Free Blue Velvet by Iris Johansen Page B

don’t seem too concerned,” she said curiously. “Are you so used to dodging the authorities?”
    His eyes twinkled as he looked down at her.“Well, let’s just say I have a limited experience in the field. I wasn’t always the captain of a rich man’s pleasure barge.”
    “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Kate said slowly. There was a charged vitality beneath that carelessly debonair exterior. “So why are you one now?”
    He shrugged and dropped down beside her, crossing his iron-thewed legs tailor fashion. There was a long jagged scar on his left thigh and it only added to the barbaric wildness of his appearance. He saw her gaze upon it before she could glance away and ran his finger down it lightly. “Not very pretty, is it?” he asked with a grimace. “Well, what could you expect? I’d never stitched up anything in my life before.”
    “You sewed it yourself?” Kate’s eyes widened in surprise.
    “Well, no one else was going to do it. I was locked up in a dirty sod shack in the middle of the desert. I figured if I didn’t close it up, I’d probably get blood poisoning before Clancy could haul me out of there. I had a hard time persuading those bastards to give me a needle and thread.” His lips tightened. “I was right. Istayed in that six-by-four hotbox of a room for over six months.”
    She was staring at him in fascination. Daniel Seifert was obviously a very colorful man in more ways than the obvious. “That must have been terrible. Where was this desert? Did your friend, Clancy, finally break you out?”
    “Sedikhan,” Seifert said tersely. “And Clancy Donahue isn’t my friend, he’s my boss. He’s head of security of the sheikdom of Sedikhan.” His teeth flashed in a slightly tigerish grin. “And yes, he got me out, cleaned up the area—and the revolutionaries who put me in the shack. Very tidily, if somewhat lethally. Clancy is a very dangerous man, and very protective of his people.”
    “You’re speaking present tense,” Kate observed. “I thought Beau was your employer now.”
    He blinked in surprise. “I guess he is. Somehow I never thought of it like that. We just sort of flowed together some time ago and have been wandering around the Caribbean ever since.” He drew up his knees and linked his arms loosely around them. “I always knew I’d go back to Sedikhan when I was ready. It was just a matter of time.”
    “I think you’re better off doing what you’re doing now,” Kate said skeptically. “Your Mr. Donahue doesn’t sound like he provides very safe working conditions.”
    Seifert chuckled. “You’re right there, but then neither does Beau. I like a bit of excitement now and then. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been too eager to get back to Sedikhan even though I’m well now. Beau can provide almost as many fireworks as Clancy upon occasion.”
    “You were ill?” She glanced down at the scar. “Oh, of course, your leg.”
    He shook his head. “The leg healed pretty well. It was almost as good as new by the time Clancy rescued me.” His loosely linked hands locked with unconscious tension. “It was my nerves that were shot. Six months in that hellhole only a little bigger than a coffin nearly drove me up the wall. Clancy could see I was in no kind of shape to keep on with our particular line of work, so he filled my bank account with enough cash to choke a horse and told me to go for a rest cure. Preferably somewhere without four surrounding walls.” His eyes were narrowed on the horizon. “I’d captained one of BenRaschid’s yachts a few years before and I knew where I’d find my place with no walls.” He drew a deep breath of warm salt air. “And, Lord, I needed that place.”
    “But you’re well now,” she said gently. She supposed his frankness regarding his violent past should have repelled her but somehow it didn’t. There was an oddly comforting strength and simplicity about this huge red-haired man. “And you don’t have to go back to