by Gail Hart
“Thanks, coach.”
Disconnecting the call, Kathryn let out a theatrical sigh. The handwriting was on the wall. Amanda’s biological clock was ticking. Soon the former wild child would marry her accountant, settle down, and start popping out little tax deductions. Sure, they’d still be friends, but the relationship would change. Up to now, Amanda had been the party animal of the two. Now, heaven help them, Kathryn was turning into the wild one.
* * *
Dressed in a brightly colored but modestly cut tank-style bathing suit, Kathryn walked barefoot down the dock to the dive boat. A slight chill in the air reminded her that although Grand Cayman was south of Cuba, it was still winter here. She savored the feel of the warmth rising from the boards, and of her composure returning. Aside from her talk with Amanda, a hot shower, a bagel with cream cheese, and a cup of black coffee, very hot and very strong, had made a world of difference. She felt almost like herself again.
Since she’d been diving with the same company all week, her equipment was waiting on the boat. She climbed aboard and crossed to the far rail, where her gear was set up. First she checked the straps of her buoyancy compensator, the inflatable jacket holding her air tank in place, to be sure the tank was securely fastened. Then she attached her regulator to the tank, turned on the air, and checked her pressure gauge to be sure the tank was full. Satisfied, she sat down on the bench in front of the tanks and began pulling on her wetsuit. As she worked, she looked around her.
Today’s divemasters were Irina, a Russian whose stately blonde beauty would have made Kathryn want to slap her if she hadn’t been so helpful, and Derek, a muscle-bound Aussie. In contrast to other mornings, when it had been jam-packed, the boat was a third empty.
“I see my buddy is missing. I may have to tag along with you,” she said to Irina. Not that she minded. Although she was an experienced diver and didn’t need supervision, a guided dive now and then was fun. The divemasters knew how to find the most rare and exotic fish.
“That won’t be necessary. I’ve found you another buddy for the morning,” Irina answered in heavily accented English.
Kathryn frowned. “I hope this guy isn’t a bozo.” Diving with someone unfamiliar was unsettling, because to a certain extent, your life was in your dive buddy’s hands.
Irina look pleased with herself. “I don’t think you’ll object to this gentleman.” The younger woman’s face lit up. “Oh, here he is now.”
Kathryn turned and saw Steve ambling onto the deck, the sunlight making his hair shine like polished gold. Her stomach did a swan dive and her body tingled. Damn! Just when she was getting her equilibrium back. Struggling to keep her voice normal, she said, “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to say hi to an old friend?” He didn’t appear the least bit fooled by her prickly attitude. His tone mocked her, and his smile seemed to say, you can run but you can’t hide.
“You know what I mean. You haven’t been diving with us up to now, and this boat is completely booked.”
“Yeah. But I figured there’d be some cancellations and I’d be able to snag a slot.”
“What about your regular dive buddy?”
“Murph? He’s still passed out cold.”
“And your gear?”
He pointed to some unfamiliar equipment attached to a tank a few spaces down from hers. “I brought it over after Irina let me sign on.”
An unreasonably upsetting image popped into her mind of Irina and Steve together, a matched set of blond giants. Kathryn’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll bet you got her to agree by smiling at her.”
Steve sat down next to Kathryn and gave her the smile. “Is there something wrong with smiling?”
“In your case, yes. That smile should be illegal. At the very least you should be required to register it as a deadly weapon.”
“My mama taught me to be friendly. By the way, she says ‘Hi.’ I told her I’d seen you.”
“You did?” Despite herself, Kathryn felt the color rising on her cheeks. This was why she’d wanted her boy toy to be someone she didn’t know.
Steve leaned closer and rested a hand on her shoulder, making her shiver. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her how much of you I’d seen.”
His nearness was so distracting she found it hard to breathe, much less speak. “No, of course not...”
