Wicked Nights

by Anne Marsh

  “Piper.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I—” What did he say? How did he tell her that something bad had happened but he, conditioned SEAL and expert diver, hadn’t been able to wrap his head around it? He looked at the surface, imagined going under, and it was as though someone had cut the air to his brain.

  “Come on.” She turned and strode back to the top of the path. Also known as the walk of shame. When he didn’t immediately head down the trail, she stopped walking, waiting for him to catch up. Good thing she hadn’t tried a wait-and-see move in the water, because he could admit to himself that he would have failed her. If she’d had trouble, he wouldn’t have been there for her, and that bothered him even more than his jacked-up head did.

  He was pathetic.

  “How’d it happen?”

  He didn’t have to ask what the “it” was.

  “One bad mission and now I can’t dive.” The words hung in the air behind them. “I can jump off the cliff, but when I descend...it’s all shit.” He wasn’t sure what he expected her to do. She couldn’t fix this, either, and it was his mess anyhow.

  “I noticed.” When he risked a look at her, she didn’t look pitying—just accepting.

  He scrubbed a hand over his head. Daeg and Tag certainly knew, as well. Apparently the Fiesta cruise execs were the only ones who hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Maybe we can work through it.” She bumped her shoulder lightly against his.

  “Some things can’t be fixed,” he said. And some things had to be said.

  “We’ll try.” She threaded her fingers through his and tugged him forward. Screw it. He let her.

  “Not being able to dive is a pretty big liability for a dive master.”

  The beach rose up before them as she murmured her agreement—and he was fairly certain she owed her curse jar another round of quarters—and strode toward the water.

  “Sit,” she demanded, dropping to the sand right above the waterline.

  Since she didn’t let go of his hand, he followed. Okay, he was also curious to see where she’d take this conversation and, since he wasn’t diving today, he had plenty of time. He sincerely doubted she could do anything about his unwelcome phobia but he already knew Piper didn’t know the meaning of the word quit.

  Piper...

  She’d taken a devastating hit to her knee, a career-ending injury. She didn’t look unhappy, though. On the contrary. She’d healed and then she’d come back to Discovery Island and started over. He didn’t know if he had that in him, but he admired her tenacity. She made up her mind about what she wanted and she went for it. Her head was definitely on straight, unlike his. Which made him wonder why she was out here with him. If she hadn’t known before, she knew now. He wouldn’t be leading any diving trips for the Fiesta Cruise Lines’ folks.

  “What exactly bothers you about diving?” Their hands, he couldn’t help but notice, were still connected. The waves washed in, swirling around their feet before retreating. “You clearly don’t have a problem with getting wet. And you used up all the hot water at my place, by the way.”

  “Nope.” He was A-OK with that part of diving. And with showering at her place.

  “So, which specific part don’t you like?” She wiggled a little, digging into the sand with her butt, and the move had her shoulder brushing against his. Then, because apparently that wasn’t torture enough, she reached up and unzipped her wet suit. The black Neoprene rubber parted, revealing a sun-kissed V of skin. The daisies on her bikini top winked mockingly at him.

  He gritted his teeth. “I panic when I submerge,”

  “That must have been one heck of a mission.” Score one for Piper.

  When he didn’t say anything, though, she poked him in the side. “Confession’s good for the soul.”

  He’d never believed that. “The mission went...south.” She poked him again. “Jesus, Piper. You’re not helping.”

  “I’d like to.” Her voice turned unexpectedly serious. “But you have to let me, Cal.”

  Right.

  “Have you discussed this with Daeg and Tag? Or with your family? A trained professional?”

  “No,” he said curtly. “This is something I have to get over. It’s not something anyone else can fix.”

  “The first time I climbed the diving tower after my accident, I told myself everything would be fine. A nice, easy forward pike. Nothing too complicated or twisty. The minute I made my approach, though, I knew I was in trouble. My knee didn’t have any intention of cooperating. My power leg took the hit in the accident, and I didn’t get any height off the board. I told myself it was just one dive, so I tried it again. Same story.” She shrugged. “Every time I climbed the tower.”

