In Too Deep

by Tracey Alvarez

  West lifted his coffee mug in a salute. “Well said, Mrs. H.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Piper.

  “You big pile of monkey excrement,” Shaye added with a snicker.

  Glenna sighed theatrically.

  Ben glared at Piper until Glenna reached over and pinched his arm. “Don’t make me put you both in time-out.”

  “Fine.” Ben dropped his knife onto his plate and leaned forward. “Piper, why don’t you share one of your wonderful ideas of how to save me from financial ruin?”

  “Ideas. Right.” Piper ran damp hands down her thighs, her gaze darting to West.

  He scraped his plate clean and leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands loosely over his flat stomach. Suddenly her ideas—actually, her only idea—didn’t seem so wonderful. She grabbed a fistful of her cargo pants to center herself and blurted, “Romantic cruises.”

  Ben looked as though she’d suggested pole dancing lessons on his boat’s mast. Except not being a sailboat, The Mollymawk didn’t have a mast.

  “For honeymooners or people celebrating anniversaries—or even marriage proposals.” Piper continued, ignoring West’s raised eyebrows. “We’d take them out in the morning, let them snorkel or dive in Paterson Inlet. Serve them a picnic lunch in one of the bays with local cuisine for dinner—provided by Shaye. Then they spend the night in The Mollymawk’s double stateroom, which she tells me is lovely.”

  “Going at it like rabbits,” Ben said.

  West rocked his chair back on two legs and grinned. “Expensive way to get laid.”

  Smug bastard. “You’re a sad, sad man, West. Some people like the idea of spoiling the person they love. Not everyone thinks romance is dead,” Piper said.

  “Do you?” he shot back.

  Heck, yeah. Flowers and candy and whispered promises that vanished quicker than soap bubbles. Romance and sappy puppy love had no place in her world. “What I think isn’t important. What’s important is that for very little outlay we can charge big bucks and it’s something no one else in Oban is offering.”

  West opened his mouth to speak, but the clink of Glenna’s teaspoon against her teacup silenced him. “It’s a brilliant idea. Shaye and I can do the meals, Piper and West will run the cruises and Ben, you’ll handle the advertising and bookings. Once we’re up and running I’m sure the whole thing will snowball. Since you’ve got Piper helping now, you’ll pick up more shark dives too.” Her mother turned to her. “You and West take The Mollymawk out this morning and get some location photos while the weather’s good, then Ben can put the best shots up on his website.”

  Alone with West on Ben’s boat? She wasn’t ready. “Ah, Shaye, you’re not starting work until ten. You come with us—I can never take a photo without sticking my finger in front of the lens.”

  Shaye gnawed her bottom lip, her gaze zipping to the left. “Sorry, I promised Kezia I’d watch Zoe for a couple of hours. I’m sure West can handle Mum’s little digital.” Her chair scraped against the wooden floor as she stood. “I’ll meet you for lunch and bring Kez along—you’ll like her.”

  Ben grunted and elbowed West. “And while you’re out, you’d better show Ms. Romance here how to set up the shark cage. I booked five paying divers last night for Wednesday.”

  Piper bent to scoop up the fork she’d knocked to the floor, glad for a brief respite from West’s intense scrutiny. Being alone with him worried her more than the idea of coming face to face with one of the ocean’s largest predators. At least the Great Whites were forthright in their desires. They only wanted to eat you.

  “I’ll make sure Piper’s clued up on how we roll.”

  She dismissed West’s baiting tone and gritted her teeth. If she’d had a choice between a morning spent in West’s company or the Great Whites—she’d opt for the sharks.

  ***

  Later that morning Piper resisted the urge to poke her tongue out as West continued to shower scorn on her romantic cruise idea by saying nothing. He navigated The Mollymawk to each suggested location in Paterson Inlet and even set the camera up on a self-timer to take a few shots of them in their swimsuits pretending to snorkel side by side.

  West offered no opinions, made no snide comments and in fact, he resembled a cardboard cutout at the boat’s helm—gaze fixed on the horizon, wind tussling his hair. His perfectly-sculptured-with-product hair. Along with his perfectly sculptured jaw, perfectly sculptured biceps, and perfectly sculptured ass. Don’t forget his perfectly sculptured ego. No, it wouldn’t pay to forget that.

