Diving In (23 page)

A
NSEL
KICKED
UP
TO
THE
surface and scanned the horizon, surprised by how far he’d traveled from the boat. Several other vessels had arrived, some tied together, and dropped anchor. The humans, fins, and plastic snorkels breaking the surface around him messed with his sense of direction. Nicki had to be right on the other side of the raft that had just dropped anchor next to him.

Deciding it had been three minutes, the longest he felt comfortable leaving her, he started swimming around the raft and the tourists already jumping into the water next to him. The crew on their tour seemed competent, but with such a mob, all the boats, the churning water, the increasing wind, he didn’t trust them to be lifeguards.

Narrowly avoiding a hairy knee to the face from a guy fiddling with a waterproof camera, he swam freestyle around the raft, kicking hard. He hadn’t gone far, but he still didn’t see Nicki’s yellow life vest.

Ever since they’d arrived at the slip and seen the size of the boat and number of other passengers, he’d had a bad feeling. She should’ve had a small private charter with a relaxed, attentive crew, or at least a tour that went to a quieter spot with a lower profile than Turtle Town. It even sounded like a carnival ride.
Buy a ticket and hold on to your fins!

The vest she got on the boat was yellow and black, like a radioactive bee, and should be easy to spot. He found their boat, scanned the space between it and the shore, his view blocked again by a trio of young women who came up for air, shouting to each other about not seeing anything good, until finally he spotted a glimpse of neon yellow about fifty yards to his left. Man, how’d she get so far away already?

His crawl stroke wouldn’t win him any gold medals, but he was strong enough to plow through the waves at a steady clip, especially with fins and a snorkel.

Halfway to the bee, he lifted his head to wave, then saw with dismay it wasn’t Nicki but a teenage kid. In between the boy and the boat, he lifted his mask, treading water, to see better. Where’d she go?

The boat wasn’t far. Maybe she’d gone back. He hoped she hadn’t; she’d be mad at herself if she’d given up so quickly.

He didn’t see another jacket like hers anywhere, but the raft tour blocked a lot of his view. Deciding his best bet was to return to the boat, he swam there, slicing the water even harder now, angry with himself for losing sight of her.

He put a hand on the bottom rung of the ladder, looking up at the captain, who was frowning at the water, binoculars in hand.

Ansel was breathing hard. “Is anything the matter?”

The captain didn’t seem to hear him.

Ansel climbed up the ladder, struggling to maneuver the rungs without taking off the flippers. “Did my friend come back to the boat? The woman in the life jacket?”

But the captain was talking to the crew member named Spike and pointing at the boy with the yellow vest, who was kicking like a shark was after him, seeming to have lost his snorkel and mask. The kid looked worried, probably afraid he’d get in trouble with whoever had brought him.

“You all right?” the captain shouted. Then, to Spike, “You’d better swim out there. See if he needs help.”

Spike already had an orange flotation belt in her hand and dove directly from the deck into the water, slicing into the water like a pale, elongated dolphin. Ansel could believe
she
just might have a handful of gold medals tucked away somewhere.

He peered over the edge of the boat into the cabin, up at the top deck, not seeing Nicki anywhere and furious that he didn’t. “We need to find my friend right now,” he told the captain. “She can’t swim.”

The captain’s attention snapped from the boy to Ansel. “I gave one lady a vest.”

“That’s her.”

“Now that kid’s wearing it.” The captain pointed. “Was he with her?”

“No, listen to me. She can’t swim.” Ansel shoved a towel out of his way and flopped onto the deck. “She’s wearing a life jacket.”

“No, that’s the only yellow one we’ve got. The rest are orange.” The captain held up the binoculars to his face and rotated in a semicircle, scanning the area.

“Give me those.” Ansel grabbed the binoculars, feeling nauseated.

“Be my guest.” The captain held up his hands.

“We’ve got to find her.” Ansel tried not to shout, but the man was half-comatose. “She’s wearing a black bikini.” Under the life vest. Which she was wearing because she couldn’t swim, damn it. Where was she?

The captain held out a hand for Spike and hauled her aboard. “This man’s trying to find somebody, a woman who started out in the yellow vest. Says she can’t swim.”

