“So,” she said. “We’re stuck on a boat with a murderer. This is so not what I had in mind when I took this job. And Ivan being sick isn’t helping anything, either… Uh-oh.” She glanced up, caught the expression on his face. “What else is wrong?”
“I hate boats.” He balanced between the counters, but he could feel it-how the wind had picked up. The boat was sloshing from side to side. He couldn’t fathom how she could continue to cook. Even more, he couldn’t imagine why tumultuous seas didn’t bother her.
“Are you going to turn green on me, Harm?”
He shook his head. “I don’t get seasick. I just hate boats.”
“I’ll bet you only hate things you can’t control or fix on your own, right?”
“Are you insulting me again?” But he was immediately diverted when he saw her open a bottle of liquor and pour it liberally into a saucepan. “You take up drinking while cooking? Not that I’m against it.”
“Actually, no, although this would sure be a good day for it. The dessert’s called Yukon Bread Pudding because it has some liberal Yukon Jack liquor in the sauce.”
“What kind of liquor is that?”
“Trust me. You won’t care when you taste it.” Possibly because this day, like yesterday and the day before, had been exhaustingly traumatic, she suddenly zipped across the galley, pounced up on her toes and planted a good, solid kiss right on his open mouth.
He had no chance to react before she was back to whisking cream and butter into the Yukon Jack on the stove.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Did I just dream that?”
“Uh-huh. It never happened,” she assured him.
The response in her eyes, though, wasn’t teasing but…warning. The two of them had a reckoning coming. It had nothing to do with murder and mayhem, and conceivably might be even more earth-shattering than murder and mayhem, anyway.
At least for him.
Maybe for her, too. She stirred the whiskey so hard it almost sloshed out of the pan.
The sound of the intercom startled them both. Harm was being paged to the pilothouse, where Hans’s voice relayed there was a message for him.
“Damn,” he murmured.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she murmured right back.
But he had to go.
Chapter 9
An hour later, Cate was a pinch away from putting dinner on, and mentally yelling at herself for stupidity. Dinner had turned into an award-winning feast, which was ridiculous. She’d created way, way too much to do for a woman recovering from a nasty headache and major bruises.
In the next life, she was going to learn. She was going to be smarter. And for damn sure, she was going to have good hair.
She carted plates and silverware to the dining room, then went back to her galley. She glanced at the clock, thinking she had just enough time to hustle down to the crew quarters, and make sure the captain was still alive. Her last trip below, Ivan had yelled that he was dying and anyone who bugged him would die with him-which seemed a good sign. If he was strong enough to yell, he couldn’t be too bad off.
She stirred, checked, piled used pots into the dishwasher, opened wine to breathe, pulled the herbed tomatoes from the oven. On the intercom, she heard Hans. “Some rough weather building,” he warned her. “Shouldn’t get here for another three hours, but then we’ll all want to batten down the hatches, get things sealed up tight. Afraid it’s going to slow up our return run into Juneau.”
“You need help, you just say,” Cate said. “You out of coffee up there?”
“Don’t need coffee, but I’m sure hungry.”
“It’ll be ready in another twenty,” she promised. Maybe all her flying around wasn’t such a bad idea. She couldn’t dwell on her hurts, on obsessing about who had pushed her last night, on fear for her life. Fear for Harm. Fear of Harm. Damn it. She’d escaped falling in love for twenty-nine years, so how could it possibly happen in less than a week’s time?
Falling in love just wasn’t in her game plan.
Yet her heart sprinted the instant she saw Harm, his face and jacket splashed from the temper-prone sea. He had his hand on the door to her galley when he was interrupted. Yale had just walked into the dining room. Harm changed course and entered the side door into the dining area.
Cate told herself to quit mooning and concentrate. She tasted, almost burning her tongue. It wasn’t easy to get the exact ratios of horseradish and Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce and onion and lime just right. For darn sure she didn’t have time to eavesdrop…but it wasn’t her fault that voices carried clearly from the open dining area.
From the sound, she suspected Yale had just poured himself something to drink from the liquor cabinet. “I didn’t think I’d get a chance to talk to you alone,” he said to Harm. “Everyone’s going to be coming up for dinner, so maybe this isn’t the time, either. But I’ve got something to say.”
“So go for it,” Harm encouraged him quietly.
“I found Arthur going through my stuff. And if you want the truth, I went through Purdue’s things when we first got here. This is killing us all. We’re turning into animals instead of the team players we used to be. I need to be cleared of this. So I want you to…”
“What?”
“I want to give you access to my bank accounts, my personal records, everything. I want you to investigate me. I want you to verify that I haven’t come into any sudden wealth, that I have no change in circumstance. I’ll sign anything you want, to give you permission to find out anything you need to about me.”
Cate held her breath, wanting to hear Harm’s answer…only she couldn’t. The risotto cakes had turned crisp and she still had to prepare the last-minute dishes. She carted dinner up to Hans in the pilothouse, checked one last time on Ivan below-who was still only communicating in swear-speak-then started to serve.
By then, Arthur and Purdue had joined the group. There was no joking at dinner about anyone falling in love with her. They ate. In fact, they devoured everything she put in front of them, which should have fed an entire platoon. Several times, Harm ordered her to sit down and relax and eat herself.
Several times, she tried.
Outside, clouds had blown in, darkened the sky, started pitching rain, which only added to the gloomy mood of the guys.
“We need to go home,” Yale kept saying.
And that became the general mantra. As soon as they got home, everything would be better, they’d figure it all out, they’d do this, they’d do that. Arthur suggested publicly at dinner the same thing Yale had cornered Harm about just an hour before.
“I’ve thought relentlessly about the disappearance and loss of our project,” he said to Harm. “And I think one thing you need to do…you must do…is look into all of our circumstances. Check out financial records. Our homes. Whatever you need to do to make all of us more transparent.”
“I already offered that,” Yale said.
“I’m not hot to have anyone in my private life,” Purdue said uncomfortably. “But you can look at my finances and taxes and all that crap for sure.”
Several times, her gaze locked with Harm, even though she was running around between the galley and dining room. But the conversation seemed extraordinary, considering someone had to be guilty of theft-and likely murder and assault, as well. All of them sounded so innocent. All them appeared more than willing to prove there’d been no financial or any other kind of gain or change in their lives.