  “So you quit.” As soon as the words were out, he wished he could take it back. A look of pain flashed across her face, quickly masked. Piper didn’t like it when other people saw her hurting. She’d been like that the day he’d pulled her out of the water, too, insisting she was fine even though she’d been out of her head with pain and shock.

  “I thought of it as moving on.”

  “I’m not ready to let go of this,” he said quietly.

  Acting on impulse, he reached down and touched her knee. She’d chosen to wear a shorty rather than a full wet suit, and for the first time, he wondered if she’d known there was no way he was diving. The scar on her knee was a thick, twisted ridge. No matter how much sun she got, the scar tissue would always stay white. He ran a finger along the side of her leg.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not unless I overdo it. Or wear three-inch heels for hours on end.”

  “I wish I could have done something more.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Me, too, but you did everything you could.” She splashed him, knocking water onto him with the flat of her hand. “You’re holding out on me. Spill.”

  “I’m not going to melt.”

  “Or run shrieking?” There was something about the look in her eyes as she slid him a sidelong glance. Piper being playful wasn’t new. He’d watched her pull this shit for years, poking, teasing, prodding. She had no fear and no boundaries. And yet, right now he was okay with it. He didn’t mind her asking.

  Okay. Scratch that. He minded a whole lot, but he sensed that the reasons behind the questions were well-intentioned. She wasn’t asking in order to make fun of him. Nope. Piper wanted to help.

  Him.

  Something tightened in the region of his heart. “I won’t run,” he agreed.

  “Good.” She bumped his shoulder companionably with hers again, a little smile playing across her lips. Like they were old friends, but...he didn’t want to be friends with Piper. Or, rather, he didn’t just want to be friends with her. He looked at her and saw the same face, the same person, he’d known since he was ten, but now he saw someone more. A woman he wanted to get to know better. Piper was more than a pretty face and a bum knee, or even a stubborn, argumentative competitor.

  “You’re smiling,” she said, but her eyes were firmly fixed on the ocean.

  “You bet.”

  “We already did,” she said darkly.

  “And I paid up.”

  “Which makes it my turn,” she pointed out. “I owe you a night.”

  One more wicked night with Piper. Just the thought had his body heating up, but he didn’t want to go to bed with Piper because of a bet, either. Not that he wasn’t grateful for the cover story. He had a feeling that the chemistry between them had been as much of a surprise to her as it had to him. One night hadn’t erased the attraction.

  He still wanted Piper.

  And, after he ran the logic in his head for a moment, he didn’t imagine his feelings were going to change after the good folks at the Fiesta Cruise Lines awarded their contract.

  “Tell me more,” she repeated, leaning against him. “Tell me it all.”

  He shook his head. “I wish it were that simple, Piper.”

  “I’m waiting,” was all
she said.

  She really was going to make him say it.

  He risked a look at her face, but she didn’t look horrified or shocked. He read concern there, but it seemed more directed at him and less, “I’m partnered with a crazy man.” She chewed on her lower lip, clearly thinking something through.

  “We were on a rescue mission over the Indian Ocean, searching for survivors from a tsunami that had hit the area hard. Whole villages had been sucked out to sea, and sometimes, if we were lucky, there were survivors clinging to the debris. We’d already pulled two people up in the basket, but the water was rough and there was enough crap in it to be a concern.”

  It wasn’t the chop that got to you. It was the unseen obstacles in churned-up water. You couldn’t see. All you could do was swim and pray—and get the survivors into the basket as fast as possible. They’d plucked two people off an impromptu raft that looked like it might have been the wall of a house or a shed door. Whatever it was, it was unrecognizable now, but it floated and it had made all the difference to the two survivors.

  “I’d come up with the first survivor, and Daeg and Lars went down to get the second. They’d gotten their guy into the basket, but Daeg took a hit. Lars convinced him to go up first.”

