Dangerous Waters (16 page)

The constraint she'd felt miraculously lifted, and Megan was able to respond in kind. "What I want to know is, what do I have to give you to get that A?"

"Um. A little of this . . ." his hand cupped one breast, "a little of that..." the other hand stroked down her throat. "We'll figure something out."

"Oh, good," she breathed.

"Do we really need to go grocery shopping?"

"Only if you're desperate for a good book."

"I think we can put it off." Mac unexpectedly lifted her, and Megan grabbed hold, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. "For an hour or two." He kissed her, then smiled.. "Too bad the table's covered."

"Ever seen Bull Durham?" she asked provocatively.

His rakish grin flashed. "I don't want to pay for the dishes."

"Oh, well." She tried to look disappointed. "I guess the bed will do."

"We'll replay this scene," he murmured as he nuzzled her ear. "After dinner. Once we've washed the dishes."

"Good," she whispered, and let her head fall back.

*****

Mac drove right past the big Safeway and found an out-of-the-way Mom-and-Pop store. Prices were higher there and the reading material consisted of used paperbacks, but he felt safer. He settled for a couple of thrillers and some westerns, and somehow wasn't surprised when Megan chose historical romances. He'd known from the beginning that she was a closet romantic; not the kind of woman you messed with unless you meant business. So what excuse did he have?

They swam again, to Zachary's delight. Mac face-floated and kicked for close to twenty feet. When he shook water off his head, he said, "Hey, Teach, what d'ya say?"

"Very good," Megan said in a sugary voice. "You know what? I think you're ready to learn the arm stroke."

"You mean, we get to the real stuff?"

"Right." Her full mouth curved into a smile that offset her stubborn chin.

Mac watched half seriously as she leaned forward to demonstrate a crawl stroke that even his inexperienced eyes recognized as long and smooth. Trouble was, her bathing suit was hardly decent, which had a way of distracting him. He'd noticed that life-guarding she had worn two, one over the other. Now he knew why. Wet, the thin fabric of the racing suit clung to her supple body, showing nipples that had tightened the minute she hit the water. The damn suit was cut high over her hips, which were almost—but not quite—boyishly narrow.

Hell. Why did this one particular woman push his buttons so hard? Hard being the operative word, he thought ruefully. Well, he never had liked lush and overblown, in women or anything else.

He also had a suspicion he was focusing on his physical attraction to Megan in part to keep his mind off the rest of it. He could handle lusting after a woman; wondering if he could live without her was another matter.

"Now you try it," she said, and he obediently leaned forward and immediately felt inept as he tried imitating her movements. "Good," she said, "just get your elbows a little higher. Reach out in front. Like that. Very nice."

Patiently she took him through the strokes. She coaxed and soothed until he was confident enough to add the arm stroke to his face-float. Mac didn't tell her about the panic that clutched him every time the water closed over his head. He tried opening his eyes, knowing the darkness was part of his fear, but the lake water was so murky that didn't help. He'd never been crazy about water in any quantity; hell, maybe he hadn't liked being trapped in his mother's womb. Whatever. Perhaps swim lessons when he was eight years old would have cured him. But he didn't get them, and now he was thirty-two. Worse yet, somebody had tried to kill him not so long ago by dropping him into deep, dark water.

And he had to fall for a woman whose natural element was water. Who was insisting he start rhythmic breathing.

"If God had meant man to breathe in the water, he'd have given us gills," he muttered.

"I think he did and we just got tired of them," Megan retorted.

"Why don't we save the breathing for another day?" Mac suggested. "My book, my lawn chair, and a cold beer are calling me."

Megan splashed him. He splashed back. Somehow he ended up carrying her, slung over his shoulder, out of the water. She was shrieking and he was enjoying the view of her rear end, just rounded enough.

"Make you a deal," he said, when she came close to wiggling out of his grip. "We call it quits now, and I'll take you skinny-dipping tonight."

She stilled, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "Deal."

