Make Her Pay (2 page)

“You know me
too
well.” She nuzzled closer to him, her worries evaporating.

“So what happens if he fails?”

“I could lose one of my most important clients.”

And, worse, she’d lose the chance to see Con Xenakis become the man he wanted to be.

The treasure chest. The recovery room. The booty box. The gold hold.

No matter what the crew nicknamed the dive ship’s lab, where recovered treasure was bathed in acid and ash, tagged and numbered, then electrolyzed to its original glory, the place was fairly easy to break into.

But even if it hadn’t been, Lizzie Dare would have made a go of it tonight.

Her watch alarm vibrated at three a.m., when the hundred-and-twenty-foot vessel was silent but for the hum of the generators. The other divers and the captain and crew were asleep in their cabins.

Secure in the fact that Flynn Paxton was on his boat anchored a hundred and fifty feet away, and certain that by tomorrow she’d never get her hands on the beaded silver chain that had been recovered that afternoon, she tiptoed barefoot out of her bunk.

Her feet soundless on the planks of teak of the narrow hallway of the quarters deck, she barely breathed as she glanced up the stairs to the main deck, where all was dark and silent after a day of diving, searching, and celebrating the recovery. If she were caught now, her excuse would be needing air. But once she turned the corner and took the stairs below, she’d have a hard time explaining herself.

Pausing for a second, she pulled a dark hooded jersey around her, took a deep breath, and darted to the steps.

At the bottom, the generators were louder, the engines and electrical systems clunking softly. Grasping the key she’d taken from Charlotte ’s stateroom during the hoopla when one of the other divers had emerged from the sea holding the chain, she headed toward the lab. In the midst of the chaotic celebration, it had been easy to slip down to the conservator’s stateroom and steal the key unnoticed. She’d return it tomorrow while Charlotte and Sam Gorman had breakfast, no one the wiser.

The metal hatch of the cleaning lab squeaked, making her cringe, then she entered to suck in a noseful of salty muriatic acid lingering in the air.

Inside it was dark, except for one wedge of pale moonlight through skinny horizontal slatted portholes. She didn’t need much light. She’d been in the lab enough times to know exactly how the worktables were arranged and where the chain would be hanging on alligator clips in an electrolysis tank.

She took a few steps to the left, reached out to touch the table, then glided her hands to the row of tanks. From her jacket pocket she pulled out a latex glove, slipped it on, then dragged her fingertips over the thin metal bar over the stainless steel plate.

But there were no clips draped with a silver beaded chain.

Hadn’t Charlotte started the electrolysis yet? She’d naturally done the initial cleaning that afternoon, and then she should have prepped the chain for electrolysis that would take up to twenty-four hours.

But the tanks weren’t even on; there was no soft vibration of a low-volt current. So where had she put the chain?

Nitric baths, no doubt. Damn. There were beads on the chain and it wasn’t all silver so Charlotte probably added a wash of nitric acid as an in-between step. Getting the chain out of a nitric solution would be much tougher.

But not impossible.

She pulled the other glove from her other pocket and headed to the closet-sized room at the opposite end of the lab, where the nitric acid baths were given to the treasure. They’d also found silver coins that day, and no doubt Charlotte had them each in an individual wash, the cups lined up along the worktable. She probably decided to do the necklace at the same time.

Lizzie slipped a pinpoint flashlight out of her pocket because a room with containers of nitric acid, even a five percent solution, was no place to accidentally knock something over in the dark.

Stepping deeper into the closet, she aimed the flashlight in the direction of the tiny worktable along one narrow wall and-

Thwack!

The door slammed behind her the very instant one powerful arm encircled her whole body from behind. A warm hand smashed over her mouth, silencing her scream as the flashlight clunked to the floor.

She jerked one way, then the other, but she was no match for the mighty arms that immobilized her. She tried to see him, but all she could get was an eyeful of shoulder.
Big
shoulder.

No shoulder she’d seen on this boat before.

“Looking for something in particular?” His voice was a low, menacing rumble, sending shivers over her skin.

She jerked hard, grunting into his hand. “Met me mo!” The demand was smashed right back into her mouth.

“No can do, sweetheart.” He punctuated that with a squeeze, forcing her body against his, her backside right up against his hips.

A whole different kind of white-hot terror seized her. In all her dive trips and salvage efforts, she’d never been on a ship that had been attacked by pirates. But on Paxton boats? Entirely possible. Probable, even.

