Her Sworn Enemy (Men of the Zodiac) (3 page)

He blinked for a moment, trying to clear the image of Bella walking out the door and turned back to Harold. “Is she always like that?”

Harold shook his head and smiled. “No, son. You seem to really bring it out in her. I’ve only seen Doc Dupré go off like that once before.” He leaned back in his chair giving Tucker an assessing look. “You still sure you want to be the pocketbook
and
muscle behind this expedition?”

“Did you tell her I was underwriting the project?”

“Did it look like it? Doc may have a temper, but she’s as smart as a whip. She wouldn’t intentionally piss off an investor in a recovery and research project she’s been bugging me about for the last five years.” Clearly, Harold both respected the woman and knew her well.

“So she wants it badly.”

“Worse than she wants anything else.”

That was good to know. Wanting things or people was a weakness. Might give him an edge.

“You’re real quiet. Having second thoughts?” Harold asked.

Tuck smiled. “If anything, I’m more intrigued. Who do I write the check out to?”

B
y the time she reached the cataloging rooms on the ground floor, Bella had nearly gotten control of her heartbeat again. Unfortunately, she hadn’t done as well with her anger. The only thing that tempered it was realizing how unprofessional she’d been.

Without an experienced dive and recovery crew, she could kiss good-bye any chance of bringing the treasures from the
Rapid
up to the surface. She had the information, education, and historical knowledge to know where the wreck was, what condition it might be in, how to find it, and what it might be worth, but her diving experience was limited to snorkeling and swimming pools. She’d been looking for a financial backer for years. They weren’t easy to find.

Bella bit her lip and sagged against a concrete and brick wall, her head tipping back to rest against the cool, hard surface. Harold would demand she apologize. But for what? For saying the truth? McCormack basically wanted to claim everything she’d scrimped and scraped for, every tear she’d shed in the last ten years, every ounce of blood and sweat she’d put into getting her dual Ph.D. degrees in maritime archeology and history in the first place, all so he could show up his daddy, or his big brother, or both. She huffed out a frustrated breath.

Not that she had any right as the pot to call the kettle black. She had a heaping helping of her own daddy issues on her plate. But what if in that morass of stupid issues, they could find common ground? What if she could convince McCormack to share the credit for the find, rather than take it all for himself? Could she live with that?

No.

Maybe.

It all depended on what it would take to convince him.

She went into the lab, picked up the desk phone, and called Harold’s office. Using her cell phone in the middle of the concrete building didn’t work worth beans.

Harold’s secretary Margret answered. “Mr. Palmer’s office.”

Bella gave thanks to God for small favors. “Margret, this is Bella. Is Harold still talking with that dive-recovery consultant?”

“Hang on a second.” The line went static as Bella’s pulse bumped up the pace with worry.

“Yeah, he’s still here, but it looks like they’re finishing up. Did you want Harold to call you back when he’s done?”

“No. Actually, can you keep the consultant there for a few minutes until I can get back upstairs?”

“Sure, honey.”

Bella hung up the phone, flipped her hair upside down, and fluffed it a bit, then grabbed a quick swipe of lipstick from her bag, pinched her cheeks, and put on a spritz of her favorite lemon verbena body mist. Feeling marginally better, she took a deep breath, dug deep for her best southern manners, and headed back up stairs.

“I told you Dr. Dupré is the best historical artifacts expert we have.” Harold’s voice drifted out of his office before Bella turned the corner.

“Yes, but do you think she can handle a project of this scope if she’s this emotionally unstable?”

“Oh, the doc ain’t unstable. Just stubborn as hell,” Harold replied.

Shit.
Yes, she’d gone and made quite an impression with McCormack.
Great. Just great.

She pasted a smile she didn’t feel onto her lips, lifted her chin, and pulled back her shoulders, as poised as any genteel southern girl on the beauty pageant runway, and walked up to Harold’s door, then rapped on the doorframe.

The conversation abruptly stopped, and they both stared at her. “I’ve come to offer an apology for my rude behavior earlier.”

