Her Passionate Protector Read online

  Ignoring the hint, he ran a disparaging glance over her. "Are you dieting or something?"

  "I don't diet!"

  "You didn't eat much in there."

  "I'm not very hungry." He'd taken note of how much she ate?

  "Why not?"

  The look on his handsome face didn't encourage her to think he'd let the subject go until he was satisfied. She finally said, "I've been sick recently, but it wasn't life-threatening and I'm perfectly all right now, only I haven't got much appetite yet."

  "I thought you were going to faint."

  So had she, but fortunately that hadn't happened, mainly thanks to him. Recognizing a fatal tendency to gratitude, she said distantly, "It was kind of you to open the door for me, but don't you want to go back to your … companion?"

  For a moment he looked blank. Then he said, "I only just met her—she's not likely to miss me."

  Sienna might have disputed that. No woman could be immune to so much blatant masculinity, and the blonde had been quite clearly smitten.

  She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly on the table, and deliberately loosened them. "I'm all right now," she reiterated. "Really."

  He reached out and touched the back of his fingers to her cheek, bringing a quick, unexpected heat flaring under the skin, a tiny shock of pleasure setting warning bells off in her mind. "You've got a bit more color," he said, "but you're still pale."

  "I'm naturally pale," Sienna argued. "It comes with my hair."

  "It's fantastic," Brodie said. "The color, I mean."

  "Thank you." The words came out clipped, and she pretended not to see the curious look he cast her. "Excuse me, Camille might need me." He was altogether too attractive. Sienna knew to her cost how easily she could fall victim to compliments and concern. Especially when allied with such a good-looking face and a calendar-hunk body that even a formal suit couldn't hide. She began to rise from her chair.

  Brodie's hand immediately pinned hers to the table, his palm warm, slightly roughened and very firm. He glanced past her to the hotel. "Camille doesn't need anyone but Rogue right now. They're still talking to people. You should rest a while. You don't want to go all woozy again."

  He was actually right. Even her sudden movement had made her head spin a little.

  Despising the alarming melting sensation in her midriff evoked by his clasp on her hand, she tried to pull away, but he retained his grip and held her gaze until she stopped resisting, though her eyes showed her resentment.

  Brodie slid his hand from hers and said calmly, "Just relax, and tell me if there's anything you want. A glass of water or something?"

  "Nothing, really." Unsettled by his steady regard, she carefully turned her head to admire the blue-green water across the road and the boats riding at anchor in the harbor. Making conversation, she said, "Mokohina's a pretty little town."

  "I like it."

  "You live here?"

  "I've knocked about the world a bit, but this is where I'm based. I own the local dive shop."

  She might have known he was a diver. Not quite as tall as his friend, he shared Rogan's broad-shouldered physique, and had the look of someone who spent a lot of time near the sea. She'd have guessed a surfer if it hadn't been for his connection with the Brodericks.

  "Are you related to Rogan and Granger?" She supposed he could be a cousin or something.

  He shook his head. "Nope, but Rogue and I have been hanging out together off and on since primary school. He'll look after Camille, don't worry about that."

  Her gaze flew back to him. How had he known she was concerned for her friend, who had fallen in love with a man Sienna couldn't help thinking was all wrong for her? A man Camille herself had admitted was the very antithesis of what she'd thought was her ideal.

  He said, "There's no news about the stolen shipwreck items?"

  She supposed if they were such old friends it was natural for him to be in Rogan's confidence. She'd been asked to keep very quiet about the antique coins, jewelry and watches she'd been entrusted with. She'd explained when Camille enlisted her expertise that she'd have to take the head of the archaeology department partially into her confidence so she could use the university facilities, but she'd told no one else. "The police don't seem to have any ideas."

  She felt unreasonably guilty about the theft, although Camille and Rogan had been very understanding. It wasn't her fault that the laboratory where she'd been painstakingly removing a century and a half of verdigris and various accretions from the artifacts recovered from a wreck site somewhere out in the Pacific had been burgled while she was in hospital. Fortunately not before she'd taken full sets of photographs.

  Other things had been stolen. Sienna's students had been excavating a recently discovered pa site. The palisaded Maori village from which tattooed warriors had once defended their families against attack had long gone, leaving only a grassy terraced hillside. The dig had yielded priceless jade and bone ornaments and weapons to be studied before finding suitable homes with tribal descendants of the original owners or in museums. But these precious artifacts had now disappeared.

  "Nothing's been recovered," she told Brodie.

  "Well, I guess there's more treasure under the sea, where Rogue found that lot," Brodie said. "And Pacific Treasure Salvors will be back there as soon as the divers and equipment are ready, hopefully before anyone else gets to it."

  Although the Brodericks had done their best to keep quiet about their discovery and refused to talk to the media, it was an open secret that the Sea-Rogue had found a treasure ship, and rumor was rife about the new company's plans. Even the name they'd given it was a dead giveaway. She supposed they'd seen no point in trying to disguise its purpose, since the secret was out anyway.

