Her Sworn Enemy (Men of the Zodiac)

by Theresa Meyers

  She waited until she heard the clink of plates and cutlery being placed on the table, and the other man’s movements fade away.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Tuck said, his voice low and gentle.

  She turned. “What the hell was that, Tuck?”

  “A kiss?” He was still close enough that she could see the dark graze of stubble on his chin and the sheen of moisture on his lips. One dark brow lifted as he watched her. A taunting smile tilted his lips, not enough to be cocky, but certainly enough to make her uncomfortably aware that he knew she’d liked his kiss and wanted more.

  She closed her eyes. “We can’t let things go that way.”

  “I can change the ship’s protocol. You say the word.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t do short-term flings.”

  His brows drew together. “I see.”

  “We’re going to be out here, what—another month, maybe two? I don’t want it to be something where we’re in the here and now and never think about where it might go.”

  “You don’t want to know that some guy is already planning on walking away from the beginning.”

  “Exactly.”

  He pulled out a chair for her at the table. “I get it, but I don’t like it. I’ve thought you were sexy as hell from the moment you pressed those fantastic breasts up against me and then fell flat on your ass in your aunt’s shop, but I understand the hesitation. I’m not exactly the kind of guy you bring home to mom.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not you, Tuck.”

  He grunted. “Yeah, they all say that.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. You’re a hell of a dancer and have a kiss that could shimmy a woman out of her shorts faster than an alligator rolling over in the bayou.” She walked over to the table and placed her hands on the back of her chair. “We should chalk it up to mutual attraction that can’t go anywhere.”

  “Wrong time, wrong place?”

  She gave a sad nod and glanced at her plate. “I’m not so hungry after all,” she said, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m going to head back to my bunk.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the stairs going down to the lower deck.

  “Good night, Bella.”

  She rested her hand on the stair rail and turned to glance at him. “’Night.”

  Each step she took down, her feet turned more leaden. She hadn’t realized how attracted she was to him. That could be a problem. It was one thing to avoid someone you disliked. It was a whole other basket of beignets to be naturally attracted to someone and attempt to stomp on your instincts. But there was no way out. She’d promised herself she’d never get involved with a guy who would easily walk away again. It hurt too much.

  Bella opened her cabin door. She hoped to hell things improved by morning. It was tough enough being stressed about her finances, but when she layered in the grinding hope of finding the Rapid, then dumped on a boatload of sexual attraction to the last man she should be interested in, she was on overload. The one thing she had 100 percent control over right now was her own libido. Everything would look more manageable in the morning.

  It had to.

  Chapter Six

  Tuck had hoped to hell things would be improved by morning. He’d sincerely hoped that by the a.m. he’d have lost the twisting sensation in his gut. No such luck. After a restless night, he was only more tightly wound. Everything about the good doctor was getting under his skin. As attractive as she was, he knew better than to flirt with her. Problem was, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. One whiff of that delectable combo of tart lemon and sweet sugar that seemed to cloak the air around her, and he was like a kid after an illicit cookie.

  She was looking for a guy who’d sink down roots, fair enough, but he didn’t do roots. Anything that could tie him down would suffocate him in the long term. He’d seen it happen with his mother. Her vibrancy, her joy for life, had slowly been eaten away by the daily grind of being merely a mistress. She’d never had any kind of security, neither emotional nor financial. Yeah, she’d loved James McCormack, but what the hell had that ever brought her? In the long run nothing but living in poverty with a case of heartache bad enough to mourn herself to death. Her son sure as shit hadn’t been enough to live for. Even when it came to living or dying, her married lover had been more important to her than her own child.

  Tuck had no interest in love. Sex? Hell yeah. Love. No fucking way. Love was a Venus flytrap baiting you with sweet promise, then sucking the life out of you. In short, something dangerous he could damn well live without. This had never been an issue before, so he wasn’t sure why he was even going down that road with Bella. She was permanent. He was temporary. That should make all future decisions a no-brainer. If this was so damned easy, why was his gut twisted with unfamiliar emotions and his brain filled with all things Belladonna?

