Beyond the Tide

by Noelle Marchand

  “Got it. Thank you, Neil.”

  “You’re welcome. Ava told me she’s willing to help with Swim For Safety. I’ll approach them with her offer, and we’ll see if that changes things.”

  Ian shook his head. “I can’t believe she remembered that at a time like this.”

  “You married a good one, Ian. She’s pure class, smart as a whip, and—”

  “I know. Believe me. I know.”

  “Congratulations, man. I’ll be in touch.”

  They ended the call just as Ava emerged from below deck. He immediately moved toward her, but she’d already spotted him and met him halfway. She’d restyled her hair, unleashing the beautiful dark waves from the previous ponytail. She’d stained her lips a slightly darker color and had done something to emphasize the shape and color of her eyes.

  She stilled at his perusal. Her fingers touched the blush on her cheeks. “It’s not too much? I thought I needed to go more casual, but my mom reminded me that there might not be much color in the photo except for what’s on my face. Plus, the engagement ring and wedding band are going to add a more formal feel. I need to match that if not surpass it.”

  “You’re gorgeous. What are we talking about, though?”

  “I need you to take a photo of me.” She handed him her cell phone. “I’m going to post it online to announce that I’m married. I don’t want it to look like a selfie. I asked Jane, but she was too nervous to do it. She said you and Justin used to take photos for Emily to post all the time, and they always came out looking nice. I guess I could ask the camera man. What was his name? Drake. He’s probably busy, though, and I need it right away.”

  “Slow down.” He slid his hands along her tense shoulders, then down her arms. “I can take the photo for you, but let’s slow down a little.”

  “I can’t,” she said, even as she leaned into his touch. Her gaze, however, was scanning the ship and the ocean. “I think we should take it on the upper deck, facing the ocean. We can’t let it show that I’m on the Treasure Hunters set right now because that might get you in trouble. Do you know of a good spot?”

  “Of course.”

  “Show me.” She took his hand and led him toward the stairs.

  He brought her to a spot by the upper deck railing where the only thing in the background was the sky and the sea. She explained her best angles to him, then struck a few poses that put her left hand in full view. Finally, she asked, “How do they look? Is anything good enough to post?”

  He glanced through the photos he’d taken. “You look beautiful…”

  “But?”

  He met her gaze, knowing she couldn’t post any of these. “But also scared and maybe even a little sad.”

  “No.” She rushed over to look at the photos with them. “Ugh. You’re right. Let’s try again. I’ll make sure my smile reaches my eyes this time. What are you doing?”

  He stowed the phone in his back pocket. “Talk to me.”

  “After we get the photo.”

  “We aren’t going to get the photo you want if you don’t talk to me first. What did your parents say?”

  She stilled, perhaps realizing he was right. She turned away. Grasping onto the ship railing, she stared out to sea. He waited. Finally, she turned to meet his gaze again. “My dad’s exact words were, ‘Thank God! I thought we had a huge scandal on our hands, but a secret marriage is much more manageable.’”

  “Oh.” He frowned. “And your mom?”

  “She said, ‘We have a lot of damage to undue.’”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all they said. Oh, and they want to meet you—tonight. They’re sending a private jet so we can have dinner with them at Emerson House.”

  “Wow.”

  “My dad hopped off the video call. My manager hopped on. Your manager joined in later. We talked strategy for the cleanup. I have to take this photo and go back to the call with my mom and my manager to make sure they approve the post before I send it out into the world. So, I really need to get this done.”

  He searched her face. “How do you feel about all this?”

  “I don’t know. I thought… My parents are relieved. That’s good. Yet I suspect that if I stop and think too much, I’m going to cry my eyes out.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  She offered a sad smile. “We worked really hard to make sure everyone was happy with how I looked. I don’t have time to ruin my makeup. I just need to look happy and in love. You can let me cry on your shoulder later.”

  “Promise?”

