Night Diver: A Novel (13 page)

For a long moment, the memory of her terror at confronting the stairway rippled between them, as did the simple warmth of his comforting hug.

“Love, don’t look at me like that,” he said in a deep voice. “I’m only a man, and you’re a woman fighting for your family. If I took what I see in your eyes, it would end in guilt and tears. You don’t deserve that—and neither do I.”

Kate wanted to argue that it was her choice, he should let her make it.

But it was his choice too, and he had made it.

“I’ll let you get back to important work,” she said.

Holden watched the door close behind the woman he wanted until he felt like his skin would split with need.

Honor and decency were cold bedmates.

B
Y THE FOURTH
day in St. Vincent, Kate had settled into a kind of rhythm. She and Holden made coffee and scrounged breakfast from the previous night’s leftovers plus whatever she had managed to sneak when the cook aboard
Golden Bough
had his back turned. Then she drove Holden and his ever-present duffel to the dive ship. He divided his time between divers and dive center, plus reviewing random snippets of the video log. She prowled the ship under cover of making an inventory and went to the dive center at the least sign of excitement she heard.

So far she hadn’t found any stash of illicit treasure aboard. She hadn’t overheard any incriminating—or even interesting—conversations, and the dive center excitement was over potsherds, pewter, and the like.

If a woman’s weight in gems and jewelry had been aboard the wreck, no one had found it.

Other than discovering that Volkert and Farnsworth each had a woman ashore to fill their downtime—when they weren’t in the local dive bars—Kate had little to show for her aboard-ship hours. Her nights were spent talking with Holden over dinner, trying not to touch him, and then staring at spreadsheets until her eyes blurred and she fell into bed.

And each second, each minute, each hour, she had become more at ease with the sea. Not at peace, just not constantly terrified.

The relief that came with her realization was like breathing a straight shot of oxygen.

“Now that’s a lovely smile to wake up to,” Holden said as he walked into the kitchenette.

“No nightmares last night,” she said without thinking, watching the coffee gather in the stained glass pot. Three seconds and she could drink some.

“Excellent,” he said. He stood close to her while he poured two cups of the coffee she had made. She smelled like sleepy woman. Kissable woman. “It’s impossible for a sane person to sustain a high level of fear when nothing occurs to reinforce it.”

She took the cup of coffee he handed her, touching his fingers in the process. She told herself it was an accident. It would have been, too, if they hadn’t both lingered to increase the almost caress.

“Sounds like you learned that the hard way,” she said.

“Is there another method? After the mishap,” he said, absently kneading his thigh, “my mind and my emotions fought a pitched battle on the subject of diving. Many battles, actually.”

“What made you dive again? Orders from on high?”

“Six months behind a desk. Thought I would go mental. Plus, I’m a man. I wanted to look in my shaving mirror and not see a coward.”

Kate flinched. “Glad I don’t have to shave.”

“You’re not a coward.”

“I don’t dive.”

“Childhood trauma is the hardest kind to overcome.”

She let out a slow breath. “It sure has been for me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have run, but I did.”

He tipped up her chin so that he could see her eyes. “What matters is that you came back.”

She looked into his eyes and saw nothing but acceptance and a beauty that still surprised her several times a day.

“How did you force yourself into the water again?” she asked, wanting to stroke against the fingers touching her chin.

“It was better than the alternative.” He dropped his hand and began rummaging in the kitchenette.

For long minutes there was no other sound but the fitful wind, the cry of birds fighting over food, and the soft, relentless sigh of sea against sand.

“I can’t think of anything worse than diving,” Kate finally said.

“You will.”

She shivered despite the sultry air. “You’re not comforting.”

“You’re not the first to notice.”

An alarm cheeped from the back of the cottage.

“What’s that?” she asked, seeing Holden come to alert.

“My computer,” he said. “It’s tracking the storm that can’t seem to decide whether to grow up or die.”

“Welcome to St. Vincent toward the end of the doldrums.” Sipping her coffee, she followed him down the tiny hall.

He opened his computer, tapped a few keys, and frowned. “Looks like she decided to grow up.”

“Who decreed that storms were female?”

“Sailors.”

“ABCD?” she asked blandly.

He gave her an amused look. “I doubt that the ancient Chinese used our alphabet.”

“Chinese?”

“Probably the first sailors. Or the Egyptians.” He tapped more keys and lifted his eyebrows.

“What?” she asked.

“Despite the turn in the weather, you’ll be relieved to know that the overlords have released enough funds for another week.”

“Overlords, huh?”

He didn’t even pause. “When in Rome, use the local dialect.”

She laughed. “Come on. We can eat our fruit and biscuits on the way to the ship.”

Holden smiled as she hurried out of the room. Of all that had happened in the past few days, watching her emerge from terror had been by far the best. Next to that, a gold money chain was simply a historical trinket.

He didn’t have the right to hug her in celebration of her progress, but he was going to claim that right soon. It was the least he could do to appease the hunger prowling through his blood.

The very least.

He settled back and tried to find signs of the weather tempest that was brewing over the horizon. All he saw was the luminous water and the increasing light of day.

By the time Kate and Holden reached the ship, the divers were suiting up. While Larry tied off the tender, waved, and disappeared, Holden climbed aboard with the duffel that went to and from the
Golden Bough
with him each day.

Kate came on board the ship quickly, easily, childhood reflexes taking over more completely with every moment she was on the sea. There was no terror clutching at her stomach right now, making her clench against fear.

