Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Gillian jerked her wrist free, but she’d lost the burning desire to duct-tape Shane to the navigation seat and kick him senseless. Sure, they shared a mutual attraction, but they’d agreed this wasn’t the time or place for it to go anywhere, even if they wanted it to.

  And Gillian didn’t. She wasn’t looking for a relationship. Not a loner by nature, she’d worked hard at becoming one over the past five years. She’d let Vivian in because the woman didn’t understand the concept of “leave me alone,” but no one else. Her heart wasn’t ready for anyone new; her mind sure wasn’t ready. It might never be, and she was at peace with that.

  Jagger pointed her toward the master suite’s tiny bathroom. “Use the shower, and then come back to the salon. Luckily, Harley will cook after we hit open water, but tonight, it’s you and me. I’m a sandwich-making ninja.” He stepped aside to make way for Tank, who’d observed the exchange from the passageway and finally decided to come inside the suite.

  “Don’t let him piss on Shane’s bed,” Jagger said with a grin, then closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with her dog and her tangle of thoughts.

  Gillian sat on the bed, inspecting her knees for splinters. “We’ll just have to figure out a way to make this work, Tank.” She pulled out a sliver of wood. “And you. Make an effort, please. You are not helping my case by mauling the man who seems to be making all the rules.”

  Tank jumped on the bed, sniffed it from end to end, and turned three times before slumping on the pillows. He was snoring within seconds. Gillian picked up a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the top of one of the built-in nightstands and considered pouring it out. Instead, she unscrewed the top and took a sip. A sweet, smoky heat filled her mouth and burned its way down her throat.

  As long as she was plundering, she might as well do it properly.

  She paused to listen for any signs of life outside the door—or at least any that were audible above Tank’s vigorous snores—but heard nothing. She peeked inside a cedar-lined closet that smelled of tangy wood and housed neat stacks of clothes, heavy on denim. Most of the hanging clothes were shirts. A couple of pairs of running shoes lay on the floor, alongside a pile of fins and diving masks.

  Well, that wasn’t very illuminating. All she learned was that Shane Burke was neat, and she could’ve guessed that from the state of The Evangeline in general. Except for the messy pile of maps she’d seen in the pilothouse on her first visit, nothing seemed to be out of place.

  Tugging open the deep nightstand drawer, she expected to see the rat’s nest of stuff people always collect in such hideaways. Instead, the drawer revealed a deep, dark secret. Shane Burke, Mr. Bossy Diver, was a chocoholic. A serious one. At least thirty or forty bars of all varieties filled the drawer, stacked with obsessive neatness. Big gourmet squares piped full of salted caramel or mint or raspberry or orange. A lidless cigar box stuffed with foil-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses. Bars of exotic darks and creamy whites. Milk chocolate with various assortments of nuts. And those were just the ones she could see without disturbing his meticulous drawer packing.

  No wonder his kisses had a hint of sweetness. His veins were pumping half blood, half cocoa.

  The thought of those kisses sapped her amusement and reminded her that his talented mouth had kissed her one minute and lied to her the next about the fact that his dive-trip plans didn’t include her.

  She picked a small chocolate bite from the drawer, unwrapped it, and let it melt on her tongue, savoring the sweetness even as she indulged in a moment of sour thoughts about Shane, aka Old Cocoa Breath. Oh well, she could at least wash off the blood before she saw him again. Maybe by then she’d decide whether she wanted to play nice or fight dirty.

  What the shower lacked in space or water pressure, it made up for in heat. The hot water relaxed her tense muscles, and she inhaled the aroma of the shower gel and the shampoo sitting next to it on the little shelf. It was the scent she’d unconsciously come to associate with Shane—citrus, with an overlay of ginger. Thinking about him in this shower, those broad shoulders coming within a nanoparticle of brushing the sides of the stall, water streaming down his chest…and fury erupting from his eyes.

  Get a grip. The man was a Neanderthal who had somehow made this whole venture about himself. If he thought he could shut her out again once they reached Wilmington, he had a lesson to learn. She didn’t care how into her he might be.

