The Pirate:. Katherine Garbera

was tired of being lied to by men. And though Laz didn’t come right out and lie to her, he hadn’t exactly been honest with any of them either. He was a pirate. That was the only explanation that she could come up with. Why else would he be beckoning men onto the tanker in the middle of the night?

      She slowed to a walk to do her warm down and sensed someone behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Laz. She turned off her iPod as he approached.

      “Mind if I join you?”

      “I guess not.”

      “That’s not very gracious. I must have made a bad impression last night. How about I make it up to you?”

      She shook her head. How could she admit to him that his impression had been fine until she’d spied on him from the gangway? “You were charming, as I’m sure you know.”

      “Charming?” he asked, arching one eyebrow at her. “Well, that’s promising.”

      “It’s your tanker so I guess you can do what you want,” she said, not wanting him to read too much into her allowing him to join her.

      “But I still want to respect your space,” Laz said.

      “Please sit down,” she said.

      He sat down next to her and the first thing she noticed was that he smelled good—a mixture of soap and mint. She took a deep breath.

      “How many more days until we arrive at our destination?”

      “Maybe a day,” Laz said. “The seas have been calm and we are making good time.”

      “That’ll be great,” she said.

      “Anxious to get to doctoring?” he asked.

      “Yes, I am,” she said. “I don’t know if I can really explain it without sounding stupid but I feel like I’m half-alive when I’m not working.”

      “That makes sense. Being a doctor is more than a job—it’s a calling. Not many people are lucky enough to find that.”

      “Did you?”

      He shrugged. “I think so. What I do is a necessary evil but I’m very good at it.”

      “What you do? Captaining a tanker isn’t evil, Laz.”

      “Nah, I guess you’re right. It’s just that compared to being a doctor captaining a tanker isn’t all that glamorous a calling.”

      Daphne looked at him. He still had that aura of danger that surrounded him, but there was sincerity to his words.

      “We are all called to do something different. All those different parts make up the whole.”

      “Very wise.”

      She started laughing. “My son said that to me before I left.”

      “So he’s smart like you?”

      “And lazy too,” Daphne said. “He was trying to convince me to let him play video games all summer instead of going to the academic camp I signed him up for.”

      Laz arched an eyebrow at her, “Did it work?”

      “No,” she said. “I want my boys to have every opportunity and only a good education can ensure that.”

      She just shook her head at him. He was charming and that was a big part of her problem. She didn’t want to like this man, because she didn’t trust him.

      “Fight!”

      Another man yelled something she didn’t understand but she recognized the telltale sounds of a crashing chair. She looked over at the tables behind her in time to see two men fighting.

      Laz stood and reached the men in two long running strides. He didn’t reach into the fighting men but just stood next to them.

      “Break it up.”

      His voice was a bellow that made her ears ring. The command was clear, but the men he spoke to weren’t fazed at all and didn’t pause in their fighting. She didn’t know what Laz was going to do but he waded into the mess and slammed the men’s heads together. They both fell to the deck but continued fighting.

      Laz kicked the back of one man’s knee and he fell to the floor moaning. He grabbed the other man and punched him in the gut. They were both on the floor. The tall African man whose name she couldn’t remember was bleeding.

      Daphne walked over to the crowd of men on the deck. The coppery smell of blood brought back memories of her residency days when she’d worked in the ER. She’d enjoyed that time and the adrenaline rush that came from treating patients who had critical needs. There was a lot to be said about doctoring like that. Though she did enjoy her pediatric practice she’d always liked ER medicine.

      “Stay where you are,” Laz ordered.

      She shook her head. “That man is bleeding profusely, and I can help him. In fact, that’s what I’m trained to do, Captain. So let me do my job.”

      “In a minute,” he said. “I doubt that Renault’s wound is critical. He can wait until I get to the bottom of this ruckus.”

      Renault said something in a language that Daphne didn’t understand. But Laz nodded and spoke back to the man. How many languages did he speak?

      It was another facet of the man she was starting to know, and she realized that the more she learned about him the more questions she had.

      Why would a sea captain speak that many different languages? She guessed fluency came from traveling. She was looking for suspicious behavior and kept finding it.

      She didn’t know if she liked this side of Laz but she did find comfort in the fact that he knew how to handle himself. She felt just a little safer knowing that he wasn’t a man who’d run away from a fight.

      Laz signaled to Hamm and another crew member to take Renault and Fridjtof down below. They had a small first-aid room, which is where he ordered Renault taken. He really needed to bash some heads together to get rid of the excess anger that was riding him.

      The tension of waiting for the pirates to attack and of hoping that their plan would work was getting to him. Having his men act like teenagers with no discipline also pissed him off. He needed his men to behave like grown-ups. There was enough tension on this tanker without adding testosterone posturing into the mix.

      “Is it safe for me to go with the injured man?” Daphne asked.

      “Yes,” Laz said. He didn’t want her alone with any of his men. “Hamm, stay with her. I need to talk to Fridjtof.”

      Daphne followed Hamm down the gangway. Laz didn’t like the trouble that Fridjtof had caused. What was going on with that man?

      Laz entered the hold—a rather large room that was used to transport private containers that weren’t large enough to make the trip on deck like most of the containers they hauled. Fridjtof was led to a chair and sat down.

      “Thanks, Rick,” Laz said. “Go back to your duties.”

      “Yes, Captain.”

      Fridjtof looked up at Laz with contempt in his eyes.

      “What happened?”

      Fridjtof shrugged. “It’s nothing that you need to worry about. He just gets on my nerves. I can’t have someone always watching my every move.”

      His accent was stronger now that he was aggravated. Laz noticed that the other man’s eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

      “Are you ill?” He hoped that Fridjtof wasn’t using drugs. But if he was that might explain his erratic behavior both today and last night. He had never met the man before this voyage, so Laz had no idea what to expect from him.

      “What?” Fridjtof asked. “Nah, just didn’t get any sleep last night.”

      “Why