Riptide (22 page)

Jealousy?

This
was a first.

He glanced at Jonah, then shook his head when his friend grinned. He’d lost his mind, and they both knew it.

He chugged the cold water, then chased it with the rest of his soda. “It was worth entertaining the thought, but honestly? I just don’t believe that’s the case anymore. We talked at length last night. She has a job waiting for her back in the States. A life there. It would be a real stretch to imagine she has anything to do with the Moroccans a world away. She just happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time, is all.”

“Fair enough. But that doesn’t explain Halkias’s attack.”

“Only two logical reasons come to mind. One—it was a random act of violence because she’s female. The other, less savory reason, would be that it’s because she happened to be in the medina that day, and someone doesn’t want a witness to that meeting.”

“All the more reason to get her off the ship.” Jonah pointed out.

“I hear you. As soon as I can. Trust me.” Nick folded his arms on the table. He didn’t like being told what to do on his own ship. Didn’t like it at all. It was only a few more days, though. In the meantime, he’d enjoy what time they had together.

“She’s like Chinese water torture. A man can only take so much before he cracks.”

“I’ll jump in and save your ass if I think you’re going down a second time.”

“Don’t!” he said tersely. He’d go down a second, a third, hell a fourth time. Until she was writhing and squirming and—

Hell. “The jewelry, sword, and pewter aren’t going anywhere,” Nick finished, and went back to Jonah’s original question. He was scheduled to take the chopper to Las Palmas to send some of the more valuable pieces to Cutter Cay by courier. The rest of the bins and their contents would remain on board for the duration.

And in the hold, millions of dollars’ worth of uncut blood diamonds were almost undetectable, hidden in plain sight in water, in the plastic tubs stacked ten-deep. But he wasn’t going to make that trip this week. Aries had maintained radio silence. Nick had to sit tight, nobody on or off the
Scorpion
until further notice. The fact that they’d roughly estimated his treasure’s worth at around three million bucks was immaterial.

But since they had millions of dollars’ worth of uncut stones on board, right now the find was just another number.

“Aries wants us to stay put,” he mused. He didn’t like the thought of Bria staying any longer than she had to on a ship where people were trying to kill her. It was ludicrous. Dangerous. And exactly the point. He’d ferret them out. “It can wait a day or two.”

Bria climbed up the ladder, nimble as the sprinter she was. All that running she did showed in the long lean muscles of her truly spectacular legs, displayed to perfection by the white shorts. She smiled at them both as she approached the table. “Burke and Olav invited me to go down with them.” She gave him a challenging look. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Jonah doesn’t want to dive.” He gave her a pointed look. Himself or Jonah. Those were the only two options. Jonah was captain this morning, and had dressed the part in his whites.

In all honesty, his friend loved to dive and took every opportunity presented to him when he wasn’t running the
Scorpion
. But Jonah would forgive him this one. “I’ll take you.”

She looked at Jonah, who put up both hands and schooled his features, but Nick knew the interplay between himself and the only woman on board amused the living shit out of his pal.

“I can’t dive this morning,” Jonah assured her, struggling not to smile.

Nick glanced at his friend. “Don’t you have a ship to run?”

Jonah saluted. “I do. I absolutely do. Gotta run and do important ship shit.”

Bria turned big brown eyes on Nick, her lips curving in a smile that wriggled its way into his chest like a burr. “Then I guess you’re the designated diver.”

He swung his legs off the chair and got to his feet. “Let’s go find you a suit.” He figured they’d both be head-to-toe in wet suits, tanks, masks, flippers. Cold water. An hour when he’d be forced to concentrate on something other than how she tasted. “Ever dived?” he asked as he escorted her to their—
his
cabin and waited while she found a swimsuit in his dresser in a drawer he was sure had held some of his old T-shirts.

She had a handful of red as she headed to the bathroom to change. “I’ve had lessons, and gone down maybe half a dozen times on vacations.”

“Why’re you leaving?” he asked, leaning against the doorjamb between his office and bedroom. The room still smelled of sex, the bed invitingly rumpled with the covers and sheet thrown to the floor from their morning marathon. “I’ve already seen every delectable inch of you.”