  Fine. He could just play the chauffeur along for the ride.

  “You all done?” he said.

  “For now. I’ll try to sweet talk our first guests into allowing their pictures to be used on the website. It’ll attract more bookings.”

  West turned the boat in a wide circle and headed back in the direction they’d come from. “Assuming you get any bookings to start with.”

  “Yes, Mr. Positivity. Assuming we get any bookings.” She sat on the helm seat and swiveled around to drape an arm over the backrest. West, at the wheel, continued practicing his thousand yard stare. Probably thought it made him look windswept and interesting.

  Dammit, it did.

  The Mollymawk motored out of Paterson Inlet and toward the open ocean. Fortunately, yesterday’s wind had died down and the sea beneath them stirred in lazy ripples—so her stomach behaved.

  Piper sucked in a deep breath. Even though she’d been out on the ocean many times, the air around Stewart Island was unique. Maybe it was the earthy green scent from the thousands of trees that covered the majority of the island’s hilly landscape. Or maybe the uniqueness came from the countless varieties of birds that called Stewart Island home and that extra something in the breeze was the distant stench of bird crap. Cynicism often kept the ache of homesickness at bay when she sat on her postage-sized deck back in the city.

  The Mollymawk powered down and the boat slowed.

  She looked around. Oban was nowhere in sight. “Why have we stopped here?”

  West cut the engine and brushed by her outstretched legs. “You’ve had your fun with the camera. Now it’s time for real work.”

  “Real work?”

  “The shark cage? Ben wants you to familiarize yourself, remember? Wetsuits are in the storage locker down below.”

  “Ben never said anything about going in the cage. He told you to show me how to operate it.”

  “Yeah, but I’m running these shark tours for the next six weeks, not Ben. You need to experience the shark cage before you take a tour.” He paused in the wheelhouse doorway, his lips twitching once with sardonic humor. “It’s okay to be a little nervous.”

  Which in West-speak translated to: It’s okay to be a total pussy.

  Hah. She wasn’t nervous—nervous didn’t begin to cover it. But she’d inform West of that, oh, in about never.

  So she’d suck it up and get her butt in the water.

  Piper puffed out her cheeks and with a gusty exhale slid off the helm chair and headed into a cabin to suit up again.

  Ten minutes later she stood on the stern’s open deck, feeling exposed in a borrowed and ill-fitting black wetsuit. West was still checking equipment next to the shark cage poised at the boat’s edge. His chin dipped as she drew alongside and across the top of his dark sunglasses his gaze skimmed her length and returned to the regulator cupped in his hands. Tugging a wrinkled bunch of neoprene out of her butt crack, Piper grimaced.

  Sorry sweetie, without a bra cup size in double letters West’s tongue’s not hanging out over you.

  His words nine years ago rose like a shipwrecked behemoth in her memory. “You’re too stubborn, too tough, and too much one of the guys for my taste. There’s nothing feminine about you. Sticking a party dress on doesn’t make you any more of a woman.”

  She ruthlessly shoved the memory aside.

  “You’ve used a surface air supply before?” he said.

  “I’m familiar with it.” F
amiliar—huh! She’d dived in rivers, tidal estuaries, and in her least pleasant experience, a fetid, pitch-black pond at the back of a farm searching for a share milker who’d taken a stroll after a hard night drinking at a mate’s stag party. Paddling around in clear conditions with a surface air supply would be a lark in comparison.

  “Good. Getting the cage in the water is the easy part. Dealing with first time divers, or divers who’ve never been this close to a real-life shark, isn’t.”

  In between grunted instructions and the whine of machinery lowering the cage into the water, Piper asked, “Has Ben ever had any close calls with inexperienced divers?”

  “Anyone who goes into the cage has to be a certified diver or, if not, the dive guide takes them on a ninety-minute theory and practical course for an extra fee. As long as they don’t panic, there’s little risk involved.”

  “And have people panicked?”

