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“De donde vienes, cariño?” he asked her in Spanish.
“Hispaniola.” She tilted her head proudly, deciding a man like that probably appreciated someone with a backbone.
“Enzo, stop making eyes at her and come pull out some fucking crates from this hold. And you, don’t bother the men while they’re working,” Camden shouted, pointing a wicked blade in her direction.
“You told me to take care of her,” the blond bellowed back. “Make up your mind, McCollough.” The confirmation of the captain’s identity reminded her just how precarious her situation was, and she decided she needed to secure Enzo’s favor.
The larger man put down the rum he was carrying and headed toward them. He was visibly angry, and she suspected she’d be the one to pay for Enzo’s insolence.
“Yes?” she demanded when he got to them, and he seemed surprised by her defiance. It took him a moment to focus on her face, and when he did, his thunderous expression morphed into something very different. She saw his awareness of her blossom before her eyes, his dark gaze going from annoyed into something a lot more incendiary.
“Take the broad to the Delilah with that first batch of rum,” he instructed Enzo, ignoring her again. “Put her in my cabin.” With that, he started walking back to the hatch. “And don’t get too comfortable, girl. You’re getting off the moment we make port in Nassau,” he informed her over his shoulder.
“I’m headed to New York,” she yelled back.
Camden froze and whipped around to face her. Enzo whistled as though she had lost her mind, and she was starting to wonder if she had. But after a moment, to her surprise, the big man laughed. His blue eyes glinted with humor at her expense.
“This isn’t a cruise ship, sweetheart.” His gaze drifted toward her, and this time when she trembled, it was not with fear. He came closer, his eyes fixed on the exposed skin of her chest. He ran a finger down her neck, stopping short of her heaving breasts. The touch sent a rush of heat to her core. She was achingly aware of the man. “Don’t think of making a fuss, little girl, or I’ll throw you overboard myself,” he warned coldly, and she nodded, deciding it was best not to respond. “Put her in my rooms,” he reiterated with finality. “I’ll give her a lesson on the price of admission for the Delilah.”
Chapter
Two
This was his last run, Cam reminded himself as he pulled the girl’s—Rosalía’s—small trunk onto the deck. As if this job weren’t enough of a headache, now he had to deal with a stowaway. A beautiful, lush stowaway who, even wearing what basically amounted to a burlap sack, could not fully conceal her lush curves and generous breasts. The stress and turmoil of the past few months, of the past few years, had to be finally catching up to him because instead of leaving her on Valverde’s yacht, he’d gone along with Enzo’s harebrained idea to bring her with them.
“Take this up to her,” Cam ordered Butter, one of the hands. “Did you find any of the reserve yet?”
He got a shake of the head in response.
“God damn it,” Cam shouted, disgusted. If he got back to Atlantic City without Big Joe’s rum, it was going to be a fucking disaster. Cam had been almost out of this damn business. Had been working on ending his career as a bootlegger for the past year. He wanted out, was done dealing with hoodlums and criminals. He craved a new life, one where he could open his jazz club. Everything had been coming together too, but two weeks ago, Big Joe Capistrano, one of his old associates, had called in a favor.
Cam could not deny the man for various reasons. One, because Cam was opening his club, the Swallow, in Capistrano’s territory in Hamilton Heights. He’d need the mob boss’s blessing to do it. Two, because five years ago, the old bastard had helped get Perry, Cam’s younger brother, out of Sing Sing. Cam had only started running rum for Big Joe when his little brother got pinched for robbery and sent up for five years. After the second time Perry was almost beaten to death in the slammer, Cam had been desperate enough to beg the old gangster for help. Joe had come through, and Cam’s little brother was now happily living in upstate New York and mostly staying out of trouble.
So here Cam was, somewhere between the north coast of Haiti and Nassau, raiding a fucking yacht because someone had fleeced Big Joe out of five hundred liters of rum. It had been almost ten years of this shit, dealing with temperamental goons and their whims, and Cam was done with all of it.
“Move your ass, Enzo. Your uncle didn’t send you to jerk off and watch us work.” He huffed as Big Joe’s nephew leaned on a wall while smoking his fifth cigarette in ten minutes.
“Giving me shit isn’t going to dig you out of the hole you’re in, Irish.”
“I’m Scottish, you asshole.” Cam raised his middle finger, letting the kid know what he thought of his little joke, and went back to hauling crates.
“You can’t wait to get in that cabin and fuck that sweet little piece of ass tucked away in there.” Enzo winked and sent him another one of those looks, the kind that kept Cam caught between smacking the grin off Enzo’s face or bending him over the nearest flat surface and fucking the smart-ass out of him.
“Don’t test me, kid.” God, his head was a fucking mess. He had never been this close to snapping.
“So testy,” the blond said, puffing smoke in Cam’s direction.
He bared his teeth to keep from saying something that would lead to blows. He focused on moving crates into the cargo hold. Best to concentrate on that instead of falling for Enzo’s taunts. At another time Cam would’ve put a bullet between Enzo’s eyes for less than that, but in the past few years, the idea of his club had made Cam more protective of his own future.
The Cam who’d come back from war with his head riddled with the horrors he’d seen, had been quick to anger. What he’d had to do there had carved a hole in him that could never be filled. He returned from that carnage cynical and broken, only to find that the world had gone on without him. For months he was adrift, festering in resentment, unsettled by nightmares. Jobless, desperate. The only thing to his name was the schooner his father had left him. After three years of barely scraping by it was very easy to say yes to Big Joe when he asked Cam if wanted to make some easy money running liquor from Canada down to Atlantic City. In no time at all, Cam was sailing down to the Caribbean six times a year, moving hundreds of thousands of dollars in contraband. The stash of money he had accumulated in that time was enough to buy himself a new life.
What a difference ten years made.
All he needed was to settle this last debt he owed Big Joe, and Cam would be on his way to becoming a legitimate businessman. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d be completely free of that world, but owning a club would be different. He would be different. If he managed to get back north without killing the mobster’s nephew. And if he dealt with the chocolate-eyed vixen waiting in his cabin.
Where had she come from? The Hippodrome had shipped from La Romana, so he assumed that was where she’d boarded the yacht. She looked young, not older than twenty-two or twenty-three. He’d seen her clothes, which were bulky but of good material, including her fine leather boots. He was quite certain she came from money or belonged to someone who did. They would be looking for that chit, and Cam would not be caught in the crossfire when she was found.
The moment they got to Nassau, he’d unload her and find her passage back home. He could not afford her kind of trouble. But he had to admit, she had fire in her. He grinned thinking about how she’d gotten Rolly. Bastard deserved it for letting his head get turned by a nice fanny. Not that Cam didn’t appreciate just how nice that fanny was. He’d told her about the price of admission to test her, but she hadn’t even blinked. He also hadn’t missed the way Enzo looked at her. But Cam didn’t have time for any of it.