“Can’t swim at all?” Spike asked.

“Only a little,” Ansel said. “And she’s terrified of the water.”

The boy’s head appeared as he pitched the vest over the top rung of the ladder. “She made me take it. I was fine, but she made me take it.”

“She must’ve had a reason,” Ansel snapped, grabbing the boy’s hand to pull him up. First he’d get the story, then he’d kill him. No, it would take too much time. “Where’d you last see her?”

“I don’t know? Out there?” Ansel belatedly noticed the boy’s lips were blue, and saw the horror in his red-rimmed young eyes. He was just a kid, barely a teenager. He stumbled into the boat and collapsed onto a bench, shivering.

Ansel jumped up on another bench to look again through the binoculars. His hands shook; the boat lurched beneath him.

“She must have some skill,” the captain said, joining him. “To give up her jacket.”

“She can’t swim. She’s phobic. She’s out there and you aren’t…” Ansel bit down on his lip so hard he tasted blood. He didn’t swear. It was a quirk of his from college that began as a bet and became a way of life. But now, ten years’ worth of foul curses swamped him like seawater in a drowning man’s mouth. “You aren’t doing anything.”

“I think I see somebody. There. Is that her?” The captain got close to Ansel and pointed downwind.

Squeezing the binoculars so hard they creaked, Ansel stared hard. He saw a body in the water facedown, the orange tip of a snorkel sticking up. A woman’s body.

Nicki’s body.

He shoved the binoculars at the captain, yanked the yellow vest out of Spike’s hands, crammed the snorkel into his mouth, and dropped over the edge into the water before windmilling through the water as fast as he could with the vest under one arm. His breathing through the tube was louder than the waves crashing around his head.

It seemed to take forever, like he must’ve headed in the wrong direction, but he had her position fixed now with a landmark behind her, and she was getting larger.

Her figure was utterly still. As if—

Finally he reached her, hyperventilating and shaking and cold. Maybe he should’ve brought two life jackets. “Nicki!” he choked out. “Nicki!”

As a wave smacked him in the face, she lifted a hand out of the water, flapped it at him, and put it back down. As she went limp again, spit and seawater flew out of her snorkel like a humpback’s blowhole.

Treading water, trembling so badly he lost his hold on the vest for a moment, he finally found her hand and shoved it through the armhole. Only then did she lift her face out of the water, reach back to push her other arm through, and flopped back onto her back to buckle it as the waves pulled them apart.

She was smiling.

“What—why—” He couldn’t speak. A torrent of profanity was all he could come up with. He swam after her and hooked his fingers around the waist straps to tug her toward the boat.

“Is the boy okay?” She spoke around the snorkel mouthpiece. Now that she wore the life vest, she was more animated, kicking and paddling along with him. She looked fine, sounded fine.

“Yeah.” He put his own snorkel back in his mouth and blew out the water.

Smiling broadly, she spoke around her own mouthpiece. “He wore himself out. I gave him my life jacket.”

“Yeah.” Ansel kicked harder, scowling at the boat through the fogged plastic of his mask. His heart banged in his chest, angry and tired.

Spike reached them with another life belt strapped to her wrist. “Everything all right?”

“Great!” Nicki said.

It is not great
, Ansel thought as he swam. He’d known she was crazy but this was
crazy
crazy. He was in love with an insane person.

He choked and closed his eyes.

Oh, God help him.

Chapter 18

“I
S
HE
OKAY
?” S
PIKE
ASKED
.

Ansel was floating with his eyes closed, his body numb.

“I’m getting my second wind,” he heard Nicki say. “I can help kick if you pull him.”

He twisted his head around. “I’m fime.” He spit out the snorkel. “
Fine.
You’re the one…” He snapped out of his paralysis and poured his frustration into dragging Nicki back to the boat. Spike took her other hand, and the three of them kicked upwind together to the boat. Half of the other tourists had climbed out of the water and were hanging around the decks, wrapped in their towels and sweatshirts as they drank coffee and laughed, nibbled doughnuts, oblivious to Ansel’s hell.

He waited in the water while Nicki climbed up the ladder. He refused to look at her long legs, her sexy anything. He refused to love her.

