Tortuga.”
She gasped . “Tortuga?”
“Then again, I might be tempted to keep you for myself.”
Amber shot him an icy glare . “Not if you were the last man alive.” Then she turned and stormed down the stairs, passing a very surprised quartermaster on her way . Logan waited for the sound of the door slamming before turning to Elijah.
“Mind telling me what that was all about?” Elijah’s hazel eyes were warm, his nose slightly crooked after being broken in a bar fight years ago, his long brown hair pulled back from his face and held at the nape of his neck with a piece of string . Logan smiled as he remembered the fight in which he had broken Eli’s nose, the moment that had cemented them as friends .
“A simple misunderstanding, Eli . The lady thought she had the authority to tell me to turn my own ship around.”
His friend laughed . “She does seem to have a mouth on her, from what I’ve witnessed . What are you planning on doing with her?”
“I’m not going to bed the girl, if that’s what you’re implying.” Logan grimaced, having harbored that very idea once or twice himself .
“And yet she’s stay ing in your quarters.”
“Would you rather have her sleep in the orlop , surrounded by men with less than honorable intentions, who travel long distances at sea without seeing a woman for months?
“They are trustworthy enough to crew your ship,” Eli pointed out.
“Aye, I would put my life in the hands of these men, no question . Never have I seen a more loyal crew . Doesn’t mean I trust them with a n attractive young woman.”
“The question is, Logan,” his friend said, in all seriousness . “Can you trust yourself around her?”
It was early evening when Logan abandoned his post at the helm . In the sky, the sun was slowly sinking, casting an enchanted light across the calm surface of the water . It was his favorite time of day .
After passing the wheel off to J ean he walked the length of his ship, checking on his men and stopping to make idle conversation with the newcomers, hoping to set them more at ease . For the most part, they had taken on the lives of pirates with no opposition, and Logan was pleased to see that . He then headed below to visit Abe, who was limping around the galley as if he had always worked there, making the evening meal with the help of Johnny and Henry . Henry too, seemed to be comfortable in his new surroundings.
Logan spent half an hour in the hold with Eli and Deacon, making an inventory of the cargo they had taken from the other ship, then another fifteen minutes at the feverish side of William, a sailor who had received a terrible blow to the side of his head when the mizzen mast of the Queen Charlotte toppled, and another nasty cut on his leg from a cutlass . The wound on his thigh looked to be infected, and the poor man was drifting in and out of consciousness .
Not wanting to witness Piers pouring alcohol into the ope n gash, he left the doctor to do his work and with reluctance headed for the stairs that would lead him to his quarters, where a lovely , and most likely furious, woman waited for him.
The si gh t that met him when he opened the door made him struggle not to smile, however . Amber glanced up from the book she was readin g. P erched on a chair at the large table , she threw him an indiscernible look . She had obviously been working hard for a good part of the afternoon . She had pushed all three of her trunks into the back corner, boxing off a section of the room that was as far away from his bed as possible . No doubt she had then rummaged through his own drawers and chests, because she had located a bunch of blankets that, with the help of some ribbon, now hung suspended from the ceiling .
The result was a closed off partition, in which he assumed she planned to sleep .
“Do you like it?” At the sound of her voice he turned to her, surprised to see her luscious mouth curved in a sweet smile . “I took the
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