by Rachel Lee
“But you run a diving business.”
“There is that little problem.”
“And you have a boat.”
“Who says I have to make sense? Besides, on the boat I don’t get all that wet.”
“Except when you dive.”
“Can’t be avoided then. I happen to like to dive.”
She laughed again. She couldn’t help it and hoped she wasn’t offending him, but the whole idea was so funny. He hated to get wet, yet here he was surrounded by water and diving off the back end of this boat whenever necessary . . . although, come to think of it, she’d never seen him jump over the side for a swim in the evening the way Tam did. He preferred to take a quick shower on board.
“I don’t get it,” she said breathlessly. Her sides were beginning to ache from laughing. “Dugan . . . you’ve built your whole life around water.”
“I know. I guess it’s my karma.”
She went off into another peal of laughter, and he grinned with her. In the past year, she had forgotten how good it felt to laugh, and it felt so good she didn’t want to stop. But after just a few moments, it began to sound a little hysterical, even to her. She was laughing too hard and too long.
Dugan tugged her hand, pulling her out of her chair until she perched beside him on the bunk. The action had the effect of stilling her laughter, and she looked at him resentfully, as if he were the one who had put her on the edge of such a mix of wild feeling. And she could feel tears hovering just behind her eyes, tears that had no reason. What was wrong with her?
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he said, his tone surprisingly gentle. “You should do it more often. But not like this, Veronica. Not like this. . . .”
What did he mean? Had he picked up on her near hysteria? But before she could gather herself enough to say anything at all, he took her by surprise.
He kissed her.
Chapter 14
He had meant it to be a gentle kiss. Just a reassuring, affectionate touch. When he’d heard the hysteria edge into her laughter, he’d recognized what lay behind it: all the feelings she hadn’t dealt with in the past year. Ever since she’d told him how she’d lost her husband and her unborn child, his every survival instinct had been warning him to keep clear. It would be entirely too easy to get tangled up with this wounded, lonely woman.
He knew his own weaknesses. He had a fondness for sensual pleasures—oh, hell, he liked sex, and since Jana he preferred to keep sex and his heart utterly separated. Hence, he rarely allowed himself to acknowledge a sexual attraction unless he was sure the rest of him would be safe from involvement. He’d been putting a big mental off-limits sign on Veronica almost since the moment he met her. And everything she’d done to irritate him had, perversely, pleased him, because it raised barriers between them.
But then she’d told him about her husband and child, and his defenses had started crumbling faster than he could patch them. Instead, he had retreated behind distance.
Until then. Something deep inside him ached, and he could no longer deny that he was concerned about this woman. Concerned and attracted. A deadly combination.
So he meant it to be brief. He told himself it was something like getting wet. He needed to comfort her somehow, but he didn’t want to get past that. Ever.
Except that when their lips met, he might as well have put a match to kerosene. Without intending to, he’d crossed the barrier and landed on the other side, and all it had taken was the velvety feel of her lips and the gentle whisper of her ragged breaths.
He felt the tension in her, the reluctance to accept his touch. It was a good excuse to pull back. But the part of him that had never been able to resist a challenge wouldn’t let him do it. He went from wanting to comfort her to wanting her to kiss him back.
He lifted a hand and ran it from her bare shoulder down her arm. It was a light touch, hardly more than the whisper of a butterfly’s wing, but it had an amazing effect on her.
She shivered. She whispered, “No . . .” And then her mouth pressed closer to his and she twisted toward him as if she couldn’t help herself. He got what he wanted. She kissed him back.
As their mouths came hungrily together, as their tongues met, his mind filled with all the questions he’d been steadfastly refusing to consider for the last two months. How smooth was her skin? What did she taste like? How did she quiver and move when touched? Were her breasts soft or firm, would they respond quickly or slowly. . . .
And now he not only wondered, he craved the answers.
Once again he passed his hand down her arm, barely enough to brush the fine, almost invisible, golden hairs that dusted them. Once again he felt a shiver pass through her, and some part of him realized this woman was as hungry for his touches as he was for hers.
Then her arms wrapped around his head and his around her waist, and they fell back on the bunk, drinking from each other as if they were long-sought oases in the desert.
Her musky woman-scent began to fill the air around him, and an ache in his groin answered. He pressed his hand against her bottom, dragging her closer until he could feel the firmness of her belly against his hardness. Too fast, too hot. A warning bell clanged somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind, telling him he was being overwhelmed by something unique, and by something that was going to shame him later.
He was past caring. Having Veronica in his arms was like hearing a siren’s call. She was irresistible.
He dragged his mouth from hers at last, gasping for air. Before he could regain his senses, her hips rocked against him almost demandingly, begging for his touches. She was panting, her eyes closed, her lips swollen, her entire body pressing against him.
He rolled over on top of her, capturing her beneath his weight, and pleasure exploded in his mind when her legs opened to bring him closer. Her hands reached for his shoulders, tugging him closer, and he was lost.
