In 1719 Bahamas, a pirate alliance leads to love and a gypsy curse that threatens everything.
When Gina Santini’s father becomes too ill to sail, she returns from the fancy London finishing school he’d forced her to attend and takes over as captain of the ship Gypsy Doll, plundering the seas as she was raised to support them both.
Captain Charles the Charmer worked his way from cabin boy to first mate on the Gypsy Doll before he was shanghaied. Escaping a brutal master, he hides a secret while he uses his charm to convince Gina to help him win the biggest plunder of all, promising enough gold to allow them to give up pirating forever.
But betrayal swirls in the air as surely as a stormy sea, and with the curse of the real gypsy doll, betrayal can be dangerous.
EXCERPT:
One pirate often looked like the other, sunburned and scruffy, but she was certain they’d never met. She would have remembered that pretty smile, hidden though it was behind those overgrown whiskers.
No matter. She had business at hand.
Flattening her palms on the table, she bent low and said through tight lips, “That was my haul you stole, and I want it back.”
His smile didn’t waver. Was he going to try to charm his way out of his…his skullduggery? If so, she’d have to inform Captain Charles the Charmer that his rumored talents would not work on her.
He leaned forward on his elbows and brought his face close to hers. She resisted the inclination to back away.
“I can never resist an easy catch,” he said in an accent that bore traces of Britain.
Her skin quivered, her nostrils flared. Yet as she met his bold stare, she sucked in a breath. She thought she saw something there she recognized. Did she know him after all? She searched her memory. To her knowledge, she’d never met him.
She recovered from the moment and continued, “Easy for you to say. The Gypsy Doll had already stopped that merchant ship.”
“Aye, your gun-laden frigate does have its uses. Being fast is not one.”
“The advantage will be mine when I blow your dinky little sloop out of the water.”
“Captain! Are you insulting the size…of my ship?”
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