Bermuda Nights - The Boxed Set (29 page)

His grip on my hand made my fingers throb, and he turned on me. “I bet this is your fault, somehow, isn’t it? I know you were trying to convince Kayla to get off the ship in Boston with you. You finally did it, didn’t you? You’ve screwed everything up, just like you always do.”

I bit my lip, saying nothing. Blaming Sven for the situation might cause Jeff to back out of it all, and we were only six hours away from Boston. Just six hours away from my part in this coming to an end. I could only pray that Evan and his team could wrap the rest up as quickly as possible. I didn’t know how much more I could take.

A tremor ran down my spine.

Evan’s voice came, slow, smooth, the gentle trickle of rainwater at dawn after a night of pounding rain. He put out a hand toward me. “Amanda, sweetie, come on over here. It’s getting a bit chilly out.”

I felt the pull as if he were a powerful magnet, and I was crafted from solid iron. My only desire in life was to move to him and press against him. I turned –

Jeff spun me, bringing me around behind him, spreading his shoulders. “She’s with me, now,” he snapped. “Staying in Boston. With me. Working the town. With me.”

Evan’s gaze steeled, his stance moving into sharp alertness. His voice remained low and calm, but a honed edge appeared along his words. “Jeff, let her go.”

Jeff’s eyes flared into brighter life, and I was afraid his death-grip on my hand might break bone. “She
was
yours. Past tense. You’re going off to New Orleans, now. That’s over a thousand miles away.” His shark-grin was back again. “Guess you’ll be out of the picture.”

Evan’s tone was low. “You touch one hair of her head while I’m away and –”

Jeff barked with anger. “You’ll what? You’ll leap off the ship and swim back up here to get me? If I want to do something to Amanda, by the time you could get into Boston, you’d be far too late.”

Before I knew what was happening, he swept me up with both hands and was holding me like a weight-lifting bar over his head, one hand on my arm, the other on my calf. He’d done this to show off so many times when we were dating that I stiffened into a board before I realized consciously what was going on.

Exasperation crept into my voice. “Jeff, cut it out. Put me down.” It was one thing for him to have treated me like a piece of gym gear when showing off for his frat buddies at a college party. But I just couldn’t take any more. Maintaining all these pretenses had reached its limit. I wanted to go back to my cabin, pack, and the moment the ship landed, race to my apartment. I would lock myself in for however long it took.

Jeff’s fingers dug into my body. His voice billowed with rage. “Not until this back-door lover of yours agrees you’re
mine
now.”

To my surprise, Evan’s voice came back soft, almost placating. “She’s yours Jeff. All yours. Just put her down.”

I looked at him in confusion. He had his hands up in a sign of surrender, and his whole body shimmered with attentive focus. His eyes flicked between me and the railing behind me.

I looked down – and the world swirled sickeningly around me. I’d been so focused on Jeff’s juvenile shenanigans and maintaining my balance that I’d completely lost track of where we were.

I was now precariously balanced above a nine-story drop into the churning ocean. I could barely see the waves streaming below me in the moonlight. Most of the balconies and windows between me and that drop were pitch black, the inhabitants soundly asleep. There were no screams of panic, no fingers pointed in disbelief. Just silence as the ship moved, like a massive office building, above the flowing ribbon of water.

At this height, a fall onto its surface could shatter bone.

A wave of panic rolled through me, and it took every ounce of my will not to tumble, to flail to get away from Jeff. It was only by focusing on Evan’s steady eyes, on losing myself in those depths, that I clung to the thinnest sliver of sanity.

Evan nudged his head toward the safety of the wooden deck. “Put her down, Jeff. You’ve made your point. Amanda is yours. You and she will be in Boston, and I’ll be far away.”

“That’s fucking right,” agreed Jeff, his stance firming. “I’m the one in control. I’m the one with the girl. Once I’m through with Kayla, I’ll be in charge of that little situation, too. And you’ll be off playing slow songs for some eighty-year-old couple, the same songs day after tedious day, and by the time your tour ends –”

He froze, suddenly, his brow creasing in confusion. “Wait a minute. Kayla said you were just a temporary replacement. She said you only signed on for a six month tour. That would mean you’d be back –”

His voice dropped into a growl. “You’d be back before the spring run. Back in Boston with Amanda.”

Evan shook his head. “It’s not like that, Jeff. I’m going to stay on the ship with the band. You get Amanda. You’ll be with her in Boston. Put her down.”

Jeff’s volume rose. “This was all a plot. Get me off the ship with Kayla and Amanda, get all the hard work done. Then once I had everything planned and running smoothly, you’d step in and get all the credit.” A grating harshness layered into his tone. “You’d snatch Amanda just when I’d softened her up good.”

Evan took a step forward, his eyes fixed on me. “Put her down, Jeff. Then we can talk about –”

Jeff’s voice peaked at a screech. “Talk about what? Talk about how you’re planning to rip her away from me, just when everything is perfect? There’s no way! No way in Hell I’m going to let you have her!”

