Jim Santino jumped aboard, flinging his head to toss his hair out of his face. “Ah, yes! The mysterious Steps.”
“They’re not so mysterious,” Darlene announced, hopping aboard. “I mean, obviously they were carved by someone a million years ago, and once upon a time, they actually went somewhere.”
Adam laughed outright, and the others chuckled, as well. Except for poor Darlene, who looked offended. “Really, that’s a perfectly logical—”
“Yes, dear, of course it is,” her mother told her. “That’s why they’re all laughing.”
“At ourselves,” Adam assured her, “for not being so quick to point out the obvious!”
In another few minutes everyone had boarded. Jem was at the wheel, and Sam showed him her dive plan. A moment later, they were under way.
Their first site for the day was going to be the Steps. Sam had planned a thirty-minute dive to fifty-five feet. While Jem motored them out to the site, she sat with the children, going over the dive tables with them again so they would know how deep they could stay down and how much air they would use. Children were usually better dive students, in Sam’s opinion. Adults were too quick to assume they could stretch the safety factors built into the dive tables. Oddly enough, young divers also tended to be more careful with their equipment. She stressed to them how important that was—if someone had a hole in his tennis racket, he would be unhappy and might lose a match, but he would survive it. An improper mixture of air in a cylinder would not just be inconvenient—it could kill.
Sam had been determined to stay away from Adam on the way out, but Darlene had stars in her eyes where the man was concerned, and Brad found him just as interesting. Even when Sam had purposely gathered them around her to work on the tables, they had enthusiastically called Adam over, suddenly seeming to need him to confirm all her lessons.
“Nearly there, if you all want to start suiting up!” Jem called.
Sam slid into her own environmental protection suit, a light “skin,” since the water temperature around the island tended to remain warm, even in winter. She was an advocate of suits, though, simply because they did what their name implied—protected divers from the environment. She’d been hit a few times by the tentacles of jellyfish—with and without protection—and it was much, much better to have protection, she had discovered.
Liam Hinnerman was an old-time diver. He hated wearing a suit, but he did for her dives. He’d begun diving, he’d told her, before many of the associations that now certified divers had existed. Liam liked being a teacher. He’d wagged a finger beneath her nose, telling her, “You forget, young lady, that this certification thing is all comparatively new. I was diving when they still called a damn tank a tank instead of a cylinder. All this book learning and computers!”
She’d very patiently reminded him that with the number of sports divers that had begun enjoying the sea in the last few decades, it was necessary to train people in order to save lives.
“Humph!” he had told her. “Stupid people shouldn’t dive.”
It was difficult arguing with Liam Hinnerman. He had his own brand of logic.
Jem dropped anchor and came around to help the divers into their buoyancy control vests, weights and cylinders. Sam went through her speech, automatically slipping into her own vest and cylinder as Jem came up behind her to help her. Her speech was about taking care of coral, reminding them that it was actually alive. She also warned them that buddies needed to stay together and watch out for one another.
“We’re making this one a thirty-minute dive, folks, so enjoy the Steps, and if you take it all the way down to fifty-five feet, remember to watch yourselves coming up.”
“Watch out for our buddies—did we decide who our buddies are going to be?” Liam asked.
“Can’t be me today,” Jerry North said, waving a hand in the air. “I’ll be up here, sunning with Jem.”
“I’m with short stuff over there,” Sukee said, winking at Brad. “A promise is a promise.”
“I’m a threesome with Sam and Adam,” Darlene said, afraid that someone might try to change the previous night’s arrangements.
“I’ve got my wife!” Joey Emerson announced, smiling adoringly at Sue.
“And I’ve got my husband,” Sue said.
“Is that mushy, or what?” Brad muttered.
“Hey, kid, mind your manners!” Sukee suggested.
“Oh, I, er, I didn’t mean anything,” Brad moaned.
Adam tousled his hair. “She knows that. Women just like to give men a hard time.”
“I think it’s the other way around,” Sukee murmured suggestively.
Adam laughed, a smile on his face as he returned Sukee’s stare. The air seemed to sizzle between them.
Irritating as hell, Sam decided.
“Well, mushy or not, son, I’ve got your mother,” Lew Walker said.
“Oh, you guys aren’t mushy anymore,” Brad said.
“Ouch!” Judy murmured.
“Young man, you’d better mind your manners!” Sukee told him. Brad grinned.
“That means we’re stuck with one another,” Jim Santino told Liam, who nodded glumly in return.
“I can already tell that the dive we made the day before yesterday is going to prove to be the better of the two,” Jim said.
“But today we’re diving the Steps,” Sukee said. “Come on, short stuff, let’s get in the water. I want to see these magnificent relics.”
In twos and threes, the divers went off the back platform of the Sloop Bee. Sam held her mask to her face as she plunged in, checked to make sure that all her divers gave her an okay sign, then joined Darlene and Adam.
It was odd. Adam’s eyes, completely silver in the watery silence surrounding them, seemed very large behind his mask. He still seemed tense, watching her with the same anger he had shown her ever since they’d been at the breakfast buffet when Brian had come trundling out to demand a piece of corn muffin.
