Between Roc and a Hard Place

by Heather Graham

  She gritted her teeth. “I wasn’t about to dance off with anyone.” She walked past him to dress in the cabin.

  He followed her out, but he didn’t bother to dress, just stretched out naked on the bunk, watching her.

  “I wonder why the hell he was there,” Roc mused.

  Her eyes quickly shot to him. “I’m telling you—”

  “I didn’t accuse you!”

  “But every time something happens, you have one hell of a way of looking at me!”

  “I like looking at you,” he assured her.

  She pulled on a long sleeved T-shirt over a pair of jeans. “Would you come on now, please? What is your crew going to think when we both disappear—”

  “Oh,” Roc said offhandedly, “they’re probably going to think that we’re having sex in my cabin.”

  “Roc, damn you!”

  He started to laugh, leaping up. He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her lips lightly. “I’ll be right along,” he assured her.

  She nodded. But for some reason, she didn’t like the look in his eyes at all.

  No matter what his words were, the barriers remained.

  And she had already risked so much of her heart again. She shivered suddenly, thinking that this had become so much more dangerous than it had seemed at the beginning.

  After all, she had merely jumped into the sea and waited to be dragged up in a fishing net.

  While now …

  Now the stakes were very high indeed. Much, much higher than the riches of the Contessa.

  She awoke ahead of Roc the next morning and dressed quickly. Finding herself the first one up, she started coffee and breakfast. She was already sipping coffee, the bacon was nearly crisp, and she’d managed a huge pile of scrambled eggs with peppers and mushrooms, when Marina came yawning into the galley, smiling delightedly, saying she would be happy to take over.

  “Wake the captain gently with coffee!” Marina suggested, and Melinda grinned, then started to leave the galley.

  “Melinda!” Marina said, calling her back suddenly.

  She paused, curious, and turned. Marina was studying her gravely. “You’re a real asset on board,” Marina told her.

  Melinda smiled. From Marina, it was quite a compliment.

  “Thanks,” she said softly.

  She left the galley, bringing coffee to the captain’s cabin for Roc. As she entered and closed the door behind her, she remembered how miserably jealous she had been of Connie. That hadn’t been so long ago. Now Connie was proving to be a good friend.

  And she was bringing Roc his coffee. Even if suspicion still lurked in those cobalt eyes …

  She found him awake, leaning comfortably on a pillow, the covers pulled to his waist. He smiled, just like a king, and she knew he had been waiting patiently and serenely for his coffee to arrive.

  “Thanks,” he said, reaching for the cup and pulling her down to sit by his side. “I like having a wife aboard. Coffee in bed. Sheer luxury.”

  “It wasn’t so bad before,” Melinda reminded him primly. “Connie brought you your coffee.”

  “But not in bed.”

  Melinda shrugged. “I think she would have if you had wanted her to.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I ought to pour this all over you!”

  He laughed and offered her a sip. She took it. “You’re a jealous little thing,” he told her.

  “Neither jealous nor little, remember?” she told him.

  “Little to me, and I think that a little bit of jealousy is great.”

  “Feeds the ego, huh?”

  He nodded gravely. “Your ego must be pretty nicely inflated, then.”

  She frowned.

  There was more tension in his voice than she would have liked. “Longford! I really enjoyed decking that guy.” He reached out and touched her hair suddenly. “I think that if he had ever touched you …”

  “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head. The look in his eyes made her feel warm. Nicely warm.

  “Breakfast is nearly on. You need to get up.”

  “I am up,” he said innocently.

  She leaped away from the bed, laughing. “I really can’t afford to miss any more meals or I will be a little thing!” she warned him.

  “I’ll be right along,” he promised her, throwing the covers aside. She was very careful to keep her eyes on his. “Are you diving with me this morning?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  An hour and a half later, they were ready to start.

  Peter was at the helm with his binoculars, but there wasn’t another vessel of any kind in view this morning. It seemed that they were alone with the endless blue sky and sea, without even a cloud on the horizon.

  Bruce and Connie went over the edge first, paired up for their dive. Melinda and Roc followed in a few minutes, entering the strange, exotic world that so fascinated them both.

  They swam down to the ledge directly over the old wreck. Tangs and clown fish darted by, and a jellyfish floated eerily a distance away.

  Something bright in the sand attracted Roc’s attention, and he swam down to it, listening to the familiar sounds of his regulator and air bubbles. He felt a rush of water and turned in time to see Hambone making a dive behind him. He watched the dolphin, then turned his attention to the sand. He shot deeper, digging around one of the rusted masts from the World War Two ship.

  Hambone dove by him again. A second later he looked just past the mast to see that Melinda was playing with the dolphin, stroking him, catching on to his flipper, taking a swim with him.

  He looked toward the mast again, then dug around it some more. Nothing. He didn’t know what he had seen.

  He looked for Melinda again and saw her diving past a section of the bow of the ship. She disappeared, following the dolphin once again, so it seemed.

  He sighed inwardly. He didn’t like her disappearing. He quickly swam in her direction, his flippers shooting him swiftly through the water.

