On the Edge

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Amy pointed her gloved finger at a foot-long, reddish hued bigeye hiding in the reef’s shadows and Jed nodded. He spread his hands in a mocking gesture of regret. The bigeye would have made good eating.

  An hour before Douglas Slater had offered Jed his choice of the various trident underwater spears that were stored in the large room with the rest of the diving gear. Jed had casually examined a Hawaiian sling, the equivalent of an underwater bow and arrow, but he declined the offer.

  “I’m not much of a hunter,” he had explained with a rueful smile. “I’d be better off driving into town after the dive and buying dinner from one of the local fishermen.”

  Amy watched now as Jed turned away from the bigeye to follow a small school of exotic blue and yellow butterfly fish. She got the impression he didn’t really regret his lack of ability with a speargun. She didn’t regret it either. It was refreshing to be with a man who was content to absorb the beauty of the sea without feeling obliged to kill some of the inhabitants. LePage had loved underwater hunting. As Amy thought about that basic difference between the two men some of last night’s uncertainty about Jed faded.

  Unfortunately, her own personal tension wasn’t being soothed as she had hoped. When she agreed to the dive this morning she had told herself that it would be good for her to get back into the water. This wasn’t a terrifying labyrinth of caves. This was an open cove. She could swim to the surface at any time and breathe fresh air. There was nothing to haunt her along the reef.

  But her breathing was still too rapid. Amy couldn’t seem to relax. She was all too well aware of the slow, even sound of bubbles from Jed’s regulator. He was relaxed, drifting easily as he paused to shine his diving light under a ledge of coral.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw her hovering in the water behind him. When he signaled her to come closer, Amy took another quick breath and kicked forward. She nodded when she saw the head of a small, speckled moray eel protruding from its hiding place in the coral.

  Jed retreated from his vantage point and indicated he wanted to explore the nooks and crannies of the rock face that formed one wall of the cove. Amy hesitated, remembering some of its dark corners and holes that before she’d always found so interesting. Today she didn’t want to get too close to anything that reminded her of an underwater cave.

  But Jed was already leading the way, and Amy could see no logical reason to protest. He wouldn’t understand. He’d only want to know why she was nervous about such a relatively safe exploration.

  Questions. She didn’t want to answer any more of Jed’s questions.

  Reluctantly Amy followed Jed, thinking wryly that she was supposed to be the one giving the tour. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that Jed was already taking the lead. If she wasn’t a little more assertive, he would take charge completely. She had a feeling it was his nature. Kicking more strongly, she caught up with him and moved slightly ahead.

  Jed seemed willing enough to let her resume her role as guide. Amy moved along the cove wall, letting her guest take his time viewing the sights. While he swam down to the sandy bottom to examine a dark coral formation, she paused in the water and tried to concentrate on breathing more normally. The anxious, shallow breaths she’d been taking were burning up too much air. Awareness of how quickly she was going through her supply only increased the overall level of her tension. She caught herself staring too intently at a small lemon yellow surgeonfish and realized she wasn’t paying attention to anything except the fish. It was dangerous to become unaware of one’s surroundings underwater.

  She wasn’t afraid, she told herself. And she wasn’t out of control. But she wasn’t functioning normally, either. Stress. As Jed had remarked, it was a useful word. It covered a multitude of sins.

  She glanced down and saw Jed swimming slowly toward her. He was watching her and Amy wondered if he was noting the too-rapid escape of her exhaust bubbles.

  Embarrassed by her own tension and annoyed by Jed’s sudden watchfulness, Amy turned away to swim further along the cove wall. She would give him something more entertaining to watch than her breathing rate. A few more yards and she found it.

  It wasn’t really a cave in the rocky wall, it was more a deep indentation where a part of the old lava had been sliced out centuries before. The entrance was almost six feet across and nearly as tall. The dark opening didn’t extend too deeply into the face of the cliff, but it went back far enough to provide the sensation of a small cave. A variety of flora and fauna swayed gently just inside the opening, beckoning the eager explorer.

