Like father, like son.
But this interlude with this woman proved that wasn’t entirely true. He sought solitude, but he thrived with a team. Always had—on the rig, in the teams, even right now. Having her here made him feel part of something, gave him something to work toward. Saving her. It was a pretty lofty goal.
And one he planned to accomplish.
He set the towels out to dry, along with their wet things. After that, he pulled out his handgun and checked the clip.
They’d get out of here in one piece—as long as his message had gotten out. He had to believe that either Ford or Von would respond to his call, but… No. He couldn’t count on it. Not with Ford in Antarctica and Von… Lord only knew where.
He could potentially take on the five people from the platform on his own. Especially if two of them were scientists. Well, not if they were scientists like Ford. His brother was as tough as any of the guys he’d served with.
If reinforcements were called in, Eric and Zoe would be screwed.
He stepped out of the cave, turned, and took in the horizon. That rig was still going full blast, lights shining out across the water so brightly that it could probably be seen from space.
No way this operation was on the books, judging from the shit they’d done to Zoe. Pretty ballsy, considering. If they were trying to keep this thing dark, they could do a hell of a better job of hiding it instead of blasting—guns out, lights on, machines pumping like there was no tomorrow.
Eric squinted back toward the mainland. He could barely make out a glow from that direction, but from the shore, the platform might be invisible. And the Coast Guard would just assume the rig had been recommissioned.
He racked his brain for an idea of what the pirates could be looking for. With a dad who’d worked in the petroleum industry—not to mention his own stint—he should know this, right? Was there anything out there that a pharma company could want? Not a by-product. Those were all used already. Did some bottom-dwelling fish out there contain the cure for cancer? Maybe algae or some crap like that? Pretty unlikely, given that they were on a platform instead of in a boat or a submersible.
Not his problem, he decided in that instant.
Except that some part of him couldn’t let it lie. Probably the same thing that had sent him to the armed forces to begin with—a desire to do good or some bullshit like that. And whatever those guys were doing out there, it was bad. Illegal. Possibly dangerous.
Millions in security alone.
That sentence stuck in his throat.
This was big. Big money, at the very least. And big money plus questionable research practices didn’t bode well. For him or for Zoe, the woman who’d walked right into the midst of it. Probably didn’t bode well for the damn world, given the way corporate assholes treated it. Like their own little playground. What if this hornet’s nest Zoe’d kicked had repercussions that went wide?
Like, what if he woke up in the morning and the whole world was on fire from it?
He turned to look at Zoe’s slumbering form, just inside the cave, and felt something odd in his chest.
Responsibility, he decided. For her. For her beloved fish. For the outcome of this entire goat rodeo.
Shit.
Standing here was making him crazy.
He spent the next half hour scouring the water around the island for signs of approach. No movement. Good.
After that, he obliterated their tracks from earlier. When he was finally satisfied that they’d be left alone for the night, he headed back to their hidden cave. For now, there was nothing to do but sit, watch, and wait.
Which he hated.
It was probably only about eleven when he returned, but it felt later. He stuck his head into the shallow cave and blinked a few times before realizing that Zoe’s eyes were open.
“You’re back.” Her whisper was tight, but he thought he heard an edge of relief in there. “You weren’t here, and I…” She let out an audible breath and shook her head.
“Sorry. Wanted to keep an eye on things.”
“I know.” The slick fabric of the sleeping bag rustled, and she pushed herself to standing, then joined him at the cave entrance. “How’s it look?”
“Same. No movement.”
“You have to stay out here? To watch?”
He couldn’t explain this…thing keeping him from risking even an hour of sleep. “Need to keep you safe.”
“What about you? Not worried about keeping yourself safe?”
“That’s…second nature.”
“Ah, right. Once a SEAL…” She inhaled, leaned her head back, and stared at the stars. “Need to use the loo. Or…the rock, I guess.”
“Of course.” Without another word, he headed into the cave, giving her privacy.
She returned, blocking out the night sky at the entrance, and asked, “You’re going to spend the night out here, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He didn’t dare picture himself in here, with her.
Brushing by him, she tromped back in without a word and emerged with the sleeping bag. “Right here?”
“Hmm?”
“If I put us against this rock wall, will you be able to see enough?”
He hesitated. “Yeah.”
Something like alarm spread through him as he watched her set up a little bed. For them. Together.
Okay. So maybe now he could admit that coming out here had been half about keeping watch and half about staying away from her. He’d been holding her when she fell asleep, rubbing her arm. And she’d let him. But who knew what she’d think when she woke up.
It was because he really didn’t want to let her go that he had.
Now, she was setting up another nest in a place where he couldn’t get away.
“This good?” She stood and surveyed her work.
“Cozy.”
Something about his tone must have sounded off because she tilted her head at him. “You okay with this?”
“Are you?” Why’d he have to sound so belligerent?
