Escape (11 page)

He stood at the wheel, his tanned forearm rested on the polished wood of the wheelhouse, guiding the boat through the water. He stared out at the ocean ahead and answered without turning his head, “Yeah, it seemed apt at the time.”

“In what way?”

“Well, after I first came here, I went home and worked my ass off for three years to be able to afford to move. To do what I planned, I needed to have a decent sum of money behind me, so I had to keep working and save up.”

Working behind the counter in your local branch of NatWest obviously didn’t pay much these days
, she thought. But then she looked at the boat beneath her feet and realized what he must have been saving up for.

She gave a low whistle. “Three years? That’s commitment.”

“No different than you committing—what, five years?—to becoming a doctor.
I don’t know about you, but once I have decided I want something, I don’t tend to let too much get in the way.”

His
dark gaze
flicked down her body and she understood where the phrase ‘undress you with his eye
s’ came from. Under his scrutiny
, she pulled in her stomach a little more and held her shoulders back. A little trippy beat of excitement raced through her. He wanted her, she was certain, but she couldn’t understand why he didn’t just walk up to her and kiss her. They were out here, a good couple of miles from shore, with no one else around. He could take her here on the deck and no one would be any the wiser.

The thought made her catch her breath and she had to turn away from him, pretending to admire the view, certain he would see her thoughts in her face and read them as easily as she had read his.

I haven’t
decided yet
, she told herself. Technically she still had a man waiting for her at home.
Think how hurt Max would be if he knew what
you were
thinking right now
. But the guilt trip didn’t work on her this time, and when she allowed herself to turn back to Rudy, studying his full mouth and strong jaw, she knew something would happen between them today.

Lucy realized they were slowing down.

Glancing back toward the shore, the island was
little more than a speck. Rudy dropped anchor. The
water was a cobalt blue and when she looked over the side, she couldn’t see the bottom.

“We’re diving here?” she asked nervously.

He saw her anxious face and smiled. “Y
ou’ll be fine, honestly. There’
s a reef wall below us, that’s why it looks so deep, but it’s shallower
where the coral is
.”

She wasn’t convinced.

“Hey, if it’s too much we can head inland a bit. I just really wanted to show you the wall. You get so much more here than a few tropical fish.”

It was the thought of all the things she
couldn’t
see that made her nervous. Images from the first
Jaws
movie flashed through her head. But she didn’t want to be a wimp in front of him, so she shook her head and forced a smile.

“No, its fine,” she said.
“As long as you don’t shout at me this time.”

He had the decency to look embarrassed. “I promise, he said, holding up one hand as though he was swearing an oath. “No shouting.”

Rudy helped her with her gear and then put his own on. They did the safety checks needed before a dive: air levels, straps, weights. He handed her a set of mask and fins, and she eyed-up the fins in mistrust. Those things were purely designed to humiliate her.

Rudy saw her misgivings. “Why don’t you jump in and I’ll hand them to you? You can put them on in the water, some people find it easier.”

“What if I drop them?”

“Then I’ll get you another pair.”

She didn’t like the idea of being in the water alone, but she liked the idea of falling overboard in the fins even less, so she allowed Rudy to help her to the side with her oxygen tanks. Still feeling huge and awkward, she jumped in.

The water was cooler here and she plunged beneath for a moment befo
re bobbing back to the surface.
As soon as she was in the water, the awkwardness
of the heavy tanks disappeared. She pulled off her mask and spat on the plastic, and then rinsed
the mask out. Spitting in front of good-looking men was not something she wanted to get into the habit of doing, but in this case—if she wanted to stop her mask fogging up and be able see something—it was unavoidable.

Rudy didn’t seem to mind. He leaned over the side and handed her the fins
. She reached down into the water
and slipped the
m on
her feet. She still didn’t like the feeling of bobbing around in the deep ocean like this, the thoughts of thi
ngs swimming only inches below
her feet haunting her, but then Rudy jumped in beside her and her worries vanished.

He bobbed back to the surface. Water droplets hung from his eyelashes, his hair darker and sleeker, wet. She wondered for the millionth time what he was doing out here with her. His type didn’t like girls like her—she wasn’t flirty or sexy. She took things seriously and had never rebelled in her life.

Except for now.

Rudy took his regulator out of his mouth. “We’re going to use the anchor rope to go down on. If you’ve got any problems, signal me. We’re going a bit deeper than last time so you might feel a bit more pressure and pain in your ears, but remember to keep equalizing, okay?”

Lucy took a couple of steady breaths and used the rope to slowly pull herself under. The underwater world enveloped her; the light fractured by the surface, sound traveling more quickly in its tightly knit molecules.