  She poured a dollop of shampoo into her palm, spread it through her hair, and dug her fingers in, working up a vigorous lather. The more she thought, the harder she scrubbed. Now that she couldn’t see his charming, boyish grin, Jagger’s tall tale struck her as a desperate attempt at peacemaking. He’d concocted that whole distraction theory because he didn’t want Gillian to storm into the pilothouse, berate his buddy Shane, and create drama. Jagger hadn’t wanted Shane to overhear what he told Gillian because his little distraction story was a complete fabrication.

  She closed her eyes and stepped underneath the hot spray to rinse her hair, letting the warm streams of water heat her body—at least until her heart rate stutter-stepped in shock. The water had suddenly turned ice cold. By the time she fully registered the temperature change, the showerhead was dry as the Sahara. What the hell?

  Suds ran into her eyes when she opened them, burning her corneas and sending tears down her cheeks. The shower head went in and out of focus as if she were looking through a pair of cheap binoculars. She reached up and adjusted the settings. Turned the faucet off and back on. Thumped on the nozzle. Nothing.

  Awesome. She not only had globs of shampoo in her hair, but she’d broken Shane’s shower. This was likely to cause a distraction.

  Gillian opened the frosted glass door, tripped over the toilet, and caught herself on the sink. One good thing about showers made for hobbits: one couldn’t actually fall unimpeded.

  There also wasn’t room to bend over and rinse out her hair in the shallow sink, at least not comfortably, but she tried. By the time she finished getting the biggest soapy mounds of shampoo from her hair with the faucet’s grudging trickle of cool water, she was shivering and wondering why she hadn’t brought clothes into the bathroom. Not that there was room to dress.

  Turning around, she cracked her elbow on the shower stall door. The world stopped for a second while the frosted glass rattled in its metal frame. If she’d destroyed the door as well as the shower, Shane wouldn’t have to toss her off the boat. She’d jump and save him the trouble.

  It stopped rattling and settled back into place. Relieved, Gillian squeezed as much water from her hair as she could, then wrapped the damp towel around her goose-pimpled body. She couldn’t wait to get topside and let the warm sea air chase away the chill.

  She opened the door only to see Tank sitting upright in the middle of the bed, his body tense, his upper lip curled to expose big white teeth.

  Uh-oh.

  Gillian poked her head out the door and followed Tank’s laser-beam vision to Shane, who stood next to the bed, stuffing the last of a miniature Snickers bar in his mouth and glaring back at the dog.

  “Hi.” Brilliant, Campbell. You can sound more intelligent than that. “I broke your shower.”

  He flicked his gaze to the bathroom door, slid it to her face, then let it take a leisurely wander down to her bare feet and back up again. She stifled the urge to feel the bottom of the towel and make sure the vital bits were covered.

  He didn’t comment on the shower; he didn’t comment on anything. He chewed his candy bar and looked at her with enough heat in his eyes to erase any residual chill she might be feeling. In fact, the room was awfully warm. Who needed sea air?

  They both jumped at the thump of Tank hitting the floor as he hopped off the bed and padded over to sit between them. Thank God, a distraction. Shane had it all wrong. Distractions were good.

  “What happened to the shower?” Shane walked around her and peered in the bathroom door. “I heard a crash. Did you fall? Oh, wait. Let me rephra
se that. Did you fall—again?”

  She’d almost given herself a concussion on the edge of the sink. “Not technically. There’s not enough room to actually hit the floor.”

  He coughed to cover what sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “True enough. Talk to me about the shower; did it suddenly stop working?”

  Ah, maybe it was a recurring problem and not her fault at all. “It did. Turned ice cold for a few seconds and then just pffft—nothing.”

  “You were in there too long; it’s set to shut off after ten minutes to conserve the water supply.” He sidled around Tank. “Shipboard life, rule one: short showers.”

  If he was giving her rules, maybe he’d accepted that she was here for the duration. She could afford to be generous. She did need him, and Jagger had been right. The success or failure of the dive, and thus her ability to keep Holly safe, rested with him.

