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Rather than have a full-blown argument, which would only make things more treacherous with the visibility at almost zero, she’d kept busy manning the bilge pump, rigging safety lines in the cabin and locking down the chart table when the contents had threatened to spill out. All the while trying to stay calm and focused and zone out the heaving noise outside.
They’d come through the worst of it an hour ago. The torrential rain was still flattening the seas, but the winds were dying down at least a little bit. But two seconds ago she’d heard a solid crash and she’d rushed up on deck, no longer prepared to follow orders.
Relief washed through her to see Dane standing at the wheel, the storm sails intact. But her relief quickly retreated.
His face was drawn, his clothing soaked, his usually graceful movements jerky and uncoordinated. He looked completely shattered. She cursed herself for waiting so long to finally confront him about his stubborn refusal to allow her on deck.
He’d been helming the yacht for over five hours and hadn’t slept for more than twenty minutes at a time since they’d left Bermuda two days ago because he’d been keeping watch solo.
Maybe it had been ten years ago, but she’d once been a competent yachtswoman because she’d learnt from a master. She should take the helm. There weren’t as many breakers to negotiate now, visibility was lifting and a quick survey of the horizon showed clear skies off the bow only a few miles ahead.
‘Dane, for goodness’ sake. Let me take over. You need some sleep.’
‘Get back below, damn it!’
He swung the wheel to starboard and the boat heeled. But as she grabbed the safety line she saw a trickle of blood mixed with the rain running down his face, seeping from a gash at his hairline.
Horror gripped her insides, and her frustration was consumed by panic. ‘Dane, you’re bleeding!’
He scrubbed a forearm across his forehead. ‘I’m okay.’
Hauling herself up to the stern, she covered his much larger hand with hers, shocked by the freezing skin as he clung to the wheel.
‘This is insane,’ she said, desperate now to make him see reason. ‘I can do this. You have to let me do this.’
An involuntary shudder went through him, and she realised exactly how close he was to collapsing when he turned towards her, his blue eyes bloodshot and foggy with fatigue. Good grief, had he given himself a concussion?
‘It’s too rough still,’ he said, the words thick with exhaustion. ‘It’s not safe for you up here.’
‘It’s a lot calmer than it was,’ she said, registering the weary determination in his voice. However stupidly macho he was being by refusing to admit weakness, his determination to stay at the helm was born out of a desire to protect her.
‘At least go below and clean the cut,’ she said, clamping down on all the treacherous memories flooding back to make her heart ache.
The mornings when he’d held her head as she threw up her breakfast in the motel bathroom...the intractable look on his face when he’d demanded she marry him after the stick had gone blue...and the crippling thought of him battered and bruised by her father’s bodyguards when he’d come back to get her...
Her gaze drifted over his brow to the scar that he’d refused to explain. She shook off the melancholy thoughts as blood seeped from the fresh injury on his forehead. She couldn’t think about any of that now. He had a head injury. She had to get him to let go—at least for a little while.
‘Seriously, I can handle this!’ she shouted above the gusting wind, her voice firm and steady despite the memory bombarding her of another argument—the one they’d had the morning he’d left her...
She’d let him have the last word then, because she hadn’t had the courage to insist she was capable of handling at least some of the burden of their finances. She’d been so angry about his attitude that morning, at his blank refusal to let her get a job.
But maybe it was finally time to acknowledge the truth of what had happened that day. Of course he’d had no faith in her abilities—because she’d had no faith in them herself. And he hadn’t left her. He’d gone to find a job so he could support her.
He hadn’t been able to rely on her because she had been weak and feeble, beaten down by her father’s bullying. And her one show of strength—the decision to run off and marry Dane and have the baby growing inside her—had really been nothing more than a transference of power from one man to another.
Dane had made all the decisions simply because she’d been too scared, too unsure to make them herself. That Dane might have been equally scared, equally terrified, had never even occurred to her. But what if he had been? And what if he’d kept his feelings hidden simply to stop himself from scaring her?
‘I’m not a princess any more, Dane!’ she shouted, just in case he was still confusing her with that girl. She didn’t want to argue with him, but she had to make him believe she could handle this. ‘I’m a lot tougher than I look now,’ she added.
Because I’ve had to be.
She cut off the thought. She could never tell him all the reasons why she’d been forced to toughen up because that would only stir up more of the guilt and recriminations from their past. Until she’d found herself alone in that motel bathroom she’d let him take all the strain. But she didn’t need to do that any more.
‘Please let me do this.’
She braced herself for an argument, keeping an eye on the sea, but to her astonishment, instead of arguing further, he grasped her arm and dragged her in front of him.
His big body bolstered hers and she felt the familiar zing of sexual awareness, complicated by a rush of emotion when his cold palms covered her hands on the wheel.