  Cal could see that rescue as if it were yesterday.

  * * *

  THE BASKET CAME up in slow motion, like things did in nightmares but weren’t supposed to do in real life. Cal reached for the metal frame, steadying it as it bumped against the edge of the chopper, and they prepared to haul it in. For just a moment, he took his eyes off his boys in the water and focused on getting the survivor out and into the comparative safety of the chopper. The guy was in shock—no surprise after forty hours at sea—and didn’t or couldn’t speak English. Since Cal’s Hindi consisted of yes, no, and “Where’s the bar?” his linguistic efforts weren’t helping to calm the guy down, either. Although maybe the guy could have used a drink. Cal knew how he’d have felt after being sucked out to sea by a tsunami.

  And then the pilot cursed over the headset. Screw international diplomacy. Cal picked up the survivor and set him down on a jump seat, buckling the safety harness around him.

  “What do we have?”

  He moved for the open bay door, looked down and...spotted blood in the water. A pool of crimson spread out around Daeg, even as the spotter barked out a terse announcement. “Houston, we have ourselves a problem.”

  They sure did. No way could Daeg make it up the ladder, dangling from the chopper, so Cal sent the basket back down. It seemed to take twice as long to reach the ocean’s surface as it had on the previous trip, but he knew that was an illusion. Time hadn’t really slowed to a crawl. He’d reach Daeg in time.

  As soon as the basket was down, Lars loaded Daeg in. Cal assumed strong-arming was involved. The basket was for survivors and not for SEALs. Daeg would be razzed about his ride for months.

  Cal grinned, relief washing over him, and then, just like that, Lars disappeared. One minute he was treading water, his hand holding on to the ladder as he waited for the basket to clear, and then he was gone. They’d dropped the chopper lower, searching. He couldn’t tell if the water was clear or not, but Lars wasn’t on the surface. He’d jumped, mask on, arms crossed and fins down. He couldn’t get down there quickly enough, ripping through the water’s surface and mentally sectioning the area into quadrants.

  No Lars.

  Nothing but brown churn from the tsunami and the cyclone. All the picture-postcard blue was gone, and he was diving in a garbage dump. Boards and trees and wood. Pieces of fishing boats, netting and what had to be the contents of a half-dozen villages. Animals and who knew what else.

  Dive. Surface. Over and over, until the chopper ran dangerously low on fuel.

  He’d ascended, leaving Lars out there somewhere. He’d have gladly traded his own life for the other man’s, but destiny wasn’t willing to broker the deal. He’d lost a brother, when there should have been something he could do to rescue him. Like his job. Years of training, thousands of mission hours rescuing others, but he’d come up short on the most important rescue of them all.

  * * *

  “ANOTHER TEAM RETRIEVED Lars’s body a day later. All I have left of him now are his tags.” He fisted the tags around his neck.

  By his side, Piper didn’t make the uh-huh noises or the head nods. She sat there silently, taking in his words, but her shoulder pressed against his arm, her fingers stayed tangled up with his in the sand. He fought the urge to press her down and strip off her clothes. To lose both himself and the memories in Piper. That wasn’t fair to her, though, and he didn’t deserve the escape.

  After, when he’d told her what he remembered, there was silence. He concentrated on his breathing, the regular in and out of air moving through his lungs the same way the waves came in and then retreated. One breath. Inhale and hold for twenty. Exhale, and then a second. And a third. Eventually, she snuck a peek at him. He was pretty sure he didn’t look okay, because the pressure on his arm got deeper, and then she stood up.

  “Can you swim with me?” she asked. “Not a dive,” she added quickly.

  He had a sudden feeling he might follow Piper just about anywhere. He filed the thought away to consider later.

  “I can swim. I train every day.”

  She nodded, and he could practically see the gears turning in her head as she considered various ideas. He didn’t need her to fix him, which was a good thing because he had a sneaking suspicion he was broken beyond all repair. Or that it was going to take years he didn’t have before the Fiesta demonstration. She reached down and held out a hand.

