by Roxie Rivera
The thought worried him, but he let it slide for now. He would get to that issue later, but first he wanted to know about what he had just seen on her screen. Eyes narrowed with suspicion, he asked, "Why are you looking at old sea charts?"
Her pouty lips parted, and he was sure she was going to lie to him again. She seemed to rethink her decision. "I'm going over some of Dad's old dive sites."
An invisible band squeezed his chest. James Pearson had been a self-made man who had parlayed his childhood love for the sea and his time in the Navy into a multi-million dollar sea excursion and recovery operation. He had been an avid treasure hunter and thrill seeker who had sought out the wildest experiences possible on the planet. Leland had known James fairly well because of Peyton and Jamie's friendship. He remembered some of the wickedly dangerous tales the older man had told him at barbecues over the years. Some of the close calls James had survived were legendary, but that final, fatal adventure of his had nearly claimed Jamie's life.
"Why are the dive sites so interesting to you?" He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer. "Please tell me you aren't considering taking a boat out to one of his old diving spots."
She averted her gaze and switched off her tablet. Pushing out of her chair, she muttered, "I've already been to most of them."
"Jamie!"
"What?"
"It's outrageously dangerous. You don't know the first thing about—"
"I'm not the same young woman you tossed out of your bedroom five years ago, Leland," she interjected with a huff of frustration. "I've gone to diving school. I've learned to pilot boats. I've skydived thirty-seven times and bungee-jumped twenty-eight. Even down into Victoria Falls," she added. "I can navigate like a champ and shoot pretty darn straight. I've kept up the rock climbing, and I've run long-distance races all around the world. I've salvaged two shipwrecks, too."
He looked at her, really looked at her, and realized that the shorter hair wasn't the only thing different about her since that day they had collided in the entryway of his parents' house. Thinking back to the few run-ins they had had over the years, he recognized the subtle changes that had been taking place right before his eyes. She possessed that sort of confidence that came from accomplishing daring feats. The mischievous spark in her eyes mirrored his own. It was the sort of spark borne from the exhilaration of surviving something truly terrifying and feeling alive. Maybe they weren't as different as he had always imagined.
A sudden thought struck him. "Is this why you left college after one semester?"
She ran her finger along the edge of her tablet. "I tried to make it work, but I couldn't get my head right. Peyton came back to our dorm room after that first day of class, and she was, like, glowing and couldn't stop smiling. She absolutely loved the lectures and the reading and the projects. She was in her element, but me? I was lost." She tapped her finger against the screen. "Hell, maybe I still am."
"I know that how that goes." His voice dipped a bit as he experienced a tremor of uncertainty at being so honest with her. "I love Mom, Dad, and Peyton, but I sometimes find myself wondering about my biological parents. I wonder why my mother couldn't stay clean, and why my father just walked away after one supervised visit with the court. I always felt loved and safe and at home with my family, but sometimes I feel like I'm looking for something that's just beyond my reach."
She nodded as if she understood. "I wanted to know why Dad was always running out the door for some new adventure. I wanted to know why skydiving and treasure hunting was more important than being around for my cello recital or my mom's birthday."
His heart ached for her. His real father had abandoned him the first chance he got, and her father had chosen an adrenaline rush over being present in his only child's life. "Did you find your answers?"
Her gaze skipped away from his face to a spot on the wall. "Not all of them."
His curiosity piqued, he watched her walk out of the kitchen and into the sleeping area of the cabin. She was hiding something from him, but he didn’t think he would get anything out of her tonight. As tired as he was, his interrogation skills weren't at their best. She was wily enough to make him work hard for the information he wanted.
"So, um, the bed situation," Jamie said as she slipped her tablet into the suitcase sitting on the bench along the foot of the bed.
He considered the comfortable bed and the short, lumpy couch. Though his aching knee and sore side pained him, he refused to pull the wounded card. "I'll take the couch."
She frowned at him. "That's hardly fair. Let's rock-paper-scissors it. Best out of three wins their choice of sleeping accommodation."
