Renegade (20 page)

Mac chuckled, and tugged her back down. “I can’t control this thing with you jumping all over.”

Sticking out her tongue, Becks sat down, but continued to crane her neck. “Well, then you’re not a very good rower. Let me know if you need me to give you lessons.”

He laughed outright at that, a great booming bark of laughter that echoed across the water and made her smile. “All right, sass-mouth. But only if you let
me
give
you
some lessons.”

Just like that, her smile faded, imagining the things he could teach her. She licked her lips once and watched the way those copper eyes followed the movement. She felt heat pooling between her legs, and she shifted slightly, desperate to press against something. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more, frankly.” Did her voice sound hoarser than usual? She wondered if he’d noticed.

Judging from the way his chin dropped and he pulled extra-hard on the oars, she must have made some impression. But he only cleared his throat, and said “It’ll have to wait, though.” And then he jerked his head slightly, and she peered around him to get her first full sight of the
Polaris
.

She was beautiful. Oh, Becks had seen other boats moored up in the marshes, especially before and after bad storms. And she’d seen them out on the Sound, although the bigger ships bypassed Edisto completely for Charleston. But this was
his
ship. This was Mac’s home, the ship he’d worked so hard for. This was his freedom, his guiding light. This ship was special.

As they pulled alongside, Robert’s head appeared above them. He looked surprised to see her sitting in the stern of the dinghy. “Thought I heard you, Mac. Couldn’t figure out what you had cause to be laughin’ about out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s not the locale, friend; it’s the company.”

“Ain’t polite to laugh at ladies.” Mac’s amusement told Becks that the big black man was making a joke, and she rolled her eyes at both of them, which made Robert chuckle.

She let Mac pass her up to his friend; Robert wrapped both large hands around hers and easily lifted her up on board while Mac gave her behind a surreptitious pat that made her blush. Then she was standing on the deck of the
Polaris,
and Mac was standing beside her, and she’d decided that the ship was the most magnificent thing she’d ever seen.

She turned to tell Mac that, but he caught her grin and spoke first. “You like her?”

Unable to keep the wonder from her expression or the excitement from her voice, Becks threw herself into his arms, wrapping her arms around his middle. After a moment’s hesitation, she felt his arms enfold her. “She’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen, Mac.” Her words were a little muffled against his chest, but she felt him squeeze her and knew he’d heard.

“I think so, too.” His whisper against her hair was so faint that Becks wondered if she’d imagined it.

“What is this? A visitor?” A voice boomed up from below, and Becks peered out of Mac’s arms in time to see a wild-haired, one-eyed man pulling himself up from a large hatch in the deck. “You did not warn us, Captain! We would have cleaned.”

“Impossible.” She felt Mac’s voice rumble in his chest. “The
Polaris
is as clean as she’ll ever be.”

“Still.” The man performed a sort of bow in front of her. “I do not believe that we have ever had a
lady
on board.”

“Plenty of
women
, though.” Robert’s mutter was so low that Becks didn’t think she was supposed to hear it. But since she had, she understood the flash of smiles across all the men’s faces.

“Becks, this is Ironto. Ironto, Becks Middleton, of Beckett.”

“Charmed, my lady.” Another bow, and Becks would have curtseyed, if she could’ve made herself let go of Mac long enough. As it was, she could only sort of nod bemusedly. This crewmate of Mac’s was the oddest-looking man she’d ever seen; not just the frizzy black hair, or the eye patch, but the leg that ended in a wooden stick, like a genuine pirate of old, the lack of three fingers on his left hand, and the way she couldn’t identify his accent. Still, his smile was sincere, and she found herself smiling in return.

“Out of the way, old man, before you scare her.” A young man—her age or even younger—tried to shove Ironto with his shoulder, but the one-eyed man just glared him down. The newcomer had red hair and freckles and an easy smile that made Becks glad to meet him. She glanced up at Mac, thinking that his crew certainly did make the
Polaris
a home.

