Читать книгу: «Sail Away»

One

He wasn’t missing, really. Just seriously misplaced. At least, he thought he must be, since he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. Or why. Or when. All he knew was that he was lying on his back in the water looking up at a very blue, very bright sky. And that his head hurt. And his leg. And his ribs on his right side. Other than that, he figured he was probably just fine.

He tried to sit up, but that just made his head hurt worse. He closed his eyes, but that didn’t seem to help. He was thirsty, he was dizzy and he was a little seasick.

He was late. He knew that. He was supposed to be somewhere. He was supposed to be doing something Something important. But whatever it was refused to be identified. And, truthfully, he didn’t try hard. It was too much effort. He should probably just stick to finding out where he was.

The raft. He should look at the raft he was lying on Maybe he could find some kind of clue, a boat’s name or return address or something. He opened his eyes.

No clue. Just a big white inflatable raft with nothing in it but him...in a tuxedo. With bare feet. And a big black Stetson lying across his stomach. In the middle of miles and miles of water.

That settled it. The only thing he managed to do with his eyes open was confuse himself. He closed them and kept them closed. And then, just for extra measure, he plopped the hat over his eyes to keep out the sun.

He really wasn’t sure how long he’d been drifting. Minutes. Hours. Days. He was sweating, and he could tell his neck and hands were burning in the hot tropical sun, but he couldn’t seem to manage the energy to move. The drift of the water beneath him was just too soothing, the breeze only strong enough to cool the sweat on his chest. So he lay there like a well-dressed lump and let the sun cook him to the color of a rare roast and wondered where he was supposed to be.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

He heard her. He ignored her. Probably a gorgeous woman in an evening dress to go with his tux.

The thought damn near made him laugh. This sun really was frying his brain.

“Hey! Are you all right?”

Her voice was closer now. Maybe she was a mermaid. Or a navy-trained dolphin who’d broken the language barrier. Unless she had his itinerary in her hand with full explanations, he really didn’t want to know.

“Go away.” He sounded like hell.

She laughed, an abrupt burst of surprise. “Why?” she asked, very near now, her voice like that of the Lorelei on the Rhine—except with a different accent. “You waiting for a date?”

He didn’t bother to look over or remove his hat. He was dizzy enough as it was. “Sure seems to me like it’s a definite possibility.”

She laughed again, and he wanted to smile. “Well, I seriously doubt anybody’s going to want to dance with you looking like that.”

“Don’t be silly,” he told her. “I’m in my best clothes...at least, I think I am.”

“You think?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure of much right now...except that my head is killing me. You have any aspirin?”

“How ’bout if I take you in to land and we can find some?”

That was what finally got his eyes open. “Land? There’s land?”

“Of course there’s land. Where do you think I came from?”

“Twenty thousand leagues under the sea.” He tilted the hat enough so he could squint in the direction of her voice. All he could make out was an expressionist painting of colors. Lurid yellows and oranges in overlapping triangles, the blue of the ocean, and a smaller series of shapes and colors that involved flickering black, deep tan and bright red, tilting and repeating themselves into a pattern that was somehow familiar, no matter how weird. He interpreted it as a shapely woman on a small sailboat, done by Picasso.

He shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t,” he demurred, dropping the hat back over his eyes. “Just let me bake in peace.”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do if you don’t get off the water,” she protested.

He felt a bump alongside the raft and tried to ignore it. A mirage. A noisy mirage that smelled like coconut oil and plumeria.

“How do I know what plumeria smells like?” he wondered out loud.

Busy doing something that made the raft buck and sway, she ignored his question. “Come on, you need to get someplace safe. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I fell off a boat.”

“I guessed that. What boat?”

He frowned in concentration. “Don’t know.”

That didn’t seem to bother her. “Probably happened during the storm. You’re lucky you ended up so close to land. Now, if you’ll take off that hat and open your eyes, you need to help me get you over.”