“I appreciate that,” McCormack said. “But it doesn’t give me much hope we can work together.”

“Now don’t be too hard on her, Mr. McCormack. She’s a brilliant scientist and historian. I tell you, you won’t find better in the Crescent City.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

Bella took a step into the office. “I don’t blame you for having reservations, but try and understand how passionate I am about this project. It’s not just another find to me. It’s my family legacy.”

“I understand, but as I said, I’m not in it for the money. I want the recognition.”

Exactly what she wanted. Well—she wanted the money
and
recognition. Bella chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. Would she be willing to share the credit for her find if it made the difference between finding another backer for the dive and potentially never getting to see the treasures aboard the
Rapid
, or getting to do this here and now before Ruesard kicked them out of their home and took Aunt Min’s business?
Yes.
She could do that.

“What if we were to share the credit? Would that suffice?”

He raised an imperious dark brow. “Fine. If we share the credit for the find, then I want twenty-five percent.”

Despite her best intentions, she frowned. “I thought you weren’t in it for the money.”

“I’m not, but neither am I naive. If I’m not going to get the benefit of full credit for the find, I might as well make up for it in another way. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“I think that’s more than fair,” Harry interjected. Bella forced herself to shove the simmering, angry heat in her belly down low.
Think of the Rapid. Think of the treasure. Do what you have to do to make this happen, girl.

She inhaled deeply and held her breath for a moment. “Obviously in this circumstance, it doesn’t matter what I think or don’t think. We need to rely on the facts.”

“And those are?”

“I know where the ship is and what we need to do to preserve, authenticate, catalog, and market anything we find properly, but I can’t bring it to the surface without you and your crew.”

McCormack gave one curt nod of acknowledgement.

“And you won’t do it without sharing the credit for the find and a percentage.”

He nodded again.

“Twenty percent,” she said, crossing her arms.

“I believe I said twenty-five.”

“You did. And you also want me to share credit for the find, which makes it twenty percent.”

McCormack glanced at Harold. “You said she was smart. You didn’t tell me she was a barracuda in negotiations.”

Harold gave a satisfied grin. “You won’t find better, I guarantee it.”

T
he way Harold said it with his deep southern drawl, guarantee sounded more like gay-ron-tee, but Tuck didn’t care. Five percent? He wasn’t about to lose out on this opportunity over five percent. Let her think she won. He was here on a mission of his own that had nothing to do with her. From his family and rocky life, he’d learned that people who were given things didn’t appreciate them nearly as much as those who had to work for those same things. So he’d take his twenty percent and make her believe she’d worked for the concession.

“Fine, twenty percent and joint credit on the find.” He held out his hand.

Her hand slowly rose to meet his. Like at Inkspell, just the slide of her bare skin against his, even in something so basic as a handshake, gave him an instant rush that both surprised and unsettled him. He’d been attracted to a lot of women before, but this was different, as if sparks pulsed through her in a current of energy and he plugged into it just by touching her.

“Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal, Mr. McCormack.”

“Please, call me Tuck. My father was Mr. McCormack.”

“And your older brother?”

“Dickhead, but he doesn’t prefer it.”

Her eyes sparkled. There was more to Belladonna Dupré than met the eye, although what met the eye was damn tempting to start with. Her movements were graceful and flowing, like a mermaid in the water, which only accentuated the flair of her hips and her inviting curves. Her pale green eyes reminded him of sea glass. His gaze dropped to the very full lips he bet were softer than the satin smooth skin on her hand. And she smelled so good he wanted to see if her skin really did taste like sugar cookies and lemonade. He resisted the instant urge to kiss her and reluctantly let her hand slide from his.

Tucker pulled his libido in on a short leash. Damn. It would be easy to get sucked in by her. She was gorgeous, smart, determined, and able to admit when she was wrong—a trait totally missing in the McCormack genetics—which he appreciated. But this was temporary. All temporary. And he’d do well to remember it. If he wanted to accomplish making a mark for himself, then he had to stick to the rules that had served him so well in the past once his mother had died:

No strings.