Mac pretended to sigh exasperatedly, but she could sense his amusement. “And this is the last member of our little band. Erasmus Jefferson, but we call him Jeff, because ‘Erasmus’ is a dumb name to assign to a poor, unsuspecting boy.” Jeff rolled his eyes, and Becks almost giggled.

“Yes, I can imagine.” She wiggled out of Mac’s embrace, and offered the young man a little curtsey, for all that she was barefoot and without crinolines. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Jeff.” Then she turned to the older man and curtsied again. “And you, Mr. Ironto.”

“God in Heaven, woman!” The older man’s smile was bright against his olive skin. “Do not assign us honorifics. I am just ‘Ironto’.” He jerked a thumb towards the redhead. “And the puppy is
just
Jeff. Or ‘dimwit.’ Or ‘sluggard’. Or ‘pustule.’ Or—”

Rolling his eyes sky-ward, Jeff jammed an elbow into the older man’s side, and Ironto bit off his insults in a fit of coughing.

Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, the younger man rocked back on his heels, and turned smiling eyes to Becks. “Thank you for your generosity the last few days, Miss Middleton. Despite what grandpa here would tell you—” Jeff indicated the still-grumbling Ironto with his chin. “—the books have kept us all well-entertained.”

Becks thought his voice sounded a bit like the carpetbaggers she’d heard in Charleston, but she couldn’t help but smile at his open sincerity. Unfortunately, she had no idea what he was talking about. “Books?” She turned questioning expression towards Mac, who came to her rescue.

“Becks isn’t actually the one you’ll have to thank, Jeff.”

He lifted one of the two sacks he’d carried out of the house, and tossed it to Jeff, who eagerly pulled out two of Pearl’s hardcover tomes. The young man’s expression lit up even further. “These are great! Thanks!” Shoving them back in the sack, he turned excited eyes to them. “I’ll go get Darwin and Twain for you to return to Mrs. Middleton.” He scampered back down the ladder into the open hatch, agile as a monkey.

Becks raised one brow in Mac’s direction, and he shrugged a little sheepishly. “Books keep Jeff occupied. And Ironto, too, arguing with him.” Becks heard the older man mutter
Bah!
and hid her smile. “So I asked your mother if I could borrow some from her library.”

“It’s not
her
library.”

Mac glanced at Robert. “I know. I think Pearl was even more surprised than Eugenia was, when we asked.”

“
’
We
’
?” Had Robert been the one to ask Pearl? Had she been rude to him again?

Becks never found out, because just then Ironto stepped forward and offered her a tour of the ship, and there’s no way she was going to pass that up.

She couldn’t contain her excitement to see Mac’s home; exploring the
Polaris
was an adventure in itself. The hold—filled with barrels Ironto told her contained rum—and the thin bunks were interesting enough, but it was the rigging that held her attention the longest. She turned pleading eyes on Mac, and she didn’t even need to say anything before he sighed and nodded a go-ahead. She tucked her skirt into the waistband and scampered up the ropes, reveling in the rough feel of the hemp between her toes and the view from the mast. She even pretended not to notice the way Mac anxiously hovered beneath her, ready to catch her should she slip. Honestly, the man had no confidence in her balance.

The other sack he’d heaved aboard contained lunch, no doubt sweet-talked from Lola. Becks and the men lounged on the foredeck—she was trying her best to remember all of the nautical terms for such a large boat—and teased throughout the meal. Even Robert had a delightfully dry sense of humor, when he would show it. Becks did her best to charm him, in an effort to make up for his original reception at Beckett. By the end of the meal, he was sharing smiles and jokes with her, mainly at Mac’s expense. She liked the way Mac pretended to mind, when even she—who’d known him the shortest amount of time—could see that he was pleased that she liked his best friend.

In fact, from the looks he was sending her, she got the impression he was pleased about a lot of things, and that made her feel warm all over. She was thrilled to be spending so much time with him, and to be learning about his life. She was thrilled that he was willing to share so much about his life with her. They might not have a future together, but sharing his present felt… right.

