Scarlet Butterfly Read online

  “Are you hurt, darling?”

  “ ‘Darling’?” Carolina’s eyes were closed. Her voice was dreamy and the top button of his shirt was completely gone, revealing the absence of the slip and something more.

  She was acutely aware of his thighs cradling her body. “I like that,” she said in a breathless whisper. “It sounds different coming from you.”

  “What?” He was practically whispering too. What was there about this woman that turned him into some kind of parrot? She must have hit her head. She wasn’t even pushing him away. And he had no inclination to move.

  “ ‘Darling.’ That’s nice. Does this always happen, Captain?”

  “If you mean do I always end up on top of a woman, no, I can’t say that I do.” The change in his body hadn’t been gradual. It had been a primitive surge of intensity, and it had caught him by surprise.

  “It’s very—powerful, the feelings you create with your touch. You called me ‘darling.’ Do you—does that go along with … I mean, does your body always react so strongly? I think you must be a highly sexed man.”

  Highly sexed? He groaned. Damn! he said to himself. He was hard again, and that hardness was desperately seeking the softness of the area that had been withdrawn from him earlier.

  “Damn!” Sean pushed himself up, caught Carolina by the hands, and drew her up against him. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Then what in hell were you doing putting that wrestler’s move on me?”

  “That was no wrestler’s move. That was the Heimlich maneuver. Weren’t you choking?”

  “On those mutilated eggs? No! It was the salt. Who taught you to cook?”

  “Nobody,” she murmured. “I’ve never cooked anything in my life. I’m sorry.”

  They were still touching, thigh to thigh, breast to chest, his hands holding her hands.

  He moved a half-step away. “Carolina Evans, I’m afraid that we’re stuck here, together, on this ship, for at least another day, and I have to know, are you really all right? I mean, have you been in some kind of institution? If you’ve run away, I’ll be glad to help you, but you have to behave yourself, quit coming on to me.”

  Carolina gave a light laugh. “Have I run away? Yes. If you mean from a mental institution, no.” She smiled, her eyes widening in question. “Was I really coming on to you?”

  Sean groaned. “Hell, yes! I think I’ll swim to shore. Don’t try to cook. Don’t clean the kitchen. Don’t do anything until I return.”

  “All right,” she agreed, bemusement washing her face with wonder. “I don’t know much about you, Captain Sean Rogan, but I think you ought to relax and enjoy whatever life sends you. Whatever, or whoever. You never know when you’ll lose it all. You’re much too rigid.”

  “ ‘Rigid’?” She was right. And his body wasn’t complying with his cease-and-desist directive. Nor was it likely to, as long as they were standing so close. To compound matters, she came closer and slid her arms up to his face, capturing it with her hands.

  “You should have a captain’s hat,” she whispered. “He did. And she loved it.”

  Feeling confused enough already, he let these remarks pass.

  The last thing he’d intended to do was kiss her. In fact, he couldn’t remember lowering his face until their lips touched. Her lips were soft, parting hesitantly. He liked that, liked that she trusted him to lead the way—even as he realized, as he deepened the kiss, that he was taking advantage of her trust. It made no sense. But nothing had made any sense since he’d pulled back the covers and found her in his bed.

  The soft little mew she let out as she melted against him jerked him back to reality. He was supposed to be taking care of her. He’d promised. And there he was, jumping all over her like some kid caught in his first attack of hormonitis. He’d let himself get too caught up in the stress of his own needs and responsibilities once before, when he’d ignored his little sister’s problems. This time he ought to know better, he chided himself.

  Sean shoved past Carolina onto the deck, drawing air into his lungs. “I’m going to check on your car,” he called out, and disappeared over the side into the fast-moving current.

  For a long moment he felt himself being swept downstream, but then his strong thrusts began moving him toward the trees that marked where the shoreline would normally have been. Sean reached up, caught hold of a limb of a live oak, and pulled himself from the water. Scanning the tree for snakes, he began to climb. The St. Marys originated in the Okefenokee Swamp. Heavy rains overflowed the swamp, bringing trash, limbs, and an occasional unwilling swamp animal along with them until just below the schooner the river current crashed into the saltwater coming inland with the tide.