She tried to swallow, tried to breathe, but he just pinned her tighter. She fought again, but he was rock solid and unyielding.

“Mwat do you want?”

“What do
you
want? is the question.”

She tried to wrest away one more time, but it was fruitless. She forced herself to be very, very still despite the adrenaline coursing through her, fueling her fight.

Three or four interminable seconds rolled by, her heart whacking at her rib cage in triple time.

“Good girl,” he said softly, the tone ominous enough to almost stop that beating completely. “This is a very bad room for a wrestling match.”

Yes, it was. Unless you had gloves and long sleeves on. Did she dare? Only her face was vulnerable.

What was worse? A minor burn or… rape and murder?

No contest.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, his mouth still pressed to her ear, his mighty grip strangling her whole body. “We’re going to back out of this closet, very calmly and quietly, before you help yourself to a single item that doesn’t belong to you. Then you’ll pay for your misdeeds, and the punishment will be severe.”

If he let go of either arm, she could grab a cup of acid and back toss it in his face. And scream like hell for help.

“Let’s go,” he said roughly, lifting her off the floor.

She had one finger free, her arm trapped under his. If she could just… close around his pinkie and
yank
.

His knuckle snapped and he loosened his grip just enough to free her arm. She stabbed straight for the row of tiny cups, seizing one in a gloved hand.

He jerked her backward but not before she tossed the contents of the cup over her shoulder. Instantly, he whipped them both to the right, hard enough that the acid splashed over the rim of the cup.

With a shriek, she flipped the whole cup just as he threw her to the ground, covering her body from the rain of acid.

“What the hell!” he grunted, writhing over her.

“Get off me!” She shoved at him, not knowing if any of the acid had touched her clothes, or his. “Get the hell off me, you bastard!”

She tried to scramble away, but he snagged her sweatshirt. “Take it off!” he insisted. “Now! Take it off!” He grabbed the zipper and started to rip.

“No!” She slammed her hands into his chest, just as she felt the air on her arm, where a hole in her hoodie suddenly appeared and grew, the acid on it centimeters from her skin.

“You’ll burn! You have to take it off!” He jabbed at the shoulders, pushing the jacket over her, stripping the sleeves as he pulled her to her feet and ripped off the cotton tank top, leaving her entirely bare.

“Your pants! Hurry before you burn!” He seized the waistband of her sweats just as she saw two gaping holes widening over her thigh.

“Off!” he demanded, dragging them down over her hips and taking her underpants with them. In one more lightning move, he flung them away. “Water! Wet your skin!”

He pushed her to the sink and flipped the faucet on, the water shockingly cold on her arm. Then he tore his dark shirt over his head and ripped his jeans off, whipping his clothes into the same corner he’d thrown hers.

“More water,” he said, pushing her closer to the sink and cupping his hands. “Give me your leg.”

Who
was
this man?

She lifted her leg and he started splashing handfuls of water over her thighs with one hand, and onto his shoulder with the other.

“Why the hell did you do that?” he demanded. “You could have blinded me.”

“That was the idea. You
attacked
me.”

He snorted softly, looking at her face. “I caught you stealing. Big difference.” He lifted his own leg to the sink and started splashing.

“I was not-” She grasped the side of the sink, adrenaline dumping through her like a straight shot of whiskey, her body rubbery and wobbly as she stared at the huge, dark, naked, furious stranger next to her.

“Who
are
you?”

“The new diver.”

Oh, no. Oh,
no
.

“The new…” Her voice gave out under the force of his laser-beam glare. Instead, she looked down, at the dark nest between his legs, his manhood fully exposed, lying against the soaking wet thigh he held up to the sink.

The new diver.

Oh, please. This wasn’t happening to her.

She finally managed to meet his sharp blue eyes again, her stomach flipping around like a hooked fish. “I thought you were going to rape me,” she said quietly. “Or… worse.”

He stopped splashing water long enough to drop his gaze over her body, as if he were… considering it.

“This isn’t enough,” he said gruffly, still studying her.

“What?” What the hell did that mean?

“We have to shower. Now. There could be droplets on your skin, and they’ll burn. They might already be burning. Come on.”

She hesitated only for a millisecond; he was right.

“In my cabin.” He shoved her toward the door.

