Stormchaser

by Cherry Adair

  Ji Li, a worn stone path, mostly hidden beneath sediment and rock, and the bonus of the mermaid. Yeah. A good day to be diving. An even better day to be sitting on top of the discovery of the millennium.

  Yesterday, after Calista left the meeting to call her husband and then retire to her cabin for the night—at two in the afternoon!—due to jet lag, Jonah listened to the crew’s opinion of her. Excited to have someone of Dr. West’s credibility, and willing to put her lack of personality down to sleep deprivation, was the vote.

  While they talked he’d had his drafting table and other crap moved back to the larger owner’s cabin, and her one bag moved into the smaller cabin. Problem was, he’d slept in that double bed the night before, and when he climbed into his king-sized bed, all he could do was imagine Dr. West sprawled in the same bed—

  Crazy.

  Married.

  Verboten.

  Yeah. He got it. Too bad his body wasn’t getting the memo.

  Maybe it was precisely because she was out of bounds that he found Calista West so damn appealing. Still, it was like being attracted to a prickly sea urchin. Pretty to look at, but a lot of pain if touched.

  Since his attraction to Dr. West was a non-issue, Jonah put it aside. He reminded himself that it was good to want things one couldn’t have. It built character. He suspected his character was going to be muscle-bound and ready for the Ironman Triathlon by the end of this salvage. He grinned behind his full face mask. If the worst thing that happened on this trip was being attracted to an unattainable woman, he was golden. Turning her back on him, she swam over to the others—again, without a wave or any sort of communication. Should he join them? He loved scuba diving. Diving, hunting for ancient treasure: It was in his blood. His father had taught him when Jonah was almost too young to walk. His heart did its usual ping of pain when he thought about the dichotomy of how his father had been with him, and how that same father had been with his three legitimate children. Night and fucking day.

  Not his fault. Still—Jonah found himself constantly trying to make up for his father’s lack of—everything—with his half brothers Zane, Nick, and Logan. It was as though their father bad been two completely different men. A loving, hands-on family man with Jonah and his mother, a drunken dickhead, cheating son of a bitch with his legal wife and sons. And never the twain should meet. His marriage to Jonah’s mother was, of course, invalid. But they hadn’t given a shit. Well, his mom probably gave a big shit, but she’d never said anything after she’d discovered that he had another family halfway around the world.

  Jonah’s and Nick’s birthdays were only a few day apart. Same month, same year. Good old Dad had been a busy man.

  Not here, not now, Jonah reminded himself. Atlantis was going to be his Holy Grail offering to his brothers. His payment for the shit they’d endured while he reaped the benefits of their father for all those years.

  Callie did a graceful flip and joined Vaughn and Saul near the wreck where they were reconnoitering for the first time. A look-see before work began.

  Ji Li was some four hundred long and sixty feet wide. She lay on her starboard side half on, half off a ridge of rough lava rock, coral, and pumice, and about a hundred feet away from where Jonah had been taking pictures of an amazing floor, inlaid with something shiny, that looked like gold.

  The doctor broke away from the others to swim around the square bow, then drifted up to circle the poopdeck, using her hands as well as her eyes to explore, the way he did. Some things were just meant to be touched.

  The azure water was top-lit with barely penetrating rays as Jonah breathed easily through his regulator, admiring the scenery. It had taken months and months of paperwork, permissions, legal crap, and putting this team together—but he’d been patient and methodical. It was all about to pay off.

  Dr. West had been the last piece of the puzzle. A piece, unfortunately, that he didn’t feel quite fit the rest of his carefully vetted group. She’d alluded to not being a team player, and while he was all for being innovative and daring, he was now a little skeptical that his marine archaeologist was the right woman for the job. What if her cynicism wouldn’t allow her to see what he saw? What if she wasn’t willing to go the extra mile and suspend her disbelief?

  His chest tightened. It was too late to find someone else with her excellent qualifications. Hell, her exact qualifications. He wanted her.

  Wanted? Hell no, needed her.