  “So how was dessert last night?” Barclay asked as they prepped the transponders to go down in the equipment baskets.

  “You didn’t bring us any dessert.” Tucker half snarled in reply as he checked the wires for breakage and the long, cylindrical cases for cracks.

  “You know what I mean.” Barclay nudged him with his elbow and waggled his eyebrows. Tuck had the insane urge to lift him up by his swim shorts and chuck him over the side into the water.

  “You and the doc hooking up, Cap?” Toneau chimed in with a broad smile. “She’s pretty hot for a smart person.”

  “We are not hooking up. She’s here to work, like the rest of you should be.” He glared at the members of his crew surrounding him. “So how about we cut gossiping like a bunch of girls and get to it.”

  “Am I interrupting?”

  A long, low wolf whistle, raked over his last nerve, and he threw Williams a death glare. “Not another sound, Williams, or I’ll have you scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush.” The man nodded.

  Tucker turned to face her. The early morning light brought out the red highlights in her auburn hair and exposed the smoothness of her skin. Even without makeup, Bella was a natural beauty. With the addition of a pair of sunglasses, bikini top, and shorts, she was a knockout worthy of a swimsuit calendar. The light shadowed the valley between her breasts, and those long, tan legs were like a sucker punch in the gut. The sweet little bow of her lips, combined with her dark hair pulled up into a messy bun, showing off her shoulders and neck gave him an almost instant case of blue balls. Somehow he managed not to groan and shook off the fog filling his brain, making him stupid. Yeah. No. Not a goddamned thing had improved this morning. Same old, same old. He had the hots. He shouldn’t have the hots. She wasn’t interested. End of story.

  “Morning, Doc.”

  “Did I miss something?” she asked, pulling down her sunglasses to look at him.

  “Nothing important.” He threw a menacing glance at the rest of the crew, and they immediately turned back to their work. No doubt listening to every word. Damn. They were worse than a bunch of horny teenagers. “You ready to get to work?”

  She pushed her sunglasses back into place with her index finger and put her hand on her hip. “Sure. What can I do?”

  How about stand there and let me look at you. No. Focus, he thought then tried to picture images of Venus flytraps.

  “We need to load all the acoustic transponders into the baskets for the ROV to transport to the site.” He pointed out the yellow and black cylinders with a coated wire cage on one end that were about the size and weight of a big Mag-Lite flashlight. He figured it would be easy enough for her to pack them up without help from him or any of the others. It would also keep her occupied while they calibrated the equipment they needed to triangulate the positions of the transponders signals once they were positioned on the sea floor.

  He tried to concentrate on the questions and comments firing off between his crew, but it was difficult. His ears kept filtering out the deeper male voices to fixate on the higher female tones as Bella hummed while she worked. He hadn’t heard a woman hum songs like that since his moth
er, and it both unnerved and intrigued him. It was one of the endearing things he remembered about her. And look where being hooked up to a McCormack had gotten her.

  Bella was different than any woman he’d ever been attracted to. She didn’t just stand out because she was smart or beautiful, even though she was both. It was more like she radiated an energy that was infectious. Her drive, her sense of purpose and certainty, had already begun to rub off on the crew. They were eager to bring up the treasure in a way that was making them reckless.

  Twice he had to remind his crew of safety checks. “You sure we’re secure and ready to go?”

  “Aye, Cap. Triple checked.”

  “Are the transponders all loaded on the ROV, Doc?”

  “For the fourth time, yes.” She turned to Toneau and said rather loudly and probably for his benefit, “Is he always this nervous about an observation dive?”

  “No, but Cap likes things done right. You call it nervous. I call it meticulous. You got no worries with him. You know it’ll be done right the first time, every time.”

  He needed to remember to get Toneau a case of his favorite mango soda when he went back to shore. The man deserved it.

