Wicked Nights (11 page)

Fiesta contract, however, his cash flow would be so tight it would squeak.

They dropped every two miles to bang out push-up reps.

“When?” Daeg grunted, hitting the ground.

Cal dropped and started working smoothly through his own reps. “Two weeks from now.”

Fourteen days didn’t feel like anywhere near enough time to fix what was wrong with his head.

Discovery Island had already used up its quota of miracles when it had avoided a direct hit with a tropical

storm earlier in the summer.

“Who’s the competition?” Daeg didn’t turn his head but picked up the pace of the push-ups. Hell. Cal

kicked it up a notch. He wasn’t getting out-repped.

“Who said I had competition?”

“Eighty-one.” Tag, the overachiever, knocked out a butt-load more than the U.S. Navy’s required forty-

two push-ups. If he went back to the SEALs, he’d pass the PT exam without breaking a sweat.

Cal snuck a peek at his watch on his way toward the ground. Tag had accomplished his mission-

impossible numbers in ninety seconds. Tag rolled smoothly onto his back, sucking in air. Ten seconds left.

Cal powered through reps, back straight, hands and feet planted on the ground. “Dream Big and Dive’s the

last competitor left standing.”

Daeg whistled and flopped to the ground. “Eighty-seven. You’ve got three seconds to concede defeat.

Which you might want to think about doing with Piper. She’s going to be one unhappy woman.”

Defeat
wasn’t a word any of them knew. Cal finished the last rep, arms burning. “Eighty-nine.”

Tag raised an eyebrow. “The form on your last rep was highly questionable. I’m calling it as a does-not-

count.”

They squabbled amicably for the rest of the two-minute rest period. As soon as Tag called, “Time,” they

started crunching. Arms crossed over his chest, fingertips on his shoulders, Cal watched the bay come and

go from his field of vision.

“You really think Dream Big and Dive can beat us?”

“Not a chance.” He had to work through this, but not with a boatload of divers depending on him. Get

in the water. Descend. It wasn’t complicated. He’d logged thousands of dives.

“Hooyah.” Tag jackknifed up smoothly.

“Piper’s a world-champion diver.” Daeg shot him a glance. “Plus, if Fiesta’s passing out points for

personality, she’s going to give us a run for our money.”

“She didn’t actually make it to the world championships,” Cal pointed out.

“She earned a berth on the team, and she would have gone if her accident hadn’t busted up her knee.

The media had her pegged as a shoo-in for gold. The cruise ship people will eat her history up.”

Probably. “A good story doesn’t make her the best fit for the job.” He kept his eyes on the harbor and

the boats there, bobbing up and down.

Daeg snorted. “Right. It could be a rout.”

“A melee. A debacle.” Tag rattled synonyms off as if he was channeling a thesaurus.

“Face it.” Daeg finished his reps, shoved to his feet and started running down toward the beach. It was

Armageddon time. “You don’t know how
not
to compete.”

Daeg had a point.

Cal pounded after his buddy, Tag dogging his heels. As soon as they hit the sand, Daeg toed off his

shoes and ran into the water.

“To the point and back?”

Tag splashed into the surf. “You bet. Last one back buys the beer.”

Half a mile out, half a mile back. One thousand seven hundred and sixty yards, and forty-five minutes.

Damn it. He didn’t want to do this. It didn’t matter how clear and debris free the water was or that he’d

bump into nothing if he went under. Ever since the first five-hundred-yard swim of his SEAL Physical

Screening Test, the combat sidestroke had been second nature, as easy as walking or running. He swam and

swam well, covering five hundred yards in under twelve minutes and competing against himself to better

his time. The stroke kept the body low in the water, which was a plus when the day’s mission included

bullets flying at him while he swam.

He’d take bullets any day.

He toed off his sneakers and dropped his T-shirt on the sand. Then he walked over to the water’s edge.

The surf in the bay wasn’t bad, the waves cresting at one to two feet. There was a current to fight on the

way out to the point, but on the way back, the same current would push him to shore. The problem wasn’t

the water or the current. It was in his head.

Daeg and Tag ripped cleanly through the water’s surface. They swam hard and fast, pushing underwater

until their air ran out, then popping to the surface and dropping into the combat sidestroke. He’d bought the

beer every night since Tag had named the stakes.

At least he was in the water. He looked down. Up to his ankles. He compromised with his head and

waded in. There was no point in agonizing over a dive he couldn’t make. Plus, if he hung back much

longer, Daeg and Tag would definitely notice his absence.

Pushing off, he started swimming, pulling hard against the current. He kept his head up (
chicken,
his

brain accused), his hips sinking correspondingly lower in the water. He was in, he reminded himself. The

sooner he touched those rocks on the point, the sooner he could head back, and this would be over for

today. The ocean dragged at his lower body. If he dropped his head even a few inches into the water, the

resistance would ease up, but not even Armageddon would get his head underwater voluntarily today.

Twenty minutes later, he neared Daeg—who’d started his return trip—as he pulled close to the point.

The other man had already touched and turned, switching sides to pull for the shore.

“Don’t you get tired of buying?” Daeg’s gaze swept over him, but he didn’t stop. He was a neat

swimmer, almost no splashing from his feet. Cal had a bad feeling his former teammate knew far too much

about Cal’s predicament. They were both pretending everything was okay, however, which counted for

something.

Cal kicked hard for the point, turning in a smooth arc. It would have been faster to somersault and push

off the rocks like a competitive pool swimmer but yeah...turning underwater was apparently off-limits to

him, as well. As soon as his head went underwater, all hell broke loose in there and he panicked. Pushing

down the self-disgust—he had hours of non-water time in which to revisit it—he slowly turned and headed

for shore.

