Page 17 of Megan's Mate
“Nothing like being in control to settle the system,” he commented, and she made some sound of agreement.
But this was nothing like being in control.
She began to imagine what it might be like to have those hard, clever hands somewhere other than on the backs of hers. If she turned so that they were face-to-face and she tilted her head up at just the right angle...
Baffled by the way her mind was working, she set it to calculating algebra.
“Quarter speed,” Nathaniel ordered, steering a few degrees to port.
The change of rhythm had Megan off balance. She was trying to regain it when Nathaniel turned her around. And now she was facing him, her head tilted up. The easy grin on his face made her wonder if he knew just where her mind had wandered.
“See the blips on the screen there, Kevin?” But he was watching her, all but hypnotizing her with those unblinking slate-colored eyes. Sorcerer’s eyes, she thought dimly. “Do you know what they mean?” And his lips curved—closer to hers than they should be. “There be whales there.”
“Where? Where are they, Nate?” Kevin rushed to the window, goggle-eyed.
“Keep watching. We’ll stop. Look off the port bow,” he told Megan. “I think you’ll get your money’s worth.”
Still dazed, she staggered away. The boat rocked more enthusiastically when stopped—or was it her system that was so thoroughly rocked? As Nathaniel spoke into the P.A. system, taking over the mate’s lecture on whales, she slipped the camera and binoculars out of her shoulder bag.
“Look!” Kevin squealed, jumping like a spring as he pointed. “Mom, look!”
Everything cleared from her mind but wonder. She saw the massive body emerge from the choppy water. Rising, up and up, sleek and grand and otherworldly. She could hear the shouts and cheers from the people on the deck below, and her own strangled gasp.
It was surely some sort of magic, she thought, that something so huge, so magnificent, could lurk under the whitecapped sea. Her fingers rose to her lips, pressed there in awe as the sound of the whale displacing water crashed like thunder.
Water flew, sparkling like drops of diamond. Her camera stayed lowered, useless. She could only stare, an ache in her throat, tears in her eyes.
“His mate’s coming up.”
Nathaniel’s voice broke through her frozen wonder. Hurriedly she lifted the camera, snapping quickly as sea parted for whale.
They geysered from their spouts, causing the children to applaud madly. Megan was laughing as she hauled Jenny up for a better view, and the three of them took impatient turns with the binoculars.
She pressed herself to the window as eagerly as the children while the boat cruised, following the glossy humps as they speared through the sea. Then the whales sounded, diving deep with a flap of their enormous tails. Below, people laughed and shouted as they were drenched with water.
Twice more theMarinersought out and found pods, giving her passengers the show of a lifetime. Long after they turned and headed for home, Megan stayed at the window, hoping for one more glimpse.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?”
She looked back at Nathaniel, eyes glowing. “Incredible. I had no idea. Photographs and movies don’t quite do it.”
“Nothing quite like seeing and doing for yourself.” He cocked a brow. “Still steady?”
With a laugh, she glanced down at her wrists. “Another minor miracle. I would never have put stock in anything like this.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.’”
A black-suited pirate quoting Hamlet. “So it seems,” she murmured. “There’s The Towers.” She smiled. “Off the port side.”
“You’re learning, sugar.” He gave orders briskly and eased theMarinerinto the calm waters of the bay.
“How long have you been sailing?”
“All my life. But I ran off and joined the merchant marine when I was eighteen.”
“Ran off?” She smiled again. “Looking for adventure.”
“For freedom.” He turned away then, to ease the boat into its slip as smoothly as a foot slides into an old, comfortable shoe.