  Jed swam up beside Amy. She waved him inside the rocky opening. He studied her eyes through the mask for a moment before asking her with a hand signal if she wanted to ascend to the surface. Angrily Amy turned away from the question in his gaze, fluttering her fins in a determined kick. She would be damned if she was going to give in to this growing anxiety. She would handle it. She had to handle it.

  The burst of energy sent her deep into the interior. The darkness of the rocky gouge rose to meet her, threatening to swamp her. Instantly she reversed herself, turning around in the water so that she could see the safe, sunlit cove.

  Jed was swimming through the opening, swinging his light toward the back of the shallow cavern. He glanced again at Amy and she knew he was getting concerned. Her movements had been too jerky, too nervous. He was bound to wonder what was wrong with her.

  Nothing was wrong, she told herself. This wasn’t a cave, it was just an interesting hole in the wall. The wide open spaces were only a few feet away and she could swim to the surface any time she wanted. Those weren’t his eyes shining out at her from that crack in the rock. Jed’s light had just caught a little parrot fish, that was all. Calm down.

  But she wasn’t calming down. She was getting more anxious. Furiously Amy fought to control her runaway nerves. But memories of recent nightmares began to crowd in on her. The underwater cranny was suddenly much too confining. She couldn’t see the roof of the cavern very clearly. Sunlight didn’t penetrate far enough to give her a good view of the interior.

  Amy heard the tempo of her breathing pick up. Good grief, she thought. She was almost hyperventilating. She had never lost control like this in the water, not even that night.

  She stared at Jed as he slowly investigated the cavern, oddly furious at the ease with which he swam. He was everything a diver should be: calm, alert, relaxed. She used to be like that in the water; she had never felt the teeth of anxiety eating at her this way.

  Amy hovered in the lazy current, vaguely aware that she was concentrating on nothing except Jed’s movements. She was unaware of everything else around her. All she seemed able to do was stare. The gentle current pushed her slowly toward the side wall of the small cavern. Amy barely noticed. She was fixated now.

  Jed was using his light to examine some of the sea urchins that clung to a rock. Amy saw the beam of light drift slowly across the colorful spines, illuminating one creature after another. The effect was hypnotic. Her focus shifted from Jed to the light. Her breathing was increasingly quick and shallow, and all she could think about was Jed’s light.

  Then her fin grazed a rock. The shock of the small physical contact was so great that Amy jerked violently, almost panicking. She had drifted too near the coral encrusted opening of the cavern. Her leg scraped across a rough edge of coral and almost instantly a thin stream of purple mingled and then disappeared in the surrounding seawater. She was bleeding.

  Of all the stupid, idiotic things to do, she thought. There was no pain yet, but she knew that would come when she was out of the water. Amy was furious with herself. She wanted to scream with frustration and anger.

  Getting out of the water became the only thing she could think of in that moment. She had to get out of the water. Her nerves had frayed to a dangerous point and now she was bleeding. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She whipped around, swimming frantically for the wide mouth of the shallow cavern. She had to get out of the water befor
e she completely fell apart.

  And then Jed was beside her. She felt his hand on her leg, tugging gently in a signal to slow down. Amy ignored him. All she wanted at the moment was to reach the surface. His fingers closed more forcefully around her ankle. Amy glanced back, angry at his interference. She tried to wrench free of his grasp and belatedly realized he wasn’t going to let go. He signaled firmly to her to slow her ascent, holding on to her to enforce the command.

  He was right, Amy knew. She should slow down. Halfway out of the cave now, she had been about to dump the air from her buoyancy compensator vest instead of slowly releasing it. She and Jed weren’t all that deep, but a rapid, uncontrolled ascent to the surface was always bad practice. She remembered reading somewhere that nearly half of the annual diving accidents occurred in less than forty feet of water. What was the matter with her? She knew better than to react wildly. All she had was a minor cut on the leg. There was no excuse for panic.

