Kate Hoffmann: The Pirate

A book in the For Her Eyes Only series, 1996

Dear Reader,

One of the best things about romance novels is that I get to fall in love right along with my heroine. And never has that been more true than with the hero of The Pirate , my ninth book for Temptation. From the moment Griffin Rourke appeared in my mind and on the pages of my manuscript, I knew he'd be a special hero-a man impossible to resist. After all, he brought with him all the chivalry and valor of an age long past And he was pretty darn handsome, too!

As I lay in bed last winter with my leg in a cast (the result of a nasty fall on the ice), I began to spin the story of how Griffin came to be in our time. And as I wrote, Griffin began to spin his own kind of magic, pulling both me and my heroine, Meredith Abbott, under his spell. When I finally sent the manuscript off to my editor, I wondered whether Griffin would have the same effect on her as he did on me. I didn't have to wait long for her answer. She soon called with the news that she, too, had lost her heart to Griffin.

Now it's time to share this hero with all of you, my readers. I hope you enjoy The Pirate . And I also hope that you lose a little piece of your heart to Griffin Rourke!

Happy Reading,

Kate Hoffmann

P.S. I love to hear from my readers. Please write to me:

c/o Harlequin Temptation

225 Duncan Mill Road

Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K

Canada

A long shriek sliced through the night like a banshee's lament, rattling the windows and whirling around the cottage until the wail obliterated everything but the pounding of her heart in her throat and the taste of panic in her mouth. Meredith Abbott wedged herself farther into the corner of the musty closet and buried her face in her knees, pressing her bent arms against her ears.

"It'll be over soon," she murmured to herself. "It can't go on forever. It can't."

This very same terror had haunted her childhood, but after so many years of undisturbed sleep, Meredith had assumed she'd outgrown the nightmare. After all, she was a woman now, nearly twenty-nine years old-a woman reliving the most frightening night of her life.

While other children may have dreamed of dragons beneath the bed or cackling crones lurking in the shadows, Meredith had dreamed of Hurricane Delia. And now, with another Delia screaming outside the windows of the gray-shingled cottage, Meredith's fears had returned with such astounding clarity that she wondered if she had ever really left them behind.

"Shiver me timbers! Awwwk ! Thar she blows!"

"Shut up, Ben!" Meredith whispered. The gray parrot flapped its wings, the movement eerily illuminated on the closet walls like some bizarre shadow-puppet game. The electricity had failed six hours ago and all she had to scare away the dark and her demons was an old hurricane lamp, the flame sputtering and swaying with every draft that slipped beneath the closet door.

"Would you perchance have a piece of cheese?" Ben inquired, punctuating the request with a wolf whistle and another squawk.

If she hadn't been so preoccupied with her phobias, Meredith probably would have throttled the bird then and there. First, he'd presented a recitation of every nautical cliché in the book and now, he'd started quoting his namesake, Ben Gunn from Treasure Island . But in all honesty, she was glad she didn't have to face Delia alone. She'd faced the hurricane alone when she was just a child and the experience had haunted her until the day she'd sailed away from Ocracoke Island on the Hatteras ferry.

"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!" Ben cried.

"Rum," Meredith repeated. "I could use a good stiff drink right now. Are you buying?"

"I takes my man Friday with me!"

"Ah, Robinson Crusoe now, is it? Imagine my luck. I'm sharing a closet with a parrot more widely read than most of my graduate students."

"Aye, matey."

Maybe she shouldn't have come back to Ocracoke after all, but it had seemed the perfect setting to work on her newest scholarly endeavor. She'd taken a year's sabbatical from her teaching position at the College of William and Mary to finish her biography on Blackbeard-the book that would assure her spot on the top of the list for the Sullivan Fellowship. And once she'd been awarded the fellowship, she'd be first in line for a tenured position. After that, she planned to be the youngest department chairperson on campus.

She had arrived on the island off the coast of North Carolina right after Labor Day, and for reasonable rent, she'd set up housekeeping in a roomy cottage on the water overlooking Pamlico Sound and Teach's Hole, the channel where the infamous Blackbeard had once anchored his sloop, Adventure .

The first three weeks had been idyllic, the simple rhythms of island life settling back into her blood. Once an Ocracoker, always an Ocracoker, they'd told her. She'd been accepted into the tight-knit community as if she'd never left. After all, her father had been an islander and these people had all but raised her after her mother died. She was family and she'd come home.

When the first storm warnings had sounded, she'd considered leaving the island on the next ferry, but instead, she'd stupidly decided to face her fears and ride out the storm. After all, Horace had been declared only a tropical storm, not yet a dreaded hurricane like Delia, and Ocracoke had weathered much worse.

By the time Horace had been upgraded to a category-one hurricane, it had been too late to leave. The ferries were safely moored on the mainland and she was left to face eighty-mile-per-hour winds, driving rain and a surging sea-alone.

Meredith leaned back against the wall. It was nearly midnight and the wind still howled outside, the rain scratching against the glass like a hag's fingernails. She didn't have the courage to venture out of the safety of the bedroom closet-not until the storm showed signs of weakening. She grabbed the lantern and held it up to survey her cramped surroundings, desperate for anything to occupy her mind. A stack of books at her elbow caught her eye and she pulled a dusty volume off the top.

The smell of mildew touched her nose as she held the book up to the lantern light. The gold inlaid letters on the cover were burnished by age, but the title was still legible.

Rogues Across Time . The author's name was worn from the spine, and a dark stain obliterated the name on the title page.

She turned back the leather-bound cover and the book fell open to an illustration, a finely rendered, black-and-white drawing-of a pirate. A shiver ran through her at the strange coincidence, another in a long line of happenstance, little bits of luck and good fortune that seemed to be tossed in her path by some greater force.

"Stop scaring yourself," she said out loud. "Everything happens for a logical reason. You don't believe in fate."

Still, she could understand why a person might. When she'd arrived at the real-estate office after disembarking the ferry, she'd been told that the old cottage she'd originally rented on the wooded path called Howard Street was not available. Instead, the real-estate agent had given her the keys to a larger cottage on the water-overlooking the exact spot where Blackbeard used to drop anchor. Twist of fate number one.

The cottage came along with twist of fate number two, the owner's pet parrot, a salty-tongued bird that would have made any sailor a fine companion. With Ben Gunn sitting on his perch spouting "nauticisms" and Meredith at her computer, the atmosphere had seemed perfect for writing the definitive biography of Blackbeard. She had never worked harder or written better in her life.