  “Okay, all hands. We dive in fifteen minutes. Let’s get the ROV loaded.”

  Bella put her hand up to shield her eyes from the growing intensity of the sun. The men guided the huge yellow mechanical boom arm into place. The enormous round magnet on the end lowered slowly until it connected to the metal cage surrounding the ROV with a clunk. Slowly, with the hiss and mechanical clicking off the boom in motion, it pulled upward lifting the heavy ROV up and over until it could clear the edge of the deck.

  “You’re welcome to watch from the conference room again if you like. It’ll probably be boring since we’re setting the transponders in place today,” Tuck said, turning on his heel.

  Deflated, Bella crossed her arms and gave him a glare she knew he couldn’t see from behind her sunglasses. “Are you watching from the conference room?”

  He paused, blue eyes deep and hard to read. “No. I’m working from the control room.”

  What was he hiding, and why was he avoiding her? “Well, then I’ll watch from there, too.”

  “There really isn’t any room. We’ll have a full crew in there,” he said a bit too quickly for her to find it believable. “You’ll be more comfortable in the conference room.”

  Like hell. She already didn’t care for the sensation of being alone on a crowded ship. She’d really hoped there wouldn’t be any awkward moments like this between them after last night. Apparently she’d used up whatever small reserves of luck she had left. “No problem. I’ll watch it from the conference room after I grab something to eat.”

  She’d never been down to the galley before. Food was always on hand in the conference room or available to be delivered with just a phone call. As she walked down the stairs, the heavenly aroma of real Louisiana jambalaya, filled with the trinity of onion, peppers, and celery spiked with garlic along with the spice of Andouille sausage, and the rich, acidic scent of cooking tomatoes, made her mouth water. She was definitely headed in the right direction.

  Bella came around the corner to find a swinging door leading into a bright kitchen filled with gleaming stainless-steel countertops and pristine white cabinets. A massive pot simmered on the stove, emitting a fragrant steam. A solid built man, his dark hair cropped close to his skull, with skin the color of semi-sweet chocolate chips was cutting up vegetables. He wore a yellow collared short-sleeve shirt and white shorts, with a blue apron tied around his middle.

  “Your jambalaya smells delicious.”

  He turned, a wide smile, brilliant white against his cheeks and chin. “You must be the doctor they all been gibberin’ about.” He wiped his hands on his apron, and then held one out to shake her hand. “I’m Chef Antoine.”

  Bella took his hand and gave it a firm shake.

  “Lawd, you got a grip, girl. No wonder you can make those men shake in their boots.” He laughed. “Now what can Antoine do for you, sugar?”

  “I thought I’d get a little something to eat. They’re getting a dive going. Right now I’m in the way more than helping.”

  “Hmm,” Antoine replied. “Feels that way sometimes, don’t it.”

  “Why haven’t I seen you around?”

  “Because Antoine likes his kitchen. I don’t have any reason to go anywhere else,” he said and smiled. His hands moved fast as he diced the vegetables, and Bella was impressed he kept his fingers intact.

  “Well, from what I’ve sampled the last few days, you’re very talented. Everything’s been delicious.”

  “Good. Good. Now you said you was hungry?”

  She nodded.

  “So what you hungry for, sugar?” He stopped chopping and held up his index finger. “And don’t be sayin’ a man, ’cause you just gonna have to get in line. There ain’t no hanky-panky on this boat, Captain make sure of that.”

  “Oh, men are definitely not on the menu.”

  He glanced at her and put a finger to his lips. “In that case, I got this friend, Louanne, who might like to meet you.”

  Bella laughed. “No, I like men just fine. I’m cursed, so they never stick around.”

  “Umm, umm. Now that is a problem.” He picked up the chopping board and slid the vegetables into the big pot with the flat of his knife.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “For lunch, or for your man curse?” he asked as he set the cutting board down.

  Bella smiled. Her aunt would adore Antoine. “For now, lunch.”