No entanglements.

No long-term relationships that could tie him down.

Unfortunately for his sex drive, that included the very sexy Ph.D. he’d be working with in tight confines aboard his ship. He shifted in his chair to ease the pressure caused with the stirring of her sweet fragrance in the air, let alone the image that flared to life in his mind of her in a string bikini. Damn.

He reminded himself that he was a confirmed bachelor. “See you aboard ship?”

She nodded and smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

He. Was. So. Screwed.

Chapter Three

B
ella squinted against the intense sunlight glinting off the azure waters of the Gulf spread out in a glitter-strewn rolling blanket below her. Only the changes in depth that made the blue deeper and the occasional outline of a boat on the water broke up the monotony of the scenery as the helicopter took her closer to her destination.

She shoved her sunglasses back into place with an index finger. “How long until we get there?” she asked through her headset. The humidity and heat in the air were less here than on shore, but still the backs of her thighs were beginning to stick uncomfortably to the vinyl seats of the aircraft. Perhaps shorts, a cropped T-shirt over her swim suit, and flip-flops had been a bad idea, but she figured she was going to be on a boat, so she hadn’t worried about it.

The pilot turned his head in her direction, his dark mirrored sunglasses reflecting an image of her. “See that dot at three o’clock? That’s the
Discovery
. Ten minutes.”

Bella nodded and started scanning the horizon for her first glimpse of the
Discovery
. The yellow and white boat looked small at first, a toy floating in a massive bathtub, but as they got closer, she saw the enormous boom crane off the back and the wide sweep of decking marked for a helipad.

The investor had deep pockets. She sighed with relief. This was no fly-by-night operation. They’d have her skills and the investor’s money and a professional salvage diver and his crew. Her heart leapt. This was it. All her dreams and hopes were getting closer and closer. Bella tasted victory in every rapid beat of her heat.

The
Discovery
was a top-of-the-line recovery operation. Judging by the number of decks and the size of it, they had no problem working with a full crew for months at a time without going back in to resupply.

The helicopter touched down light as a dragonfly on the helipad of the ship’s uppermost deck. A huge guy wearing Hawaiian-print board shorts and a white tank top ducked under the spinning blades of the chopper and opened her door. Pacific Islander by the look of his squared body, big shoulders, and deeply tanned skin and wide, white grin.

“Welcome to the
Discovery
,” he yelled, holding out his hand and helping her down, then taking one of her bags.

The wash of the helicopter props made it hard to hear as she ducked down, and they both hurried out of range of the helipad as the transport lifted up from the deck and darted back into the blue on blue of sea and sky.

She turned to the man and held out her hand. “I’m Doctor Dupré. Bella.”

His beefy hand swallowed hers. He had a generous smile, a dark beard, and eyes that sparkled with humor. “Nice to meet you. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Toneau Lupopo, first mate of the
Discovery
. Let me take your things and put them in your cabin after I show you to the conference room. The captain wants to see you right away. We’ve been doing some prelim dives with the ROV based on the information you sent, but he’d like to get a briefing complete so we can get this recovery effort moving.”

Toneau picked up her bags and started walking. He moved fast for someone who she imagined would have to turn sideways to make it through the narrow corridors down below. They took the teak staircase from the helipad to the deck below, and she was ushered through a set of glass double doors into a sizable air-conditioned conference room.

On one side was a long glass and chrome table with sixteen gray, modern chairs around it. On the other side was a seating area of black leather chairs and couches and a massive large screen television that took up most of the wall space that the windows didn’t. Right in the middle was McCormack.

She thought she’d been prepared to see him again. She’d been wrong. All the fluttery expectations and excitement that had been swishing about in her stomach all morning came to an end. Instead, her pulse took over, pounding everywhere until she swore it even beat at the ends of her fingertips and toes. There was something about McCormack that made her go from smart to stupid in seconds.