  But then, she had been swimming along the edge of panic almost from the moment she had entered the water, Amy reminded herself bitterly.

  Jed’s mask was level with hers now. She looked into his eyes and saw his grim determination. He still had a hold on her. He was taking charge and he was giving her no option but to do this his way. He held her steady and waited for her to calm down and accept the situation.

  Amy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She had been diving since she was a child and water was her second element. She had made a fool of herself today, and in front of a man who had probably never lost his nerve or self-control in his entire life. Strange how humiliation could achieve what common sense could not. She took a firm grip on her nerves and forced herself to breathe more naturally. She nodded to Jed and they slowly started back toward the surface at an angle that brought them in toward shore.

  It was, Amy decided later, one of the longest underwater trips of her life, even though it only lasted a few minutes. Jed didn’t let go of her until they were walking out of the surf, pushing their masks back on their heads. Neither said a word until they had reached the sandy beach. Then Jed stopped. He stood facing Amy with his feet braced slightly apart, water foaming around his ankles, his hands resting on his hips. His hazel eyes had lost none of their unrelenting grimness.

  “You want to tell me what the hell was going on down there?”

  Amy, who had been feeling torn between apologizing for her foolishness and screaming at him for interfering, reacted violently to the cold demand in his voice. She forgot all about apologies and explanations.

  “Nothing was going on down there until you started acting like a Neanderthal. I cut myself on the coral. I was trying to get to the surface. That was all there was to it. Are you always that aggressive underwater? You should have warned me. I don’t like diving with macho types who feel obliged to take charge of the little woman. When two people go down together it’s supposed to be a buddy system, not master and slave!”

  “Don’t give me that. You were nervous almost from the moment we went in. And it was getting worse, wasn’t it? Admit it, you were acting as if it were your first dive and you were terrified. You told me you’d been diving since you were a kid. Your parents said you were good in the water. What got into you down there?”

  “Nothing got into me.”

  He took a step toward her and tapped her air pressure gauge with a short, irritated movement. “Look at that. You were burning almost twice as much air as you should have. Christ, you’re down to about five hundred pounds. And you didn’t bother to call my attention to that little fact while we were in the cave? Amy, that was stupid and you know it—or you should know it.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said through gritted teeth as she stripped off her mask and gloves and began unbuckling the equipment, “I won’t subject you to any more dives with me. Feel free to find another partner or feel free to use your return ticket to the States. Just don’t get the impression you have a right to stand there and read me the riot act because you don’t happen to like the way I handle myself underwater.”

  He caught hold of her shoulders, his fingers closing around the fabric of the short wet suit. Jed’s eyes blazed. “That was the whole damn problem down there. You weren’t handling yourself. You were losing control. I want to know why.”

  “I was not losing control. You just decided you knew more about diving than I did. You had to take charge, didn’t you? Couldn’t stand the thought of a female diving partner making her own decisions.”

  “Did this kind of thing happen when you went diving with LePage? Did you panic on him, too?”

  A white hot fury enveloped Amy. She swung her hand in a short, violent arc that caught the side of his face with a loud crack.

  For a painfully long moment Jed simply stared at her. Amy gasped, aware that she had just provided all the evidence he needed of her lack of self-control. She wanted to scream, she was so mad at herself. She stood trembling with tension, wanting to turn and run and knowing that was impossible. Jed was silent, and his eyes were frighteningly unreadable.

  Clenching her fingers into fists, Amy stared at a point just beyond Jed’s shoulder. “For both our sakes, don’t bring up the subject of Bob LePage again. Do you understand me, Jed?”

  “I understand you.” He didn’t say whether he intended to obey her, however. In fact, he didn’t move.

  Amy jerked her eyes back to his, feeling suddenly pressured from a new direction. “So? Had enough fun in the sun in a tropical paradise? Going back to California on the next available plane?”