It looked as though he’d be buying the beer again tonight.

8

PIPER KILLED THE motor and coasted toward the dive buoys scattered across the surface of the water.

A good dive would clear her head, and yesterday’s bombshell from the good folks at Fiesta had certainly

gone a long way toward making things muzzy. She needed to focus on the game because there was too

much at stake not to give it 100 percent. Or 200 percent. She grinned. Cal wouldn’t know what had hit him.

Rose Wall wasn’t one of the better-known dive sites dotting the ocean around Discovery Island, but it

was one of her favorites. Nice and shallow, the location didn’t have a whole lot of currents to trip up a

novice diver, and the colors here were gorgeous. The site had earned its name from the gorgeous kelp

forest stretching floor to surface. Bright pink-and-orange anemones peeked out through the green fronds,

like flowers in an underwater garden.

And...go figure. Her arch nemesis had beaten her to the punch. The
Dive Boat I
bobbed lazily in the

water, already tied up to one of the buoys. She’d sent Cal a brief text announcing her intentions of working

this dive site into their joint demo. When he hadn’t shown up at her boat slip at the time she’d mentioned,

however, she’d left without him. Happily and without giving him so much as an extra second, but she’d

made the offer.

Working with Cal ranked way down on her to-do list, right there with having a root canal or filing her

taxes. He’d want to be in charge. He always did, and if she was being honest, he was good at it. Cal always

had a plan, and he had a way of issuing orders that made other people happy to comply. Unfortunately for

him, she wasn’t other people. Unfortunately for both of them, however, the Fiesta guys had been perfectly

clear on one thing. The two of them had to put together a diving demo. Together.

Apparently, Cal wasn’t taking the grade school approach of one group member doing all the work and

the rest simply scrawling their names on the project when it was time to turn the work in. His being here

wasn’t a surprise, but as far as she could tell, he was alone. The cardinal rule of diving was no one dived

alone. Cal treaded water on the surface, although the dive marker was in the water, indicating a submerged

diver. She did a quick scan of his boat and all of the dive tanks were present and accounted for. Something

was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, so she fell back on her old standby. Fighting with him.

“Trying to get the jump on me, Brennan?” She brought the boat in, and Carla snagged the mooring line,

tying them up to the buoy and dropping the anchor over the side.

He slicked the water back from his face. “Do I need to define the word
partners
for you?”

He reached the
Feelin’ Free
in a few swift strokes, the muscles in his arms flexing as he pulled himself

out of the water. Water ran down his chest and over the muscles of his abdomen. How was any woman

supposed to ignore all the gorgeousness? Piper herself lacked the willpower. Her brain was too busy trying

to imagine him in one of those barely there Speedos favored by the island’s European guests. She’d bet it

would be a good look for him. Almost as good as the wet look.

He popped his fins off. “The deal was we worked together.”

“Which is why you’re making yourself at home on my dive boat?”

She yanked her zipper up on her wet suit. She shouldn’t be looking at him. So what if he’d turned into

a hottie sometime between the age of ten and thirty? He was still Cal, the eternal pain in her butt and the

man who thought he could snag the contract she’d worked so hard for.

“You told me to be here,” he pointed out, all Mr. Logic.

“At the slip in the marina.” She slapped her dive harness on. “Thirty minutes ago.”

“You didn’t wait for me.” Now he sounded amused.

“You were late.”

The amused crinkles at the corners of his eyes said he wasn’t so sure. “Did you time me?”

Carla snorted behind her but kept her mouth shut. Wise woman.

“You’re not in charge, Piper,” he said softly.

“Neither are you.” Finished gearing up, she switched her attention—or as much of it as she could, at any

rate—to checking the gauges on the steel tanks.

He shrugged. “We have to figure this out.”

He sounded so calm. So logical. While she, on the other hand, wanted to knock him overboard with

one of the dive tanks. He’d been like that for as long as she could remember, always the golden boy, so

responsible and mature.

“You coming in?” She made a show of checking his boat. “Oh. Too bad. You seem to be missing a dive

buddy. I guess I’ll have to get started without you.”

He grinned. “Ladies first. I thought we’d established that.”

Dive checks complete, she rolled backward over the side of the boat, keeping a hand on her mask.

Knees up, she floated to the surface and flashed Carla the okay sign.

* * *

AS SOON AS Carla entered the water, Piper bent at the waist, then drove her arms over her head,

straightening her legs as she stroked downward with her arms. Her fins flashed briefly and then she slipped

beneath the surface. No splash. Just here and then gone. Damn if that wasn’t Piper all over again.

She was a force of nature.

She’d also made it perfectly clear how she felt about working with him. He didn’t know how he felt

about it himself, but it was a prerequisite for winning the Fiesta contract, so he’d do it.

He eyeballed the water. Recreational diving had nothing on combat diving. He’d led covert missions to

scope enemy beaches and catalog the ocean floor for natural obstacles and land mines that might impede

the navy’s landing craft. Executed midnight rescue swims that had ended in gunfire. Rappelled out of

choppers, and, yeah...there’d been one memorable occasion when he’d almost planted fins first on a shark

in the Indian Ocean. A site like Rose Wall shouldn’t pose any problem.

But...it did. The smooth surface taunted him. He didn’t want to get in and he definitely didn’t want to go

under. If he couldn’t do it, however, he wouldn’t win the contract. And that was hardly the worst problem.

Nope. Something in his head was broken beyond all repair, and yet he was under the gun to fix it.

Piper’s shadow disappeared from his line of sight. The boat suddenly seemed a whole lot emptier now

with her gone. Which was what he’d wanted, he reminded himself. He didn’t need an audience for this next

part. He was a U.S. Navy SEAL: he got in the water and he went under and he did his job. All too often, life