  Widening her eyes, she blinked repeatedly as her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Don’t be sweet, OK? That isn’t going to help. I need less emotion right now. Not more.”

  “Actually, you just need the right kind.” He eyed her and the ocean behind her. Taking hold of her waist, he backed her up slightly so that she was closer to the railing.

  She frowned up at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Changing your mood.” He captured her lips, drawing her into a kiss. Her response seemed automatic at first. He kissed her again. This time he felt her soften, engage. He varied the kisses. Some were short and sweet. Others lingered with heat. He let her catch her breath as he kissed the line of her jaw.

  “You, crazy man,” she whispered, laughingly. “No one wants to see me like this.”

  “I do.” He claimed her lips for a deep kiss. It was no easy thing to manage because she was smiling. Finally. Relief filled him.

  He stepped back, then took her left hand to press a kiss into her palm. He placed her fingers near her lips and pulled the phone from his pocket. “Don’t move, or I’ll have to kiss you again, then you really won’t get this picture anytime soon.”

  Her smiled widened. He took a few more photos of her. In each photo, her eyes were filled with love, longing, and quiet joy. He grinned. “I’m going to make one of these my phone background and my desktop background and—”

  She laughed. “Let me see them.”

  He took one more photo of her laughing, then showed her a couple of his favorites. “Will any of these work?”

  “Definitely.” She glanced at the photos once more before meeting his gaze. “I must really love you or something.”

  “Or something.” He grinned.

  She caught hold of his collar and pressed a fleeting kiss on his mouth. “Back to work.”

  “Wait. Dinner at your parents?”

  “Yes.” She glanced toward the far-away shore. “Is there any way we can turn this boat around?”

  “Maybe in an hour or so.”

  “Sounds good.” She blew him a kiss, then hurried down the ladder.

  He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. Her mood may have improved, but she was not in a good place right now. Wasn’t it a little odd that her parents were so detached about all of this?

  From the little that Ava had shared about their responses, it seemed that they were only concerned about how all of this would affect them. Ava’s needs weren’t even a consideration. No wonder she’d said they treated her like a doll that they kept of a shelf and only brought out when necessary. It was wrong. So wrong. It needed to stop. Yet, Ava was really the only person who could make that call.

  He hadn’t forgotten her fears back at the waterfall in St. John. She’d thought he wouldn’t want this her. The one who existed in the real world—as if she was two separate people. She wasn’t. She just hadn’t figured out how to manage the pressures of her family.

  It wouldn’t help either of them for him to rush in to try to save her or make some big statement against her parents. He could only pray that she would find the strength and wisdom to figure out how to set those boundaries. And, he could talk with her. He could help her figure out where she wanted those boundaries to be and how to set them.

  Either way, he was meeting her parents tonight—if he could get this boat turned around. He returned to
the control room to find out how he and Ava could return to shore without completely disrupting everyone’s schedule. Rick was still standing at the comms, his worried gaze on the live feed. “Emily, it’s time to come up.”

  “In a minute,” she responded, breathlessly.

  “No. Now.”

  Silence.

  Ian frowned. “What’s going on?”

  “Her breathing is shallow and accelerated, but she won’t come up.”

  “Where’s Justin?”

  “She told him to stop hovering.”

  Ian hurried to Justin’s comm box. “Dude, we need eyes on Emily. Something’s up with her breathing.”

  “On it.” Justin swam past the ghostly outline of the forties-era shipwreck they’d often dived on as kids. A second later, Emily came into view. She was holding onto one of the anchor chairs with one hand and treading water with the other. Her left leg looked stiff, and her flipper curved at an unnatural angle.

  Ian opened the comm line to say, “Looks like a severe cramp. Bring her up.”

  Rick spoke to Emily. “Justin’s going to bring you up, ok?”

  “No!” She clung tighter to the chain. “It’s just a cramp. It will pass. Give me a minute.”

  Ian shook his head. He looked to Rick. “How much air does she have left?”