Hell. Now he'd done it. He didn't just have to go swimming, he had to do it in water dark as midnight.

*****

"Are you sure nobody else is down here?" Megan whispered.

"I don't see anybody."

"I can't see anything," Megan said.

"Then nobody'll be able to see us, right?" Mac's low, amused voice made her feel prudish. And this had been her idea, for heaven's sake.

"Ow." She stubbed her toe and hopped a couple of steps. Once the trail passed out of the scattered trees, moonlight added visibility, and Megan could make out the line of dark shore and glass-smooth lake. Considering it was midnight, she wasn't surprised that not a soul was in sight.

In front of her Mac dropped a towel on the beach and began to disrobe. Gulping, Megan did the same.

Moonlight silvered Mac's skin, accentuating shadows and the lean play of muscles. Megan hesitated, threw off her T-shirt and said quickly, "Race you in!"

The evening had cooled the air to nearly the same temperature as the water. The sensation of passing from one element to the other with so little contrast between was eerie. The water slid over Megan's bare skin, and she stretched and rolled her shoulders as she dove porpoise-like beneath the surface. She surfaced and turned back to the dark shape that must be Mac.

"It feels good," she said, hearing her own surprise.

"You've never done this before?"

"Nope." She lazily breast-stroked toward him. "We used to talk about it sometimes. Maybe climbing over the fence into the pool at night, but we never actually did it. It wouldn't have been the same anyway. A pool is so...artificial."

"Yeah, and you could have turned the lights on." Under his casualness, Megan could hear tension. The memory of that night and the endless dark water didn't disturb her, because this was where she belonged. Swimming had always been a primal pleasure to her. She'd sometimes fancied that she did have gills, that she had been made to live her life in the water. As a child she had often felt so clumsy out of it.

"You don't have to come in if you don't want," she said repentantly. "This was probably a dumb idea."

"Nah." He lowered himself into the water. "It's better to face things that scare you."

"Um." She slipped around behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "A little company never hurts."

"What scares you?" He turned so suddenly she lost her grip and floated free.

Megan half sat, half treaded water with her hands making easy figure eights. The moon was behind Mac, so she couldn't see his face. Something made her decide on honesty. "You do," she admitted.

A moment of silence greeted her admission, and she wished desperately that she could read his expression. Then he said abruptly, "You scare the hell out of me, too. I thought you were a mermaid the first time I saw you. Something out of a fantasy. I thought I must be dead."

"Is that why you didn't fight me?"

"I figured I was dead either way. You looked more pleasant than the alternative."

A small shiver cooled her skin. She'd thought of the alternative, too. "I'm sorry," she said. "We shouldn't have come."

"I don't know. This isn't so bad." Then, surprising her, he lay back and floated. She followed his example, looking up at the moon. Unexpectedly, Mac's hand came out and found hers. Megan returned his grip, grateful for a small peaceful moment. For the first time in weeks, all fear left her. She didn't even let herself think, only revel in sensation: the strength of his fingers, the brush of air against her skin, the weightlessness water gave her, the moon and the night.

CHAPTER 9

While Mac talked at the pay phone, Megan waited in the car. When he at last emerged from the phone booth and walked toward the car, she knew.

She waited until he climbed in behind the wheel and slammed his door. "The dead man's been identified."

"Yeah." Mac wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel and looked straight ahead through the windshield. "Renato Mendoza. He's been connected with Saldivar before."

"So now you know."

"I knew," he said, still not looking at her. "Now I have to do something about it."

Megan, too, gazed ahead, watching without really seeing the traffic passing on the highway. The phone booth was outside an Arco gas station. She tried to sound calm, collected. "Do you want me to stay here, or should I go somewhere else?"

When Mac didn't answer, she turned her head. He was looking at her, his brows drawn together in a frown, his expression brooding. "Damn it, I don't know what to do with you."

"What do you mean?" she retorted. "I'll do what you wanted me to in the first place."

"I don't like the idea of you off by yourself."