She gave a surprised laugh. “Did I… Oh! You wanted to be alone. I’m sorry. I misread that completely.” She stooped to pick the stuff back up.
Alone? Hell, no. He wanted to get back to that warm, safe place he’d shared with her earlier. Wanted, more than anything, to give her that safety. “Don’t.” He took a single step forward, his shoe scuffing loudly in the quiet night.
When she stood, her body language was wary. Like What’s the crazy man gonna do this time?
“Shit. I’m an idiot.”
“Eric? I’m not sure I get what’s going on.”
“Yeah.” Sheepish now, he ran his hand over his head and back. He needed a cut, as usual, but that was sort of his way since he’d reverted to civilian life. No more buzz cuts. Not that SEALs gave a shit about military regulations, but… Fuck. What am I doing?
“You’re cute.” Mesmerizing, actually, but he had enough presence of mind to keep things light.
Even in this light, he could see her raise her brows. She didn’t say a thing. Smart woman.
“My dad used to fish out here. Told you that. I like it. But there’re other places I enjoy more. I don’t keep coming out here for the memories.” He shut his eyes and just gave in to the embarrassment. “I come out here ’cause I’ve got a bit of a crush. On you.”
When he dared look at her again, her big eyes had gone comically wide in her heart-shaped face, and her mouth joined in with a little cartoon O shape.
Then her expression shifted.
“So…” She didn’t look unhappy at what he’d said, which was a start. If he had to qualify it, he’d say she looked intrigued rather than displeased by his admission. “You do or you don’t like the idea of sitting with me out here under the stars?”
“I do,” he said quietly. “Ve
ry much.” And then, because he needed to know, he asked. “And you?”
“It’s been a crappy day, Eric.” She moved slowly toward him.
Right, it had been. A horrible day, especially for her. And, shit, he’d just made it awkward by saying—
“But with you, I feel safe. Like nothing can touch me.”
He’d been afraid of this. Now she thought she needed to be with him in order to receive his protection, and that wasn’t at all what he—
“I’ve got a crush on you, too, Eric.” Their bodies were close enough to touch.
He didn’t budge. “Yeah?” The word came out low and barely audible, a gently plucked bass string. He couldn’t hear himself so much as feel his own vibration.
“In fact, I promised myself I’d ask you out tonight. On the way home.” She made an embarrassed little huff of a laugh and looked away before meeting his night-darkened gaze again. “But I tell myself that every time I come to Polaris. Never once got up the courage.”
His heart was thumping like crazy in his chest when he bent and put his face close to hers. “Wanna stay out here and keep me company, Zoe, while I keep watch?”
Slowly, she shook her head no and, way too fast, his insides crumbled. He started to pull back.
“I know you’re the big tough guy, but that doesn’t make you responsible for everything. How about, instead”—she closed the gap between them—“we keep watch together?”
Chapter 5
They settled against the stone. Not like before, but side by side. As if by talking about whatever this was between them, they’d opened up something they needed to handle carefully.
“Saw you out once.” He spoke quietly, his head back, eyes on the sky rather than on her, though it felt as if she had every ounce of his attention.
Something prickled up her spine. It wasn’t unpleasant. “Yeah?”
“At Howie’s, down near the beach.”
She nodded. She’d been there exactly once, with girlfriends. “You didn’t say hi?”
“No.” Why did that hurt, just a little? “You’re…young.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
He looked surprised, which wasn’t a shocker. She’d always been told she appeared younger than her age.
“How old are you, Eric?”
“Forty-one.”
What were a few years, really? “That’s nothing.” His profile, long and stern and immovable, looked cut from the rock he leaned on. He fit in out here, seemed a part of the landscape. She tried to conjure up an image of him sitting at a bar like Howie’s, full of Marine Corps recruits and college girls. In a rowdy place like that, he’d stick out like a rock in a stream. And no way would he sit. He’d stand, so that the crowd would have to flow around him. That image made her smile.
“You were with a guy.”
She threw him a disbelieving grimace. “I was?”
“Surfer type. Joined you and your girlfriends.”
“And?”
“He was into you. He seemed right for you.”
That sent a spike of irritation through her. Who was he to decide what kind of guy she deserved to be with? “Right for me?”
“Easygoing. Good-looking, I guess, in a young, hip shithead kinda way.”
“What does that make you? Old and out of it?”
He shot her a look, not quite smiling. “Pretty much.”
“Were you wearing dad jeans?” She’d only seen him in shorts, but he had the kind of long, rangy build that would look really good in a pair of jeans.
“Of course. I am retired, after all. Not to mention I’m your elder, so…”
“Yeah. Retired.” She looked at him, long and hard. Something about him—the careful way he held himself maybe—spoke of feigned nonchalance.
With a burst of insight, she got it. “You were afraid,” she said.
“Huh?”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You—the dude who broke into an oil rig, unarmed, to pull me out of a certain-death situation—were too scared to approach a table full of women and some guy who, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t remember at all.”
