thought. “That’s a great idea, Cate. It’s much safer if no one thinks we’re on to them. In fact, I can bring up your death-by-peppermint theory and make out like I think it’s funny-for the same reason-to make the culprit think he’s safe. However…”

  “However what?”

  “However, you won’t be making breakfast tomorrow, Toots. You’re going to be in here. Safe and sound.”

  “You call me Toots or Cookie again, Harm, and that’s it. I won’t sleep with you, no matter how much you beg me.”

  He scooched down, just another notch, pressed the softest whisper of a kiss on her brow. “Aw, yeah, you will.” And then, “What a fabulous little body you’ve got. Perfect. Curved in all the right places. Strong and sweet.”

  “Yeah. I know,” she said, and damn the man, but he forced her to fall asleep on a smile.

  She slept, but Harm couldn’t. First off, he couldn’t rest because he had to check on her every few minutes-to make sure she was covered, to make sure the ice packs were still cold and not leaking. And obviously, to make sure she wasn’t hurting.

  And since he was stuck not sleeping, he kept turning over the last two days of events in his mind. It seemed petrifyingly likely that someone had tried to kill Cate-probably the same someone who’d killed Fiske, who was the same someone at the source of the formula disappearance.

  That was easy enough to conclude. But it didn’t help him any more than it had before to identify the culprit.

  He woke Cate every two hours to check her pupils, kiss her brow and order her back to sleep. By 5:00 a.m., though, he gave up trying to sleep himself. The only thing he’d gotten from the long, endless night so far was an evocative long, endless hard-on from sleeping next to her.

  The pervasiveness of that hard-on made him aggravatingly aware that he was becoming more attached to that woman than a thorn on a rose. He barely knew her, yet here he was losing sleep, feeling responsible, feelin
g a sense of connection and pull and hunger to be around her.

  Groggy-eyed, he headed up on deck and went straight for the elegant, old-fashioned coffee urn. It looked awful to him, but when push came to shove, it was just a machine. He’d made coffee in tougher spots in the army, so he wasn’t worried he couldn’t figure it out.

  He prowled around Cate’s galley for coffee beans, something to measure water, then paced around, waiting for the others to wake up. The sky was blurry, a mix of doughy clouds and murky light, and didn’t discernibly change over the next hour. By then he’d worn holes in the deck, pacing around and realizing-not for the first time-that he was really good at doing, and really bad at having to wait and not act.

  Finally, though, Ivan emerged from the crew quarters. Harm didn’t leap on him like a rabid dog, but the captain had barely gotten out a yawn before he barked, “Is it okay with you if I get into the pilothouse? Use the radio?”

  “Sure.” Ivan filled a mug, carted it with him outside to unlock and step into the pilothouse. The captain hadn’t shaved, had sucked down his share of whiskey the night before and had the swollen eyes to prove it. Still, he was no one’s fool. He set him up with the radio, then plopped in the captain chair, out of the way. “What happened?”

  “Cate was hurt last night.”

  Ivan’s eyes sharpened. “How, when, where and what?”

  Harm talked; Ivan started up the engines, and both of them took turns at the radio, communicating to the mainland and Baranof Springs. By then, Arthur showed up, holding a mug, saying, “Who in God’s name made this sludge? Where’s Cate? What’s going on?”

  His three guys all looked as if they’d had a rough night, but none had a guilt sign tattooed on their foreheads, nothing to give away any more information than Harm already had. The story he told them-while serving a bunch of fruit in a bowl and army oatmeal-was that Cate had fallen the night before. She’d apparently headed topside to do some stargazing, dozed off and then fell.

  The men all expressed concern that sounded sincere. Purdue eventually tried to lighten the atmosphere by lifting his cereal spoon, trying to make a joke. “I’ve never had much religion, but I’m willing to fall to my knees and pray that she’s feeling good enough to make the next meal. Are you sure this is oatmeal and not cement?”

  Arthur was in no mood for humor. “Harm, I think we should cancel this trip completely and go home. There’s just too much going wrong. It’s as if we’re jinxed.”

  Yale immediately backed up Arthur. “It doesn’t matter what the authorities said. They can’t keep us here. If they have any more questions about Fiske, they can call us or something. No one can stop us from going home.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Harm said.

  “Sure, it is.”

  Harm said, “There isn’t a doctor, but there is a PA in Baranof Springs, and we can be there in just a couple more hours. The lump on Cate’s head is one big slugger. I really believe a medical person should check her out before going anywhere else.” He exchanged glances with Ivan. Both also knew, from the radio transmissions earlier, that the Juneau pathologist had returned from his fishing trip, and they could possibly hear more about Fiske’s autopsy later that day or tomorrow. Harm’s priority was Cate. But he was wary of making any sudden moves without all the information he could gather first.

  “So we stay through today,” Arthur agreed, but his tone still reflected tension. “I just think we should head home right after that. I’m really uneasy with all this. We still don’t even know what happened to Fiske.”

  “I know what Cate thought happened,” Purdue piped in. “Yale told me he heard her talking to the captain. Said she went to make more peppermint cookies for us and found all her peppermint oil-or extract, or whatever it is-gone. She was worried Fiske got into it. Might have gotten sick from it somehow.” So Yale had overheard that conversation, Harm mused. Just as Cate thought. But if both Purdue and Yale knew about Cate’s theory, neither still had a motivation to push her off the top deck-at least none Harm could think of.

