Shock Wave(47)

She ran away to Melbourne and worked her way through university toward a career in zoology. Her father made no attempt to bring her back into the family fold. He merely abolished her claim to any family investments and pretended she never existed after her twins were born out of wedlock six months after a wonderful year she spent with a boy she met in class. He was the son of a sheep rancher, beautifully dark from the harsh outback sun, with a solid body and sensitive gray eyes. They had laughed, loved and fought constantly. When they inevitably parted, she never told him she was pregnant.

Maeve set the bottle and glasses on the desk and stared down at the personal things casually thrown among a stack of papers and a nautical chart. She peeked furtively into a cowhide wallet fat with assorted credit cards, business and membership cards, two blank personal checks and $123 in cash.

How strange, she thought, there were no pictures. She laid the wallet back on the desk and studied the other items strewn about. There was a wellworn, orange-faced Doxa dive watch with a heavy stainless-steel band, and a mixed set of house and car keys. That was all.

Hardly enough to give her an insight into the man who owned them, she thought. There had been other men who had entered her life and departed, some at her request, a few on their own. But they all left something of themselves. This seemed to be a man who walked a lonely path, leaving nothing behind.

She stepped through the doorway into his sleeping quarters. The mirror above the sink in the bathroom behind was still fogged with steam, a sign that the occupant had recently bathed. She smelled a small whiff of men's aftershave, and it produced a strange tingle in her stomach.

"Mr. Pitt," she called out again, but not loudly. "Are you here?"

Then she saw the body laid out full length on the bed, arms loosely crossed over the chest as though he were lying in a coffin. She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing that his loins were covered by a bath towel. "I'm sorry," she said very softly. "Forgive me for disturbing you."

Pitt slept on without responding.

Her eyes traveled from his head to his feet. The black mass of curly hair was still damp and tousled.

His eyebrows were thick, almost bushy, and came close to meeting above a straight nose. She guessed he was somewhere in the neighborhood of forty, though the craggy features, the tanned and weathered skin and chiseled, unyielding jawline made him seem older. Small wrinkles around the eyes and lips turned up, giving him the look of a man who was perpetually smiling. It was a strong face, the kind of face women are drawn to. He looked like a man of strength and determination, the kind of man who had seen the best of times and worst of times but never sidestepped whatever life threw at him.

The rest of his body was firm and smooth except for a dark patch of hair on his chest. The shoulders were broad, the stomach flat, the hips narrow. The muscles of his arms and legs were pronounced but not thick or bulging. The body was not powerful but tended on the wiry side, even rangy. There was a tenseness that suggested a spring that was waiting to uncoil. And then there were the scars. She couldn't begin to imagine where they came from.

He did not seem cut from the same mold as the other men she had known. She hadn't really loved any of them, sleeping with them out of curiosity and rebellion against her father more than passionate desire.

Even when she became pregnant by a fellow student, she refused an abortion to spite her father and carried her twin sons to birth.

Now, staring down at the sleeping man in the bed, she felt a strange pleasure and power at standing over his nakedness. She lifted the lower edge of the towel, smiled devilishly to herself, and let it fall back in place. Maeve found Pitt immensely attractive and wanted him, yes, feverishly and shamelessly wanted him.

"See something you like, little sister," came a quiet, husky voice from behind her.

Chagrined, Maeve spun and stared at Deirdre, who leaned casually against the doorway, smoking a cigarette.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded in a whisper.

"Keeping you from biting off more than you can chew."

"Very funny." In a motherly gesture, Maeve pulled the covers over Pitt's body and tucked them under the mattress. Then she turned and physically pushed Deirdre into the anteroom before softly closing the bedroom door. "Why are you following me? Why didn't you return to Australia with the other passengers?"

"I might ask the same of you, dear sister."

"The ship's scientists asked me to remain on board and make out a report of my experience with the death plague."

Ànd I remained because I thought we might kiss and make up," Deirdre said, drawing on her cigarette.

"There was a time I might have believed you. But not now."