He sighed, unbelievably tired, even after just lying around for...for how long? He remembered darkness, the jolt of cold water. A struggle trying to get shiny black pumps off in the water. Which made just about as much sense as anything else he remembered.

“I don’t suppose you could just tow me back like this?”

“Not in a sailboat,” she assured him. “Besides, if you can get over here, I have water.”

Water. That got his eyes open again. It got his limbs to move, although no one would have confused the results for anything graceful.

“God, I am thirsty,” he admitted, only now realizing how very hoarse his voice was. His throat was as charred as his face. He got all the way up, dizzy as hell, and almost landed in the water in his first attempt to get over into the sleek little sailboat.

“Oh, man,” she breathed in surprise, even as she held on to his raft with one hand and held the other out for him. “Your face is all bloody. You took quite a whack.”

He shook his head and almost ended up in the water all over again. He thought he was usually pretty nimble. He sure as hell wasn’t now. “I sure hurt like I did.”

He’d just about managed to lean forward into her boat when suddenly she just let go. “Oh, my God...” she whispered as the boats bumped and skipped away from each other. “You’re...”

This time he got a mouthful of water before she pulled him up.

“I do something... wrong?” he sputtered.

She was frozen solid, as if she’d just seen him rise from the dead. “You’re Cameron Ross!” she squeaked, almost letting go of the boat again.

He blinked at her. “You know who I am?”

She laughed, that musical, sweet sound that seemed to skip across the water. “You’re kidding, right? Who doesn’t know who you are?”

He frowned a moment. Took a look down at the bloodstains on what had probably once been a snowy tux shirt. Looked back up to what he figured was probably a very pretty young woman who held on to his arm as if he was about to splinter to pieces. Did his best to smile.

“Me.”

All Lilly had been looking forward to this afternoon was a few last hours of peace and quiet. A slow sail home from the old cabin on Molokai, where she’d been taking a few days away from the family. From the job. From the claustrophobia of Oahu, where too many people made too much noise and she was forced to participate.

Today she’d meant to have wind and water and sky. She’d ended up with Cameron Ross instead.

“Come on,” she urged him, trying her best to sound pragmatic and purposeful when she just wanted to shake. She wanted, ridiculously enough, to giggle.

He was beautiful. Every bit as rugged and dashing as he was said to be, with that just-too-long dark hair and those crystal-blue eyes. Dimpled chin, perfect nose and broad chest. And all of that floating in a life raft in a tux and Stetson. Who said life was mundane?

He didn’t look exactly like himself, Lilly decided, but that didn’t matter. Her cousin Koki, who had worked on Magnum, P.I., assured her that nobody really looked just like they did on screen. Cameron Ross looked good enough, that was for sure. Good enough to give Lilly weak knees.

Which wasn’t going to be much help, when he was hurt and confused and lost out in the Pacific on a life raft. So Lilly swallowed her surprise and reached out, not to Cameron Ross, but to the injured man in the life raft.

“Here,” she coaxed. “You get over here, and we’ll get some water in you. You really got smacked on the head. That’s probably why you don’t remember. Soon as I get you ashore, we can take a look at it. Are you dizzy or anything?”

“I’m dizzy and everything,” he assured her, his voice gravelly and tired.

She took hold of solid, strong arms and leaned back until his face was almost in her neck so he could get his legs over. He really must have been hurt. She’d seen Cameron Ross dance through a fight scene like Baryshnikov. Now he could hardly move four limbs at once.

And then she saw more blood.

“What did you do to your leg?” she asked, trying her damedest not to inhale the earthy smell of him. The sharp tang of sweat, the darker, smokier hint of cologne. It was distracting her from the rusty stain just above his left knee.

He flopped over into her little boat and took a distracted look down at his leg, as if somebody had left him with one he hadn’t used before. “I don’t know...hurts, though.”

“Can you sit up?” Lilly asked. “Just for a minute. You need to get that jacket off.”

