Stranded With Her Ex (4 page)

He’d been fascinated with sharks ever since he was a kid. Point Reyes, his hometown, was just north of San Francisco, in the heart of the Red Triangle. The area encompassed a portion of the California coast, including the Farallon Islands, and boasted more fatal shark attacks on humans than anywhere else in the world.

The summer he turned fifteen, his parents separated, and Sean moved to San Diego with his dad, but he never forget his idyllic childhood in Point Reyes, those halcyon days before the divorce. They’d lived just blocks from the beach, and he and his dad had gone surfing together damn near every day.

One unforgettable morning, when Sean was about twelve, they’d been out on the water, waiting for the next swell. A creepy sensation had come over him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The “sharky” feeling was one every surfer on the planet recognized. His dad felt it, too. They left the water immediately.

Later that afternoon, another surfer had been bitten by a great white and bled to death on that very beach.

From that moment on, Sean knew what he wanted to do. Studying sharks in general, and the white shark in particular, was his greatest ambition, his ultimate goal, his life’s dream. Just being near them made him happy.

Or, it used to.

Now he loathed this island. If he hadn’t been trapped here, fulfilling his last professional obligation before he took family leave, he’d have been with Daniela. He’d have been driving instead of her.

“Damn it,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. He wouldn’t have agreed to come to the Farallones again if he hadn’t owed Dr. Fitzwilliam a favor. Fitz had covered for him during the family emergency.

“Do you think she should stay here?” Jason asked.

“No,” he said, his voice grim. The sun had gone below the horizon, taking every hint of warmth with it. “But she says she can handle it.”

“What happened to her?”

Sean pulled his gaze from the water. “You don’t know?”

“I haven’t spent much time in the States for the past couple of years. To be honest, I never connected her name to yours.”

He hesitated, reluctant to tell the tragic story. In the weeks following the accident, Sean had been responsible for notifying dozens of friends and family members about Daniela’s condition. Although he had the words memorized and could speak them without inflection, they were no easier to say the hundredth time than the first.

“She was in a car accident during the third trimester of her pregnancy,” he began, his voice flat. “A drunk driver blindsided her SUV, leaving her trapped inside for several hours. She lost the baby.”

Jason stared at him for a moment, trying to process the information. He swallowed hard and put his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Jesus, man. I’m sorry. Really sorry. That’s terrible.”

Sean clenched his jaw, hating this part of the process. But then, he hated all the parts. He knew Jason meant well, but Sean felt like a bear with a thorn in his paw. Watching another man comfort his wife, when he couldn’t, had put him in a very dark mood.

It was all he could do not to shrug off Jason’s touch. He was more interested in a rousing fistfight than this clumsy display of kindness.

“I had no idea,” Jason continued, a pained expression on his face. “No wonder she’s having a hard time.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should have done a basic background check before you signed her on.” He cast Jason a cutting glance. “Although, judging by the look of the crew this season, I can guess the criteria you used to make your selections.”

Jason dropped his hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Knowing he was being an asshole, and not giving a damn, Sean tilted his chin toward the house. “All of the ladies inside are very easy on the eyes. I don’t think you could find a prettier group of female scientists if you tried.”

The jibe was beneath them both. And Sean couldn’t have cared less.

To his credit, Jason refused to take him seriously. “I chose them based on expertise and project diversity, not physical appearance, but what can I say? I got lucky. Next time you visit, I’ll make sure the girls are uglier.”

Sean shook his head and sighed, his anger fading as quickly as it came. Jason was impossible to stay mad at. And Sean couldn’t begrudge his appreciation for the opposite sex; he’d always liked the ladies, himself. Although his parents’ divorce had been bitter, and his own more devastating still, he continued to enjoy the company of women.

Just not with the same…vigor.

Daniela used to tease him about his female friends, calling them his “followers,” but she’d never acted jealous. Not even when he was working in the field for weeks at a time. Of course, he’d always jumped on her the instant he walked through the door. It was one of the aspects of their relationship he missed most. He’d loved coming home to her after spending time apart. They’d never been able to get enough of each other.

“Let’s keep a close eye on her for the next few days,” Jason said, returning to the topic of most importance. “She can always go back to the mainland if she needs to. The last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt here.”

