Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set

by Zoe York

  “Sounds perfect.” His heart skipped a beat and he cupped her breasts with her hands. “So Miss Katy. Are you ready for Round Two?”

  She slid her hand between his legs, making him gasp. “You certainly are.”

  — TEN —

  By ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, Neptune had reached the wreck site and the expedition group was preparing for another dive. Moira and Jack were spending the day in Cobh, sorting artifacts at the Lusitania museum, but the rest of the team was present.

  Katy hid a yawn with the back of her hand and poured herself another cup of coffee from the large Thermos Mark had provided for the trip. After a night of pulse-pumping sex with Dex, she was tired but revved up for today’s dive.

  “Okay, people. Listen up.” Rick’s wild hair was even wilder in the breeze and he sported dark bags under his eyes. “The teams will be concentrating on the following areas today.”

  Using his tablet computer, the expedition leader zoomed in on the area that Katy, Dex, and Jack had explored on the last dive and pointed to the zone on the opposite side of the old cruiser mine. “Dex, Katy, and Mark will explore this section today.”

  Katy’s heartbeat accelerated into a sprint. Hot damn, I’m in luck.

  Then Rick zoomed in on the bow section of the wreck. “And Mickey and Bill will concentrate on the seabed over here. I’ll stay above and sort artifacts.”

  “Any questions?” Rick looked around the group with a scowl on his weather-beaten face. His demeanor left them in no doubt that asking for clarification would be a mistake.

  The man’s crappy mood had no effect on the butterflies in Katy’s stomach. She caught Dex’s eye and he favored her with one of his knee-weakening half smiles. Could she sneak off and look for the case without him noticing her absence? Okay, the chance of eagle-eyed Dex not noticing was slim, but it was worth a shot. Besides, he was as psyched by the hunt as she was. He’d get a kick out of chasing her around the wreck in pursuit of lost treasure.

  “Right,” Rick said, rounding up his morning pep talk, “Suit up and check your equipment.”

  Katy was already wearing her diving gear. She drained her cup of lukewarm coffee and performed a last check on her rebreather. One of the straps had come loose. Damn. She’d checked it only this morning. Had it come undone during the drive to the harbor? If so, how? “Bad news, guys.” She held up the torn strap.

  Dex came over to examine the rebreather. He fiddled with the loose strap and frowned. “That’s weird. I had problems with mine before the last dive. You say it was fine at the apartment?”

  “Yeah. I looked it over thoroughly. Maybe I snagged it on something while climbing aboard the boat.” A prickle of unease settled between her shoulder blades. While having issues with a kit two dives in a row wasn’t unheard of, it was certainly unusual. Watch your back.

  Mark joined them and fingered the broken strap. “If I performed a makeshift repair on this it would probably be fine, but I’d rather not take the risk. I’ll fetch a spare rebreather from our supplies.”

  With surprising agility for a man who’d completed two strenuous dives in less than forty-eight hours, he leaped over the equipment table and disappeared below deck. A minute later, he reemerged carrying two rebreather packs. “The one with the yellow stripe is my lucky pack,” he said cheerfully, his short brown curls blowing in the wind, “and the orange is one of the expedition’s spares.”

  “Mark,” Rick barked, “and Dex and Katy. Get your arses over here for a minute. You can put the packs on afterward.”

  “What bug crawled up his ass?” Katy muttered under her breath. “He’s been pissy all morning.”

  Mark’s boyish grin shed five years from his careworn face. “Moira. She’s taken a shine to young Jack. She persuaded him to let her accompany him to the Lusitania centenary exhibition in Cobh yesterday and they didn’t get back to the hotel until after midnight. I seriously doubt they spent the whole time showing the artifacts we salvaged to museum curators. Today, they’ve wrangled an invitation to lunch with the head of the museum. Needless to say, our fearless leader is furious.”

  Sure enough, Rick paced the deck in a restless shuffle. “Our sponsors are disappointed with what we’ve turned up so far. They want more museum-worthy pieces brought to the surface and you need to deliver.”

  “We’re doing our best,” Dex said with ill-disguised impatience, “but we can’t make valuable artifacts appear at will.”

