Freya’s bosom, even the ancient lump of lard was growing on him. Last he’d peeked inside the sailcloth shelter to check on them, Gubbie had rolled onto his back and pinned him with a stare from where he rested beside his sleeping mistress.
Gubbie wanted a belly rub. Unable to hurt the old cat’s feelings, he’d obliged, much to Gubbie’s delight. The oversized beastie promptly purred a song, and then he fell asleep only to drool all over Callum’s hand.
“Like that, do ye?” Callum had asked, not thinking for he’d forgotten to lower his voice.
Lady Alanna had pushed up on an elbow, her hair mussed, and looking way too delectable. “He loves belly rubs,” she’d told him.
“So does every man,” he’d said before he could catch himself.
“I am not surprised.” She’d smiled.
Gubbie stirred again and yawned, releasing a cloud of herring-scented breath. Then he’d pushed his head against Callum’s leg, again leaving a silver trail of drool.
Lady and pirate shared smiles and a chuckle then, a moment that sent him exiting her presence almost faster than Wind-Dancer raced across the swift-running winter seas.
Now, as they passed the sheer cliffs of an inhospitable island, home to only seabirds, rock, and wind, he wanted more of her laughter, the warmth he hadn’t expected.
He couldn’t recall the last time he’d enjoyed suchlike.
He did know he could’ve smiled and laughed with Lady Alanna for hours, even days or weeks, and not tire of the pleasure. Oddly, the moment was not just shockingly intimate. It also felt comfortable. Familiar in a way that disturbed him, for he felt a strange certainty that they’d enjoyed such times before.
And that was nonsense.
Nae, it scared him and he didn’t like that at all.
Nothing had frightened him since he was a wee lad of ten summers or so, and his uncle’s fishing boat sank beneath them. He was the sole survivor, his life saved by the two bravest men he knew…
His Uncle Lars who swam across cold, angry seas, wee Callum tucked under his arm, until his uncle thrust him between two jutting-above-the-water reef ledges, leaving him there in the hope a passing ship would rescue him.
And Blackie, who’d done so, slewing his galley round with a great plume of spray and then flying across the waves to where Callum faced certain death, wedged as he was between the jagged rocks, the tide rising.
One man died that day. The other lived. And Callum loved Blackie like the uncle he’d lost.
He took care not to let anyone else close to him.
The parting was an unbearable pain, something he remembered in his mind, distant agony that didn’t lessen even though the years went on. Years that felt like centuries, and stretched into the deepest reaches of his soul.
So, nae, he didn’t want to breathe in the fresh, feminine scent of Lady Alanna’s hair. Nor did he want to admire the soft creaminess of her skin or the ripe curves of her body, her fiery spirit and remarkable ability to send his blood hurtling where it didn’t need to go. Topping it all…
He didn’t want to like her cat.
Whoever called a cat Gubbie, anyway?
He frowned, sure he didn’t know.
* * *
“’Tis a fine night, eh?”trilled a merry voice beside him.
Callum’s blood ran cold. Devorgilla of Doon, the great lady herself, the Highlands’ most far-famed cailleach here on Wind-Dancer in the small hours, in the middle of the North Sea?
Such a horror didn’t bear consideration. Yet the chills racing through him and the weird crackling in the night air didn’t lie.
It was her.
He whipped about, hoping he was wrong.
Of course, he wasn’t.
