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to give her that. Slightly taller than her aunt, she was every bit as slender. Her white jeans were pencil thin, her blousy, peach-colored T-shirt rolled at the sleeves and knotted chicly at the waist. Her skin, too, was flawless, but it was pale; she’d skillfully applied makeup to cover shadows beneath her eyes and add faint color to her cheeks.
    Any similarities to her aunt had already ended. Shaye’s deep auburn hair was anchored at the nape of her neck in a sedate twist from which not a strand escaped. The younger woman’s lips were set, her nose marked with tension, and the eyes that met his held a shadow of rebellion.
    She didn’t want to be here. It was written all over her face. Adding that to the comments he’d overheard earlier, he begrudged her presence more than ever. If Shaye Burke did anything to spoil his uncle’s adventure, he vowed, he would personally even the score.
    Samson, who’d sensed the instant animosity between Noah and Shaye, spoke up quickly. “If you ladies will come this way, I’ll show you to your cabin. Once we’ve deposited your things there, we can walk around more freely.”
    Short of turning and fleeing, Shaye had no choice but to follow Victoria, who followed Samson through the narrow passageway. Her shoulders were ramrod straight, held that way by the force of a certain man’s gaze piercing her back.
    Noah. Noah and Samson. The VanBaar family, she decided, had a thing about biblical names. But her image of that Noah was one of kindness; this Noah struck her as being quite different. Sitting in the shadows as he’d been, she hadn’t been able to see much beyond gloom and a glower. She knew one thing, though: She hadn’t expected to have to protect her aunt, but if Noah VanBaar so much as dared do anything to dampen Victoria’s spirits, he’d have to answer to her.
    *   *   *
    S AMSON LED V ICTORIA AND S HAYE to the cabin they’d be sharing, then backtracked to show them the salon, the galley and the captain’s quarters in turn. Noah was nowhere in sight during the backtracking, and Shaye was grateful for that. There was precious little else to be grateful for.
    “We do have our own bathroom,” Victoria pointed out when they’d returned to their cabin to unpack. She lowered herself to Shaye’s side of the double bed that occupied three quarters of the small cabin’s space. “I know that it’s not quite what we expected, but if we clear our minds of those other expectations, we’ll do fine.”
    Shaye’s lips twisted wryly. “Grin and bear it?”
    “Make the most of it.” She jabbed at the bedding with a delicate fist. “The mattress feels solid enough.” Her eye roamed the trapezoid-shaped room. “And we could have been stuck with a V-berth.”
    “This bed is bolted to the wall. I thought Samson said it’d be a calm trip.”
    “This one will be, but we have no idea what other waters the Golden Echo has sailed.”
    “If only she were somewhere else—without us.”
    “Shaye…”
    “And where do we go to relax?”
    “The salon.”
    “For privacy?” She was thinking of the dagger-edged gaze that had followed her earlier, and wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to endure it as a constant.
    Victoria’s mind was still on the salon. “There are comfortable chairs, a sofa—”
    “And a distinctly musty smell.”
    “That’s the smell of the sea. It adds atmosphere.”
    Shaye snorted. “That kind of atmosphere I can do without.” She knew she was being unfair; after all, the cottage she’d booked in the Berkshires very probably had its own musty smell, and she normally wasn’t that fussy. But her bad mood seemed to feed on itself and on every tiny fault she could find with the boat.
    “Come on, sweetheart,” Victoria coaxed as she rose to open her suitcase. “We’ll have fun. I promise.”
    Shaye’s discouraged gaze wandered around the cabin, finally alighting on the row of evenly spaced, slit-like windows. “At least there are