  Rick glared at his subordinate. “Just try harder to find pieces that will make them happy and keep the money flowing. Now get the fucking packs on and get in the water.

  Asshole, Katy thought and grabbed her pack from the bench where she’d left it. The Moiras of this world thrived on male attention. If Rick was dumb enough to choose Moira as his go-to booty call, he shouldn’t be surprised when she strayed.

  The instant Katy hit the water, all thoughts of Rick and Moira vanished. Now it was just her and Mother Nature.

  The dive down was glorious. The sunlight penetrated farther this time and gave the water a lovely greenish glow. At the bottom, vision was better than it had been on Monday. Katy estimated she had over three meters on all sides.

  “Everything okay?” Dex asked when they reached their destination.

  “Yep.” She gave him a thumbs-up, and they got to work.

  For the first while, Katy diligently did the job she’d been officially assigned to do, snapping photos and filming the interesting parts. When Dex was fully absorbed in digging his patch of seabed, she oh-so subtly moved in Mark’s direction.

  Mark wasn’t directly near the area of the metal box, but he was closer to it than Dex was. He’d also had more success than Dex and was marveling over his finds. “Bullets,” he said, delighted as a schoolboy. “It’s a Remington .303.”

  She inspected the slim metal object. “First World War?”

  “Definitely.” Mark put the bullet into his salvage bag. “Jack will be livid he missed this.”

  Katy peered at the seabed. “I think I see another one.”

  The man turned his attention to the seabed and concentrated on easing his find out. Katy snapped a few photos and slowly backed away.

  Damn. The area where the case lay was outside the parameters of today’s dive. Not far outside, but venturing off without informing another diver where she was going was reckless. She tossed the possibilities over in her mind. Telling Dex would mean he’d know exactly why she wanted to go there. Telling Mark would mean him objecting and getting Dex involved. In terms of the hierarchy of the expedition, Mark outranked her.

  Not telling either of them she intended to leave the agreed upon area was precisely what every underwater archaeology student was told not to do, repeatedly, and then some more. She squeezed her eyes shut, visualizing the box. Ah, fuck it. This getting older and wiser business was a drag.

  Moving back in Dex’s direction put her back in radio contact with him. “Hey, Fitzgerald. Want to go on a treasure hunt?”

  He immediately jerked to attention. “I knew it,” he said with a laugh. “I was sure you knew more than you were saying.”

  “Come with me. I need a buddy. When I was looking at footage from Monday’s dive, I noticed what looked like a metal box protruding from the seabed. It’s a few meters from the old mine Jack and I found.”

  “Okay. I’ll let Mark know where we’re going.”

  After Dex notified a thoroughly preoccupied Mark, who had now dug up several bullets, they arranged a meeting time back where the latter was digging.

  “I hope this detour is worth it,” Dex said, kicking hard to pick up speed. “Rick will be pissed if I don’t bring back enough salvage from my area.”

  “Rick is already pissed. Besides, doesn’t he want you to find the treasure?”

  “Yeah.” His laughing eyes met hers. “But on his terms. He wants to be the one to take the glory, even if it means me finding the treasure and handing it over to him to bring to the top.”

 
; “Fuck that,” she said with heat. “If I find that box, it’s going in my salvage bag.”

  He laughed. “You go, girl.”

  When they reached the old mine, Katy pointed in the direction she’d seen the metal object. A few meters later, it came into view.

  Dex whistled. “You’re right. There is something there.”

  They lowered themselves onto the seabed and began gently digging around the object. “Be careful,” he said, steadying her hand. “This doesn’t resemble a mine, but we don’t know what lies underneath.”

  Easing sand from the object with their plastic implements, their quarry finally revealed itself. It was indeed a rusty box and the appropriate size to have carried jewels in its original incarnation.

  Dex took the case and shook it. “There’s something in here. Put the case in your bag, and we’ll get back to Mark. I don’t want to stray off course for long.”

  “Sure. Get a head start. I’ll be right behind you.”

