by Cherry Adair
“Don’t make any sexy moves, Cutter,” she said, only half joking. Jonah looked as exhausted and wiped out as she felt. If she hadn’t forgotten his anger about her involvement with Rydell, she knew he hadn’t, either. Their life-and-death race to safety merely postponed the completion of that conversation. “I don’t have one ounce of energy in me.”
Now that it was over, now they were safe, and not fighting danger together out of necessity, they were right back in the control room, everything still unfinished. It was easy to claim to love someone when you were about to die a fiery death, but back in their real world, Rydell Case still stood between them.
Naked, Callie opened the shower door and pressed the dial for water. Set to Jonah’s preference, the water shot out cool. Eyes closed, she let it sluice over her without moving. It stung against her burnt skin, but gave relief at the same time.
After a moment she felt Jonah’s fingers working at the back of her head. His touch in her hair, no matter how impersonal, proved that she wasn’t too tired after all. But he wasn’t coming on to her. Just his hands made impersonal contact; his body stayed well away from hers. The ache in her chest grew into a painful ball, making it hard to breathe, and harder still not to let the tears, so close to the surface, fall.
She rarely cried; there was never any point to it. But the sadness of impending grief was almost too much to contain. She should’ve gone back to her own cabin. “I can do that,” she whispered, not moving as his fingers snagged in the dusty, damp, nasty mass as he loosened the braid.
“I’ve got it.” He worked through the long skeins, then nudged her directly under the water.
She groaned as her parched skin sucked up the cool liquid. Tilting back her head, she drank until she was satiated, as Jonah started lathering her hair with soap that smelled like an ocean breeze. Heart heavy, she hummed her pleasure.
Opening her eyes to find his chest inches from her nose, she put her hand out. Pouring a dollop in her hand, he went back to washing her hair, his strong fingers massaging her scalp until she wanted to melt into a puddle at his feet.
Rubbing her palms together, she stared at his throat, as far as she could reach with his hands in her hair and his arm surrounding her. From the neck up it would take a concerted effort to get the thick paste of caked-on dust-turned-mud washed off.
Gently but firmly he pushed her hands aside. “Later.” Lifting her chin, he met her eyes as he carefully washed her face as if she were a child. Callie desperately wanted to lean against him for the last time. Wanted to store up every memory so she could take it out for years to come, and relive every moment they’d shared.
Locking her knees, standing still as a statue, she let him bathe her as her mind drifted. Maybe she fell asleep.
“Turn.”
His hands seemed to be everywhere at once, and she turned so he could rinse her hair. The soap suds tickled her skin and ran down over the globes of her butt. Bracing her arms against the tiled wall, tears of exhaustion stung beneath her closed lids as Jonah carefully and impersonally washed her back, and down her legs.
“Callie? ¿Querido?” he murmured softly against her cheek. Groggy, she blinked open her eyes. “Get out and dry off. I’ll be right with you, I have to chisel this crap off myself, too.” He nudged her out of the shower stall.
Cool air pebbled her skin as, dripping on the floor, she stumbled into the bedroom and dropped face-first across the bed.
* * *
Jonah sat on one side of his bed, Maura and Gayle on the other. Callie, sprawled facedown between them, hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d emerged from his shower. He’d swept her wet hair out of the way and draped a towel over her naked body for modesty’s sake. They needed full access to see what the damage was.
“Let’s do this by committee,” Gayle said efficiently. “I’ll take care of her feet, then I’ll work on yours, Jonah.”
“The gunshot on her left side takes precedence over assorted singed body parts.” He pulled the towel aside to expose Callie’s left hip, which was on the women’s side of the bed.
“Right side?” Maura ran her hand down Callie’s rib cage, then down over her hip searching with eyes and hands for the wound.
Since the sight of the blood was still crystal-clear in his mind’s eye, Jonah said emphatically, “No, that side.”
Maura gave him a sympathetic look and said evenly, “Let’s take a look on the right side anyway, okay?”
Jonah slid the towel down so it covered just her ass and bared the long line of Callie’s back. There wasn’t a mark on her, just smooth, lightly tanned skin without a blemish. He ran his hand from her nape to her ass cheeks. “That’s impossible. I saw the wound myself.”
“Then she’s a quick healer,” Gayle said cheerfully, gathering salve from the first-aid kit to treat Callie’s burns.
Except—“Was she wearing fireman’s boots?” the first officer asked with a slightly puzzled frown as she held Callie’s foot in her palm.
“Same sandals as I was—”
“I see your burns, Jonah.” She gently placed Callie’s foot back on the bed. “But look at her feet and hands.” Gayle caught his gaze across the bed. “Not a red mark on her. Anywhere. Now look at you.”
Yeah, he didn’t need a mirror to tell him he was a mess. His skin was red and blotchy; fiery pain throbbed in his hands and feet, across his cheek, and down his side, which was raw and black and blue. “I don’t give a shit about me. She must have internal injuries—maybe the gunshot wound was more to the front than the back—”
Gayle put a hand on his arm. “She’s fine. Exhausted, but uninjured. Let’s patch you up so you can conk out, too, okay?”