  There she was, making a startling beeline to him already. He paused, ready for a collision with her, but the force of the water just brought her right to him, where she began trying to talk around her mouthpiece, letting out strange sounds in the aquamarine depths.

  Then she lifted her hands. She was holding a small chest, so covered in soft green growth that it was amazing she had seen the thing. It was just the size of a lady’s jewel box. Maybe a lady from a very different time …

  He nodded to her, and they kicked the water, rising swiftly to the surface. He called out, and Joe was quickly there to help them from the water. He took the prize out of Melinda’s hands while she climbed aboard, stripping off her equipment.

  “Roc! It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Something? Of course,” he agreed, taking the piece. It was eight inches along, he thought, four deep, four wide. The top was arched. He tapped on it gently and looked at Melinda.

  “Brass, I think.”

  He turned and started down to the equipment room, finding a tiny wedge to set in the indentation he at last discovered in the chest.

  Melinda was behind him, along with Marina and Joe. Peter was out on deck yelling to Bruce and Connie, who had just surfaced, to hurry in.

  The chest popped open.

  There was no dank green growth inside. The brilliance of the gems was startling. The small container was filled to overflowing with necklaces, earrings, brooches, pins.

  “My God!” Melinda breathed.

  Roc’s eyes touched hers. “Quite a find!” he exclaimed softly. He shook his head. “How on earth do you do it?”

  “How do you find the right stretch of ocean floor?” she asked him in return.

  “I’ve got to match this with the Contessa’s manifest,” he told her, “but I’m sure we’ve really made an incredible find.”

  “Then we stake our claim—”

  “I want a better idea of where she’s really lying, first,”
he said softly. “But this is the main step. We should be ready in another day or two.”

  “Hey, how’s it going down there?” Bruce called down.

  “We’re coming up. Wait until you see this!” Roc replied.

  They started up the stairs to the main deck. Suddenly they saw Peter’s face right above them.

  “And you,” he warned softly, his voice tense, “should see what else we’ve discovered up here.”

  Roc looked at Melinda.

  She felt that awful, awful cold again.

  “What?” he asked Peter. “Another boat?”

  “Not another boat,” Peter said. “Two boats. And moving in very, very quickly!”

  Chapter 12

  There were definitely two boats very near them, one to the south, one to the north.

  As Roc stood by the rail of the Crystal Lee, Peter handed him the binoculars, and he stared out.

  Melinda saw him stiffen as he looked north, then seemed to harden to concrete as he looked to the south.

  She didn’t need binoculars to recognize either boat. It was her father’s newest to their north. And it was Eric Longford’s well-equipped search vessel to the south.

  She was damned. He didn’t have to open his mouth. She was already damned.

  “Company,” Peter said lightly.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Bruce said, standing close by Roc’s shoulder. “We’ve got the spoon, and the casket. It’s time to go ashore, fill out the papers and pull out the heavy equipment ourselves.”

  Roc lowered the glasses and pointed across the water. “They’re already diving from Longford’s boat,” he commented. “And we still don’t have a fix on the damned position of the Contessa. You know, it is amazing—amazing!—that after all these weeks, Davenport and Longford home in so exactly on our location.”

  He wasn’t looking at Melinda. He didn’t need to look at her. There was an edge in his voice, cold, sarcastic.

  For a fleeting moment she wondered just what in hell her father was trying to do to her. Then she felt a shivering deep inside. It seemed to start at the base of her tailbone, then send icy little fingers to curl around her heart.

  She couldn’t change things. She couldn’t go back. Something had broken between them years ago, and now his barrier against her was always in place. He would condemn her at the drop of a hat.

  She couldn’t change it, and she couldn’t live with it.

  She turned away from the group. She had on her black one-piece bathing suit—exactly what she had arrived in. She wasn’t going to fight with Roc anymore. And she couldn’t plead with him anymore to believe in her. Maybe it was time to go.

  “We’re being radioed!” Connie called suddenly, hurrying up to the helm, Roc close behind her. Standing in the cool breeze below, Melinda couldn’t hear their conversation. But a second later Roc came down, his face thunderous, eyes furiously dark and flashing. He didn’t say anything at first, just stood by the rail, looking at Longford’s boat.

  Then he spun around, staring at Melinda. “It was for you,” he told her very politely. “He says that he’s here now, and has suggested that you might want to swim back.”

  Melinda felt the blood draining from her face, but kept her chin high. She shook her head. “I never—”

  “Then there’s your father, of course. Only one of them had to know where we are. The other one simply followed! Maybe you didn’t call Longford. Maybe you just called dear old Dad.”

  “Roc!” Connie gasped.

  “Roc, maybe—” Peter began.

  “This is between us!” Roc snapped, staring at Melinda. “Damn it, don’t you think I’ve wanted to believe all along? My God, she snapped her fingers and I was back like a puppy on a string. In all the seven seas, she’s the only damn thing ever to undo me!”

  He was clearly angry, but there was something else in his voice, too. Maybe an edge of anguish. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t hurt the way she was hurting; he couldn’t feel as if a knife had been thrust right down his gullet. Maybe she hadn’t earned his total trust, but she didn’t deserve this.