  Dr. Calista West’s stamp of approval on this salvage was paramount.

  After all her papers insisting that Atlantis didn’t exist, her report on the finding was going to be what kept the world’s attention riveted on this find as no fly-by-night rumor but the genuine article. If he was right, and he’d bet everything he had that he was, they’d need more investors. Dr. West’s word would bring that weight to bare.

  He envisioned their salvage and observations taking years. How was a woman going to be separated from her husband for that long? Hadn’t she said something about children? He couldn’t remember. He’d been too sucked into looking at how his team interacted with her to listen to every word.

  He started swimming to join the others.

  He was being ridiculous.

  He didn’t have to like her; the dive team and crew didn’t have to like her. Sure, it made life easier, but they could all be professional. He’d be happy as a pig in shit if she did her job. Period. The rest was immaterial.

  For a moment he suspended his qualms about her and gave into the fantasy. He was intrigued by his strong physical response to her, because she wasn’t particularly beautiful or out of the ordinary. Attractive, yes. But so were hundreds of other women he’d met in his travels.

  He enjoyed the rush of adrenaline he felt when she was nearby. He enjoyed the hell out of the smell of her, something both ocean and mountain. Fresh. He liked looking at her. He liked all that. Attraction without a payoff in sight was something new, and rather intriguing, for Jonah.

  Bringing the underwater camera up to his mask, he clicked off a dozen shots of her, his artistic eye framing her against Ji Li.

  Maybe not a traditional beauty, but damn, she had an engaging face. He adjusted the focus on the camera for a close-up. She turned her head, saw what he was doing, and scowled directly into the camera. Jonah grinned, turned on by her clear annoyance.

  Suddenly a sharp, bone-shattering buzz sounded, sending an electrical current jolting through his entire body. It sounded, weirdly, like giant pistons, getting louder and louder and more intense, as if a train were speeding overhead.

  “What the fuck?” He had no idea where the sound was coming from, just that there was stunning high-volume noise and pressure as if someone were taking a plunger to each ear and pushing in and out.

  Sand swirled up from the seafloor. A school of small silver fish flashed by, the sand and fleeing fish obscuring his divers for a moment.

  The startling physical reaction to Dr. West was followed immediately by a loud, tooth-jarring noise that seemed to come at him in surround sound. The far-too-close, extremely loud noise of a large engine rattled his bones. Jerking his gaze away from his high-priced marine archaeologist, he looked up to see if Stormchaser was in trouble. Or about to come plummeting down to join the Ji Li on the rocks, since he was pretty sure there wasn’t a train anywhere about.

  He’d been so busy fantasizing about wrapping that long hair around his … Shit. Had he screwed up and inadvertently floated directly up under the giant propellers?

  Nope. He was still levitating a few feet above the sand. He bit back a half laugh. Honest to God, for a nanosecond there he’d thought his attraction to her had caused the sensation.

  Idiot.

  He cast an all-encompassing look through the blue world at his team, all of whom floated nearby. They were looking around nervously as well, so clearly they heard and felt whatever it was. They weren’t reacting to their new team member.

  “Earthquake,” Dr. West said calmly into the lip m
ike inside her dive mask and therefore directly into Jonah’s ear. The comm crackled with interference. “Surface now.”

  Her husky voice sent a different kind of vibration through Jonah, but he didn’t like it any more than the one a few seconds before. “It’s over,” he pointed out as his observation and the cessation of the bone-buzz and the hellishly loud noise vanished, to be replaced by the rhythmic-Darth Vader saw of his own breathing.

  “And there could be another, stronger quake any moment,” she said unequivocally, heading to the surface. This close up and personal, her voice sounded far too sexy and way too intimate.

  He had a strong aversion to being told what to do, and when. But he wasn’t going to argue with an expert, especially if it meant putting his people at risk.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he told the others, indicating they follow suit. His philosophy was pretty much the opposite of better safe than sorry, but he couldn’t go off half-cocked when the lives of his people depended on him making sound choices.