By unspoken agreement, all five of them steered the conversation away from anything involving the crew’s less-than-legal escapades. Perhaps it was naive of her to think that she could ignore his smuggling, but since they had so little time together, she didn’t want to mar it. Hell, she didn’t even know what it was that he was smuggling but wasn’t going to ask and risk spoiling this easy truce they had. He’d leave Beckett soon and go on with his renegade ways somewhere else… but here and now, she wanted to pretend that he was just here for her.

And that was easy, when he was sending her such hot looks. And maybe she was sending him hot looks, too, because after the meal he abruptly hauled her to her feet, a look of intensity in those captivating copper eyes.

She swallowed and stepped even closer to him, wanting to feel the length of his body pressed against her, but knowing that he might not appreciate it in front of his crew. But he just stared down at her, the heat in his gaze matching the heat pooling between her thighs.

“Want to go for another boat ride?” Was he as desperate for some privacy as she was?

“Good God, yes.” His smile flashed at the rashness of her response, and he squeezed her hand.

Mac pulled her close enough that she could feel the bulge in his trousers, and called over her shoulder to his crew, “Robert, think y’all can manage alone for another few hours?”

The black man was lying on his back with a hat over his face to block the sun from his eyes, and Becks would’ve thought he was asleep, had she not seen the rude gesture he sent Mac’s way. Jeff was hunched over one of Pearl’s books, but Ironto sent them both a jaunty salute from where he sat on the fo'c'sle, deftly splicing rope.

Mac lowered her over the side into the dinghy and then climbed down as well. If she hadn’t just seen him that morning, relaxed in her mother’s parlor looking like a perfect gentleman, she wouldn’t have believed he could be the same man. The breeze flattened the gray cotton to all of his hard contours, and ruffled his dark waves. She watched the muscles in his forearms bulge as he climbed down the rope, bare toes gripping the hemp fibers like he was born to this life. The more she learned of him, the more she realized who he was
;
the Mac she’d seen in Eugenia’s presence wasn’t the real Mac.
Here
he was all ease and comfort and
freedom.

He could mean freedom for her, too, if he’d hurry up and start rowing them to privacy. She wanted to lose herself entirely in his touch, to revel in the freeness to feel anything she wanted—
everything
she wanted. To liberate herself from the normal.

She wanted adventure, and he would give it to her.

It wasn’t until after he’d shipped the oars that she saw the brown stick in his mouth, and had to smile. He must have noticed, because after he started pulling—downriver, past Peter’s Point, rather than towards Beckett—that he raised a brow at her, and that dimple reappeared.

Becks smiled. “I wondered why you always smell like cinnamon.”

He shrugged and shifted the cinnamon stick from one side of his mouth to the other. “There are worse habits. Worse things to smell like.”

Her smile grew. “I’m not complaining. I think it’s…” She moved forward, until her hand was on his thigh, scarcely believing her own boldness. “Delicious.”

His eyes darkened slightly, and his brow rose again. He glanced down at her hand, and pulled on the oars again. “You know, I promised myself I wasn’t going to touch you again, not so soon after…”

“You shouldn’t make promises about things you’ve got no control over, you know.”

“You don’t think I’ve got control over my… urges?”

She smiled again. “I don’t think you’ve got any control over
my
urges.” She ran her hand up his thigh. “I plan on touching you.” Oh Lord, did she. If he was going to do the gentlemanly thing and ignore her advances—like he’d tried to do last night—then she was going to have to play the renegade.

But then they rounded a bend, and he was heading for a secluded little beach on the left bank, pulling hard enough that she thought he might snap an oar. The bow had barely scraped the sand when he was out of the boat, water splashing over his thighs as he gripped the gunwale and shoved it further up the beach. When the stern reached him, he grabbed her and hauled her out of the boat into his arms, and she laughed to feel the cool water pulling at her skirt.