The hell with him, she decided. She pointed downward and began a slow descent, making sure that Darlene was following without suffering from any of the squeezes that could occur due to increasing water pressure.
It was a beautiful portion of the sea in which to dive. A coral slope fell slowly into the sea right by the sandy floor where the Steps plummeted downward. The Steps themselves were very large, a good foot thick, and approximately four feet by four feet wide. Following them downward, Sam and her party passed by a school of amberjack, a half dozen pretty yellow tangs, one massive grouper—a fish that weighed about five hundred pounds—and a curious barracuda. Darlene cringed at the sight of the multitoothed sea dweller. As Adam drifted by Sam to reach Darlene, it felt to Sam as if he touched the entire length of her body.
He seemed to realize the stirring he had caused and paused, staring at her.
She had to remind herself to breathe. This was ridiculous. He was behaving even more oddly than he had been now that he knew about Brian. Why? What difference did it make to him? He seemed convinced that Brian had to be hers, and angry about the baby’s father, which was absolutely ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
She was furious herself, dying to send him off the island. No, dying to hurt him the way he had hurt her. Then she had to admit that it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was, she was…
Dying to touch him. In the middle of the water. To reach out, take his hand.
No! She wanted to tear his hair out.
At least, that was what she should want, and she told herself it was what she did want. Wrong. She wanted to…just touch his hand….
Run her nails down his back….
No, just her fingertips….
She wasn’t breathing! she reminded herself. The first rule of diving was to breathe continuously. She tore her eyes from his. Darlene was still staring at the barracuda. At last Adam set a hand on Darlene’s shoulder and gave her the thumbs-up sign.
They moved by the barracuda without incident.
Sukee and Brad
were just ahead of them. Sukee motioned them over, and they all watched a ray try to cover itself with the sand to escape their curious eyes. Sukee shot down lower, following the Steps. They followed.
It was a beautiful dive. They followed the Steps until they suddenly disappeared into the ocean floor, pointing out fish and sea fans and exceptional pieces of coral along the way.
At fifty-five feet the group was still basically together. The Emersons—hand in hand as they floated through the water—studied the ground. Brad and Sukee remained near. Lew and Judy Walker, too, seemed happy to stay hand in hand, cruising along the bottom.
Both Jim Santino and Liam Hinnerman seemed to be studying the stones.
Well, they had all wanted to see the Seafire Isle Steps. Everyone had seemed avidly determined, beyond eager. Now they were here. So just what in God’s name were they all looking for? she wondered.
Something. All of them.
And all of them somehow suspect.
Even if her father—and Hank—had met with foul play, she told herself sternly, it was only Adam’s presence making her feel that her father’s enemy was now among the guests on Seafire Isle.
Sam found herself studying the stones, seeking some elusive answer herself. Here, at the fifty-five-foot mark, they didn’t create a clean trail as they did at the lesser depths. It seemed that someone had tired of his task and thrown the last few any which way.
Ahead was an ocean ledge, leading to deeper water. Sam, with Darlene right beside her, was still staring at one of the Steps, studying the craftsman-ship, when she realized that Adam had gone ahead of them.
He had disappeared over the ocean ledge.
Curious, she caught Darlene’s hand and shot after him. When they reached the drop-off, he was already returning.
His right hand was clenched, as if he was carrying something. She stared at him questioningly, but he pretended not to notice and tapped his watch. It was time to go up.
Back on the Sloop Bee, the guests all talked excitedly about the Steps. Sam was quiet.
She’d tried very hard to watch Adam, to see what he was up to. But he’d never let her see what he had been carrying, and when she’d asked him outright, he denied that he had found anything, and the hostility between them made it difficult to insist he tell her the truth.
“Where next?” Liam Hinnerman demanded.
“Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said, forcing herself to forget Adam and whatever he was up to. “Our second dive of the day will be at a small outcropping of coral we call Nellie’s Reef—supposedly because a girl named Nellie chose it as a place to throw herself into the sea to drown.”
“Did she? Drown?” Darlene asked.
Sam smiled, shaking her head. “When she threw herself in it was low tide, and the coral was so high that she ended up standing on it—and then she was rescued by the young man she had thought had forsaken her.”
“That’s nice,” Darlene decided.
“Don’t tell her the rest of it!” Adam warned.
“The rest of it?” Darlene said.
Sam shrugged. “Some people say there’s more to the story. And it’s really not bad. Actually, it’s kind of nice.”
“Then tell me,” Darlene insisted.
Adam did the telling. “Nellie and her beau had a wonderful wedding, a half dozen children and lived happily ever after.”
“That’s still nice,” Darlene said.
He shrugged.
“Yes, they lived to ripe old ages—then had themselves buried at sea on Nellie’s Reef,” Sam said.
“Oh,” Darlene murmured. “So do they haunt the reef?”
“Well, only as really nice ghosts,” Adam assured her.
“Even if they were thrown in here,” Liam Hinnerman said, “the currents probably carried them elsewhere, and then the sharks probably ate them up right after their carcasses got tossed into the drink anyway.”
“Liam!” Jerry North—slicked down beautifully in suntan oil—moaned.
