Pursuit (18 page)

The lungs of the Earth.
Charlotte blinked at the poetry of the image, and at the incongruity of the image coming out of Matt’s mouth. “That’s beautiful.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned his head to look out over the ocean, hard mouth lifted in a half smile.

“As beautiful as the ocean itself. You must make friends with it. If it’s not your friend, it’s your enemy.”

Well, someone who swam the way he did
would
think that. “Easy for you to say,” she said wryly, looking out to the horizon. “You swim like a dolphin.”

“I have BUD/S to thank for that.”

She looked up at him, surprised. “You have your bud to thank for that? Who’s he?”

“Not bud. BUD/S. Basic Underwater Demolition. The Navy spent thirty months keeping us wet and sandy and wet and cold and wet and tired, and drownproofing us.” His mouth quirked. “Among other things. It’s our training course. BUD/S. That’s what the Navy calls it. We called it Pain 101.”

Charlotte lifted her face into the sun, contemplating the notion of being drownproofed. Sounded nice, really nice. “You said that before—that you wanted to drownproof me. How do you drownproof someone? It sounds great.”

“I don’t think you’d like our system much. Our hands are tied behind our backs, our feet are tied at the ankles, and we’re tossed blindfolded into a nine-foot-deep tank. We’re expected to bob for five minutes, then swim a hundred meters, then float, then bob, then we have to go to the bottom of the tank and retrieve our mask with our teeth. It’s a little . . . intense.”

Charlotte’s eyes rounded in horror as she took an instinctive step backward. Matt smiled down at her. “No need to worry, honey, I’m not going to do that to you.”

“I should hope not,” Charlotte replied heatedly. “That—that’s tantamount to torture!” She tried to ignore the little leap her heart had taken when he called her “honey.”

“Yep, that’s what it was originally, torture. Or rather murder. The Viet Cong used to hog-tie American POWs and throw them into the Mekong, expecting them to drown. Only our guys survived and proved that you can swim even with your feet and hands tied if you have to. Since then it’s become part of training. You’d basically have to tie a weight, a heavy weight, to a SEAL or shoot him in the water to drown him. But don’t worry. You don’t need to learn that kind of swimming. All I want is for you to feel comfortable in the water and learn to do the crawl and maybe a backstroke, so you can exercise your shoulder muscles.”

She didn’t answer, intensely aware of the big big ocean and the big big man by her side. He looked down at her and silently held out his hand, exactly as he had last night. He didn’t coax, he didn’t cajole. He just stood there, his hand brown and broad and steady. Without even thinking about it, Charlotte found herself with her hand in his. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and turned her on.

She was suddenly intensely, keenly aware of everything. The feel of her hand in his, immensely safe. The bright sunlight, the tang of the ocean, the wavelets lapping at her toes, the soft plashing of the water. The clear air, bringing both warmth and coolness that she could feel in every cell of her body. She felt awake and aware and
alive.
She felt good for the first time in two months. Two years.

“Come on,” he said softly, tugging at her hand. “You’ll enjoy yourself more in the sea if you can swim.”

That remained to be seen. Still, Charlotte shucked off her sandals and, letting go of Matt’s hand, reached down to whip off her beach cover-up.

Matt’s sharp, dark eyes went immediately to her shoulder. She’d bought three one-piece swimsuits in Cabo, all with broad shoulder straps. If you didn’t know the scar was there, you wouldn’t notice anything, and, anyway, Charlotte had taken to going into the water only when there were very few people around.

But Matt knew. He noticed the white scar tissue edging out from under the straps. His mouth tightened but he didn’t say anything. He started walking slowly backward in the water, coaxing her forward. Charlotte stepped gingerly forward, until the water was up to her knees, and sucked in a breath.

“It’s
cold!
” she said indignantly. This wasn’t going to work. Only dummies went into the water when it was cold.