  “Once or twice. Nothing major.” He finished securing the cage to the boat, stooping to dip his fingers in the ocean. “Ah…just like bathwater.”

  Cords of ropey muscle in his exposed forearms drew her gaze. West had always been strong; he’d grown up hoisting beer crates and boxes of canned food in his dad’s restaurant. Once his body had been so familiar she could’ve sketched every freckle, each scar. But the hard packed muscle further up his arms and across his chest hadn’t yet formed nine years ago. And the span of his shoulders seemed so much wider since the last time he’d given her a piggyback ride when they were horsing around as teenagers. Piper’s hand itched to discover if his skin remained silky and hot-to-the-touch.

  He glanced over his shoulder and she diverted her attention to the sky, fiddling with her wetsuit’s pull tag.

  “You scared? Want to pack up and call it a day?”

  The thought of going in sent tiny stabbing pricks across her scalp. She let her gaze skim disdainfully over the cage, as if she often hopped into the territory of two-ton creatures with teeth sharper than Shaye’s paring knives.

  “Hardly. I grew up diving these waters too. I’ve seen the sharks.” Safely aboard a boat—and never up close. Except for that one time, which she would not think about now.

  His grin was as dangerous as what might lurk in the fathoms below. Almost as if he read her mind. “All right, then. It’s simple. You get in before the paying guests and you help them into position. During the dive you’ll signal me if there’s a problem. Most importantly, you prevent any fool from sticking their cameras or limbs outside the cage.”

  “Got it.”

  “Normally I’d be attracting the sharks with some bait chunks, but today I didn’t pack any. You only warrant a dry run, sorry.”

  “I’ll survive the disappointment.” Piper’s voice came out smooth and even, not revealing the tremble gathering momentum in her knees.

  Stepping to the boat’s edge, she gazed into the water. Clear blue and sparkling, good visibility. If she’d paid for this opportunity she couldn’t have picked better shark-viewing conditions.

  “Into the floating metal lunch box, then,” she muttered and tugged on the wetsuit hood.

  West’s snicker made it through the layer of neoprene. She pulled her mask into place and descended into the hole until her shoulders were submerged. Glad he found some humor in the situation, as right now it took all her years of training not to bolt back onto the boat. And not only because the sea was freakin’ icy.

  He laid out some air hose and handed her the regulator. “Ready?”

  “Born ready.”

  With the regulator plugged in, she slipped under the surface. The frigid water slapped at her exposed cheeks as she glided further into the cage, floating in a slow-motion semicircle.

  The water was a pretty turquoise blue, darkening to azure under The Mollymawk’s motionless propeller. Gentle waves buffeted her, shifting her neoprene slippered feet on the cage’s mesh bottom. Her breath rasped in her ears, and she held the cage’s handrail to keep steady.

  Glancing up over her shoulder, the blurry shape of West leaned against the gunwale, watching. See, smartass? She was okay. She could totally do this. A smile formed behind her regulator and she faced forward again.

  Dull grey cut through the turquoise right in front. Jagged teeth and scarred off-white flesh flashed away to the left. Metal shuddered under her fingers as the Great White’s tail struck the cage. Sonofa—her heart whomped into triple time while her lungs squeezed shut.

  Piper thrashed backward, her shoulder blades bumping the bars behind. Incomprehensible shouts overhead. A flurry of bubbles swarmed around her face as the reptilian part of her brain remembered to breathe, even as the mammal part wanted to curl into a ball to make the smallest possible target. Her fingers cinched on the hand rail again—a small miracle it didn’t snap off at the weld.

  Her gaze zeroed in on the shark cruising past; it was close enough that if she stuck her arm through the gap that allowed tourists to take photos, she’d touch the creature’s battered dorsal fin.

  A hollow banging sound above. Piper twisted her head up. West leaned over the boat edge with a fishing gaff in his hand. He tapped the cage again, held his other hand further out so she could see his thumbs up signal. She returned his “come up now” gesture by showing him her back. Then she raised a hand, one digit extended from her fist.

  It wasn’t her thumb.

  Give no quarter, show no weakness. Shark or no shark, bolting right now was not an option.

