by Cherry Adair
“Another thing we have in common then,” he said, giving her an easy smile he didn’t feel, especially when all he wanted to do was wrap himself around her and take her mind away from all those memories that had stolen the light out of her eyes. “We both found family when we didn’t expect to. I’m glad you weren’t alone.”
She sat up, her back straight, and leveled her gaze at him. “Even if I had been, I would’ve survived.”
“I know you would’ve. But having people who love you makes pretty much everything in life better, right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve never married?”
The powerful need to see her naked, that silky dark hair loose around her shoulders, wrapped around him …
Dios. These thoughts had to stop. He was many things, but, unlike his father, he’d never stoop so low as to seduce another man’s wife. And even if that were a faint possibility, if he lost all sense of honor and reason, he’d despise Callie almost as much as he’d despise himself for giving in.
Man, he couldn’t fucking well win.
“Almost.” He kept his thoughts well hidden. “Somehow I let her slip through my fingers. Young. Stupid. Blind.” He shrugged. “She’s the woman I called at the weather station earlier. Robin Waugh. I thought at the time that she was the love of my life. I had no idea.” Because what he felt for Callie, if not love, was as powerful, as motivational as love and sure as hell made whatever he’d felt for Robin feel like a school yard crush in comparison. And his hands were tied.
It was some sort of cosmic joke that when he was ready, really ready, the woman was unavailable.
“Is she still single? Maybe you could rekindle what you had.”
Jonah sat back, deliberately putting himself out of reach of her soft, tanned skin. “No, that ship sailed years ago. Plenty more fish in the sea, right?”
She covered a yawn with her hand. “Not always.”
His gut twisted. Yeah. There’d never be anyone like Callie. And letting that particular ship sail just out of reach was killing him.
“Let’s give it another hour, tops,” Jonah said, longing to take her in his arms, to carry her downstairs to his cabin and make love to her slowly. “If you want to dive tomorrow you need a decent night’s sleep.”
“I just want to run through all the pictures to get a sense of what we have here. I think…” Trailing off as she thought to herself, she picked up the remote control and brought up the next picture from a different book—the one that he’d been photographing. “This is Old Aramaic script.” Brow furrowed, she squinted as she tried to read the faded text.
Jonah was having a hard time multitasking. Focusing and keeping his hands off her. “That was the international trade language of the ancient Middle East, right?”
She nodded. “It originated in modern-day Syria between 1000 and 600 BCE. What we’re looking at here is the ancestor of present-day Arabic and Hebrew … Damn it, Jonah! I can’t decipher this. It’s like having something on the tip of my tongue. Please let me send this to Miguel.”
It made complete sense to send it to an expert. But even if it didn’t, her eyes looked so green, so pleading, that damn if he could deny her anything.
“If you send it now, can we go to bed?”
Ten
Maura agreed to spell them, so all seven divers went down together to explore the enormous lava cave the next morning.
The headset worked just fine on the surface when she tested it, but once again, as soon as they went deep, all Callie heard was faint, annoying static. She tapped Jonah on the shoulder, pointing to her ear. Her wireless communications headset wasn’t just malfunctioning again. It appeared to be completely offline. Not that she minded; she enjoyed diving in silence.
Jonah shook his head. His didn’t work, either.
With hand gestures he checked with the other divers to see if any of the communications devices worked. None did. The masks were expensive; Jonah should get a refund.
Divers used a sign language of their own for instances like this, so they could communicate just fine without the head mike. But having the mikes in their face masks made it easier and faster, and meant they didn’t have to be facing one another to communicate. If not for the dead air in her ear, Callie was exactly where she wanted to be. Calm, serene, tranquil blue water.
No pressure. No lies. No looking over her shoulder. Jonah locked up tight in his wet suit, mask covering his face. It wasn’t even a case of look but don’t touch. There wasn’t much to see. Feeling as though she’d been released from a strong force field, Callie could, ironically, finally breathe freely.
The words he’d spoken so matter-of-factly last night throbbed a persistent beat in her brain. “Can we go to bed?”
He hadn’t of course meant it in a sexual way. But her body, so sexually aware of him, so primed and on edge already, leapt at the suggestion. She was in a constant state of annoying, bewildering, heightened awareness. Primed and ready for sex.
Jonah hadn’t touched her, and yet she felt as though the last week had been one intense bout of foreplay.
She was a scholar, a scientist. Practical. Down to earth. She hated the muddy swirl of strong emotions, and had avoided them like the freaking plague as far back as she could remember.
She didn’t do lust.
She didn’t know who this sexual being was.
Sleepless the night before, body sensitized and aching, she seriously contemplated seducing Jonah. Something she’d not even considered when he’d hired her. Hence the reason for the wedding ring. Protection from any hunting male.
But this distraction had to stop. She could barely do her job because her days and nights were filled with images of herself and Jonah having hard, driving, hot sweaty sex.
Get him out of my system. Sleeping with Jonah can’t possibly be as good as my imagination.
Men rarely turned down the offer of sex. It shouldn’t be too hard. God only knew, having sex with the man might stop her thinking about it 24/7.
