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“Yeah.” She hooked her arm around him in turn. “Let’s do that.”
Chapter 12
Recharging and refueling were fairly new concepts for Eve. Before Roarke, unwinding time might have been downing a beer at a cop bar, surrounded by other cops talking shop. Occasionally, if Mavis could talk her into it, a night out at a club. But for the most part she’d done the solo, in the apartment now full of color and Mavis’s family.
She’d never looked, particularly, for anyone to share the end of the day with, but doing just that with Roarke—whether it was work or like this, a short interlude without it—had become a habit.
And it was better.
She liked the busy pizzeria with its clatter and conversations, its pretty view of the marina and the boats swaying in their slips. She had cold beer, hot pizza, and a man who loved her to share them with.
Yeah, it was a whole bunch better.
“Why don’t you have a boat?” she asked him.
“I believe I do have one or two.”
“I don’t mean big-ass cargo boats or whatever for shipping your loot from point to point.”
“Loot? That’s a shadowy word. I try to stick to the light now that I’m married to a cop.” He cocked a brow, lifted his beer. “Think of how embarrassing it would be for both parties if she had to arrest me.”
“I’d front your bail. Probably.”
“Good to know.”
“I mean, why don’t you have one of those zippy boats or the sailing jobs?” She bit into her slice, gesturing toward the window and the view with her free hand. “The kind of boats people have who think skimming all over the place on top of the water is such a good time.”
“You don’t want one.”
“Me? No. Looking at the water—it’s nice. Being in the water—a pool, the beach—all good. Riding on it where you might end up in it way out there with things that live under it and want to eat you? Why go there?”
“I’ve been out there, and in addition to the things that live under it and want to eat you, the ocean herself can be very unforgiving.” He looked out, as she did, at the water and beyond. “I’ve lived on an island, one way or the other, my entire life,” he reminded her. “I must like them.”
“But not boats.”
“I’ve nothing against them.” He slid another slice of pizza onto her plate. “I’ve enjoyed some of my time on them—for business, for pleasure. There was a time, when loot was more applicable to my business, I spent considerable time on boats.”
“Smuggling.”
He smiled, so easy, so wicked. “That’s one way to look at it. Another would be engaging in free enterprise. But there’s more than cops and crooks in the mix when engaging in free enterprise on the high seas.”
“Such as?”
“Well.” He glanced at the boats again, then back at Eve. “Once, in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Ireland and Greenland, we hit a storm. Or it hit us, more accurately. That would be my description of hell. The utter dark, then the blinding flashes of lightning that brought waves, taller than a building, wider than the world, into terrifying relief. The sounds of the wind and water and screams of men, and the cold that numbed your face and fingers, froze your bones inside your skin.”
He took a sip of beer, shook his head. “That’s a memory.”
And the sort he rarely shared and she rarely asked about. “What happened?”
“Well, we fought all night, and into the day, to keep afloat. It was like being rattled about like dice in a cup. The water heaving over the deck. You’re never so alone as that, I think, than in a storm at sea. We didn’t all make it, and there was no help for those who went into the water. The instant they did, they were lost.”
She could see he’d gone back, felt it through and through, so said nothing while he took a moment for the rest.
“I remember being slammed, tumbling toward the rail and the sea that waited to swallow a man down. And ramming into something, I can’t say what even now, that stopped me before I pitched into the maw of it. And as I managed to brace myself, I caught someone’s hand as those bloody waves heeled us up, caught it as he was sliding by me. I saw his face in a sheet of lightning. Little Jim they called him as he was small and slight. Tough one, though, Little Jim. I’d taken fifty from him the night before the storm in a poker game. I’d had a heart flush over his full house. I had him, I thought, I had him, but the water slammed us again, and he slipped out of my hold, and went over the side.”
He paused, lifted his beer, sipped it, like a toast. “And that was all of Little Jim from Liverpool.”
“How old were you?”
