Scarlet Butterfly (12 page)

But in a moment all thoughts were erased, as she was caught up in the force of passion, swept into a release of such intensity that she was left sated and limp before she came back to reality.

“Damn!” Rogan came to his knees and swore again, not angrily, but in resignation. He marched across the deck and went below. She could hear him grumbling, and Bully’s echoing response. There was another noise that filtered through, a different kind of curse—a thump at the far end of the boat that might have been the ship hitting the dock, or a fist planted against the mast.

Carolina lay on the deck, in the sun, and let its heat sink into every pore. Rogan was slamming around below with such violence that she wondered if the cabin would survive his getting dressed. She smiled. If he weren’t emotionally involved in their budding relationship, she thought, he wouldn’t react so violently. So each curse, each bump, widened her smile.

Then she heard him returning. Risking his wrath, she opened her eyes and took in the sight of him. He’d left his hair free. It was making dark wet spots on the blue chambray shirt he was wearing. From where she was lying on the deck, her gaze could move leisurely up long legs encased in worn jeans.

His rough, strong face was lined with discord as he spoke. “Carolina, this is wrong. I know it, but I don’t seem to be able to resist you.”

“You haven’t done anything that I haven’t welcomed.”

There was a guttural sound of despair as Rogan shook his head. “I’ll be back this afternoon. Don’t stay out here too long or you’ll blister.”

And then he was gone.

But long afterward she was still experiencing the incredible satisfaction he’d given her. She didn’t know yet where she was going. She only knew that she’d begun a journey and she couldn’t turn back. She wondered what he was feeling now.

What Rogan was feeling as he sat at a table in Ida’s house was anger, masked by a brooding silence.

“So where’s Beauty this morning?” Ida finally prompted as she poured Rogan a second cup of coffee.

“On the
Butterfly
.”

“How is she feeling?”

“Frisky!”

“Uh-huh. And how are you?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Where’s Harry?”

“Fishing, probably. Why?”

“Where’d he get peaches?”

“Harry brought you peaches? I don’t think so. When he left here he had fried pies from Miss Lucy and a couple of fish, but no peaches.”

“There were peaches in the galley. Fresh sweet yellow peaches.”

“Beats me. Sounds like one of the local variety. There used to be some late producers around, but I thought they were all gone.”

So Harry hadn’t brought them. He’d hoped Ida
would say she’d sent them, but she hadn’t. Bully’s phrase, “Peaches for Carrie,” kept swirling around in his head. Rogan stood and stalked to the window, glaring out at the river, now calm in the sunlight.

“Rogan, what’s really on your mind? I can’t see you getting excited about peaches. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? I have a woman, a mythical creature on my boat. It’s as if she has some kind of magical powers. Every time I come near her I turn into Samson—a bald, powerless Samson.”

“I’ve heard that happens to men when they fall in love,” Ida said quietly.

“I am not in love. I will never fall in love, and furthermore, I don’t believe in fate or ghosts or shadow figures! Do you understand that?”

He swore and whirled around to reinforce his point. Ida looked stunned at Rogan’s outburst. He grimaced, let out a deep breath of apprehension, and shook his head.

“Sorry, Ida. I have no right to bark at you because I’ve run into a situation I can’t get a handle on. It’s just that Carolina doesn’t see me as I really am. She’s trusting and beautiful and much too gentle for a renegade like me.”

“Yep, Beauty and the Beast. Believe me, I’ve met the Beast. I’ll admit that you two put a different twist on the story: Beauty wants to stay and the Beast is trying to get rid of her. Ah, well, you’ll work it out, Rogan. In the meantime, try not to growl. You’ll frighten her.”

“Her?”
Frighten Carolina?
No, it was Rogan who was scared silly, and he knew it.

He still had a half hour before it was time for his appointment with the attorney he was to consult
about his court fight over the
Scarlet Butterfly
. On impulse, he stopped at the local bookstore and bought a copy of
Cooking Made Easy
. Carrie ought to be able to follow these recipes, he thought, then went back and exchanged it for a gourmet cookbook. No point in making it too easy on her. On the way to the checkout counter he picked up a copy of a new novel rich with history of Georgia’s sea islands and its people. Carrie would like that too.