  From the top of the tree, he scanned where the road should have been. Though he should have been able to sight the red car through patches of leafless tree, he couldn’t see anything but water. The rain was still falling, not hard but steady. Sean turned his gaze back to the boat.

  There was no sign of the woman.

  He perched there, trying to sort out his thoughts. Carolina Evans. He had a name, nothing more. She’d apparently come looking for him—no, not for him, but the Scarlet Butterfly. Why? Why the elaborate pretense that he was what she’d expected? That anything had been expected? He didn’t understand, and when he didn’t understand, Sean Rogan became abrupt, sharp, and, as he’d been called, “a coldhearted bastard,” more interested in having his way than in listening to others.

  But Carrie—no, not Carrie; Carrie was too personal; he’d do better to think of her as Goldilocks—Goldilocks didn’t seem to think he was a bastard. In fact, she seemed quite pleased with the “captain.”

  But what was he doing dwelling on her, when he needed so badly to focus all his attention on the fight ahead of him. He was making a mistake, he thought ruefully to himself. And so had kissing her been a mistake, as was his willingness to accept her without a better explanation.

  It had to end. It was bad enough that the schooner had developed a will of its own—creaking from footsteps that weren’t there, tables shuddering for no good reason, sudden breezes that swept in and died—but now he had a fantasy woman who was slipping past the hard armor he’d forged so carefully around his emotions.

  Dammit, this was his boat, his domain. He might not be able to do anything about her until the storm passed, but he could set up some rules.

  The first thing he needed was information.

  Who was Carolina Evans, and why was she there?

  Three

  “Ahoy, Captain, swab the deck! Awwwk!”

  Parrots! The captain listened to the bird and swore. When he’d sailed the Butterfly, he’d never believed in having animals on a ship. Then she’d found a feisty, half-starved kitten, and he hadn’t been able to refuse her request to keep him. She’d called him Barney, and long after she’d gone, Barney was still there, Barney and the child. They’d kept an uneasy peace until one day the child grew up and left. Soon Barney, too, was gone, and he was alone.

  Until now.

  After all these years, the Butterfly had been raised by another Rogan. The cat had been replaced by a bird. And a young Carolina, proud and invincible, had come back. Almost as if he’d been given another chance.

  Oblivious to the rain, he leaned against the mast and watched the young woman as she tasted the eggs and grimaced. It was obvious that she was as unfamiliar with cooking as he was with the changing banks of the river he’d once known as well as the back of his hand.

  A suggestion of a smile played across Carolina’s lips as she scraped the too-salty food overboard. Then she took on a look of quiet determination as she studied the cookstove and the food supplies in the storage area. Slipping a carrot from the refrigerator, she offered it to the bird.

  “Hello, Bully. I bet you’d like something special for your breakfast.”

  Bully eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then sidled over to the edge of his perc
h and took the treat.

  “Pretty Carrie!”

  “Carolina,” she corrected. “Doesn’t take you long to learn. I think that the captain is a little slower. He doesn’t quite know what to make of me.” She leaned against the table and let out a deep sigh. “To tell the truth, neither do I. Father never believed that I would leave. But I did it.”

  “ ‘Father’?” Sean Rogan stepped inside the galley and leaned against the door frame. “Then you are mortal, not some spirit come to torment me.”

  “Of course I’m mortal.”

  “If I hadn’t seen your car I might question that. Why did you come here, Carolina Evans? What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead. I came; that was enough. As soon as the water recedes, I’ll leave.”

  He continued to eye her skeptically and to speak in a voice that was low and intentionally calm. “Where will you go? You don’t look very strong. Is there someone I can call to come and get you?”

  “No, I’ll manage by myself.”