Feeling his throat tighten, Sean moved his gaze to the uneven shoreline, watching midnight-blue water slosh and slap against gray, perforated rocks. In the distance, the Skull was shrouded in darkness now, wearing an impenetrable mask.

Chapter 4

A
s Daniela came down the stairs, the aroma of sautéed vegetables and the sizzle of oil assailed her senses, along with the faint, sweet fragrance of sticky rice.

She was hungry, she realized with surprise. Really hungry.

Jason was in the kitchen, doing his magic. The top half of his black hair, which was even longer than Sean’s, was caught up in a Samurai ponytail. Despite the chill, his upper body was clad in a thin white T-shirt. The muscles in his arms flexed as he moved the sauté pan, and the edge of a tattoo flashed from beneath one short sleeve.

He was very nice to look at, but her eyes slipped by him almost immediately, resting instead on Sean. Her ex-husband stood in the back of the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a beer bottle in his hand.

Men.
Hot water wasn’t a necessity, but they always had beer.

Under the harsh fluorescent light, he appeared older than the last time she’d seen him, a little wearier and a lot more weathered. His hair was still the same thick golden-brown, his eyes the same shade of dark honey and his skin as tanned as ever, but his demeanor had changed. When his gaze met hers, it was shuttered. He was hiding something from her, and he’d never done that before.

Daniela became aware that a hush had fallen over the room. On the other side of a wall partition, but in full view of the kitchen, Taryn and Elizabeth were seated at the dinner table, laptops open. After a brief pause, they resumed tapping at the keys.

Brent Masterson stood by the front window, hands in his pants pockets, as still and quiet as a shadow. He gave her a wry smile, acknowledging the awkward moment rather than pretending it wasn’t there.

She drew in a deep, calming breath. “What can I do to help?”

“You can set the table,” Jason said. He pointed with the spatula, indicating the cabinet behind Sean. “Plates are up there.”

The kitchen was small, and she had to get very close to Sean in order to take the plates down. He flattened his back against the side of the refrigerator, but her elbow still almost touched his chest as she opened the cabinet door. The dark green sweater he was wearing looked familiar—she’d given it to him for Christmas, at least five years ago. Like him, it appeared a little worse for the wear. Used hard and work-roughened.

Not that it mattered, on his body. Even threadbare, wash-faded fabric suited his rangy, well-muscled frame.

Swallowing drily, she looked up into the cabinet. A stack of colorful ceramic plates sat on the top shelf.

“Do you need me to get them?” he asked.

“I can reach,” she said, standing on tiptoe. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body and smell his skin. If she lived to be a hundred years old, she would never forget his scent, warm and musky and deliciously masculine.

Sean.

She took down the stack of sturdy, mismatched plates, aware of his proximity and his watchful eyes.

Her red long-sleeved thermal was a utilitarian item, sturdy and comfortable, but it fit snugly, outlining her breasts. She’d always had trouble finding clothes that weren’t too tight across the chest. Under Sean’s gaze, the fabric seemed to shrink further, making her feel overwarm and underdressed.

It wasn’t as if he was ogling her. It was just that she couldn’t help but think of the many times he’d lifted her against any convenient flat surface, including the kitchen countertops, in their apartment.

Heat rose to her cheeks. The memories seemed foreign to her, as if those intimacies belonged to someone else. The person she’d become didn’t respond like that, tearing a man’s clothes off as soon as he walked through the door.

The woman she was now didn’t respond at all.

“Silverware?” she murmured, avoiding eye contact.

“In the top drawer,” Jason said. “Just forks will do.”

Nodding, she counted out six forks and placed them on top of the stack. Adding a handful of napkins, she carried the bundle to the table, trying not to let her arm brush against Sean’s midsection as she walked out of the kitchen.

Elizabeth and Taryn put their laptops away, helping Daniela set the table.

After Jason brought out the food, there was a minor commotion as everyone gathered around the table. When Sean took the seat opposite Daniela, she found herself staring at him. She dropped her gaze to the forest-green knit across his chest, her heart racing in a way that had nothing to do with anxiety.

The sweater was seven years old, now that she thought about it. She’d given it to him on Christmas Eve, the same night he’d proposed. He’d hidden the ring in a lingerie box with a ridiculously sexy red teddy.

