Moriah's Mutiny

“Where’s your hotel?” he asked.

“Bolongo Bay Beach,” she told him.

“Hey, that’s not bad,” he commented, thinking college professors must get paid pretty well these days. “But I wouldn’t sign up for any diving lessons if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Bart’s one of the instructors.”

“You mean that big Neanderthal works in the same hotel where I’m staying?” Moriah’s concern was obvious.

“Don’t worry,” Austen assured her with a smile. “He usually has his head underwater. Explains the waterlogged brain, you know?”

Moriah smiled back at him. Austen had come at her virtually out of nowhere, looking like a bronzed Adonis, rescuing her from the menace of a pack of tiger sharks. He’d made her laugh a lot and enjoy herself immensely this evening, despite the dread she still harbored at her sisters’ impending arrival. Not to mention the fact that he was a remarkably talented kisser, too. Austen might have come as a surprise, but it had taken Moriah no time at all to decide that she liked him. A lot.

“Anyway,” he went on, interrupting her thoughts, “what I was going to say was that your hotel isn’t that far from the airport. You won’t have to get up too early. You could stay up just a little bit longer, couldn’t you?”

He’s so cute, Moriah thought with no small amount of surprise. She’d never fallen for a cute man in her life. She’d always gotten involved with men who were as dry and humorless and as ignorant of the concept of fun as she. And, of course, that’s why she’d always wound up dumping them.

“I don’t know,” she began reluctantly, obviously weakening in her conviction. “If you knew my family the way I do, you’d understand.”

“Hey, if they’re anything at all like you, I don’t think you’ll have any problem,” he told her.

But that was the problem, she wanted to tell him. The rest of the Mallory clan were nothing at all like her. Or rather, she was nothing at all like the rest of the Mallory clan. That’s what had always been the problem.

“Come on, Moriah,” Austen coaxed as he nudged her shoulder playfully with his. “You’re on vacation. Enjoy yourself.”

“Actually, it’s going to be something of a working vacation,” she told him, stalling for time. “I’ll be visiting several islands that have university and library facilities, and I’ve made some appointments with other anthropologists and professors. I’m doing some research for a new textbook that I hope will be a useful tool in classes focusing on primitive Caribbean cultures.”

Austen looked at her for a moment without speaking, then slowly, gradually, a wonderfully wicked, marvelously mischievous grin spread across his face. His amber eyes twinkled merrily when he finally spoke. “You know, you’re right. You are dry and humorless. But I have the perfect remedy for that.”

Moriah blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Austen’s smile broadened, and Moriah felt her insides turning into mashed bananas. “Come on, Moriah. We’re going to Sparky’s.”

Chapter Two

“So what you’re saying, Austen, is that these naughty, um, I mean, these nautical nods—”

“Nautical nogs.”

“Whatever. What you’re saying is that these teeny little drinks are the ultimate cure-all for the world’s ills. That if every world leader past and present sat down at a big table at Sparky’s and sipped these little drinks, then the world would be a beautiful place. Is that about the gist of it?”

“That’s about the gist of it,” Austen agreed, smiling down at a flushed, soft, slightly inebriated Moriah.

“What I don’t understand, though,” she went on, then paused suddenly when she became fascinated by the gold-tipped errant curl that had tumbled over one eye as she spoke. She brushed at it weakly in an attempt to make it join the rest of the unruly mass, but it fell forward again almost immediately. “What I don’t understand is what I’m supposed to do with a collection of these little blue-and-white china mugs if they don’t make a pitcher to match them.”

Austen laughed and glanced at the man seated next to him. Upon entering Sparky’s, he had recognized Dorian Maxwell from across the room, no easy feat amid a crowd large enough to rival The Green House. Austen had shouted to his friend and partner, and the other man had waved an invitation to join him and the large group crammed around a small, scarred cocktail table. At Moriah’s enthusiastic consent, they had. Dorian was originally from Tortola, but the two men had both lived on St. Thomas for the past five years, having based their business there. So Dorian knew as well as Austen the effect that several of Sparky’s nautical nogs could have on a person, and the wide white grin that split the other man’s sable-skinned face mirrored the one Austen knew must be fast spreading across his own.

“Well, to be honest, Moriah,” Austen said, “very few people walk away from the table with a collection of the mugs, and I have to shudder at the concept of what an entire pitcher of nautical nogs might do to someone.”

Moriah’s eyes narrowed as the information Austen offered her seeped slowly into her brain. She blew an upward gust of breath from her lips and finally sent the unruly curl that had been plaguing her back from her forehead. “Oh,” she replied. “Okay. Can we have another one?”

Dorian laughed out loud, a rich, deep rumbling that seemed to erupt from his very soul. He slapped Austen soundly on the knee and said through his chuckles, “Looks like you got her right where you want her, mon. I guess you’ll be wantin’ the key now to Lionel’s apartment.”

Austen grinned sheepishly at the other man’s reference to a friend’s apartment near the bar that they both borrowed from time to time whenever it seemed one of them was going to get lucky. He mumbled vaguely, “Ah, not just yet.” Then to Moriah he responded, “I think you’ve had enough nautical nogs for one evening. They have a tendency to hit you when you’re not looking.”

Moriah gazed at him with a puzzled frown until the meaning of his statement hit her squarely in the brain. “Are you insinuating that I’m drunk?” she gasped in horror. “Why, I’ll have you know that I have never, never, never, never, never in my entire life been under the influence of anything.”

“Moriah…” Austen began to apologize.

But Moriah pushed on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Except for that Valentine’s Day dance at Barry Masterson’s house when I was sixteen. But that was Marissa’s fault. Hers and that geeky boyfriend’s of hers, Bra-ad.” She said the name in a singsong voice, rolling her eyes as she did so.

Austen’s smile broadened. He was having more fun tonight than he’d had in a long, long time, and he owed it all to the honey-haired, lushly curved, slightly sunburned woman at his side. Moriah was such a far cry from the numerous and redundant bleach-blonde, salon-tanned, surgically perfected, empty-headed women with whom he normally took up on St. Thomas. The ones who came down from the States with the dual intentions of toning up their tans and getting lucky with the locals. Even under the influence, Moriah was bright and fascinating, and the more time Austen spent with her, the deeper he felt himself falling into the inviting depths of her dark gray eyes.

“So what did Marissa and geeky Brad do?” he encouraged her to finish the story she’d left hanging.

“Hmm?” Moriah responded, gazing at him with warm, liquid eyes, thinking that this man was just about the most gorgeous one she’d ever seen.

“The Valentine’s Day dance when you were sixteen?” he prodded. “You got drunk that night?”

Moriah’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know about that?” she demanded.

“You just brought it up,” he told her.

“I did?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Oh.”

When she didn’t continue, Austen tried again. “So what did Marissa and Brad do?”

Moriah frowned, drawing her brows downward comically. “They slipped me a Mickey,” she said with melodramatic bitterness. Almost immediately her face cleared of its feigned dark expression and she smiled broadly. “But I got even,” she announced.

“What did you do?” Austen tried not to laugh but found it nearly impossible.

“I countered with a Donald,” she told him, slapping a hand over her mouth to hold in the giggles she felt erupting. “Then we all went out and got Goofy,” she added through her chuckles. “Get it? Mickey? Donald? Goofy? Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Hilarious,” Austen agreed, though his own mirth wasn’t so much a result of the joke as it was from watching Moriah.

“I read that on a greeting card,” she said when she’d regained control of herself. “I love telling that story now. It used to be no fun at all.”

Austen shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m not sure I want to know where you shop for greeting cards.”

“What? Why not?”

He sighed. “Never mind, Moriah. You want to dance?”