His build was that of an athlete, and his dress wasn’t captain-like at all. His tight black T-shirt showcased his well-defined shoulders and back, and his low-slung black shorts revealed a nice butt, muscular tanned legs, and wide feet in simple black flip-flops. His surfer hair was on the long side and brushed his shoulders in sun-bleached layers. All in all, he looked nothing like his Armani-suit wearing brother or the spit and polish one would expect from the captain of a craft as impressive as this one.

“Captain, Doctor Dupré is here.”

His back was to her as he looked out over the water. “Thanks, Toneau. We’ll have an all-hands meeting in one hour, then break for lunch.”

“Aye, aye.” Toneau scooped up her bags and disappeared, leaving Bella alone with Tucker.

He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and flicked on the wide flat-screen television between them. Cool blue underwater images filled the screen. Soft, rounded lumps and silt-covered shapes appeared and disappeared as the ROV drifted over the seabed. Branches and twigs of straggly coral looked more like tumbleweed strewn across a desert than the bottom of an ocean.

“This is some footage from our prelim dives with the ROV. We’ve already done three with the coordinates you texted. So far we haven’t found anything.”

Bella frowned at the moving image. Willing a man-made shape to form on the seabed. “Not even outlying debris?”

He shook his head.

“Before we go any further, I need to clear something up with you that we neglected to talk about in Harold’s office.”

He turned, his incredible blue eyes sucking her in. His lips curved with a sensual tilt. “You mean the instant attraction between us?”

Shit. Had she been that obvious?
That would have to change. Now.
Bella swallowed back the retort that rose to her lips. He flustered her, and she didn’t want to think about how obvious she must have been for him to notice. She shook her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. “No, actually, that wasn’t what I was thinking of at all.”

“But you
have
been thinking of it.”

She frowned. “Is this going to be an issue?”

He took one step closer. “Not unless you want it to be.” His smile got slightly wider, and her heart pounded in response.

McCormack was good looking, but she was not about to let her female Dupré instincts override her own intelligence. She refused to let him keep redirecting her thoughts.

“Did someone explain to you that I’m supposed to take lead on this project?” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. She hated to jump into this detail, but it hadn’t been covered in their meeting in Harry’s office, and she wanted to make sure exactly where things stood before the operation got fully underway.

H
is smile faltered. “So that’s how it’s going to be, is it? All work and no play?” He nodded. “Okay, Doc. That’s fine. I was only told you needed an expert crew to recover a wreck. And since I’m the one with exponentially more experience in the actual water, pulling up items from the sea floor, and responsible for the safety of everyone aboard this vessel, I’d planned to call the shots with
my
divers and
my
crew on
my
boat.”

She crossed her arms and took a seat at the table, like she intended to dig in and stay awhile. “But you don’t have the historical or preservation expertise.”

Wow. The good doctor did not mess around when she went for blood. Fine.
If she wanted to go head-to-head, he’d oblige his guest. “True, but now that we know the location of the wreck, once you give us the specifics of what’s down there, we really won’t need that expertise until we bring it to the surface, now will we? So you can tag along after the initial dive-recovery plan is formed and get some sun while we bring things up for you.”

Bella bristled and crossed her legs as well, her foot bouncing, making the silver ring on her second toe wink in the sunlight streaming through the conference room windows. Good. At least now she knew he wasn’t a guy to be pushed around just because she had a pretty face. What really amazed him was how she could be so demanding when she hadn’t even been on his ship more than half an hour. It concerned him that she threatened the well-run order of his ship. Not every man on board could resist her charms.

“You don’t know precisely what you are looking for, or how to catalog, clean, preserve, and store it properly once it comes up,” she insisted. “That’s my expertise.”

He let a slow, almost predatory, half smile lift the edge of his mouth and derived a small sense of satisfaction as the pulse at the base of her creamy throat beat faster. Doctor Dupré still thought she had the upper hand with him, but she didn’t realize he’d already discovered two of her vulnerabilities: the wreck and her attraction to him. “Which is why I guess the financial backer wants us working together on this.”

“Who exactly is the financial backer on this project? Mr. Palmer was a little sketchy on the details.”