He really
was
the new diver. The one who was coming ing…
tomorrow
. The one who was going to sleep in the small cabin next to the lab because it was the only unoccupied bunk on the boat.

The new goddamn freaking diver. “I thought you were… ”

“I know. Rapist. Killer. Pirate. I got the picture.”

“It’s only five percent nitric acid,” she said as she led him through the shadowed lab.

“It’ll still burn you. And scar.” She turned to look over her shoulder. His gaze was trained directly on her bare bottom.

Flynn had told them they were getting a new diver. But he failed to tell them the new guy was tall, dark, and so far past handsome that he was in another time zone. And she’d tried to burn that face?

He nudged her into the hallway and the first cabin, then whipped open the door to the head, a typical combination toilet and shower in one fiberglass closet.

With one hand, he shoved her into the tiny area, lifting the showerhose off its hook as he flicked the water knob.

“You know what they say, don’t you, Lizzie Dare?” He stepped inside, stealing every remaining inch of space with his big, bare body. He pulled the door firmly behind him and looked down at her with a dangerous gleam in his eye as he pointed the ice-cold spray right at her breasts. “Payback’s a bitch.”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE GASPED AS the water hit her, honey gold eyes flying open as she held her hands up to stave off the shock.

“You know my name?” she sputtered, backing up.

Con didn’t answer but moved the nozzle to target that shapely little bicep she’d splattered. “Does it burn anywhere at all?”

She shook her head, a mop of shoulder-length blond curls already dampening from splashed water. “You?”

As if she cared, the treacherous little thief. “No, but like I said, that stuff can sneak up on you.”

“Kind of like you did,” she shot back. “What were you doing in there, anyway?”

A
pretty
treacherous little thief, with beautiful pink nipples that were beading up like pebbles before his eyes. “I heard you go in.”

“There’s no way,” she said under her breath.

“There’s a way,” he assured her. No matter how silent she thought she’d been, Con could hear. He’d heard her breathe when she passed the bunk. He’d heard the key in the lock. And she, of course, never heard him follow her.

Could it be this easy? Could he have found his target less than three hours after he climbed on board?

“Other arm, Lizzie.”

Her cunning eyes narrowed, forming a delicate crease that pointed straight to a pixie nose and a heart-shaped face that looked far too innocent and appealing to be a criminal’s. Looks could be so deceiving.

Hesitantly, she stretched out her arm for washing. “How do you know my name?”

“I was given a list of crew members when I signed on.”

“There are four women on this boat.”

“And only one is five-four and a hundred and ten pounds.” A hundred and ten well-distributed, nicely proportioned, sweet little pounds of
trouble
.

“The list had our heights and weights?”

“I’m thorough.” Water sluiced over her breasts and down a clenched stomach. “This leg got hit, didn’t it?” he asked. “There were holes in your pants on your right leg.”

“Yes.” She offered him her thigh, and he studied it for signs of burn dots. He saw none and his gaze moved up to the narrow strip of darkened hair between her legs. Beautiful, feminine, and wet.

No surprise, his cock stirred.

“Turn around,” he said sharply, using his free hand on her shoulder to get her in the other direction.

When she did, he lingered over her back, taut and toned, straight down to a high, round ass.

“At least you’re smart enough to take the treatment and not go all modest on me.” So he could be equally smart, and not let his body respond to the visuals.

“I live on boats with divers for months at a time. Most of them are men, and all of our days are spent in bathing suits. I lost my modesty years ago.”

He called up his mental file of Elizabeth Dare. Daughter of famed salvager Malcolm Dare. Highly skilled SCUBA diver with a recognized expertise in treasure hunting. Thirty, single, and commonly known as Lizzie.

It didn’t say anything about smart-mouthed, prettyfaced, or smooth-assed. And Lucy thought she was so damn thorough.

He aimed the spray right between her legs, drinking in the curves of her heart-shaped behind.

“It’s a shame I have to turn you in tomorrow morning.”

“Turn me in?” She spun around, eyes on fire. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

He just lifted a brow and turned the spray to his shoulder where a few drops of the acid had splashed on his T-shirt. “You were breaking and entering the cleaning lab and about to help yourself to the treasure. Define
wrong
for Mr. Paxton.”

“Paxton?” She rolled her eyes. “That explains it. And I thought you might be one of the good guys.”

“You thought wrong.”

She grabbed the spray nozzle. “Here, let me get your back.”

