Gentlemen Prefer Nerds (19 page)

“No.” This time her voice sounded calm and firm. “I won’t go with you. The Rose isn’t yours or mine. It must be returned to Ogilvie Diamonds. I’m going to do that.”

Roland’s eyes narrowed into reptilian slits. The faint grooves bracketing his mouth deepened in disgust. “Law-abiding people are such a bore. I thought you were different. I offer you the world and you spout middle-class morality like any other plebeian of mediocre intellect and no imagination.”

Maddie breathed a sigh of relief at this vitriolic assessment of her character. He was insufferably rude but at least he wasn’t getting violent. “I’m glad you take rejection so well.”

“You think?” Roland reached down and lifted his left pant leg. From an ankle holster he withdrew a gun and pointed it at her. “Now, you will tell me which diamond is the real Rose. Or I’ll be forced to do something unpleasant.”

Maddie stared down the barrel of the gun. Her limbs were suddenly rubbery and useless, her brain terrifyingly blank.

The door to the head opened. Fabian stepped out looking, if possible, even more dangerous than the thief. “You’ll do no such thing. Give me the gun.”

The surprise on Roland’s face was almost comical. His gun hand wavered. “Fabian! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Keeping you honest. Not an easy task, of late.”

With Roland’s attention diverted and the gun no longer pointing at her heart, Maddie, quick as a flash, scooped up both diamonds plus the pendant setting and stuffed them in her evening bag. Slinging the chain strap over her shoulder she started to sneak out of the cabin while the men faced off.

“Poor Fabian,” Roland mocked. “Sent on another fool’s errand. Aren’t you tired of playing the family policeman?”

Maddie stopped short. The familiarity between the men finally sank in. “Wait a minute!” Her astonished gaze flicked between Fabian and Roland. “Do you two know each other?”

Fabian met her gaze then quickly glanced away. “In a manner of speaking…”

“Of course we know each other,” Roland snarled. “We’re brothers.”

Bloody hell
. “Maddie, I can explain—” Fabian began.

“Brothers!” Maddie clung to the doorframe, staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. A beat passed as she processed the information. “It all makes sense now. The way you knew so much about the Chameleon, the faint resemblance between you two. You told me you didn’t know him. You lied to me!” She looked gutted, her voice choked. “Why? Was it so you could steal the Rose yourself?”

“He’s no better than I am, despite his airs and graces,” Roland said before Fabian could reply. “He’s a user, a manipulator.”

“I’m not, Maddie. Trust me, I’m not the bad guy. And I’m not out to steal the diamond.” Fabian heard the plea in his voice and couldn’t believe he was begging. Couldn’t believe her opinion mattered so much when no woman’s opinion had mattered for years. But could
he
trust
her?
Until a few minutes ago he’d been sure of it. Now he wasn’t so certain.

“Who
are
you?” She sat abruptly on the bed, holding her head between her hands. “Is your name really Fabian Montgomery? Are you the son of an earl and will you really inherit the Licciardo gem collection? Are you even English?”

“Everything I told you about myself is true.” Fabian gave her a searing glance. “What about you? Perhaps you’re not quite as honest as you make out. You took an awfully long time to say no to Roland’s proposition. If I hadn’t been hiding here, would you have reacted differently? Would you have teamed up with him? How much of your father’s daughter are you?”

“This isn’t about me. Why didn’t you tell me Roland was your brother? What’s your real agenda?”

“Good question,” Roland taunted. “Why don’t you tell her now, Fabian?”

“You never intended to hand him over to the police, did you?” Maddie said.

Fabian ignored their questions. This was no time for explanations. Roland still held the gun, and although he wasn’t aiming at anyone right now, that could change in a heartbeat. “Give me the Rose, Maddie. I’ll keep it safe. Roland won’t get his hands on it.”

“You can’t trust him,” Roland told Maddie scornfully. “Has he made love to you? Told you how beautiful and sexy you are? Did you believe it? He’s got another woman, one he’ll never give up. He’s just using you. He does want the diamond for himself.”

“That’s not true. None of it’s true.” Fabian turned on Roland, pained and angry that his only brother was his enemy. “You’re the one obsessed with building a private collection. Your bitterness has twisted your mind. You’d stoop to anything.”

“You’re no better than I. You’ve relied on subterfuge, using Maddie for your own ends.”

“At least my ends are honorable.”

“Oh, really? ‘Give me the Rose, Maddie,’” Roland mimicked. “She’d be insane to trust you after you lied to her. You’re greedy, Fabian. You’ve got the title, the estate and a fortune in gems. Yet you want more. You always want more.”

“Don’t listen to him, Maddie.” Fabian didn’t take his eyes off Roland. “He’s trying to plant doubt in your mind.”

“At least I’m honest in my dishonesty,” his brother said. “I never claimed to want the Rose for anything other than my own desire.”

Fabian braced his legs on the shifting deck and glared at Roland. The boat was rocking more than usual. Outside, the wind whistled through the stays, and waves slapped against the hull. “Stealing, fraud, lying. How is that honest?”