  His eyes, burning ice, ripped into her. “Well?” he said, and suddenly his voice was soft.

  Well. This was it.

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” he suggested.

  She walked the few feet across to him, her heart seeming to shatter into little pieces as she did so. She stopped right in front of him and met his gaze. “No!” she said flatly.

  “Lord,” he whispered softly. “So you admit—”

  She’d meant to leave with a little bit of dignity, but this was the wrong side of too much.

  She swung at him without thought, her hand cracking against his chin. The sound was loud, and her palm was left stinging.

  This time, she thought fleetingly, they had quite an audience for the death of their relationship. Now they would all know that she really was the Iron Maiden, the witch of the sea.

  It couldn’t be helped.

  Neither could the tears that were stinging her eyes like acid.

  Roc didn’t respond to her slap other than to raise his fingers to his reddening flesh, though she couldn’t really see his face; she couldn’t see at all anymore.

  She did know which way was north. She turned and headed down the port side rail, leaped up, then plunged into the sea.

  She dived deep and swam a good distance beneath the water before surfacing. When she did, she heard him shouting to her.

  “Oh, no, you don’t! Get back here!”

  She looked. He was poised on the rail, then leaping in after her.

  She looked at her father’s boat. It seemed to have moved farther away since she had entered the water.

  She started to swim. She had a head start, and she was nearly as fast as Roc.

  She swam hard, streaking through the water. Yet almost impossibly, two seconds later, Roc had reached her, his arm winding around her middle, sending the two of them plummeting into the depths.

  He let go of her then, and she shot to the surface. He rose alongside her. She stared at him in disbelief, and then she saw the dolphin’s fin.

  Hambone. Hambone had come along just in time to give Roc a nice ride. And now that he had caught up with her, the same ice-hard look was in his eyes. “Back!” he told her.

  “For what?”

  “To finish this thing.”

  “She shook her head, the tears stinging her eyes fiercely once again. “It is finished. It was finished three years ago. I was just too stupid to realize how final it was. I—”

  “Back!” he insisted again.

  “I’m not giving you any explanations—”

  “You’re not going to your father or Longford—”

  “I am going to my father!” she cried. She turned, stroking determinedly through the water once again.

  A hand clenched on her ankle, and she found herself jerked back.

  The amount of struggling she was doing would have drowned anyone else, she thought, but not Roc. He’d managed to get a hold on her, and no matter how she twisted and flailed, there was only so much damage she could do. Gasping, choking, furious—but spent—she finally went limp in his hold. She didn’t think she’d ever been so miserable in her life, feeling his touch, the power of his hands, and knowing that he wouldn’t listen to her, didn’t believe in her, and that somehow, though she still loved him despite her fury, she was going to have to escape him.

  He reached the ladder at the bow of the Crystal Lee. She had very little choice except to climb ahead of him. Connie was there, her pretty face troubled, ready to offer a towel. Roc came up right behind Melinda; she felt him at her back. His hand fell on her shoulder, and she whirled. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t touch me, and don’t speak to me! I’ve done all the pleading I can do with you. I’ve—”

  “There are two boats right out there!” he roared.

  She started to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and swung her around until both his hands were cl
utching her upper arms in a relentless hold. “Tell me how the hell they got here!”

  There was something desperate in his words, in his hold. He held her in a vice, but his hands and fingers shook with emotion.

  “Go to hell!” she cried back.

  “Stop!” Connie shrieked suddenly. She ran to the two of them, then stopped, biting her lower lip, her eyes miserable. “I did it!” she said. “Roc—I did it!”

  “Oh, Connie! Don’t!” Melinda whispered.

  “Connie—” Roc began.

  “You don’t understand!” she said swiftly. She looked quickly from one to the other of them. She shook her head, looking into Roc’s eyes. “I spent a lot of time with Jonathan Davenport the other night. In the bar, when you came in. And then later …” Her voice trailed away. Melinda felt her eyes widen. Connie? And her father? “Roc, if he’s doing anything, he’s trying to help you. He doesn’t want the Contessa, he just wants to see that everything goes smoothly for you. And naturally he was worried about his daughter. He’s just here to help. I’m sure of it! I’m sorry, Roc, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  Roc shook his head, his hold on Melinda easing. “It’s all right, Connie. We’ve both been seduced.”

  “Ahoy there!”

  They all swung around, staring toward the bow, where Jonathan Davenport was now securing his dinghy, then reaching for the ladder. He was in cutoffs, bare-chested and barefooted, light hair in disarray over his forehead, aquamarine eyes very bright.

  Melinda frowned at her father, then realized that he was a striking man and only in his mid-forties. Maybe he was just right for Connie, and Connie for him.

  If any of them could survive the next few moments …

  Jonathan stared across the bow to where Roc was standing with Melinda. “She almost had you that time,” he informed Roc matter-of-factly. “Am I losing my mind, or did you get a little help from a dolphin there?”

  “I had a little help,” Roc said.

  “How’s it going, kitten?” Jonathan asked his daughter softly.

  “Kitten!” Roc snorted. He met her eyes. “Barracuda!” he assured her.

  She kicked his shin. He winced, but offered no retaliation.