He relinquished the showerhead, turning so she could see if he had any acid burns on the back of his shoulder. “Any spots?”

“Guess I missed,” she said dryly.

He glanced back and caught her checking out his backside exactly as he’d studied hers. “Looks like I saved both our asses.”

She lifted her gaze from his, not the least bit coy about having looked. “What the hell else should I have done?” she asked. “I thought you were going to hurt me.”

“Someone has to stop a thief.”

“I know you’ve made up your mind about this, but I wasn’t stealing anything.”

He turned to face her. “Yeah, right.”

She aimed the water right in his face. “Any burns
there
?”

He blinked, dodging the spray, spitting water as he seized the nozzle. “Not for lack of trying.”

“You got that right,” she said, disgust rolling off her like the water cascading over her rock-hard nipples. “How was I supposed to know you were the new diver?”

“If I
had
been there to attack you, you moved fast and smart. Good thing I’m faster and smarter.” He glanced down to his dick, which was dangerously close to coming back to life. He sprayed it, watching her eyes follow the water.

“Did I get you there?” she asked, nothing like apology or worry in her voice.

“Damn close.”

The intensity of her stare and the iciness of the water canceled each other out, keeping his arousal at bay. But it wouldn’t last much longer if he spent much more time in a two-by-two head naked with Lizzie Dare.

“Listen,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “What you saw was
not
what it looked like.”

How many times had he been in her situation, faced with an accuser, forced to manufacture some wild-ass excuse? A few.

“So, let me take a guess. You left something in there, woke up in the middle of the night, remembered, and went back for it?”

“No.”

“I know,” he said, snapping wet fingers and pointing to her. “You had a sudden urge to polish the silver.”

“No.”

Their gazes locked, their bodies close, their breaths matching. One more step and they’d touch.

But his orders were to get close to the crew. He might have the thief, but did he have the potential leak?

“Then what were you doing in there?” he asked.

She couldn’t back up, so she jutted her chin up, pink lips pursed in defiance. “Can I trust you?”

“Honey, we’re naked in a shower, a water drop apart, and I haven’t laid a hand on you to do anything but make sure you’re not hurt.” He tilted his head to the side and gave her a lazy, inviting smile. “Of course you can trust me.”

Lizzie blinked through the water on her lashes to study him more intently. This man was a study in contrasts.

His eyes were the color of a winter sky set against olive-toned skin, and his ebony hair was short enough to qualify for the military, but he certainly didn’t seem… safe. He’d jumped her like a man bent on killing, but saved her in one smooth, slick move. Despite a threatening body jacked with muscles and high-octane testosterone, he’d been positively protective since the moment she’d met him.

And he was right. They were naked and close, and the nitric acid wasn’t the only chemical combustion going on between them. Still, he hadn’t done anything but check her out.

He looked bad… but seemed good.

Could she trust him? Not with
everything,
but just enough to test his loyalties. “I just wanted a picture of something we recovered today.”

“A picture? Then why not take it in the middle of the day, on the deck, with witnesses?”

“Because we’re not allowed to take pictures of the treasure, of anything,” she told him. “Didn’t Paxton tell you that when you took the job?”

He shrugged, noncommittal. “I know things are a little different on this dive.”

That was one way of putting it. “Do you know why they are different?”

“Security reasons,” he said, parroting what the crew had been told.

“Right.” She snorted softly, still assessing him.

He was a perfect stranger who could be sworn to loyalty by Satan or his stepson, and even if he believed her and wanted to help, he’d think she was nuts. But if she didn’t tell him the truth-or at least part of it-he was going to rack up Brownie points with the boss by turning her in.

Then she’d be off the dive before her work was done.

“I’m trying to preserve history before Judd Paxton sells it on the open market, and uses the money to build another monument with his name on it.”

He didn’t react, but stared her down, considering that.

“I was trying to get some shots of the treasure before it disappears to a private collector,” she explained.

“So you’re just breaking the terms of your contract, not robbing our boss blind.” He speared her with a smoky look that sent heat coiling through her, doused when his words hit her.

“Our boss?”
One ding for the hot diver. “So you
have
been bought and brainwashed by Judd Paxton already.”

“I’ve never even met the guy. I just take the paycheck-which, as you know, is better than most.”

She surveyed his face, trying to read his indecipherable expression. Impossible.