He lowered his voice. “But I’d have liked to. I’m so happy I’d like to tell the whole world. If I didn’t have to be a gentleman, I’d post it on a billboard, or take out a full page add in the Washington Post, or get a skywriter to spell it out over the channel between here and Little Cayman.”
She jerked away from his touch. “The Washington Post? Are you assigned in the D.C. area?”
“Yes, ma’am. At Andrews Air Force Base.”
Oh God! On top of everything else, he lived almost in her backyard. Of course, Washington was a big city. She hadn’t run into him in the past, and there was no reason to think she would in the future.
If not running into him was what she wanted.
It had to be. Back in her real world, this man would be a huge distraction, not to mention hazardous to her mental health.
As the boat pulled away from the dock, Kathryn leaned back against the railing and closed her eyes. She didn’t open them again until the boat came to a stop at a dive site Irina identified as Neptune’s Wall. While she made her final dive preparations, turning on her air and putting on her mask and fins, she listened to Irina’s dive briefing.
To her annoyance, she had trouble concentrating. She kept being distracted by Steve’s muscled torso. How was it possible for one man to look so delicious? And why wouldn’t her hormones obey her order to stop running amok?
Nothing was distracting Steve, though. He seemed totally absorbed in what Irina was saying. Or maybe totally absorbed in Irina.
So what? Kathryn had no claim on Steve. She had no right to care if he was interested in another woman.
Trouble was, she did care. Damn it all to hell, she cared a lot.
They were among the first buddy teams into the water. At the shallower depths, brightly colored tropical fish, moray eels, and the Cayman Islands’ trademark turtles abounded. The couple made their way to the wall, where the continental shelf extended down over a thousand feet. Kathryn admired how Steve moved through the water as smoothly as a fish, his breathing through the regulator slow and controlled.
After a little over half an hour, they returned to the boat. With her eyes on her dive computer, Kathryn did a three-minute safety stop at thirty feet, then swam up to the ladder and climbed onto the boat. She peeled the sleeves of her wet suit off her arms to get some sun, moved her gear to a new tank for the second dive, and sat down to enter data about the dive into her logbook.
Steve’s voice came from behind her shoulder. “Your safety stop was too short, buddy.”
Kathryn shifted to face him as he lowered himself next to her on the bench. “Bullshit. I took a full three minutes.”
“At this depth you should take at least five. And speaking of depth, you busted the 110-foot depth limit.”
She rolled her eyes. “I only went to 112 feet. Besides, no one pays any attention to the 110 foot depth limit. The 110-foot depth limit is fascist.”
He looked amused. “Fascist?”
“Yes, fascist. The government here wants to spoil our fun by restricting us to 110 feet, when science tells us 130 feet is perfectly safe. I wouldn’t expect you flyboys to pay the least bit of attention to a silly rule like the 110-foot depth limit.”
“We flyboys have to follow all kinds of rules, even if we sometimes push the envelope.”
Kathryn shrugged. “If you say so.” She reached under the bench, pulled up a plastic bottle of SPF-30 sunscreen, and began spreading it on her left arm.
Steve stopped her by grabbing her right hand. “That’s my job.”
She shot him a skeptical look. “How do you figure?”
“Sunburn
is the most common diving injury. I can’t let that happen to my buddy. I need to take care of every inch of exposed skin.”
Her muscles tensed. This was so confusing. Her inner good girl felt she ought to tell him to keep his paws to himself. But that other part of her, her newfound inner slut, wanted him to touch her all over, and she did mean all over.
It was no contest. “I wouldn’t want to be overexposed,” Kathryn said, extending her arms in his direction.
True to his word, he didn’t miss a spot. Lubricated by the lotion, his warm hands slid over her, caressing her arms, shoulders, throat, neck, face, and finally her back. His fingers tested the edges of her bathing suit at every opportunity, and she imagined them slipping further down her body. She managed to ignore the heat spreading through her until he moved behind her to massage her shoulders, but when his strong hands began kneading the knots out of her neck muscles, she couldn’t help moaning.
“My Kat is purring,” he said.