Callie had lain there in the darkness, knowing Jonah was merely across the hall from her cabin. Did he sleep naked as she did? God … Her skin grew feverishly hot.
She couldn’t now admit that she’d lied. That Adam had died four years ago, and as a widow she was more than free to have sex with him.
Confessing that lie would dredge up her reasons for doing so. And she couldn’t do that to Rydell, who was already putting plans in place to usurp Jonah’s finds and make them his own.
Would Jonah sleep with a married woman? Other than Adam and Rydell, most men of Callie’s acquaintance would have no compunction about having sex with another man’s wife. Would Jonah balk if she offered herself to him? It would have to be just before she left Stormchaser once and for all, and before he realized that she’d deliberately set him up so Rydell could steal everything he held dear out from under his nose. As payback. Revenge. The Jonah whom Rydell had told her about should have no problem satiating her desires despite the wedding ring. But she was beginning to doubt Rydell’s clear-cut version of Jonah.
The timing had to be just right. And God only knew, Jonah might not want her and reject her desperate offer out of hand.
But hey, what the hell was a little humiliation when she was so aroused she couldn’t catch her breath when she was near him? It had been so long since she’d felt anything—who knew when she’d feel this way again? If ever?
They swam around the hulk of Ji Li, and over and around several temple pillars, which she had already photographed every which way from Sunday. Callie ran a hand over one perfectly intact beauty as she swam by. I’ll be back.
She hadn’t wanted to tell Jonah last night, not until Miguel confirmed what she suspected: The pages they’d captured might be more profound than either of them realized when they were on Fire Island.
Miguel had promised to look at the images right away, but Callie knew he was thorough and precise, and he wouldn’t report until he was absolutely sure. So as much as she was dying
to know, she had to be in the present and explore the caves with the others.
Callie had learned at an early age how to compartmentalize.
Pushing the ancient texts off to the side, tucking the future exploration of her city into a neat pocket of her brain, she focused on what they might discover in the lava cave. The only thing she couldn’t seem to compartmentalize was Jonah. Was he friend or enemy? Competitor or lover?
The beams of their powerful dive lights led the way through the wide entrance into the tube. Small shoals comprising thousands of tiny transparent fish swam around them, flashing like bits of glass in the aura of the lights.
Charmed, Callie wanted to tell Jonah they were in a traffic jam, but of course couldn’t do it in sign language. But as she was thinking it, he turned his head, eyes smiling mischievously. He made a steering wheel motion with both hands so the beam from his light danced around the walls.
For a moment, suspended between ceiling and floor, as tiny fish swarmed around them, as the others swam ahead, there was just the two of them. Callie struggled to breathe through the burning ache in her chest. It felt so tight, so strong, that for a moment she forgot how to breathe and saw dancing particles of light in her vision.
Unrequited lust.
God. Her own stupidity made her sigh.
Why did she have to meet a man like Jonah Cutter now? Under these circumstances?
Why, damn it, was she this close to finding the discovery of a lifetime?
Everything she’d ever wanted was inches from her outstretched hand.
And she couldn’t have any of it.
Suck it up, Calista, and move on. Life is seldom fair.
Vertical, and maintaining his position, Jonah, as if sensing her sudden mood change, frowned at her through his mask. He gestured OK? Callie circled her fingers, OK, then resumed swimming after the others, leaving him to fall in beside her.
The ache in her chest didn’t go away, and she had to blink the sting from her eyes before she fogged up the inside of her mask.
Grateful she could do something meaningful for Ry, she’d sworn to do anything to help him best the Cutters, but she’d had no freaking idea when she’d made that promise that everything she held dear, everything she could love, would be ripped away from her in the process.
* * *
The lava tube cavern was a lot bigger than Jonah realized. Masks off, and depositing their tanks, fins, and buoyancy compensator units high on the stairs, the entire dive team clambered up the rough-cut, uneven steps to the thirty-foot-deep ledge high above the water.
“Quite a view.” Brody sounded awed at the eerie beauty of the auditorium-sized cave as he looked around.
Reflected ripples of the water danced on the lava rock ceiling forty or more feet overhead, stalagmites dripped dramatically over their heads, and the dark water bounced the streams of light from their flashlights across the surface.
“There’s more.” Leslie indicated a black opening large enough to drive a car through off to the right-hand side in the craggy rock of the back wall. “I only went in a couple of hundred feet the other day, but I think it goes back much farther than that.”
“Sometimes these lava tunnels remain intact for centuries.” Callie walked gingerly on the rough, uneven floor to peer over the edge. Twenty feet down. One slippery misstep and she’d plummet to the water and rocks below. Jonah’s heart did a little hop-skip of fear. He planted his feet. She wasn’t his to worry over. Not officially. She was a grown woman. Brilliant. Savvy. Married to another man.
He willed her from the edge anyway.
As if she’d heard him, she returned to the group, gathered a good ten feet from the sheer cliff down to the water. “The tube might be open and navigable all the way up to the source. Personally, while I see that humans forged those stairs for some purpose, which begs the question who and why, I’d prefer to concentrate on the city and Ji Li. Those two salvages and explorations are enough for thirty or more people, and we’re only six. I think we should concentrate our endeavors and limit our exploration to those. There aren’t enough of us to waste going spelunking or exploring.”