  “You’re still sitting down,” she teased.

  Warmth unfolded in him.

  When he took her hand, she eyed him cautiously. They did have history, after all. “You’re not going to pull me in, are you?”

  She’d done that to him on more than one occasion. She reacted first, thought later. He tightened his fingers on hers and her eyes narrowed.

  “Nope,” he said. “Although I reserve the right to do so later.”

  She grinned. “There’s hope for you yet, Cal.”

  He hoped so. He really, really hoped so.

  * * *

  PIPER HAD ALWAYS had nothing but respect for the men and women who chose to serve. She couldn’t imagine flying away and leaving a man down because it was the right thing to do. Because otherwise the people you’d come out to rescue would be jeopardized. Those kinds of decisions didn’t come up in her life—and probably explained Cal’s fanatic insistence on staying safe.

  She tugged and zipped as they waded in, grateful for the shorty’s insulation. Although the water here was shallow enough that the sun had warmed up the surface, it still packed quite a chill. The ocean off the California coast was definitely no South Pacific dream when it came to warmth, although it didn’t seem to bother Cal. Maybe it was his SEAL training.

  Piper waded until she was chest deep, then sank down lower and lower into the water. Cal stopped with her, letting her set the pace.

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s what friends are for.” She said the words lightly.

  “Are we?” He rested his forehead against hers.

  Were they? She thought about it for a moment, and the answer was yes. In a strange, frenemy kind of way, Cal was her friend. He was arrogant and pigheaded, and she’d probably butt heads with him when she was ninety but...yeah. They were friends. Returning to Discovery Island had proved Cal had redeeming qualities, if nothing else.

  “I think so.”

  The next small wave picked her up, bumping her against Cal. He was taller than she was, and his legs easily reached the bottom here. Plus, his larger body mass made it harder for the waves to knock him around. Taking advantage of his relative stability, she wrapped her legs around his waist, anchoring herself. And, okay, enjoying the heck out of the close contact, too. She grabbed for his shoulders with her hands.

  “Because th
is seems more like kiss and make up,” he said.

  “You don’t kiss your friends?”

  “I could make an exception.”

  Cal needed a friend. It was something about his eyes, she decided. He had gorgeous eyes, the rich brown making her think of decadent treats like brownies and chocolate. Usually, there was more than a hint of reserve in his eyes. Or disapproval. Cal didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. He liked being in control. Right now, though, her SEAL looked more than a little lost.

  Admitting to a weakness wasn’t something he did. She understood. She really did, because she was the same way. She leaned in closer and his hands cupped her butt, helping her out. They both were all about showing a strong front to the world. When she’d still been diving competitively, she’d known that even a bad dive meant she climbed out of the pool with her game face on. Don’t show the cameras, the people in the stands or the other divers how much the entry had hurt or that she knew she’d over-rotated. Keep it to yourself. Do the postmortem later, over and over, making sure the mistake never happened again.

  Cal blamed himself for his teammate’s death. She’d bet he hadn’t discussed it with Tag and Daeg—and that they all carried around their own burdens of guilt. She wondered why guys couldn’t mention the word feelings without clamming up, but then another wave pushed her higher in Cal’s arms. His thumb stroked the curve of her butt.

  “Make me the exception?” she suggested, her mouth inches from his. She couldn’t fix him, as much as she wanted to, any more than he could undo the damage the Jet Ski accident had done to her knee. So here they were, two people who were used to being in charge and making things better, and neither of them knew what to do with the other.

  Okay. She had one idea.

  “You bet,” he said roughly.

  Good enough.

  The ocean pushed her against him. That was the excuse she gave herself as she pressed her mouth against his.

  He didn’t pull back. Instead, eyes open, he stared at her with single-minded intensity. His grip on her butt tightened as his eyes drifted closed. It was strange. This was Cal, for crying out loud, and she’d never imagined she’d be kissing him. And yet she was.