He figured his chances at a good night's sleep were better if they went that route. "All right."
Standing across from each other, they held out their fists and counted to three. The first round, his paper beat her rock, but she won the second with a rock to his scissors. Tied, he decided she was probably going to throw out a rock again and chose paper.
"Yes!" She squealed happily while making a cutting motion with her two fingers. She playfully blew a raspberry. "Loser!"
He picked up the closest pillow and whacked her with it before carrying it to the couch. "Talk about bad sportsmanship, Jamie."
She gasped with outrage at being smacked with the pillow and thumped his arm with her small fist. "Brute!"
Laughing, he whipped free the thin throw tossed over the back of the couch. He heard the bathroom door close behind him and the splash of water in the sink a few seconds later. While he waited for Jamie to finish brushing her teeth, he stripped out of his shirt and jeans and slid into a pair of loose fitting shorts.
"Holy—what happened to you?" Jamie's outburst startled him. He found her standing next to the bed, gawking at his naked chest and side. "Did you get shot?"
He pressed a hand to the healing wound that had caught her attention. "It's just a graze from a ricochet."
Her lips settled into a grim line. "Did that happen the same time you got tossed down two flights of stairs?"
"No, this happened about two minutes before I went ass over tea kettle down the stairs."
Her lips curved into a sad little frown. "I'm really glad you didn't go see Peyton first. She would flip out if she saw you like this. Like—I'm about to start crying from counting up the scars I can see, but Peyton? She would lose it."
Leland didn't doubt that Peyton would lose it if she got a good look at the roadmap of scars on his body, but it was Jamie's remark and the shiny wetness to her pretty eyes that made his heart flip-flop in his chest. "It's all part of the job, Jamie."
"My dad's job had risks like that. You remember how well that ended for him." Gesturing to the bed behind her, she said, "I'm taking the couch. You can have the bed."
"I lost the match."
"And I won and I want the couch," she replied.
"Jamie—"
"No, Leland." She strode by him and hopped over the top of the couch, crashing down on the floppy cushions like a carefree frat boy. Wiggling her hips, she settled into a comfortable spot and pulled the thin blanket up to her shoulders. With an exaggerated, contented sigh, she closed her eyes. "So freaking comfy!"
Snorting, he shook his head and made his way to the bathroom. After going through his nightly routine, he checked the front door and windows and shut off all the lights. He gratefully sank down on the plush, wide mattress and sprawled right in the center of it. His throbbing knee welcomed the extra pillow he shoved beneath it. He hated babying the damned thing, but it was better to be gentle with his knee than to risk a career-ending injury.
The stillness of the cabin left him tense and uneasy. Usually, he was the kind of man who could sleep anywhere—curled up in a cold, wet cave, bouncing around in the bed of a speeding truck, smashed into the noisy, shaking confines of a helicopter—but tonight sleep eluded him. The sound of Jamie's slow breaths filled his ears. She wasn't asleep yet either. He could almost hear the wheels in her head turning.
Eventually her soft voice drifted toward him. "You rescued the crew of the MV Thetis."
His heart skipped a beat. How the hell had she pieced that together? Glad for the darkness, he answered calmly, "No."
"Bullshit."
He smiled at the hint of amusement in her voice. "No."
"Whatever." He imagined those coffee brown eyes of hers rolling with frustration. "I know you have to keep your secrets, but I also know a guy who knows a guy who was onboard the Thetis. I ran into them at a bar before I left Punta Cana last week. The crew had taken their families on a vacation down there, all expenses paid by the shipping line, apparently. Anyway. I heard the story about the firefight. Your wound is in the right stage of healing for the timeline. I also heard that one of the SEALs took down three armed men with bare hands after he got thrown down a flight of stairs. That sound familiar?"
He didn't say anything. She was right about all of it.
