Going Under (Wildfire Lake Book 2)

by Skye Jordan

  “It’s false,” Kat says. “They do have eyelids. They just don’t blink like us. They use their eyelids to protect their eyes from things in the water.”

  “Ew,” Jazz says again, dropping her head back and yelling at the ceiling.

  I grin at Kat. “Doesn’t look like she’ll be following in your footsteps either.”

  That makes Kat laugh. A light, happy laugh that fills me up and makes me feel whole.

  There’s no doubt about it, I’m head over heels. I want to deny it, but I can’t. Not to myself, at least. Part of me wishes it wasn’t true, because I’ve got a bad feeling about how this is going to turn out in the long run. She’s a free spirit. Has never tried to deny it or claim otherwise. She’s been nothing but up front with me, and while I do believe she cares about me, our feelings aren’t equal, putting me—and the girls—in a dangerous position.

  “Oh, wow.” Violet’s reverent awe turns Kat’s gaze forward as the marina comes into view. “It’s so big. Like, triple the size of the one at home.”

  Violet grips the back of my seat and leans forward to get a better look out the window. “Those boats are huge. Are those the kind of boats you worked on, Kat?”

  “I have worked on those kinds of boats, but the job I had that you and I talked about was on a different kind of ship.”

  “Even bigger,” I tell Violet, whose mouth is hanging open as I pull into a parking spot.

  I take in the marina, and all I see is gray clouds, white boats, and wealth. The flags whap in the wind, and metal hits metal somewhere in the distance. It’s fairly busy, with people walking the docks and working on boats. All men. And I’m reminded of just how many men Kat will associate with on any given day out in the wilds of life.

  The girls are already clamoring to get out from the SUV. Kat unbuckles Jazz from the car seat, and my daughter hits the ground running. By the time I pull in a breath to yell, Kat has Jazz’s arm and makes a game of catching her and swinging her to a seat in her arms. No one just meeting Kat would ever suspect she’d never had kids of her own. I’m starting to think the woman is a natural at everything.

  “You little monkey,” Kat says, tickling Jazz’s belly as they round the hood to meet us on the other side. “You’ve got to stay close to your dad and me, okay?” Once we’re standing together, she looks at Violet and Poppy. “Think of every boat as someone’s house and the dock as a street. Every boat is privately owned, so we can’t go on them unless we have permission.”

  I feel like I did the first time I stepped into a hospital as a medical student—exhilarated and overwhelmed and sure as shit that I was in the wrong place.

  “Let’s head to the office.” She sets Jazz down and holds her hand as she follows a sidewalk toward a building. “They’ll know where we can find—”

  “Mami!”

  We all turn toward the voice of a man, calling from the docks. He’s already jogging toward us, speaking a slur of Spanish that doesn’t sound quite like the Spanish I learned in school.

  “Never mind,” Kat says with a laugh. “He found us first.”

  “What language is that?” Violet asks.

  “Puerto Rican Spanish.” Kat lets out a surprised laugh when the guy vaults a low fence instead of stopping to open the gate. “Oh, Jesus.”

  He’s young, fit, dark, and on the uncustomary exuberant side. She’s still laughing, sidestepping to put Jazz at arm’s length, clearly prepping for what will be—at least on his end—an ecstatic reunion. “He can be a little crazy—”

  My first instinct is to gather the girls close. Jaime doesn’t give me or the girls a first glance, just runs straight at Kat, his grin white and wild.

  “Jaime, Jaime.” She’s laughing his name with one arm out, walking backward. “You crazy—”

  She squeals as he wraps her in his arms, lifts her off the ground, and spins around with her. She’s hugging him back, her grin broad and sparkling, her laughter high and tinkling with joy.

  I recognize bits and pieces of Jaime’s phrases—look at you, you’re beautiful—that kind of thing, but it’s his tone and their natural physical intimacy that tells me far more than his words.

  My stomach sinks. My throat tightens. Fuck. I hate that my deepest fears hit a bull’s-eye.