“Not if you move. Shuffle your feet, get your circulation going.” He turned and, executing a neat dive, swam underwater for so long she started to get worried. At the last possible instant, when Charlotte would have already drowned three times over, his head popped up, farther away than she would have imagined anyone could go on one breath. Before she could call out to him, he dove again, and she watched the large, dark shape moving underwater fast, coming closer.

He surfaced a foot away from her. “Don’t you dare shake yourself and get me all wet!” she warned, palms up and out. Matt grinned at her, the mischievous look in his dark eyes telling her he had, indeed, been about to shake himself.

His face was utterly transformed when he smiled. He dropped years and looked almost—

almost handsome.

He
was
handsome, Charlotte realized suddenly.

She hadn’t really noticed it before.

Most handsome men carried themselves with vanity, and were intensely self-aware, their words and actions gauged for maximum effect. Matt had such a serious, somber—almost grim—air about him, his looks were the last thing you noticed. Mainly you noticed his size and watchful eyes.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he said piously, that damned grin plastered on his face. “Come on,”

he coaxed. “Move in the water, warm yourself up. Just dunk yourself. I promise you it’s worse when you go in slowly. Like ripping off a Band-Aid slowly. Now just follow me.”

Matt walked backward while he talked. He was walking directly toward where the bottom suddenly dropped.

“Hey,” Charlotte called, alarmed. “Come back here! I can’t touch where you’re going.”

The water lapped his shoulders. “Don’t worry, I can touch. Come on, Charlotte, trust me. Nothing will happen to you, guaranteed.”

Charlotte didn’t know where her fear of water, her terror of drowning, came from. She’d never learned to swim well, so she was naturally very cautious in the water, but she’d never had a bad experience while swimming. Still, when she had nightmares, they were often of drowning, of water closing in over her head while she sank deeper and deeper. These past two months, she’d woken often choking and gasping, having dreamed of drowning.

Her near death in the water had been her worst nightmare come true. He watched her eyes. “Fall forward, honey,” he said softly. “I’ll catch you.”

There wasn’t another human being on Earth she’d do this for. But at some level of her being, deeper than thought, deeper than emotions, she trusted Matt utterly. In the water, anyway.

Taking a deep breath, Charlotte toppled forward into the water. Before the awful truth—

she couldn’t touch!
—had time to make it to her brain, before she even had time to start flailing, two strong hands gripped her under her arms, and she was steady in the water, facing Matt.

They were so close she could feel his breath wash over her face. So close her breasts brushed his chest. Though she was held as steady as a rock, her legs automatically churned frantically, the reptilian part of her brain telling her she was in free fall. Her toes kicked his shins and, with difficulty, she forced herself to stop. She wasn’t having to work to keep herself afloat. He was holding her up.

Her heart rate, which had started trip-hammering when her toes couldn’t reach the sandy bottom, started calming down. Matt’s hands were still holding her, but his grip had loosened even farther. All of a sudden she realized he’d let her go completely. She slipped, the water covering her chin.

“Don’t panic,” Matt said quietly. “Breathe normally. In and out, deep breaths, that’s great. Perfect. My hands are an inch away. Move your arms and your legs gently, you’ll stay afloat.”

Matt’s low, deep voice was calm, reassuring. It set up a little hum in her diaphragm underwater. Just listening to him made her feel better. Her movements in the water slowed, became more rhythmic.

“You’re doing fine.”

She was. Sort of. Maybe.

Charlotte was taking it on faith. If Matt said it, and it had to do with water, it was probably true, though she slipped a little farther down. Still, to be polite, she nodded. This close up, Matt’s face was so fascinating. He’d shaved closely this morning—when had he done that?—but she could still clearly see the line of demarcation where the beard started. He had a scar running through his right eyebrow, lifting it, giving him a slightly devilish cast to his face. The silver threads at his temples were echoed by even more silver hairs in his chest hair.

She watched his eyes for clues to what he was thinking. They were the only eyes she’d ever seen with no striations of color at all—just an even monotone chocolate brown.

“Better?” he asked quietly, as she quietly trod water.

