Captain's Paradise Read Online Free Page B

business, policing your own people, especially when the minority of those people, the lawbreakers, were often in the filthy business of using their own kind as a means for profit.
    But it nonetheless bothered her that this man could well be the kind of man prevalent in her own family: the tough, fearless, confident kind of man who was a born police officer. In the last few years she had learned to resent some aspects of that kind of man, particularly the trait of fearlessness. They made it look so
easy
, those men, and at times she had hated them for it.
    Because what came so easily to them was something Robin would have given anything to possess: courage.
    She looked at his big, powerful hands on the wheel, and felt her throat tighten, her mouth go dry.
Damn … Oh, damn …
She dragged thetraitorous thoughts back into hiding, refusing to give in to this mad attraction. Fiercely, she concentrated.
    “Are you a cop?” she asked, almost hoping for a negative response.
    Michael seemed to consider for a moment, then shrugged. “Something like that.”
    “DEA?” she asked, remembering his knowledge of the “rumored” shipment of drugs in these waters. If he was one of
those
men, she thought painfully, then he certainly had courage in spades. The people who worked in drug enforcement had the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs of all.
    “I’ve done work for them from time to time. Miami has been known to be a center for drug trafficking, and this boat gives me a certain amount of mobility.”
    “Are you working for them now?”
    “You’re a very inquisitive lady.”
    Robin refused to be put off. “On a need-to-know basis, I think I need to know. Is that why you suddenly decided to help me find that yacht?Because those animals could be running drugs as well as being slavers?”
    “I’m not working for anyone at the moment,” he answered finally. He was gazing forward, frowning.
    “But you aren’t a captain.”
    “Of course I am. I even accept charters occasionally.” His voice was dry again.
    Robin’s journalistic talents were at the forefront now, and she probed with careful concentration. “So it’s just a cover?”
    “What were you doing in Miami?” he parried.
    “Vacation. Are you based here?”
    “If anywhere. Where are you from?”
    “San Francisco. And you?”
    “The East.”
    “The Far East?” she asked gently.
    He smiled a little. “No. East Coast.”
    Robin reflected that he was adept at not answering questions, but that only increased her curiosity. “About your work,” she began determinedly, but was cut off.
    “Miami is a long way to come for a vacation,”he said smoothly, “when you’re from the West Coast. Why here?”
    She gritted her teeth, but her voice remained calm. “You know what they say about summers in San Francisco; I wanted to bask in the heat down here.”
    “L.A. would have been closer.”
    “Smog,” she dismissed promptly.
    “There are other cities on the West Coast.”
    “I wanted to visit Miami,” she said irritably, even more annoyed that she was losing her calm. “Look—”
    “Robin.” His voice was quiet, but it still possessed the peculiar trait she had noticed before, like something hard and dangerous covered with deceptive softness.
    “Yes?” She felt oddly uncomfortable.
    “If you want the truth from someone else, you’d better not offer lies yourself.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Don’t you?” He half turned to face her, expressionless. “You aren’t down here on vacation. You have some kind of background in policework, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked the questions you did with such calm. Most people don’t have the faintest idea what the DEA is. And if an average vacationing young woman got herself shanghaied, managed to escape, and was pulled from the ocean by a stranger, she wouldn’t calmly ask him if he was a smuggler or a gun runner. And it isn’t likely she’d decide to take on her kidnappers with