  Jaime finally eases Kat to the ground and brushes her hair back from her face with both hands. The familiarity between them is clearly romantic. There’s no fucking missing that billboard.

  Kat puts a hand against his chest in a move that appears as if it’s designed to keep him from kissing her. ’Cause, yeah, I’m pretty damn sure that’s next on Jaime’s list.

  My jaw is stone by the time she gestures toward us. “Jaime, these are the friends I told you about.”

  He forces his gaze from Kat, and it seems to take him a minute to shift gears. But when he does, he showers the girls with the charm of a prince from their storybooks. Dropping to a crouch, he addresses each girl in Spanish, telling them how beautiful they are, how prettily they’re dressed. And even my daughters, who don’t understand a word he’s saying, are grinning at him like he’s a fucking sugar daddy.

  It’s petty and childish for me to hate this guy already, right? He’s like a leech, dragging out every last sliver of insecurity I thought was long gone. That, I believe, is not about how I feel about myself, but all about how I feel about Kat.

  “He’s telling you how beautiful you all are.” Kat’s smiling down at the girls.

  “Does he speak English?” Poppy asks.

  “Sí, yes, pretty girl, I do. But when I get excited, I lapse into my native tongue.”

  “This is Violet,” Kat says, gesturing to each girl, “Poppy and Jazz.”

  “Beautiful names for beautiful girls.” He’s beaming at them. Beaming. And it’s so damned authentic.

  “And this is Ben.”

  Jaime stands and meets my gaze directly, openly. His smile shifts to something more adult, but still holds the kind of warmth I find in the gazes of old friends. He offers his hand boldly, gladly. Overall, I get the same feeling from Jaime as I do a resident who’s been waiting to meet me.

  “Doctor Ben.” I shake his hand, and he returns it with solid strength and continued eye contact. “I admire a man who can manage so many females in his life as successfully as you have.”

  I laugh. It’s completely unexpected, and I’m maddened to find I like the guy. He’s equal parts lady’s man and man’s man. Swarthy, charming, and charismatic, but also direct, confident, and masculine. “Nice to meet you.”

  He steps back and claps his hands together, scanning the girls’ excited faces. “Who’s ready to look at some boats?”

  “Me!” the girls chorus together.

  He spirits them toward the docks like he’s part of the family, and the girls seem to accept him just as easily.

  Charisma doesn’t begin to describe the man’s magnetism.

  Kat comes up beside me, hands in her back pockets, watching Jaime and the girls move down the dock. She’s smiling, and I wonder if she’s seeing Jaime with the girls or the girls with Jaime. Yeah, there’s a difference.

  “He’s…” I search for the right word, but of course, one word could never describe the man I just met. “Enthusiastic.”

  She laughs, and we follow on the docks. “He’s certainly one of a kind.”

  I want to refocus on the setting, sights, sounds, and feel of the place where Kat has spent so much of her life, but there’s a lot going on—inside and outside of me. “When did you two meet?”

  “Must have been six or seven years ago. We were both headed into a marina, and he cut me off, then took my slip. We fought for two hours, police were called, spectators chose sides and cheered us on. I think we were in Capri.”

  I try to place the city but can’t. “Where’s that?”

  “Italy. I was in between assignments, sailing on my own. The argument turned into a comedy show, and everyone was laughing by the time we shook hands and went for a drink, even the
cops. We’ve been friends ever since.”

  She would only have been twenty-three or twenty-four. So young, yet even back then, so together, so confident. Talk about one of a kind. Kat continues to floor me every day. The more I know, the more I want to know. But on the flip side of that, the more I know, the more I doubt our long-term fit.

  “When’s the last time you saw each other?”

  She thinks a minute, her gaze on the girls ahead. “I guess two or three years ago. Got together with mutual friends when we ended up in Saint-Tropez at the same time.”

  I realize that what’s really bothering me isn’t the fact that they slept together in the past, but not knowing if they will sleep together in the future. In this moment, the expectation that Kat would stay monogamous seems pretty fucking unreasonable.