“Come on,” she finally said. “We’re de-acidified. I want to get dressed. I’m freezing.”

“You can’t put those clothes back on,” he said. “They still have traces of nitric acid on them. I’ll get you something to wear.”

“Fine.” She tried to get by him but he grasped her elbow.

“After you tell me why you want to take pictures, Lizzie.”

“In case we get caught out here. This dive is illegal. I don’t know if you know anything about Paxton, but he’s made his millions selling most of what his dives recover to private collectors. He gets to pocket a lot more if it’s not reported. Not to mention that, without a claim or lease, we’re a ghost ship out here. No one knows we’re here. That’s dangerous. Pirates-real ones-could board us at any time.”

“So you’re going to fight them off with pictures?”

“If that chain happens to disappear somewhere between this boat and the processing lab in Sebastian, then so does a little piece of history. Do you care about that, or are you just in this for the money, like Paxton?”

His gas flame eyes sent a blood rush from her toes to her ears. “So if you hate the company owner, resent his rules, and already have credentials, why did you take the job?”

For reasons he’d never get her to admit. “I needed the money,” she said easily. “There’s not a lot of salvage action in the winter, this beats cleaning heads on a ship in dry dock, and… it seemed like an intriguing opportunity.”

He took another long, slow look at her body. “We better go get your camera, then, before someone finds it.”

Hope surged. “Does that mean you’re not going to turn me in?”

“That means I’m going to keep my eye on you.” He stepped to the side, opened the door, and nudged her out. “And I like the rear view very much.”

She was lying. Lizzie Dare had an agenda as sure as she had a blistering hot body, and he intended to find out a lot more about both.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much you can wear,” he said, glad he’d stashed his bag under the bunk, so all that she could see was a backpack and the clothes he’d shed when he arrived.

He grabbed them, pulling on khaki shorts and a shirt. He had a plan, and she needed to be undressed for it to work.

Taking a towel from a rack next to the head, he held it out. “Small, but it’ll cover the essentials until I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Your cabin to get you clothes. Is it unlocked?”

“No. The key’s in my sweatshirt in the lab.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He didn’t think she’d run down the hall in that tiny towel, giving him enough time to do a quick search of her room.

In the lab he carefully gathered the clothes-which did include a camera in the pocket, as well as two keys-and dropped them into a plastic bag he found next to the sink where they’d washed. Carrying it out, he locked the lab using one of the keys she’d obviously stolen, and headed up to the quarters deck to her cabin.

He knew where every one of the crew slept; Lucy’s file had a full layout of the boat. Lizzie’s cabin was between the brother divers, Kenny and Walt Brubaker, who shared a double bunk, and the conservator and diver couple, Charlotte and Sam Gorman.

Would he even have to interview the other divers, or did he already have the person he’d come to find? She certainly hated Judd Paxton, and every excuse she gave was riddled with guilt and lies.

If things kept going his way, he’d be signing a contract with Lucy by the end of the week.

He slipped the key in and entered her cabin, far more spacious than his. The bed was unmade, the room just disheveled enough that he wouldn’t leave any evidence that he’d searched it.

Dropping the plastic bag, he headed straight to the small built-in dresser next to the bed. The drawers were a jumble of bathing suits and underwear and tank tops, but nothing incriminating. Maybe the small work desk.

On top, a few paperbacks with two dive magazines, all well read. He flipped open each drawer, one with odds and ends, the next, a little makeup, some simple jewelry. The third, a deep file drawer, was locked.

Promising.

With a penknife, he opened it easily. Inside was a photograph of an older man on the deck of a boat, a gold trinket hanging from his hand, and another photo of the same man on another boat with two little girls about ten and twelve, each displaying huge smiles and shiny gold coins.

Either girl could have been Lizzie, especially the one with lighter hair, more curls, and the sweetheart face. Beneath the pictures were a few pages of computer printouts about treasure hunting. Then an article about Judd Paxton, torn from
Time
magazine.

And the flimsiest piece of cheap pressboard at the bottom of the drawer, not even close to the wood stain of the desk. A pathetically bad false bottom. It snapped right out of place, and under it he found a brown leather notebook.

He fluttered the pages, full of sketches of jewelry, brass buckles, a porcelain jar, some hand-drawn charts, notes in the margins in scratchy, shaky handwriting, and then, on the last pages, the large block-letter heading:
El Falcone
.