Kitabı oku: «In Too Deep / Matched»

CHAPTER ONE

CRASHING WAVES. SUNLIGHT streaming onto his face. A light breeze blowing through the open floor-to-ceiling windows. And a pounding headache.

Alex Stone reached his hand out to the bedside table and groped for his phone, then brought it to life to read the time. 8:37. Shit.

He sat up in bed and swung his legs to the floor, cursing his brother as he grabbed a pair of swimming trunks from his suitcase. Ditching his boxer shorts, he slid the trunks over his bare hips and bent forward to dig around for a T-shirt. His head protested.

Alex may not have minded his headache so much if it was the price for an evening of fun, but the case was anything but. After arriving in Moretta from LA last night, tired and jet-lagged—naturally, Alex had refused his brother’s offer of a private jet to neighboring Barbados in favor of three leg-cramping commercial flights—his considerate rock-star brother had driven him straight to his place, where a raucous party was in full swing. No amount of sleeping pills or pillows over his head could block out the noise and music pounding through the walls of his brother’s home, which lasted until, by Alex’s estimation, about four hours ago.

He glanced at his phone again: 8:40. His scuba-diving lesson was due to start in twenty minutes. He’d taken all the preliminary lessons back in LA, and today was to be his first open-water dive. But right now he was exhausted and feeling anything but mentally prepared for it. It was probably dangerous to dive with so little sleep. He was staying on the island for a week; there was no rush. He should cancel…

Screw that. This was something he needed to do. He’d promised himself he would, and Alex Stone was a man who always kept his promises.

Alex opened his bedroom door. It had been dark when he arrived last night, so between the lack of light and the throngs of bodies crowding the space, he hadn’t gotten a good feel for its layout. Now Alex could see how breathtaking both the house and its setting were. Each of the eight bedroom doors opened onto an expansive piazza with the beach just beyond it. Between a stand of palms on his right and a rocky outcrop to his left, the turquoise ocean lapped gently. As he watched, a tortoise slowly made its way along the sand in his direction.

Alex turned and walked toward the main house, noting that there wasn’t an empty glass or a cushion out of place to be seen, thanks to his brother’s twenty-four-hour housekeeping staff. Passing through the enormous living room, he admired a trio of white sofas the size of queen beds and the tasteful, original artwork on the whitewashed walls. By the time he got to the stainless-steel-and-polished-concrete kitchen with coffee on his mind, his walk from one end of the house to the other felt more like a quest.

“Hey, little brother,” Dev said with a grin as Alex entered the room. Lounging against the counter with a cup of tea in his tanned hand, Dev was the picture of health. For the life of him, Alex would never understand how his brother could party as hard as he did and never look the worse for wear. “Sleep well?”

Alex glared at him as he hit the button on the Starbucks-size espresso machine. “Glad to hear you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“What happened to you, anyway? You missed your own party.”

Alex stared at him in disbelief. “My party?”

Dev shrugged. “Yeah, man. I haven’t seen you in what, four years? My brother comes to visit me—I pull out all the stops.”

“And I always thought the guest of honor was supposed to get a little attention at his own party. My mistake.”

Dev appeared oblivious to Alex’s barb. “Plenty of people there would have loved to give you a little attention,” he said with a wink, turning his head toward the window. Through the glass, Alex could see Dev’s entourage—including several silicone-breasted groupies—lounging by the infinity pool. Alex gave his head a hopeless shake. There was no denying that he and his brother looked alike—same tall build, dark hair and unusual aqua eyes. The eyes were courtesy of their mother, and, Alex thought, looked devastating on Dev’s somewhat prettier face but didn’t quite work with Alex’s more masculine features. But the similarities ended with their appearance; in every other way the brothers were about as different as guitars and boardrooms, much like their respective careers. “I have to get going,” Alex said, downing the last of his coffee.

“Going?”

“Scuba diving. I told you last night.”

“Oh. Right,” Dev replied, but Alex knew better than to think his brother had been paying attention. It had always been like this between the two of them, even when they were kids—Dev busy entertaining his adoring audiences while Alex hurried along behind in his shadow, just hoping for a shred of his attention. “So, scuba diving, huh? That’s kind of unlike you, considering…” Dev trailed off, leaving the thing they’d never talked about hanging in the air.

Alex placed his coffee cup down with a thud. He wouldn’t give his brother the satisfaction of seeing that he wasn’t quite over his fear yet. “Scuba’s been on my radar for a while. And what better time to tackle a water sport than when you’re surrounded by water?” He started to walk away, and then turned back and gave his brother a cool smile. “You should come with me.”

Dev busied himself with fishing his tea bag out of his mug. “Can’t risk the old ears, brother. Be the death of my career.”