“What would Mother think if she knew you lied to get what you wanted?” Roland gripped a handhold on the bulkhead for support. “She’d be disgusted.”

More than that, she’d be heartsick that her two sons were snarling at each other like wild dogs. “Don’t you dare bring her up. You’ve made her heart bleed.”

Roland edged closer, struggling to maintain his balance. “You’re just jealous because she always spent more time with me.”

“Do you think I’d waste a single second being jealous of you?” Fabian’s body was tensed for a fight, his fists clenched. A vein throbbed in his temple. “Think about what you’re doing to the Montgomery name. It’s hard on Father. Questions could be raised in the House.”

“Bah!” Roland spat at Fabian’s feet. “The Lords are a bunch of stuffed owls sitting on their fat arses.”

“You say that because as the younger son you’ll never have a seat there. Get over it.”

Roland’s jaw tightened so hard Fabian could have sworn he heard his molars grind together.

“Father’s sick,” Fabian went on. “Do you ever call and ask how he’s doing?”

“Why should I care?” Roland waved the gun like a petulant boy. “He banished me to South Africa. I don’t give a damn what happens to him.”

From the corner of his eye Fabian saw Maddie slide off the bed and creep toward the door. Sensing movement, Roland spun around and lunged. He yanked her purse so hard he wrenched her shoulder. Maddie cried out and stumbled backward.

The boat lurched violently.

Fabian kicked the gun from Roland’s hand, sending it flying across the cabin, and curled an arm around his brother’s neck, reaching with his other hand for the beaded bag. Before his hand could close around it, Roland stuffed the purse into his pants pocket. He jabbed an elbow into Fabian’s ribs. Fabian bent double, the wind knocked out of him.

Roland twisted free. Fabian tackled him again. They fell to the floor in a tangled knot of flailing, pummeling limbs. Roland got his hands around Fabian’s throat and squeezed. Pressure built in Fabian’s chest. His face grew hot. His body writhed beneath Roland’s as he tore at his brother’s hands.

The boat lurched hard to starboard. Maddie was flung against the bulkhead. The pistol slid back across the carpeted deck. With a last-gasp effort, Fabian broke Roland’s stranglehold. He sucked in air then flipped his brother over, slamming him down. Roland bucked and they rolled around on the heaving deck, grunting and cursing. In a gruesome way it reminded Fabian of when they were boys, play-fighting. This was no play.

Suddenly Maddie was right beside them. At first he thought she was going to help subdue Roland. Instead she snatched her purse from Roland’s pocket. No sooner had she slung the chain over her neck and shoulder than the yacht heaved again and she tumbled sideways. The tiny part of Fabian’s mind not engaged in getting to the gun before Roland did recognized that something was seriously wrong with the boat.

Roland’s fingers closed around the butt of the gun.

The ship pitched again. Books, clothes, shoes, toiletries tumbled out of lockers and flew across the cabin as the boat tilted almost ninety degrees on its side. Clinging to the bulkhead, Maddie climbed uphill to get to the door. She glanced over her shoulder.

“Wait,” Fabian said.

Indecision flashed across her face. She shook her head and stumbled out.

Dragging himself to his knees, Roland raised the gun and pointed it at Fabian’s heart.

“Roland,” he shouted hoarsely. “Don’t.”

The ship lurched again. Roland fired.

* * *

A gunshot rang out. Maddie froze halfway up the gangway. Every particle of her wanted to go back down and help Fabian. But she couldn’t trust him. It might be he who had the gun. If he could shoot his brother, he could shoot her. Her duty now was to save the Rose.

She ran the last few steps up to the deck. The boat was wallowing in the trough of a wave. Sails flapped and the boom made a
thunk
as it swung wildly from side to side, straining at the lines and rattling the shackles. The boat pitched again and the boom swung across, coming straight for her head. She ducked, just in time.

The
Beau Sancy
teetered on the crest of a swell just long enough for Maddie to see the dark outline of a small island to starboard. With the wind howling through the stays, the boat slithered sideways down a long wave, into a trough. It wallowed there for endless seconds, surrounded by towering walls of water. Then the immense energy of the wave lifted the boat up, up, at a steep angle, back to the crest.

The small island hadn’t moved position relative to the boat. With all this sail let out, they ought to be moving at great speed. Instead they were dead in the water.

The ship’s wheel was moving erratically as if spun back and forth by ghostly hands. The automatic pilot must have broken. With no one at the helm, the boat had turned into the wind, the sails flapping uselessly and noisily from side to side.

The boat listed to port. Maddie found herself at eye level with foaming waves riffling over a barely submerged coral outcropping. She broke into a cold sweat. They were meters from being grounded on the reef.

She crawled across the deck and grasped the stainless steel wheel, wet and slippery with salt spray. Dragging herself to her feet, she ducked the wayward boom and turned the wheel hard to starboard so the wind would catch the sails. The boat lumbered in heavy seas, maddeningly slow to respond.