  With a mock salute, he was gone, kicking his way back to the point they’d begin their ascent. Katy opened her salvage bag. Maintaining her grip on the box was difficult and it took a couple of attempts to get it into the bag. Please let it contain the jewels. After all the time she and Dex had wasted, they’d better have something to show for it.

  Katy kicked her flippers and started to swim. And kicked some more. Her stomach lurched and her pulse pounded. Something was holding her in place. She struggled to get free, kicking and tugging. The light from her helmet shone on an old fishing net. Fuck. Just what she’d been trying so desperately to avoid. Kicking and thrashing, she struggled to free herself, but the net was reluctant to relinquish its pray. “Dex,” she shouted into the microphone. “Dex, come back. I’m stuck. Dex?”

  Shit. He must be out of range. Okay. Think, Katy. Deep breaths. She had cutters in her pack. She’d have to get them out and hack herself free. Trying to keep calm, she opened the bag and tried to grip her knife. Her gloved hands were clumsy in the deep water but she eventually got it out. With careful sawing motions, she cut through some of the net, but another tug showed her that she was far from free.

  And then disaster struck. While maneuvering herself into position to cut net from her leg, she lost her grip on the bag. It floated out of reach. Heart thundering, she made a grab for the bag, but the net held her tight. No, this is not happening. Gasping and trying to keep calm, she watched it spiral downward and come to rest amid a range of net further down the wreck.

  The hackneyed phrase “so near, yet so far” was on repeat in Katy’s brain. To come so darn close to the jewels and to lose them in such a manner…

  Right now, she had to disentangle herself from the net before her air ran out. Forcing herself to focus, she concentrated on hacking at the net. Little by little, she made progress, but it wasn’t quick enough.

  “Katy?” Static and Dex’s voice sounded in her helmet. Thank God.

  “Dex? I’m caught in a fishing net.”

  “Hang on. I’m almost there.”

  He swam into view and immediately perceived what the problem was. “I have a small saw in one of my packs. Wait a sec.”

  A few minutes later, he’d cut through the stubborn material and freed her.

  “Thank you,” she gasped, clinging to him. “I feel so stupid for getting caught in that thing.”

  “Don’t. Those nets are lethal. It could happen to any—” He stopped and put a hand to his ear. “Hang on. I’m picking up a signal from Mark. No, it’s gone again. I don’t know what’s up with him but we’d better get moving and find out.”

  “But Dex, the case fell, and—”

  “Fuck the case, Katy. We’ll come back for it another day. We need to check on Mark. Move.”

  She obeyed, swimming as quickly as she could. Sometimes their sensitive equipment gave off false alarms. It was probably that. If Mark was fine, they might have enough time to go back for the case.

  When they reached the spot where they’d last seen Mark, he was nowhere to be seen.

  Dex’s voice was clipped and tense—the nearest to panicked she’d ever experienced him on a dive. “He’s not responding to my voice or my signals. I can’t see him anywhere.”

  The sense of unease she’d experienced on the boat returned. “Let’s position ourselves to maximize the power of our combined lights,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “We’ll look around in a circle, then up.”

  They repeated this exercise a couple of times, but to no avail.

  “Our time is running out,” Dex said in a hoarse tone. “We’ll have to start our way back to the ship. I’ve sent a distress signal to the boat. I can only hope it makes it.”

  “But we can’t leave Mark down here. Can’t we—”

  “We can’t stay down here without air, Katy. We swim to the surface. That’s an order.”

  While the journey up never held the same excitement as the descent, Katy had never felt more reluctant to reach the surface. Every meter that brought them closer to the boat represented time that was running out for Mark.

  Katy and Dex swam as quickly as they dared and took the bare minimum for decompression breaks. It still wasn’t fast enough.

  When they reached the ship, Rick hauled Katy aboard. He’d changed out of his deck clothes into a diving suit. He stared at her in shock, his normally ruddy complexion ashen.

  “Did you get Dex’s distress signal?” she gasped, pulling off her helmet.

  “Search and rescue are on the way. I didn’t wait for clarification.” He looked over her shoulder to the water. “What happened? Where’s—?”