“Of course.” Alex left the kitchen, his mood unimproved.

“Take a golf cart,” Dev shouted after him.

Nicola Metcalfe was going to be late for work—again. Turning the key in the ignition a second time, she made a frustrated noise in her throat when it gave a dry click…and then nothing. Running an agitated hand through her hair, she jumped off the golf cart and made a beeline back to the tiny staff bungalow she shared with her roommate.

“Kiki!” she shouted furiously as she flung the front door open and strode toward her roommate’s bedroom. “You forgot to fill up the cart again! How am I supposed to get to work?”

On her bed Kiki rolled onto her side, her strawberry blond hair spilling over her pillow, and opened one eye. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I finished work so late last night, and the station was already closed…”

“It’s called planning, Kiki.”

“Planning. Right,” she agreed but was already rolling away again and pulling her pillow over her head.

Nicola sighed, knowing it was hopeless. She loved Kiki—they’d been friends since Nicola had first moved to LA to finish her teaching degree nearly a decade ago, and Kiki was the whole reason she’d moved to Moretta four months earlier, acting as a soft landing for Nicola when she needed it most. After the messy end of Kiki’s marriage two years ago, she’d traded in her crazed career as an executive assistant for a bartending job on Moretta. It still amazed Nicola that her friend had had the organizational skills to orchestrate such a dramatic move—unlike Nicola, Kiki was hopelessly scattered.

Nicola left the house again, then she snatched her satchel off the seat of the golf cart and started a slow jog toward the beach along the island’s main road. In truth it was Moretta’s only road, a meandering loop around the entire island with a crisscross running through the center to allow access to its hillside homes, which traded beachfront property for breathtaking panoramic views of the Caribbean Sea. But on a three-square-mile chunk of land sprinkled with only one boutique hotel, one restaurant, ninety-two estates and a few staff cottages, the beach was only minutes away for each and every resident. Seventy years ago it had been a handful of Barbadian and American judges who first recognized the beauty of the tiny island, flocking in to build majestic homes on inexpensive land that soon skyrocketed in value. The influx had earned the island the temporary nickname of “Judgment Isle,” ironic considering that it had now grown into a destination known for its privacy and lack of judgment.

By the time Nicola was halfway to the scuba shack, she was breathing heavily and the thin white tank covering her bikini top was soaked through between her breasts. In mid-August it was already ninety degrees before 9 a.m., but having grown up in Hawaii she was used to heat like this. She stopped to catch her breath, placing her hands on her knees as she leaned forward. All was quiet aside from her ragged breathing and the sound of a light breeze riffling through the palm leaves. Gathering her hair off her neck as she straightened again, she found herself wishing for one of the elastics she kept in a drawer at the scuba shack.

In the distance she could hear the whine of an engine approaching. She recognized the sound as another golf cart, the chief mode of transportation around the island. Every home boasted at least two of them—except, of course, her home.

Nicola started walking in the direction of the beach again as she heard the cart draw nearer to her. She cast a glance over her shoulder, hoping the driver might be someone she knew—Juan from the restaurant maybe, or Stella from the hotel—but one look told her this was not someone she was going to be bumming a ride from.

The driver was a lone female. Her signature dark wavy hair was wrapped in a pink scarf, and large sunglasses covered half her face. Nicola recognized the woman immediately: Lauren Hayes, just one of the many celebrities who owned a home on the island.

No, Nicola would not be asking Lauren Hayes for a lift to her lowly scuba instructor job.

Nicola lifted a hand briefly in greeting, but the star cruised by with perfectly averted eyes. Nicola shook her head with a small grin. She had no right to complain—this was exactly why she had moved here. On an island overflowing with celebrities, Nicola was an unrecognizable nobody—and that was exactly who she wanted to be.

It was only after Alex had started driving that he realized he wasn’t entirely sure if he was going in the right direction. There were no signs, as Moretta wasn’t exactly welcoming to tourists—apparently, you either belonged here or you didn’t. Even the scuba shack’s website was obtuse—We’re located at the beach, of course!

As Alex drove on, half hoping he was traveling in the wrong direction so he would miss the boat after all, he tried to calm his nerves by bringing his mind back to the whole reason he was here in the first place: John Brissoli. The self-made entrepreneur and ex-lawyer was known to be a recluse, especially since his most successful website had reached stratospheric heights two years ago. The site had spawned a spate of copycats, but Alex was only interested in acquiring the real deal. Never mind that a quick internet search revealed the true scope of Brissoli’s work—he had his fingers in many pies, including the porn industry. But Alex didn’t see that as his concern. He’d learned a long time ago to separate his own ethics from those he did business with, as there probably wasn’t a deal to be made under the sun that didn’t have a little dirt on it.