  “Look, I’m sorry for sneaking on board. It’s just that I feel so damned helpless.” The fear and anger and sadness of the past few days tangled into a big knot of pressure behind her eyes. If she ever began to cry, she didn’t think she could stop, so she mentally compacted the pressure and stuffed it down. “Being here makes me feel as if I’m doing something, even though I’m not.”

  Shane took a step closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. It was big and warm and strong. Gillian wanted nothing more than to take the implied invitation, move toward him, accept comfort.

  But Tank, who’d been sitting sandwiched between their legs, barked and jumped up, forcing them each to step backward.

  “Couldn’t you have boarded him or found a dogsitter?” Shane bared his teeth at Tank, who gave him teeth in return.

  “He just needs to settle down.” She didn’t want to make the pathetic confession that, other than Vivian, Tank had never been forced to share her attention with anyone else. “And I’ll work hard. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” As long as he didn’t try to bully her again, or lie to her.

  “There is something you can do, but…” Shane’s face flushed beneath his tan. “I think it would be easier if you were wearing clothes. You’re kind of…”

  “Ahhh, yeah.” Maybe Jagger had been telling the truth. Gillian didn’t plan to ask.

  “Meet me in the salon, back by the galley?”

  She smiled. “Sure. And don’t worry—I’m not planning to take over your bedroom. I can sleep anywhere.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Shane walked to the door and looked back with raised brows. “Just stay out of my chocolate drawer.”

  What? How could he—? As soon as the door closed and she’d had a chance to stand next to the drawer where Shane had been eating his Snickers bar, Gillian spotted the wadded-up foil of the Kiss she’d stolen. Busted.

  She dressed quickly, tugging on her favorite worn jeans and a long-sleeved red t-shirt. The Evangeline’s air-conditioning system worked well and kept things cooler than she was used to, working outside in the heat most of each day at the reserve.

  “Okay, mister.” Gillian sat on the edge of the bed and gave Tank a stern look. He gave her a stubborn, serious look in return. “You can stay here by yourself.” Bad idea; he might pee on Shane’s bed to make a statement, the way he always dowsed the door at the vet’s. “Or you can go with me and learn how to socialize. It’s okay if I have friends.”

  Friends. Ironic that she’d consider these guys her friends, but she did. Or at least she could pretend they were friends until reality slapped her upside the head again. She’d been slapped enough in the past few years to know it was inevitable.

  She was headed along the portside passage toward the galley, when the boat shuddered and jerked. Gillian caught herself on the wall and listened. The steady hum of the motor and soft whir of the air conditioning system sounded normal, so she continued on. Shane sat in one of the salon chairs, looking at a map of Canada’s eastern provinces. She’d studied that coastline enough in the past couple of days to recognize it from across the room.

  She peered into the galley. “Where’s Jagger?”

  Sandwich-making stuff and bags of chips sat on the short counter, alongside simple blue plates and mismatched silverware.

  Shane looked up from his map. “He went topside to see why we stopped. It’s probably nothing.”

  Gillian sat in the upholstered booth across from him. “You said there was something I could do to help? I really want to.”

  Shane pushed the map into the middle of the table. “I thought of it after you said you might have found some leads about your family genealogy online. Do you think you could do some research into who might have an interest in this cross and also who might have the power and money to go after it?”

  Gillian had stuck her laptop in her case as an afterthought, but it needed a Wi-Fi signal. Her smartphone didn’t, though. Maybe they’d be close enough to land the whole way up the coast to keep a steady stream of free wireless signals. “It has to be someone not only with money and power, but also completely without morals. Maybe a history of power mongering. Yeah, I can do that. Maybe we can all sit down and—”

  Shane looked away from her and frowned, and Gillian followed his gaze to the passageway. Jagger hurried toward them, his long hair loose and streaming over his shoulders. “We need you topside, Shane. Another boat flagged us down—forced Harley to pull up fast. They’re lucky we didn’t plow right over them.”