  As he and the rest of the team drifted to the surface, he tried not to let her voice conjure images of rumpled sheets and tangled sweaty limbs. If ever a woman was out of bounds, off limits, prohibido, it was this one.

  Privately lust after? Sure. But too important to mess with.

  The four of them pulled themselves up onto the dive platform, legs dangling in the water as they removed their masks and tanks.

  “That was kind of freaky.” Vaughn Leader shoved his mask off his face and slicked back his long hair with one hand.

  Saul undid his tank and stared out over the water, his limbs jumpy with fading adrenaline. “That was freaking cool—I’ve never been underwater during a quake before.”

  Neither had Jonah. “It wasn’t that powerful,” he pointed out, standing to strip off his wet suit. He dumped it in the freshwater tank before hanging it up on the rack. It was barely eight in the morning, and the sun felt good on his skin.

  “Anyone on board feel the quake?” He hadn’t factored in earthquakes, never even crossed his mind, but now that there’d been one he had to consider if this was going to impede his quest in any way.

  Brody and Leslie, waiting their turn to dive on the lower deck, shook their heads, then glanced in unison not at him but at the archaeologist. “Stay put or go back in?”

  Jonah told himself not to knee-jerk a response to them looking to someone else for direction. They were all working together for the first time. He had to keep his propensity to jump headfirst into things to a minimum until he’d felt his way with the team.

  Sunlight gilded Callie’s lightly tanned skin and highlighted the curve of her cheek. He looked away. Over the calm water. Not a sign of the quake up on the surface, but there had been plenty of action down below. And he wasn’t just thinking of the earthquake.

  “Doctor?” Leslie repeated.

  Swiveling his head to see what the good doctor had to say, Jonah was grateful he still held his suit, about to hang it up. Sitting on the edge of the platform Callie was in the process of picking apart the wet strands of her braid and using her fingers to untangle her hair. Waist-length hair. There went his fantasies. Holy shit, that hair—wet and slick as melted dark chocolate—clung to her body all the way to her shapely ass and pooled on the deck. The woman had weapons that were going to make his sleep fitful to say the least.

  Pulling her hair over her shoulder, she wrung out the water. “I’d give it an hour or two, just to be on the safe side. That might’ve been a precursor to a bigger one.” He wanted to bite her soft, pale mouth, with its cushiony bottom lip.

  “Or a mild tremor and the end of them,” Jonah countered, rubbing his chest, feeling … antsy for no good reason. Yeah. There was a reason. He never lied to himself. He was annoyed with himself for being so drawn to her. Not to mention he hadn’t given a second’s thought to her being so strongly resistant to his Atlantis project.

  For some dumb-ass reason he’d expected her to fall all over the news and be thrilled. Instead she was dismissive and argumentative, which raised his hackles. Fucking annoying as hell to have his bright new balloon pricked before he could even tie a string on it.

  She shrugged, her delectable mouth unsmiling. “Or that. But why push it if there’s no hurry? There isn’t a hurry, is there?”

  “Time’s money out here.” Ridiculous thing to say, and everyone turned to him with various degrees of surprise on their faces. Great. He’d known her barely a day and she’d reduced him to behaving like a horny adolescent. Not her fault. His.

  “Sorry. You’re right of course.”

  She’d worked on salvages before. She knew there were investors, sponsors, and assorted other people waiting for their investment to pay off, or for their museum or other institution to get some of the spoils found.

  Jonah knew he had to get a grip, but he seemed to be caught in some weird sensual spell that wouldn’t let go.

  “No—safety first. Since we’re waiting out another quake, let’s have a quick meeting. I have something important to share.”

  He’d planned on telling the others about Atlantis the night before, but he’d wanted the doctor to be there when he told them. Once again she’d been the missing component.

  They were all together now. “Ten minutes. Deck two.”

  Four

  “We’re fortunate the submarine quake was small,” Jonah was saying as Callie slid the door to the salon shut behind her. She couldn’t ignore the team, and decided to join them for the briefing on the second deck, where they’d gathered around the long table.

