“Sorry.” He fell backward on the bed. “Have you had a good day?”
She towel dried her hair with one hand, keeping the towel around her chest tight with the other. “Yep. I got my new car, went down to the dive center, and I’m picking Oz up in about an hour to go out for dinner. Will you be okay on your own for the night?”
“Actually, I was gonna ask you the same thing. I have a date for the night.”
“You dog!”
“Yeah, I know. I’m hitting the shower. You all done in there?”
“Yup. I’ll probably be gone before you get out, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Pop down to the dive center if you’re getting bored, and I’m sure someone will be able to suggest something for you to do.”
“I’ll be fine. Probably sleep all day. Have fun, sweetie.” He sauntered off to the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later, she pulled up the zip on her jeans and tucked in the tail of her black tailored shirt with three-quarter length sleeves, checking herself in the mirror. She smiled, pleased with what she saw, and honest enough with herself to acknowledge that she wanted Oz to like it too. The memory of Oz’s eyes traveling the length of her body earlier made her blush. She shook her head and reminded herself that this was just a friendly dinner between two colleagues, not a date, and she had nothing to be nervous about. That didn’t seem to stop her hands from shaking though. She checked her makeup and ran the brush through her hair one last time before taking a deep breath and heading for the door, grabbing her car keys and wallet as she did so, and repeating over and over in her head that it wasn’t a date. She wouldn’t pin hopes on anything in her new life until her old life had been erased.
*
Oz’s breath caught in her throat as she watched Finn climb out of the sexy car and walk slowly toward her, her hips swaying as she moved. Oz realized it was the first time she’d actually seen Finn the woman, rather than just the girl in baggy clothes. She was stunning. And she was definitely all woman, not the girl looking to get out from under her daddy’s thumb like Oz had thought. Instead, Finn arrived in clothes that fit her trim, sexy body, and there could be no denying she was one of the sexiest women Oz had gone to dinner with in a long time. She swallowed against an unexpected tide of nerves.
“Sorry, I know I’m early, but I worked up a bit of an appetite hauling tanks earlier. Why are you looking at me like I grew another head? What’s wrong? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?” Finn pulled off her shades and started to use the reflective surface to check her teeth.
Oz smiled, enjoying the sound of Finn’s accent. “Is this another disguise?”
“Excuse me?”
“You look great. Clothes that fit and everything.” The blush dancing across Finn’s cheeks added to her appeal. The fitted black shirt was tucked neatly into jeans that fit like a second skin, and her dark auburn hair hung down her back like burnished copper. The fading daylight turned her eyes to polished jade and her high cheekbones were a light pink from the day spent in the sun.
“Yeah, Pete bought me these ages ago, but I never wear them. He actually packed them in his case and hung them in my wardrobe when we got here. It’s his way of dragging me into the world of modern fashion. It’s taken me three years to get into these. All part of the new disguise.”
“I see. Well, it looks great on you. I think I’ll be beating them off with a stick.” She noticed Finn’s frown. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I think you have a tendency to exaggerate. I’m sure you’ll have no need to worry about that at all.”
“Are you kidding?” Oz looked into Finn’s eyes and saw with absolute certainty that Finn had no idea how beautiful she was. Oz took a chance and blatantly let her eyes roam over Finn’s trim figure, noting how her full breasts tugged slightly at the buttons with each movement, a teasing testament to how easy it would be to pop the shirt open and view its hidden jewels. “You will definitely have admirers wherever we go tonight. Men will ask if you’re with me. If you say no, they won’t leave you alone. If you say yes, and they’re brave, they might ask how open you are to new experiences. With or without me. Women will ask you the same thing and probably respond in the same way.”
“Oz, people don’t see me like that. They look at me like I’m a little kid and ask for my ID before I even get to the bar.”
“Dressed like you were today? Sure. Dressed like this? You still look young, but you definitely don’t look like a little girl. You look like a lovely, beautiful, sexy young woman. Who could, and should, have her choice of company.” Oz watched as Finn searched for something to say. She took pity on her and decided the situation had gotten far too intense. “But I might just be saying that so I can drive your car.”
Finn burst out laughing and clearly relaxed. “Show me this mansion of yours and then you can take me out to dinner like you promised.”
Oz fiddled with her keys, uncomfortable. “I wasn’t really expecting visitors. This place is a mess.” She shrugged, looking more than a little sheepish. “Would you mind if we just went straight to the restaurant?”
“Of course not.” Finn smiled. “Have you lived here long?”
“About four years. I’m still doing some work on it though. I’m remodeling the kitchen at the moment. I’ve hung most of the cabinets, but it’s a mess in there.”
“How very butch of you.”
“I’m not butch.”
Finn crossed her arms over her chest and gave her a look of disbelief.
“Well, not that butch, not really.”
“It’s your disguise, right? You’re really a lipstick lesbian and hiding it well?”
“Not that well, obviously! Anyway, who told you that I’m a lesbian? Lipstick or otherwise?”
“Well, a guy on the dock thought I was your latest fling and that you wouldn’t be pleased that I had turned up where you were working. And there’s the fact that you usually do the picking up when you go out to dinner. And you thought Pete was my boyfriend. Actually, thinking about it, that’s probably a point against the lesbian thing. Where is your gaydar?”