"I realize you didn't become a SEAL for the glory or the public adoration, but you should know that Ryan and the rest of the crew toasted your team until the bar closed. He showed me pictures of his three daughters and his wife. You did a really amazing thing for those men and their families, Leland."
He tried to swallow around the ball of emotion clogging his throat. The covert and astoundingly dangerous work he and his teammates did was grueling and often thankless. But she was correct. They didn't do it for the glory or the fame. It was a calling for the elite group of men who survived the cut. Even so, he couldn't deny the surge of pride that hit him upon hearing her words.
Clearing his throat and changing the subject, he asked, "What were you doing in the Dominican Republic?"
Six long seconds of silence stretched between them. "You're not the only one who gets to keep secrets, Leland."
Frowning, he pushed up on his elbows and stared at the silhouette of the couch. "That's different. My work is classified."
"My work is my business." She spoke with an edge of finality. Whatever she was doing near Punta Cana, she didn't want him to ask any questions. He suspected something had happened there that had spurred her decision to hide out in the cabin and shut off her cell phone.
Blowing out an exasperated breath, he said, "You can trust me, Jamie. I can help you if you'll just let me."
"You don't want to get tangled up in this, Leland. It's my mess to sort out."
"You don't have to do everything alone."
"Says the guy who chose to hole up in the middle of nowhere to lick his wounds all by his lonesome instead of staying with his family that absolutely adores him?"
She had him there. "Listen, I—arrgh!"
His thigh picked that exact moment to cramp up something fierce. Gritting his teeth, he growled with pain and clutched at his knotted muscles through the top sheet. "Shit!"
With speed that surprised him, Jamie flicked on the lamp closest to the couch and vaulted over the top like an Olympic hurdler. She rushed to his side and gazed down at him with concern. "Is it your knee?"
He gritted his teeth. "My thigh."
"It's the way you're favoring that bum knee of yours. You're putting a lot of stress on your legs."
"It's not a bum knee," he growled unkindly.
She shot him a look but said nothing. Instead, she walked to her suitcase, unzipped the pouch on the front and retrieved a small tube of lotion. With the tube in one hand, she grasped the sheet and yanked it down to uncover him completely. The pain in his leg was momentarily forgotten as she crawled onto the bed and perched between his ankles. In his dreams, she had never looked more alluring than this moment.
Her hand moved toward his shorts but she didn’t touch him. "May I push these out of the way?"
"That depends on what you have in mind," he said, his voice huskier and his heart beating faster as all sorts of sexy possibilities raced through his mind.
She rolled her eyes. "I’m pretty sure what I have in mind isn't what you're thinking about right now."
"Can you blame me?" He was a hot-blooded man who hadn't been with a woman in months, and now the only woman who had ever starred in his fevered fantasies was slowly pushing the fabric of his shorts out of the way to bare his thigh.
"This will probably be uncomfortable at first," she warned and worked a dollop of lotion between her palms to warm it. "Last year, I got tripped up in some rope on a dock in Haiti and tumbled right off the edge and into the water. I got my leg all twisted up in the rope and damn near drowned before I managed to hack my way free with a diving knife I happened to have on me. I didn't even realize I'd slammed my knee and thigh into the dock until a fisherman who had seen me go under helped drag me to safety."
He winced with sympathy. "It's the adrenaline."
"Well, when the adrenaline rush faded, I thought I was going to die. Getting to the closest hospital was the most excruciating drive of my life." She shook her head and started to massage his cramping thigh. "The roads were terrible, and my leg was bouncing all over the place. It was pointless. The docs couldn't even x-ray me."
Trying not to think about how good her small hands felt gliding over his skin, he made an educated guess. "No electricity?"
She nodded. "It was a nightmare. They examined me as best they could and loaded me up with painkillers. One of the guys from my boat crew found a pilot who was willing to fly me to Port-au-Prince. By the time the boat finally made it to the capitol to join me, I was able to hobble onboard with crutches, but my thighs, hips, and shoulders were killing me by the end of every day. All that rocking, you know? It's a bitch when you're struggling to stay upright by balancing on two sticks and one good leg."