  More shouting. This time she deciphered a few words—Piper, goddammit, and get-your-ass, before she tuned out.

  Piper looked for the shark, but it had since disappeared into the gloom. The shifting of shadow and light and the motion of the water dampened down her pulse rate to almost normal.

  No sharks. No dead bodies. Just the ocean she’d always loved.

  Always had loved.

  She was unsure what her feelings were toward it at the moment. Or toward the man above—and she couldn’t avoid dealing with him for much longer.

  Chapter 5

  Once she estimated a good five minutes had passed since West threw up his hands and walked away, Piper swam over to the cage hole. Point made—she was no coward. Quitting because panic nipped at her heels was unacceptable. If she left the cage when West ordered, she’d find it twice as hard to go back in next time.

  And really—a police diver losing it because of a big, dumb shark that couldn’t even get to her? She confronted more danger patrolling the streets of Wellington city on a Friday night shift.

  Breaking the surface,

  Piper spat out the regulator and pulled off her mask and hood. The sunshine striking her face after the chilly water was bliss. She climbed onto the boat and dropped her mask into the bin with the other spares.

  West lounged on one of the cushioned benches, feet propped on an overturned fish bin, his fingers wrapped around an open bottle of Coke. He drank deeply, then placed the bottle on the table in front of him. “You done?”

  “Yep.” She sat on a plastic stool and peeled off the neoprene booties, wriggling her toes. “I can see why the loopies like it. It’s an adrenaline rush.”

  “An adrenaline rush.”

  “Oh, yeah. Shark must’ve been a thirteen-footer.”

  “More like eleven.” Sunglasses still covered his eyes and he kept them directed at the horizon, his thumb hooked all casual-like in the pocket of his shorts. As if the catching-some-rays act could convince her he wasn’t seething on the inside.

  Piper yanked on the wetsuit’s pull tag, dragged the neoprene off her arms and chest, leaving it to flop down around her hips. Adjusting the straps of her swimsuit, she directed another covert glance at West. He still stared out to sea, but this time the twitch of his Adam’s apple and the white-knuckled fingers around the bottle neck indicated an imminent blowout.

  “Must’ve been my lucky day to see one without any bait.” She stood and grabbed a towel off the nearby stack, rubbing it over her damp skin.

  �
��Scared the crap out of you, didn’t it?” He dropped his feet off the fish bin and slid the sunglasses to the top of his head.

  Her temper sparked at the smirk coloring his gaze, fanning to flame by him being right. A more accurate description of her reaction was terrified-to-a-whisker-of-a-meltdown. And the shark’s sudden appearance couldn’t explain the sick apprehension that choked her before the dive. Not a comforting admission, when the ability to think clearly and cope under stress would affect her future career. “It startled me, at most.”

  “Startled? You leapt two feet backward— it was a wonder you didn’t swallow your tongue.”

  “I wasn’t expecting a shark to just be there, that’s all. My reaction was completely understandable and no big deal.”

  West stood, muscles bunching under his thin tee shirt as he crossed his arms. “It could’ve been a big deal if you’d knocked the regulator out while you were panicking.”

  Trust West to select the one word guaranteed to trigger a response. Seabirds wheeled in the air currents, their cries slicing through the only other sounds—waves slapping against the hull and her teeth grinding together as she counted to ten. Counting didn’t help.

  Piper threw down the towel, balling her hands into fists. “I don’t panic.”

  “You did that time, baby.”

  “Bull. Shit.”

  West edged around the table. “And your hissy-fit when I ordered you up? Childish, even for you.”

  Hissy-fit? Heat flamed her cheeks and spread, hazing her vision red, loosening her tongue. “After three-and-a-half grueling weeks on the Navy training course, a little thing like a shark or a lost regulator would not make me panic. I was in no danger, so your power trip was uncalled for.”

  “Just had to prove how big your balls were, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you.” She turned to make a grand exit to her cabin but West blocked her path, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm.

  “You’ve got something to prove to everyone with that giant chip on your shoulder. But I’m not playing your juvenile pissing game again. Next time I signal you out of the water, you get out of the fucking water.”