“Shut up,” she growled.
“Yes, ma’am.” He made no effort to keep the laughter out of his voice. “So, what was your favorite thing we saw on this dive?”
“If I tell you, you’ll laugh.”
“Probably, but tell me anyway.”
She leaned back against his chest. “You know I can’t say no to you. It was those two huge queen angelfish near the end. I love angelfish. They’re so beautiful.”
He squeezed her shoulders. “A good choice, Katie. A very good choice. Do you know why we always see angelfish in pairs?”
“No, why?”
Resting his cheek against the side of her head, his voice seductive, he whispered, “Because they mate for life.”
CHAPTER FOUR
For life? Oh, please.
Kathryn stood up and pretended to examine her pressure gauge for a few seconds, then looked at Steve. “Very funny. Do girls your own age get all gooey-eyed when you feed them that line?”
His smile dimmed a few megawatts. “What line? We were talking about fish.”
“Sure you were.” She touched his upper arm, willing herself not to notice the definition of his muscles. “You don’t have to play games with me. I know what you and I are about, and I’m cool with it.”
His tone stayed playful, but his jaw muscles tightened just perceptibly. “So you know it all, Katie?”
Before she could tell him to stop calling her that, they were interrupted by the metal-on-metal clang of Derek pounding on a tank. “Listen up, mates,” the divemaster said in his yummy Australian accent. “Rumor has it some of you were over-served last night, so we’ll do an easy second dive. We’re going to Stingray City.”
Kathryn headed for the weight bin, knowing she’d need extra lead for the shallow dive on the sandbar where the Southern Stingrays came to feed. She listened as Derek explained the ins and outs of diving Stingray City. How to accept squid from the divemasters. How to feed it to the stingrays, which didn’t bite. How to avoid the squid-stealing yellow snappers, which did.
Once in the water, Kathryn settled on the bottom, accepted a handful of squid from Irina, and hid it in a clenched fist. Detecting the squid by smell, a four-foot stingray approached her. She moved her fist, making the creature dance through the water, before opening her hand so it could eat. Its soft underbelly, where the mouth was, felt like velvet. She watched it flap its wings and swim away, then grabbed another clump of squid to repeat the process. Around her, other divers were busy at the same game.
After forty-five minutes of play, they’d run out of squid, the stingrays had taken off for the deep water, and the divers were back on the boat headed for the hotel dock. Kathryn took care of her gear, then found a seat in the sunny stern of the boat. She leaned back and shut her eyes but opened them again at the sound of Steve’s voice. “That was awesome.”
“Totally.” Kathryn smiled at him. His enthusiasm was endearing. She found herself blurting out, “They remind me of you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“They’re big and beautiful and gentle.”
His smile turned soft. He picked up her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed her palm. “And you have them eating out of your hand.”
Suddenly the moment felt too intimate. Kathryn shifted gears. “And they have very impressive tails.”
He let go of her hand. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Go on the afternoon dive, have dinner, and make an early night of it.”
“Have dinner with me.”
She fixed her hungry gaze on his mouth. “Room service?”
A flush rose on his cheeks. “No. I want to take you somewhere nice.”
“But I like you better with less clothing than would be acceptable in a restaurant.”
His body stiffened. “Forget the whole thing.” He jerked around and walked away.
Damn it! She’d pissed him off. Kathryn pretended to study her dive computer as she thought over the conversation and grew increasingly confused. It had been a mistake to send Steve mixed messages by implying she was attracted to him for reasons that went beyond lust. But she hadn’t expected him to get upset when she went back to sexual innuendo. What was up with that?
She raised her head when she heard Steve and Irina talking. In Russian.
In Russian?
Yes, he was talking to the divemaster in Russian. And whatever he said was making her laugh, a silvery, infectious sound. A sound that made Kathryn grit her teeth.
When the boat docked, Steve walked past Kathryn without acknowledging her presence. He stuffed his gear into his dive bag, slung the bag over his shoulder as if it were weightless, and stepped from the boat to the dock.