“Hey, I knew Pete was gay. I just didn’t know if you knew.”
“Of course, so why did you think he was my boyfriend?”
“I guess I was fishing for information.”
“About me?”
“No, I wanted to ask Pete to marry me. Duh! Of course about you.”
“You mean you can’t tell?” Finn stopped and faced Oz when they got to the car and Oz felt that familiar heat between her own legs. Damn, Finn was gorgeous.
“I mean, I thought maybe. But really?”
“Will it make you feel better if I tell you I was winding you up?”
“I assume that means teasing me. Were you?”
Finn gave her a Mona Lisa smile. “I’ll let you decide for yourself. So where are you taking me for dinner?”
“Do you like seafood?”
“Yup.”
“Good. We’re heading to Turtle Kraal’s. They do the most amazing conch fritters and seafood platters.”
“Sounds great.” Finn held the keys out for Oz. “You can drive, Jeeves.”
“You sure?”
“Totally. You probably love this car more than I do, so yeah, I want you to drive. If you still want to?”
“I love to drive.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
*
The restaurant was packed and Finn’s eyes wandered constantly while Oz studied the menu and the waiter brought their drinks.
“Have you decided what you would like, ladies?” They both ordered seafood platters, and an awkward silence developed when the waiter walked away.
“This place is lovely. I can’t believe it’s so busy though. It’s only a Monday night.”
“It’s always like this. If you come on a Saturday night the chances of getting a table aren’t great.”
Conversation stalled again and Finn played with her napkin. Maybe accepting Oz’s dinner invitation wasn’t a
good idea after all. Although, she couldn’t have asked for a better looking dinner companion. Oz’s forget-me-not blue eyes watched the room from under heavy blond bangs, constantly scanning everything around them. She sat with her back to the wall, her strong shoulders nicely filling the white cotton shirt she wore, and its high collar accentuated her high cheekbones. She turned her glass between her fingers before taking a sip, making Finn wonder if Oz was nervous too. Finn smiled as she realized that the thought of making Oz nervous calmed her a little.
“So how did you end up as a dive instructor?” Finn knew that the best way to get people talking was to get them to talk about themselves. It was something she had learned at the many parties her father had forced her to attend. She watched as Oz seemed to consider the question.
“Long story really.”
“I’m in no rush.”
“Well, my family is all in the navy. My dad, uncle, cousins. Except AJ, he’s in the coast guard. My dad jokes that our love of water started with the Vikings we came from.” She smiled as she sipped her drink. “I went into the navy straight out of college and was a navy diver for ten years.”
Oz sipped her drink and Finn watched a shadow skitter across her face, darkening her eyes as she remembered something. Then she put her glass back on the table and shrugged, seemingly shrugging off the memory.
“When I left the service, I didn’t think I’d want to dive again. My cousins talked me into going on vacation with them to Egypt and we went to the Red Sea. They badgered me to go diving with them, and eventually, I gave in and we all went for a joy dive. They picked the wreck of the Thistlegorm, a cargo vessel that sank during World War II. It was carrying supplies and stuff across the Red Sea to the troops fighting in Africa.”
The waiter arrived with their starters and they stopped speaking for a moment. When he left, Oz didn’t seem like she was going to keep talking. But Finn wanted to hear the rest, to know about the woman she would be under the waves with.
“You were telling me about the Thistlegorm.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I kind of set it as a test to see if I still actually enjoyed diving, and it was just the navy rules that bugged me, or if I was genuinely sick of it all. So I signed up for this dive. I’d dived more times than I can count by then, so gearing up was like going through the motions. Same with the descent, then it was like I was looking underwater for the first time. I’d dropped down to about eighty-five feet, and straight in front of me, just sitting on the sea bed, was a steam engine. It had been on the deck of the ship when it sank and had landed twenty or so feet from the wreck. I was just staring at it, letting myself drift on the current, when this manta ray comes out of the blue, floats above the engine, and just keeps going past me. Manta rays glide so effortlessly it looks like they’re flying through the water. It felt magical or something.” She ate slowly as she spoke and Finn could see the memories passing through Oz’s eyes.
“Anyway, I finally got past the engine and on to the wreck. There are tanks sitting on the deck, practically welded on now with all the coral over the years. In the hold, there are cars, trucks, motorcycles. There’s even one room full of rain boots. This whole room is full of nothing but boots and a moray eel hiding inside one of them. The juxtaposition of it all, of man and nature coming together to create something so beautiful and bountiful from the death and destruction of the Second World War made me look again. At what I had done in the navy, and it wasn’t—isn’t—the sea that was the problem. It was me. I went into the navy to find order. And I found it. But what I really wanted was peace. And that’s what I found under the water. Not the navy’s water though. The water as it is. It’s raw and beautiful, lethal but calming. The ocean just exactly as it is.”
“Wow. That’s amazing.” Finn wondered if she would ever have the kind of passion Oz had for the water. For anything or anyone. Her focus had been on getting away from her father and everything that entailed. Now that she could look beyond that, she suddenly felt as though she were facing an abyss. She shivered slightly.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, the emotion behind Oz’s words enough to fill the silence comfortably and keep them both occupied with their own thoughts.