  “How do you maintain friendships with that lifestyle?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “We all understand that if a friendship is going to last, it has to be the kind that doesn’t need constant attention. The kind that can be sustained with an occasional visit, some texts and social media chats. It helps to have both a unique lifestyle and the love of travel and boats in common. You must have friends like that from medical school or residency.”

  I nod. “I do.”

  “It’s like Laiyla and Chloe. Until six months ago, we hadn’t seen each other in seven years, but they were my best friends all that time. We bonded in Niue and touched base after that when we could, but we all had such crazy travel schedules that we couldn’t meet up in person. They were my best friends when I left them in Niue and are still my best friends now.”

  I’m trying to apply that theory to a romantic relationship as we catch up with Jaime and the girls.

  “Jaime,” she says, hands on hips as he’s leading them onto a yacht the size of my house. “You’re supposed to start small and go bigger so they don’t see every boat after this as a cracker box.”

  He grins. “Always start at the top, mi querida.”

  “We met in Capri, right?” she asks before he disappears inside. “When you cut me off and stole my slip.”

  “¡Ay bendito! This again. It was Ibiza, and you cut me off and stole my slip. How could you get Capri and Ibiza confused? Arroz con culo, querida, arroz con culo.”

  He’s gone before she can respond, but she mutters, “Prick” with a smile and no heat.

  “What did he say?”

  “That I have it ass backwards.”

  I smile. “Where’s Ibiza?”

  “Spain.”

  “Is there anywhere you haven’t been?” I ask.

  She thinks a second and smiles at me. “North Korea.”

  That makes me laugh.

  “You want to go in?” she asks.

  “No. I like your idea better. Start small and work our way up.” I want to touch her. Slide my hand into hers. Wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her into me, but the girls are running out on decks at various levels, waving to us. “Can you come over tonight? After the girls are asleep? Or stay until after they go to bed?”

  Her smile is hot, and I want to kiss it off her face. “Can’t wait.”

  The girls come running off the yacht, Jaime jogging behind them.

  “Daddy, it’s huge.” Violet’s face is lit up like fireworks, and she turns to Kat. “Is that the kind of boat you’re buying?”

  “Nope.” Then she looks up at Jaime. “Muchas gracias, el buscarruidos.”

  “De nada, querida.” He looks at me. “How do you keep up with these three?”

  I don’t know what buscarruidos means, but by her sarcasm, I’m guessing it’s something along the lines of asshole. I also know mi querida is my darling.

  “Where next?” Poppy asks.

  “Let’s start a little closer to the smaller end of the scale,” Kat says, giving Jaime a warning glare. “And we’ll end somewhere in the middle.” She points down the dock, past the yacht slips toward an area housing small sailboats. “Head that way and find a boat named Eclipse.”

  The girls take off, skipping down the dock, pausing to look at anything they find interesting. I look ahead and spot a single-hull model similar to the dream boat Kat showed me online and the name Eclipse on the hull.

  “Where’s my cat?” Kat asks Jaime.

  “I’ve got three great choices, but the best deal is going to be that one”—he points to a catamaran—“the Blue Moon.”

  She makes a sound of appreciation. “Nice. Why the deal?”

  “Divorce, what else?”

  “Can’t wait to see it.” We reach the end of the dock, where the girls are waiting by the Eclipse.

  Kat takes them inside while Jaime and I wait on the dock.

  “What brought you to Santa Barbara?” I ask.

  He explains the cancelled trip, because of yet another divorce. Then tells me about a job he picked up to teach someone to sail. “He’s new money,” Jaime says. “Sold an app to Microsoft and can’t spend it fast enough. Bought a boat without ever having sailed a day in his life. There are three kinds of people with money—Einstein, salt mine, and dumb as a rock.”

  “Which are you?”

  He laughs and tilts his head. “I forgot, there’s one more—lucky.”

  “I guess you consider yourself lucky?”

  “Half lucky, half salt mine. My family has more money than God, but I’m always working.” The girls move up onto the deck, and Kat watches over them like a mother hen. Jaime’s watching them wander around the narrow deck toward the bow of the boat. “I think you’re the same as me, hardworking and damn lucky to earn KT’s affections. In all my travels, I’ve never met a woman with her passion.”