* * *
Callie woke to find Jonah beside her, ankles crossed, chest bare, propped up against the pillows. Only the night-lights on the above decks shining through the window illuminated the dark cabin. “Is it morning?”
He didn’t move. “Just after midnight. You didn’t sleep long enough. Go back to sleep.”
“I feel wonderful.” Surprisingly, she did feel great. Rested, energized, and wide awake. “How are you doing?” He must be as wiped out as she’d been. Why hadn’t he slept? Was he sitting here in the dark plotting her punishment for being in cahoots with Rydell? It seemed unlikely that Jonah would be that cruel. He was more a walk-away-and-never-look-back kinda guy.
“Fine. A few dings here and there, nothing major.”
He was looking at her as though he expected … she had no idea what. “Where are we?”
“Still heading south. Maura and I agree, the whole area is unstable. No point hanging around. We’re heading back to Cutter Cay.”
She sat up, pushing the long, damp strands of her loose hair out of her face. She was naked, disconcerting when things were still unsettled between them. Since she lay over the coverlet, there was nothing to pull over herself. She brazened it out, pretending she was fully clothed. “Can we see the eruption from here?”
“Yeah, starboard side. Want to go up and take a look?”
Swinging her legs over the mattress, she stood, then plucked a towel from the foot of the bed to wrap around her body. She nodded. “I need to go to my cabin for a sec.”
“You’ll need this.” When he turned to reach over and get something off the bedside table, the meager light limned his bare hip, showing he was completely naked. Ah. Jonah.
He picked up the master key. Their fingers brushed as she took it, but if he felt the same zing of electricity at their touch, he didn’t show it. “Meet you on deck.”
Callie hastily dressed in khaki shorts and a white tank top, then carefully emptied the small bowl of water beside the bed into the sink with the stopper closed. Fishing out the three iridescent tiles, she held them in her open palm under the light in the bathroom, staring at them intently for a moment. “What secrets could you tell me? What wonders could you teach the world?”
Closing her fingers around them, she left her cabin and made her way to the
top deck. The slider was open to the balmy night air. A half-moon emerged from behind the cloud cover—smoke from the volcano, Callie figured.
Jonah was leaning over the aft rail as she walked across to him. “You don’t have a mark on you,” Jonah said softly.
Since she was barefoot, and hadn’t made a sound, Callie wondered how he’d known she was behind him. Coming up beside him, she pushed her loose hair over her shoulders as the breeze danced the long strands around her face and arms. “I noticed. The fact should scare the hell out of me, but strangely I’m okay with it.”
“It beats digging a bullet out of you while we ride the high seas,” Jonah said drily, not looking at her.
“It beats even thinking I ever had a bullet in me,” Callie responded with utmost sincerity.
He gestured to the orange glow across the water. “It’s a pretty spectacular show. But I feel for those poor bastards dying for their cause.”
“Maybe it was part of their prophecy. Whatever the reason, they believed in it fully. And acted on those beliefs.” Her voice carried, and she lowered it as she draped her wrists over the railing, mimicking his posture and casual attitude.
Even from a hundred miles distant, she smelled the volcanic smoke and saw the molten flares shooting high into the night sky. Fiery orange reflections danced on the dark water between Stormchaser’s wake and the small speck of Fire Island. Soon to be extinguished as the entire island sank beneath the water. Just as the Sacred City had done three thousand years before.
“They sacrificed themselves to keep their city safe.” Standing several feet from him, her body listed toward his as if he were magnetic and she couldn’t stay away. Since he wasn’t looking at her, she drank in his strong profile, his unshaven jaw, the curve of his cheek. And ached inside. Her fingers itched to comb through the shiny, silky length of his hair, being teased by the slight ocean breeze.
She inhaled the unique scent of his skin, sea and Jonah. She’d never see the ocean again without wanting him. It was going to be tough as hell in her line of work.
Instead, she stayed where she was. And yearned.
“The lava is flowing in the same paths it did three thousand years ago, depositing where it did then,” she said quietly, voice strained. “The city and everything in it will be buried under millions of tons of magma. No one will ever be able to find it now, even if they know its location.”
“An irreversible way to preserve its secrets,” he said just as quietly, staring straight ahead.
“Obviously they felt strongly enough about preserving those secrets to take such drastic action. They knew when they activated all those quakes that this would happen. Do you think it was foretold in the manuscripts?”
“Maybe. We’ll never know.”
He’d said Stormchaser was heading back to Cutter Cay. He hadn’t said if she’d be there when they made port. She couldn’t imagine him wanting her with him for the entire journey back to Cutter Cay. Did he plan to drop her off in a nearby port, and have her fly back to Miami?
Yes. She was sure that’s what he’d do.
This, then, would be their last night together.
Or as together as two people who had unresolved issues could be.
