In Too Deep (2 page)

Kind of made Fisher’s two weeks
off squad duty almost look appealing.

The ferry docked with a
bone-rattling thump. She peered at the town’s distant lights
shimmering through the light rain as she stepped onto the wharf,
though “town” was too big a word for the local
pub/restaurant/hotel, the cluster of small stores, and the
community hall.

Nothing changed. Time stood still
here.

Piper tugged the baseball cap
lower on her head and zipped her leather jacket shut. People swept
by, surrounding her with a chatter of bright voices and the rattle
of suitcase wheels along the planks. She hoisted her hiker’s
backpack and strode off the wharf onto Oban’s main road.

Her stomach looped into a series
of reef knots, each growing tighter the closer her steps carried
her into the center of town. She stopped at the children’s
playground opposite the Due South Bar and Restaurant. A grassy
slope led to a jumble of rocks and a beach dotted with clumps of
seaweed. Overturned dinghies framed a picture-perfect island
scene—ruined only by spitting skies and the choppy grey waves
surging across the sand.

Raucous laughter drifted through
the open doors of the bar. Someone roared, “C’mon Gav—drink, drink,
drink!” The locals claimed Friday night as their own and without a
doubt her brother Ben would be there. She shoved her hands into the
pockets of her jacket and hunched her shoulders against the chilly
air. Watching from the outside, yet again.

Light spilled from the large
windows of the double-story building. The Westlake family had owned
and operated Due South for the last fifty years, and the watering
hole was the hub and heart of the town. Cocooned behind the glass,
secure and enfolded by the warmth of familiarity, men and women
she’d grown up with drank beer and gossiped.

She had to go inside and face her
brother, face them all.

Face Ryan Westlake.

West.

Piper’s pulse rate jetted into the
stratosphere and she sucked in a gulp of sea air.

You’re stronger than this,
Constable Harland. You’ve faced gang members and addicts high on
methamphetamines spoiling for a fight in dark alleyways. Just do it
already.

Willing steel into her spine,
Piper strode across the road, dumped her bag under the shelter of
the railed verandah overhang, and walked inside. The scents,
smells, sights and sounds of Due South were a sly jab in the solar
plexus, leaving her the village idiot frozen in the
doorway.

A musty wet-wool smell assaulted
her nose. The same old photos of fishing boats remained mounted on
olive green walls. Ford Komeke, the island’s mechanic, sat on a bar
stool to one side, strumming his guitar. Old Smitty was hunched at
a table, emphasizing a point to his sidekick Laurie by poking
Laurie’s belly with an unlit cigar.

Her gaze flicked away and circled
the crowded room—there he was, in her father’s old spot by the
corner. Slumped in a hard-backed chair, Ben stared at his empty
beer glass.

One of the knots in her stomach
contracted a fraction. Her gangly big brother with the easy grin
and overdue-for-a-trim mop of sandy hair had changed into a
broad-shouldered, short-haired, scowling stranger.

Piper adjusted her cap again,
directing a quick glance at the guy working the bar. Not West,
thank God. She ordered a bottle of imported lager, then impulsively
held up two fingers when he returned.

Keeping her head angled down, she
grabbed the beers and plunged into the crowd. The nape of her neck
prickled as she weaved past table after table of familiar faces.
She gave it, oh, two minutes before every Islander knew of her
arrival.

Piper stood in front of her
brother, since the bulk of his cast-covered ankle occupied the
chair opposite. “Mum always said you’d break your neck on that
mountain bike one day.”

Ben didn’t move but his fingers
cinched almost imperceptibly around the glass. Five endless seconds
stretched, his silence burned her to the bone. He rolled his
shoulders under his woolen jersey and met her gaze with insolent
slowness.

“
Mum also said you’d always run
toward trouble, not away from it.” The deep timbre of his voice
scraped her nerves raw. Such a long time since they’d spoken. His
gaze never wavered as he drained the beer dregs from his glass.
“She was wrong about that too.”