"Why didn't you just fly home?"
"Do you know what it costs to outfit a boat for shipwreck hunting? Or how much time it takes to put together a solid crew?" She gently increased the pressure of her hands as they worked his knotted muscles. "After all the time that went into putting together that trip, I wasn't going to let a bad sprain and a bruise sideline me. We sailed on to Samana Bay. By the time we reached the Dominican Republic, I was so freaking thankful I had hired a cook who used to work as a massage therapist at one of the swanky hotels on Montego Bay. Every night, he'd toss me down onto the dining table and work out all the kinks for me before bed. He was worth every penny."
Leland's jaw clenched as she gushed over the masseuse. A flash of jealousy burned through him at the mere thought of some guy rubbing his hands all over Jamie's body. "It sounds like he worked on more than some sore hip muscles."
She pinched his thigh hard enough to make him hiss and took her magical hands away from his aching leg. "If you're going to be a jerk about it—"
"No," he said quickly and snatched at her hand, catching her slick fingers. "I'm sorry."
"You're better than that, you know?"
"Obviously not," he replied, the tips of his ears flushing red. "I let my jealousy get the better of me."
She studied his face for an agonizingly long moment before finally putting her hands back on his throbbing thigh. She worked her palms up and down his tight flesh, pressing hard and easing the ache from his body. "You have no reason to be jealous of Hurley. I'm not his type." She eyed the front of his shorts. "But you sure are."
"Oh." He ducked his head so she wouldn't see his embarrassment spreading. Somehow Jamie managed to reduce him to a stumbling kid who couldn't stop putting his foot in his mouth.
"More?" she asked, increasing the pressure as she kneaded his thigh.
"Yes." He leaned back and let the tension ease of out of his back and shoulders. "Did you find your shipwreck in Samana Bay?"
"It was exactly where Dad's maps said it would be."
"But?" He sensed there was more to this story.
"It wasn't the right one."
"How can it not be the right one if you found it exactly where it was supposed to be?"
Her gaze remained glued to his thigh as her skillful hands moved over him. His entire body hummed with a languid sort
of vibration. He opened his mouth to prod her a little, but she finally answered him.
"Before Dad took me climbing with him that last time, I found this old book and some ancient looking maps in his office. The maps were in English and French, but the book was in Spanish. Thank goodness Mom insisted that I take all those foreign language courses, right?"
Squeezing another dollop of lotion onto her palm, she said, "I flipped through the book and glanced at the maps, but I didn't think much of them until after…" She couldn't bring herself to say it, but she didn't need to because he knew what she meant. After his death. "And then it was too late to ask Dad what he thought he had found out there."
"And what did he think he had found?"
"The night before we buried Dad, I sat in his office chair until sunrise and read the book cover to cover and studied his maps. Somehow, some way, he had puzzled out the location of a Spanish shipwreck that people have been trying to find since the 1600s. The shipwreck," she emphasized. "Like the shipwreck and salvage to end all shipwrecks and salvages. It was going to be his prize and the splashy recovery that would make put him in the record books."
Her slick hands moved to his calf. She carefully avoided his slightly swollen knee as she massaged the lower part of his leg. He waited for her to continue her story, certain there was some juicy part coming up next. She didn't disappoint him.
"That first week after he was gone, I read through his journals to feel close to him, but then they made me really angry. I was thumbing through them one morning, and I realized he kept these meticulous notes of his adventures but you know what he said about me?"
Leland shook his head.
She lifted her hand and scribbled on the air with her pointer finger. "December 1—Junior's birthday. Michelle went overboard with party. Gave kiddo one gold doubloon. She smiled." Blinking rapidly, she dropped her hand to his calf and resumed her massage. "Fifteen fucking pages describing the hurricane he sailed through off the coast of Cuba and one line for my thirteenth birthday. That's what I meant to him."
"Jamie," he said gently, his heart breaking for her. "He loved you."