Steps thudded up the gangway. She braced herself to face Roland. Fabian burst through the hatch, gripping his left shoulder.

The boat pitched and the boom swept across the deck.

“Look out!” Maddie screamed.

Fabian ducked. At a crouch he scrambled into the cockpit and collapsed, panting. Blood oozed between his fingers, staining his torn shirt.

Roland emerged, gun in hand.

The returning boom caught the side of his head and knocked him sideways. The boat heeled over and he slid across the steeply angled deck. His arm and one leg slipped between the gunwale and the lower rail. His hip jammed on a stanchion, saving him from going overboard.

“Help!” He scrabbled for purchase on the slippery deck. “Fabian, for God’s sake, help me.”

The boat dipped into a wave trough, slewing around. Roland’s other leg slid through the gap under the railing. Still gripping the gun, he clung to the boom vang with his other hand while his legs thrashed the air above the water. “Help me, you bastard!”

“Drop the gun,” Fabian yelled.

Roland released his grip on the pistol and slid it down the deck toward the bow. Maddie corrected her steering again, her eyes anxiously fixed on the sails, which were slowly starting to fill. Fabian’s leather-soled shoes slithered across the wet fiberglass deck as he worked his way across the sloping surface to Roland. A wave peak sent him sliding in reverse and he struggled to hold on as the deck tilted crazily. When the next trough pitched him back the other way, he reached out to his brother, grasping him by both arms and dragging him back over the gunwale into the boat.

The sails caught the breeze with a sharp tug of resistance. Maddie released a sigh of relief. Stabilized, the ship began to pick up speed. They were still heading for open water but at least they’d skirted that dangerous stretch of reef. And the boat was back in the control of a helmsman.

Roland clawed his way to a standing position, helped by Fabian. But as soon as he was upright, Roland pulled away and edged along the narrow strip of deck between the cabin and the gunwale. He was going after the gun.

“No bloody way!” Fabian grabbed Roland’s shirt to haul him back.

Roland spun around, backhanding Fabian with the full strength of his outstretched arm. Fabian staggered sideways and fell against the railing, teetering off balance. A huge wave lifted the
Beau Sancy
up, up, up… Then the boat tipped forward and started to sail down the swell. Maddie gripped the wheel with all her strength as the stern slewed sideways.

Fabian hung suspended over the railing, arms flailing as he struggled to regain his footing on the slippery deck.

Maddie watched in horror, unable to move away from the wheel for fear the boat would turn broadside to the waves. She shrieked at Roland, “Grab him!”

Roland picked up the gun instead. The top cable of the railing beneath Fabian broke away from the stanchion. He tumbled overboard.

Maddie gaped in disbelief at the hole where Fabian had disappeared. The snapped railing cable lashed back and forth, whipped by the wind. This could not be happening. The awful day her mother had been swept away by the sea returned in a flash. The horror of her going overboard, the hours of desperate search, the mounting fear, the waning hope…

Fabian was not going to drown, not if she had anything to do with it. Abandoning the wheel, she ran to the stern and lifted a life ring off the railing. With no one steering, the sailboat wallowed in a trough and the sails began to luff again as the boat turned once more into the wind.

Fabian’s head bobbed above the water, dwarfed by the mountainous waves. He flicked dark hair away from a pale forehead with a twist of his head.

He was alive. She tossed the life ring into the streaming foam that trailed the stern. It fell short. Then in nightmarish slow motion, a wave crested and curled over, sending a wall of foaming water crashing down on top of him.

Clinging to the railing, her feet braced on the pitching deck, Maddie screamed at Roland, “Turn the boat around. We have to get him before he drowns.”

“He’s a champion swimmer. He’ll be fine.” Roland tucked the gun inside the waistband of his pants, scrambled into the cockpit and straightened out the wheel. The sailboat pulled away, leaving Fabian behind.

Maddie peered into the darkness at the faint white circle of the life ring, barely visible amid the foam and waves. He’d never find it. They were miles from shore. There were sharks out here. Sea snakes. Deadly stinging jellyfish. Plus he was wearing a suit. The clothes would get waterlogged, drag him down.

She crawled back over the deck to the cockpit. With both hands she grabbed fistfuls of Roland’s shirt. “Are you crazy? You can’t leave him out there!”

Roland flung her off him. She fell backward onto the bench. “It’s too late,” he said. “We’d never find him in the dark in these seas.”

Maddie pushed the hair out of her eyes and propped herself up. She stared at Roland, a man leaving his brother to drown. “You’re mad. Completely and utterly insane.”

“Fabian is always stopping me from doing what I want. This will teach him a lesson.”

“I demand you take me back to Hamilton Island!”

“No, I’m going home.” Roland’s shirt was soaked with salt spray and his hair plastered to his forehead but he was eerily calm and determined. “The boat is stocked with enough water, fuel and provisions that we won’t need to stop till we get there.”