It took some struggling and more than one surprised grunt of pain, but between them they managed, while Lilly held her breath and tried valiantly to ignore the spread of his shoulders and the curl of chest hair that glistened beneath an unbuttoned collar.

Then, settling him back on the deck, she reacquainted him with his hat and broke out the bottled water she always carried with her. “It’s not cold,” she offered. “But it’s wet.”

He just lay there at her knees, his eyes closed. The skin around his eyes and mouth was white, in contrast with the raw red of the rest of his face. His chest rose and fell in short, ragged breaths. His eyes were closed and his mouth open. Lilly tried not to be afraid. Her first movie star, and he was going to die on her boat because she’d taken off his jacket.

“Mr. Ross?” she whispered, a hand out to his head. Almost. She couldn’t quite touch him, as if her intentions and her fantasies were getting scrambled.

He didn’t answer. Just lay there, breathing with a funny grunting sound Lilly recognized all too well. She had three very large brothers who played sports and loved nothing more than a good fight. Unless Lilly had wasted all that time in emergency rooms, Mr. Ross had hurt his chest. Or worse.

“Mr. Ross, please,” she begged, now touching him. Feathering her fingers against his hair, along his cheek, his throat. Just to make contact, to reassure herself with his warmth. “Please. You need some water.”

He gave another little grunt and then startled awake, flinching. “Sorry...I, uh...don’t feel very...good.”

She tried smiling upside down into fabulous robin’s-egg-blue eyes that were now clouded and tight. “You have every nght not to. Take some water and then put your hat back over your head so I can get us to Maui.”

He blinked at her. “Maui? Is that where I was going?”

She gave up waiting for him to lift his head and did it for him, resting it against her thighs so he could drink. “That’s not even where I was going. I was on my way back to Oahu, but we’re much closer to Maui, and I think you need closer. Now, drink.”

He did, gulping, so the water ran down his neck. He raised his hands to cup hers and closed his eyes. Lilly let him drink a little and then pulled it away. “I have plenty,” she assured him. “You need to take it easy.”

He rested his head back against her thighs, still watching her. “Thank you. I think...I think you’ve just saved my sorry butt.”

She couldn’t help smiling again. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s my pleasure.”

She even prided herself on not mentioning how very not sorry his butt was. His feet were bare, she suddenly realized. Now, why did that make her giddy? She wasn’t exactly a foot fetishist, but the idea of bare feet on a man wearing a tux was unbelievably erotic. Besides, they were beautiful feet. Long and strong and graceful. But Lilly shouldn’t have time to think of that either. She should have been thinking that they were probably going to blister from that sunburn.

She couldn’t quite think that, though.

“Can I ask?” he asked. “How you know me?”

Lilly dragged her attention back to the look of uncertainty he was sharing with her. “Everyone in the civilized world knows you, Mr. Ross. You’re probably the most famous movie star there is.”

He stared at her for a minute, processing. Then he just snorted. “No, I’m not.”

Lilly laughed. “Oh, I’m afraid you are.”

“What about you?” he asked.

She should be moving. She couldn’t manage it. Somehow, even battered and bloody, he had managed to dredge up the most delightful sparkle in those eyes of his. “What about me?” she asked, breathless all over again.

“Are you a movie star?”

“Almost,” she said with a bright grin. “I’m a librarian.”

Now he smiled. Really smiled. It was a softer smile than on screen, less assured. A little boy’s smile, all heart and humor, and Lilly understood just why he’d earned that reputation he had as a lady-killer.

“And my name’s Cameron Ross?” he said.

She nodded.

He thought about it for a second. “Doesn’t sound right. I don’t know why, but it...” He shook his head, closed his eyes. “There’s something else, too. Something I think I should remember. And something I’m supposed to be doing....”