  Sienna bit at her thumbnail, a frown creasing her forehead. Despite Camille's assurance that the salvage would be carried out with due regard to the wreck's historical importance, she wasn't at all sure her friend hadn't been dazzled by her dashing new husband into a false sense of security. Apparently the Broderick brothers' father had been obsessed with finding a treasure ship, and Rogan looked to be following in the old man's footsteps.

  "What's the matter?" Brodie asked curiously.

  She dropped her hand. "I'm not sure about this company—disturbing a historic wreck."

  Brodie folded his arms, his eyes assessing her. "You want the ship to remain on the bottom of the ocean, untouched, until it rots away?"

  "I'd just like to know that nothing of archaeological significance is lost because of ignorance or greed."

  Brodie's eyebrows lifted. He said in a deceptively mild tone, "Don't you trust Camille to make sure that doesn't happen? She's the official researcher and a qualified historian."

  "She's in love!" Sienna shot back at him. "It tends to skew people's thinking." As Brodie cast her an inquiring look, she said hastily, "I'm sure she'll do her best, but archaeology isn't her specialty, and…"

  "And you're afraid that Rogan will influence her." Brodie appeared slightly amused. "Don't you realize the guy is crazy about her? He'd do anything for Camille. She only has to lift her little finger."

  "That may not last." A shadow touched her heart, but she tried to keep it from reaching her face.

  His expression was quizzical. "Cynic," he accused. "A bit young for that, aren't you? Twenty-five?"

  "Twenty-seven." She was well aware that he was fishing. He'd be about Rogan's age, presumably—thirtyish. "Age has nothing to do with it. I'm being realistic."

  "Have you ever been in love?"

  Something inside her quivered. "Of course. Haven't you?"

  Brodie looked past her, and his eyes glazed. He said slowly, "Not … like that."

  Involuntarily she turned to see what had taken his attention. Camille and Rogan were framed in the open doorway, holding each other's hands and for the moment alone. And it wasn't the sun that lent that almost blinding glow to Camille's face, or kindled the fierce light in her new husband's eyes.
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  The picture held Sienna spellbound for a second, and an unaccountable lump rose in her throat. Rogan said something to his bride, and she gave him a smile that positively dazzled. He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers. It looked like an act of homage, and Sienna recalled the words from the traditional marriage service he'd spoken in the chapel earlier, "With my body I thee worship…"

  She experienced a return of the poignant sense of desolation that had unexpectedly pierced her when a radiant Camille and blazingly proud Rogan had turned from the altar to begin their married life.

  Brodie said softly, "You don't think that will last?"

  Wrenching her gaze away, Sienna lifted a shoulder. "Who knows? All I'm saying is I wouldn't count on it." For Camille's sake she fervently hoped it would, but experience made her cautious of such predictions.

  Brodie's blue gaze was suddenly penetrating. "Want to bet on it?"

  Shaking her head, she said, "I don't gamble."

  "That figures."

  It sounded like a derogatory comment, but she didn't reply, instead shifting her attention again to the moored boats. "Is one of those the Sea-Rogue?" Camille and Rogan planned a short honeymoon on the boat they owned, before its refitting was completed and they put it to work as a dive tender for Pacific Treasure Salvors.

  "She's farther round the bay," Brodie told her. "At the old fishing wharves."

  Sienna nodded. She looked away from the boats and started to get up. This time Brodie didn't stop her.

  "Well, nice talking to you," she said distantly as he too rose to his feet.

  He cocked his head, his questioning eyes openly doubting her sincerity, but he didn't follow when she made her way to the now empty doorway.

  Sienna found Camille who said, "I might go up and change soon. Are you all right? You look a bit flushed."

  "I'm fine," Sienna insisted. "I've been sitting out in the sun." Although Brodie had made sure she was under the shade of the umbrella.

  "Oh, yes. Granger was hunting for you but he said Brodie seemed to be looking after you."

  "I don't need looking after!"

  Camille smiled at her vehemence. "You do look a bit fragile, and I suppose it brings out the protective instinct in the male of the species."

  "They can keep their instincts to themselves as far as I'm concerned." A long time ago Sienna had learned there was no sanctuary in a man's arms. That the only person she could rely on to look after her was herself.

  Regarding her thoughtfully, Camille evidently decided not to comment. "It's only about two weeks since you came out of hospital. You would have said, wouldn't you, if you weren't up to being my bridesmaid?"

  "I told you," Sienna replied, "it's a pleasure. I didn't want to miss it." In truth, the pleasure was mixed with concern on her friend's behalf. Impressed despite herself by Camille's steadfast certainty, she hadn't dared voice her own reservations.

  A little later they went upstairs and Camille shed her wedding gown in favor of more practical cotton pants and a shirt. Most of the wedding party then decamped along the foreshore to see the newlyweds aboard the Sea-Rogue for their short honeymoon cruise, and as the boat slipped out of its berth some of the onlookers threw streamers across the widening gap and Camille tossed her bouquet to the wharf.