Evan was nearly there. “Jeff –”

“No! If I can’t have her, then no one will!”

I was launching.

I was a cliff diver, soaring, sailing, releasing from the cliffs of La Quebrada, Acapulco into the ocean below. I had the luxury of depths of water beneath me, unlike the scant six feet that those daredevils routinely faced. I knew that the key was absolute focus – absolute calm.

I had swum competitively for years. I knew the techniques. I could do this.

It seemed Evan’s voice sounded in my head, steady, soothing, reciting each step for me.

Rotate so the feet are down. You don’t want your head absorbing this kind of a powerful shock.

My twist is graceful, elegant, as if I’m performing ballet in a marbled theater of ebony and sparkling diamonds.

Enter in a perfectly straight line. Feet, arms, shoulders, head, all as straight as possible. Tighten each muscle. Point the toes.

I am a ballerina. I am designed for this, and my entry into the water will be a pinpoint of space, providing as little resistance as possible to the massive surface of water below me.

Focus. Focus. Breathe in slowly … deeply …

I know I have to maintain calm. Perfect calm. Everything depends on it. The rippled waves are nearing, closing in, and I have to let it all go.

Close your eyes. Breathe out … now!

SLAM.

Book 4: Wanting All

Chapter 1

I wanted all to sparkle,

And dance in a glorious jubilee.

-- Emily Brontë

SLAM!

My body shook with the force of the impact. The violent collision seemed to shatter every bone, crunch each vertebra into the next as if I’d been a battering ram crashed into the iron gate of a castle. The shock of it stunned me; I nearly exhaled all my breath before I clamped my lips shut.

Flowing, cool sensation flooded around me, and it was a second before awareness hit. I flung my arms and legs out, trying to slow my descent into the inky depths. Resistance grabbed every limb, thick like molasses, and I slowly spun to a stop.

I opened my eyes, but everything around me was dark. There was no sense of up or down. I might have been sinking or buoyant. In the directionless water I could not get a sense of which.

My years of swimming training kicked in. I’d surfed off of Mexico and Hawaii; I’d had my fair share of wild tumbles. I brought my hands to my face and carefully breathed out a portion of my precious oxygen. The bubbles swirled in my cupped hands, then slowly leaked out to the right. I stretched one hand in the direction they’d gone, reoriented my feet to the opposite direction, and then began kicking. Hard.

I was moving, and a frisson of panic darted through me. Was I indeed going up? What if I was instead driving myself down further into the stygian depths? I risked a small trail of bubbles and eased as I felt them stream up my cheeks. I kicked harder. Now I just had to hope that I hadn’t driven too deep by the nine-story plunge. I had to reach the surface before my air ran out. Every movement of my leg took an eternity, every stroke a lifetime. I imagined a column of water above me, miles high, the shimmering top forever out of reach.

I stretched –

My arm flailed as it emerged from the water and swept in open air. Then the second arm slapped down and my face breached. I drew in a deep lungful of air, crying out in relief. The air was cool, salty, and tasted of pure ambrosia.

I rolled on my back, sucking in the air like a racer at the end of a fiercely contested marathon. One phrase rang out in my thoughts like the cheers of a thousand spectators.

I was alive.

After an eon, my thundering heart gentled to a more normal rhythm. I wiped at my eyes and angled my feet down so I was treading water. I turned in a slow circle, taking stock of my situation.

The ebony sky stretched out high above me, a sprinkling of stars dusting the firmament. There were no clouds hiding them away – but there was no moon, either. At least the seas were fairly calm, with only three foot waves. A patchy fog swirled. And while the water temperature was cool, I’d been in far worse. All I had to do was get back to the ship, and –

As I turned, the glistening Christmas-tree lights of the cruise ship came into view. I stopped in disbelief.

The ship should be curving. It should be making a long, graceful arc around to pick me up. There should be people on the deck with searchlights, a team ready to lower a rescue boat for me, and Evan at the middle, anxiously scouring the waves for any sign of life.

Instead, the ship was off in the distance, serenely sailing away from me as if there were not a care in the world.

I pushed down the panic which welled up within me. Now was absolutely not the time. Right now I had just one thing to focus on.

I drew in a deep breath, then bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Evan!”

A strong voice carried to me from fairly close ahead. “Amanda!”

I blinked in relief laced with confusion.

Had the man actually jumped in after me?

“Evan!” I called again, setting out with strong strokes in his direction. “Evan, I’m coming toward you.”

“Amanda, thank God,” he groaned, and then his fingers brushed mine in the water.

Every ounce of my being wanted me to wrap my arms around him, to curl up in his strong embrace and let the world go. But we were both treading water in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, our ship had sailed, and there was no convenient plank of wood drifting nearby to climb upon and stare deeply into each other’s eyes.

Chapter 2

I gazed at Evan, gratitude pouring out of every bone in my body. If there was any person in the world I’d choose to be at my side in this treacherous situation, Evan was the one.

He treaded water in front of me, his eyes scanning the parts of my body within view. “You’re sure you’re all right? Nothing broken?”