Lilly found herself perilously close to stroking his cheek again, just to soothe that look of tension. Instead, she straightened. “Well, it’ll wait ’til we get you back in. Or at least to a motorboat that can get you there faster. If you’d had the good sense to fall off your boat on the south side of Molokai, you would have been picked up in a minute. It’s lousy with traffic down there, and within sight of Maui and Lanai both. On this side there’s just water.”

“And you.”

“And me. Who should have paid a lot more attention to her Tutu Mary when she was teaching me first aid.”

“Tutu Mary? Who’s that, a ballerina?”

If anybody else had asked that, Lilly would have bristled. Somehow Cameron Ross failed to make the old joke offensive.

“Tutu is Hawaiian for grandmother,” Lilly explained. “My tutu was a healer. She tried to teach me, but I was better at theory than practice.”

At least, that was what Lilly had always contended.

He smiled again. A soft smile of understanding. “I know first aid.”

Lilly smiled back. “Of course you do.”

Even so, she checked his leg to find that the bleeding was old, the tear in the slacks minimal. She checked his head to find a couple of good gashes up beyond the hairline, and one along his temple that some fancy plastic surgeon was probably going to charge a fortune to fix. Nothing was bleeding actively, though. Lilly couldn’t see anything else obvious, and she couldn’t do anything about it if she did, so she decided it was time to sail.

“Here,” she said, wetting down a beach towel and draping it over his blood-caked head. “I’m going to give you your hat back to keep the sun out of your eyes.”

She did, tilting it just enough that he could feel the wind underneath.

“Is that Molokai over there?” he asked, closing his eyes.

Lilly turned to see the undulating curtain of emerald cliffs that seemed to simply spill from the clouds straight into the glistening sea.

“It is,” she said, her voice unconsciously softer.

“Can’t believe I didn’t notice it before. Can’t we just go there?”

“Not on the north coast,” she said. “No way to get you to civilization from there.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Lilly smiled like a fond parent. “It is.”

Actually, there was civilization on the north coast. Kalaupapa. A small peninsula of lush green that had been poured straight down the side of those forbidding cliffs to form a perfect tongue atop the sea. It held a community. It had medical care. Lilly had actually given brief thought to staying on her original course and landing there. But the only people living on the Kalaupapa peninsula were the last of Father Damien’s children, elderly survivors of Hansen’s Disease. Leprosy. As rigidly as they now guarded their privacy and shelter, Lilly wasn’t sure they wanted the notoriety of a famous star dumped on their doorstep. Besides, Maui would be much better suited to transporting and pampering somebody who wore tuxes and sailed in yachts. Carefully climbing to her feet so she didn’t disturb Cameron, Lilly untied the boom and set to work.

“I remember a storm,” he said, his voice muffled as Lilly gently eased the little Sunfish over around the way she’d come. “Lots of noise and lights.”

“Night before last,” she said, gingerly stepping over him. “It was a beaut. I almost lost a roof and a radio in it. We’re expecting a bigger one later. I was trying to get home before it got too close when I spotted you.”

“I remember...diving. Diving? That’s stupid. Why would I dive?”

“Probably falling off the side. Was it a sailboat?” she asked. “A cabin cruiser? Do you know if you had a crew? If you were on a ship of any size, there’s probably a search out for you.”

If she’d actually listened to that radio she’d had at the cabin, she might have known. But she’d walked. Thought. Wished.

Mr. Ross lifted a hand to rub gently at his chest. Sore, Lilly thought. There’d probably be a bruise or two under that once-starched tux shirt.

“I don’t... remember,” he admitted. “I don’t remember much more than the wind and lightning, and trying like hell to get my shoes off. But I feel like...like there’s something important I’m forgetting.”

“More important than your name?” she asked, alternating her attention between him and her task. The wind had caught her sail, and the little boat skipped like a flat rock, the wind spinning her hair out behind her and cooling the sweat on her chest and back from the effort of hauling in a strange man.