  I’m wondering if he means sexual passion or passion in general as the girls step onto the dock again.

  “Enjoy her while you can, my friend.” Jaime gives my shoulder a friendly slap. “The minute she sails, she belongs to the sea. Port to port. Man to man.”

  19

  KT

  I glance into the back seat and find that Violet has finally dozed off like her sisters. When I return my gaze to Ben, his mind is still off in the ether somewhere, his expression thoughtful but grim. The idea that he might not have found the marina and the boats as captivating as I do is a crushing thought.

  There’s only ten minutes left of the drive, and I know as soon as we get home and the girls wake from their late nap, rested and excited, crazy time will ensue. So I reach for the radio and lower the volume so I can talk quietly with Ben.

  “What’s going on in your head?” I ask. “You’re struggling with something.”

  He tilts the rearview mirror to look at the girls, then refocuses on the road. He shakes his head with a one-shouldered shrug and sighs. “I’m still trying to get my head around it all.”

  “Is the cat too small? Does it make you claustrophobic?”

  “No, actually, I really liked the cat.”

  I wait, but he doesn’t go on, and his jaw is ticking. I feel my walls go up, something that’s never happened with Ben before.

  “Are you thinking our idea won’t work for the girls?” I think back to the moment Ben told Violet I was going to give her sailing lessons for her birthday and how excited she was. Ben called it the proverbial birthday-pony reaction. “I know their excitement today might not translate into the long term, but—”

  “That’s not bothering me. I know them, and I can tell by their excitement today, they’d all be thrilled with the idea.”

  That means it’s Ben himself who’s having the issue. My heart sinks a little lower, and my desire to get to the bottom of his concern fades.

  “We talked about everything except how you leaving will change our relationship,” he says.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean that we’ve talked about dates we can meet up for a short window of time, but not about how you’ll live your life in between.”

  “I’m going to be winging it, like I told you.”

  “Not professiona
lly. Personally.” He takes the freeway exit toward town. “We’ll be apart most of the year. I guess seeing you with Jaime reminded me of just how many men out there may still want you, not to mention new men you meet along the way.”

  I have no idea how to address the second issue, so I go after the first. “There’s nothing between me and Jaime but friendship. We were together once, years ago.”

  His jaw ticks faster, and I’m beginning to feel like there is a fuse burning, one leading to a bomb. “I’m not holding past relationships against you,” he says, “but I’m doubting my ability to live with this arrangement unless I know for sure we’ll stay exclusive.”

  Stay exclusive? The phrase jolts me and raises my hackles. My first instinct is to hit back, tell him we were never exclusive. Chloe would tell me that my defensiveness is a signal that I’m blocking the gifts of the universe—energy, love, opportunity, whatever the hell it is her precious universe is trying to send me. She would tell me that this is a trouble spot inside me that will keep me from living a full life if I don’t deal with it. But I certainly don’t have what I need to deal with it at the moment.

  Ben makes a few turns until he’s on the road to the Wildfire marina and his house, and I’m biting the inside of my lower lip to keep the creeping anxiety from spreading.

  “I don’t have any desire to see anyone else,” I tell him. “And I haven’t seen anyone but you since I’ve been in Wildfire. It’s not like I’m sleeping around.”

  “Not now, but you’ve also had a professional desire to maintain a good reputation, which won’t be in play once you leave here. And you’ve freely admitted that’s been your preferred way to live—uncommitted. I guess I need to know how you expect to live once you leave. When I bring the girls to see you, am I just going to be one of many guys or the only guy?”

  Fuck, I don’t like where this is going. Just like in Niue, my crystal-clear waters are turning murky, signaling a storm. And, dammit, I don’t want a storm. I want smooth waters. I want peace. But I feel like he’s trying to squeeze me into an uncomfortable, unfamiliar mold.

  “I’m not leaving for months,” I tell him. “Why is this an issue now?”