Carrie
. There was something nice about shortening her name, something intimate, he decided as he flung his parcel through the open window of the truck. He climbed in, slammed the door, and leaned his head against the steering wheel. What was he doing, buying paints and books? He was just prolonging the inevitable—her leaving.

The attorney told Rogan about what he’d expected, that the laws were absolute. Any waterway that had ever been navigated by raft, dugout, or boat was state property to which the salvage law applied. Any historical object found in state waters belonged to the state. Even with proof of ownership, Rogan’s claim to the
Butterfly
was questionable. Without proof, the state had every right to claim it and would undoubtedly win any court case. And he had less than ten days before he’d meet the state representatives and learn the schooner’s fate.

Rogan was hungry and out of sorts as he drove back to the
Butterfly
. He hadn’t expected any resolutions. He’d read up on the law and knew he was fighting a losing battle. Even if there were references to the ship and Captain Rogan in Carolina’s journal, the journal was gone.

•   •   •

Carolina never intended to fall asleep on deck, but the sun was warm and she felt so tired—good, but tired. Still, this chronic tiredness seemed to fall away a little more each time Rogan touched her. She closed her eyes and lay there, enjoying the afterglow.

When she finally woke, it was with a start, as if she’d been nudged. Struggling, she tried to open her eyes, feeling a definite shake of her shoulder.

She was alone and in such pain that she couldn’t believe it. Her skin was on fire. Every inch of her was bright pink. The midday sun had kissed her delicate skin and left it red and throbbing.

Forcing herself to her feet, she took one agonizing step after another until she reached the shower. With an audible prayer she pulled the string, hoping that the cistern was still filled with rainwater. It was.

The warm water sluiced across her body, but gave only temporary relief to the heat that was increasing with every moment. At least she was clean. Rogan had called her a puny, bony little thing. Now she was cooked too. “Ohhhh!” she groaned as she made her way to the cabin and fell backward on the bed.

“Ohhhh!” she repeated, trying desperately to marshal some of the strength she’d garnered from her captain. Yes, she was in pain, but it wasn’t the excruciating kind of pain she’d once felt inside her head. This was intense, but it would pass. She could concentrate. She would lie there and not move.

Taking shallow, quick breaths, she finally slept again. By late afternoon she roused briefly, feeling the cooling touch of liquid being applied to her skin.
There was an allusive scent to the lotion and a gentleness to the application.

“Rogan?” she whispered, and started to open her eyes. But they wouldn’t open. They were swollen shut.

“Be still, Carrie. I’ll take care of you.”

There was something stiff about his voice, something different, but she didn’t know what. She only knew that Rogan was there, and that he was soothing her with his touch and his words, just as he had the first night when she’d collapsed in his arms.

“I know, Rogan. You always do.”

She felt his fingers falter a moment as they grazed her breast and moved lower. Even in her state of pain she felt a response, a shiver of anticipation for what she expected to come. But he simply ranged across her abdomen and down her thighs, applying the liquid until he’d covered everything but her face.

His fingertips spread coolness across her face, her swollen eyelids, her cheeks, lingering on her lips.
“Your hair,”
he whispered in a gravelly voice,
“your lovely hair. Let it grow again—for me.”

“Of course, Rogan. I’ll do anything you ask.”

When Rogan stepped on board there was no sign of Carolina. He called her name, first lightly, then with a thundering voice that set Bully to squawking wildly.

“Hoist anchor, furl the mast! Looky, looky, looky—”

“Shut your beak, you loudmouth, or I’ll pull your claws out one at a time. Where’s Carrie?”

“Carrie!”

Rogan heard the thundering voice calling her name.
It had to be his own, but he couldn’t remember saying it.

“Rogan?”

She was in the cabin. He took the steps in one leap, reaching the bed and coming to a stunned stop. She was one pitiful sight. She was blistered so badly that her eyes were closed. Her face was swollen, and her arms were extended out so that they wouldn’t touch her body.

“Great heavens! You’re cooked!”

“Well, you wanted me to learn how,” she managed weakly.

“But I didn’t intend for you to start with yourself. Does it hurt?”