The idea to acquire the website had come from Alex’s father, the cofounder of the family media empire along with Alex’s mother. Devin Sr. had made it clear to Alex that he was to pay whatever was necessary in order to add Brissoli’s site to their company’s roster. But of course, it was rarely that simple. Mr. Brissoli had ignored Alex’s many emails and calls until a week ago, when he’d sent Alex a one-line response: on moretta if you want to talk.

Moretta. It figured. The same island his rock-star only sibling spent a third of his time on; the same island Alex had been avoiding for that very reason ever since his brother had bought a home here several years ago. Knowing the size of Moretta, Alex had had no choice but to tell his brother he was coming, which maddened him all the more because he didn’t actually have a clue what he was going to do once he reached the island. Alex’s follow-up messages to Brissoli had once more gone unanswered, so now here he was—four thousand miles away from home with no cell phone number for his contact, no meeting time or place, staying with a brother he’d stopped trying to forge a relationship with years ago. Even the stunning views of the island as he drove weren’t enough to cheer him up.

Alex sighed deeply as he rounded a corner in the road, swerving slightly to avoid a crossing tortoise. Beautiful island or not, he couldn’t wait to track Brissoli down, get the meeting over with and hightail it out of here.

That was what Alex was thinking when he saw her.

Behind her, Nicola heard another golf cart approaching. She broke her jog, slowing to a walk as the cart pulled up beside her.

“Excuse me,” said a deep male voice. When she turned to face him, her breath, which was coming out fast from her run, literally caught in her throat. The man who had spoken the words to her was drop-dead gorgeous. Square jaw, dark mussed hair, and his eyes—they were the exact same color as her own. No one had the same shade of eyes as her. When she was little, her mother used to tell her they were proof that she was born with the ocean in her.

“Yes?” Nicola managed to get out.

“Am I going in the right direction? I’m looking for the beach.”

The beach? Hot or not, it was an obvious pickup line, and a bad one at that. Nicola had heard plenty of those since she’d moved here. This guy was obviously some C-list celebrity staying with an A-list friend and thinking that moved him up two letters in the alphabet. What was it about celebrities that made them think you were supposed to fall at their feet if they deigned to talk to you?

Nicola started walking again, looking straight ahead. In her peripheral vision, she saw the cart crawling along beside her. “Keep driving in any direction. You can’t really miss it.”

“Of course. The, uh—the main beach, I guess I meant. In the town center.”

“Not much of a town, but keep going straight and you’ll be there in about a minute.”

“Thanks.” He paused, and then, “You looked like you were in a bit of a hurry. Can I offer you a lift?”

Nicola turned to look at him again, setting her face in a firm expression of disinterest that belied the flutter she felt in her belly.

God, he was beautiful.

He was wearing swimming trunks and an old gray T-shirt with a rip in the neckline, a flaw in his clothing that only served to highlight the perfection of the body beneath it. She couldn’t help herself—she followed the line of his smooth biceps down to his large hands to check for a ring. Now more than ever, married men were a definite deal breaker for Nicola. But his fingers were bare, allowing her to imagine them sliding up her thighs, tugging on the ties of her bikini bottom and…

Stop it.

But she couldn’t. Judging from the length of his bent muscular legs, he was at least six foot three—perfect for her, as at five foot nine, she felt too tall around many men. One last look between his legs revealed an impressive bulge that she could imagine undressing, stroking, until he was rock-hard, and then…

Enough!

She was thinking like a sex-crazed teenager, probably because she hadn’t actually had sex since long before she moved here. Everything that had gone down in LA hadn’t exactly worked wonders for her libido.

“I’m happy walking,” she lied, and then started doing just that to prove it. She could feel his eyes burning into the side of her face.

“Suit yourself,” he said, shrugged and then drove away.

Really, it was a good thing she hadn’t accepted the ride, because Alex was pretty sure there was no way she wouldn’t have noticed the swelling under his swimming trunks. Jesus, she was fucking beautiful. Trim, toned figure, long blond hair and those eyes…the same shade as his. Though if she’d noticed that, she certainly hadn’t let on. He wasn’t sure why she’d been so standoffish with him when he was just asking innocent questions, but he figured it might have something to do with the fact that she looked familiar. Like almost everyone else on this island, she was a someone, and she wanted to be sure to send the message that she was way out of his civilian league. Not to mention that a woman as hot as her was most likely off the market.

Alex shook his head, trying to clear it of the image of the glistening sweat between her breasts, the tanned slice of tummy he’d spied between her tank top and shorts, the heavy breathing that had made him think of only one thing. He wanted to hear her breathe like that again, but this time because of his cock driving into her again and again, her nipples thrusting upward to meet his hungry mouth…

Get yourself together. You’re about to be sixty feet beneath the surface with nothing between you and a lungful of killer water but a couple of rubber tubes.

