Wickedly Wonderful (Baba Yaga, #2)(13)

“Not a chance in hell,” Marcus said. “You’re a damned menace. Look at what you did yesterday, getting yourself all tangled in our net trying to save some baby dolphin. You could have been killed!” Suppressed fury made his hands tighten into fists. “I am not going to allow you to go out there and finish the job. Not on my boat. Not on my watch.”

“Fine!” Beka couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy. Who the hell was he to tell her what she could and couldn’t do? “I’ll find another ship to take me out. Or I’ll rent a motorboat and just take myself.” Ass.

“The hell you will,” he said, in slightly lower tones. “You know perfectly well that a motorboat will just drift away while you’re underwater, and no other fisherman is going to leave his territory just to take you diving.”

She opened her mouth to speak, and he added, “Besides which, I plan to have a little word with the other captains. I grew up on this harbor, and I know just about everybody around here. Believe me, by the end of the day, there won’t be one person willing to have you. So you might as well give up this cockamamy idea and go home. There’s no treasure worth risking your life for.”

Beka closed her mouth with a snap. She couldn’t believe she’d actually been attracted to the man. He was a bossy, stubborn jerk. Counting to ten under her breath, she forced herself to speak calmly.

“You must find it hard to work a boat with that handicap,” she said, meeting his steely gaze with one of her own.

“What handicap?” Marcus asked, a puzzled look on his face.

“The stick you’ve got up your butt,” Beka said with a sweet smile. “I imagine it makes bending over kind of difficult.” And she swiveled on her heel and marched off down the dock, refusing to look back. If she never saw Marcus Dermott’s face again, she’d be a happy, happy woman.


*

MARCUS WATCHED THE most infuriating woman on the face of the earth stomp away from him and wished he could call her back. There was no point, of course. Even if she didn’t hate his guts. He chuckled a little at her “stick-up-the-butt” comment. No one could argue with her nerve, at least, even if her common sense was seriously in question.

He couldn’t believe she actually thought he would agree to take her out to the middle of nowhere and just leave her there, much less support her plan to dive without a safety partner. The woman really was crazy. Which was a pity, since he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. Last night, his dreams had been haunted by images of a beautiful, long-legged blond enchantress who had somehow soothed and aroused him at the same time. Too bad that in person, she just made him livid.

He’d thought for a moment, when he fished her out of the sea the other day, that the universe had gifted him with some kind of miracle. Not that he believed in miracles. But still, there she was, dripping with salt water, like Aphrodite risen from the waves. Instead, she was turning out to be more of a curse. He could almost hear the universe laughing at him.

First, she’d sabotaged their net—he still hadn’t figured out if he bought the idea that she was rescuing a dolphin, or if she really was just one of those crazy activist types as he’d initially thought. Now, she wanted to rent his father’s boat to go out on a suicide mission? So not happening. He’d lost enough men during his years in the war. No one else was ever going to die on him; not if he could help it.

His father . . . well, that wasn’t under his control, as much as he wished it was. The old man would either beat the cancer or he wouldn’t. All Marcus could do was stick around, here in the last place on the planet he wanted to be, and try to keep the stubborn mule from working himself to death while he fought the disease. It would also be good if Marcus could keep himself from giving in to the impulse to strangle his father before the cancer could kill him. That, and maintaining a fishing boat that had suffered from long years of neglect, was enough to have on his plate.

There was no way he was going to allow Beka to risk her life—and the life of everyone around her, since that was the way the flaky ones worked. Most of the time, they didn’t kill themselves; instead, it was the innocents around them that died. Like his brother.

Marcus sucked in his breath as the old grief eddied around him like a riptide, all unexpected waves and downward pull. It was one of the reasons he’d stayed away so long. In the desert, he could go days, sometimes weeks, without thinking of the younger brother who had been his shadow from the day he was born until the day he died, lost over the side of this same ill-fated boat when Kyle was only fifteen.

Now that shadow haunted him in all the silent moments, only eclipsed for a brief time by the bright light that Beka brought with her, captured like a rainbow in her sunshine-colored hair, temptress smile, and sparkling blue eyes.

There was no way he would risk that light going dark. Not on his watch. Never again.





FIVE




BEKA WAS SO mad, steam rose out of her damp footprints on the dock until she noticed what she was doing and reined herself in. That was the problem with magic if you were a Baba Yaga; it was a part of you, like the beat of your heart or the flow of blood through your veins. If you weren’t careful, it seeped out, spilling over into the mundane world.

Not that most people would notice. Back in the old days, in the Old World, magic was accepted and people knew it when they saw it. These days, folks were more likely to explain it away with logic, or suspect a lurking camera crew and Hollywood illusions. Still, she needed to be more careful.