Paradise Cursed – Snippet 5
CHAPTER 3
Jase Graham’s toothy smile was doing its best to appear friendly rather than smug, and perhaps it was just a change in the light streaming through the window glass that gave his eyes a hint of meanness. Nothing can divide a crew so swiftly as meanness. It spreads like a drug.
My hand balled into a fist. Then the light changed. His smile was only a smile, eyes twinkling with humor. I rapped my knuckles on the table to cover my temper spike.
“Okay then, sailor,” I said. “Tell me what you have in mind for crew retention.”
Before he could answer, a movement in the doorway caught my eye. I looked up to find a woman there. A passenger would have been routed to the upper-deck bar for afternoon swizzlers. A glance at Burke, wondering why he’d scheduled two applicants in quick succession, found him frowning at his chart. Apparently, the woman was a surprise to him, as well.
Captivating, nearly six feet tall, she might have been sculpted from bronze and polished by hand to the radiance of black pearl, her facial features more exotic than beautiful. I couldn’t stop looking at them, although the rest of her was equally mesmerizing.
“I will take the job,” she said, in the low-pitched lilt of an islander with African-English heritage. “I crewed on the Polynesia for three years, on the Solar Eclipse for two years, yeah.
And I am not afraid of any curse.”
Through the open door to the dining room, “One Love,” Bob Marley reggae style, filtered from the sun deck while I attempted to steady my breath without taking my gaze from the amazing woman who’d just stolen it. Not only was she gorgeous, Ayanna had uttered the magic words.
“A woman as first mate?” Jason Graham chuckled. “Captain, what crew would go for that? Besides, I never said I wouldn’t take the job.”
“I’d go for it,” Burke panted, smoothing his thinning brown hair.
“Pardon me, Jase.” I rose to guide the unexpected but entirely welcome applicant out to the bar to wait until I finished interviewing her competitor. Her handshake, cool and firm, proved as confident as her words.
As we walked, she said, “I began crewing for my father when I was ten. If you require references, ask any person on da island.”
She slid onto a stool. I waved the bartender over.
“Ayanna, your qualifications sound intriguing. While I finish up inside, would you care for a drink?”
“I have time, yes.” She fingered a gold charm that hung on a chain around her neck. “I also have an extra protection amulet if Mr. Graham is truly worried.”
The way she said the name made me frown as I returned to the dining room.
“You and Ayanna know each other?” I asked Graham.
He flashed the smile I was finding more and more irritating. “I’ve not had the pleasure, but I look forward to correcting that.”
“On your own time, sailor. If you crew the Sarah Jane, you’ll be chatting up our female passengers, not your fellow seamen.” To the new quartermaster, I said, “Burke, would you visit with Ayanna for a bit?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” He was out of his chair faster than I’d ever seen him move, his manifest abandoned on the table.
I watched him leave, then turned my attention back to Jason Graham, hoping the arrival of competition had kicked a bit of wind out of the self-satisfied bloke. Despite his rather grating arrogance, he had useful qualifications.
Ayanna also had potential. With only eighteen hours to fill out the crew, I needed both sailors. Unfortunately, there was only one position as first mate.
CHAPTER 4
Dayna wished Erin would stop letting people go ahead of them to take their turn in the ship’s noisy, stinky dinghy. They were still in line, and Erin was rethinking the cruise again, ready to jump ship before they’d even boarded.
On Lake Palo Pinto, near their hometown in Central Texas, Dayna had poled a home-made raft along the shore when she was ten, jockeyed a jet ski at twelve, and had taken the wheel of her uncle’s speed boat more often than he knew. During a vacation to Galveston, she’d toured the tall ship Elyssa and fell spellbound to the notion of sailing around the world, an ambition her father considered a pipedream.
“Why should we spend a week crowded on a creaky old boat?” Erin grumbled, her back turned to Dayna and the launch as she snapped pictures of the shore. “There’s plenty to do right here in Jamaica.”