Right. He needed to focus. He had come here for two reasons—to close a deal and to once and for all conquer his childhood fear of the ocean, and he wasn’t about to be distracted from either of those goals by any woman.

No matter how fucking hot she was.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO INSTRUCTORS, EIGHT STUDENTS. At the dock Nicola did a quick final head count before zipping her dive skin up to her neck. Much to her annoyance, her mind was still on the chiseled god she’d encountered on the road—and the furtive, hopeful glances she kept throwing at arriving students irked her even more. She really did need to get out more.

“Tanks are ready to go,” said Zach, her fellow instructor, reaching past Nicola to set the last two metal cylinders on the boat. Nicola smiled her thanks to him. As far as she knew, Zach was one of only a handful of island staff members who had actually been born on Moretta. Raised the son of one of the estate’s chefs, Zach had grown up in the tiny staff quarters behind the house and been homeschooled by his mother—just the inspiration Nicola had needed to start tutoring some of the island kids once per week. She didn’t think she’d ever become accustomed to the huge class chasm that separated the island natives from the residents who’d taken it over.

“Hi, Miss Nicola,” said a quiet voice. Nicola turned to see one of her students, Raia, peeking out at her shyly from around the corner of the shack.

Nicola smiled at her. “Back to school this week,” she reminded Raia with a mix of anticipation and longing. It wasn’t lost on Nicola that if she were back in LA right now—back in her old, normal life before it all went crazy—she would be welcoming her first-grade class to their first day of school today. The memory of the children she’d been forced to leave behind two months before the end of the school year still stung.

After Zach and her students had piled onto the boat, Nicola stepped onto the boat herself and started to mentally prepare for the upcoming dive. The fact that she’d been scuba diving since she was thirteen and instructing since she was nineteen, when she’d used it as a part-time job to put herself through college, did nothing to make her take the sport less seriously. It only served to heighten her awareness of its dangers, because with the rising popularity of scuba diving, people tended to lose sight that it was an extreme sport. If done properly it was almost always safe, but there were many things that could potentially go catastrophically wrong.

She ran the upcoming dive through her head, planning the traverse around the reef she would lead her students on. Then she ran through her four students’ abilities, assessing each one for potential weaknesses or panic triggers. By the time the boat geared down, pulled up alongside another dive boat and dropped anchor at Sinkhole Reef, Nicola was feeling ready.

“Okay, everyone,” she said, pulling her mask and snorkel over her head and letting it rest around her neck. “This will be an easy one. We should have excellent visibility, and we’re going for a max depth of seventy feet. You’ll see lobsters, stingrays, moray eels, possibly a few nurse or reef sharks. Lobsters hang out in pods, so don’t be freaked out if you come across a den of fifty or so. Just keep your fingers to yourselves! Remember to practice neutral buoyancy and keep your fins off the reef. Stay with your buddy at all times, and ascend—slowly, remember—before you have no less than 200 PSI left in your tank.”

She walked around to her students to be sure their tanks had been turned to the open position, getting each of them to test their regulators in turn. Then she put on her fins, weight belt and buoyancy control device. Shuffling backward on her fins toward the edge of the boat, she put her regulator in her mouth. Then she held her mask on her face and fell backward to demonstrate a back fall-in. “Now your turn. One at a time,” she called to her students once she’d resurfaced.

Focused solely on the safety of the four people under her charge, Nicola was barely aware of the sound of bodies splashing into the water as divers from the neighboring boat began to drop in at the same time.

Alex had thought he was doing okay. On the boat ride he’d run through his entire lesson book in his head, followed by everything he’d learned on the eight pool dives he’d completed back in LA.

He could do this. People did it every day. Hell, there were teenagers on his boat who didn’t look the least bit concerned that they may very well be taking their last-ever breaths.

Quit it. Not every kid who goes into the ocean has a near-death experience.

After he’d talked himself somewhat off the ledge, he took a deep, calming breath and followed his instructor’s orders—tank open, regulator in, mask on. He was standing up, ready to walk backward to the edge of the boat when his instructor pointed at his waist. “Forgot your weight belt,” Rusty said. “You won’t get far down without that.”

Alex groaned. His weight belt—of course. Shit, he was a mess, and his persisting thoughts of that Sienna Miller look-alike on the road this morning weren’t helping matters.

Focus.

As he sat down again and unfastened his BCD, Rusty walked over to inspect Alex’s belt. The man was huge, which gave Alex a small measure of reassurance—even though his brain told him he’d be practically weightless underwater, if anything went wrong it was comforting to know this guy could probably carry him to the surface on one finger.