“Well, he was all over you.”
After a few quiet moments, she spoke. “I would have been pretty happy to see you.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d totally have gone home with you.”
He turned, putting their faces inches apart. “You’re kidding.”
“Why?” Full of a newfound power, she leaned in. Close enough, even in the dark, to make out the lines that fanned out from his eyes. “You think I don’t like old men?”
The lines deepened as he smiled and threw his hand to his chest. “Stab me in the heart.”
“You’re the one who said it. I think you’re fine just the way you are.”
He cocked his head to the side, and for just a second, she thought maybe this was it—the lead-up to a kiss. “Thanks.”
“So. Retired, huh?”
“Kind of. I’ve been thinking about getting some friends together, using our combined skills to start a security company.”
“Sounds interesting.”
His eyes slid her way. “You’re full of it.”
“What?” She shrugged, then wrinkled her face up in embarrassment. “Honestly, I don’t even know what that means. Security? You, like, put alarms in houses?”
“Not exactly. I mean, some companies do that. I’d be more interested in”—he lifted his chin toward the rig—“stuff like this. Like…figuring out what the hell those people are up to. Stopping them.”
“Except with clients.”
“Right.”
“So, like…Bat-Signal stuff.” She ignored a tight burst of disappointment when his body shifted minutely away. A little raw around the edges, she forced herself to smile and sucked in a refreshing breath of cool, sea-foam air. It was amazing, actually, that she could find joy in a moment like this one.
She threw him a surreptitious look. It was because of this man that she wasn’t in hell right now. “If we get out of here, Eric—”
“When.” His voice was quiet but certain, and what she’d thought was him putting distance between them proved to be just a straightening of his stance. More proof that the man was somehow rock solid, while she melted into a puddle here beside him.
“When we get out of here…” With her next breath, she sucked in courage. “I’d consider a date. If that’s what you’re after.”
“I seem like I’m after something?” Was he teasing her? She couldn’t quite see a twinkle in his eyes, but she could hear one in his voice. Maybe.
“Well, you did follow me to the platform today.”
His lips twitched in response.
“You saved my life, Eric.” Her voice came out breathy, as if this dark, needy femme fatale routine was something she did every day. “It’s the least I can do in return.”
He smirked. “So, a date for your life, huh?”
“Sure. Fair payment. Can you do that, old man?”
Had she misread the humor she’d seen on his face? It was gone now, replaced by an expression so solemn that she wasn’t sure if he’d laugh or take her seriously. Suddenly, she regretted the joking.
She’d just opened her mouth to take it back when he spoke.
“How ’bout a kiss?” His words shocked blood to the surface of her face again, made her hot and a little shaky.
In a flash, she pictured the way he’d handled that man, done something to make his arm not quite right. The way the man had screamed, and Eric’s expression had been blank, emotionless… She shivered just thinking about how hair-raising it had been to watch one man hurt another without caring for a single second about it. And now here he was, flirty, attractive. Unbelievably warm. And he wanted to kiss her.
“Which one’s the real you?”
/> Without seeming to move, he stiffened, turning the few inches between them into an insurmountable gulf. “What do you mean?”
Why was she shaking as if she’d opened up a can of worms she should have left alone? “Are you the easygoing guy fishing off his boat? Or the big, scary badass on the rig, ready to tear a man’s arm off? Or…” Who even knew who this version was. He was the world’s most singular fusion of solid and sure, smart and competent, funny and skeptical and cautious. “Or this guy?” She waved a vague hand between them, because there was no way to condense his million-and-one facets into one sentence.
He blinked. “This guy?”
“Yeah.” She cared about the answer. That was why she couldn’t get her lips to stop trembling or her breathing to calm. “This reserved, kinda funny guy who’s solid and smart, but not quite at ease in social situations?”
“Kinda funny?” He huffed out a quiet laugh, and everything inside her let go.
“Well, you’re not laugh-out-loud. More subtle.” She dredged up enough courage to lean in. “The good kind of funny.”
“Little of each, I guess. Like you, Zoe Garcia, I am a complex individual.”
Complex? More like lethal.
She watched him for a few seconds out of the corner of her eye. Was this real, this thing between them? It felt more solid than anything she’d experienced with a man—possibly ever—but what if that was just the gratitude talking? Could this be a comedown from today’s adrenaline rush? Or a misplaced sense of somehow owing him after what he’d done for her?
Something about his profile—straight and ridiculously masculine against nature’s harsh backdrop—pulled a memory from her brain. It unraveled in a split second, like tugging at the end of a ball of yarn. The first time she and Jane had come out to the Polaris, they’d chatted with him about God knows what.
After they’d pulled away, Jane had said some nonsense about how cute he was. When Zoe didn’t answer, she’d turned and given her a look. “Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”
Turn the Tide Page 8