  Arthur edged back his chair. “Actually, using peppermint on a toothache is an old-fashioned remedy. Maybe that was what Fiske was doing in the galley. We all know how he was addicted to sweets. Maybe a tooth started going bad on him.”

  Harm finished the oatmeal and had another coffee. Neither tasted that bad to him. Of course, he wasn’t concentrating on food. He was studying his men, and suffering enough frustration to claw walls. None of them showed any sign of guilt. There were no hidden looks, no apparent nerves. The whole mood of the guys was darker than gloom, though, until Cate suddenly showed up in the doorway.

  She looked like something the cat dragged in out of the rain. Her hair, never styled at the best of times, stuck up in ragamuffin spikes around a blue-scarf bandage. She’d pulled on big, droopy sweats over big, droopy socks, and could barely traverse the room without limping. Panic buzzed his heartbeat. “What the Sam Hill are you doing up here?” he demanded.

  She shot him a look reserved usually for puppies who’d piddled. “Well, I’ll be. Did you suddenly turn into my boss?” She shot a scandalized look at the table’s contents. “Are you boys trying to eat this? And who burned the coffee? I could smell it all the way below deck.”

  “Cate-” He thought she’d agreed to stay in his cabin, locked up tight, where she’d be safe.

  “I was just en route to the head when some of the conversation filtered downstairs. I thought I heard that y’all were going to postpone going home because of me. That’s silly. I’m fine.” She limped over to the coffee urn. “I don’t need a doctor. You guys should do whatever it is you want or need to do. I admit, I may not be up to much cooking today…but honest to Pete, even if I were bedridden in a body cast, I can keep you guys fed better than this.”

  Harm was about to get testy about all the slurs to his breakfast making, but abruptly he realized what she was doing. The men immediately took his side, bullying her into the necessity of having someone medical check her out in Baranof Springs. Even if they all wanted to go home, it wasn’t as if a few hours’ difference was going to matter.

  She poured a mug of his “burned” coffee and made it all the way around the table to the seat next to him. She never winced, never outwardly showed how much she was hurting. But she still eased down next to him like a kitten next to her lion. He realized abruptly that the damn woman was making all this effort for his sake-playing his team, her way, to help him get what he wanted, which was more time here in Alaska.

  Actually, what he wanted was to scoop her onto his lap and hold her indefinitely. He wanted to soothe those bruises away, make her feel safe and warm, yell at her for being such a numbskull for climbing the stairs.

  He could hardly do any of those things-particularly when she took another sip from her mug, and spouted further gross, effusive insults about his inability to make coffee.

  “We could kill rats with this, I guess. But…I don’t think we have any. Possibly we could clean all the sinks? I’m pretty sure this swill would kill even the most optimistic germ nature ever created-”

  “Sheesh. You think that’s enough ribbing?” Harm played up that his feelings were hurt. Maybe they even were, a little.

  “I don’t know, guys. You think that’s enough ribbing?”

  Of course the guys didn’t think it was enough ribbing. They’d never teased him before. Cate was egging them on. And in the meantime, Hans was edging into the dock at Baranof Springs. At which time, Ivan announced orders to all passengers to bring a towel and their bathing suits.

  “Right,” was the standard incredulous response.

  Ivan said, “I mean it. Follow the road through town, up the hill. On the right side of the waterfalls-which are colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra, pardon my French, Cate-are hot springs. All bigger than hot tubs. Think we’d all benefit from an hour’s soak. And that sure includes Cate.”

  “Sounds great,” Cate said.

  She looked him straig
ht in the eye when she said it. Harm let out an internal sigh of relief. At least one thing was going right. She’d get off at the Springs, get the medic to check her out, and at least he could know she was physically all right before dealing with the next crisis.

  Cate barely made it back below deck before collapsing on her bunk. For the first time, the cabin didn’t strike her as claustrophobic. She just plain didn’t care. Her head hurt. Her hip hurt. She felt whipped and battered and weak as a baby bird.

  It was intolerable. But she was pretty sure she’d put on a good show for the guys-especially for Harm-and if they’d all just get off the damned boat, she could get some rest and peace. Yes, of course, she expected they’d notice she didn’t join the shore group…but she also suspected none of them particularly wanted to infringe on her female bastion/boudoir.

  She should have known that wouldn’t work for Harm. Heaven knew how much time had passed before she heard his knuckles rapping on her cabin door.

  “I’m sleeping,” she called out.

  “You’re going to get checked out.”

  “All I need is rest. Go on with the group.”

  “I could tear down the door, but that seems awkward. It looks to be made of steel. That won’t stop me, but I’m afraid it’ll make a lot of damage-”

  She hurtled off the bunk, across the cabin, and yanked open the door with one hand on her head. “Go away.”

  “You are such a faker. Making everybody believe you’re just fine, just a little bruised. Did you think you were going to fool me, too?” He entered the cabin, which meant there wasn’t enough oxygen for one, much less for two people trying to move around. She sank back on the bunk, since Mr. Busybody seemed determined to paw around, locate her jacket and shoes. “You’re not only seeing this medic, but if I don’t like the medic, I’m getting a plane in here and getting you to a hospital on the mainland.”

  “You and what army?”

  “I don’t need an army.”

  She opened her mouth to give him what for-and it was a what for that was going to include a blistering set down-when his tone softened to rough gravel.