She shot him an arch look. “Because when you see my inches, you get distracted, and when
you
get distracted,
I
get distracted. And I’d really like to dive,” she finished demurely, making him laugh.

“Don’t happen to have your PADI dive book with you, do you?” he teased. She was probably exaggerating her experience by half, but they wouldn’t stay down long, and since he’d be watching her like a hawk as it was, might as well do it underwater.

“It’s in my other purse,” she shouted, going into the bathroom and firmly shutting the door. “I’ll give it to you later.”

Nick shook his head, feeling as light and dizzy as if he’d inhaled helium.

Carrying a towel over her shoulder and wearing what, on any other woman, would be a modest red one-piece swimsuit, Bria looked mouthwatering. On her the simplicity of the garment only served to showcase, well,
everything
. The high swell of her breasts, the curve of her waist and hips, and her long, long golden brown legs.

Nick found himself torn between praying Aries’s call would come through soon—and praying that it didn’t.

They went down to the dive platform. The sound of the blower, moving the sand below, was loud enough to make hearing difficult. A slight, hot breeze danced across the sunlit surface of the water as Nick chose suitable gear. “We’ll do a circuit of
El Puerto
and I’ll show you some of the artifacts we’ve yet to bring up.”

She smiled. “Awesome.”

He walked her through a safety check, explaining the gear and making sure she knew how the respirator, goggles, and buoyancy compensator worked, then handed her a wet suit. She pulled the black neoprene over her red bathing suit and it hugged every delectable curve like a second skin.

“You’re going to need a weight belt,” he said matter-of-factly, eyeing her slender body form analytically to judge what weight she’d need. His dick eyed her form with a completely different agenda.

Pulling a belt from the gear storage, Nick pulled four of the small bullet-shaped weights off it with a little more force than necessary, and readjusted the buckle to fit her snugly. Circling his arms around her waist, he lifted the heavy belt over her hips, which required that he touch her. And even though it was in the mid-eighties, and the sun beat down on the deck, she shivered and slanted him a heated look.

He raised a knowing eyebrow. “Something the matter, Princess?” She was so beautiful she hurt his eyes.

Amusement flickered as she shook her head. “Tell me what we’re going to see down there.”

“First finish suiting up.” He set up her BC, fitted with tank and regulator, in front of her. “Follow my lead, grab it, swing it up over your head, then put your arms through and latch the buckles.”

She eyed him with a wry glance. “I’ve dived before,” she reminded him.

Nick slung his BC into place. “
El Puerto
was on her way back to Cadiz from Cartagena and Potosi with tons of gold and silver and precious stones.”

Bria huffed as the heavy BC and tank landed on her back, but her eyes lit up at the prospect of gold, silver, and gemstones. They’d be a lot brighter if she saw what the
Scorpion
was storing in the hold. “Was she caught in a storm?”

“Battle with a Portuguese warship.” The black neoprene hugged her body from neck to ankle. Extremely distracting.

“Ah. A battle at sea. Exciting stuff.”

“
Terrifying
way the hell and gone out here. I’ll show you the cannon from both
El Puerto
and the Portuguese galleon
São Juan Poinsat
. They’re practically side by side, which has made this salvage fascinating. Ships fought close together then, and the captain of
El Puerto
probably lashed the ships together as they tried to do in those days, so his soldiers could board and fight hand-to-hand.”

“They sank together?”

“Yeah.
El Puerto
due to half a dozen direct hits from the
São Juan Poinsat
’s cannonballs,” he explained. “I’ll show you where they hit. The ships probably struck simultaneously, and that was the end of both of them, lost forever to the hungry sea. Until now.”

Mikhail came over to hand Bria her full face mask with integrated regulator and communications system, and said to Nick, “No current this morning, visibility forty-five meters.”

Nick adjusted the straps as he fit the mask around her head, and silently cursed as his dick twitched in response to the smell of her hair.

The sooner Gabriella Visconti was off his ship the better.