“How did the Guardians even know about nanotechnology?” she asked, because it was safe, and non-inflammatory, and hearing his voice was going to have to hold her forever. “Fire Island was so isolated. No phones, no TV, the only books we saw were thousands of years old. It’s pretty hard to make up something if you don’t at least have a vague knowledge that it exists.”
“I believe them.” The long line of his back caught the moonlight, which highlighted the shift of his powerful muscles under bronze satin skin. At least he wore shorts.
Callie swallowed thickly. “You do?”
“Yeah. But no one is going to believe us. We have dozens of artifacts. The pictures we got of the pages … Of course, you’re right. No scientific, irrefutable proof that was Atlantis.”
She brought her hands back to the deck side of the railing and opened her fingers. “These…?”
The nano-infused mosaics would be irrefutable evidence. Showing them to the world would bring everyone to the location to delve into all the secrets the Guardians had spent millennia preserving. “I wish we could take them down,” she said regretfully. “It would be fascinating to watch them migrate. Here, do you want to—?”
His eyes ate the light, looking more black than piecing blue as he shook his head. “You do the honors.”
Callie closed her fingers around the glass squares for a moment. They seemed to warm against her skin. “Whatever your secrets, whether we call the Sacred City Atlantis or not, your secrets are safe with us.”
Turning her wrist, she opened her hand over the water. Together they watched the small pieces of ancient history return to where they were supposed to be. The tiny glass mosaics picked up the orange glow of the volcano, and the stark white of the moon, as they turned end over end, then disappeared soundlessly into the water without a splash.
“Which pretty much makes us the Guardians of the Sacred City’s secrets now, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. What I’m thinking, too.” Turning his back to the rail, he faced her. “What will you tell Case?”
“I’ll tell Rydell the truth,” Callie replied, knowing the it-was-interesting-having-sex-with-you-goodbye speech was moments away, and tried to brace for it. “We discovered a Sacred City and it was consumed for all time by the volcano that put it under the water three thousand years ago.” Dragging in a breath, she kept her gaze steady as her heartbeat raced, and her breathing became impossible because her entire body hurt just looking at him. “And you? After all that, in the end you have nothing to show for this salvage. A few silver coins, a handful of artifacts we can’t authenticate—will your brothers be pissed off that you didn’t find your treasure?”
His eyes reflected the glow of the volcano, and he startled her when he slid his hand under her hair to cup her nape.
“You’re wrong, Callie. I found my treasure. A priceless treasure that I can authenticate. You.”
Her heart leapt. “But—”
“No buts,” he murmured firmly as he drew her to him, his chest hard and solid beneath her palms, his heartbeat strong and even as he lowered his mouth to hers. “Eres mi todo, mi amor. Enough said.”
You are my everything, my love, said it all.
Get swept away in Cherry Adair’s next Cutter Cay novel!
Available April 2017 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Also by
CHERRY ADAIR
Undertow
Riptide
Vortex
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE AT ITS BEST!
Praise for the novels of Cherry Adair …
“Cherry Adair writes for those of us who love romantic-suspense fast and hot.”
—Jayne Ann Krentz
“Adair leaves readers eager to dive into the next novel in her Cutter Cay series.”
—Booklist
“Undertow is the beginning of an exciting and witty new series enriched with fun characters and action-packed drama. I literally could not put it down!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Adair returns to her romantic suspense roots with an underwater treasure hunt that is thrilling and hazardous! Nonstop action plays off the treachery and danger. When you add in the sensuous sizzle you have the full Adair package.”
—Romantic Times (4 stars)
“Grips readers and never slows down as the protagonists struggle with perils, including to their hearts, with every nautical mile they sail. Fast-paced, Cherry Adair opens her Cutter Salvage series with a strong sea saga.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
“Full of action and suspense! Cherry Adair did such a great job making the reader feel as if they were part of the experience. I felt like I was right there diving into the water looking for the buried treasure with Zane and Teal.”
—Hanging with Bells Blo
g
“A relentless page-turner with plenty of enticing plot twists and turns.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“[A] fast-paced and intricately plotted tale of danger, deception, and desire that is perfect for readers who like their romantic suspense adrenaline-rich and sizzlingly sexy.”
—Booklist
“Adair has done it again! The chemistry between Hunt and Taylor is red-hot, and the suspense is top-notch.”
—Rendezvous
“A very sexy adventure that offers nonstop, continent-hopping action from start to finish.”
—Library Journal
“Get ready to drool, sigh, and simply melt.… Fascinating characters, danger, passion, intense emotions, and a rush like a roller-coaster ride.”
—Romance Reviews Today
About the Author
Cherry Adair has garnered numerous awards for her innovative action-adventure novels, which include White Heat, Hot Ice, On Thin Ice, Out of Sight, In Too Deep, Hide and Seek, and Kiss and Tell, as well as her thrilling Cutter Cay series for St. Martin’s Press. A favorite of reviewers and fans alike, she lives in the Pacific Northwest. Cherry loves to hear from readers. Find her on Facebook and Twitter or at her website: www.cherryadair.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two