He spread kisses on her skin, finding it every bit as soft as he had hoped. A pulse pounded wildly in her throat, and he kissed it, drawing a faint moan from her. His hands, as if they had a life of their own, slipped up beneath her tank top and cupped her breasts. Her bra was thin, little barrier to his touches, and he felt, at last, just how soft and full she really was. Felt her nipples pucker eagerly in response to the brush of his fingers through the tricot.
Her hips arched up against him, and the sensation jolted him with pleasure, causing him to press harder into her, negating the layers of clothing between them. With each motion of his hips, she rose to meet him.
He was swamped in desire, heat pounding in his veins, driving the last sensible thoughts from his head.
With a twist, he opened the front of her bra and drew her nipple into his mouth, sucking in rhythm with the movement of her hips. A soft, keening cry escaped her, and her movements became almost frantic, her hands digging into his shoulders. His response was explosive. Her passion was infectious, pushing him to the very top in moments.
Then he felt her stiffen and rise up hard against him, finding her satisfaction. With one more hard movement, he took his own, spilling over the crest of the wave, and crashing on the other side.
It was not the crash that hurt. His brain reawakened, and it was not happy with him. He might be a quasi beach bum, but he prided himself on the idea that the years had given him at least a little maturity. Instead he’d just acted like a sixteen-year-old in the backseat of Daddy’s car. Christ.
He had a wild, juvenile urge to erase the last ten minutes from memory. A case of amnesia would do fine just about now. But only if he could give a case to Veronica as well.
He pried open an eye and looked down at her. Her lips were swollen, her chest was heaving . . . although he refused to look too closely. With a sudden feeling of tenderness, he pulled her tank top down, covering her. Then he rolled off of her and, since amnesia wasn’t going to cooperate, he drew her into his arms.
He wasn’t the world’s best lover—Jana had certainly made him aware of that—but he’d also figur
ed out a long time ago that the worst sin a man could commit was to fall asleep, leave, or light a cigarette right after. Hold her. That’s all you had to do. Just hold her.
But in this situation, he was glad there wasn’t a weapon nearby, because he had a feeling that as soon as she came down off her high, Veronica was going to want to cut out his gizzard.
Which was a damn good reason not to get involved with nice women. Not that he could blame her if she did get mad. Why wouldn’t she? He’d come on like a rutting animal and had taken advantage of a moment that should have been kindness and nothing more. But if you were going to act like a jackass, it was generally better to be a jackass with someone who was prepared for it. Not with someone who’d probably lived her life on a straight and narrow path the way he suspected Veronica had. Hell, if she told him she’d been a virgin on her wedding night, he’d believe her.
As the minutes ticked by with her snuggled into his shoulder, his anxiety grew. Was she planning the most cutting thing she could possibly say? Was she feeling too ashamed to even look at him? The latter possibility concerned him far more than the former. He’d hate himself if he’d made her feel ashamed.
She stirred a little, and a soft murmur escaped her. Hesitantly, he looked down at her and met her sleepy gaze. Then he saw the soft smile on her mouth.
“Mmm,” she murmured quietly. “That was nice.”
Nice? Nice? Her words were so far removed from what he had expected that his brain was suddenly in free fall, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Then, stunning him even further, she tipped her head and kissed his cheek. Panic of a new kind began to fill him. He had to get out of there now. This could lead to things he’d sworn off for the rest of his life. This could get him emotionally involved in the way he had been with Jana.
He wished he’d never touched her. He wished he’d never discovered that behind that prickly, determined, rather depressed facade she wore there was a sensuous woman who wasn’t ashamed of her needs. Who wasn’t embarrassed by the things men and women did together. A decent woman who could also be an uninhibited lover, something he’d always believed couldn’t go hand in hand.
This was quicksand.
But needing to get away and actually doing it were two separate things. He wasn’t cruel enough just to get up and walk out, as if what had just happened was no more important than sharing a cup of coffee. He’d learned from Jana just how vulnerable a person was when it came to making love. He didn’t want to wound Veronica.
But hanging around was apt to wound him. And maybe her eventually, because he didn’t want her to misinterpret this interlude as meaning something more than it had.
Although just what exactly it meant he didn’t want to think about too hard just then.
Finally, combining imperatives, he kissed her forehead and said, “I have to go above. I’ve left things unattended too long.”
Then, before she could react, and before he could say anything that might cause more trouble, he slipped his arm from beneath her, got up, and left.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see the shadows creep into her fantastic blue eyes. He didn’t want to know what he’d done.
He found Tam above decks, standing at the rail puffing on a cigarette. Tam was the only person he’d ever known who could have a cigarette every now and then but no more.
“How do you do that?” Dugan asked now, wanting to get his mind off Veronica.
“Do what?”
“Smoke just one cigarette every few days or weeks.”
“Oh.” Tam laughed and tossed the butt overboard. “Sometimes it just tastes good. And it’s a good rush. But if I smoked all the time, I wouldn’t get the rush, and I’d blow out my lungs.”
“But people get hooked.”
Tam shrugged. “I don’t. I’ve never gotten hooked on anything.”
Dugan wisely avoided asking Tam to enumerate the things he’d never gotten hooked on.
Tam turned, leaning his hip against the rail so he faced Dugan. “So, how come you came up early today?”
“Huh?”
