Captain's Paradise by Kay Hooper Page A

below to try to sleep.
    But sleep had been impossible, so she had returned,watching him pilot the boat and feeling unsettled. She told herself she should be relieved that he wasn’t willing to bet on their long-shot chances of a relationship, but she couldn’t help but feel the irrational sting of rejection.
    And she felt lonely, needing to hear the sound of his voice. So she tried again. “After the angel of death?”
    “That was her name when I bought her,” he said finally.
    Robin was glad of that, but his answer left her with no reasonably innocuous subject to talk about. He had shut her out with an iron will, and even though she knew why, it didn’t lessen the pain she felt. “How long will it take us to get there?” she asked.
    “By dawn if we’re lucky.”
    Robin tried to think clearly; if he was hell-bent on doing this alone, then she had to help him all she could. “Does Sutton know what your boat looks like?”
    “He probably knows the name and general description.”
    “Then we can’t get near him.”
    “No,” Michael agreed. “But the Maze is close to several other small islands, and the fishing isn’t bad there. We shouldn’t look too suspicious getting in close enough to spot the yacht.”
    “And then?”
    “There’s an inlet on the opposite side of the island from the cove. We can anchor there.”
    “And then?” she repeated evenly.
    Still refusing to look at her, Michael drew a deep breath. “I’m thinking only one step ahead, Robin, and that’s all.”
    “You said you never bet on long shots,” she heard herself say. “What else could you call what you’re doing?”
    “I told you—I don’t have a choice.”
    Robin decided to drop the subject for a while. Leaning against the doorjamb and highly aware of the darkness all around them, she asked as lightly as she could manage, “How did you happen to get involved in this business anyway?”
    “Naval intelligence. But I wasn’t a career man, and when I got out there were … other offers.”
    “When was that?”
    “Eight years ago.” He sent her a speaking glance, then looked back ahead and added in a deliberate tone, “Our parents had been killed the year before, and Lisa had been in a boarding school while I finished my tour with the navy. She loved the school and wanted to stay there. It seemed best. I couldn’t provide a settled home for her then, and it wasn’t likely that state of affairs would change, since I’ve never been suited for a nine-to-five desk job. But I’ve always been able to take time off for her vacations and holidays.”
    “How old is Lisa now?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “Does she know what you do?”
    Michael nodded slightly. “She’s had to. Not when she was younger, of course, but I told her four or five years ago. I wanted her to know she’d be taken care of … if something happened to me.”
    Robin was silent.
    He sent her another look, and his voice grated. “I did my best.”
    Without thinking, Robin reached out to touch his arm briefly. “I know you did. I was just remembering how I felt when my father told me he’d gone into intelligence work. It was ten years ago, and I was eighteen. It had been easy to accept the danger of his being a cop because I’d grown up with it. And my brothers had become cops. But intelligence … I understand what that meant. Even though he said he wouldn’t be a field agent, I knew him too well to believe it.”
    “Does he head up an agency?” Michael asked slowly.
    “Yes. I don’t know what it’s called. But it’s one of those small agencies formed during the last fifteen years to help regular law enforcement agencies cope with all the craziness in the world today—drugs, terrorists, international crime rings. All of that.”
    “Where’s it based?”
    Robin looked at him curiously. “I couldn’t say. For a few years Dad was mostly on the WestCoast. After that he seemed to be fairly … mobile. And I haven’t seen him in three years.”