  “She’s low. She kept asking for five more minutes down there. She’s overdone it.”

  Ian spoke in to the call box once more. “Justin, bring her up.”

  Justin reached for her. Emily did her best to shy away, then pushed at his hands, saying, “Leave me alone.”

  Ian switched his frequency so that everyone could hear him. “Emily, you’ve worked too hard for this moment to let it play out like this. Let Justin bring you up. We’ll work the cramp out of your leg. You can go back down later.”

  She spoke through clenched teeth. “I am trying very hard not to same something rude right now.”

  A smile quirked Ian’s lip. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like, ‘shut up!’ You have no right to speak to me or tell me what to do. I don’t have to listen to you.”

  His brow lifted. “You’re right. That would be rude. Not to mention silly. Especially because you’re probably in a whole world of pain right now.”

  She let out a laugh. “You think?”

  The tone of her voice told him she was talking about way more than just her leg cramp. He stared at Justin’s live feed, seeing that she’d loosened her grip on the anchor chair. “Just come up, ok?”

  A shaky sigh of resignation filled the audio feed. She released the anchor and immediately began to sink. Justin caught her and started swimming to the surface. Leaving Rick to mind the comms, Ian rushed out to the dive deck. Justin and Emily surfaced a minute later.

  Ian caught Emily’s arms, pulling her from the ocean so that she rested on the dive deck. She ripped off the face mask and shrugged out of the oxygen tank. Ian tugged the flipper off of her foot, then glanced up at her. “Is it your shin or your calf muscle?”

  “It’s my whole leg. Don’t touch me. I can handle it.”

  Justin pulled his mask off and tossed it onto the deck. “That’s the thing, sis, you don’t have to handle it alone. You should have told us the second the cramp started. How can we trust that you’re ok down there if you don’t tell us when you’re not? And you pushed me away, physically. What’s was that about? I was trying to help you. And, yes, you needed my help.”

  She ignored all of them, trying fervently to work the cramp from her leg. Suddenly, she stopped and placed a hand on her side. She grimaced as she tried to stretch the opposite way. Another cramp? This was ridiculous.

  Ian placed his hands around her calf and shin. Recognizing the calf muscle was the tightest, he flexed her foot with one hand while working the muscles around her shin with the other. It was nothing he hadn’t done before. Yet, it felt wrong.

  His wedding band winked in the sunlight, reminding him that he didn’t want to touch any woman this intimately besides Ava. At the same time, it wasn’t intimate at all. Her father, her brother, and the camera crew were all standing by. They all had watched him help Emily through other cramps, through rehab, through workouts. Jane had tried, but Ian was stronger, more able to help and to keep up.

  He felt her calf muscle release, so he focused on her shin. Finally, that released as well. He pointed her foot, then flexed it to make sure the cramp wouldn’t reengage. It didn’t, so he let her leg rest gently on the deck, advising, “Walk it out, drink some water, rest it a while, and you should be fine.”

  Ian finally met her gaze to find her glaring at him despite the stark relief on her face. They stared at each other for a moment. He glanced up to meet Rick’s pleading, imploring look that asked him to keep the peace. Justin watched in trepidation and concern.

  They couldn’t keep living like this—in a limbo of hostility and hurt. Nor could he keep trying to please the Holdens by going along with how they wanted him to handle the issues between them. It wasn’t helping anyone. Ian captured Emily’s gaze. “I’m not doing this anymore.”

  “Doing what?”

  “All of this unspoken, unhealthy, never saying how we feel until it blows up in our faces thing. All it does is hurt both of us.”

  Disbelief washed across her face. “How are you hurt? You with your perfect new wife and a body that actually works and everyone so ready to welcome you back?”

  Did she really not get it? His tone gentled. “Emily, I lost you. That hurt. It hurt bad. It still does. Yes, I love, Ava. She’s my wife. That doesn’t cancel out the fact that you were my best friend, the closest thing I had to a sister, the person who helped me find a family.”