  At that moment, Dex hauled himself up the ladder and slumped onto the deck. “Mark,” he managed between heaves. “Mark’s still down there.”

  Con the skipper appeared on deck, visibly shaken. “We need to move over to the buoys and collect Mickey and Bill.”

  Rick nodded his assent. “I’ll suit up and dive down to look for Mark.”

  Katy blinked. “Are you sure that’s wise? We’re supposed to dive in pairs.”

  The expedition leader’s lined face was grave. “There’s no time to wait.”

  “You have a dive buddy.” Dex pulled himself to his feet and grabbed the last rebreather from the equipment stash. “I’ll go with you.”

  Katy started in alarm. A second dive so soon after the first wasn’t smart. Her eyes met his, and he gave her a tired wink before refitting his helmet. “See you soon, cupcake.”

  — ELEVEN —

  The next few hours were the bleakest in Dex’s adult existence. Halfway down to the seabed, his lights picked out Mark’s lifeless body. In silence, he and Rick joined forces to carry their teammate back to the surface where Con and the rest of the team were waiting for them aboard the Neptune.

  When Dex broke water, Katy was leaning over the side of the boat. Her pale face was tense and leached of color.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she said when she saw him. “Is Mark—?” She broke off, her gaze focused on the body in his arms. “Oh, God, no.”

  Con and Bill appeared at Katy’s side. Between them, they managed to haul Mark’s body onto the boat and lay it on the deck.

  Dex swung over the side of the boat, stripped off his breathing apparatus, and dropped to his knees. “Where’s the first aid kit?”

  Katy grabbed a red case from the table in the center of the deck and handed it to him. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” He sounded as though he’d sandpapered his vocal chords. If he hadn’t already suspected that CPR would prove hopeless, he would have known the instant he removed Mark’s helmet and stared into his unseeing eyes. Dex’s stomach twisted and he tasted bile. Come on, mate. Please don’t be dead. Swallowing hard, he willed himself to go through the resuscitation routine again and again until a warm hand squeezed his shoulder.

  “Leave him,” Katy said softly, her voice breaking on a sob. “There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “Maybe he’s just unconscious.” A note of hy
steria flavored Bill’s high-pitched tone. “The coast guard is on the way. Surely they can resuscitate him if Dex can’t.”

  “Mark’s gone, Bill. There’s nothing anyone can do.” Rick ran a trembling hand through his wiry gray hair. The man looked as though he’d aged ten years over the past couple of hours. “I’ll call the coast guard and tell them to meet us at Ballybeg harbor. There’s no point in them heading out here now.”

  Katy handed Dex a towel and a steaming cup of tea. “In the meantime, you need to dry off and warm up.”

  “Thanks, Katy.”

  He went below deck and stripped off his diving suit. Rubbing a towel over his cold body, he felt numb and weightless. The situation had a dreamlike quality but it was tainted by the knowledge that this nightmare wouldn’t end when he next woke up.

  Despite his extensive experience with deep sea diving, often in risky waters, this was the first time Dex had encountered a fatality. He’d barely known Mark but he’d liked the man. No one deserved his fate.

  A sense of unease settled between his shoulder blades. He’d had to swap his kit for one of the expedition’s spare units before their first dive. Today Katy’s had been broken and Mark’s had presumably malfunctioned. Rebreathers could be fiddly, but three causing issues in such a short space of time was unusual. And there was the matter of the note…

  By the time Dex had changed into dry clothes and gone back on deck, the Neptune was pulling into the harbor. The coast guard, the police, and an ambulance were waiting on the pier. The paramedics immediately began working on Mark, but apart from officially confirming his death and transporting the body to the morgue, there was nothing they could do to help.

  A grim-faced Seán was accompanied by a young police officer with red hair and big ears and an older man wearing a coast guard’s uniform.

  Seán stepped forward to shake hands and make introductions. “This is my partner, Sergeant Brian Glenn, and Ciaran O’Hare from the coast guard. Any idea what happened to your colleague?”

  “We’re presuming his breathing apparatus malfunctioned,” Rick said gruffly. “Mark was an experienced technical diver. I doubt he made a mistake with his kit.”