“Not as much since you put that lotion all over me.”

She was hallucinating. There was an odd-looking bottle of liquid on the table by the bed, a bottle without a label. She must have found it in his chest and used it before she got so feverish. No point in upsetting her by denying her claim. Instead he knelt beside her. “Would you like more lotion?”

“Oh, yes. I like you touching me.”

He quickly remembered that he liked touching her too—too much, so that what started out as a medicinal effort soon became an intense test of willpower. Carolina was in no condition to move, and yet her nipples puckered in response beneath his touch. On the way back home, when he ought to have been trying to find a way to keep his ship, he’d been searching for a way to let Carolina go, starting with a vow that he wouldn’t touch her again. He’d allow her to stay on board until they could find a solution to her future, but nothing more.

He was a strong man. He could control his emotions. He was old enough to refuse to give into base sexual urges and to explain to Carolina why it was better that they refrain from lovemaking. There were hundreds of men out there better suited to her. She owed it to herself to look over the market and make sure she wasn’t mistaking a simple crush, or lust, or even gratitude, for more.

But it wasn’t working. His heart was pounding; he was hard and throbbing. With effort, he pulled air into lungs that felt as if they were as blistered as the skin he was touching.

“Oh, Rogan, I wish I could open my eyes and see you.”

“Why?”

She licked her parched lips. “You’re so beautiful, so gentle, so special. Thank you for caring—”

She would have finished, but his lips brushed hers once, then again. “Your lips were cool before, Rogan. They’re warm now.”

Before
? “Just lie here and rest. I’ll fix you something cool to drink.”

“Yes, I’d like that. I’d like crushed ice and peaches, like you brought earlier.”

Rogan started to argue, then he saw the glass with tiny slivers of peach swimming in the melting liquid. This was very strange. Carolina was probably describing what she’d imagined, what she herself had done, what she’d fantasized.

But what about the glass?

And what about the peaches?

Carolina dreamed again, but she dreamed almost every time she slept now, hazy impressions of Rogan. Sometimes he was dressed in his shorts. Sometimes he took on the persona of Captain Jacob. Jacob was always tantalizingly close, yet just out of her vision.

This dream was different. Whisper-soft hands applied lotion to her hot body, followed later by cream-covered, rough fingers that both tingled and soothed. She squirmed and moaned, and not altogether from the pain of the sunburn.

Rogan wanted to slip back in bed with her, but the dragons that warred inside his mind were too strong. He should have taken her to town before he’d let his sense of responsibility take over. Hell, when would that have been? He’d felt responsible the moment he laid eyes on her, as if they’d bonded immediately in some old-world, mystical alliance.

Rogan sighed and covered his charge with a sheet.
He was shocked at her flushed pink skin. The September sun would not have blistered a normal skin, but Carolina’s, protected so long from the elements, was tender. He didn’t think she’d be ill, for the lotion was already making a difference. But he was stunned by his ever-growing protective instincts.

He replaced the cork in the bottle and studied it again. The container was old, but the lotion inside was fresh. There was a citrus scent to the liquid and a creamy texture that he didn’t recognize. When he’d moved from his condo in Savannah to St. Marys he’d spent several days at Ridegeway Inn, storing some of his things in Ida’s root cellar. Perhaps when he’d left he’d inadvertently picked up someone else’s medication without being aware of it.

Carolina was sleeping quietly now, the rise and fall of the sheet evidence of that. He fed Bully and made himself a sandwich, of which he took two bites before discarding it. For the first time, the
Scarlet Butterfly
withheld its peace. Granted, his talk with the lawyer had been unsettling, but he’d expected that. He’d expected Carolina to be there when he returned too. But finding her sleeping in his bed again, flushed and feverish, had unnerved him.

Moonlight dappled the deck with lacy patches of light, the tree limbs throwing shadows between them. Rogan lay thinking about the other Carolina and Rogan, the hammock swaying gently as the ship undulated in the water. It was just as he was sliding into sleep that he noticed the vague shadow near the galley, a dark silhouette of a man wearing a captain’s
hat. Imagination, he scoffed mentally. For a moment he actually thought someone was standing there.