She hoped it stayed that way.

The ship rolled a bit at anchor, caught between the strengthening breeze from one direction and the usual swell from another. The sky was still silvery with the last of the morning clouds. Beneath the sullen weight of the sun, the breeze was a soft whisper of life. Ripples slapped at the hull and fell away gently.

Holden was feeling a lot less gentle. After days and nights of being gnawed on by his superiors, plus the persistent ache in his thigh from the undecided weather and the near-constant beat of need for Kate, he was ready to take off heads. The fact that an unknown diver had been added to the rotation—again—didn’t help. New people had to be taught the routine, which meant more time wasted.

Right on schedule some early bird from Antiquities called Holden on his phone. When he saw it was Chatham, he knew it wouldn’t be good. He answered and listened to what had become the standard rant—too much money spent and not enough valuable salvage to show for it.

“Respectfully, sir,” Holden said when Chatham ran down, “the miserable wages necessitated by the . . .”—
unconscionable and ultimately self-defeating
—“contract the government offered require that Moon Rose Limited scrape divers from bar floors and drag them to the
Golden Bough,
where they have to be slapped sober and instructed as to their duties. Rather like England’s merry old days of rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

“I am not amused,” Chatham shot back.

“Neither are the divers, I assure you. The point remains that miserable wages equal miserable hires.”

“So you are telling me that Larry Donnelly is running an inefficient operation and should be cashiered.”

Holden took a better grip on the phone and his temper while he moved to a part of the deck that was empty of people.

“I’m telling you that if you pay for sour beer, you shouldn’t be surprised when you are served just that,” he said.

Chatham had quite a bit to say on the subject of sour beer.

Holden pretended to listen while keeping an eye on his surroundings.

“ . . . all we have to show for it is pails of junk that won’t pay for the cost of shipping them to England!” Chatham yelled.

“I do believe that is why this is called treasure
hunting,
” Holden said, smiling as he echoed Kate’s words. “The outcome isn’t guaranteed.”

“You are there to make sure we come up with more than pails of junk.”

Holden sensed someone approaching behind him. He turned just enough to catch the red flash of Kate’s hair.

“I’m here to judge the efficiency of the dive,” Holden said crisply. “Considering the monetary handicap Moon Rose Limited is working under, the operation is reasonably efficient.”

“What about theft?” Chatham asked.

“Has Ms. Pinkham found anything dodgy in the dives she has reviewed?”

“Not yet.”

“Has anything else appeared on the black market?”

“No,” Chatham said reluctantly.

So you called me to vent your spleen. Lovely,
Holden thought.
AO must be crawling up your arse.

“Farnsworth has been working overtime to catalog what the divers have found,” Holden said.

“I get the reports,” Chatham said sharply. “I don’t see gold or precious gems, and bloody little silver from the wreck of the
Moon Rose
. Why don’t they use the device they call the ‘mail box’ again?”

“It’s expensive to run, mucks up the clarity of the water, and stands a good chance of destroying any fragile artifacts on or close beneath the surface debris, which really upsets the scholars who—”

“Sod the scholars. We need to pay for this dive. Tell the divers to quit farting about and get to work.”

Holden thought about inviting his superior to fly down, suit up, and grub around in the crevices of the sea’s vast twilight zone for bits and bobs of gems smaller than his fingernails, but he held his tongue. People who didn’t dive simply couldn’t grasp the difficulties involved.

“Diving is a tedious, dangerous, costly undertaking,” Holden said calmly. “You would get better odds of return on your money in Monaco.”

“The Crown does not gamble.” There was frost on every syllable. “Are they using the siphon yet?”

“Not that I’ve seen. In some situations a siphon is inefficient. In all cases it costs petrol to run. As you well know, the captain is extremely limited as to expense money.”

“Not my problem. Adding to the Crown’s coffers is. See that those lazy bastards get on with it.”

“Would you rather I suit up and dive than oversee operations ashore and aboard?” Holden asked.

“Bugger,” Chatham muttered. “Carry on. I have a report to prepare for my superiors. They will not like it.”

Holden shut down the phone and put it in one of the pockets of his cargo shorts. When he turned, Kate was there, watching him.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“Defending us against your boss.”

Holden wondered how much of his defense had been due to his growing interest in her, but all he said was, “Chatham isn’t a diver, much less a salvage diver. He has no way of actually understanding the difficulties involved. Also . . .” Holden realized what he was about to say and closed his mouth.

“What?”

The turquoise eyes watching him with something very close to trust made a knife turn in Holden’s conscience.

Sod it. Of all the people involved, she deserves the truth.

“The contract my superiors gave Moon Rose Limited was a glass of salt water handed to a man dying of thirst,” he said roughly. “Chatham has no pretense to serving any higher purpose than greed.”

“Kind of like Bloody Green,” she said. “Until he met a woman who was worth more than gold and gems.”

Holden’s fingertips traced the softness of Kate’s cheek and the strength of the bone along her jaw. “Men have done many things, both stupid and sublime, for a special woman.”

Her heart stuttered. Then she did what she had been wanting to do for days—she ran one fingertip around the line of his sensual lips. “The same could be said about women.”

“We’re both mental, you know that,” he said softly. Then he touched her fingertip with his tongue.

Watching his eyes, she put that same fingertip against her own tongue. “Yes.”