It was a joke, because he knew she hated gifts like that. She hadn’t seen the ring at first. Annoyed by his poor taste, giving her trashy underwear on Christmas, after she’d bought him an expensive sweater, she’d almost thrown the box at him.

Then she saw his eyes sparkle with humor, and she looked again, finding the diamond. With a smile, he got down on one knee and asked her to be his wife.

That night, she’d worn the ring
and
the teddy.

Daniela rubbed the empty place on her finger, blinking away the memories. Now the ring was hiding in a jewelry box at the back of her lingerie drawer. The teddy was in shreds, having been torn from her body by Sean on one of his homecomings. Blushing slightly, she lifted her gaze from the sweater to his shadowed jaw.

His scruffy, don’t-give-a-damn appearance only added to his appeal.

In contrast, Brent, to his right, seemed almost elegant. And then there was Jason. With his dark good looks and easy smile, he had an edgy style that was neither rugged nor refined.

All three men were handsome—and eligible—as far as Daniela knew. The table seemed to shrink in their presence, and she felt acutely self-conscious. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a meal with strangers.

Jason proposed a toast. “To new beginnings?”

“To new beginnings,” Brent agreed, lifting his own glass.

Sean’s expression was sardonic, but he went along with it, and Daniela followed suit, clinking her water bottle against Taryn’s. It didn’t escape her attention that a barren, inhospitable island was an ironic choice as a place to start over.

Jason served the
lumpia
fresh, rather than fried, and it was a build-your-own affair. The ingredients were placed in the center of the table, and everything looked delicious.

Daniela scooped up sautéed vegetables and shredded chicken, the filling for the moist, paper-thin wrappers. Rolling them up into neat little packages wasn’t easy, and no one but Jason was entirely successful. Although she was hungry, her frayed nerves wreaked havoc on her appetite, so she focused on chewing and swallowing, one small bite at a time.

“This is your first visit to the Farallones, Daniela?” Brent asked.

“Yes,” she said, glancing up from her plate. “How about you?”

“It’s my first time, too. And Elizabeth’s, I think?”

She nodded.

“That can’t have been the first time you’d seen a shark attack,” Daniela commented. “You were as cool as ice.”

Laughing, he shook his head. “I was scared witless, I assure you. But you’re right, I’ve filmed sharks feeding many times. The trick is to cultivate a courageous facade.” Arching a brow at Sean, he asked, “Or do you become inured to it, eventually?”

Sean shrugged. “It would be a mistake to get too comfortable out there.”

“Says the man whose pulse never climbs above seventy.”

Sean lifted a forkful of rice to his mouth, not bothering to dispute him.

“Well, you couldn’t pay me to watch a shark feeding,” Elizabeth said with a shudder. “If this island wasn’t home to so many species of birds, I wouldn’t have come at all.”

Brent gave her an odd look. “Really? I could have sworn I’d met you before, on a shark expedition. I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to remember where and when.”

Jason perked up at this news. “Liz is secretly a shark groupie?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, her tone frosty. “I hate sharks.”

“My mistake,” Brent murmured, but Daniela was left with the impression that he didn’t think it was.

The tension in the room was palpable. Elizabeth seemed uneasy in her surroundings, and reluctant to share personal information. Sean wasn’t thrilled with Daniela’s unexpected arrival. And Taryn picked at her food, looking depressed by the turn of events.

“I heard that the house is haunted,” Daniela said, changing the subject.

Unfortunately, her attempt to lighten the mood failed. No one said a word.

“Is there a local superstition?” she asked, pressing on.

Taryn stopped pretending to eat and set her fork down. Sean shot her a warning glare but she ignored it. “Some people think the house is inhabited by a lady in white. She was a light keeper’s wife, a pioneer woman who lived here a hundred years ago.”

“What’s her story?”

Her lips curved into a humorless smile. “Apparently, she threw herself off the cliffs. One night, she went to the lighthouse tower to check the lamps. Instead of refueling them, she walked to the edge and leaped to her death.”

A chill traveled down Daniela’s spine. “How do they know she jumped?”

“She washed up at Dead Man’s Beach, pockets full of stones.”

