White Hot (14 page)

“There’s nothing I can say to talk you out of this insanity?” she pleaded.

He looked up, lips thin. “Sure. You can tell me a better plan.”

Their eyes held, and she could sense he wasn’t thrilled with the present one but was determined to see it through. Her heart sank. She felt as though she had been put through a meat grinder since waking up this morning, but no doubt the coming hours would be even worse on her frazzled nerves. Clint would be risking his life to get to the radio and send a distress signal, and the odds of him succeeding weren’t great. She’d be stuck down here belowdecks, unable to see where he was, whether he was alive or dead, or even what he was doing over on that trawler.

Assuming he made it that far.

And, yeah, if she obeyed his orders and actually stayed put. Which wasn’t at all a certainty. What if he needed her, and she wasn’t there to help? How could she cower and hide when he was putting his very life on the line?

Her dismal thoughts must have shown on her face. With a sigh, his harsh expression softened and he put the wetsuit aside and pulled her into his arms. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

“Please don’t go,” she whispered, sinking into the momentary comfort of his embrace. With him there to support her, the shakes came back, and she had to close her eyes against a painful rocket of fear. “What if they’ve smashed the radio, and you can’t—”

“It’s a chance I have to take. There’s no other way.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to—”

“It won’t,” he assured her, and tilted her chin up. “And even if it does,” he said, “you’ll be fine. If these bastards are who I think they are, I’m the one they want. If I’m dead or captured, they’ve got no reason to stay on board.”

Dead.
A burst of dismay went through her. She clutched him tighter. “Don’t even say that. I won’t—”

“Shhh,” he murmured. He searched her face for a moment, then bent and kissed her. It was a sweet, tender kiss. Filled with all the poignancy of an uncertain future. And totally at odds with the desperate situation.

“Clint…” she began when their lips parted.

He put a finger to her mouth, brushed another kiss over her temple, and said, “Come on. Help me get into this thing,” then let her go to reach for the wetsuit again.

Though bursting with reluctance, she didn’t argue, but held the stiff, heavy wetsuit overalls up for him as he struggled into them. Thankfully the size was a bit larger and stretchier than she’d remembered, but it was still a tight squeeze. And about four inches too short.

He frowned down at his exposed ankles, tugged at the material where it clamped around his thighs, then gave up and fiddled with the shoulder straps. “Damn, you weren’t kidding about it being too small.”

He’d definitely never get the Velcro ends to meet over
his broad expanse of shoulders. Not without castrating himself in the process.

She glanced around, and her gaze fastened on the hammock, still hanging between the bulkheads. She scooped up the dive knife and walked over to it. Ignoring the depressing symbolism that streaked through her mind, she sliced through its leader ropes. The end of the hammock fell to the floor in a big tangle, the other end swaying limply from side to side. Focusing determinedly on her task, she cut two lengths from the dangling ropes, each a couple of feet long.

She brought them to Clint, who was still wrestling with the wetsuit. “I’ll slice holes in the straps where they meet and you can extend them with these.”

His gaze followed her as she made a pair of oversized buttonholes, threaded the ropes through them, and tied the ends securely over his shoulders.

“Probably won’t be all that comfortable,” she observed, yanking at the knots to make sure they were tight.

“I’ll live,” he said, then grimaced and added, “With any luck.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

But before she could get a word out, he said, “Kidding,” and his lips pressed once again against hers. He gave her another long kiss, and she could feel the heightened urgency in the way his fingers held her, the way his blood pulsed so close to the surface where she touched him.

When he lifted his mouth, she was breathless. Mostly from her growing fear for him, but despite everything, also because of the way she felt whenever he kissed her. She watched in growing trepidation as he tugged on the wetsuit jacket and with some difficulty zipped it up.

This was so damned unfair. She’d lost her ship, her crew, would no doubt lose her job if she made it through this alive, and now she was about to lose Clint, too—a man who somehow, in a few short hours, had come to mean the world to her.

Everything about this situation sucked.

After pulling on the pair of dive boots she handed him,
he turned away to gather up the snorkel and other gear. The feel of hard steel in her hand suddenly reminded her of the knife she was still clutching. A too-ugly symbol of reality. She tried jerkily to slide it back into its plastic sheath, but missed. She tried again.

“Don’t forget this,” she said. “You’ll need a—” She cursed as her second attempt missed, too. Finally on the third try, she succeeded. She looked up and saw him shaking his head.

“No, you keep it. You’ve got nothing else to defend—”

“Are you kidding me?” She pushed it into his hand. “You are
not
going over there unarmed.”

He still didn’t take the knife. “No, I—”

“That’s an order, LC.” She let go and stuck her hands under her armpits so he had no choice but to catch it. “They’ve got guns, Clint. And I’m not Crocodile Dundee.”

Finally he relented with a tight smile. “Fine.”

If she’d expected another lecture on staying hidden while he was gone, he didn’t deliver. Instead, he gave her a look that was so penetrating it made her heart stall in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought this on you and your ship. And I’m sorry as hell about Shandy.” A slow fuse of bone-deep rage burned through his eyes. “I’m going to take down these bastards if it’s the last thing I do. That is a goddamn promise.”

She was torn between sadness and alarm at his solemn declaration. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “But please, don’t be a hero. Just get to the DSC radio and send that signal, nothing else.”

She took a step toward him, nearly overcome with the urge to grab his arms and hang on with all her might. Not let him go on this insane errand. “Just come back safe. That’s all that matters.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to. She could see the unspeakable knowledge lurking there in his molten dark eyes—the knowledge that he might not be coming back at all, let alone safe.