“Not like name important,” he said slowly, thinking hard beneath that hat. “But important.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Lilly said, much more blithely than she felt. “As soon as we get you ashore, you’ll have plenty of time to remember.”

They were still quite a ways from help of any kind, but with any luck, once they swung into the Pailolo Channel they would run into a good-sized yacht, maybe a deepsea fishing charter, that wouldn’t mind conveying Mr. Ross to a doctor. And, if worse came to worst, Maui was only about five miles beyond.

Wait ‘til she told her mother, Lilly thought with a stunned little shake of her head. Wait ’til she told her colleagues. So there I was, minding my own business, just breaking the speed record between Molokai and Oahu, and who do I happen to rescue in his tux and Stetson but Cameron Ross? They wouldn’t believe it. Heck, she still didn’t believe it.

The brightly striped orange-and-yellow sail strained with the wind, and the cliffs of Molokai were slipping slowly past. Time to check her patient again. Lilly once again tied off the boom and bent to retrieve the water.

“Mr. Ross?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. She panicked.

“Oh, please don’t do this to me,” she begged, dropping right back to her knees to shake his shoulder. “I’m not good in a crisis.”

She lifted his hat to find him squinting up at her. “Doin’ okay by me,” he said with a rakish grin.

Lilly almost clobbered him. “Don’t do that. I think you’re not supposed to fall asleep, but I can’t remember why. Health wasn’t my section.”

“Your section of what?”

“Research. I’m a research librarian. I can find the information once I get home, but I can’t remember it. All I can remember is the line of Stuart succession.”

He scowled. “Well, don’t tell me that. I’d be out in a nanosecond.”

Lilly wanted to smile. “Not into British royalty, huh?”

“Nope.”

“How ’bout Hawaiian royalty? I can name you that succession, too.”

“How about telling me your name? Since you seem to know mine.”

“Lilly,” she said, handing over the bottle of water. “Lilly Kokoa.”

He squinted again. “Named after that Hawaiian queen? Liliuokailani?”

“Nope. The flower. I was born on Easter.”

He grinned. “Not nearly as romantic. You are Hawaiian, aren’t you?”

“Half. Quarter Portuguese, quarter Chinese. I’m a mutt.”

He squinted again, as if assessing. “I’m no judge right now, but I’d bet that when I can actually see you, you’ll be the best-looking mutt I’ve ever come across.”

Lilly frowned down at him. “What do you mean, when you can see? Can’t you see?”

His shrug was minimal. “It’ll probably clear up. I’m already less sick.”

Lilly knew he was trying to ease her mind. He wasn’t having much success. Not only did she know perfectly well how she looked, she knew just what it meant that he couldn’t tell. She’d lied to him about not knowing about head injuries. She knew enough, and he was scaring her again.

“Have some more water,” she begged, hoping that maybe it was dehydration talking rather than head injury. After all, if he’d really fallen out of his boat the night before last, he’d been out in the sun an awfully long time.

“Thank you, Lilly,” he agreed, once again wrapping his hands around hers to bring the bottle to his lips.

He had wonderful hands, she thought. Beautiful, long-fingered and callused from real work. Marred by nicks and old scars across a couple of knuckles. Strong hands. Lilly watched them, watched him sip the water, his eyes closed, the liquid dribbling down his throat. And she thought he didn’t look a thing like a pampered movie star. His hands hadn’t been manicured in a while, and his face was rough with old beard and new sunburn. Even in the tux, he looked like an outcast. A sexy, charismatic, vulnerable outcast.

And Lilly had been alone for too long, she decided, pulling away before her libido got the best of her.

“You don’t want to rush that,” she warned him, closing the bottle with hands that shook just a little. “It could make you sick.”

“More research?” he asked, his voice weary and sore.

“No. Several viewings of Man on the Run, that movie you did where you were lost in the desert.”

He got one eye open. “Uh huh.”

“Come to think of it,” she said with a grin, “you were in a tux there, too.”