Piper shrugged and put the bottles
down. “Well, I’m here now.”

His glass settled on the table
with a hollow clink. “So you are. And I suppose I’m the trouble
you’re running to.”

“
I bought you a beer.”

He turned the bottle around to
read the label. “Only loopies drink this imported crap.”

Loopies, the Islanders’
affectionate but slightly derogative name for visitors and
tourists. Piper’s eyes narrowed as she took a sip from the second
bottle. “Is that so? I seem to remember when you were seventeen,
you and your mates pinched a couple dozen and drank until you
passed out under a tree.”

The corners of Ben’s mouth
twitched, like the muscles there battled against a smile. He
slumped further under the table lip and folded his arms. “Things
have changed since those days.”

“
Uh-huh. You were a lot more
responsible back then.”

Ben winced as his foot jolted
against the chair, and fired a scorching glare up at her. “Shaye
told you about more than just my broken ankle, didn’t
she?”

Piper took another swig of beer
but made no move to sit. Ben hated anyone looking down at him. “Of
course she did. She’s worried sick.”

All the fear and hurt and
rejection exploded in her stomach, a shrapnel bomb of emotion. She
slammed her bottle down, braced her clenched fists, and leaned in.
“What the devil were you doing, risking your house to buy a bigger
boat?”

“
Butt out, Piper,” he
growled.

“
Not a chance. Just how much in
debt are you?”

“
I am not discussing it here.” His
clipped tone brooked no argument. “It’s under control.”

She slanted a glance to her right.
Conversation had dwindled to a low grumble and clusters of people
now craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the unfolding drama.
Super. This little reunion would fuel the gossip mills for
months.

Her attention returned to Ben.
“Bollocks. When Shaye mentions late payments, foreclosure, and Mum
offering to take out a second mortgage to save your ass, that tells
me you
do not
have things under control.”

“
Shaye’s got a big
mouth.”

“
And you’ve got a fat head.
Neither of which will save your house and Dad’s business.” She
whipped around to glare at the now silent pub. Suddenly people
discovered they had plenty to talk about, and the murmur of
conversation and clink of glasses resumed.

Ben dropped his head back to
grimace at the wood-paneled ceiling. “You’ve come a long way to rub
salt in it.” Fine lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes and
he rubbed a palm over at least a week’s worth of
stubble.

She sighed and tugged her cap off,
ran a quick hand through the flattened strands. Did he honestly
believe she’d come to gloat? Temper vanishing, Piper squatted at
the table edge and swallowed past the dry blockage in her throat.
“I’m only here to help. I’ll run the dive tours until your leg
heals.”

“
It’s not that simple. I don’t
just offer tours now. A lot of my business comes from cage dives.
It’s why I bought the bigger boat.”

“
Cage dives?”

“
A shark cage. See the Stewart
Island Great White sharks up close and personal. Loopies love
it.”

“
Oh, Ben.” Spidery tickles iced
down her spine. “Not the sharks.”

“
Don’t you go all holier-than-thou
on me. While you’ve been up north living the dream I’ve done what I
needed to survive.”

Someone brushed against her, and
Piper leaned forward.

“’
Scuse me.” Smitty’s gap-toothed
grin leered above a huge plate of fried fish and chips. “Good to
see you again, lass.” He winked and waddled off, stopping at the
nearest group of men and muttering, “You fellas mind your own
beeswax, ya hear?”

Piper lowered her gaze to the
scuffed floor and took a deep breath. Old Smitty was the worst
gossip of the lot, and even from his perch in the far corner, she’d
bet a month’s wages he’d been eavesdropping.

Liquid glugged into a glass and
she looked up. “Thought you didn’t drink that imported
crap?”

“
I’m not in a position to turn
down a free beer when it’s offered.” Ben shifted in his seat and
turned his face away to glower at the window.

