CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He dug in his breeches’ pocket.

“I hope you think I want your money.”

Just as well when he’d have to write her an ‘I owe you’. But maybe it just eased the amusement flickering in his veins, to be magnanimous when he’d scored one about these bloody awful parrots, belonging to her equally awful, bloody chiselling, peg-legged, frog of a grandfather, who, to even have one parrot, never mind five of the fecking damn things, must have been a pirate.

Divers could quite picture the old skunk with them sitting on his shoulder. No wonder his stepmother had run away. Hell, the pity was she’d ever run back. A nice woman from all he remembered. As good to him as his own might have been had she lived. In a way thank God she’d died before he’d uttered that curse or he’d feel responsible.

“No.” He eyed her squarely, spoke in his deepest, most impressive voice. “What you want, is me here tonight. But as I said--”

“Oh, you always were the cocky one.”