Rudy, with his vast experience, went down with her, not needing the rope to pull himself under. He just held on loosely with one hand. He kept eye contact with
her,
using his free hand to form the hand signals to ask if she was okay.

At fifty feet down, he signaled her to stop.

Together they swam away from the line toward the coral wall. The wall looked like a cliff face in front of them. The precipice dropped into the depths, its height somehow dizzying, even beneath the water.

The wall teemed with life.

A cloud of bright blue and yellow fish swirled like a fast moving, colorful fog in front of her eyes. Pink and orange sea anemones clung to the surface of the rock, their fat tentacles swirling in the current like fingers. A huge spindly crab walked across the coral, unsteady on its stick thin, multi-jointed legs.

They swam up the wall, toward the coral reef. The light penetrated further now they were in shallower water, and the colors of the fish and coral seemed even brighter. The coral ranged in all shapes and sizes, from elegant branching fingers, to
delicate fans, to even strange-
looking brain corals. Butterfly fish, black and yellow with a huge swirl of a dorsal fin, darted between rocks. A shoal of squid moved so quickly, they reminded Lucy of a flock of sparrows circling at sunset, swarming in front of her.

Rudy grabbed her arm, dragging her attention away from the fish. He pointed below them, toward a crevasse, and she looked down to see a turtle, huge and ancient, sleeping under a rock. The turtle opened its eyes as though sensing their presence, and blinked at them lazily.

Leaving the turtle to its nap, they continued to swim. In the distance, a long dark shape slowly undulated toward them. Within moments, the shape was close enough to recognize and Lucy’s heart jumped into her throat. It was a grey reef shark. The shark glided elegantly through the water, paying them little attention. Lucy could feel h
erself breathing too fast, but
Rudy reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it in reassurance and her breathing slowed.

They floated there, suspended, watching the shark swim by, as though they were the only people in the world.

Chapter Seven

Lucy pulled her hair into
a ponytail and twisted it between her hands, wringing out the salt water. Her e
xperience had left her exhilarated. S
he understood how people got addicted to diving.

She glanced over at Rudy, packing the equipment away. He felt her watching and looked up. She smiled at him and without hesitation, he smiled back.

She hugged the excitement closer. Did life get much better than this?

The midday sun took no time to dry her off, leaving tracks of white salt on her rapidly bronzing skin. She had grown chilled after spending so much time submerged, but now she was back in the sun, she quickly warmed up again.

“Hey!” Rudy called out.

She looked up in time to see Rudy throwing her a bottle of suntan lotion. She reached out and caught the bottle, just stopping it from going overboard.

“
Wouldn’t want you to get burned.”
H
e grinned.

She held up the lotion. “You were nearly going back over board for this.”

“Na
h
, I knew you had good reflexes.”

She thought back to the previous dive experience and her apparently ‘good reflexes’, but decided she wasn’t going to bring that one up again. She didn’t want to ruin the mood.

The sun beamed down, hot and bright. A light breeze rippled across the water.

“Are you hungry?” Rudy asked
.

“You bet.”

They headed back to the little cove and Rudy docked the boat back on the pier. He pulled a large, blue cooler out of the wheel house,
and then helped Lucy climb on
the dock.

They walked across the deserted stretch of beach, the sand hot beneath their feet, to a shaded spot beneath some palm trees.

Rudy threw a couple of towels down on the sand and she sat down. He opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of cold white wine and a couple of glasses. She couldn’t hide her surprise.

“I know it’s only lunch
time,” he said, apologetically, “but I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“Hey, I’m on holiday.”

“Good,” he said, smiling, but the smile seemed restrained. “Great.”

He poured her a glass and one for himself. He held his flute up and
clinked
the glass against her own.

“To new friends,” he said.

“To new friends.”

She peered into the ice box, hoping to see what they were having for lunch, but the box was empty. She wondered what he’d done with the food. All that swimming and excitement had made her hungry.

About ten feet away from where they sat, a pile of sand had been disturbed and a spade was propped up beneath one of the palm trees.

Rudy followed the line of her gaze.
“I suppose you
’re wondering what’s for lunch
.
”

“Well I did wonder if you just had a liquid one in mind,” she said, holding up her glass.

He jumped up and picked up the shovel. As Lucy had suspected, the pile of sand did have something to do with him and she watched with pleasure as he started to dig. He hadn’t put his shirt back on after the dive and she took in the lean muscles of his back bending and flexing beneath his tanned skin.

He shoveled
up the sand, digging a
hole
three fee
t deep
. Her curiosity roused, Lucy stood up and peered into the hole.