“Please, Clint,” she whispered hoarsely.

She would have felt the same way regardless of who was about to brave the icy sea and two brutal hijackers, she told herself. It didn’t matter that she’d made love to this near-stranger just hours ago. She’d only just met him, for godsake. She didn’t know him at all. Had little basis on which to mourn him if he died. Hell, she didn’t even know whom to notify of his death. But her heart hurt so much at the thought of it that she nearly doubled over.

His jaw muscles moved. “Samantha…” he began, his voice an uneven blade of iron. But his lips compressed, and he shook his head. He glanced down at his wrist, paused for a millisecond, then grasped the brown leather thong tied around it. With a swift jerk he snapped it off.

She gasped, knowing how much the totem meant to him. After they’d made love, she’d asked about the unusual totem bracelet, and he’d told her about his grandfather and how he’d sent Clint on his first vision quest where he’d also killed his first deer with a bow and arrow. He’d had to use every bit of the animal for something useful, and this was one of the many things he’d made. The only thing he hadn’t given away. Later, he’d added a claw from the first—and only—bear he’d killed.

“What are you—”

He held it out to her. The ivory bear claw hanging from it was pale and lustrous against his bronze skin. “Keep it for me.”

“But—”

“I’ve got to go.” He went to the door and cracked it, checked the passageway, then swung it open. He looked at her one last time, and gave the lecture she’d been expecting. “Stay here. Stay hidden. Do not even think about sneaking up on deck.” His expression, even sterner than usual, if that was possible, willed her to obey.

She nodded, though she knew at once she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not while he was in danger.

Her heart lurched as he stepped through the door into the passageway. The ivory totem was still warm between her
fingers.
Warm from his body.
“Clint?” she called after him, her breath oddly strangled.

His head came around, eyes indecipherable. “Yeah.”

Suddenly she had no idea what she wanted to say. There was too much. Too many bewildering emotions. Too little time to sort it all out.
Too little time
…The ivory claw stabbed into her flesh as her fingers curled tight around it. She swallowed. “When you broke into my stateroom last night,” she managed past a thick lump of confusion, “I…I lied to you.”

A guarded expression flicked over his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed again, wishing…“I said you smelled like a bilge rat.”

His eyebrows hiked.

…
wishing they’d just had more time together
.

She took another halting step. “That wasn’t true.”

He stared down at her, and all the air squeezed from her lungs.

Oh, God. What would she do if she lost this man, too?

“It wasn’t?” The query came out low and rumbling, like the sound of a ship’s engine deep in its belly.

Her vision swam as a deep regret washed through her. Regret for dreams that were already lost. But more for the ones she’d never get to dream.

“No,” she whispered. “You smelled like week-old chum.”

Week-old chum.

A reluctant smile sifted through Clint as he crept stiffly around the fringes of the pitch-black ro-ro deck. The lights had been turned off, and he was feeling his way along the bulkhead in the dark. His fins were tucked under one arm, his mask and snorkel hanging from his neck, the dive knife strapped to his right thigh, and a coiled-up rope circled his chest like a bandolier.

“Feeling” being the operative word.

What had Samantha really been trying to say? Because it sure as hell wasn’t anything about the way he smelled. His wry smile quickly faded. He didn’t feel good about leaving her on her own. In point of fact, he was downright worried. The woman he’d left behind in that hideaway was not the same dauntless, in-your-face fighter he’d gotten to know since sneaking on board
Île de Cœur
. This woman had been scared witless—which, admittedly, was only natural. Then again, he was grateful for her fear. Nothing like abject terror to keep a body hidden and safe.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think it would last very long.
Samantha Richardson just wasn’t the type to cower in fear on the sidelines, letting someone else relieve her of what she saw as her own responsibility. Especially not a man. She definitely had issues with men controlling her.

Five minutes alone and she’d be itching to spring her jail cell. Talking herself into doing something stupid. Something
really
stupid. Like try to get to those guns in the officer’s lounge. Or rescue her crew single-handedly. Or hell, even try to rescue
him
if and when the bullets started flying.

His heart clenched. Yeah, that was what he feared the most she’d do.

Because there had been something else in her expression, something in the way she’d looked at him as he’d turned and walked away from her after that chum remark. Something that tied his stomach in knots.

Speaking of which…Letting out an uneven breath, he pressed close into the hulking black bulk of a large cargo vehicle to adjust his wetsuit. Already the makeshift Farmer John suspenders were cutting into his shoulders, and the thick strangle of the rubbery fabric was binding him in places that made him fear for the fate of his future grandkids.

He tightened his jaw. The irony of
that
concern did not escape him. When had the idea of grandkids even entered his consciousness? Let alone make him fret about not having them?

Blame it on Samantha. The woman had a talent for bringing out totally unfamiliar and vaguely disturbing sides of him. Sides that apparently wanted grandkids.

Jesus.

With a grimace, he continued picking his way along the bulkhead. Hell, maybe he was just feeling his mortality.

Not that he was worried about those two goons on
Eliza Jane
, as Samantha seemed to be. But making a jump into mile-deep water with nothing but blue for two hundred miles in every direction tended to make a body contemplate its limitations. He’d done it with his former team too many times to count, but he’d felt a healthy respect for the situation
every single time. Unlike some of the guys, he’d never been a danger junkie.

His fingertips told him he’d finally reached the triple cargo bay that rolled up like a giant garage door, opening up to the outside, usually to a pier where the ship’s wheeled cargo was loaded on and off. He was on the port side. There was also a matching set on the starboard. Samantha had told him there were regular-sized doors, as well, for easy access to the outside by the crew when the big ones were closed.