  “Everything you said about me was past tense.” She stood shakily, pulling away from him when he tried to help her. “You realize that, right? It may have been true once, but it isn’t anymore.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  She braced herself on the railing of the boat. “And, for the record, Ian… I was never your sister.”

  His gaze faltered, falling to the deck between them before he forced himself to look her in the eyes and face the truth. “Emily—”

  “You weren’t…” She hesitated, then lifted her chin. “You weren’t my family.”

  A kick to the stomach might have hurt less. Nevertheless, he nodded in acknowledgement, even as Rich chided sharply, “Emily, you don’t mean that. It isn’t true.”

  “We aren’t related,” Emily insisted. “I’m so sick of everyone acting like we are and like what I felt for him was weird or unnatural. It wasn’t! Obviously, those feeling were never reciprocated—despite what he made me believe.”

  Justin pulled himself on to the diving deck, quietly interjecting, “Look, I was the first to call him out on that, and I’m not saying he was right to do it, but you were in a bad place. A blow like that too soon might have—”

  “So you’re all on his side?”

  Rick frowned. “There are no sides.”

  “Really?” She rolled her eyes. “How convenient. So everything’s just fine now? We’ll all just go back to being normal.”

  Ian finally spoke up. “I didn’t think we could, but you told me that was what you wanted.”

  “I did want it, but you were right. It isn’t possible. What we had wasn’t honest. It hadn’t been for a very long time. Now? It’s non-existent. I have no place in your life, and you have no place in mine.” She walked past him, heading for below deck.

  Instinctively, he caught her arm. “Wait. Emily, can we talk away from the cameras?”

  She stilled, glanced at the cameras as if she’d forgotten they were there. Her expression became guarded. “Fine.”

  “Think you can make it to the upper deck?”

  “Of course, I can.” She stormed toward the ladder.

  Ian turned to everyone. “Please, just let us have a minute.”

  For once, the camer
as didn’t follow him. He found Emily looking winded and sitting on the white bench in the middle of the deck. She met his gaze. Her voice was drained of most of its fight, but was still defensive. “What else is there talk about?”

  “I’m sorry that I hurt you. I want you to know that. I also want you to know that I meant what I said down there. I do care about you.”

  Her gaze fell to the deck. “Here’s the thing, Ian. I’m not sure… whether or not—I don’t know if I’m still in love with you. I honestly hope not—especially since you’re married. Now, whatever I feel is not only unrequited but… suddenly, very wrong. Maybe it isn’t that in love kind of love. I don’t know anymore, but whatever it is… I need time. I need you not to be in my life.”

  For some reason, the only thing Ian could say in response was, “But I work here. So, it may not be comfortable for you or me, but we’re still coworkers. For the sake of the rest of the team, we’ll need to find some way to get along and be professional. We don’t have to be friends, but we can still be respectful of each other. Can’t we?”

  She finally met his gaze again. “Yes.”

  “Ok, then.” He took a step back. “I’ll give you your space.”

  He walked down the ladder to where Rick, Justin, and the Treasure Hunters crew waited. Rick watched him hopefully. “Y’all good?”

  “Not even close, but we’re going to put that aside to be coworkers. Ava and I need to head back to Corpus Christi. How soon can we make that happen?”

  “Right away.”

  “Thank you.” He gave them a wave, then headed down to his cabin. Jane stood in the doorway, laughing softly at something Ava was saying.

  The Holden matriarch caught sight of him. “Here’s Ian. I’ll give you two some alone time.”

  He gave Jane a quick hug as she passed him and murmured, “Thank you for being so kind.”

  “Of course.” She patted his shoulder when he released her. “She’s a sweetheart.”

  He nodded. “Listen, Emily had a leg cramp during her dive. Justin brought her up. You should probably check on her. She… We had words. She was on the upper deck last I saw her.”