“So have you ever been diving before?” Oz said suddenly, putting her fork down and looking at Finn intently.
“Nope.”
“But you’ve already booked and paid for the whole course. What if you don’t like diving? What if you can’t equalize your ears? You’ll have wasted all that money and time. Yours and mine.”
Finn finished the last bite of her food and crossed her cutlery on the plate, contemplating her answer.
“Oz, I’m not wasting anything. This is what I want to do. I know I haven’t been diving before, but I know I’ll get the hang of the ear thing. I’ve done a lot of swimming. A hell of a lot, and I know I can dive deep in the pool and equalize, which isn’t entirely the same I know, but close enough that I know if I take it steady, I’ll learn whatever I need to learn to get the hang of it. As far as not liking diving goes, I really can’t see that happening. I’ve spent more hours visiting aquariums than I can count. I loved walking through the tunnels where the water and animals were all above me. I loved the feeling that I was down there with them. I’d stand there watching the sharks and the rays, turtles, so many varieties of fish, and the amazing array of colors.” Finn smiled at Oz, glad to see she looked interested instead of bored. Or worse, judgmental.
“I wanted to be there, wrapped up in the peace of the water like they were. I want it even more now. Why the water calls to me like it does?” She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s because I know my dad can’t swim so he would never follow me there. Maybe it’s the quiet. That peace you found down there? Maybe that’s what I’m craving too. All I know is that when I close my eyes, I can picture all the things I see in the aquariums right there with me. But I’m floating along in the water. It’s something I’ve always dreamed of doing.”
“Can I get you ladies anything else?” the waiter said after setting down their meals.
“No, thank you.” Oz picked at her food, frowning as she did so.
“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” Finn sighed, ignoring the meal in front of her.
“Yup.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. It’s a kind of nuts that I think I understand, though.”
“You do?”
“Sure. I think that’s why I ended up in the navy in the first place. It felt like it was in my blood. My Uncle Charlie calls it saltwater in our veins.”
“I have trouble picturing you in the navy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Do you have any proof?” Finn relaxed, glad they were moving on. It seemed like their conversations kept getting serious, and she wanted to see the lighter side of Oz. And she certainly didn’t want the conversation to turn to her family.
“Not on me, but I do at home.”
“Really? Like what, your uniform?”
“No, they make you give that back when you leave, but I probably have a picture of me in uniform.” Oz laughed and then leaned forward. “You really are gay, aren’t you?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Asking, I guess.”
“Then I refuse to answer. I told you earlier you have to work it out for yourself.” Finn cracked a crab claw and peeled out the meat.
“How old are you?”
“It’s on all the forms I filled out.”
“I know, but I don’t look at those things really. They feel like such an invasion of privacy.”
“You’re slightly odd. You know that right, Oz?”
“Yeah, yeah. Spill it.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Really? Wow. You look so much younger, as you know. But talking to you, you seem so much older. I thought you might actually be closer to my age.”
“Which is?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Sooo old,
how can you stand it? Pete will be thirty this year, and he’s dreading it. He’ll be glad you’re older than he is.”
“So how did you two become friends?”
“Pete kind of took me under his wing. As I said, I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. He’s a couple of years older than me, and I guess he’s like my big brother. He always looked out for me when I was a kid.”
“How did you meet?”
Oz speared a piece of seafood from her plate and Finn was mesmerized by the way her full lips opened and sucked it in smoothly. She focused on her own plate, and the question. “He was hanging around with some of the boys whose parents worked for my dad. I was about five at the time. My dad had just moved me to London and I didn’t know anyone. I had no friends, no family except my dad, and I kept watching the staff kids playing in the grounds from my window every day. I watched them for hours. I snuck out of the house one day and followed them around for the whole day, but they kept trying to lose me. They all disappeared at one point into the woods. I’m sure you can picture it, dark scary woods. Whiny little girl, crying about being left behind. Big butch Uncle Pete.”
“Are you kidding?”
Finn shook her head. “Nope, he was only eight and in denial. Anyway, big butch Uncle Pete comes charging to the little girl’s rescue. Tells her it will all be okay, that he’ll look after her. I loved him there and then and I’ve stuck to him like glue ever since. He was like my babysitter, best friend, and big brother all rolled into one.”
“Does your dad know he’s gay?”
“You’ve met him; everyone knows he’s gay.”
“But he still wants the two of you to marry?”
“Yup.” She knew where Oz was going with her questions. They were questions she’d asked herself many times before. She still wasn’t sure she knew the answers to them, or the true reasons behind her father’s intractable desire to see them wed.
“Why?”
Finn shrugged, debating how much she wanted to share with someone she didn’t know. “Well, Pete is brilliant with computers and programming and all that stuff. My dad wants to groom him to take over the IT and communications aspects of his business. For some reason, he seems to think that getting Pete and I married will, I don’t know, cement his plan for world domination or something. Like the old-fashioned kings marrying out their daughters for allegiances, power, and money.”
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