  Shane was already on his feet before Jagger got the last words out. “Is it another marine unit? We should be in Pinellas County jurisdiction by now.”

  Jagger looked at Gillian, then back at Shane, somber, all traces of boyish charm gone. “It’s not police or even Coast Guard. It’s two dudes with guns, demanding to talk to either you or Gillian.”

  CHAPTER 14

  First, the beast from hell had flattened him. Then he got caught with his hand in the candy drawer by an almost-naked woman and instead of kicking her out of his room, he had wanted to repossess his towel and kiss her. Now, some moron was waving a gun around and asking for him by name.

  Shane’s calm, reclusive life as a semipermanent member of the marginally employed had been blown to hell in less than seventy-two hours.

  No, make that a moron with a gun asking for him or Gillian, which meant it had something to do with the blackmail—but weren’t they already giving Tex everything he wanted?

  He hurried along the passageway and assumed Gillian was behind him, but when he turned to suggest she go to the pilothouse and retrieve his service weapon from underneath the navigation seat, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and neither was Jagger.

  An air of déjà vu swept over him as he strode through the door onto the portside deck and saw a small white vessel idling alongside The Evangeline. This one didn’t have a Levy County marine-unit logo on the side or a swaggering blue-uniformed fake deputy on board, however.

  Shane assessed the scene quickly, from the last dregs of sunset sinking in the west to the big overhead swing light that Harley had adjusted to illuminate the smaller boat. A young guy wearing a bandana, maybe early twenties, held a wavering shotgun on Harley, who stood with his legs apart and his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Shane’s friend looked anything but intimidated.

  The second guy on the small boat, wearing a Florida State baseball cap, might be older—maybe late thirties—but he held his shotgun in his arms more like an infant than a weapon. His eyes widened when he spotted Shane, but he still didn’t drop the gun into a firing position.

  Strictly amateur hour. Of course, amateurs with guns were probably more dangerous than experts. But whatever Tex and his employer wanted, Shane didn’t imagine it involved them being shot by a couple of yahoos before they found the treasure.

  “Harley, I’ll take it from here. Go back in the pilothouse.” And find the pistol, and get ready to move this boat, just in case I’m wrong.

  He walked nearer the side rails of The Evangeline. “I’m Shane Burke. What do you guys want?”

  Harley turn
ed and headed toward the door into the boat’s interior, and the younger guy swerved the shotgun toward Shane, who raised his hands. “Don’t get excited. I’m not armed.”

  The guy reached up to adjust the blue and white bandana, causing the gun barrel to wave precariously. These guys were worse than amateurs; they were idiots.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” Bandana said, his focus darting from Shane up to the pilothouse and back. “We just got an envelope to deliver to you or Gillian Campbell, and then we’ll be on our way home.”

  Couriers, then, which meant they probably didn’t know a thing. “Deliver an envelope from whom? Who hired you?”

  “I don’t know. Gary, give him the envelope.”

  “Don’t use my fuckin’ name, Chris.” Baseball Cap propped the shotgun against the side of the smaller boat and bent over to pull a thick packet from underneath a seat. He walked to the side of the boat nearest The Evangeline and tossed it onboard.

  The generic manila envelope landed with a splat and slid a couple of feet before coming to a stop, facedown. A metal clasp secured the back. Shane waited to see if it would explode or burst into flames, but from the shape of its contents and the way it landed, he guessed its precious cargo was a stack of papers.

  “What did the guy look like who hired you?” Shane made no move to pick up the envelope. If this delivery was the hapless Gary and Chris’s only task, they wouldn’t be hanging around so he needed to question them before they took off.

  “It was left for us on our boat,” Gary said, then turned to Chris. “Put down that dang-fool gun. You look like the redneck you are.”

  Yeah, well, neither of them would win any IQ contests. “How’d you know what to do with it?” Shane asked.

  “Some dude called me, but he didn’t give me a name.” Chris settled his shotgun on one of the boat’s bench seats. “Said he got my number from the marina we use over in Tarpon Springs and knew we fished this area. Offered us a bundle of cash to deliver an envelope, no questions asked.”