“From the dive. You were already up here when I surfaced to tell you guys about the cannon.”
“Oh.” How to explain that one without lying? He hated to lie. “I found a copper coin,” he said finally, remembering the coin he’d been playing with only a short while ago. “But it’s so corroded we couldn’t really tell anything.”
“Did they have copper coins back then?”
“Apparently so. But Veronica said she’d have to use special stuff to clean it before we’ll know anything. Now that cannon,” he said, swiftly changing the subject, “that cannon is something else.”
“Yeah.” Tam laughed. “Man, I could hardly believe it when I started burrowing. I honestly thought I was going to find some kind of trash, you know? The propeller off somebody’s boat. An old tackle box. I gotta tell you, Dugan, I didn’t think we were going to find a damn thing on this wild-goose chase.”
“Me, neither.”
“So there I am, scooping mud away, expecting to find something that was obviously from the last thirty years, and instead, all of a sudden, I’m looking at this huge rusty thing. Man, my heart started hammering. I had a feeling what it was gonna be. I had a feeling.” He shook his head and folded his arms, turning his attention out to sea. Moonlight dappled the water and created a silver path toward the east.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
“Incredible?” Tam looked at him. “Man, we found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Dugan felt a shiver of unease creep down his spine. “We might not ever find anything else. And it might not be the Alcantara.”
“Don’t you get it? Just finding that cannon was like finding the gold at the end of the rainbow. The odds are incredible.”
Dugan’s uneasiness faded. “That’s a fact.”
“And wow, what a head rush it was.” Tam laughed. “I could do with a jolt of that every so often. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun.”
Dugan had to agree with him there. It was as if he’d been spending his life in some kind of limbo these past ten years. For all he’d told himself he was doing exactly what he wanted, the simple fact was, he’d been waiting, just biding his time. For what he hadn’t known. But finding the coins today, and then the cannon, had told him. He’d been biding his time, waiting for this. The treasure hunt to end all treasure hunts.
Tam pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and lit another one. “Celebrating,” he said by way of explanation. “I suppose tomorrow we’ll go back into boring survey mode, and I’ll be climbing the walls again. But I’ll tell you, Dugan, I won’t be climbing ’em quite so fast, not if there’s a chance to make another find like this.”
They were infected with the treasure-hunting bug, Dugan realized. Both of them. He had a feeling they now had it every bit as bad as Veronica. Tam was right. It was a great head rush.
And he was already hooked.
Three days later when they sailed into harbor, the three of them were as high as kites. They’d mapped out an oblong area where they’d gotten a number of interesting readings on the magnetometer, and Veronica had decided it would be a good place to start diving to check out the more interesting anomalies. They had a plan of action.
And Tam hotfooted it right home to call Luis’s pager.
Luis was a man in hell. The way he figured it, Emilio would be showing up any day, and interfering in everything he had planned. Worse, as the days passed, Luis became more and more convinced that Emilio had somehow figured out what was going on.
Then there was El Desconocido. Unknown in more ways than Luis wanted to think about. As the days passed and he didn’t call the man to give him an update, Luis became increasingly paranoid. Sure that he was being watched. Sure that the man knew who he was. The man’s unknown nature had grown in Luis’s mind to be a dark, looming threat, almost supernatural in nature.
&
nbsp; Rosa, Luis’s wife, had always said he was superstitious. As if Rosa wasn’t. She insisted on having a crucifix in every room of the house, she kept the votive-candle industry in business, always tossed salt over her shoulder when she spilled it and knocked on wood when she felt someone had tempted fate. Luis had always scorned such silliness, but Rosa threw his contempt back in his face by pointing out that he had virtually demonized Emilio in his mind.
But she didn’t know Emilio the way Luis did. The man was entirely too knowing. Too perceptive. And there was no reason to think El Desconocido wasn’t at least as uncanny as Emilio.
Of course, there was no reason to think he was, and Luis kept trying to tell himself that, but the paranoid part of his mind wouldn’t listen.
He felt threat closing in on him from all quarters, inchoate and dark. And it was all his own fault for trying to deceive Emilio.
By the time his pager beeped, Luis was half-convinced he was a dead man. The chirping snagged his attention, but he broke into a sweat when he thought of looking at it to see the number of the caller. He was afraid that it would be El Desconocido asking why he hadn’t called with information. But he was terrified that it might be Emilio, letting him know the game was up.
Finally, he dragged himself across the room, and with a trembling hand he lifted the pager to look at the display.
It was Tam. His relief was so great that he dropped the pager with a clatter. Tam. Now he would have some information to use to appease Emilio. And maybe he would use it to appease El Desconocido as well. Just to assure the man he was delivering on his promise.
Not that they really had a deal, he reminded himself. He hadn’t exactly promised anything, and the man hadn’t made any demands. He had simply said he would pay well for the mask.
That wasn’t exactly betraying Emilio, Luis told himself. He had made no commitment to anyone else.
Feeling a little better, he picked up the phone and called Tam.
“We need to meet,” Tam said. “I’ve got something.”
Luis’s heart quickened, and his fears dimmed as excitement poured through him. He named a place, and Tam said, “Fifteen minutes.”