But Darlene laughed. “Mr. Hinnerman, you are very pessimistic!”
Nellie’s Reef was a nice dive, but it seemed almost anticlimactic after the Steps.
When the divers were all aboard the Sloop Bee after their second dive of the day, Sam realized just how compelling the Steps had been when Jim Santino said, “Great day, dive mistress! But let’s do the Steps longer, maybe tomorrow or the day after? That was the most fascinating dive I’ve had in a long time. Don’t you all agree?”
A chorus answered him affirmatively.
“Jerry will even go in if we go back,” Liam said.
Sam glanced at the blonde, who looked miserable. “Jerry, if you hate to dive—”
“I don’t hate to dive. And if you decide to go back to the Steps…” She shrugged. “I guess I’ll join the party.”
“See, Sam!” Joey Emerson said, his arm around his wife. “Even Jerry will dive.”
“Well, we’ll see,” she murmured.
Adam was staring at her. She returned his stare. What the hell had he been holding in his hand?
When the Sloop Bee returned at last to Seafire Isle, the guests were quick to disembark and disappear.
Except for Adam. He helped Jem rinse down equipment as if he’d been doing it every day for years. The two men worked naturally and well together. Sam watched them broodingly for a while, then felt Adam’s eyes on her.
Like a touch. Just like a damned touch.
She turned away, then started along the path to the main house and her own cottage.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
She turned to see him standing on the dock, his hands on his hips. He was barefoot, wearing just his swim trunks.
Damn. She wasn’t breathing again.
He was sleek and toned. Bronze muscles rippled along every hard inch of his body.
She threw up her hands, exasperated with him and with herself. “To bathe and change,” she said.
“Not alone, you’re not,” he told her.
She arched a brow. “Oh?”
“Damned right, oh.”
“Well, I’m going. So if you’re coming…”
She turned and started along the path again. Fine, she decided. If he was going to follow her, he could tell her what he’d had in his hand.
She didn’t look back, but she was certain that Adam and Jem had exchanged a look assuring one another that women were indeed cantankerous creatures. A man couldn’t live with one, but then, he couldn’t shoot her, either.
It didn’t matter. She knew he was behind her. She could almost feel his breath, sense his warmth.
She unlocked the door to her cottage and stepped inside. She left the door open.
She knew that he had followed her into the living room of her cottage, that he’d closed the door behind himself and carefully locked it. All too aware of him, she started down the hallway to the bathroom.
“Sam—”
She stopped, dead still, staring at him. “What?”
“Sam, you can’t stay alone.”
“What did you find at the Steps, Adam?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a liar, Adam.”
“I can’t leave you alone, Sam.”
Can’t leave you alone…. What exactly did that mean? He couldn’t leave her alone because she might be in danger, or he couldn’t leave her alone because he was caught in the same tangle of emotion—and lust?
Maybe it was a little bit of both.
It didn’t really matter. She had lost. Lost what, though, she wasn’t quite certain. A battle with herself, she supposed. Longing was rising over dignity.
“Sam, you’ve got to realize, I can’t leave you—”
“Fine.” She turned again, peeling down the straps of her damp blue bathing suit as she went.
She stepped out of it completely in front of the bathroom door and left it lying in the hall.
He couldn’t leave her alone. Well, if he was going to be with her constantly, she couldn’t bear i
t if he left her alone.
He never attacked without an invitation. Well, now he had his damned invitation. She stood in the hallway for a moment with her naked back to him.
Then she walked into the bathroom and into the shower, turning the spray on full, allowing it to sluice through her hair. She moved mechanically, scrubbing her body, then her hair, rinsing, not opening her eyes, hearing only the thunder of the water.
He was there, she thought. He’d followed her. Into the bathroom. He was near her, now.
Because he couldn’t stay away.
Because he’d been invited….
And any minute, he would step in beside her. He would touch her.
He was near.
Wasn’t.
Was….
Oh, God…it was wrong, she tried to tell herself. What she was doing was wrong. Justin Carlyle had taught her all the right things about life. He had taught her that love was the greatest emotion. He had taught her to be considerate, caring, fair and honest. He had taught her to see the world through the eyes of others, to be just and understanding. He had taught her that sex wasn’t something to be engaged in lightly. He had taught her that it was an expression of love to be shared between two individuals when there was commitment and caring between them.
She had believed him. And she had been deeply in love with Adam O’Connor the first time she had ever made love with him.
Now…
Now, she just remembered.
The way he’d touched her.
The way he’d made her feel.
Now…
Now the man had scarcely come back in her life, and here she was, fantasizing. He didn’t know what her past few years had been like, and she didn’t know about his.
Of course, she could guess….
But that didn’t matter. The things her father had taught her didn’t matter. The look Adam had given her in the water did.
Just as her early years had been too sheltered, her last years had been too isolated. She wanted Adam. She didn’t want to think about right or wrong. She didn’t want to assess her feelings for him, and she most certainly didn’t want to think about the emotional hell she would endure once things were over. Her every action seemed to be ruled by her nearly desperate desire for him. She wanted to be held. Touched, stroked. More….
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