“Oh.” Now she knew why Sean hadn’t wanted her to hear the tale. He’d always been protective, and there was a time, not so long ago, that she’d contemplated a similar fate. “Why wasn’t she eaten by sharks, do you think?”

“It wasn’t shark season,” Jason said, matter-of-fact.

Daniela stared down at her plate, silent. She was curious about the skinned seal, but she hesitated to bring up a second unpleasant topic. Instead, she ate a few more bites and took sips of water, pretending to relax.

After the dinner plates were cleared, Sean disappeared into the office, Brent cleaned his camera equipment and Jason washed dishes.

Taryn and Elizabeth took out their laptops to write daily logs.

Daniela hadn’t brought hers, as she preferred to write notes by hand and input the information later. There was another computer in the office, an older desk model that stayed on the island, but Sean was using it.

She wandered over to the bookcase, perusing its contents. There were a lot of dog-eared paperbacks, mostly fantasy and science fiction. Not what she was looking for. “Have you always done computerized logs?”

“No,” Taryn said. “There’s a stack of ledgers in the cabinet.”

“Ah.” The wooden cabinet was situated against the back wall, above an old Formica countertop. Daniela opened the cabinet doors, eying the rows of books with interest. Being vertically challenged, she couldn’t reach the back, or see all the way inside.

“I’ll get them,” Elizabeth offered.

“That’s okay,” she muttered, boosting herself up and perching one hip on the edge of the countertop. “Short girls know how to get by.”

In addition to the ledgers, she found dozens of history books, some decades old. She took them out, one by one, smoothing her hands over the scarred leather surfaces. There would be a wealth of information here.

The story about the lady in white had piqued her interest. Since her own near-death experience, she had a morbid fascination with other people’s tragedies.

After choosing one of the newest ledgers, and the most intriguing history text, she put the other books back in the cabinet. Taking a seat in the armchair in the far corner, because it couldn’t be seen from the office, she opened the ledger. Sean’s jagged scrawl leaped out at her from the pages, line after line of dark, confident script.

When they were married, he’d often written her notes in the morning before he left the house. Nothing wildly romantic, because that wasn’t his style. Just your basic grocery lists and gentle reminders and the occasional “I love you.”

Putting those notes out of her mind, with some difficulty, she flipped though the pages of the ledger. A single date jumped out at her: September 25th, just over two years ago. The anniversary of the accident.

Sean had jotted down the time and a detailed description of an incident with the cage-diving crew. Apparently, he’d driven the whaler out to their diving boat to ask them to stop chumming, and some four-letter words had been exchanged. Just as the dialogue started getting interesting, the script cut off, midsentence. There were no new entries from Sean until recently. He must have been writing this when he heard—

Daniela closed the book abruptly. She picked up the history text instead, learning about the islands’ tumultuous past.

When the words began to blur on the page, she knew it was time to turn in. She’d taken a red-eye flight from San Diego to San Francisco, and a rocky, four-hour boat trip from there out to the islands. Her afternoon had been spent watching a shark attack. She’d had a difficult day, to say the least.

Although it was still early, just shy of 9:00 p.m., she was dead tired.

“I’m beat,” Taryn said, echoing her thoughts. “I won’t be able to drag myself out of bed at the crack of dawn if I stay up much longer.”

Murmuring in agreement, everyone else began to put their work materials away. Daniela returned the books to the cabinet, and Elizabeth ducked into the downstairs bathroom.

Brent, who’d just gone outside, came back in, bringing a rush of cold night air and the faint scent of tobacco with him. It wasn’t the acrid stench of filtered cigarettes, but the mild aroma of roll-your-owns. The smell reminded Daniela of her father.

“I guess I’m ready to go upstairs,” she said to Taryn.

The girl forced a smile. “Good night, then,” she said, nodding at the others.

“Good night,” Daniela parroted, avoiding Sean, who had come out of the office. It hurt too much to remember all the nights they’d spent together, most of which had been very good indeed.

In their shared room, Taryn kicked off her furry boots and climbed into the top bunk, her body a slight curve beneath her sleeping bag. Daniela changed quickly, removing her weatherproof trousers and pulling on soft flannel pajama pants. After laying her own sleeping bag on the lower bunk, she slipped inside, reaching out to turn off the lamp.