Kathryn followed him. “You speak Russian?”
He turned and made eye contact. “Yes. Russian and Serbo-Croatian, plus a few other languages. That was my job as an enlisted man. I was a translator.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.” She wouldn’t have pegged him for a job that relied more on brain than brawn. Apparently there was more to him than met the eye.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I’m not just another pretty face.”
* * *
Oh hell. This wasn’t going the way it was supposed to. Katie had moved from his fantasies to his bed, but she didn’t want to stay. All she wanted from him was a good time.
A muscle in his cheek twitched as he thought of the piece of paper he’d found on the floor after Katie left his room. A list of her sexual fantasies, apparently—and one that suggested her sex life up to now had been plain vanilla. A problem he’d be happy to help her with. He’d have considered this roadmap to her libido a goldmine—except for the title. Okay, so she must have written the list before they ran into each other, but her attitude on the boat this morning confirmed the message. The woman of his dreams didn’t take him seriously.
No one had ever taken him seriously. Not that he could blame them. Until recently, he hadn’t taken himself seriously. He’d slid by on his looks and his charm, expecting the world to shower him with unconditional love the way his family did. And most of the time, the world had gone along with the plan.
But now he was growing up. Even he was surprised. He’d cut back on the drinking when he’d started flight school, and on the women when he’d graduated. Not because anyone was pressuring him to clean up his act, but because the constant partying had gotten... well, boring. He wanted more. He’d found a sense of purpose in his professional life, but his personal life was lagging behind. He was ready for a serious relationship with a woman who’d be an equal partner. Someone sexy yet smart. Fun yet reliable.
Someone like Katie.
Yes, he realized, unconsciously that’s what he’d been looking for—a younger version of Katie. But none of the eligible women eager to volunteer for the job had seemed right. Now he understood why. His heart had been saying, accept no substitutes. Hold out for the real thing.
Steve was a patient man. He was willing
to give the rest of the world time to notice he’d matured. But Katie was a different story. Boy toy, his ass. He wouldn’t take that from her. He had to come up with a plan to make her take him seriously now. Turning around, he stalked off at a pace he knew she couldn’t match without running, not giving her a glance.
* * *
The sun was low in the sky when Kathryn entered the hotel gift shop, wearing a sarong over her tank suit and carrying a canvas tote. Her just-completed afternoon dive with the regular crowd hadn’t been anywhere near as much fun as her morning dives with Steve. Even out of bed, the kid was fun to be around. He was good for her ego, and he made her laugh.
Too bad she’d screwed up her chances of getting him to help her cross more items off her to-do list. The way he’d sulked off after the second dive, it was clear there was no point in stocking up on condoms. With a sigh, she passed them by and walked to the rack of paperback books. She’d have to make do with a romance novel—the hotter, the better. After looking at several titles, she picked up the one with the steamiest cover and moved on to look at the selection of colorful beachwear.
Without warning, she sensed Steve’s presence behind her—sensed it from the way goose bumps formed on her arms and her nipples snapped to attention. Then his hand landed lightly on her shoulder and his voice, mere inches from her ear, said, “You never gave me an answer to my dinner invitation.”
She slipped the incriminating novel into her tote and pivoted to face him. He wore his swim trunks and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt that showed off his washboard abs. The day’s sun had left a faint flush on his face. Lord, he looked fine.
Kathryn forced her thoughts away from his physique and back to his question. “The way you were pouting, I was under the impression you’d withdrawn your invitation.”
He smiled a slow smile that turned her insides to Jello. “Guys don’t pout. I was standing up for myself. I didn’t agree to your terms, but the invitation still stands, on my terms. No more sex until we get to know each other better.”
Kathryn rolled her eyes. “Let me get this straight. You’re pissed off because I offered you what men always say they want: an uncomplicated hook-up without any hint of commitment?” She shook her head. “Men are so perverse.”