Rusty picked his belt up and gave it a heft. “Twenty-two pounds? You’re a big guy. I think you’ll want another fiver on there.”

“You sure?” Alex asked as a vision of himself sinking to the ocean floor like a rock flashed through his head.

“Yep.” The instructor grabbed a weight from the crate near his feet and handed it to Alex. “Just thread it through your belt and you’re good to go.”

Alex did so, then hefted the belt around his waist and fastened the airline-seatbelt-like closing. It slipped down a little when he stood up, so he tightened it. It slipped down again. Was it supposed to feel this loose? Probably—what the hell did he know? All he was certain of was that he was used to being in control, being the one to show others how things were done, and he was tired of looking like a rookie fool. It was this departure from his comfort zone as much as the ocean he was about to jump into that was causing his anxiety.

In any case, it was go-time. There was no backing out now. Alex got himself ready and fell backward into the open water.

The surface was crowded, as it looked like another group of divers had just dropped in at the same time. It took Alex a minute to locate his buddy, because everyone was unrecognizable to him with their masks and snorkels on. After they inserted their regulators into their mouths, his buddy counted down with his fingers. Holding their inflator controls above their heads, they slowly released air from their BCDs to start the descent to the reef. Alex felt the water close over his head, and then he saw bubbles rise in front of his mask as he exhaled.

He was doing it! He was under the surface of the ocean, and he was okay! Ridiculously, he felt an urge to let out a whoop, then quickly reminded himself of how stupid that would be.

When Alex’s feet hit the ocean floor, he spun around in a slow semicircle toward the reef. Then it was right in front of him, and all he could do was blink in amazement. The reef was so much more incredible than any photograph could capture. It was covered in every imaginable shape and color of plant and animal life—waving pink sea fans, purple and yellow tubes of coral—all forming a backdrop for the many animals that called it home. Sea stars of purple, orange and yellow shared space with spiky sea urchins on the coral. A spotted moray eel poked its head from its den, a turtle nipped at a plant, a grouper the size of a coffee table cruised by and a school of tiny blue fish flashed in synchronicity. Beyond it an underwater meadow of seagrass spread into the distance.

Alex turned to look to his left. There, much too close for Alex’s comfort, the ocean floor fell sharply away to create a cavernous, eerie-looking dark blue space: the sinkhole the reef was named after. Alex shivered, imagining himself stepping off the edge and falling down, down, gathering speed as the air in his BCD compressed, struggling to swim upward…slipping beneath the surface and sinking while his brother laughed onshore—

Stop it.

He was doing so well; the last thing he needed to do right now was send himself into a panic over something that had happened nearly two decades ago. He tore his eyes away from the sinkhole.

Alex’s group was starting to move along, so, remembering his pool dives, he put a little air into his BCD until his fins lifted from the ocean floor. Then he did his best to get himself horizontal—he could only imagine what a newbie he must look like, but at this point he was almost beyond caring—and started swimming after his buddy.

Of all the incredible things to see underwater, Nicola’s favorite was probably the very common trunkfish. With their clown-like faces, boxy spotted bodies and you-don’t-scare-me attitudes, they practically made her laugh into her regulator every time. She was pointing one out to a student when she noticed another diver swimming past her.

Many divers had trouble identifying people when they were suited up underwater, especially if they were in matching equipment, but Nicola had a knack for it. She could tell this diver wasn’t from her group, or even from her boat, and that he was very inexperienced. That was fine—everyone had to start somewhere—but what wasn’t fine was that he was on his own with no buddy or instructor in sight, and worse, headed directly for the sinkhole.

What the hell? What was he doing, and why was he on his own?

Checking quickly to make sure her students were all fine, she started going after him. This diver may not have been experienced, but he was very tall, making for a fast swimmer. When he reached the sinkhole, he didn’t slow down but cruised right over it, staring down into it as if mesmerized. Then he suddenly stopped, suspended above it.

Nicola was still about fifty feet away from him. She swam harder, not letting him out of her sight. Judging from this diver’s behavior, she had a suspicion of what was going on. It was unusual for it to happen at this depth, but certainly not unheard of: nitrogen narcosis. She’d seen it several times in her diving career—a state of euphoria and invincibility, much like that caused by narcotics, induced by breathing air at a higher pressure than the atmosphere. It was imperative that she get to him before he got any bad ideas—like letting all the air out of his BCD so he could swim to the bottom of the sinkhole, for example.

Forty feet away…thirty-five—

Nicola saw something from around the diver’s waist drop into the abyss. Her heart stopped.