He said it so brusquely, she couldn't feel flattered. "What, you think I'm going to do something stupid?"

"I don't know," Mac snapped. Then he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "No, I don't think you'll do anything stupid. You're scared enough now to behave yourself for a while. But damn it, it's so easy to screw up."

"Maybe," she agreed, puzzled by his rare indecision. "But what choice is there? For you to keep playing bodyguard?"

"Let me think about it."

"Do I have a choice?" she asked tartly.

"No." He turned the key in the ignition and took advantage of the first opening in the traffic to pull back onto the highway.

Not knowing whether she was angry or hurt, Megan sat beside him in silence. He had changed so quickly, from the relaxed, passionate lover she awakened beside this morning, to the guarded, even cold, man she had first known. Which one was the real James McClain?

Why did he feel differently about her being alone now? Was it because he knew her better, thought her impulsive, maybe? Or was it because he cared more about what happened to her? Megan wanted very badly to believe the last. She knew, though, that she might be kidding herself.

It was late afternoon when they made it back to the cabin. Zachary hopped off the double bed when Mac unlocked the front door. Even though they had left the curtains drawn, the small cabin was uncomfortably hot. Megan was sweating, her hair sticking to her neck. She headed straight into the bathroom to brush her too-thick brown hair into a pony tail. When she came out, Mac was lying on the bed, both pillows shoved behind him. His hands were clasped behind his head and he gazed broodingly at the wall in front of him.

"Do you want to go swimming?" Megan asked.

He gave her a distracted glance. "Not right now."

"I'm going by myself, then," she said, turning on her heel.

When she emerged from the bathroom again, this time in her suit with shorts pulled over it, Mac frowned. "Where are you going?"

"Swimming," she said shortly. What had happened between them? Why had they reverted so easily to their antagonistic relationship?

His tone was flat. "I don't want you going by yourself."

Megan bristled. "Why not? What do you think I'm going to do, drown?"

"I just want to know where you are."

"Well, you know," she said, grabbing a towel off the back of a chair and flinging open the outside door. "Come on, Zachary." The retriever bounded after her.

She knew she was behaving badly, that he had good reason to be worried, but the way he snapped orders infuriated her. What was she supposed to do, stare at the wall with him? Why bother, since he'd made clear that she had no say in whatever decision he made?

Megan swam back and forth across the cove, Zachary valiantly trying to keep up. She'd done ten laps when she saw, not at all to her surprise, that Mac had followed her down. He wasn't swimming, just sitting on the baked, red-orange slope that rose from the water. Ignoring him, she swam another ten widths before she left the water. Megan picked up her towel and wrapped it sari-like around herself, tucking the end in.

Mac watched, his expression distant. Megan studied him, trying to imprint his image in her memory. High forehead, cheekbones that gave his face angles and planes, hooded gray eyes and a mouth that could be cruel or tender. The lines between his dark brows were more obvious than usual, the grooves in his cheeks carved deeper. He could use a shave and his dark-blond hair was shoved back without a semblance of style. He should have been suavely handsome, and instead was pure male.

She felt as if a tourniquet had been tied around her heart.

With a sigh Megan sat beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees. This time she looked at the lake, turquoise-blue, and the speedboats making crisscrossing plumes. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice constrained. "I was just...frustrated."

He nodded but didn't answer.

"Have you decided what to do?"

"Up to a point. It's time to bring this thing to an end. No more hiding. I want it done, one way or another." He grunted. "That's where I run into trouble. I need help, but I don't dare trust anyone who can do me any good."

"Your partner..."

"Could have sold me out," he said harshly.

"Now wait a minute." Megan touched his arm. "I don't think you really believe that."

Mac shoved his fingers into his hair. "I don't know what the hell to believe. The first thing I should do is put him to the test."

"Do you really need to do that?" Megan asked. "Has he ever let you down?"

His chest rose and fell on a long sigh. "No. But this time my safety isn't the only thing riding on my judgment."

"Are you talking about me?"

"Damn right."