  Sienna stepped back, her hands resolutely at her sides, but Granger deftly caught it, and when he presented it to her with one of his grave smiles and a faintly lifted eyebrow, she could hardly refuse to take the flowers.

  Back at the hotel Granger told Sienna, "I've booked us a table for dinner here at seven-thirty. Camille's mother and some other people will be joining us."

  Supposing that entertaining Mona Hartley was part of her bridal-attendant duties, Sienna said, "I'll get changed and meet you in the dining room later."

  In her bathroom she freed her hair from its knot of curls and brushed it out, hoping it wouldn't spring back into its usual wild corkscrews too quickly. The floor creaked as she crossed the old kauri boards to her suitcase and pulled out a plain sand-colored skirt and a sleeveless cream top embroidered with amber beads. The mirror in which she checked her appearance before going downstairs had a heavy carved wooden frame on which stylized Maori patterns were mixed with depictions of roses and lilies.

  At the foot of the stairs she saw Brodie, one hand thrust into a pocket of his dark trousers, his collar open and his jacket slung across one shoulder. He watched her descend, his gaze swiftly encompassing her from head to toe and returning to her face with a gleam of masculine appreciation lurking in the vivid depths, and she wished she'd thought to take the old elevator instead, but for only one floor it hadn't seemed worth it.

  "Ready for your dinner?" he asked her.

  "I'm having it with Granger," she said coolly, fighting a ridiculous sense of pleasure at the way his hair gleamed in the light from a chandelier overhead, the blond streaks turning to gold.

  "I know. Me too," he replied, walking at her side as she made for the dining room. "I offered to wait for you."

  She wasn't late, but when they entered, two women already sat with Granger at the round table—Camille's mother and another middle-aged woman.

  Mona looked pinched and put upon—not unusual in Sienna's experience. The other woman, whom Granger smoothly introduced as Mollie Edwards, a good friend of his and Rogan's late father, was cozily rounded with brass-colored curls framing her rather overpainted face, and a wide smile.

  Sienna took to her immediately, but to help Granger out—and also to avoid having to talk too much to Brodie, whose presence she was all too conscious of at her side—she devoted a good deal of her attention during the meal to Mona. The woman had just seen her only child marry a man Sienna had a strong hunch she didn't approve of. Though it seemed that

  Mollie's presence had more to do with Mona's offended air than did the loss of her daughter.

  Granger occasionally caught Sienna's eye with a hint of grateful appreciation in the turquoise depths of his, and attempted to keep the conversation general around the table.

  Brodie had discarded his suit and wore casual gray pants and a T-shirt. When his bare arm brushed against hers as he reached for salt, Sienna felt as though the tiny hairs on her skin had been charged with a current of electricity. It must be the dry seaside air, she thought, confused. The same phenomenon that caused her clothes to crackle sometimes when she shed them.

  Mollie was excited that Rogan and his brother, along with Camille who had inherited half of the Sea-Rogue, were planning to raise the treasure their late father had discovered. "Barney always knew he'd find it someday." She wiped a small tear from her eye with her table napkin.

  Mona gave a scornful little laugh. "I have my doubts about this whole thing." She speared a piece of fish on her plate. "Camille won't even tell me what all the excitement is about. After all," she complained, "my husband was Barney's partner, I think I'm entitled."

  Granger studied her for a moment, then said quietly, "I'm sure you can keep a secret, Mona. Rogan's already recovered coins and a few pieces of jewelry from the wreck Barney found. The cargo, if we can recover it, could be worth a great deal."

  Brodie swallowed a mouthful of his rare steak. "Even passengers' effects might bring in quite a lot of money, coming from a historic wreck."

  Mona sniffed. "What difference can that make?"

  Granger explained, "Sunken treasure accrues value from its history. A romantic shipwreck story and a certificate of authenticity make for a better price at auction."

  Sienna commented, "It's an artificial inflation. Part of this whole business of commercial treasure hunting."

  Brodie turned to her. "Can you give an expert opinion," he asked her, "on the possible worth of the pieces Rogan had?"

  She had to meet his eyes, finding them blindingly blue and disconcertingly close. She could see her own face reflected in them, giving her an odd feeling of unwanted intimacy. For a moment she couldn't recall what the conversation was about. Pulling herself tog
ether, she said, "The brief I was given was to try to find out where and when they were made, to help identify the wreck. I'm sure Rogan and Granger will get the highest prices possible."

  Mollie's look at Sienna was disappointed. "You sound as though you disapprove."

  Brodie said, sounding amused, "Sienna's suspicious of treasure hunters." His eyes teased her, still holding her gaze until she wrenched it away as Mollie spoke to her.

  "Why?" Mollie asked. "You're too young to be bitter and twisted about it." She directed a meaningful look at Mona, who almost choked on another morsel of fish.

  Granger's gaze went to Sienna. "I'm sure you have good reasons. Would you like to tell us what they are?"

  Sienna suspected he knew very well, or could at least make an educated guess. But the men obviously hoped, by throwing Sienna into the arena, to avoid open female warfare.