  “How about we do a bit of both? Food can help heal the soul, you know.”

  “Now you sound like my grand-mère.”

  “Smart woman. So what’s ailing you, sugar? Can’t fix you the right food unless I know the condition.”

  “Confusion, maybe mixed with a lot of doubt.”

  He hummed for a moment. “That sounds like an egg-salad sandwich with a side of little dill pickles.” He bent down and pulled a small saucepan from under the counter and filled it with water.

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Egg salad—part mayonnaise and mustard, egg that’s both white and yellow, salt and pepper, totally different. Hell, it’s so mixed up it doesn’t even know what it is, but still perfect. What could be better for confusion?” He turned and walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out an egg carton.

  “And the pickles?”

  He pulled out jars of condiments and a jar of pickles and balanced the armful carefully on his way back to his spot near the stove.

  “All those sour little nagging doubts. All ugly like, but you still got to like them just the same. There’s something satisfying about biting them in half and chewing them down to size.”

  She smiled. “True. You know, maybe this therapy by food thing ought to be a blog or a cookbook or something.”

  He chuckled as he plucked two eggs out of the carton. “Lawd no, child. Antoine don’t need all that attention. Anybody else could do the same if they’d just sit down for dinner with their grand-mère once in a while.” He set the eggs in the small saucepan, sprinkled in some salt, and turned on the gas stove, the blue flame licking at the bottom of the pan.

  “Tell Antoine what’s confusing you.”

  “Mostly the captain. One minute he’s flirting with me, and the next he’s arrogant and aloof and trying to avoid me. I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, sugar, if I took even half of what I don’t understand about men and put it on paper, then Antoine would have himself a book. The thing you got to understand about our captain is he’s a troubled soul. Man could eat dirty red beans and rice every night of the week. He don’t dare get close to anyone.”

  “But why?”

  “You gonna have to ask him.” He pulled out the pickles from the jar with a fork and placed them on a plate, then picked up his knife and sliced them into thin spears. “But I suspect everything he’s ever loved
has been pulled away from him at one time or another. Makes it hard to trust that love isn’t going to turn around and bite you in the ass, you know?”

  Leaning over the counter, Bella nodded and propped her chin in her palm. “We’ve all got family issues.”

  “True enough,” he said as he began mixing the condiments in a bowl. “But at least we got family. I think he’s a lost soul, feels he ain’t truly got no one.”

  She straightened and gripped her hands together. “Family is everything to me. I don’t know how I would have survived without my aunt and grand-mère.”

  Antoine pulled the saucepan off the stove and went over to the sink where he ran cold water into the pan until the eggs were cool enough to peel. “Not everyone is so lucky. Man like that, takes a special soul to understand his pain and give him the thing he needs most.” He placed the shiny, peeled eggs in the bowl and mashed them with a fork, mixing them with the sauce, and a dash of salt, pepper, and paprika. He heaped the warm egg mix on thick crusts of bread and cut her sandwich in half diagonally, placing the triangles on the plate beside the pickles. He nudged the plate in her direction. “There you go, sugar. Now get outta my kitchen so I can hang up my psychiatrist hat and get back to my cookin’.”

  Bella smiled, feeling better already. “Thank you.” She took the plate and headed back up to the conference room where she picked out a chair to settle in and watch the show. Truth be told, after the first half hour of watching the ROV move at a snail’s pace plunking down one transponder after another precisely one meter apart, she understood why Tucker thought she might be bored. Her eyes were heavy, and lunch had made her tummy full. Perhaps she’d rest her eyes for a moment.

  Bella had the sensation of being weightless, floating, arms and legs outstretched, hovering in an endless space of blue. The movement of the water as it gently pushed and pulled her back and forth, like a rocking chair moving with a slow and steady rhythm, was her only clue that she was indeed in water and not in some endless dreamscape. The water was like a bright blue sky overhead, sparkling as streams of sunlight filtered down through the surface.