“I agree, to a certain extent.” Jonah addressed the group instead if looking directly at her. Callie sounded stiff, and more formal than usual. Did the cavern freak her out like it did Brody? “This is historically relevant. Those steps were carved to serve a purpose. Perhaps they had something to do with the city. We won’t know until we look to see if there’re any clues farther in. I think we should explore for a couple of hours, and see how deep the tunnel goes. Then we can get back to business. All in favor?”
The ayes had it.
They all wore water shoes inside their fins for this dive, and the flexible rubber soles made walking on the rough, porous pumice rock a breeze. Their combined flashlights’ powerful beams lit up twenty feet ahead. Rough walls, rough floor. But easily navigable.
“Notice the smell? Or lack thereof?” Leslie’s voiced echoed in the tube as she picked up the rear of the group with Brody. “Fresh air must be coming in from somewhere.”
Jonah’s brain was currently filled with the warm coconut scent of Callie. Whether real or imagined, it was a powerful aphrodisiac. They were in the lead, and she was a few steps behind him. In this confined space he was ultra-aware of every breath she took, and he found his own breathing rhythm matched hers after a few minutes.
“Vented somewhere for sure.” His head didn’t touch the ceiling, but still, he kept wanting to duck. Stretching out his arms, he found his fingers just missed touching the walls on each side. Six feet wide give or take. What he hadn’t figured on was Callie walking into him when he stopped to measure.
They came wet-suit-to-wet-suit. Not exactly full-body contact, but the touch of Callie’s body down his back was electrifying. “Sorry,” she murmured, stepping back as he resumed walking.
“No hay problema.” Which was bullshit. It was a problem if the accidental brush of her body caused his heart to race and his mouth to go dry. “Now, isn’t this interesting.” Jonah put up his hand to indicate he was stopping this time. “Just a guess, but I’m thinking this is human-made, too.”
Their lights illuminated a massive, rusted metal door blocking their path.
“What the—” Callie’s mind boggled at the unexpected sight.
A door? It was so out of context she stared at it for several minutes trying to compute what she was seeing. Approximately eight feet high and six wide, the door was huge. No markings, no ornamentation, no handles of any kind. Just an incongruous, riveted, rusty monolith obstructing the way.
The seams fit tightly into the surrounding rock, so snug, she doubted a piece of paper would fit between rock and door.
Her flashlight beam joined Jonah’s as she pointed it directly in the middle. “Amazing craftsmanship.”
“Open it,” Saul ordered.
“How? I don’t see a handle, do you?” Leslie murmured.
Brody shouldered his way closer, jostling for position with Vaughn. “Need some muscle?”
Callie shared a look with Leslie as the guys tried to wrench and shove open the door, using their combined body weight. “Are you going to kick it next?” she asked drily.
“We need a crowbar,” Brody suggested. “Or a nice big stick of dynamite.”
Callie shook her head. “Always good inside the tightly confined space of a lava tube.” She took her opportunity to squeeze between Vaughn and Brody to get a closer look. Of course Jonah was standing right there, so she had to be right beside him. Not on purpose, but it felt right.
Together they shone their flashlights in unspoken unison from left to right along the seam where door met rock.
Across the top, down the right-hand side, across the bottom, up the left side.
A large family of barnacles decorated an upper corner, and a piece of dried-out vegetation clung to the bottom edge.
Jonah’s eyes were stunningly blue, even in the iffy light from their various flashlights
. It was always a shock seeing that piercing azure gaze focused on her. “What do you make of it, Doctor?”
I make of it that I could fall into your eyes, and never come out. Her attraction to him was getting worse, not better. She’d prayed propinquity, and her own common sense, would kick in. But that wasn’t the case. And thinking about case reminded her of Rydell Case. The man who’d put the wheel in motion. If she did what she’d promised Ry she’d do, Jonah would never forgive her. If she did what she wanted to do, Rydell would—no he’d never hate her, but he’d be disappointed. And that would almost be worse. She worshipped her brother-in-law. Loved him as if they were blood. She owed him. She’d promised.
Callie rubbed a fist across her sternum where the pain of the unattainable, and the urgent need for Jonah, collided until the ache was almost unbearable.
“Pressure in here getting to you?” He took a half step toward her, hand raised as if he was about to touch her arm. He dropped his hand. “We can head back if there’s a problem.”
Leave it to Jonah to notice her discomfort.
Damn it. His voice turned her on. Callie couldn’t think of a worse or more inappropriate time, and she didn’t want to feel like this about him. She wanted to feel nothing for this man with his piercing blue eyes and six o’clock shadow. The only thing she was grateful for was that he was covered from neck to ankle with black neoprene. Skintight, muscle-defining, bulge-outlining black neoprene.
She conjured up the memory of being in the hospital after being jettisoned through the windshield when she was a kid. Remembered the fear and pain that even the medication-induced numbness couldn’t quite mask. The memory was powerful and visceral, and her stupid hormones backed off to a low simmer.
“Callie?”
She was going to have to have sex with him. Soon. She couldn’t go on like this, she really couldn’t.