“Like what? Lay around the resort with all the newlyweds and soon-to-weds? Sis, you need a vacation away from all that. Anyway, this cruise is going to be fun. And it’s free.”
Erin had won it as part of an online “Jamaica Honeymoon” contest the very day she broke up with her fiancé. She tossed the cruise packet in the trash, but Dayna, spotting the Sarah Jane’s sails on the illustrated envelope, snatched the brochure and read the cruise line’s promise, “seafaring traditions of yesteryear.” She coaxed and badgered until Erin agreed to go—and take Dayna along. All the way to the airport, Erin had tried to renege, and after a night in the plush but boring Montego Bay Resort, she’d became teary-eyed, moping, ready to hop a plane back to Texas.
“Ship-bound for six days?” Erin aimed the camera at Dayna. “What’s there to do?”
Dayna rolled her eyes.
A lady in the launch line next to them, touched Erin’s arm. “Hon, you’re gonna love it.”
Her round brown face dimpled around a big smile.
“So you’ve done this cruise before?” Erin sounded skeptical.
“Oh, my. I’m an old salt.” As the lady raised a hand to her sizable breast, a bracelet of tiny gold bells tinkled. “This is my fifth cruise on a tall ship. I enjoyed every minute of all four.”
Yes! If an “old salt” had chosen the Sarah Jane, Erin might finally be convinced.
Usually, Dayna was no quicker than Erin to trust anything that seemed too good to be true. Erin couldn’t recall even entering the contest. But Dayna had resisted the worm of doubt that niggled at her brain and harangued Erin until she finally agreed to go. If hidden strings did materialize and yank them off to some third-world slave camp, Erin would gleefully commit sister-cide.
“So maybe you can tell us where we’ll be sailing to,” Erin said. “We requested an itinerary, but it never came.”
“Mine didn’t, either, dear. I’m Ola, by the way. Married five times, divorced three, widowed by two, mother of four and determined to live it up before I start babysittinggrandbabies. Hon, you look a lot like my oldest daughter. Except for your pale skin, of course.”
Erin introduced herself and Dayna.
“This is our first cruise,” she admitted. Do you think there’s really enough room for eighty passengers? That’s at least forty staterooms.”
Ola laughed. “Staterooms? Sweetie, you been watching too many Love Boat reruns. You gonna have just enough room to stand beside your bunk and pull a swimsuit over that skinny little butt. Nobody wastes time in their cabin, anyhow, except to snooze.”
Uh-oh. The only thing Erin had hoped to do was take photographs for her travel blog, pig out on chocolate and lie around the cabin reading a mystery novel.
“What about the food?” Dayna said. If it included chocolate, Erin might fold.
“Three square meals plus afternoon swizzlers and snacks.” Ola stepped forward, next in line to board a launch. “If you get hungry in between, sweet-talking the cook usually works.”
From a distance, the ship appeared to be everything the brochure promised, and the water was like liquid jewels. Dayna’s tiny doubt stopped niggling.
“Do you think they’ll have snorkel equipment aboard?” she asked as Ola was boarding the launch.
“No. But you can rent scuba and snorkel gear on any island.”
The woman’s cheeks dimpled, and the friendly banter must have worked a bit of island magic, because this time Erin took the hand of the smiling Jamaican man ready to help her down from the pier and into the next launch. Their tagged luggage, except for Erin’s yellow carry-on, would arrive later.
As Dayna stepped into the boat, Ola added, “Rent your gear on any island inhabited by people, that is.”
Erin stood abruptly and turned to gape at her, causing the boat to list. “Why would we go to an island that’s not inhabited? And what else would be there but people?”
“Hon, that’s why I chose the Sarah Jane for my fifth cruise,” Ola said. “We gonna plant our feet on clean white sand that doesn’t have a footprint in sight. Except maybe the ghost-prints of dead pirates.”
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