The diver’s weight belt had slipped off, she realized, and now one of two things could happen. Either he would rocket straight for the surface and get a life-threatening case of the bends, or he could panic and very likely spit out his regulator. She hoped upon hope it would be option number two, because then at least she’d have a chance to get her spare air supply into his mouth before he drowned. Muscles burning and heart galloping, she put on a burst of speed, knowing that she still had to keep her breathing under control. If she sucked in too much air, she wouldn’t have enough left in her tank to get both of them safely to the surface.

Twenty feet—

Nicola watched the diver’s body language as he registered surprise, confusion—he was starting to rise upward—but then the best thing possible happened. She saw his arm shoot out to grab his inflator control, which meant he was doing what he was supposed to—removing the air from his BCD to keep himself from rocketing up to the surface.

Ten feet—

But oh, God, no—he’d hit the wrong button. This, too, was something she’d seen happen before—the buttons were different shapes but close together, so sometimes in a panic a diver would hit the fill button instead of the expel button.

Fifteen feet now as he floated up and away from her—

Adrenaline kicked in, but Nicola’s muscles still screamed. Her breath tore out of her lungs—not much chance of giving him air now, but she had to do something—and finally she was close enough to take a lunge at him. Reaching her hands up, she used her fins to propel herself upward and managed to close one hand around the tip of his fin. Her other hand closed around the edge of his second fin, then she clawed her way up until she could grab his ankles. She had a hold of him now, but it could still mean both of their deaths if she didn’t get to his inflator control to let his air out. She used the same arm she had locked around his legs to let the air out of her own vest by its built-in button, then used her other hand to take a slow-motion whack at the diver’s forearm. He dropped the inflator control and it floated slowly down toward her. Nicola snatched it up and pressed the expel button, doing a strong reverse frog kick with her legs to try to pull them downward.

And then she prayed.

Long, slow, deep breaths to conserve what little air she had left. Pretty much impossible at this point, but Nicola focused on it all the same to try to quell the adrenaline pumping through her veins. She still had her arm wrapped around the man’s waist with her head near his hip. She reached for her dive computer to read her oxygen level, though she already knew from her increasingly labored breaths that it was dangerously low. The number flashed at her in urgent red digits—80 PSI. Just enough to get her to the surface if she started her ascent in about one minute, but that didn’t help him any. At least they weren’t rising anymore—they seemed to have leveled out at around forty feet. Nicola employed a few more reverse frog kicks to pull them down a little farther, calculating that they’d now have to stay at this depth for about three more minutes to compensate for their initial rapid ascent. Going up any sooner put them both at serious risk for decompression sickness, a potentially lethal condition where gaseous bubbles formed in the bloodstream.

Sliding her hand up the diver’s chest, Nicola reached behind his left shoulder and pulled her arm forward to catch the tube attached to his dive computer. She caught the device in her hand and looked down at his oxygen: 50 PSI.

It was decision time—release him to his possible death but save herself, take both of them up now come what may, or try to share what little oxygen she had left with him.

There was no question. She swept her arm backward to catch her spare air supply, then pulled his regulator out of his mouth, replaced it with hers and hit the purge button.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN ALEX’S HEAD broke the surface of the water, cold fear was still pumping through his veins. Just moments ago he had been quite certain he was about to draw his last breath. Ripping his mask off with shaking hands, the only thought in his mind was: he’d been a fucking fool to ever think he could do this. Quick on its heels, fueled by his extremely damaged ego, was the thought that he never wanted to face the person who’d been stuck with saving him. Given the choice between terror and humiliation, he chose a third option—outrage.

“What the hell happened down there?” he sputtered to Rusty after he’d yanked his regulator from his mouth. No, not his regulator, not even his rescuer’s—the device he’d just pulled from his mouth was the spare air supply that his own instructor had had to save him with. After Rusty finally got the memo that things had gone south with one of his students, he’d taken over the job and relieved Alex’s real rescuer so he or she could surface and save their own life. “You let me lose the group on my first dive? My fucking belt falls off?”

Beside him, Rusty yanked his mask down around his neck. “The important thing is that you’re all right,” he said soothingly, waving to his driver to pick them up. “Let’s get on the boat and I will explain.” The driver spun the boat in a semicircle and then backed up toward them, expertly placing the ladder within Alex’s reach. He grabbed on to it and heaved himself out of the ocean, feeling water gush down his legs as his wet suit drained. Four pairs of eyes—those of his fellow divers, comfortably seated on the benches—turned to look at him as he stumbled on deck. Great. Now he had an audience, as if he didn’t feel stupid enough. And he knew very well how he’d just sounded—like one of those pompous assholes that Alex himself hated, the ones who tried to blame everyone else for their failings. Still breathing heavily with exertion and adrenaline, Alex sat down on the bench and leaned his head forward with his elbows on his knees, trying to get himself together.