“Um.” It was, sort of. If she didn’t actually
think
about the fact that she couldn’t touch, that if she dropped in the water, it would close in over her head . . .

She slipped, but before the water could cover her mouth, and she could panic, Matt caught her.

“I’ll just bet you were thinking about the water just now instead of letting your mind go blank.”

“You didn’t tell me I had to let my mind go blank,” Charlotte complained. “You have to say these things. And I don’t like having my mind go blank, not unless I’m at a yoga lesson. It doesn’t go blank naturally; it tends to think of things all on its own.”

“Okay, then, think about this.” He nodded his head gravely. “I never thanked you for my watercolor and that incredibly beautiful painting of the conch shell. I’ve never owned any art before, and here I start my brand-new collection with a couple of masterpieces.”

Charlotte smiled. “They’re not masterpieces,” she protested. “Though it’s nice of you to say so. And I guess I can forgive you for not thanking me yesterday, considering you were busy saving my life.”

“Do you think two thanks cancel each other out?”

“No. I’d like to think that they are mutually reinforcing.”

“Okay, that’s a nice way of looking at it.” Matt watched her eyes. “By the way, this might be a good time to tell you that I poked around your artwork this morning. I won’t apologize because most of it was out there for me to see. I have to tell you that I’ve never seen stuff like that in my life outside of museums, not that I’ve ever been to that many.”

Charlotte was instantly distracted. He hadn’t seen many museums? “I thought Navy people traveled the world? Isn’t that what the posters say? Join and travel the world?”

“That’s the Army recruitment slogan, but we travel a lot in the Navy, too. Only we travel mainly to places where there aren’t that many museums. Lots of armed fu—scumbags itching to cause trouble, oh yeah, plenty of those, but not much artwork. My last posting was Afghanistan. Any artwork there was blown up by the Taliban.”

“How much time did you spend in Afghanistan?”

“Six months, before—before I was shot. My Team is still deployed there.” Something—

some expression crossed his usually expressionless face.

“You miss them,” Charlotte said, on a sudden insight. “You miss being with them, and you miss Afghanistan.”

“Miss sleeping in the desert with a bazillion scorpions? Miss carrying my water on my back because there isn’t an oasis or a water hole within a hundred miles? Miss hiking sixteen miles a day in hundred-degree heat, hoping not to step on a Soviet-era land mine, dodging snipers in the hills while carrying a hundred-pound pack? Miss Mylowski who snores, and Gardner who smells, Hernandez who fa—who has flatulence, major
major
flatulence, and Lopez who never remembers the punch lines to his rotten jokes?” Matt’s mouth twisted in a bittersweet smile. His pain was visible. “Yeah,” he said softly, “I miss it, miss them. What’s not to miss?”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Oh
God,
Charlotte knew all about missing someone you cared for. How many times she’d stopped to watch something interesting or thought of something amusing and thought—
I
must tell Dad.
And right on the heels of that thought, a sharp searing pain, as fresh as if she were back in the hospital room, watching his life being snuffed out. Her father wasn’t there. Would never be there again.

“Now you’re thinking about something sad.” Matt’s deep voice interrupted her thoughts, and she was reminded all over again how observant he was.

In a dinner date, that was a good quality to have. In a man who would probably turn her in to the police if he knew the truth about her, it was a highly dangerous quality.

“Not at all.” She paddled gently in the water, looking away from those too-perspicacious eyes. She studied the horizon, water as far as the eye could see, all of it deep . . . A current of cold water caught her, and she shivered.

“You’re tired and getting cold,” Matt decided. “Time to get out.”

Somehow, without appearing to have helped her, she was back where she could touch. A moment later, they were on the shore, and Charlotte was drying her hair with a towel. She
was
a little tired and was looking forward to relaxing with the new Faber-Castell pastels, which had just arrived.

Matt looked back toward the cheerful line of brightly painted shops and houses past the
ramblas.
“We’ll have lunch at the cantina. And then when we’ve digested, we’ll have another swimming lesson.”