He wasn’t used to—didn’t damned-well
like
—this constant barrage of unwanted emotions. Every time he was anywhere
near
her, Nick felt as though he was caught in the blower’s high pressure jets—tossed this way and that on the seafloor at high speed.

Not only didn’t he like this excess of emotion, but get a hard-on in a wet suit and
everyone
would see it. With any luck, Aries would make contact while they dived. Feasibly he could be flying the princess to Las Palmas within hours.

For some annoying reason, Nick didn’t feel the relief he’d hoped to feel at the thought of getting rid of her.

The sex was good.
Incredible
.

But out of sight, out of mind would make for a calmer, less frenetic libido. He took a deep breath. Yeah. Once she was gone, his body would be back to being his own.

But for now he felt possessed, out of sorts, and horny.

“To communicate, just press the button here.” Taking her hand he helped her fingers find the send/receive button on the side of her mask. He stopped touching her as quickly as possible. His reaction to her, he knew, was pheromone based. But, Christ—he’d never, ever felt this way in his life.

It was unnerving, that’s what it was.

“Works up to about six hundred feet, just like a walkie-talkie. Ready?”

Eyes big and bright behind her mask, lips curved with excitement, Bria nodded.

Her smile set off an insane chemical reaction in his brain, and he found himself grinning back as he secured his own mask.

Together they dropped off the dive platform, then followed the shot line from a slight surface chop through clear blue water. Visibility was excellent, and Nick pointed out the wrecks below. Because he’d studied both galleons in detail, he knew exactly what they’d looked like, but to an untrained eye, the pile of worm-eaten timbers on the seabed looked like nothing but coral-covered lumps.

“Hear me okay?” he asked through the underwater communication headpiece. She gave him the thumbs-up. “Just push the button and talk normally, I’ll hear you just fine.”

“Look at the turtle!” Bria said excitedly a few minutes later. Her breathy excitement as it reverberated through his head gave Nick his first underwater erection.

Chapter 13

They stayed where they were, hovering in the water, maintaining their position easily and almost silently as the turtle paddled lazily by. Five smalltooth sand tigers cut through a shoal of tiny neon dottybacks. The sharks hovered for a moment in the midst of the swarm of blue, orange, and yellow, then flashed through the shoal and disappeared into the blueness beyond the hulk of the
El Puerto
. The dottybacks moved as one in a sweep of color in the opposite direction.

Bria did a graceful pirouette to watch them go, the bubbles from her regulator spiraling over her head. Her eyes smiled behind her mask. “Breathtaking.”

Yeah. She was.

The light diminished the deeper they got, turning the underwater world around them into shades of blue. The darkened outline of the wrecks showed up against the light golden-sand seafloor.

The
São Juan Poinsat
rested a hundred yards away. He took Bria by the Portuguese wreck first. Little remained, so it was hard to tell what it had been. The timbers that hadn’t yet been consumed by worms were burnt and twisted beyond recognition.

“Wow,” Bria said through the microphone in her mask. “What happened to this one?”

“
El Puerto
carried
bomba,
ceramic fire pots crammed with flammable material. They’d throw them at the sails and rigging of an enemy ship. So while the Portuguese were firing at the Spanish ship, she was burned beneath their feet.”

“A hideous way to die,” Bria said soberly.

There wasn’t much left of the warship, and he turned her around toward the
El Puerto
. The once magnificent galleon lay on her port side, at a sixty-degree angle to the sand, bow first. Nick touched Bria’s shoulder, then pointed at the massive gaping holes running the length of her hull. “That’s one of four direct hits below the water line from the Portuguese cannons. She sank fast.”

“Can I touch it?” Her genuine excitement pleased him.

“Sure.”

He followed as she dove down to the wreck and watched as she lightly brushed her fingers along the ragged edges of the hole in the hull. He’d done exactly the same thing when
he’d
first seen her.

“Do you know if anyone survived?”

“Out of the thirteen hundred people on board the two ships, five were picked up by a fishing boat the next day.”

“That’s good. Good that there were people who could tell what happened. Hopefully they were able to contact some of the families…”