Rusty dropped down beside him. “Another diver got caught in fishing line, so I had to stop and cut him out. It happens sometimes.” When Alex didn’t respond, Rusty calmly went on. “You swam away from your buddy. Your belt slipping off was a piece of bad luck. I came for you as soon as I realized you were missing, but thankfully someone else got to you first.”

Alex shook his head with his eyes focused between his feet. He still didn’t understand what the hell he’d been thinking. He remembered gazing out at the sinkhole from the reef, and then an overwhelmingly optimistic feeling bubbling up in his chest. He would do more than get over his fear, he remembered thinking—he’d fucking obliterate it. And then he’d started swimming toward the sinkhole like he was under some goddamn spell or something. To say he was furious with himself was an understatement. He’d thought he could handle this, could conquer his lifelong fear, and instead he’d only succeeded in making it worse than ever.

“Nitrogen narcosis,” called out a female voice from behind him. “At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. Did you feel giddy and invincible?”

That voice—it was vaguely familiar. Alex lifted his head and slowly turned it to see a woman standing on the other dive boat, bobbing up and down with the waves in an opposing motion to his craft.

No.

It was her. Looking completely different from this morning—wet hair askance, a red rim around her eyes where her mask had imprinted on her now-pale skin, but those aqua irises—he could see them all the way from where he sat. There was no mistaking it: the goddess he had encountered on the road this morning, the hottest woman he’d laid eyes on since forever, was his rescuer.

Alex’s pulse kicked into high gear, making his ears ring. Now he truly wanted to die of humiliation. Everyone on both boats was staring at him now, including another large, protective-looking instructor at the woman’s side. As Alex looked at them, his memory of the recent events fell away, leaving only an intense visceral feeling in his body that was all too familiar. He felt the warm gush of water rushing out of his mouth, saw the crowd of kids staring at him, and his father’s furious face as he strode toward him. And then later—the sharp sting of his father’s slap across his five-year-old cheek. His father, the person who was supposed to care about him, had only enforced to Alex how badly he’d messed up.

Alex’s hands curled into fists on his thighs. He’d learned about nitrogen narcosis in his scuba lessons, but his understanding was that it only happened at depths below a hundred feet. Was she trying to help him save face? Or making fun of him? He knew he owed her his thanks for saving his life, but with his emotions running riot, he feared doing so might reduce him to tears. So instead, he jumped up and strode to the end of his boat, getting as far away from his rescuer as possible.

“Whoa,” Kiki said to Nicola as she watched her friend down her second tequila shot in five minutes. “That bad, huh?”

“That bad,” Nicola confirmed, sliding her glass across the bar for a refill.

“Care to talk about it?”

Nicola shrugged. “What can I say? I saved some Z-list celebrity today—risking my own life while I was at it, I might add—and he doesn’t even have the decency to thank me. I mean, sure, it’s part of my job description, but really? The way he was looking at me, it was like the whole thing was all my fault or something.”

Hands on her hips, Kiki shook her head in disbelief. It was one of the many things Nicola loved about her roommate—that she could always count on Kiki for a big validating reaction to her stories. “Jesus. Where does someone even get off?”

“I know, right?” Nicola said, lifting her third shot to her lips. “Maybe it’s a Moretta thing.” She threw the tequila back with a quick toss of her head, and then clunked her glass down on the counter. “Like as in, maybe I’m just not cut out for this place.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Kiki said, slinging her dish towel over her shoulder and leaning her elbows onto the bar to get in her friend’s face. Her pretty green eyes narrowed at Nicola. “You’ve only been here for four months. It’s been good for you. You are not bailing on this like…” She stopped.

“Like I usually do? It’s okay, Kiki, I know.”

“Okay. Good,” Kiki said, plucking a wineglass from the rack above her to fill an order.

Nicola watched her friend, thinking how grateful she was to have her in her life. When Nicola first came to Moretta, it hadn’t been with the intention of staying here. After she’d been fired, she’d known exactly who to call in a fit of tears. Kiki had convinced her that a break from it all would do her good, so Nicola had packed a suitcase and flown to Moretta the following week. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with the place, and when she’d gone for a dive and mentioned to Rusty that she was an instructor herself, everything had started falling into place. Kiki needed a roommate, Nicola needed a place away from the spotlight where she could regain her sanity and still earn a living, and they both needed a friend. A few phone calls back to LA was all it took to wrap up her life there. She’d been sharing an apartment with a colleague back at home, and as luck would have it, her colleague had recently started making noise about wanting her boyfriend to move in. Whether her roommate was sincere or just using it as an excuse to kick Nicola out after the scandal, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter—Nicola asked her to put the remainder of her clothing and few personal items into storage, which she’d happily done. Nicola tried not to think too hard about the fact that it had taken less than a day to put an end to a ten-year chapter of her life, because something about it was downright depressing.