She could’ve died. Willingly. For no reason, no good reason, the crazy, adorable nutjob…

“Oh my Lord, is this her?” a woman in her late forties in a turquoise robe pointed at Nicki. She rushed forward and held her arm, unfurling a towel. “I will never forgive myself.” The boy stood behind her, arms crossed over his chest, slumped over to about half his full height, staring at a puddle under his long skinny feet.

Holding her fins in one hand, Nicki hopped gracefully onto the deck and glanced back at Ansel with a grin as the woman wrapped the towel around her shoulders. She still wore the vest. Ansel climbed up to join her, vowing if she tried to take it off, he’d drown her himself.

“I can’t thank you enough.” The woman glanced back at the boy for a moment. Leaning closer to Nicki, she lowered her voice. “Jared would thank you but he’s… still a little shell-shocked.”

Ansel maneuvered past the two women, eyeing the boy, fingers twitching to throw him overboard if he made the slightest snotty move—an eye roll, a snicker, a sneer.

But he looked too miserable for any of that. He backed up until the backs of his legs hit the bench, where he sank down in a crumpled ball under his hoodie.

Bright-eyed and glowing, Nicki patted the woman’s turquoise arm. “I had the time of my life,” she said. Then she went over to Jared and punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Thanks for bringing the jacket back to the boat for me. It was really cramping my style.”

Ansel stared. Style? Cramp?
Thanks?

Spike put a towel around Ansel’s shoulders. “You’re shaking.”

The captain pushed a cup of steaming coffee into his hands. “Maybe you should sit down.”

Before he could argue, they herded Ansel into the inside cabin and plunked him on a bench. The captain whacked him on the arm. “Drink it. We’ve had enough drama today.”

Ansel lifted the coffee but didn’t drink, just inhaled the steam. “What is the name of this boat of yours?”

“The Blue Magoo,” the captain said with a smile.

Ansel nodded, storing it away in his memory for the future. Buying it and dropping it into a volcano might make him feel better.

Nicki hurried over and put the back of her hand against his cheek. “Are you okay? What happened?” She was like Florence Nightingale in a bikini. “Your skin is freezing. Is that coffee? Drink it. You don’t want to get hypothermia.”

He couldn’t believe it. She was worried about
him?

Nicki put a motherly arm around his shoulders and guided the cup to his lips. “Thanks for the rescue, by the way.”

He gulped the coffee and savored the scalding pain on his tongue and throat. Anger simmered deep within him, the stewed remains of his fear. She had no idea how badly she’d scared him. He barely understood it himself.

“You’re welcome.” He stood up and handed her the half-empty cup. “I need to use the bathroom.”

He left her there without another word.

* * *

Flying as high as a hippie on Telegraph Avenue in 1968, Nicki strode down the gangplank to the dock, smiling, swinging her arms, and humming a tune as she watched Jared walk ahead with his mother.

She knew he felt humiliated, and she really did empathize, but he was alive and Nicki was cured and she couldn’t regret any of it.

Yeah, she knew it was temporary. And she still couldn’t swim very well. But she’d faced a nightmare and not only survived but had risen above it.

She refused to think about what would’ve happened if Ansel hadn’t come for her. Of course he was going to look for her—that’s why she’d brought him along. She knew the crew would be too busy to watch her every second.

But even if he hadn’t found her, she would’ve survived. She hadn’t wanted to wear herself out, but when she was doing the dead lady’s float, she’d steadily kicked her legs, moving the fins enough to keep her relatively close to shore and the other snorkelers—but not too close. She’d been bracing herself for a rough landing on the beach, worried she might hit the reef on her way in, which would be bad both for her and the coral. But then he’d found her.

First thing she’d do back at the resort is get in the pool. Strike while the fear remained submerged, so to speak. Drown it. Drown it until it was dead, dead, dead. Then take more lessons. She’d join a swim team back home. Compete on weekends.

It felt great to be triumphant.

“Slow down,” Ansel said behind her. “Please.” His voice was clipped. He’d disappeared into the bathroom for so long, she’d wondered if he’d been seasick.

“Sorry.” She waited, hugging her damp towel to her chest, smiling warmly at him—though his gaze was fixed on the dock.