  She obviously wasn’t well. Yet, like some wild thing, she was ready to fight for her independence. He admired her for her spirit and her determination. There was a softness about her too, and it reached out and touched a part of him he’d thought closed off long ago—compassion, the ability to put someone else’s needs ahead of his own.

  No, he wouldn’t fall into the same old trap. He’d finally managed to get away from people who needed him one minute and then stabbed out at him in anger when he didn’t give more of himself, people who demanded more from him than they were willing to give. He’d put up with that for too long, until one day he’d realized that there was little of himself left, that those he’d given to hadn’t appreciated any of his caring, that his ability to care was gone.

  “No, no, there’s no one to call,” she explained hesitantly. “I know this doesn’t make much sense to you. I truly didn’t expect anything, except to see the schooner. When I saw the story about the Scarlet Butterfly in the magazine, I knew it had to be the boat I’d read about.”

  “You read about it? Where?”

  “In an old journal that was handed down in my mother’s family. The schooner disappeared in eighteen sixty. There couldn’t be two boats named Scarlet Butterfly, could there?”

  “I doubt it. Boats were named for people, for spirits, even dreams, but butterflies? Our captain must have been a little … different.”

  “Oh, he was. Jacob was a rough but caring man. He must have loved Carolina very much.”

  “Jacob?”

  “Captain Jacob Rogan, the man who sailed the Butterfly. A man much like you, I’d guess. Isn’t it odd? I’m Carolina, but your name is different.”

  “Whoa! What makes you think that the man who sailed this ship was named Jacob Rogan?”

  “I read it, in Carolina’s daughter’s journal. And even if I hadn’t, I think I’d have known that you belong here. His name was Rogan; your name is Rogan. The ship once belonged to him, and you found it. I had an ancestor named Carolina, and I found you. Don’t you feel the continuity? Like the circle is complete again.”

  As if in answer, the ship took a sudden dip, throwing Sean through the doorway onto the deck. Carolina followed, concern etched across her forehead. “Are you all right?”

  “Damned if I know. You may think I belong, but I’m not sure the ship agrees.”

  “Oh, but if it weren’t for you, the ship would still be underwater.”

  “Yeah, maybe that’s where it wants to be.”

  “No, this is right. I know it.”

  “ ‘Right’? Here I am, in the middle of a flood, with a woman who not only claims to know more about the ship I’ve spent the last two years restoring than I do, but who knows about my—my ancestors too.”

  “Oh, no, not really. Carolina’s daughter’s journal was only partially intact. I’m not even sure how she was related to me. Sometime in the last hundred years there was another flood, and most of the writing was too faded to read.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I just know Carolina ran away with Captain Rogan on the Scarlet Butterfly and disappeared. Her daughter didn’t write much about her childhood, just that her mother died, and she lived with the captain, who, when he went back to sea, left her with his brother in Charleston.”

  “Odd, my family came here from Charleston.”

  “Really? You know, in some weird kind of way, maybe Carolina and Rogan have come home. I like that idea, don’t you?”

  “Just so long as you’re not planning on carrying out that second part of Carolina’s history.”

  “You mean dying? No, that’s behind me now. I intend to live, really live from now on.”

  “Ahoy the ship!” a voice called out, breaking Rogan’s train of thought, forestalling any more questions.

  “Harry!” Rogan exclaimed, and turned back to Carolina to explain. “Harry is a fisherman who lives in the swamp.” Rogan climbed the stairs and moved toward the rear of the boat. “Harry, you all right?”

  Carolina followed, sighting a wizened old man wearing overalls and a railroad cap.

  “Yep. Just thought I’d better check on you. Pretty bad storm, weren’t it, boy?” He tilted his head as he caught sight of Carolina. “Sorry, didn’t know you had a lady now.”

  “I don’t!”

  Sean looked at Carolina again. “I mean she’s just come about the Butterfly.”

  “Are you thinking of selling her?”

  “No. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Haven’t you heard? The state’s put in a claim.”