Nicola watched Kiki’s eyes following someone behind her. “Dev Stone just walked in,” Kiki said under her breath. “Just another day at the office.”

Nicola could have cared less, but she caught a glimpse of him in the reflection of the bar’s mirror all the same. Hair raked back, careless swagger, a gaggle of groupies in tow. Vomit-inducing. She was just about to say so when she caught sight of another face among the entourage: the diver she’d rescued.

Nicola groaned. This island was much too small, and the scene was so fucking typical that it made her stomach turn. “Don’t look now, but it’s Mr. Z-lister himself,” Nicola told Kiki. “I guess we’ve unearthed whose star he’s hitched his ride to. I have to get out of here.” She slid a twenty across the counter and stood up.

“Total asshole,” Kiki agreed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Never mind that he’s a hot asshole.”

Nicola rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t deny the twinge she felt in her nether regions at the memory of their brief encounter this morning. After everything that had happened, how was that even possible?

“Love you,” Nicola said to her friend, and then she was gone.

“You should try the lobster,” the woman beside Alex urged him, not even attempting to be subtle about pressing her breast against his arm as she leaned toward the dish. “It’s unreal.”

“Thanks, I’m good,” Alex responded dully, leaning away from her just as unsubtly.

Lobster. He’d seen a whole pod of them today on the dive. It had been amazing to see them all piled together with their antennae waving at him in slow motion—before it all went to shit and he decided he was Poseidon, king of the goddamn sea.

“Hey,” Dev said from across the table, the first word he’d spoken to Alex since they’d been seated. As he watched, the woman on Dev’s left reached for a platter of plantains and started refilling her master’s plate. Alex refrained from rolling his eyes. “How was the dive?”

“Fantastic!” Alex forced a smile, then glanced over his brother’s shoulder toward the adjacent bar to check for any new arrivals. He’d been doing this since they sat down in the restaurant an hour ago, just hoping she might walk in. Just hoping he’d have the chance to apologize and thank her the way he should have in the first place. But there was no one new—just the same lineup of bodies seated at the strawberry blonde’s bar that had been there since they arrived.

A sharp knife of regret twisted in Alex’s gut. He’d acted like a fool. Sure, he’d been furious and terrified, but how could he have let his pride get the best of him like that? He rubbed a hand over his stubbly face. “Hey, you know what?” he said to Dev, pushing his chair away from the table. “It’s been a long day, and I need to get some sleep. I’ll see you back at the house, okay?”

Dev looked taken aback. “Sure, man, whatever you want.”

Alex excused himself and looked around for their waiter. He knew his gazillionaire brother was accustomed to paying—even expected to pay—for everything all the time. Dev wouldn’t even check the bill when it arrived. But it was the principle of it that mattered to Alex. Just as he’d refused Dev’s offer of the private jet, he would pay for his own meals and any other expenses that arose when they were together. Letting his brother give him a free ride only enforced the shadow Alex had lived in his whole life—especially after Dev’s first album took over the charts when he was just twenty years old.

The waiter was nowhere to be seen. Sighing deeply, Alex made his way over to the bar and leaned forward on his elbows. The strawberry blonde bartender was inches away from him, but instead of offering him a drink, she picked up a bar mop and started slowly wiping down the already clean countertop.

Alex cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

“Oh.” She rocked back coolly on her heels. “Did you need something?”

“Just hoping to pay my bill. I can’t find my waiter.”

She tapped a button on the iPad that was sitting on the bar. “Table twelve? Mr. Stone has a credit card on file.”

Alex reached into the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out his wallet, then took out a hundred and laid it on the counter. “Then please just put this toward it,” he said. He was about to walk away when he caught himself and spun back toward her. “Hey,” he said, giving his fists two quick raps on the bar. “There’s a dive instructor that works at the scuba shack…blond hair, greenish eyes—”

“Male or female?” the bartender interrupted with a lift of her eyebrow.

“Female.” And hot as hell, he wanted to add.

“Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell,” she replied with an exaggerated upturn of her palms, then returned to her cleaning.

Alex stared at her. It was so obvious she was lying that it was almost funny—she wasn’t even trying to hide it. Which could only mean one thing: that she and his rescuer were friends, that his rescuer had already spilled the story and that somehow the bartender had figured out that he was the guy who’d made it all go down. God only knew what an asshole this woman must think he was.

“Listen,” he said. “I did something really stupid today, and I owe that woman a serious apology. I get it if you’re protecting her. But as her friend, think about this—would you rather she went to bed tonight feeling shitty, or feeling like a hero? Because she was my hero today, and I really need to tell her that.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow. You’re good.” She reached under the bar and slid a piece of paper across to him. “I’ll give her a note.”