She was fishing for answers, which amused him. “If he didn’t tell you, then it’s not my place to reveal the source.” He struggled to keep his expression as neutral as possible.

“But you’re friends.”

“Close enough that I know him as well as I know myself.”

Bella let out an exasperated sigh, uncrossed her arms, and gripped the edge of her seat. “That explains a lot.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You think you can call all the shots because you have a doohickey, and I don’t,” she said, waving a hand in the general direction of his groin.

He paused for just a second and tried not to laugh. “Did you just call my junk a doohickey?”

She glanced down at the floor a moment, a delicious pink color staining her cheeks before her gaze connected with his again. “That’s not the point. The point is, I need to be in charge of the salvage. The wreck could be in a delicate state.”

She huffed out a breath and leaned forward putting her forearms on her knees, giving him an exceptionally nice view of her cleavage that just about dropped his jaw to the floor. He’d gone rock hard the moment she’d entered the room, and he’d smelled her perfume—a light, mix of citrus, flowers, and sugar, like
limoncello
sipped on a Sicilian seashore on a hot summer day. Prolonging their meeting one-on-one was just adding to his torment.

Perhaps he’d do best to wrap up their introduction and give himself a breather before he had to talk to the rest of the crew. He forced himself to look at the images on the screen instead of her and hoped his long T-shirt was long enough. If he didn’t look at her, perhaps his brain could outpace his libido. He needed to put some distance between them, which on the confines of a ship wouldn’t be easy.

“The point is,
Doctor
Dupré, that on board this vessel you will act as a professional and that includes not micromanaging or harassing my crew. I have experience handling a ship of this size. Managing a professional and experienced dive crew.
And
the ship’s crew. Ordering and maintaining equipment, purchasing supplies before we need them, and transporting the artifacts back to shore safely.
I
do all that. Plus. Why don’t you stick to what you’re good at? Cleaning, ID-ing, and cataloging our finds.”

He gave her a moment to process that. He could practically hear the cogs in her brain turning. She remained silent. Good. There was only one boss on board, and that was him. If she insisted on pushing, he’d play hardball. He hoped to hell it wouldn’t come to that. “We’ll be meeting with the rest of the crew in thirty minutes. Please pull together whatever additional data you may have for us to review. It will give us a better scope of what we’re searching for before we go down again to set up a sonar scan grid.”

She didn’t respond, but he could hear her even, shallow breathing. The air held an electric charge that amped up every sense. Just having her in the same space altered everything, like the sensation before a thunderstorm. “Are you on board with that, Doctor Dupré?”

The whisper of movement as she shifted in her chair told him she was no longer seated. He turned and found her chair empty. She was gone.

T
hirty minutes later there was sharp knock on her door.

“Doctor Dupré?”

The sound of his voice made all the downy little hairs on her arms raise. Dangerous. That’s what he was. Just like lightning. She’d seen it so many times before with the women in her family. Men who were in it for the quick hit and then disappeared. Well, no thank you. She was not interested. Somehow she hadn’t gotten that message to all her girl parts just yet.

“Sorry, no one is home right now, but we’ll get back to you soon. Please leave a message at the beep.
Beep
.”

“You have one minute to open this door, or I will.” The change in his tone from casual to imperious put her even more on edge.
I will not give in.

Bella didn’t budge from her seat in the cushy chaise in the corner of her room. Why should she? She’d already made up her mind she was finding a way out of this. She would not be conned, duped, or stripped of her legacy because it was a man who claimed he was in charge of the biggest event in her life.

“Thirty seconds.” His voice held an edge of irritation.
Good.
He’d certainly irritated her enough. In fact, she was downright uncomfortable around him.

“Ten seconds.”

Mentally she did a countdown in her head and stood up to stare out the porthole window in her berth. She fully expected him to walk away. In her experience, men never did what they promised.

After she silently counted down, three…two…one, and didn’t hear anything, she felt justified in her assessment and smoothed her damp hands down the side of her shorts.