  Everyone acknowledged her in their own way. Leslie waved and smiled. Brody leered, Saul grinned, and Vaughn nodded. Jonah continued talking as she pulled out the only empty chair—beside him—and sat down.

  The smell of Jonah—salt, male, soap—mixed with her coconut sunblock made a heady combination that rushed to her brain as if she’d guzzled wine on an empty stomach. Acutely aware of him sitting mere inches from her, their arms just inches apart, she shifted in her seat to put another inch between them, then in desperation swirled her wedding ring around her finger as a reminder.

  She’d gone to her cabin to pick up her camera and make a few calls. Now she felt as though she’d walked on stage in the middle of a play as everyone stopped the scene to stare at her.

  Gathered around the teak table under shade, they all wore sunglasses. The sun beat down on the white paintwork and reflected off the glassy water surrounding them, making dark glasses a necessity. Fine with her. The less Cutter read in her expression, the better.

  “Didn’t feel small while it was happening,” Vaughn told those who hadn’t experienced it. He leaned back, rocking his chair on the back two legs. Like the other men, he was bare-chested and very tan. He was a big guy and took up a lot of real estate, yet Jonah’s presence was more powerful, and impossible to ignore. Callie gave it her best shot.

  “The fucking noise was hellacious,” Vaughn continued as he rocked, a deep frown evident above his dark glasses. “Was it only me, or did everyone have a crackle problem with your comms? Mine had major interference.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Thanos is taking a look at them now,” Jonah told him. “Always something with new equipment. Don’t worry, he’ll get the bugs out before we go down again.”

  Thanos was the engineer who’d brought her to the ship.

  “My life flashed before my eyes,” Vaughn continued, clearly enjoying his drama-filled moment. “I thought we’d be buried under Ji Li for all eternity.” His delivery was a bit dramatic, but he got the point across.

  Callie motioned for Saul to hand her the jug of ice-filled whatever-it-was as she tried to appear engaged. Conversation about the quake eddied around her.

  Sometimes detaching was appropriate—like when her mother tried to set herself on fire, or the time her father had jumped out of her moving car on the freeway as she hauled his ass back to rehab for the eleventh time.

  Oh, yeah, good times.
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  But here, and now. She had to be in the present. Had to bring her A game. Had to figure out if Cutter was telling the truth, or only the truth as he knew it.

  Focus. Be here.

  “… thought we were under the propeller, about to be chopped into sushi,” Saul said half seriously.

  “… same thing,” Jonah told them. “Thought Stormchaser was about to descend on top of us. Fortunately, there was no harm done.”

  “Other than scaring the crap out of all of you.” Brody stretched his arms out, resting them on the back of Leslie and Saul’s chairs. “I wish I’d been there to experience it. New experiences are always good, right?”

  No. New experiences are not always good. Callie lifted the heavy, frosty glass jug. Her arm dipped, and she brought her free hand up underneath to support it. Jonah reached out without a word, taking it from her, filling her glass as if he did it every day. His arm brushed hers, setting off white-hot, jagged electrical sparks that she was afraid everyone present could see despite the glare. All her girl parts, dormant for seven years, jolted to life, and she jerked her hands away, almost upending the jug from Jonah’s hands.

  Seeing her own mulish expression reflected in his glasses, Callie evened out her scowl. “I’m quite capable of pouring my own drink—”

  His lips—firm, sensual, tempting—quirked. Not a smile. It really wasn’t. “Thanks, Jonah,” he prompted, his soft husky voice dripping over her already overreacting hormones like gasoline over an open flame. When he was around she constantly felt like a cat with its fur being rubbed in the wrong direction. Her physical reaction to this man puzzled as much as it annoyed her. Jonah Cutter—all damn Cutters—were the enemy. And if that wasn’t sufficient reason to get her libido in check, she wasn’t in the market for a fling. And that’s all it would ever be with a Cutter.

  She’d never experienced anything even remotely like this and prayed the jittery overstimulated feeling would pass after she’d been around him a few days. Please God …