  “Oh?” The old man’s flatboat bobbed in the water as he struggled to find a calmer spot near the shore where he could escape the unsettling swirls of water.

  “They’re trying to claim state ownership.”

  Carolina felt a chill come over her. “But they can’t,” she protested. “The Scarlet Butterfly belonged to Jacob Rogan. You must be his descendant. That makes it yours, or at least it belongs to the Rogan family.”

  “Yeah, well it looks as if I’m going to have to find a bill of sale to prove it.”

  “Too bad,” Harry said. “Well, I’ve got to get on downstream. I want to check on Miss Lucy. You know she’s got no phone on that old houseboat where she lives, and she might need something. Can I bring you anything on my way back?”

  “No, but thanks,” Rogan said. “We’ll be fine. If it stops raining, the water will drop by morning.”

  Harry pushed himself away from the bank and let the current move him out. “See you in a day or so.”

  They watched Harry lift his steadying pole from the water, allowing his boat to be swept downstream and around the curve of land, out of sight.

  “Why didn’t you send me with Harry?”

  Rogan looked startled.

  “In a flat-bottomed boat in a fast current? Not safe. Look at you, you’re getting soaked.”

  She was. The soft cotton shirt hugged her slim body as water dripped down her forehead. A silence fell between them, and she didn’t know what to say. The raindrops no longer bounced off the deck, but fell gently on its polished surface. The wind was gone, so that the trees hung heavy with water, the limbs bending down and being dragged by the current. Its swiftness had abated, but it was still powerful and still carried debris, slamming it against the hull of the ship and off again in a furious chase.

  Rogan set his lips sternly. He stood opposite her, waiting for her to speak, studying her with regret and confusion. He wished he had sent her with Harry. It would have been a smart move. Lucy could have taken her in until they could reclaim her car. Or she could have gone back to Ida’s in town. But he hadn’t, and he recalled with a jab in the gut that for one second he had considered it, then had deliberately closed off the thought, further saddling himself with this half-starved woman-child who’d boarded the Butterfly and sought refuge in his bed.

  Her hair was wet, plastered to her head like a cap. Her eyes seemed more blue, a silv
ery blue. They were opened wide, watching him with childlike innocence and trust. At the same time she was waiting as if she expected to be censured and was willing to take his rebuke. Something about that trust caught him off guard and made him want to draw her close and comfort her. She shivered.

  “Oh, hell!”

  Rogan swept her into his arms and carried her to his quarters. “What were you thinking, standing out there in the rain like some water sprite?”

  He took a thick towel from behind the door and began to dry her hair, to blot the moisture from her face. To Rogan the cabin was warm, very warm, but her skin was cool. “You’re soaked, and I don’t think you’re strong enough to take this kind of chill.”

  She nodded as he knelt down, drying her legs and ankles.

  “You’ve been ill, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.” He swore and began unbuttoning the shirt. “I want you back in that bed, under those covers.”

  “Will you come too?”

  The implication of her question took his breath away and stilled his hands.

  “No. You’ve already had a sample of what can happen. I might not have been conscious of what I was doing then, but I know better now. I’m going back on deck. You get in bed and cover up. I’ll bring you some hot coffee later.”

  Abruptly, he left the room, climbing the steps in one long stride. Inside the cabin Carolina finished unbuttoning the shirt, draped it across the bureau, and climbed into the bunk. Clearly, he’d come to his senses, and he didn’t want her. She could understand that, but the knowledge hurt. Men had never been more than a teenage fantasy—except once, when she’d learned just how far her father’s money could go.

  But Rogan was different. She sensed that beneath his gruff exterior he was hiding a man who could care. For a moment she allowed herself to remember the safety of his arms, the way he smelled, and the texture of his bare skin against hers. Suddenly she felt as if her skin were encased in a moving blanket of electric impulses. She clenched her teeth, pulled the covers over her, trying in vain to stay awake until he returned.