Outside the wind had picked up,
hammering sheets of rain against the glass in a blustery tantrum.
She shivered, even though the temperature inside with so many
bodies crammed together bordered on suffocating. “Listen, I’ve
another idea we can try. When’s your next tour?”

He took a sip of his beer and
wrinkled his nose. “Got a shark dive booked this Wednesday—why? You
gonna swim with the big fishies, little sis?”

Piper shot him a cocky smile. “I’m
meaner than anything that cruises the ocean around here. So what
time do we leave?”

“
We?” He hacked out a laugh.
“There’s no we, Piper. Doc says I’m not allowed on a boat for at
least five to six weeks, and I assume you haven’t got a commercial
skipper’s license?”

Piper stood, rubbing her
protesting thigh muscles with damp palms. License? Ah, no, she
hadn’t considered who would skipper Ben’s boat. She just assumed he
wouldn’t be able to dive. “No. No license. What about one of your
mates?”

“
It’s summer. No one has any spare
hours to give me.” He reached for the crutches braced on the other
side of the table. “I told you, it’s under control. We don’t need
you here. Go back to the city.”

She lifted her chin, ignoring the
small stab of hurt at the bitterness of his tone. “Not an option.
So who’s skippering for you?”

“
Me,” a voice grated directly
behind her.

Her pulse exploded into chaos, but
she controlled the tremble in her muscles as she half turned toward
him. “Hello, West.” She moderated her tone so it was chilled with
absolute politeness.

His voice remained the same, but
the boyishness there at twenty had vanished now West had nearly hit
thirty. His shoulders were broader, the cut of his business shirt
hinting at the shape of his chest beneath, and his dress pants sat
low on lean hips. His dark brown hair, once unkempt in sync with
Ben’s, was stylishly trimmed and kept in line by some slick
product. Bet the locals gave him hell about that.

Eyes the brittle blue of dried sea
coral locked with hers. One assessing look shattered any doubt that
he recalled each intense moment spent together when she was
eighteen.

Bubbles of old, revived attraction
fizzed through her veins, as potentially deadly as nitrogen
collecting in her cells during a dive. Those feelings couldn’t be
allowed to multiply. A fizz could turn into a trickle, the trickle
to a cascade, and the cascade to a torrent. She wouldn’t go through
the devastation of purging Ryan Westlake out of her system
again.

Fool her once, and all that
crap.

***

West smothered a grim smile as he
scanned the length of her, from the leather biker jacket, down to
black jeans emphasizing a pert ass, to grape-colored combat boots—a
touch of pure Piper. Her shoulders stiffened to fence-post
straight. So, she remembered more than just the sound of his
voice.

Every cutting, snide comment he’d
intended to use from the moment Ford had sidled into his office
with a grunted, “Piper’s back,” evaporated into sea fog. He
swallowed, unable to extract his gaze from her full mouth and
creamy skin. Her hair, which in his rare poetic moments he’d
thought of as burnished chestnut, should’ve flowed past her
shoulders, but instead she’d cut it short, the fine strands curling
in the humidity.

“
You cut your hair.”
Jeez,
West, real smooth.

She twisted a lock around her
finger, before tucking it behind her ear. “Too many drunks tried to
grab me by it.”

He gripped the top of the nearest
chair, then noticing his reaction, deliberately relaxed his hand
again. What Piper chose to do with her life was irrelevant. “The
perils of being a cop.”

Her head swung toward Ben, who
clattered and fumbled to get his crutches from behind the
table.

West took a step closer, trying to
block the faint perfume of her skin from addling his brain even
further. “I take it you’ve volunteered to run the diving part of
Ben’s business.” The rigid line of her backbone betrayed her
tension.

Her arrival and plans to work
would solve some of Ben’s issues, but create a whole bunch of new
ones for West. Back on the island, Piper became another
pain-in-his-ass problem, a reminder of his youthful naivety. “So
how does a cop plan to make nice to tourists and handle
testosterone-fired guys on a shark cage dive?”