  “Is that what you want me to do?”

  She moved away from him, trying to appear unconcerned with the matter. “It might be for the best. It’s obvious you’re not going to enjoy diving with me and, frankly, that’s about all there is to do here on Orleana. That and drink Scotch.”

  “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, Amy.”

  Her head came up at the soft threat in his voice. She wanted to lash out at him again but she couldn’t think of anything to say. A part of her desperately wanted him to stay, but there was another tiny, carping little voice in her head that said it might be much safer if he left.

  If he left, she’d know he was just the casual friend she thought he was. It would prove he had no real interest other than normal curiosity about the caves or what happened the previous October. But if he stayed she would have to continue wondering.

  “How’s the leg?” Jed came closer, eyeing the thin bleeding cut just above her ankle.

  Amy stepped back uncomfortably. “It’s only a minor scratch.”

  “Yeah. Hardly enough to cause all that panic,” he agreed coolly.

  “I did not panic.” She shoved equipment into a duffel bag.

  “Pardon me, I meant it was hardly enough to cause all that stress.” He began removing his gear. “Let’s get back to the house and take care of it. No sense getting it infected. Then you really would have something to scream at me about, wouldn’t you? Somehow, it would be my fault.”

  “Stop it, Jed,” she hissed.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop baiting me, dammit.”

  “Sorry. Maybe I’m just trying to let off a little of my own tension. Returning your slap might do the trick, but it doesn’t seem like the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  Amy said nothing. Grabbing her equipment, she stalked up the beach to the Jeep her father had insisted they use. Jed joined her a few minutes later. He had pulled his jeans on over his swimming trunks. He stowed diving gear in the back of the vehicle, dropped into the driver’s seat, and twisted the key in the ignition without saying a word.

  In spite of her own foul mood, Amy glanced at his left leg. “Is your leg all right?”

  “The leg is fine.” He spun the wheel of the vehicle and headed for the road.

  Amy lapsed back into silence. Her small wound wasn’t even bleeding now. It was a long, uncomfortably silent ride back to the house.

  Douglas Slater was standing in the
doorway when Jed pulled into the drive. He waved a jaunty greeting and started to ask about the dive as Amy jumped out of the Jeep. When she gave him a short, monosyllabic answer, grabbed her gear and strode past him, he cut off his questions and raised his eyebrows inquiringly at Jed.

  “My daughter, sir, seems a bit upset.”

  “Your daughter, sir, is mad as hell at me.”

  “You don’t seem all that upset,” Slater observed.

  “I’m choosing to interpret the situation as a sign of progress.” Jed hoisted his diving tank and bag of equipment and walked into the house.

  Chapter 7

  Sunset that evening found Jed with a glass of white wine in his hand. He sipped it in hope of gaining fortitude. He would have preferred the Scotch his host had offered earlier, but Jed figured the wine was a small gesture that might help appease Amy. He only hoped she had noticed it before she had left for the kitchen with her mother. But she had hardly spoken three words to him since they had returned from the dive, so he couldn’t be sure. For that matter, he couldn’t be certain if she even gave a damn what he drank.

  “I trust you like grilled pompano,” Slater said as he began the nightly ritual of stoking his outdoor barbeque. “One of the local fishermen had a nice haul this morning. I picked up a couple of pounds from him today when I went into town.”

  “Anything to wash down this wine.” Jed grinned and held up his glass as Slater glanced at him.

  The older man returned the grin. “She’s really got you going, hasn’t she?”

  “I’ve only just begun to realize it, myself.” Jed leaned one elbow against the railing, swirling the wine absently in the glass. “Her temper took me by surprise this afternoon, though. Somehow I wasn’t expecting it.” But he should have expected it, Jed told himself. There was too much passion in her. She was bound to have a temper. It was strange to realize he had known her for three months and this was the first time he’d encountered it. She had been very careful these past few months. But then, so had he.